Father of the Year 2025: Dr Arne Rubinstein - the Power of Rites of Passage - Better Than Yesterday with Osher Günsberg

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Every one of our children is going to go through
a write a passage. The question is are they going
to create their own with the potential disastrous impact.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Well, can we do something.

Speaker 1 (00:11):
That's really healthy, positive and supports them in the next stage.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
Giday, Welcome to the show. This is better than Yesterday.

Speaker 4 (00:23):
Useful tools and useful conversations to help make your day
to day better than yesterday. Every week since twenty thirteen.
Min I'm Sloshi Ginsburg. Thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for downloading the show. If you're new, hey, welcome.
Got a question when you think about rights of passage,
what do you think about the first time you snuck out,
first time you got drunk, first time you are I

(00:44):
don't know, got into a fight.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Maybe they were r all on the same night.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
And our culture, a right of passage is associated with
becoming an adult, but it's also often associated with some
rather negative behaviors. Yet for the vast majority of human existence,
countless indigenous cultures across the world have had some sort
of guided ritual which transitions their children into adults. And

(01:10):
there's immense power in that that we don't do it
really in our modern culture. So what if we lost
by not having modern rights of passage, what could we
stand to gain by finding a way to bring them back. Today,
we are going to speak with the man who is
literally Father of the Year, doctor Arna Rubinstein, OAM Father
of the Year twenty twenty five. He's a doctor, counselor, mentor, speaker,

(01:33):
author and co founder and CEO of the Rights of
Passage Institute. In this conversation, we talk about the crucial
elements involved in a writer passage, what we are seeing
in our young men and women when they don't have
these rights of passage, and what it feels like to
get off the plane from burning man, drop your bags,
walk into my studio and record a podcast, because that's
exactly what happened. The conversations absolutely captivating. We'll get right

(01:56):
to it after the break. Right before we get to
doctor Arna Rubinstein.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
So what now?

Speaker 1 (02:11):
What?

Speaker 4 (02:11):
The live tour is on sale right now. The book
has been out for a while. You can get that
in the show notes right now. But me and Cam
are going on the road. We're doing a live show Brisbane, Perth,
Melbourne and Sydney.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
We are coming to you.

Speaker 4 (02:24):
We are performing the book live on stage, like when
the Flaming Lips performed the entire album of Yashimi Battles
the Pink Robots.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
It's that but with a book. I can't wait for
you to see it. Links are in the show notes.

Speaker 4 (02:36):
It's going to be a rad night out and I
can't wait for you to come and say hello. Let's
get to my guest. This is my fabulous conversation with
doctor Arna Rubinstein. He's the founder of the Rights of
Passage Institute. To find out more about that, Rights of
Passage Institute dot org. Enjoy the conversation.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
How are you, Ana, I'm good.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
I'm tired.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
I've had a big, big journey getting here the last
few days, but I'm here.

Speaker 4 (03:03):
You were on the black Rock Player with I Want
one hundred thousand Other Burners.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, something like that.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
It's an extraordinary thing that at the age of sixty one,
I did my virgin burn and I'll never be the same.

Speaker 4 (03:19):
Burning man for most people might be aware of it,
but it's sometimes amazing. It's sometimes a mud pit. I
believe it was a catastrophic dust storm healscape.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
We it took us twenty two hours in the queue
to get in in our Fortunately we had an RV,
but you know, I thought it was going to take
us maybe two three hours. Twenty two hours after we
left we were in so the whole epit but incredible,
futuristic and you know, it's a hedonistic, debauched event, but

(03:54):
it's amazing. It's probably the greatest party on earth. And
it's also like being in Babylon, and so there's a
lot of you know, contradictions happening at the same time.
But I was fascinating to see it, and I'm glad
I went.

Speaker 4 (04:06):
Would have been hard to look at with your eye
on ceremony and ritual and rites of passage, it would
have been hard to look at it, and particularly with
the men in the cohort there to not kind of
go oh, I can see what's happening to here.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
I understand this well.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Part of what I was there doing was giving a
presentation on whether burning Man is actually a right of
passage and has all the elements of a right of
passage because we're separated from our normal day to day
environment and there's potential for transformation and then there's the integration.
But what it really comes down to is if people
go there just to get messed up, and you know,

(04:45):
do as much damage themselves and others as they can.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
That's definitely not a right of passage.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
That's just as you know, it's a harmful activity. The
potential at burning Man, and why I think burning Man
was actually originally brought into the world, was have insights
into who you could be and what you really want
to do with your life, and what parts of your
life are actually bullshit, but you're just doing them anyway
because that's what you've been doing for so long. And

(05:12):
for the people who go there and really have significant
realizations about things, they want to change, things they want
to do, the vision that they want to live their
life and can then go home and take those things
with them and do that, that is actually a right
of passage. So there is potential for that to happen,
but you know, it doesn't automatically happen.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
There's been a lot of experiments over history of consciously
built communities, not the communities that we kind of arrive into.
They generally don't end well. Like most communes that were
created with the best of intent generally don't work out
in the end.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
So it's a hard thing to do it correct.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
And I moved to Byron Bay over thirty years ago,
and I was very interested in communities, and I found
exactly that that the majority of communities that were set
up did not go well. You'd get, you know, ten
to fifteen people buying a piece of land together and
you know, living in their particular part on the land,
and everyone thinking this is amazing. And then there's some

(06:14):
roadworks that need to be done and two or three
people say, well, I'm not putting in money for that,
or someone gets a dog that barks all night, or
someone sleeps with someone else's partner, or you know, any
one of a million things of people break up and
then the dynamic changes, and unfortunately, a lot of the
communities often ended up disastrously. And what I did find

(06:35):
is that the communities that worked well were the ones
that had a common vision but also had a place
where people could get their own space and be separately
in the community, as opposed to living with each other
the entire time and having to have meetings until one
o'clock in the morning about all sorts of different things

(06:56):
and wanting to kill each other. And it's an incredibly
interesting topic which we could talk about for this whole
PODCAS think.

Speaker 4 (07:03):
It's the idea of anyone that was like for me,
anyone that thinks I don't know free market economics, that's
the answer. Like, just look at any community that was
based on some sort of altruistic visionary goal of this
is what a utopian human community would look like.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Like, Yeah, but.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
It's got humans in it, that's your problem. Yeah, And
humans are greedy, and humans are driven by desire, and
humans sometimes have lower impulse control than others. And you
know it's if you don't factor that in and have
corrections for that, you're cant out up in trouble.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, as it happens.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
I am fascinated by community because I think one of
the things that we most need, in fact is community.
And I'm also fascinated by human behavior having been a
doctor and in the work that I do and starting
at a sort of a micro level.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
You know, you and I don't know each other.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
So we're going to be nice implied to each other
today and we're going to go as far as we
can in this conversation.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Fantastic.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
But if we lived and worked together after a week
and month, three months, you cross what I call the
intimacy line. And once we cross the intimacy line. I
get all of you and you get all of me,
which means I get all of the stuff that happened
to you growing up, all of your trauma, the relationship
you had with your dad, you know, the relationship you.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Had with you, the bully at school, and all of that.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
And that's going to create a whole new realm of
relationship between us. And if we can't resolve that, then
the dangers that ends up in conflict and we start
triggering each other. And you know, it's easy to write
off community, but what we actually are yearning for is community.
And I believe one of the most significant issues is

(08:42):
that because we've lost community, people are living individualistically and
thinking just about themselves and that sort of goes on
into major problems throughout every aspect of life. And so
part of it is actually about, well, how do we
create healthy communities, And it means being able to have
honest conversations, being able to be vulnerable. There are ways

(09:03):
to do it, but it definitely takes work.

