Redefining Masculinity & Embracing Vulnerability | Beyond the Scenes

From a young age, boys are inundated with messages that teach them not to cry, openly express emotions, or show any sign of weakness for fear of appearing weak or feminine. And as a result, men experience a lack of intimacy and close friendships. Host Roy Wood Jr. sits down with the co-founder of  “A Call to Men,” Ted Bunch, and developmental psychology professor at NYU, Niobe Way, to chat about how boy’s friendships evolve as they get older, the additional cultural pressures that Black and Brown men face, what men can do to prioritize their mental health, and how therapy could be transformative for a lot of men. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hey, what up, Ears Edition listeners, It's Roy Wood Junior,
your correspondent for The Daily Show. You're about to hear
one of our original Daily Show podcasts, Beyond the Scenes.
It's the show where we dive deeper into segments and
topics that originally aired on The Daily Show. We chat
with the shows writers and producers and experts. This episode
is about male intimacy and vulnerability and why men are

(00:26):
in a friendship recession. I'm joined by Ted Bunch, who's
the co founder of a Call to Men, and developmental
psychology professor at NYU Naobi Wade to discuss how boys
friendships evolve as they get older, what men can do
to prioritize their mental health, and how therapy can be
transformative for a lot of men. We hope you enjoy it,
and if you like the show, check out the Beyond

(00:48):
the Scenes podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes deeper
into topics and segments that you might have seen on
the Daily Show. This is what this podcast is. This
is how you gotta think about this podcast. You have
a go bowling, right, You know you want to go bowling,
and bowling, you're just going in. You have a good time,
the stars, the bowling pins, and the bowling ball. But
this podcast, we're all the extra shit that you need

(01:21):
to be able to bowl.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
You gotta have the goofy clown shirt, you gotta have
the big ass clown shoes, you gotta have beer, you
gotta have wings, you have to have an inability to bowl.
All of the skills that are required to make bowling fun.
That's exactly what this podcast is. So I'm Roy Viginia.
Today we're gonna be talking about a topic that has
come up on the show quite a bit, male vulnerability

(01:47):
and intimacy and why it is important that men go
to therapy.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Roll the clip.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
We know that women are going through it, but we
have to acknowledge that men are going through to you.
Guys are angry, you're depressed, and you're lonely. In fact,
fifteen percent of men say they have zero zero friends
and the other eighty five percent they don't have friends either,
but they was too sad to fill out the survey. Now,

(02:16):
luckily there's a tool that can help you with all
of this. Paravey therapy is amazing. You pay someone to
unload all your bullshit on them. They're like prostitutes for
the feelings. The problem is men don't use it. In fact,

(02:41):
they're almost half as likely to go to therapy as women.
Men out here treating therapy like Nick Cannon treats condoms.
They're here to help you, Nick. But we know why
men is this way, because, starting from a young age,

(03:02):
we cheat them that they can't have feelings.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Today, I'm joined by co founder of a Call to
Men and co author of the Book of Dares one
Hundred Ways for Boys to Be Kind, Bold and Brave,
Ted Bunch. Welcome to be on the scenes. How you
doing Ted, I'm good, Roy, Thank you so much. Happy
to be here with you, and Yob. You got a
voice of stature right there. That's a voice of statue.
And I see for the people listening, you got one

(03:25):
of them grown men. You got one of them, Coach
Goate's I just want to do whatever you tell me
to do. Ted also joining me as a professor of
developmental psychology at NYU and author of the book Deep Secrets, Boys, Friendships,
and the Crisis of Connection. Her book was also the
inspiration for the Oscar nominated film Close Neobi Way, Welcome

(03:50):
to the show, Naobi.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
How you doing.

Speaker 4 (03:52):
I'm doing great. I'm so happy to be here Roy
with you and Ted. I'm really excited about this conversation.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, I'm happy to be a part of this as
well as a father of a six year old. I
definitely you know, if I'm gonna be honest, just up front.
You know, I didn't come from a home. This is
why I feel like this discussion is very important. You know,
I had two parents that everybody worked odd hours. My

(04:18):
dad worked mornings and nights, so I rarely saw him
other than pick me up from baseball practice. My mother
worked until nine pm because she was going to law
school in PhDs and all of the secondary degrees that
you get to build your income. So I didn't see
my mom but right before I went to bed, and
first thing in the morning on a way to the
bus stop. So this idea of intimacy and hugs and

(04:40):
conversation and that was not I knew I was love.
I felt love, but you know, I came up in
an era where intimacy within a family, especially man to man,
was more incidental than intentional. So in coming up with
ways to be intentional with my son. It's these types

(05:01):
of stories and stuff within the show that have really
helped me because you know, and and I'll start with you, Ted,
because you know, the act of being a man is
something that's just said, but it's never really detailed. It's
never really laid out in specifics. You know, people tell

(05:21):
you a man while you're crying, be a man. What
does that mean? My knee hurt. I It's okay to cry,
It's okay to feel. So Ted, let's start off with
talking a little bit about, you know, defining how society
views manhood and masculinity, or as you refer to it,
the man box. Explains us what the man box and

(05:43):
what does healthy manhood actually look like.

Speaker 5 (05:46):
So thank you Roy for that, and I appreciate what
you're sharing about the difference from you growing up and
then the type of parent you want to be, the
intentional father that you want to be around nurturing and
supporting your son. And our parents did that too, to
the best of their ability, but we know much more now.
And so when we talk about the man box, which
is a term that a call to man coined more

(06:08):
than twenty years ago. That's a short version of saying
the collective socialization of manhood.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Right.

Speaker 5 (06:14):
The manbox just sounds cooler, right, But we can talk
about the man box. You can imagine all the things
that we're taught around manhood and masculinity. Even if we
were to ask a six year old boy or a
sixteen year old boy what it is. What have you
been taught about what a man is? They'll say, be tough,
be strong, make money, carry a bag, rite a bag

(06:34):
of money, don't ask for help, don't be vulnerable, don't
be weak, right, because those things that vulnerability, that weakness,
those things where you need to ask for help are
not what men do. And I'm putting that in quotes
based on this male dominated society. It's what women do.
And if you're a man that does that, then you
fall in short of the manhood that you're expected to

(06:56):
live up to. So there's a few things that happen
in the MAOX. One of them is that we're all
taught that on some level, women and girls have less
value than men and boys, that women are the property
of men, and that women and.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Girls are sexual objects.

