A Shocking Turn in the War on Men - Richard Reeves

What has changed or how has the debate about boys and men adapted since we last spoke? What's new? I think when we last spoke, I was still frustrated that there was no sort of political space for this. I think people have become aware things aren't great with boys and men. There was raised awareness of it, but I still felt maybe particularly on the center left that it was difficult to actually do anything about it. And that's changed. I used to say, one of my talking points used to be that it was very hard to get people, especially on the political left, to actually do anything about this problem. First of all, we have to get them to talk about it. A, it's a problem. B, we can talk about it. And then C, we can do something about it. And I can't say that anymore. We've got governors, Governor Nuome, Governor Whitmer, Governor Wesmore in Maryland, also Governor Spencer Cox in Utah, all of whom have got pretty serious initiatives now to try and promote boys and men. We've got as as I'm speaking to you now, two bills have just been introduced to Congress to create a men's health strategy and office and to help men with their mental health after fatherhood, right? The men matter bill. And there are a bunch of stuff happening in states. And so I can't credibly say anymore, you know what, no one's paying any attention to this. I can't sort of say anymore like you're shouting into the wilderness. And I used to say like I'm banging my head against the brick wall, especially on Democrat side of the aisle. That is just not true anymore. And there's some politics behind that. Of course, I will I I think it I have to be honest that I felt like I was banging my head against the brick wall with Democrats until November 2024 >> and then there was an election and then my inbox started filling up with Democrats >> because they saw how much they'd fallen behind with men, especially young men. I mean, they can read a poll and there's no question that one of the things that happened in the 24 election was that Democrats lost men and especially young men in a very very big way. And I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the Democrats I've just mentioned and that we're working with are very often also mentioned as potential presidential candidates. And so they they realize that we can't win without young men. >> Uh so I'm not going to lie, I think there's a political dimension to this. But I don't unlike many people I don't blame politicians for doing politics, right? So some of the more men's rightsy people have said about Governor Nuome's initiative for example, which is a serious initiative. What is it? Uh so he signed an executive order last year saying telling his administration to come back to him with comprehensive plans to help boys and men in K12 education, employment, and especially mental health. He's already done a male service challenge. She's done a call to get 10,000 more men in California into service, into mentoring, into coaching. Um, they're following that up with a big push on getting more men into teaching, like male role models in the classroom would be a good idea. And it was very interesting that the men's rightsy folks, if I can use that language for now, although I'm on the more conservative side of it, they're like, "Oh, he's just he's just being he's just doing politics. He's just realized that the Democrats have lost young men and so he's just doing stuff to try and win their votes back." like and why is that a bad thing? [laughter] Isn't that how democracies are supposed to work? Uh and so I just can't say it anymore. I think it's there's real progress on this. It's serious. Not all of it's making it into the culture war, but that doesn't mean that it's not good. In fact, most of it's not in the culture war. It's not being discussed generally and podcasts or um or even on cable TV, but it doesn't mean it's not happening. >> How much is it? Is it a good first step or is this a really significant move? >> It's a significant move in the sense that it's the first time we've seen like serious political figures and policy makers making serious efforts to address the problem. >> Right. Okay. So, it's a it's a it's a a significant move in the same way as firing the first shot of a war is a significant move. It's the first thing that happens and from that it suggests that more will come after. >> That's right. So, the question is is there substance behind >> sufficient yet? >> No. And I think part of my role and part of my institute's role is to hold these people to account. Is to say, "Okay, you said you were going to do that." Yeah, you said you're going to do this. Great. 