Speaker 4 (09:06):
You don't accidentally get you know, we don't get born
with this stuff. We have to deliberately chase it down.
The intimacy line that you mentioned is also that anyone
that's worked with someone quite closely for a while will
know exactly that how was work. All the first six
months were okay, yeah, and now the guy that hired me,
he just I can't figure it out.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
That's right, I hate him. He's an ogre, he's a
bully or you know.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Oh man.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
In my case, it was like, ah, it was the
moment where I made that person my dad and they
didn't realize it. And so every time that they did
not like something that I did, I would They had
no idea why I was being did and I was
bestowing upon them something that they didn't didn't need or
didn't want.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
But it made it hold on. I really weird.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yes, and I happened to have exactly that problem of
a lot of people protect dad energy onto me. And
I actually just won the Australian Father of the Year.
So you know, it's just going to get worse. And
there are people who love me and there are people
who who hate me and they've never met me, right,
and so yes, all of these projections are a big thing.
But when we can actually sit down and talk about
it and start with the conversation around well, actually, what

(10:10):
was your relationship with your dad, and what's my relationship
being like with my dad? And we can actually see
the other person as a person. It is possible to
significantly shift things. And you know, we were at one
stage born into communities. I look at my mother, you know,
sixty years ago she was in a community in Perth.

(10:32):
Every Sunday they would go and have lunch with Grandma.
All the family would be there. They'd all be asking
whatever the kids are doing and how they're going, and
all of that community was natural.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
But now everybody's.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Moved away and people live all over the place, so
people want community, and that the simplest option we're getting
at the moment is online, you know, social media, friends,
all of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
But that is clearly not community.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
No, it's anything. It's monetized that need.

Speaker 4 (11:01):
We think we might get a little bit of it,
We might get enough or not quite enough, so we
keep scrolling or keep engaging, but it's not what we
what we actually need. You kind of just you are
the Australian Father of the Year for twenty twenty five
and it is the thing that we sometimes call ourselves.
I will tell you my father a year story that
happened last weekend when we fuck up like a father

(11:21):
a year. Yeah, I'm sure you've done that any farther.
Everyone makes mistakes. What is it like when you get
the phone call?

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Well, when I got the phone call and they said, oh,
we're just ringing to tell you that you've been awarded
the Australian Father of the Year, my first thought was, oh,
my gosh, what am I going to tell my kids?
You know, how are they going to feel about this?
And knowing them, they're going to say, well, they didn't
ask us, we weren't consulted. So I was alectually quite
confronted by the whole thing because I certainly haven't been

(11:49):
the perfect father.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
And you know, when I really sat.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Down to it about it, I came to the conclusion
there is no such thing as a perfect father.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
We're all just trying to do the best we can.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
You know, you're making vortex canons for your six year
old's birthday tomorrow. And I got my son over here
for the award and we just went on the news
together and he was chuffed as anything. And you know,
there are things that I've done well, there mistakes that
I made. But I think the thing about being a
father is trying to do it as well as we
can and keep learning and growing, and it's a really

(12:19):
serious role and topic.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
And so there's that aspect of it. And then the
other thing for me around.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
The award is the is the work that we do
with creating rights of passage for teenagers and that I'm
very passionate about it, and I feel like this award
will hopefully really help to take this work more into
the mainstream, which is where we really want it.

Speaker 4 (12:40):
I was confronted quite intensely with the rights of passage
in my own life when I watched our eldert. She's
now twenty one, but she did the last two years
of high school on a zoom call and missed all
of those things that you know, hanging out in the

(13:02):
holidays or you know, your formal or you know whatever.
It was like, she missed so many of these things,
and so school was over, but it was the day
was exactly the same as the day before, yeah, you know,
And they ended up organizing some events for themselves and
they managed to put that sort of stuff together. But

(13:24):
without these signposts, it can be it can be quite
difficult to know to know when something's over. You know,
it's a quote from someone I know who gave up
smoking three times.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Like why do you do it? You know it's trouble
for you.

Speaker 4 (13:38):
They're like, oh, because that's when I know the meal
is over. Y right, there has to be a kind
of a full stop and a moment where we all
agree this is a thing. But as you mentioned, community
was it was built in to our society, and rights
of passage were similarly built into our society.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Well, the community ran the rights of passage. Rights a
passage were a community event, and I studied rights of
passage all over the world. Actually, going back a bit
before that, I was a doctor. I was an emergency
medicine doctor for fifteen years, and I saw an emergency
what I call an overrepresentation of young people. Boys coming
in who crashed a car and killed their mates, or

(14:19):
who'd jumped off a tower and broken their legs or
their backs, or overdosed on drugs or gotten into a fight,
or you know, anyone of any stupid thing they could
do in order to try and make themselves feel like
an adult. And girls who were coming in, you know,
doing something with someone that they'd never done before while
they were drunk and you know, especially at things like

(14:40):
schoolies in Byron Bay where I used to work, and
I was just seeing that these young these kids were
doing things that were going to impact on them for
the rest of their lives, that they would regret forever.
And I started looking around and found that every indigenous
and traditional community.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
All over the world would have a rite.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Of passage to who acknowledge and celebrate the fact that
there is a line and there's a time when they
move from being children to being adults. And when they're children,
you want to let them be children. But if they remain,
if you don't have a healthy write passage and they
stay children, then the danger is that even when they're adults,
they're still thinking and acting like children, and that is

(15:21):
a major problem.

Speaker 4 (15:22):
I don't know what the female version of the name is,
but we all know a man child, yeah, yeah, and
it can be. I've met a bunch of them working
on a show like The Bachelor or Bachelorette, when there
would be lots of men.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
I found it really fascinating.