Speaker 5 (07:13):
These are the things that we're taught and we pass
these teachings down to our children as well as that
we're not supposed to openly express emotion, that we're not
supposed to show weakness for fear. You're not supposed to
act like a woman or a girl. You're not supposed
to ask for help. I do want to unpack just
for a moment, that less value property objectification piece Roy,
if you don't mind. So we're taught our collective socialization, right,

(07:36):
it's just kind of in the air that women and
girls have less value than men and boys. So if
I say to a little boy you have to throw
that ball hard on their son, you throw like a girl.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Everybody knows the answer to that.

Speaker 5 (07:46):
We've never had this conversation, but we know the answer, right,
And it's not that it's true, but we know what
the answer to that is.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Just recently, at a golf tournament, you had Tiger Woods
slide of tampon to another golfer as a way to
say that that sho he just the drive, he just check.

Speaker 4 (08:06):
The on.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Tiger Woods thought, oh, there's surely no cameras here at
this televised golf tournament that will slide you a woman joke.
I didn't mean to cut you off taking No, that's.

Speaker 5 (08:18):
That's that's a great example because this is done everywhere
because like that six year old boy, right, what does
he what does he leave that situation when that man
he looks up to says, you have to throw her
on it, you throw like a girl and girls still
just fine?

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Right?

Speaker 5 (08:32):
But does he leave that interaction thinking that girls are
equal to him or less than him, less than And
we're giving him those messages all day long, and Tiger
continues to give those messages. So it's not just Tiger,
it's all of us. That's our collective socialization, and that
women on some level of the property of men. So
if I'm in New York or LA or Chicago or
Texas and I walk over to a man today who's

(08:55):
hitting his wife for girlfriend, I say, knock it off.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
He says to me, shit, you wales though that's my
business one way or another. And the other is around
the objectification.

Speaker 5 (09:04):
Our boys are actually taught to objectify girls, and they're
taught that by men in their life. They're taught that
by messages they're getting in all different areas. Right, And
it's not that we're doing things well, this is let
me give a quick example, high school boy in your community,
or in your community, Naobi, or anyone who's listening here,
a great kid, seventeen year old kid who wants to

(09:27):
take a young woman out to go to a movie.
He's just taking her out, right, He takes her out
to the movie. His name's John, her name is Keisha.
He takes John, takes Keisha out, gets on the group
text with a couple of his boys and says, hey, guys,
I'm taking Keisha out to the movie. They give him
a little crap for that, but he takes her, takes
her back home, perfect gentleman. He gets it back on
the group text and says, hey, guys, I'm back. Is

(09:49):
the first thing in those boys good boys ask him
is how with the movie no right? So where did
they learn that from? So that's the manbox, that collective
social that.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
Did you get? I guess did you get their grab
my mood? Didn't she right? Because the only purpose to
spend time with her is the conquest. That's what they're taught.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Okay, So, Niobe, you've studied young boys friendships and how
these relationships change as they get older. Can you tell
us more about what you found in your research.

Speaker 4 (10:17):
So I've been listening to boys and young men since
nineteen eighty seven, a long time, and I started off
as a high school counselor listening to boys and thinking
about surprise that what they were talking about was not
was I what I expected. They were talking about their friendships,
their desires for close friendships, their desires for intimate connection
with other guys, and that led really to a lifetime

(10:39):
of being fascinated by First of all, was this typical
of a lot of boys? But secondly, why aren't we
telling this story? And so what's interesting to me is
that when you listen to young people, when you listen
to boys, I would say, anywhere from your son's age
all the way up to basically twenty four to twenty five,
they tell something very different, and in terms of their socialization,

(11:02):
especially when they're younger and they're less pressured to man up,
which is that they want close friendships. You hear twelve
thirteen fourteen year olds talking beautifully about their desire for friendships,
their desire to really trust someone, to not be laughed at.
That not being laughed at, by the way, is a
big one. Being able to share something with or not
laughed at that being able to trust them. And then

(11:24):
as they get older, they basically the pressures to man
up starts to happen and they start to disconnect from
what they want. They start to sort of everything that
becomes a joke, even though even though basically that they
don't see it as a joke because they're looking for
that connection. And right at the point where boys start
to disconnect from their own desires for closeness, especially with
other young men, you see the suicide rate goes up,

(11:46):
You see all kinds of stuff. Mass violence happens right
at that age between sixteen and twenty five, where men
are being asked by the culture young men to basically disconnect.
And this is the part I really want to say
Roy on your show. This is a human desire. This
is a human desire. It's not a girl thing. It's
not a guy thing. It's not a gender identity thing,

(12:08):
or a sexuality thing, a gay thing. It's a human
desire to want to connect to other people deeply emotionally.
And the only way we connect, Roy, this is the
whole point and Ted, this is the whole part of
Ted's work too. The only way we connect is that
we're vulnerable, we're expressive, we share our feelings. We're also stoic, right, Ted,
I mean in relationships you need to be able to

(12:29):
be stoic, you need to be able to be soft.
But we only value half of our half of ourselves,
and especially for young men. So if we only have
value the side of the hard side of ourselves and
don't value the soft side, first of all, we're not
gonna have relationships. We're not gonna have good relationships. Secondly,
we're going to be in trouble. So if we raise
kids to go against their humanity and go against their nature,

(12:50):
which is to be loving human beings, and we raise
them to go against that and to actually value this
sort of only the hard side of themselves, that that's
the man up part, then we shouldn't be surprised that
a lot of them struggle when they get older and
need therapy, right right, I mean that you know why
do so many men need therapy in the first place?

Speaker 2 (13:09):
All of the causations that you've just laid out, is
that part of why you think men are stuck in
I think, as you've called it, a friendship recession in
a way, because you can't be real with your friends.
You can't be open in eyes for fear of being
teased or being called a girl.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Man, why you crying?