6 months later, we're going to be like, "Did you do that? >> Where is the initiative to get more men into mental health care?" Uh, Governor, what what did happen? Did you get 10,000 more men into service? Uh, Governor Newsome, uh, did you uh increase uh access to mental health care and paternity leave? Governor Moore, yes or no? Right. So, I'm not certainly not saying it's enough, but it is a lot more than we had 3 or 4 years ago. I mean, 3 or 4 years ago, you couldn't even get people particularly on that side of the aisle even to talk about this problem. >> When did your book come out? >> 2022. >> Okay. So, pretty much bang on that. And when did Obama endorse it? >> 2024. >> Okay. Right. So, you're sort of tracking this journey over time. >> Yeah. And honestly, it's been for us then, we've suddenly got a pivot and say, "Okay, we've now got policy makers coming to us saying, "Okay, I got it. What shall I do?" Wait, wait, wait, hold on. that was on our 2029 plan, right? We didn't quite expect to catch up this quickly. And that's obviously a good problem to have, but we have had to pivot and say, okay, how do we actually help these governors or these senators or these legislators do something about it? And my worry, honestly, is that this will just have a moment. Either it will be driven by the politics or it'll be driven by suddenly there's this issue, right? Boys and men are being discussed in a way that they were before. >> Sexy to talk about it. >> Yeah. Where are we going to be 5 years from now? 5 years from now, it might be, I don't know, something else, right? because these things do have their moments and the question I'm asking myself is what will I be able to appoint to that's still standing that's still here and so actually Virginia is a good example Virginia is if the governor new governor signs it going to create the first commission on boys and men >> to sit alongside the commission on women and girls now it's just a government commission in the state you might say great but what that means is that the issues of boys and men will be at the table >> in policym in Virginia in a way that they weren't for and that will still be there 5 years from now if that happens, right? That's going to get line item. It's going to be real. It's going to be institutionalized. >> And my whole thing, I think we've talked about this before, is I want this issue to become boring. I want this issue to be mainstream. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Guys are falling behind. We've heard it. We've heard it. Like, we know we're working on it. We've got it >> kind of. Yeah. In fact, and and I want people to say, well, that's why we've got this office of men's health and that's why we've created this that's why we've got this big push on. We're doing it. What are you talking about? >> Yeah. It's mom coming upstairs and telling you to clean your room when you're got the hoover beds already made. >> Yeah. Exactly. Well, you said that the men's rights types >> Yeah. >> don't actually want to win. What do you mean? >> Well, I've just sort of noticed that when something does happen, something and there was very nearly a commission in Washington state, I've mentioned the governor's uh moves, is that sometimes what will happen with the folks, some of whom have been in this field for a long time, and I would say that they come at this from a more conservative or sometimes even a reactionary perspective. [gasps] It's like they tend to dismiss these efforts. They'll say, "Oh, sure. There's been an executive order. Sure, they're creating a commission on boys and men, but they'll put their people on it or they don't really mean it." >> Are these people inside of government, the men's rights? >> No. No. These are advocates. These are activists. >> Okay. Like commentators. >> Yes. Or people that have been like, there are various groups out there. They tend to be small and not that well funded and honestly quite often fueled by grievances. Not necessarily illegitimate grievances. I don't want to be misunderstood, but I'm on various, you know, conversations with them. And I I heard this rabbi, uh, I think it's David Walp is his name on a podcast the other day, and he said something really struck me. He said, "Activists are always psychologically reluctant to succeed." >> Mhm. >> Because there's something about your identity and your purpose that is tied up to your own failure. If you succeed, you'll have to start saying, "Great, we've done it. Now I have to find some new identity. If you've actually wrapped up your identity in the sense that the whole of society is stacked against men, there's been a feminist conspiracy against men. No one cares against men. I've spent decades saying this. And then suddenly people do start caring about men and they do start doing stuff about men. You've either got to say oh that's not true anymore and change your identity or say no no that can't be true. But I think that's true for like LGBTQ activists like climate. and just like basically people can't take a win anymore, right? People can't say that's a win. It may not be perfect, but it's a win. Has to be glass half empty rather than glass half full. I think one of the reasons for that is that people worry if they are too grateful for a success. It's not going to continue to push the process forward. It's the same reason that hard charging overachiever type A people refuse to let themselves feel too much pleasure when they succeed because my displeasure is exactly the fuel that keeps me going. And