Speaker 4 (15:38):
I'd meet guys who are twenty seven, lived at home,
had never introduced a women to their parents, like you're
just a giant teenager.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, more than that. More than that.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
I mean, I wrote a model and the different between
a boy and a man, and we talk about a
boy thinks, you know, your six year old, they think
they're the center of the universe. That's fine. They want power,
they want everything for themselves. They never take they don't
take responsibility for their actions or their emotions. They can
never be wrong, and they want a mother to be
their servant and do everything for them. And that's fine

(16:09):
for a six year old. But if you end up
with an adult man who still thinks he's the center
of the universe and you know, loses his temper when
he doesn't get what he wants and just wants power,
and you know, thinks he's going to live forever and
thinks that women are there for him.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
To serve responsibility for his choice. Correct.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
And if that man then becomes the head of a
major company or run or becomes elected, you know, to
run a country and can start wars and impose all
sorts of rules, and you know, it's a major problem.
And unfortunately, I actually think that we live in a
world that is run by boys, and we need to
live in a wather that's run by good men.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
And powerful women.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
And you know, I'm you've got I'm already excited here,
We're about ten minutes into our podcast.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
I'm excited.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
But as I look into it, what I realize is
that in the Indigenous rights of passage, one of the
things that would happen is when boys went through their
right of passage at fourteen fifteen, let's say, or thirteen
around that time. Part of it would be the boys
would be humbled, and part of the humbling is realizing
it's not just about me. I'm not the center of
the universe. I actually have a role and my actions

(17:21):
affect others in my community, and my main role is
to do good and to be a part of the community.
So the boys would be humbled and the girls would
be empowered, and they would realize from their right passages
that within themselves they had great capacity and strength, and

(17:43):
you know, it was inside them. And when that doesn't happen,
the girls end up thinking they have to be small,
and they don't go for the promotion, and they go
with the wrong guy just because he looked at them
a certain way or whatever.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
And I see more the.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
Impact of us not having healthy rights of passage, and
I also see, because we've been hearing this for thirty years,
that when we put people through a healthy writer passage,
the young men who come out a beautiful young man,
and that the young women who come out know themselves,
listen to their inner voice, trust their own intuition, support

(18:20):
each other.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
You know, it changes their lives.

Speaker 4 (18:26):
Taking a break from Anna, doctor Arna Rubinstein back in
a moment, the right of passages that you've studied, I
certainly haven't studied as much as you have, but I
am aware of them.

Speaker 3 (18:48):
It's not just the kid that is.

Speaker 4 (18:51):
They were the three phase, the separation, the transformation, and
the reintegration. I wrote a story about separation, transformation, reintegration
because I had some I wrote a short story, a
true story about when some neighbors moved in next door
and they were bikers, and I, for the first time,
only in my life ever, I snuck out of my

(19:12):
house to go on It was one of their fortieth birthdays.
And the way they looked at me when I showed
back up after I'd already said good night, was like
here he.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Is, Ah, there's the boy, He's become the man.

Speaker 4 (19:25):
It was only because there was bottles of gym beam
with a green label in there that I know it
was fifteen. I have a very different relationship to Aghalla now.
But the separation, it's not just for the child, it's
also for the parents. It's for the parents to also
say goodbye, because yeah, you know, I love that wolf.
He sleeps in our bed. He still shows up. He's massive.

(19:48):
He kicks me in this splane all night long. But
I know one day it's going to stop.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
You don't want him still sleeping in your bed when
he's twenty five to thirty.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
No, that'd be a problem.

Speaker 4 (19:56):
And like today he rode his bicycle to school really
really well. Part of my heart breaks because like, oh
fuck you can I ride a bike really well? And
a little part of the part that needs me is gone.
And that's the part that some parents, I can understand why,
really have a hard time letting go of. Can you
talk to me a bit about how important is for
the parent to allow the child to do this?

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Oh, it's critical, it's critical.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
I look at it like life is like a staircase,
and each step is a different stage of life, from
baby to child, to able to ride your bike to school.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
To young adult to add a home parent.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
If you become a parent, job things elder, and we're
all on that staircase.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
We're all somewhere on the staircase.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
And when the child moves, say from child to young adult,
their parents also need to move give them the space.
And also, you know when that happens, you know, my
sons have done that now, so that puts me at
a different place on the staircase. And if we don't
do that, and parents don't want to move, they want

(20:59):
to hold on. And when that happens, if your child
goes for a right of passage and moves into the
space of a young man, but goes home and the
parents still treat them like they're a child, they'll go
back to being a child and it won't go well.
It actually often starts a war in the household. And
you know, if there are any women who are listening
to this podcast, they will know men who when they

(21:21):
get go home or with their mothers, go back to
being children again. And it's not a healthy thing. And
it's actually incredibly unhealthy for the children. So most of
the camps that we run we do children together with
parents so that they're both going through the right of passage.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
And you know, that's very powerful.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
It can be as powerful, if not more powerful, for
the parents in the short term, because then also we
have to think, oh, well, I'm moving more towards elderhood
and what am I going to do with the rest
of my life?

Speaker 2 (21:54):
And how do I want to be?

Speaker 1 (21:55):
And when you live in a society where elderhood, instead
of being respected and honored, is looked down upon and
is tied in with shame, you know, it's not easy
to move into that space. Whereas this is where it's
really interesting. In the traditional and indigenous communities, the most
respect went to the elders. In our community, the most

(22:16):
sort of respect in worship goes to young youthful you know,
airheads fucking say it.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Well, they're not all we heads, but don't understand we
worship youth.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
I mean we have songs like forever Young, I want
to be for ever young. Yeah, as opposed to you know, hey,
let's really respect the elders.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (22:35):
Yeah, you've got an answer to the problem that I have,
you know, can you tell me, Like.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
No, I'll be just fine, I'll figure it out myself.
What do you know, oh man?

Speaker 4 (22:44):
Yeah, which is weird because like right now I'm certainly
I'm fifty one and my career is changing very intentionally.
It was like, oh, oh this is ages, Oh this
is interesting, and it's full on because I've never experienced
it before in my life.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
But that's that's by the by when people think.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
It's not actually by the bye, we don't need to
talk about it now, but it's actually not. By the way,
it's actually very important. And you're at a stage where
I actually call it magi, which is the Sufi word
for wizard. And you would have one foot in man
and one foot in elder, and by that I mean
you'll still be strong, and you'll still be able to
do lots of things, but not like when you are thirty.

(23:23):
Oh no, and you've got some wisdom, not like you'll
have when you're seven or eighty. And so it's actually
a really powerful time that you're talking about between so
I don't know it starts somewhere around forty five fifty
and goes to about sixty five that in between space,
and to recognize that, you know you're I would say,
so you're fifty one, I'm sixty one. You know, it

(23:44):
becomes it's no longer about empire building, you know, it
becomes more about family, and it becomes more about support
in the next generation, becoming loving rather than competitive, and
it's not about being right or wrong anymore.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
And you know, so things do.

Speaker 4 (24:00):
But we had a Father's Day race at Wolfe School
this morning, and like, like, look.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
I had to win.

Speaker 4 (24:08):
I had to throw the egginspoon race because I was
going to beat him. He's still figuring out that race
means someone will beat you. Yeah, he's still getting there.
I'm trying to get him to the point where it's
okay if you don't win. He's still figuring out how
it's okay. But sport does play a role in helping
our young people understand how the world works.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
I had a policy of beating my kids for as
long as I could, and I told them I was
going to I told them, I said, I'm going to
beat you for as long as I can, because as
soon as you start beating me at something, you'll be
beating me at that forever.