Speaker 4 (13:29):
Exactly? Everything that I'm saying comes directly from the mouths
of boys. I mean, they will say things like, it
might be nice to be a girl because then I
wouldn't have to be emotionless. I mean, I just want
adults listening to that to register that comment it might
be nice to be a girl, because then I wouldn't
have to be emotionless. We are asking human beings to
be emotionless, and then we expect them to have healthy relationships.

Speaker 5 (13:52):
It is a human desire and that our boys, as
Nao be said, start out with all of these things
that they want to express, and actually when we allow
space for them to talk about it, they're thirsty to
talk about it. They really are, and so on men.
By the way, Once we remove that, it's it's that
there's a shaming of being vulnerable and talking about it.

(14:13):
So we start teaching. We start teaching our boys not
to experience those feelings. When we tell our boys to
stop crying, then they don't they don't get to express
what they're feeling. When we tell them to stop crying,
we're also saying stop feeling, and so then they push
that those emotions down and the only thing that's expressed
with that's accepted is anger. Aggression, that's what's seen as

(14:34):
an emotion that men can express. And lust you can
express that as well. So those are the harmful things,
and it directly ties to anxiety and depression and suicide.
All of those things are tied to this. So the
boys don't develop a language to express how they're feeling.
So we become these men who also don't have that language,

(14:55):
and so we don't no doubt to ask for help
because when we tried to ask for help, that's spends
seeing as a weakness or something that men don't do.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
How much of all of this that we've been laying out,
because what's interesting about this whole discussion is that men
are going through Hey show your emotions, Hey, women can
do it too. Meanwhile, women are cooking on the feminism
side of the game, and go on, we are girls, girls, strong,
girl power, we gon march, we can do whatever we want.

(15:25):
So it almost seems as if both sides are getting
or having two different types of awakenings concurrently. That also
kind of but hits. How much did the lack of
women's rights in the thirties and the forties and the fifties,
and even if you really want, because I'm not gonna
put this solely on slavery, but I also want to

(15:46):
put it in the context that for a long time
in America, the man had to go do the work,
and the woman was at the house and you was
in the kitchen, and maybe the man felt that he
could never share because no matter what the burden of
providing was passed on, he has to do it. And
then we got to a time where we didn't have

(16:08):
to live like that anymore, but men were maybe subconsciously
passing on that rhetoric to their next generation and then
their next generation, and by the time we got to
the nineties, the idea of what a man should be
was molded by what a man had to be at
that time, and we thought that that, Like someone said

(16:29):
to me, something I thought was very profound, don't confuse
the tact that you use to survive with the tactic
you need to go on. How much does the history
of gender dynamics play a role in a lot of
these bad habits being passed down from generation to generation.

Speaker 5 (16:46):
Yeah, So in a male dominated society, right, because that's
what it is, and it's patriarchal society to male dominated society,
and then you do have women who are seeking liberation
because coming out of all of that, in the same
way that in a white supremacy society you have people
of color who are seeking liberation. Right, all of those
things because these constructs exist, and there is an antiquated

(17:08):
notion of manhood and masculinity that I think is so
woven into the fabric of our society that when it's challenged,
then sexism rears its ugly head right and seeks to
put down what women have achieved or are doing in
those kind of things, as if it's taking away from men.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
But it's not.

Speaker 5 (17:27):
It's not just this one pie and that everybody's pieces
a little smaller. It's an expansion of a pie, right,
It's much bigger than that.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
So this allows men right to really look.

Speaker 5 (17:40):
At our authentic selves too, that we don't just have
to be this rigid notion of manhood. That there's so
much more to you and to me and to the
men who are listening. There's so much more to who
we are that we can now embrace our full authentic selves.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
Also, because there's things.

Speaker 5 (17:54):
That you may have wanted to do or your son
may want to do that the man box says, oh, no, no, no,
you're not supposed to do that.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Right.

Speaker 5 (18:01):
I have flowers in my picture all the time when
I'm on zoom.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
Right.

Speaker 5 (18:05):
It took me years to accept that, Oh, I can
go buy flowers because I like flowers in the house.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
I don't have to bring them to a woman to
have flowers in the house, or to my wife to
have flowers in the house.

Speaker 5 (18:15):
That actually, I'm the one who likes the color. I'm
the one who likes the smell of the flowers. And
it took me. It took me a while to really
accept that. Now that's my authentic self. I love flowers.
So now I'll go to the floorers and I pick
out what I want. They say, do you want me
to do it? Put in a vas for you, mister bunch. No,
I want to take them home and arrange them, because
you know what, Roy and Aobi, I like flowers. So

(18:36):
there's so much that we're missing as men that these
rigid noses of manhood patriarchy harms all of us. It
really does. There's lots of wonderful things about being a man.
I don't want to not be a man. I don't
want to not be a father. And this is not
an indictment on manhood. Actually, it's an invitation of man.
It's not about calling men out for wrong behavior. It's
about calling men in to a healthy, respectful manhood.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
So what boys have taught me is that we've split right,
our culture, our modern culture, I call it boy culture,
but it's called we call our modern culture has split
us into thinking that thinking is masculine and feeling is feminine.
Herd is masculine and feminine.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Right, you get where I'm going, right, Get where I'm gowk?

Speaker 4 (19:14):
Yeah, right, you get what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Masculine, feminine. Right.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
That sounds like every argument I've had with everybody I've
dated in my life.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Goodness gracious.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
If you live in a culture that says, basically independence,
thinking the self stoicism is masculine, and vulnerability, emotions, sensitivity
is feminine, you're going to be messed up because ultimately
you are half hard and half soft as a human.