right, it's not too dissimilar with climate the climate crisis. Not enough is done because well maybe if I stop now even if lots has been done it'll slow down or it'll reverse or people will forget. So now that we've got the front foot we must keep going. That would be the more virtuous way to put it. I also agree there's a a fascinating graph if you look at the um uses of the word racism in the New York Times over the last 20 years and you compare it to how much racism is actually happening. The the two lines just have nothing in common and going completely opposite direction. It's like some insane multiples times increase in the word racism >> because lots of people made their careers around identifying racism. So you concept creep out things like racism. >> Yeah. You end up slaying smaller and smaller dragons, >> which makes your cause less and less legitimate. >> Yeah. Which makes it easier for your opponents then to say, "Actually, that's kind of silly." And so, in the end, I don't think it works. >> And I said, I don't want to I want to be balanced about this because I remember getting an email, I think, from the human uh human rights uh what are they called? H um and it was something like along the lines of there's never been a worse time to be trans in America. And this was two months after Gorsuch had written his really, I think, incredible civil rights victory to include trans people under the sex discrimination law. I mean, that was a massive civil rights victory for the trans community. And it was almost like, yeah, we did get that, but that but look at this terrible thing over here. And I don't want to be misunderstood. I don't want to suggest there aren't still challenges for trans people. But the idea that after extraordinary civil rights victory, I mean, really, no one saw that coming, especially from that Supreme Court. They couldn't just take that win. And then you have to send out an email funding saying it's never been a worse time. Like >> is that true? And so I'm not saying it's a left right thing. It's a this so attached to the idea that you can't win. And I've really noticed it in my space too. And it's something I think about a lot in my own work is to try and I really want to update my own view of the world and make sure that if good stuff's happening, I don't get trapped in this kind of rut. Yeah. >> I want to win. Uh, I want us to become mainstream and and and that will mean like I have less to say, >> but that's good. >> You want to put yourself out of a job. Like the best dating app would be one that's designed to be deleted. >> Do and don't shouldn't we all want to do that? >> Designed to be deleted. >> It's sort of hard, [laughter] right? But that requires you not to wrap your identity up so strongly. >> There's a a line from Ben Francis the uh founder and CEO of Gymshark and he said um when your aspirations for the business are bigger than your aspirations for yourself then you can be a proper leader. And his point there was that he stepped he was the founder then he became CEO then he stepped down as CEO and got some guy from Reebok in who could take them from whatever 100 million to whatever billion. Then Ben came back in because he was needed at a different time and he was just happy to do what the mission called him to do. >> Yeah. >> And uh yeah if you don't have a grievance anymore >> and we saw the rug get pulled out from BLM with this regard. Right. It was some people sounded the alarm early. there's a lot of money there and we can't really work out where it's gone and they all live in really nice houses and then it took a lot of pressure and then eventually that's kind of dissolved and I think it's done damage to putting forward the rights of black people and and minorities in the modern world because now everything's being tred with the same brush. That's the problem is that you actually just become too easy a target, right? And you the last thing you ever want to do is do your enemies work for you, right? By just being bad, >> right? playing in playing into the caricature that they have of you. >> Exactly. Which is the big I heard you talk about that as a big fear. But I want to turn the tables a bit and ask you because you have been thinking about talking about this issue of boys and men >> for many years as well. >> How do you think the debate's moved just in the last sort of two to three years? [snorts] >> There's definitely been more of a mainstream recognition of it to me. I I have to certainly sort of do a little bit of breath work when I read one of these headlines because I'm trying to work out is this lip service being paid to blowing with the wind of a cool topic at the moment. >> Mhm. >> Is it kind of like a disclaimer? Well, we did talk, you must remember, we released four a four-part series in Politico on the crisis of boys and men. By the way, all written by women. Um >> well, not my piece in Politico, but yes. They did the the Christine Ember had theirs and hers came out theirs came out at the same time. Not one was written by a man. If it was why are men talking about women's bodies, that would have