Speaker 4 (24:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
And I remember the first time they beat me in
an arcade game, one of those racing games.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
I'm like, hang on, we're going to play again.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
That was like that couldn't have happened, you know, and
now my son is you know, six foot five ways
over one hundred kilograms and still wants to wrestle me
to submission.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
And I'm like, don't hurt daddy, don't hurt daddy.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
But you know they know that when they started beating me,
they legitimately and validly did it.

Speaker 4 (25:06):
That is yeah, I'm going to this is a thing
I'm going to need to get into the right of
passage that when you speak about indigenous things, and I'm
fascinated by how indigenous cultures and you know, religion systemaize
a lot of things that their brain needs anyway, you know,
just to make sure this stuff happened. There was healing,

(25:27):
There was rights of passage and ritual around birth and
death and you know, maturation and puberty and stuff like this,
because they just figured out all the ones that we
do this with do better.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
We just do better when we get this together right.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
But it's also like, oh, bullet ants, Like it doesn't
always have to be well, no, we don't circumcise.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
You when you're six days old, we will wait till
we're fourteen.

Speaker 4 (25:48):
Like it doesn't always have to be an immense amount
of pain, but there is an amount of discomfort involved.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
Now why is that?

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Okay, So let's go back to the first thing he said.
First of all, there's like this staircase that I talked about.
The staircase is sort of usually to do with stages
of life, child, young adult, and elder, for example. And
then at the same time as there's a staircase that
goes up, there's a spiral that goes down, and in
that spiral is disappointment, loss of dreams, failure, grief, loss

(26:20):
of loved ones, death, and all of those things will
happen to us.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
At stages in our lives.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
And in the same way as the steps need to
be managed well, those spiral moments need to be managed well.
And the majority of the time they're actually not. I mean,
how many people as a doctor I've seen who someone
dies and it's never talked about. It's pushed to the side,
or something bad happens and it's like ignored or you know,
and it doesn't go away. It just lives inside us

(26:49):
then and creates all sorts of other problems and addictions
and all of that. And rights of passage are the
actual perfect and appropriate way to manage not only those
staircase times in our lives, those age times, but those
difficult times in our lives. And then there are four
things that I've recognized that are always present in a

(27:10):
writer passage.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
And the first is the sharing of stories.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
So as our children go through different stages in their lives,
or we do, or something happens, it's really important that
we share stories about anything and everything to do with
that time, our own stories and the stories of everyone involved.
The next thing is there's always a challenge. Rights of
passage are challenging. Now the thing is that challenge will

(27:34):
be different at different times in our lives. So you
mentioned bullet ants, and it's actually the Saterre Mahwe tribe
in Brazil who make these gloves and get these bullet
ants that have the worst bite known to man. And
this was a specific thing for teenage boys. And in
the communities they recognize that teenage boys need some physical
challenge that actually exposes them to the possibility of.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Death or extreme pain.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
The mass I warrior boys had to go out and
kill a wild animal, preferably a lion with a spears.
I tell Mahi used the bullet ants in other ones
in Vanuatu, they jumped off big towers made of bamboo
and tied a vine around their ankle, and there was
the possibility of death. Now we say that's ridiculous, we
can't do that. But in my work as an emergency

(28:22):
medicine doctor, what I saw was time and time again
boys who they didn't do bullet ants, but they would
stick cigarette butts between their arms and the one who
pulled away first lost the competition. Or they'd jump off
a crane into Darling Harbor and one of them wouldn't
come back up again. Or they'd drive their car, you know, say, boys,

(28:42):
would I've been doing things.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
I've been in the boot of a Mazda six to six?
Has it got air out the back of Brookfield?

Speaker 2 (28:47):
There you go?

Speaker 3 (28:48):
All right, there you go.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
So there's this thing in boys that they need to
do it, but when there's no men facilitating it, the
dangers they go too far. And you know, look, the
truth is, back in those days, they would they would
take twenty boys out and maybe only bring fifteen back.
Jesus and they'd say, well, you know that's how it goes.
Those are the five weren't supposed to come back. You know,
when we do our work, if we take twenty boys.

(29:11):
We have to bring twenty back every single time. But
we're losing We're losing kids. We're losing kids in car accidents,
We're losing kids to drugs, fights, suicide, We're losing them.
So it's like, how can we do it in a
way that it creates what it needs to create but
doesn't kill them, doesn't maim them.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
And then those challenges change.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
So I'm going through a ride of passage now at
sixty one, as I'm moving into elderhood. But I don't
need to do these incredibly physically difficult things, you know.
I don't need to serf the biggest waves I can,
or write the biggest climb the highest mountains. My challenges
are much more psychological, spiritual, even emotional. And what you

(29:52):
were talking about around fifty one and how you manage that, well,
you know, there's so the challenges are still there, but
the challenges change at different times. The appropriate challenge is
different at different ages.

Speaker 4 (30:06):
Is the idea of the indigenous culture. You know you
did from what I know about it, it was always
managed as well as they could.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
Like say, for example, a.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
Kid has to I can't remember where it was in
the world, had to spend a night alone, but all
the other men in the tribe would be down the
hill making the exact replica noises of the animals that
are there to eat them.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
That was one of the Native American Indian tribes.

Speaker 4 (30:32):
And like someone's watching the kid the whole time, but
the kid can't see them because they haven't taught them
how to like the stealth mode yet. Yeah, but the
kids fucking I'm going to die, Yeah, completely safe.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, they want them to feel fear. They want them
to know that there's that possibility. So you know, our
challenge is how can we create these challenges and to
be honest, get the parents out of the way so
that we can do it, because if we don't do it,
as I said already, they'll get near bloody carr and
do something stupid. Or you know, every know of our
children is going to go through a write a passage.

(31:03):
The question is are they going to create their own
with the potential disastrous impact, or can we do something
that's really healthy, positive and supports him in the next stage.
Because the challenge is actually only one part of the
writer passage. Hearing the stories of elders is another really
important part about it. So you know, with boys, they
want to hear about what it's like to be a man.

(31:25):
And so when we sit with men around and the
men tell stories about when they were that age, the
relationship they had with their own fathers, you know, their
successes and failures, the boys will sit there.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
For hours and listen.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
And similarly with girls, and I would like to talk
about girls rights and passage, but just complete this bit
on the boys stories a challenge. We also get them
to create a vision for who do they want to be,
what sort of young men, what sort of man do
they want to be, what's important to them?