(19:48):
And again, I'm not doing the human thing because it's
my own you know, ideology. I'm doing it really because
that's what the boys are yelling at us about. Like
they are. They're saying exactly what you just said, Ted,
They're saying, I am actually half what you call feminine.
I am vulnerable, I am sensitive, I'm emotionally intelligent. I
like flowers or I don't like you know, whatever it is,

(20:10):
but things that have been associated with femininity, and you're
trying to push that down in me. And that's how
I actually build relationships and friendships. So like, what's your problem?
And I feel like young people, honestly, Roy, have been
yelling at adults for almost a century and saying what
is wrong with you people? You know that basically we
get it. Young people get it. Ted. You know that

(20:30):
young people get it all the time. And so I
think when it comes to the women's issues, this is
what I think, Roy. I think that women, obviously, and
I definitely identify as a feminist and I'm definitely part
of the feminist movement. Women are angry because for lots
of different justified reasons. So you know, I'm not diminishing
that in any way, but the reality is that we

(20:52):
keep on seeing the symptom as the problem. So we
keep on thinking that it's basically from women's from a
feminist perspective, we keep on thinking, well, it's men's problems,
so if you fix men, then the problems should go away.
But it's all of our problems. Roy it's the culture
that we have all created with obviously, this hierarchy that
some men have been more influential than other men. You know,

(21:15):
you're talking about white supremacy, et cetera, et cetera, and
some you know, and some women have been more powerful
than other women. But basically we have a creative society
that doesn't make any sense where we've gendered basic human qualities.
So then that means is that women are getting mad
at men when we really what we should be doing
is trying to change the culture. And the more we
sort of blame it on men, actually the more men

(21:35):
just feel attacked. I've heard that a lot, you know,
the men just feel attacked when we have to see
it as a collective problem.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
Before we go to the break, I want to I
want to delve in for a second with you iov
about your work that you did where you essentially walked
me through this. You had one hundred and fifty boys
ages thirteen to eighteen.

Speaker 4 (21:55):
Well, I followed them over over four years. So I
followed them, Yeah, I from twelve to thirteen and follow
them over four to five years.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Okay, how did you measure intimacy and see it slowly
start to dissipate in their relationships with other boys at
the same age, because you were essentially looking to see
how they related and how they spoke to other boys.
And when did the dissipation of feeling and turning into
creatures of action when that started happening.

Speaker 4 (22:26):
When you listen to twelve year old boys, they will
use the language of love. They will talk given a
safe space, right, not getting a safe space, they won't
do it. When they talk about their friends, they say
I love him, I can't live without him, or I
want to find a friend that I could really rely
on and not be you know, and be myself and
be a real self. So the language, it's right there

(22:47):
in the language. It's literally they're talking love. They're asking
questions about love. They're thinking about love, both heterosexual love,
romantic love, platonic love, all sorts of love. They're wanting,
they're having questions about it, and it given a safe space,
they actually ask it. Then as they get a bit older,
it's incredible because remember it's the same kids. So it's
the same kids. Over time, you start to hear this,

(23:08):
I don't care ted you know this language, I don't
care whatever. It's all good. It's all good, you know, like, no,
I don't have you know, I don't connect to someone
that much anymore, but it's all good. You know, that
whole pressure to sort of sound like you're totally and vulnerable.
So you hear in the language, and then you also
hear the anger, You hear the sadness, and then sometimes

(23:30):
in the worst case scenarios, you hear the depression and
the sense of feeling totally isolated and not knowing what
to do about it, and a lot of anger at
why is not anybody paying attention? Why is not anybody
paying attention to these basic human needs? And everybody's calling me?
You know, in some cases mass shooters, I've read the
mass shooter manifestos, it's the same thing. They feel like

(23:54):
nobody's paying attention to their suffering.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Right there, I want to take a break, and I
want to come back and jump more into that, and
this is beyond the scenes, will be right back they
will be before the break. We were just talking about
how men feel like they don't have a way to
express their feelings without being criticized or compared to being
a woman or having their feelings not be received properly,

(24:20):
and so as a result, it can bubble up in
a number of different ways. Now, this study that you
conducted with a number of boys over the course of
four or five years in their teenage years, you're seeing
that a lot of the conversation in verbiage as they
became more emotionally disconnected, was similar to some of the
verbias that you've seen in some of the mass shoot

(24:41):
of manifestos. What are some of the other ways that
this type of you know, and I don't want to
say dysfunction, but the absence of vulnerable that's not a word,
you knew what I was trying to say, Just Dan.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Don't laugh.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Vulnerability the lack of stop laughing, ted, I see, how
does the lack of the inability to be vulnerable?

Speaker 1 (25:05):
There? I did it?

Speaker 2 (25:07):
What are some other negative ways that it manifests itself?

Speaker 1 (25:10):
It can show up in a lot of ways.

Speaker 5 (25:11):
It can show it outwardly, right, because these are hurt
kids and it can show it outwardly where they're hurting
other kids, maybe it's bullying or gun violence, all of
these other things where they're trying to establish some sort
of power, some sort of affirmation. And when we talk
about the emotional disconnection that NAO be brought up and

(25:33):
then you leaned into a little bit there, roy, I
do want to say this that those emotions when they
stop from that first year of the research to the
last year of the research where they're not vulnerable, where
they're not looking for that connection, or at least admitting
they're not. They're looking for it, they're not admitting it
is because they're becoming more and more indoctrinated.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
In the man box.

Speaker 5 (25:54):
And the glue that keeps that man box together is homophobia.
Yeah right, So in other words that yeah, so that
when they start saying that there's an emotional connection other
boys or men in their life even or even women
in their life, because we're all social, we're all swimming
in the same water, right ye are saying oh no,
you don't don't say that, you don't do that, they

(26:17):
push them back into the manbox because that glue, that
homophobia is the glue that keeps that man box together.
It doesn't work without it, right, it doesn't work without it.
So they're punished when they show their emotions. They're punished
when they're vulnerable because it's seen as weakness. So they're
really being taught that, okay, I can't it's not safe
for me to talk about it. It's not safe for

(26:37):
me to hug my friend and say, hey, man, you
know what, I really do love you, you know, and
I'm glad you're in my life. And then they're saying
things like you know, things that I don't even want
to say it, right, yeah, they push them back into
the manbox.

Speaker 4 (26:52):
Right, yeah, yeah, they say things I know, homo. So
my my, my, and my interviews you get things directly.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Which to define just real quick for I listen. Yeah,
when you say no, homo, it's like a man, I
love you, no homo, as if to say I love you,
but not in a gay way, which assumes that love
means intimacy.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
And exactly well between men and boys, it does. We
don't say it. They don't say it when they talk
to a girl.