probably been an issue had it have been reversed. Um, so I'm trying to work out, okay, there's definitely more headlines about it um that I see in the press. I'm not tapped into what's happening in Washington, what's happening on the policy side. It would probably be good. I know that you guys are are promoting it, but it would be good if there was a way to get that out more that, you know, good news about men newsletter or something. Um, to really allow that to sort of make people who care about the issues and boys and men not feel like it's a permanent loss battle or like all of their efforts, the best that they can hope for is a a Washington Post headline once every 3 months or something like that. Um, we've got Ross Kemp just released a three or five part series about young men. Uh, Louis Thu's documentary just came out on Netflix. Um, adolescence did so much damage. I think when with the way that it tried to frame things, with the language that it used, >> not so much adolescence itself, I think, but the way it was interpreted by interpreted. >> Well, it was it that's a that's correct. Yeah, it was purposefully left up to interpretation. >> There was a lot of vacuum in there and I know that at least some of the guys that helped to contribute to it. I some of the showrunners I feel like had a bit of an agenda and actually did have some things they wanted to put across that I didn't like I didn't really like. Um but yeah, it was purposefully left open to interpretation. Unfortunately, if it's it's like a raw shock test. It was like an ideological raw shock test for the world. And what did almost everybody think? They all thought the same thing. All the mainstream thought the same thing. What was it? Chem Badino was being pulled up for having not watched it as if it was a documentary. >> I know. It was the first time in British history that a political leader has been criticized for not watching television. [laughter] >> Did you see this Jared mate? It was insane. She got pulled up on morning TV >> by watching saying you need to watch this. How? What? >> Wow. >> What do you mean? It wasn't even reality TV, let alone a documentary. It was you need to watch this fictional portrayal. >> Wow. >> It was wild. >> Of the show adolescence of the show. >> So that's a the UK is a good example. I've actually since we spoke I think set up a think tank there as well and we're working quite closely over there and it's like it is you do feel always one step back one forward and a lot some of the stuff that gets the most attention is not necessarily the stuff that either should or is most important. So simultaneously the UK has released the first ever men's health strategy and it's a very good document where streetings kind of put that forward. Um they had a very serious debate in parliament on international men's day and actually all of the MPs told a dad joke >> at the beginning this organization called dad shift did that and it's absolutely it's absolutely amazing. I really it's so cool. Wes Streeting did it as well. >> Um it's very fun. It was it was an amazing debate about men's mental health about what's happening. They're doing a summit on the money. Were you happy with what they did? >> Very happy with it. Uh and so but then the way that they were talking about adolescence wasn't great for a while. Uh there's been like so it's never going to be a straight line. And the other thing that happens is particularly things like adolescence and I suspect with these new documentaries too. I've really noticed this is that the lag between the idea to the screen is so great that by the time it lands it's out of touch with where the culture currently is. >> Correct. So, it feels like, yeah, that's maybe how people were thinking 3 years ago, but it's not how it feels now. A quick aside, most people think that they're dehydrated because they don't drink enough water. Turns out water alone isn't just the problem. 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Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklnt.com/modern wisdom. Louie filmed the documentary from the start of 25 until the middle end of 25. But that means that they were thinking about it through >> 24 and you go this is a a fastmoving uh Ross Kemp is probably almost uh spurred on by the adolescence thing I think and you know he sits down opposite William Costello and he says uh so incelss they they they kill a lot of people right and William says we think that the total number of incel killings worldwide is the upper bound Five. And Ross Kemp looks like he's been punched in the head. And you five five per day. He goes, "No, five. Five total. Five." So is is the territory going to be gained equally? No. What would I what would I say? um the gender wars or the sex wars I guess of what's happening inside of the home, what's happening with men's roles, those things that that is going to be downstream from all of the uh structural changes that need to be made like how are we doing with boys literacy rates which I know are just falling through the floor like they can't read, boys can't read. uh what's happening