Speaker 2 (31:51):
And what they come up with is beautiful.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
And then the fourth element that's always in a writer,
passage comes from this indigenous belief that every child is different,
and every child is born with their own innate qualities,
their own gifts, talents, genius, and spirit, and the role
of the community is to recognize and bring out those gifts.
So both your children will be completely different and now

(32:16):
both have their own you know, you'll already be able
to see their spirit. And if we can bring that
out and encourage that and then help them to use
that in a positive way, that's when they're going to shine.
But if no one sees them, if they don't understand
or value their own gifts, the danger is that they
get sucked into thinking like you know what social media

(32:37):
and the algorithms are telling them that they all have
to look the same way, be a certain size, be
a certain shape, have certain clothes, drink certain stuff.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
And that's where we actually get the problems.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
So when we can actually, you know, when we do
our programs, we get the men, starting with the fathers.
If we have the fathers there to tell each of
the boys the gifts that we see in each of them,
the spirit that we see seeing each of them.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
And you see these kids grow.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
It's like a plant that hasn't been warded for months
and you bought it and that you come back later
that afternoon and it's you know, we see these kids grow.
And when they've heard the stories of men and been
out to ask questions, gone through a challenge, created a vision,
and being honored, that is a life changing experience for them.

Speaker 4 (33:20):
We got really lucky with g and we were able
to get her into the kind of school we're able
to afford to get her in the kind of school
that took this kind of stuff very very seriously with
the young it all girls school, and the systemaized way
that they spoke to them. And for example, what I
loved about it when they were studying maths, right or whatever,

(33:42):
when they talked about it's the only one I can remember,
like quadratic equations. They would bring up a woman in
history who used this to do something they only ever
used powerful women to demonstrate, and that would be.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
In bio, in science whatever.

Speaker 4 (33:57):
Fantastic and these were the scientists that they talked about
when they talked about the discovery, the thing they showed
the woman that used it, and so that was the normality,
is like, of course women are amazing and.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Inspired them, yeah, abs fuckingly yeah.

Speaker 4 (34:09):
And the way that they talk to them and the
way that they gather them together and pulled them together,
you know, it went a long way to helping her
become the woman that she is. Because if they do
the work that the parent can't do because it has
to be work done, that isn't the parent. We'll talk
about that in a second, But what's the difference between
the teenage girl's right of passage that you mentioned, the empowering,

(34:31):
the making them bigger if it's not pain and humbling
and death is around the corner, what is it.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, well, look, we're getting into big generalizations now, and
we know that the world is a lot less generalized.
And you know, back in the day, it was very
clear a boy became a man and a girl became
a woman, and now.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
There's a lot more crossover.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
But from the studies I did in traditional rights of passage,
where the boys, one was about being able to face
fear and pain of me. For the girls, a lot
of it was actually going inside. And in a number
of the indigenous communities, when the girls started reach puberty,
they would be put in a heart, or they would
be put in even a hollow tree, and the elder

(35:12):
women would come and bring them food and tell them
stories and teach them things.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
But the principle was for.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
The girls to go inside and learn to trust their
inner voice and their cycles.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
The whole cycles thing is so important for the women.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
And you know, when I used to work in emergency
medicine and the girls had come in and they'd done
something they were going to regret forevery the night before,
and I'd say to them, you know, did you know
before you did that that it was not a good idea?
Did you know it was going to go badly? And
most commonly the girls would look at me and they'd go, yes,
they knew the voice was there, but they didn't trust
it and listen to it. And if we did nothing

(35:49):
more than teach girls to trust that in a voice,
we'd already be doing a good thing. And interesting, I'd
say to the boys, you know, when they've done their
stupid thing, did you know that it was a bad idea?

Speaker 2 (36:00):
I was going to go bad?

Speaker 1 (36:00):
And the boys would look at me and they'd go, Nah,
they didn't even think about it.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
They just saw glory.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
Their brains have wired very differently at those ages, right.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
So a big part for the girls was that insight
and also building community that they learned to trust each
other and when they don't get that, then they actually
go into competition with each other. And also encouraging the
girls that they are important and they can do anything,
and empowering them. And you know, I have a great

(36:32):
concern about what's happening with girls, and I actually work
in the you know, the biggest girls school in the
Southern Hemisphere had three suicides in twelve months. And yeah,
and I got contacted the head mistress, she's a legend,
contacted me the day after and we had a big
you know, she asked.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Me if i'd help, and I said, yeah, I will
do anything I can.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
And that school has actually created a retreat center and
all the girls in year nine go there for a
month at a time in small groups over the year,
and it's all about creating a healthy ride of passage
to support these girls as they.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Are becoming young women.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
And we want to see that in schools all over
the country because when you think about what girls are
seeing on social media.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
And they believe it, they think it's true. They think that.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
Unless it's tall and skinny, you know, with big breasts
and blonde hair and perfect teeth and you know, unblemish skin,
they think they've got a major problem. We talk about
with boys toxic masculinity, and what we're talking about more
and more with girls is toxic perfectionism, where they think
they have to be perfect and if they're not, it's
a disaster, and that creates so much stress and anxiety,

(37:43):
and it's you know, I actually believe our education system
has a lot to answer for at the moment, and
I actually believe it's broken.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
But if you've got the opportunity to intervene at a
societal level through something like state education. We already have pe,
you know, we have music, we have functional relationship skills
that come through lunchtimes and figuring things out, like we're
generally socializing our people through this system. There's an opportunity
for an intervention, of course there is, which is quite exciting.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
And what we're realizing is that, you know, the whole
emphasis on academics and the year twelve score has been
the most important thing in the world is no longer
if it.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Ever was true.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
In fact, the research has shown out that your child's
year twelve mark is not going to be the major
determinant of their future success. It is not that you know,
when I grew up, it was all about your year
twelve mark. And what they've clearly shown in multiple research
around the world is that what children need now is

(38:44):
they call them twenty first century life skills, resilience, adaptability,
emotional intelligence, to have a vision and purpose, a growth mindset.
That is what's going to determine success because all of
the academic information is now on our phones and our computers.
You know, if I want to design a swimming pool,
I just have to ask Siri, you know. And so

(39:07):
that is what we really need to be focusing on,
because the kids who come out and they've got the
academic mark but no social skills, they're really.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Going to struggle.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
And parents are now as interested in the well being
programs of schools as they are and the academic outcomes
when they're choosing a school for their kids, which is
saying parents are worried. Any parent who has a kid
under fifteen has to be worried.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
At the moment.

Speaker 4 (39:41):
I have spent time in countries when national services. I
think one thing I found was really interesting is that
the danger of pub violence that I had grown up
with wasn't there at all because everyone knows everyone has
been through the same training. They also know that I
don't know which one is the commando, No do I
know which ones to cook, So I'm not going to

(40:02):
fuck with anybody. So no one was a threat to anybody.
But because they also have this communal thing of like
we all did this thing together. You might be a
stranger to me, but I know exactly what you did
for those three years of your life because I did
the same thing. And we have this common experience. And
I asked this friend of mine about her child who
was finishing high school and office coming. It's like, how
do you feel. I'm terrified, right, But the deal is

(40:24):
you give them a boy and they give you back
a man. And I wondered what your thoughts were on,
whether it be military or other some sort of structural
thing like that, and is there value? Do you see
a value in something like that?