Speaker 5 (27:16):
Yeah, right, so it really is there's homophobia within that, right, yes,
it's so.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
Yeah, if we didn't live in a homophobic society. No
homo actually wouldn't necessarily be homophobic, but because we because
we right, so so the idea, right, the idea don't
be such a girl or no homo is misogynistic and
homophobic because we live in a homophobic, misogynist society. So
it's it's but I think I really like that image

(27:42):
that I'm going to use it again too and quote you.
Of course, is the glue. It's the glue. It's it
forces young men to actually adhere because there are consequences
if you don't, and the consequences I hear about in
older men and I mean older teenagers sorry all the time,
the consequences of being teased, pushed around, if you don't

(28:02):
play sports, if you don't man up, if you don't
do things that make you look straight. And this is
the thing roy in our culture right now, it's okay
according to the kids in New York City right now,
it's okay if you have an aunt who's gay, you
have an uncle who's gay, maybe you even have a
you know, a brother who's gay. But I'm not gay.
So there's this weird sort of almost backlash going on

(28:25):
that like it's cool. It's cool that, you know, you
if people do that, people love each other. But don't
think I'm gay. Yeah, let me clarify, don't put that.
What I mean. So, the men who are the least
secure of their masculinity are oftentimes the most likely to
adhere to masculinity. So, you know, the oftentimes you get athletes,

(28:46):
for example Roy, really well known athletes who are actually
breaking the gender boarders all the time, you know, hugging
each other, kissing each other because they don't have to
prove their manhood because everybody else slaps on the exactly
exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Ying is allowed that the Super Bowl, you lose, the
Super Bowl crime.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
Crime exactly exactly exactly. You see some of the most
tender things between well known athletes. And so it's just
interesting to me to think about the homophobia drives and
that's part of the culture. I mean, come on, I
just it's stunning to me that we still think in
a culture we still raise our kids Roy that thinking
that thinking is masculine and straight of course, and feeling

(29:29):
is feminine and and gay because obviously femininity is linked
with being gay in a homophobic world.

Speaker 5 (29:35):
I also like that thinking is masculine feeling is feminine,
and that when women.

Speaker 4 (29:40):
Think exactly exactly.

Speaker 5 (29:43):
When women right, When women exactly and show their intelligence
and all those things, men say things like, yeah, well
she need to be in the kitchen or she you know,
they're doing things that that that diminished that right exactly
because it challenges again this patriarchal notion of male dominance.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, when we talk about that as parents. So last
year I had the pleasure of going on Finding your
Roots with the wonderful doctor Henry Lewis Gates. And amongst
all the things that I found out about my family tree,
I knew that I did not have when I was born,

(30:22):
I had one living grandparent. What I did not know
before that television show was that my father lost his
father when he was four and from that time on
there was no male head of household per census data
every eight years. That was done when my father was
living with his mother, you know, well into adulthood. So

(30:44):
as far as I know, there was never another man
of the house in my dad's life, and so it
really reconstituted a lot of how I viewed how he
raised me. And so there was one thing that always
came up with that, I'll getting into like this isn't
me like unearthen family trauma and drama or anything like that.

(31:06):
But I just know that one thing my dad would
always say whenever he was losing an argument with my
mama was I pay the bills. Because my mom was
pouring all of her money into grad school and second
degrees and third degrees and law degrees.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
You ain't run the house, you know. You know, we
get to when we lose the argument. We started bringing
up for seeds.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
But what I didn't realize until I became a father
myself was that was the first thing that I defined
as manhood was my ability to provide and clothe and feed.
And it wasn't about feeling and connecting with my son.
I knew that was important, but it was not what
I prioritized because the idea of paying the cost to

(31:52):
be So the example you get is the example you see.
There was no book, There was no doctor SEUs for this.
There was no beasting bad about fatherhood. So you know,
how do how do fathers provide you know, a model
not only to their sons but to their daughters about
what they need from a man when they go out

(32:12):
and start dating, Like, how can we as parents, especially
as fathers, set a better example and roadmap to what
masculinity looks like. Because I feel like the issue that
I'm dealing with as a as a forty four year
old man, I can say that the issue I'm dealing
with is trying to relearn something while also teaching it

(32:34):
to someone at the same time.

Speaker 5 (32:36):
So, your father, with the belief that I'm the provider,
I pay the bills all the things, those things are important.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Being a provider paying the bill are.

Speaker 5 (32:43):
Very important, and that's an important thing and so but
whatever the woman in the household does, right, your mom working,
somebody's taking care of children to whatever she's doing is
also just as important.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
Absolutely.

Speaker 5 (32:58):
So the problem is that are again women have less
value than men and boys. So whatever men are doing
is always elevated. Our default setting is to give men
the benefit of the doubt. Our default setting is to
elevate what men do over what women do. So what women, Oh,
she stays home and takes care of the kids. Have
you stayed home to take care of the kids.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
You run back to your job.

Speaker 5 (33:21):
That's work, right, So it isn't like that's not work,
but it's.

Speaker 1 (33:25):
Not valued because women do it, and honestly, when men
do do it, it is valued.

Speaker 5 (33:29):
Oh what a great dad, He's doing all of those
things right when women are juggling this all day long
work and home and their relationship with their spouse as well.
So we often put much more value on what men
do and not on what women do. And that's that's
really the way it plays out. Which is which is

(33:50):
which is harmful and it's disrespectful.

Speaker 4 (33:53):
And I want to add something one other division that
we do. We don't listen to young people. So we
think we know, we think we know how it is,
we think we know how we should do it. And
if you actually listen to five year olds up until
as I said, up until whatever in the twenties, they
tell you a story about who we are as human,

(34:14):
what gets in the way, and how to solve it.
A five year old boy says to his mom who
comes into the kitchen of the mom's going through a divorce.
The mom doesn't want to have a sad face a
sad home, so the boy says to his mom. Within
a split second, seeing his mom with a big happy
smile on her face, he says, Mom, Mommy, why are

(34:35):
you smiling when you're feeling sad. And what that five
year old is showing is he can he's or he
is asking why are you faking in emotion? That's a
deep feeling. That's a deep feeling. Another five year old
boy said to his mom, Mommy, are you yelling at
me because your mommy yelled at you? I mean, think
about how genius we come out into the world as