with getting them into education or higher education or apprenticeships and then what's happening with employment and then what's happening with your place in society and fatherhood and all the rest of it like all of these the issues that I think matter most that people feel the most which is well where's my meaning and what's my job like and what's my income like all of those are after effects of the stuff that comes before it and that is education that's employment that's mental health support That's all of the systemic kind of bor like your work. Yes. >> Uh and it it almost feel >> Did you just call my work systemic and boring? >> Cuz if you did, I'm so happy I've always boring. >> This is like hallelujah for me. >> I feel like I feel like a guy who's got who's in a a relay race and I'm the last dude. >> I'm the last dude because this sort of stuff, the way that I speak and the place that I can have the biggest impact is actually much closer to the end. I think in some ways that if we're going to talk about uh what is what is the role there are there are maybe not that I can definitely influence the way that people think and and and the uh approaches that that guys and girls take to the sort of structure of their lives but ultimately the big movers that come before that really lay the groundwork are going to be more on the side of what's happening in school what's happening in employment what's happening well I think actually it's interesting you put it that way because in some ways I think you're kind of at the back and the front of the relay because >> I'm both of the guys in the human centered. >> You sort of doing the work of both like they feel like and I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm like the rest of >> you can be you can be the middle of the >> Can I be the middle? I don't know this analogy is working for me. But anyway, um so because you have to have space for a good faith conversation about what's actually going on with boys and men >> and a good faith investigation of that. Uh, and you also need young men especially to hear that conversation and to feel like we're talking about this stuff that in a way that takes them seriously and that says they have problems, not that they are the problem. >> And and so I do think that these sorts of spaces are important for creating the conditions under which policy makers and politicians and others can then do their work which will then hopefully address the material problems. I don't think we're not going to change some of these material issues like overnight. >> Yeah. But I think that we could at least do no harm. And for too long, the deficit framing around this issue of young men, what's deficit framing? We start with like what's wrong with them. So classic example of course would be toxic masculinity, which I think we've talked about before, and just like let's start with that. Let's start with not making you toxic, right? Or like what's wrong with boys in school? they don't try or and even like uh my my friend Scott Galloway falls into this a little bit when he says, "Oh, like the the daughters are a pen or a lawyer and then the guys in the basement vaping and playing video games or whatever." Like there's just this way of talking about young men that really suggests that they're the problem rather than looking at the kind of systems around them. And I will just say given the young men I know who listen to you and to others that that this hunger just for honest disagreement, good faith engagement around the problem is huge. >> And so I do think we have to set the table in a way that allows us to do the work. Right. The cultural stuff's both before and after. >> I I I get what you mean. I think that the challenge that you have when speaking to men about uh the balance between ambition and compassion. Uh I know you can be more but you are enough already. um we need to do things to help you, but you also don't want to be a victim. Especially for men, it comes into contact inside of their minds because nobody wants to feel like they're not doing it on their own, especially if you're a guy. Where's the heroism in that? Uh and you know, I think what Scott's sort of trying to point the finger at there is he's saying you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right? >> And for many men that is true. I had this idea uh earlier this year called advice hyperresponders. So advice doesn't distribute evenly like medicine. It distributes like alcohol. The people that are already drunk on it take too much when the people who need to loosen up don't have a >> I think you've talked about this in the context of me too, haven't you? >> Yes. Yeah. Exactly. The guys that are told that they shouldn't be pushy with women, >> the nervous ones take it to heart and the dudes that were blowing through boundaries just disregard it entirely. Yeah, a person who is already loading too much responsibility and working too hard hears just work harder and goes I knew I knew that I wasn't working hard enough. I must push push more. Whereas the guy that is laying on the couch and there is a huge what