Speaker 1 (40:37):
So I don't think there's any one thing that will
suit every single child. And for some people, national service
is something that can actually completely turn them around. And
I've also been in countries and spent time countries where
it's compulsory. My biggest concern with national service is that
generally the philosophy is we break you down first so

(40:58):
we can build you up, and we will give you
our values and our beliefs, and you will follow orders
and you will do what we tell you, even if
it means you're going to die and it's not the
right thing, and you know, et cetera, et cetera. So
I do have significant concerns with you know, who's running
the who's making the decisions that the people in the
national is it a boy or a man straight away.

Speaker 4 (41:21):
As a leader, I guess it's more the idea of
what society do you get if you know that everyone
in the room has done this right of passage, every
man and woman that you can lay eyes on.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
We get a form of community, so that it is
a community. The army is a community, and they should
in theory be looking after each other.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
But we do still hear terrible stories.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
About things that happen in the army and hazing, and
when the new recruits come in, they're really bastardized, you know,
And that is an example of unfacilitated rights of passage.
And when peers are creating it, they'll do terrible things
to the things to the new ones, and then as
soon as those new ones get to any form of power,
they will do the same thing to the next round

(42:03):
coming through. So I'm definitely not a fan of compulsory
national service, but I have definitely seen young men who've
gone through in national service and it has been in
fact the making of them.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
So it's a mixed bag there.

Speaker 4 (42:16):
I would agree when I look at my own life,
something if it wasn't military, something like that could have
brought me the life skills that otherwise wasn't going to
get something, because event what happens is even someone who
however they got brought up, they get spat out the
other side. They know the brush their teeth, they notice

(42:37):
and up on time. They know to how to not
follow instructions. At least, you know, they become more valuable
in the community.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
I went through many, many.

Speaker 4 (42:48):
Uncomfortable meetings at HR because I just didn't know how
the world works.

Speaker 1 (42:51):
If you'd grown up in indigenal, in an indigenous community
at whatever age fourteen fifteen fifteen, the men in the
community would have come and taken you, that's the first thing.
Your parents would not have come along, and you would
have spent anywhere from a week to five years with
the men, learning basic life skills, hearing stories, getting in

(43:14):
touch with your spirit and who you are, working out
your particular role in the community. And they would have
guided you through that, and when they felt it was completed,
then you would have been put back into the community,
but as a man, not as a boy. You know,
in some of the Papua New Guinean communities, the boys
were taken away for five years and they didn't see

(43:36):
their mothers. They didn't see their families for five years,
but when they came back it was with incredible respect.
But they were not boys, and there was this very
clear line of childhood has finished. Now you're a young man,
and we need you in the community. We need what
you have to offer, and we need you there as
a man, as an adult, not as a child.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
There's a part of us that is wired to look
for I know, for boys.

Speaker 4 (44:01):
I don't know if it's the same for women, but
as part of us is why to look for a
man who is similar age to our own father, but
not our father at around fourteen fifteen years old? How
can we support the people around us who have kids
of that age to do that? I mean, I find
that really brilliant that it just happens in our brains.

(44:22):
Like I won't listen to a thing you say, but
that guy who told me the same sentence that's the truth.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
Yeah, and you know I'll do that.

Speaker 4 (44:27):
Like when your own sons were younger, was there a
man around them? What can we do for own our
own kids to help those people be around for them. Well?

Speaker 1 (44:35):
I work in a lot of communities and I always
say to them, and when we run rights a passage
or when we set something up, I always say to
the men and the women, it's really important that we're
not just here for our own child, that we're actually
here for all of the children, and that we're sort
of like creating an umbrella of adults. And you know,
one of the things I say to parents is get
to know your children's friends and have them know that

(44:58):
if they ever have a problem, they can come to you.
And I definitely had men who my sons could go
to and who my sons were very close to, and
I think that's a really important thing to set up.
And I also say to the man, you know, there
may well come a time when you can have a
better conversation with your son's friend than you can with
your own son.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
It's actually a really beautiful time thing.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
And you know, it's not only at you know, fourteen
or whatever that boys are wanting that I find throughout
their whole lives. Boys are wanting old older man, or
men are wanting older men. And I still want it
who I can speak to. I mean, my father's ninety five,
and bless him, you know, when I go over there,
he just wants to tell me how to live my life.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
And what to do.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
And you know, I actually, you know, I got an
Order of Australia a year ago and I literally had
a thousand people from around the world ring me up,
text me social media and congratulate me. And when I
told my dad, he says to me, well, Anna, now
that you've won this award, you better have a serious
look at your behavior.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
You know, it is funny.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
The only way I can deal with it is by
laughing around it.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
You have to.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
But he actually mentioned it, and so you know, he
still sees me as a fourteen year old, right, And
yet I have other men in my life, and it
gets harder as you get older. But I have men
who are seventy and you know, close to eighty, who
I have deep respect for, and I can go and
I can sit with him, and I can have conversations
with them that I can't have with other people because

(46:30):
they've been they've been at my age, they've been older them.
You know, they just know stuff. And I love that.
I love being with older men who know that. And
I can't tell you how many young men I have
in my life, anywhere from twenty to fifty, and they
want that from me, you know, they just want to
come and spend time with me, go for a surf,

(46:52):
sit in the sawn, I have a walk on the land, and.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
Just just be able to ask questions and just be
able to hear stories. And it's a really special thing
to do.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
And I think it's a super important role for us
as we get older, to be able to have those
conversations with those who are younger than us. And there
are women as well who want that, you know, the
whole thing with women and fathers and that relationship. I
was told years ago that there's research which shows that
the better a girl's relationship is with her father, the

(47:23):
older she's likely to be when she loses her virginity,
which is so interesting. It makes so much sense because
if she's got a good, healthy relationship with her father
and can talk to him and you know, get advice
and share things, as opposed to not talking to her
father and hating her father but still warning that older
man energy, then what is she prepared to give to

(47:45):
get that older man energy from somewhere else?

Speaker 2 (47:47):
And you know, we don't want that.

Speaker 4 (47:49):
And that's to say that's help and how in my
experience as a as a teenage boy and someone who
survived my early twenties, all the nefarious and perilous stuff
that happened. If I think about it, it was to
get the energy and the approval of other men around me,
particularly older men.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Father hunger.

Speaker 4 (48:07):
Absolutely, yeah, I would see it all the time. When
we did those bachelorette and stuff like that. There was
one guy one particularly, we never really cast anything off,
but he was like it was rigged and it was
a big fellow and lovely guy. It's forty one. The
other guys just kind of wind up like in an
Attenburgh documentary, you know, in order of age, and just
did anything. He said, Yeah, they didn't. These are all guys.

(48:29):
We've got their own businesses. They've got six packs. You know,
they're amazing. But they're like, what do you reckon?