(34:57):
humans with that natural intelligence, and then what happens is
we grow up and we become less intelligent. And I'm
not just being snarky when I say that we really
do become less intelligent. We become more cowed over by
our cultural norms, and we don't listen to our heart,
we don't listen to our minds. We start believing in
things that we know are not true. My daughter asked

(35:18):
me that at eight, why do we believe in things
we know aren't true? You know, and we start believing
in things about ourselves because seven year old boys were
I promise you they know this stuff we're talking about
right now. They don't even be taught this stuff.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
What role does society play, especially in black and brown fathers,
you know, dealing with all of these extra cultural pressures
when they're outside the home and being able to or
not being able to partition those stresses and bringing that
into the house because I'm sure to some degree my

(35:50):
dad not to some degree, my dad dealt with a
lot of racism because that was his calling journalistically. So
you get a nice full day white folks yelling at
you at a couple of protests, and you come home, Yeah,
you might be a little bit more on edge, and
you probably are also a little bit more disconnected with
your child because you're still processing your own stuff that's

(36:12):
going on out there in the real world.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
How does mental.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Health play a role in men sometimes misplaying the role
of father?

Speaker 5 (36:21):
Fortunately, mental health, talking about mental health, accepting mental health
is becoming more and more acceptable among men. And it's
really because men who have an influencing platform, people like yourself, Roy,
who can talk about mental health being important. Other men
are listening to that and saying that, oh, okay, so
you know, maybe it's not about weakness. Maybe I do

(36:43):
need to do that because we know on some level
that this isn't working for us either, right, men know that.
But when we talk about again the construct of racism
that so we have men who living in this man
box and distressors around that not asking for help, so
we don't go to the doctor when we need to,
We don't ask for help when we need to. All
these other things, anxiety and depression are really off. The

(37:03):
charge suicide is about three and a half times higher
among men than among women. Men are living only about
six years five and six years less than women for
all of these things, including not getting medical checkups for prevention.
But we go in more for intervention all of those things.
But then when you have the issue of black men

(37:24):
and men of color, the trauma, as you said, of
just dealing and walking around every day a racist society
is a very traumatic thing, so much so that we
do it so much that we it's kind of like
we don't even pay attention to it anymore until it's extreme,
like you know, some like George Floyd or something.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
But we're dealing with these traumas all the time, and.

Speaker 5 (37:46):
Our boys are too, right, the boys are also, so
they have to have a place to be able to
talk about that, to debrief about it, to see that
it's not about them, that it's not that anything wrong
with them. It's actually the opposite that they're that they're
good and that they're worthy and that they are enough,
but they're not getting these messages. So we need to

(38:06):
lean in, especially for our boys and for our black men.
But again because of this, they need to prove that
yourself in this man box. And black men haven't really
had the opportunity in the same that white same way
that white men have, right, because white men can do it,
and so black men can do it. You know, you'll
see it more in sports, entertainment, music, that kind of

(38:29):
thing where you'll see many more images of black men
who are really successful, where white men get to play
out this power and control thing in all areas. Right,
So it can be exaggerated also, but it also can
be something where it's really harmful for us because it
limits us so much as black men. It really is

(38:49):
a limiting thing, but it's also a way of protecting ourselves.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
I Naobi, I want to direct a question to you,
and Ted, feel free to jump in. I'm gonna paint
you the scenario. Yeah, and you tell me what the
hell I should have said to this child? Okay, So
I take my boy to a kid's birthday party and
like a five year old just turns to me and
we're just watching.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
It's not my child, it's someone else's child.

Speaker 4 (39:14):
I don't know whose child.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
And he asked, with a straight face, why do men
work harder than women?

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Yeah, and I just.

Speaker 2 (39:26):
And you know, you don't want to give the wrong
answer and poisonous child. And then he takes it back
to his family, goes and then yeah, telling those Daddy
told me that me and oh, and I was like, hey,
we all work hard and we have to look to
make sure that the work that we see the work.
Just because you don't see the work doesn't mean that
the work isn't happening. And I just kind of ate
my pizza and drifted away from this child. Before you

(39:48):
ask more deeper philosophical questions, what role does media play
in influencing the perceptions of you know, what it means
means to be a man, what fatherhood means. You know,
there's the type of content that we're exposing our children
to also kind of perpetuate those roles just a little

(40:11):
bit absol.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
As I became more.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Conscious of gender equity within the home, Like there was
a show as a pepper pig, I was like, oh,
let me make sure Mama Pig out there doing some
stuff too, and then it ain't just Daddy Pig coming
in the house with a briefcase.

Speaker 4 (40:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
Yeah, so I had to run every show through a filter.
But what role does media play in a lot of this?

Speaker 4 (40:34):
Okay, So first I want to ask I want to
give you some support for how you responded to that point.
But I do think that when people say things that
make as if what we're trying to fight against real,
like men work harder, men are more human than other people,
or men are smarter or whatever, it is the best

(40:54):
way to deal with that, whether it's little kids or
your colleagues, roy is to ask questions about it. So
tell me about why you think they work harder. So
what's the example? And then the idea is to say, okay,
so tell me about what your mom does, like, tell
me what right, so that you're engaging the conversation, because ultimately,
what I learned from working with college students is if
you say you're wrong that you know it never works.

(41:17):
So I basically try to figure out what is the
mindset that's making them think that, and then all of
a sudden, introducing like, let's think about what women do
let's look go into what your mom does you know
and so that they can begin to recognize it without
being told they're wrong. And I think media, of course
reinforces I mean, it reinforces this incoherent, immoral, amorl story.

(41:38):
We tell about ourselves that there's some humans that are
more human than others, there's some human qualities that are
more valuable than other human qualities, and we repeat that story.
So media just reinforces it. And I don't care what
kind of media it reinforces it.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
Now.

Speaker 4 (41:53):
Obviously shows like this are critical because this allows us
to disrupt those narratives. So I don't want to make
media all blankets, but obviously it does. I mean, you know,
we are living right now in an immoral, a moral,
immature culture, and we got to disrupt it with these
kind of conversations.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
On the other side of the break, we're going to
talk solutions. And I want to know how hopeful you
all are for this next generation of men coming down.
How hopeful are you from a six year old, I
want to know. I want to hear it straight out
your mouth. This is behind the scenes. We'll be right
back beyond the scenes. We are around in third and
headed for home. It's been a wonderful, wonderful discussion here.