is it 14 million men who are >> not in education, employment or training. >> Yeah, exactly. Nicholas um >> Istat uh isat. >> Ibistat Yeah, he corrected me. Um yeah, I've been getting it wrong for years. >> It's fine. Uh, look, you're right that we've gone through this period of informing men of how to be men. >> Yeah. >> By telling them everything that they shouldn't do. >> That's right. A long list of don'ts. >> Yeah. It doesn't inform what you should actually move toward. And the vacancy is hugely detrimental. And if you're going to complain about what men are doing, >> but only tell them what they shouldn't be doing without a replacement. You can't complain when people step in and fill that gap. Whether you don't like Rogan or me or Peterson or Tate or Nick Fuentes or Myron or or whoever whoever it is that you do or don't like, whoever is or is not, and if you don't like Aragon from Lord of the Rings, like if there's a vacuum, that will get sucked in because there's a market to speak to people. And if nothing else, even if people aren't speaking to it, if you don't service the market, someone will reverse engineer another message to become the thing that they're missing. Like if you can't eat food, you'll eat tree bark instead because it's the closest thing that's approximating food. Yeah. So there's a certain naivity in thinking that we don't have to answer the question, what does it mean to be a man? Correct. Right. Because every culture has had to answer that question. And and and so the it's not the question is not is there going to be a question? It's who's giving the answer? And if you don't like the answers as you say that some of the men are getting then what's the alternative? >> And so you can't just vacate the ground and then complain. You can't give up the ground and then complain that somebody else takes it. And that's exactly what's happened. Like mainstream culture just basically gave the gave up the ground and said like we're only going to talk about masculinity if we put the prefix toxic in front of it. In fact, you can't even really use the word masculinity now with young men. Um because it codes so it codes left because it's come with the modifier toxic, right? Even if you use it as just on its own >> even only. Yeah. So what young men have kind of heard, they've only heard it in that context now. And so you got to even the words really count here in terms of which what how does it signal and it's really interesting to me that the word masculinity itself now to a lot of young men they've only heard that coming out the mouths of people who are about to say something bad about it, right? And sometimes they'll say >> so good or they'll say healthy masculinity, right? Implying of course against >> that normal masculinity without the modifier is unhealthy. >> Just don't hear it the other way around, right? And so they they know what's coming when they hear you talk that way. And I do think you're right that there's been this huge cultural vacuum. Um and I'll come back to something you said a minute ago which is like and I struggle with this a bit in my own work and in some of the work that policy makers are doing which is you don't want to say to young men especially, we're here to help you. Poor you. Right? Look at you struggling. Poor you. What we want to say is we need you. That's the message I think most young men need to hear is we need you. Society still needs you. The tribe still needs you. Your family still needs you. Your kids for the love of God definitely still need you. Uh we need you and we also need you in these service offerings. I I wrote a thing with Robert Putnham in the Times last year talking about the boy crisis of the early 20th century and how all these civic organizations, Boy Scouts, Boys and Girls Clubs, Big Brothers, Big Sisters were created almost overnight to respond to what was happening with boys in the cities after urbanization. They were staffed by men. There were four boys and there was a so huge civic response, but it took men to do it. Whereas all of the youth serving organizations now have way more women volunteers than male volunteers. M >> and of course I'm not blaming the women >> who are stepping up to do that work. God bless them. But I am saying if you want to serve boys and young men, you better have some men, too. But our men hearing that message, we need you. Not despite being men, not >> as a volunteer, but as a man, we need we need men, >> right? It's just not >> because you're good. Because you have something to add as a man. Not Yes. That your masculinity, and I I've made the I've used the word again, your manhood, right? Well, basically, we want you because you're a man, not despite being a man. We see you being a man as a feature, not a bug. >> Yeah. >> And I just don't think enough men have that. Well, even that, right, the the the idea of uh duty um of uh almost like service um turns very quickly into obligation isn't nasty enough of a word that well I mean you know you you you should you should go and do this as opposed to this is a noble pursuit for you to try and pass on good things