Speaker 3 (48:32):
What do you think?

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Mate?

Speaker 3 (48:33):
Like they wouldn't have It was amazing how it just happened.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
There you go, Yeah, it was fit does.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
And when we know that, we actually realized the responsibility
of having the age and having the wisdom and how
we can really support these younger people who they want it,
they're looking for it.

Speaker 4 (48:50):
I got really lucky that this was kind of structurally
put into my life as I've got sober because it's
a part of the sobariety fellowship that I'm a part of,
is you find someone who's further along than you are.
They could be younger than you, but they're further along
with you then you and in their sobriety adventures and
they help guide you and you ask them questions and

(49:12):
they tell you just fucking don't do what you think
to do, just do this, and it all worked out,
which is wild. So the idea of sponsorship in a
sobriety fellowship is really really powerful, and sponsoring other people
as well is really powerful, and it kind of systematizes that.
But you don't have to be in a sobriety fellowship
to access that.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
You can choose people.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
But you're describing, by the way, a healthy community. Coming
back to what we talked about earlier, I think AA
and the other sobriety communities are predominantly a healthy community
where there's network set up and support and those.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
Who the elders, because elderhood.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Is not necessarily based on age, no no, and so
the ones who are the elders in the community are
supporting the younger ones. And you have a buddy or
a partner, or a mentor, whatever you call it, you know,
And in a lot of healthy communities, every boy and
every girl had a mentor, and the mentor was someone
from outside of the family. And I mean, when I
was fourteen, I had a mentor. He used to tate

(50:11):
me fishing in Victoria. Would go out on the bay
and sit in his boat, and he tell me stories.
And he was quite quite a guy. And I would
just sit and listen for hours, and I could ask
him any questions I wanted.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
And you know, I.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Worshiped that man because he treated me like someone who
was important enough.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
To share stories with and to answer questions to. And
you know, I learned a lot of him.

Speaker 4 (50:31):
And this is what the bikers next door were to
me when I was fifteen. These guys spoke to me like,
that is an interesting question, Let me think about that.
And they spoke to me as if what I had,
my question was worth answering and worth their time. And
I was like, I was getting this from a bunch
of long hairs with sleeve tattoos, back when sleeve tattoos
meant you don't ever work a regular job. Yeah, all right,
And that was such a profound thing for me to

(50:54):
have these men speak to me like I was I'm
Matt at yep.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
But the thing that people don't realize is that whilst
that is so beneficial to you, mentoring goes both ways,
and for them to have someone listening to them, who
they can share their wisdom with, who they can think
about it is actually highly beneficial to them. And so
you know, not only do young people need mentors, but
the older people need someone to mentor.

Speaker 4 (51:18):
They got real excited when I'd figured out because they
I listened to some of this and I've figured out
how to play Matt Taylor chain on the guitar.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
They're like, oh, he's planet. He's like a planet.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
And that's that story thing, you know. The young and
this is in the right of passaging. The young need
to hear stories of elders, but the elders need someone
to tell their stories too.

Speaker 4 (51:37):
You know.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
That's why grandchildren and grandparents are so beautiful together. In fact,
there's a.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Saying that grandchildren and grandparents have a special bond because
they have a common enemy.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Yeah, and what goes on there is that the.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Children get seen by the grandparents who tell them how
fabulous and beautiful are and have time for them, which
is what the children want. The parents are too busy
and doing their thing. And for the grandparents, from the children,
they get energy, and they get purpose, and they get
someone to tell their stories to.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
And so it's a really beautiful relationship.

Speaker 4 (52:14):
I'm really aware that. So my wife's from Fiji and
there's quite the diaspora throughout Australia. As you know, we
have a minimum cohort of twenty six if we're going
to have something, that's the smallest amount of people we
can invite before someone gets upset. All right, But these
are also people that she has no blood relation to, okay,
because it's a parent's friends kids, and she calls them

(52:34):
cousin and she grew up with just this gigantic, roaming
pack of people. I had a little bit of that embrisbone,
but nothing like that. And what we're trying to do
with Wolf, because he's got cousin as well, just trying
as much as we can, even though they're on the
other side of the city, as much as we can
just get him around these boys who are older than
him as much as possible, rather than it's a FaceTime

(52:57):
call or it's on the phone to pack his life
with more people that aren't his parents, to have more
things to bounce off.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Well, clearly you don't want to be doing everything online
and on FaceTime. But the other thing that you mentioned there,
which I love, is when you have different ages, then
everybody sort of slots into their right place. If you
get a group of six year olds together, then they
just start screaming and yelling and running full speed, you know,
and someone gets hurt and anything like that. But when
you've got you know, six year olds, ten year old,

(53:27):
fifteen year old and eighteen year old, then you actually
see that the fifteen year old start to look after
the six year old.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Twenty year old say you're wrong.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
So I always love the diversity of age thing.

Speaker 4 (53:39):
So when you do the programs that you do with people,
how old?

Speaker 3 (53:45):
I mean you said?

Speaker 4 (53:46):
Somebody I've met twelve year old sort of twelve year
old the other day at the pub for this kid's party.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
He was told to me, how are you twelve?

Speaker 4 (53:53):
The guy was like, as a gigantic, but he's got
the brain of a twelve year old. But then some
fifteen year old as a fifteen years all my life?
Who the hormones hadn't shot up yet. He was still
talking about lego. Yeah, you know, at what point.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
It's not just based on age, it's actually based on
where they are emotionally, and often was actually the grandparents
or the elders who decided when they were ready, because
the parents would actually either hold them back.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Too long, oh don't take my child, don't or want
to get them in there.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
When you're doing your programs, what do you tell parents,
We say sort of fourteen to seventeen, somewhere in that
time when they're changing, when they start locking the door
to the bathroom, when they grunt, when they tell you
to fuck off, when they don't want to talk to
you anymore.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
You know, that's when you start something's changing.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
That's when you start getting an indication that it's the
right time to do it. So most of our programs
are sort of fourteen to seventeen. If you get them
when they're too young, they don't get it. You know,
they can maybe say the right things, but they don't
get it. So, and it's actually gotten older in the
last ten years or so because technology in many ways
has held them back. Right, you know, they're in their
room and they're seeing all these things on tech knowlogy,

(55:00):
but they're not actually out on their bikes and down
the park or down the river experiencing in the same
way as they were And same for the girls around
fourteen to seventeen. But we also have some junior programs,
just overnight programs of seven to eleven year olds, and
a big part of that is parenting skills. Just teaching
parents sensible parenting, which unbelievably a lot don't know about.

(55:24):
I mean, they did some research recently which showed that
children and who have dinner with their parents three times
a week or more do better than those who don't.
And I was amazed, like, why would they do that research.
Doesn't every parent have dinner with their children every day?

Speaker 2 (55:41):
They don't.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Kids are in the bedroom on their computer, Dads having
TV dinners, Mums just eating.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
When she can't Like whoa really?