(42:34):
How can somebody prioritize their mental health? And if you
are a man that is in a friendship recession. Now
I'm not talking about teenagers. We're talking about grown men.
What tools can men take to build and deepen and
strengthen the connections that they already.

Speaker 4 (42:51):
Have normalize it. When I'm in classes, I will get
a switch within four seconds. I'm not exaggerating. Boys will
tell I will read a quote for twelve year old
boys that says something soft, you know, I love him
so much from my book Deep Secrets. They will start
cracking up. I'll say, why are you laughing? They'll say,
the dude sounds gay, and I'll say, well, I didn't

(43:15):
look at his sexuality. I'm just telling you that eighty
percent of boys sound like that at some point in
their teenage years. And they will say inevitably, for real,
And I'll say, oh, yeah, for real, that's really what
what teenage boys say. And guess what happens roy within force.
I'm not kidding. They will immediately start talking about their
own friendships, their desire for friendships. All they need is

(43:35):
the permission to feel and the permission to ask. And
once they know it's normal that they want friendships that
they then they can. Then they know how to do
it. It's natural. I wish the world could hear that the
questions that twelve year old boys ask when given a
safe space, because they are geniuses. They're geniuses in terms
of understanding how love works, how relationships works, how humans work,

(44:00):
and so I just they normalize it and then in
their homes and teachers and bosses, you just got to
make it normal so that you create spaces where friendships
are valued. Teachers, put don't separate out kids that are friends,
put them together. Put them together and then talk about
how they can help each other learn the material that
they learn it better with each other than by themselves.

(44:22):
So don't do that thing. And we're going to separate
you because you guys are friends. It's like no, no,
Actually use that relationship to learn. There's a beautiful study
at UVA that shows has been replicated. The subject of
the research stands in front of a hill and has
to estimate the steepness of the hill with a backpack
on their back. Okay, it's an experiment, a research experiment.

(44:43):
They're standing next to a best friend in one condition,
standing there a stranger in another condition by themselves or
with someone they know who they don't know very well. Okay,
so in each condition they have to estimate the steepness.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Of the hill.

Speaker 4 (44:56):
You got it right, Hm, Those that are standing next
best friend see the hill as less deep. So what's
incredible is that we actually see the world as less
difficult when we're standing next to someone who loves us.
We see that the math problem, the whatever you're doing

(45:17):
is less difficult when you're next to someone who loves you.
So use that in education, Use that in the workplace.
Put people who are close together working on teams together.
You see what I'm saying, So you disrupt the even
at home, talk about friendships. We got to think as
parents to say, tell me about, you know, thinking about
our own friendships. Talk about with your kids. I don't

(45:37):
share the intimacies of my own friendships, but I talk
about when I feel get my feelings hurt with friends.
I talk about how that made me feel bad when
so and so didn't return my text and I wrote
her three times that you didn't write back, and that
made me feel bad and then I asked them for advice.
They're teenagers, so I'll say what do you think I
should do? What do you think I should say? And
I see you do that with my son as well,
by the way, and so they what the message they

(45:59):
get for and this is this is normal, This is normal.
This isn't some weird thing that you have to you know,
you have to get special help for.

Speaker 5 (46:06):
You bring up a lot of great points and you know,
and you're talking about your kids, and I'm a father also,
they're between twenty one and thirty three now. But would
it was not unusual at all for me to ask,
especially my boys, on scale of one to ten, how
do you feel today?

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Right?

Speaker 5 (46:20):
Or to have those conversations that were informal conversations around
how they're doing, and to really lean in and ask
more and more questions. So that's really important to your question, Roy.
For men, it's normalized that we're taught to not ask
for help, to not need any more, pull yourself up
by your bootstraps, all those kinds of things. And when

(46:40):
we do spend time with each other, it might be
around going and having a drink, or it might be
around a sporting event or watching a game. That's where
the bonding happens, right, And what we need to be
able to do, And what's helpful is that we really
lean into the strength and vulnerability, right, Like, I'm really
going through something, right and I want to share that

(47:00):
with you, and I don't. What men often say is okay, man,
well you know it'll get better.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Let's just move on.

Speaker 5 (47:06):
They don't really lean in and process in the same
way that women are taught, honestly in our society to
use more language and ask more questions, right, Because I'm
sure I'm sure your wife asks more questions about what
you're feeling that you might ask her. You just want
to know you're okay, good, okay now to talk about
anything else, right, So.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
You don't ask enough questions. Therefore you don't care. It's
like I do care. I pay the bills. Don't you
see this fee? This warm heat in this house?

Speaker 5 (47:34):
We absolutely care, but we're not comfortable asking those questions
because we've been told you don't go into that emotional space.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
You stay away from that emotional space so much.

Speaker 5 (47:45):
So that even when we go to and thinking about
your listeners, I bet if there's a woman listening to
the podcast there's a man in her life, her brother,
her father, Mancy's dating her husband who's going to the
she gonna make sure she goes with him.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Why because he's not going to ask the questions that
he needs to ask.

Speaker 5 (48:05):
Because even that, for us is vulnerability, right, Even that
for us it is like, oh, I don't know, I
just want to get in and out.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
You go to doctor, yes, but you ask them about
this well? Truth? Right?

Speaker 5 (48:15):
So vulnerability is a strength, it really is. And honestly,
when men become vulnerable, they're respected for that because other
men see that, Wow, that was vulnerable, and that's his strength.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
So it isn't something we need to run away from.

Speaker 5 (48:30):
And that's going to give us a better sense of
well being, a better sense of mental health, to really
have health mentally and to be able to support everyone
else along the way. And it's going to really make
us feel better too, and it's modeling it for our
children as well.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
How does therapy play a role in this? Men are
half the country, We are eighty percent of the suicides
according to the CDC. Where does therapy of any kind
help with anything that you all have just been talking about.

Speaker 4 (49:03):
I want to say something that's very specific to me
being a woman, and I hear this from other women friends.
So therapy is huge because it allows the space. And
this is what happens Roy in between heterosexual relationships almost
always is women feel I'm going to now be the
voice of all women across the world, Roy, are you ready?