and good advice to the next generation of young men, >> right? Uh so do we need new language to talk about gender issues then? Femininity is that is that also a difficult one to talk about? >> No, I mean femininity is hard. I mean feminism has become quite >> femininity actually I would very rarely hear being spoken about other than anybody from the right. Femininity would be pushed as part of a sort of sundress and baking trad. Uh I don't hear many people from the left talking about it because it's not something to be pedestalized. I would hear masculinity talked about primarily from the left as a cudgel to beat men with usually with some sort of modifier of toxic or whatever. Um so yeah and and feminism as well manosphere unfortunately well it was it was very quickly kind of [snorts] it feminism was something that previously in the past I think a lot of people think was was was it was a gender equality claim. >> Yeah. very quickly moved into something else. Uh actually it gets increasingly quickly moved into something else when I learn about some of the factions that sort of birthed out of feminism at the very beginning. I was learning about this yesterday. Um >> but the manosphere was used to describe a group of people, not necessarily a movement or an ideology. The group of people happen to all agree about it. So maybe the manosphere was never going to be it. I' I've given you my bit about the three waves of the manosphere, right? First pick, second wave, which originally was the gentleman, >> but I think maxing is going to be the third wave. >> What? >> Lux maxing. >> You think that's the third wave? >> I So here's my here's my theory about about luxing. >> Most of the Lux maxing, guys, if if it sticks, cuz it's only been around for 6 months. >> If it if it sticks and it becomes even more ascendant, and it might do cuz it's really memeable. If it stays, what it will create is basically a sexier version of the black pill and migtau. So it'll be men going their own way. If you look at what the men are coding for, presenting for, it's not for women. They don't care about women all that much at all. They care in as much as women can get them a claim in the eyes of other men, but it is basically formidability is what they're signaling. height, uh, like unbelievably masculineized faces, which if you look at the evidence, most women prefer an either average in terms of masculineization, or a slightly feminized face with a masculineized body. That's what they find most attractive. But men think about gigaad. They think about these protruding cheekbones, insane draw. Yeah. The mandible. They have that. >> People mewing. >> Mewing. >> I learned about that the other day. >> Pushing their tongue into the roof of the mouth. Yeah. >> Why do they do that? It's to try and create a tighter jawline. You're doing it right. Yeah, you look like a gigachad. >> You [laughter] look like I look I look like a squad. >> Yeah, you do look like um but look, a lot of the the most extreme version of male luxing basically is a male to-male transsexual operation. >> It is taking a man and trying to turn up the caricature. Oh, my my thinking about this, if it stakes, uh, what it will be is basically disregard women and just focus on mogging, which is male-to-male intros competition. It's trying to be as formidable as possible. Now, you saw this with Ziz 15 years ago in 2010, but he was still obviously very female attraction coded. It was a much more kind of holistic broy version of this. It was way less autistic. and he had this great line which was um disregard women acquire dance moves but it was done in a lol pow kind of way whereas this is this to me feels like genuine disregard of we're not bothered about mating we're not bothered about getting women we're not bothered about really anything other than maleto-male intraexual competition and if that sticks it's going to become very insular stick will it mean the idea that these these guys are hammering their faces or breaking their bones or doing the thing you just what I just tried to do kind of mewing. >> Yeah, it worked. >> Uh and then not interested in women. >> No, I I don't I think it go Do you see Sto Steven Cobear just did a thing on Looks Maxing? No. >> Uh it's from a very feminist perspective. It's funny as you can imagine, but a whole thing about it. Um it's worth it's just worth watching because he goes into it. But I sort I just again I think I don't want to be empirical about this but like how many men are we talking about? like is it how long will this last? Will it will it last? Will it go? Is this the start of a you know decadesl long shift in the gender tectonics or is it just >> decades long but it it could stick about for a while and it would definitely put things on the back foot because it's going to be less um >> I just I see that I see it breaking through. I hear people talking about it. I'm not saying it's not happening and and actually we're doing some work on growing issues around body dysmorphia and and so on among which is on track to overtake female body dysmorphia within the next decade. Yeah, I've seen