Speaker 1 (55:50):
So just teaching parents sensible parenting, like have dinners a
few times, have a check in, don't just be on
your phones at the table, Go around the table and
everybody gets to say.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
What went well?

Speaker 1 (56:01):
You know rose thorn banana pil for example, what was
good today? Anything difficult today, anything funny or weird or
unusual happening today. Then start you doing a conversation. Parents
I found are so appreciative of basic parenting tips.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Yeah, and they need that.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
So we do the junior programs, and then we do
the rights of passage programs when they're older, and then
we actually get the kids who've been on our rights.
The passage can come back as returning young men and
returning young women.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
And in fact, our senior facilitator, who's thirty eight.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Has two sons of his own, and who's our program manager.
He did his ride a passage when he was fourteen
and I was his facilitator. Wow, and now he's in
charge of the programs.

Speaker 4 (56:41):
I was going to ask, you know, what's it like
seeing the men and women have gone through it now
and how do they how do they describe the differences
in their lives to friends of theirs that haven't gone
through something like this.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
Well, I can just see the differences.

Speaker 3 (56:55):
You know.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
If I see one of them in the street and
I say to them, how are you, they'll actually tell me,
as opposed to saying good, They'll tell me how it's
going at home. They'll tell me how it's going with
a partner, or how they want a partner and can't
get a partner, or that they've been getting in trouble,
and they know that they can tell me whatever they
need or want to tell me. I'm not there to
tell them off what. I'll just listen and say, well,

(57:16):
maybe you thought of trying this or that. You know,
I can see they are different kids, you know. And
in our community. It was interesting a few years ago
there were some kids going around doing car washes and
I heard a story of a woman and some kids
came around and said, can we wash your car? Bob
a job and some money, and she initially said no,
and then she somehow found out that those boys had
been on one of our camps. And when she found out,

(57:37):
she said, you can wash the car and I'll pay
you for it. So the community actually knows about the work.
And you know, we've now set up programs in maybe
seventy places around Australia and twenty five countries around the
world and had you know, around half a million people
coming through and it's a thing now and we want
it to be mainstream again. We want every boy and

(58:00):
every girl to have an opportunity to go through a
healthy rite of passage, to hear the stories of elders,
to go through appropriate challenges, to create a vision for
who they want to be, and to be honored by
elders who see them and you know, tell them the
beautiful things they see about.

Speaker 4 (58:18):
I'm mad for it and I think it'll be long
between between now and when you see me, and we'll
fore you an attent somewhere up at your place.

Speaker 2 (58:23):
Fabulous.

Speaker 1 (58:24):
We'd love to, and you know, so we do. I
have a property at Mulmbimbi and byron by on Hunt
and fifty acres which is purpose built for these camps
and we have people come from around Australia and overseas,
and we also set up in schools and communities. And
if we can get the parents along, that's fantastic, but
if we can't, we do a lot of work now
with school camps.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
So a typical school camp, kids.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Go away, they go bike riding, they go abs sale
and they go kayaking.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
They stay up late at night.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
They get through three or four days of doing that,
come home, throw their clothes on the ground and the laundry,
eat everything in the fridge, go to bed for fourteen hours,
get up and go back to school tick. The school's
done it, we say, well, that could actually be an
incredible personal development right, a passage opportunity. If we took
an hour each evening and got the kids sharing their
stories with each other and talking about their challenges and

(59:11):
creating a vision and honored them and did a process
with the parents while the kids are away, and had
the parents are there at the end to welcome the
kids back, and the kids share some commitments that they've
made about what they want to do differently. And you
know that the schools are doing this and going, oh
my god, these are the best camps we've ever done.
We can't believe the impact is happening. And that's what

(59:31):
we want to be doing more and more all around it.
We want that to be normal.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
I want it to be normal.

Speaker 4 (59:37):
And thank you for coming in, man, and thank you,
like my father of your story very quickly is I
you know what it's got. I'm not saying this to
make myselfs awesome, but my father to your story on Saturday, well,
if we had his last rugby game of the places
touch it was over and manly, so we drove all
the way over there and it was hard getting about.
It was real early got out the door. I was
on the other side of the harbor tune. It was like, fuck,

(59:59):
I forgot you fucking rugby boots. And he was in
his gun boots because had been muddy and call him
a neighbors saying can you throw them at uba?

Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
Da da da?

Speaker 4 (01:00:08):
And he's in the back and he says, don't worry, dad,
I'll run on my rugby boots and I'll play hard anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
And he blood he did.

Speaker 4 (01:00:16):
The uber showed up Muhammed, brought them with me and
thanks to humored high five them and get them in
the game two and three. But he won the like
the best kind of you know, trying hardest guy. But
I've got photos with him in gum boots holding the ball,
just fucking fanging it. And so a father of the
year forgot his boots, but also father of the year.
He went ahead and did it. And I'm just fucking

(01:00:36):
thrilled over that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
I love that amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
And I have a suggestion for you, given that it's
your son's sixth birthday tomorrow, take it or leave it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
I have to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
You can edit it out of this if you don't
do it. But a beautiful thing to do is have
a fantastic party. Yeah, whatever canon thing that you've made.
But then at some point see your kid on a
chair or something in front of everyone, and tell him
in front of others one or two things that you
really love about him.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
And where you see that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
You know, like if you might talk about the rugby
and he say, I think you're brave and courageous and
I saw an example of that. So you name the
thing and you actually say when you've seen it, and
then see if there are any of the other adults around,
like his mother or anyone who wants to say something
to him. And then see if there are any of
the kids want to tell Wolfy why they love him,
what they think is special about him. It's an honoring

(01:01:26):
and you know you've got to get them a little
You've got to pick the time. You don't do it
straight after you've given them red lemonade, na.

Speaker 4 (01:01:32):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
But you can set it up beautifully.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
It's a pretty good idea.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
And you know it's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
And he will he will remember that he's not allowed
to say a word while it's happening.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
He's not allowed to say a word.

Speaker 4 (01:01:45):
I will do I'll put it to the committee, but
I reckon that we can make that get out of
the line.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
I know you're busy. I know you've got to get
something else.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
Thanks for coming in, man, that was freaking awesome, absolute pleasure.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
Thanks brother. And that was doctor Arna Rubinstein.

Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
He is the founder co founder of the Rights of
Passage Institute. You can find out more about their Rights
of Passage Institute dot org. Once again, I'd love to
come and see you. Get your tickets fort So what
now what the live show cam Walker Struthless and I
are going on the road around the country Perth, Brisbane,
Melbourne and Sydney. The link is in the show notes

(01:02:22):
and it'll be a freaking top night gigs at the
end of October.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
I'll be back here on Monday. Thanks for listening. See
you then.

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Father of the Year 2025: Dr Arne Rubinstein - the Power of Rites of Passage

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Father of the Year 2025: Dr Arne Rubinstein - the Power of Rites of Passage