(49:23):
So basically that we are a burdened with the care
of our children and the care of our husband, and
now with this new emotional awakening of men, we now
have to be the therapist for our husbands as well
and our partners, and there's a lot of anger about that, like,
we can't be the therapist, we can't be the caretaker
of the therapist that everything you know for our husbands.

(49:44):
And then the dynamic I see in my friends. I
do not do research on this, but I see it
in my community is resentment. Is that the woman doesn't
have time to be the therapist to her husband. He
wants her to because he feels safe talking to her.
So I would say, therapy, that's not your wife, it's
not your partner, that's not your romantic partner. Whatever it is.
It could be a friend, could be a friend, but

(50:06):
a professional who really knows basically how to make you
reconnect with your own humanity. So I would very much
encourage therapy, especially in terms of understanding that you need
multiple people to support you. This whole notion that we
could rely on one person in our life, you know,
our spouse or our partner to be the end all

(50:28):
be all is getting in the way. It's getting in
the way. We need multiple people. We need our moms,
our grandmas, our aunts, our uncles, our therapists, our best friend,
our partner, we need we need a community to build,
you know, to make us fully human and so that
we act like humans. And we're still stuck in this model, Ted,
you know this, We're still stuck. We put all our
emotional eggs into one romantic basket and then expect us

(50:51):
to be happy with this one person, and that's just
not real.

Speaker 5 (50:55):
Therapy is very important and we don't need to even
call it that. When I encourage men to get therapy,
I'll say, man, you just need you need a sounding board,
you know what I mean. You need somebody who can
share objectively what they might think not you know, it's
great to have a friend, but we're not always objective,
and we kind of want things to get better for
you and it me. It may not require us leaning

(51:18):
in to really ask more questions that really get to
a real solution that's meaningful, that's more meaningful. So really
encouraging therapy for men. I encourage therapy for men. I've
been in and out of therapy for different things throughout
my life. My children know that my children have also
engaged in therapy at some point in their life because

(51:39):
it's not something to run away from.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
It's actually they needed a sounding board too. And I
would say even just.

Speaker 5 (51:46):
Go to share any frustrations you have about me or
your mom, like, just go to start talking about things
where you can share some things that you may not
feel totally comfortable sharing with us at this point. So
therapy is essential. It will prevent depression. The anxiety among
manager is off the charge. As you said, suicide is
really three and a half times higher than women and

(52:08):
eighty percent of suicide, I believe you mentioned for the CDC.
So there's something that's not right, that's not working for
us as man. So this is the fix. So with
all of that being said, let's end it here. We've
already kind of unpacked ways that we can try and
change the culture. What hope and optimism do you have
for the future of manhood?

Speaker 1 (52:30):
Yeah, I have a lot of hope. Yeah. Ahead, it
looks like you're not finished. Really well. You know, we
gonna see how this will grow up.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
You know, you got to understand my sample size is one, y'all,
the one studying one hundred and fifty people and writing books.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
I'm not writing books. I'm just raising one. He seems
to be doing good so far.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
He's definitely in tune with his emotions and expressive about it,
way more so than I was at the same mile marker.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
And that's what we need to allow, right.

Speaker 5 (52:56):
We really need to allow our children like your son
to embrace and express his full range of emotions.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
And we need to do that too.

Speaker 5 (53:03):
When he's going through fear, we can say, you know,
I feel afraid too, and this is what I do,
and I want to work through that fear because on
the other side, no matter how it turns out, it's
always good that I've worked through that fear. So we're
not saying don't push our children to confront things even
if they're difficult.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
We want them to, but we.

Speaker 5 (53:21):
Don't want them you know, we don't want to motivate
them by denigrating them or using girls or women or
others to say, don't be like that or don't be
like this.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Right, those are the kind of things that we really
want to do.

Speaker 5 (53:33):
We want to help them express through their language what's
going on. So I have a lot of optimism about men,
about manhood. I think that we've reached a point where
it's clearly not working and we know that, and so
now it's just a matter of time of how do
we need to purge what needs to happen so that

(53:54):
we can start talking in real ways that really connect
with our humanity. That's the real thing, really connected with
it on it just as there's a racial awakening in
a lot of ways, and it's.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Difficult, it's painful.

Speaker 5 (54:06):
People are being triggered all the time, right, So it's difficult,
but we have to get through it. And the same
thing here around our own mental health and our own
sense of well being.

Speaker 4 (54:15):
I think first of all, we have to make sure
we're locating the problem where the problem is. So the
problem is not men, the problem is not women. The
problem is not non gender conforming people, right, the problem
is not black people, it's not poor people, it's not immigrants.
The problem is a culture that doesn't align with our
nature and a culture that doesn't nourish the best angels

(54:35):
of our nature. Right, So the idea is, if the
focus is on valuing both the heart and the soft
sides of ourselves equally, equally, men and women, non gender conforming,
I don't care what your identity is. Your heart is soft.
If that's our goal, which it should be, then it
becomes easy because we're naturally hard and soft. And the
hope is and I work with. Remember I teach at NYU,

(54:56):
so I see one hundred college students a semester, and
the hope with I see those young people across race,
across class, across nationality, all sorts of young people. They
are starving roy for this conversation. They are starving for it.
They are literally, I'm not I'm not even exaggerating, they're
yelling at us in those in my classes I teach

(55:18):
of like, what is wrong with you people? And this
is what we want? Why are you still saying academic
achievement is more important than close friendship? Like why are
you still saying that? Because that's not what's important in
the world. I just have to say the fact that
they even this close scot this nomination. It's just about
boys friendships. That's all the film is about. And then

(55:39):
something happens because the friendship gets in the way, and
the enormous response to it means that cultural change is
already happening, right, It's already happening.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
This has been a wonderful conversation. I cannot thank both
of you enough for giving me a piece of your
time and given our viewers a little bit of knowledge.
That's all the time we have for today, ted Naobi,
thank you so much for going beyond the scenes with me.

Speaker 4 (56:05):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple Podcasts,
the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 6 (56:26):
Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by
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This has been a Comedy Central podcast