that stat. I I don't know if that's true or not. >> Scott Griffith Australia. >> I just always worry about those lines being projected forward, but anyway, it's a real thing. Yeah. Um and and what I think it speaks to is um I do think lying behind all of these trends, right? Whatever the thing is now, what it will be before is what we're talking about a moment ago was just this guy John DeVa Vulp. I don't if you know him, Pollster. He wrote this really nice piece a few months ago where he talked about masculinity vertigo in which he says basically what's happening to young men is that they're I I call it pinball but same idea which is on Monday what you're being told is the problem is that you're not masculine enough right you need to work out more eat more protein looks max be more dominant etc right you need to you need to man up and be more masculine the next day what you're being told is you're too masculine you need to cry cry more and eat more salad and go to therapy more and like find your feminine side and then on Wednesday you're back to so it's just become this very contested and kind of difficult thing right now uh in a way that just wasn't before and into that you'll get looks maxing or you'll get whatever body dysmorphia will get what whatever moral panic people want to put into it they will but behind it what I actually see is just a bunch of men especially young men honestly just trying to figure this out and to be good people and to be good dads and good friends and have a good life and to matter and definitely to matter. They want to be they want to belong. >> Well, everybody I mean like not being needed is fatal to the human condition. >> There was that line, you know, I went and searched it. I went and searched for the original source of that line that you gave me two episodes ago, maybe even our first ever episode. Uh uh uh uh the the modern family is a myth that makes men tolerably useful. At least one that at least makes men tolerably useful. Jeffrey Dench. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> And it's kind it's actually this a good opportunity to say that that masculinity, manhood, whatever words you want to look is always more socially constructed like it's a cultural construct. Same with fatherhood, right? Margaret me talked about the invention of fatherhood. Fatherhood is a social invention. M and it is just true that the roles, the structures, the scaffolding, the norms, the messages from society like we have to make men basically. Before we continue, most people in their 30s are still training hard. 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Best of all, there is a 30-day money back guarantee, plus free shipping in the US, and they ship internationally. And right now, you can get up to 20% off by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's timeline.com/modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. This is what I fought Louisie about. He he pushed back against the idea that um uh women are born with value. Men need to create it. And well, what value are men born with? Women have this unbelievable capacity to make the next generation. What do men have? What are they born with? >> Not in the same way. and look around the animal kingdom and every man needs to every male needs to construct himself into something useful in order to matter and be a part of the and is that a bad thing? Is that part of the drive for men to sort of push for mastery and conquer and progress and improvement? I think that's something that you have the choice between men that are driven or men that are useless. I'd much prefer the driven men. Obviously that can overshoot and turn into very squirrely outcomes where they become tyrants or scammers or whatever because that's the same drive just turned up in the wrong direction. They can be letharios and they can play play the field in a way that really hurts people. But yeah, I um question driven by what isn't it? So that word driven is really sitting with me interestingly because it's like you're driven what you actually feel is like you belong, you're connected, you're needed, you have a role, you have a purpose. And so sure if that's what we're talking about and that has to be constructed a lot more. I mean I think me's right and you've had animation on talking about you know the birth of how we how we invented fatherhood >> to survive as a species. Right. >> Baby's heads got too big and women were either they had the choice between being snapped in half or having a husband that would care. >> Right. That's basically right. That's a good summary of the work. And so it's just true. And and I just think it's incredibly naive for anybody to just assume that we can just get to some androgynous future. Um and that we don't have to keep doing the hard work of making sure that there is a cultural message to men. All right, we need you. We need you to do this. We need you to not do that. Sure. But this is why our tribe the tribe still needs you. There's this um there are these cave paintings from um they're in northern Italy, I think, Romeia. And they're they're famous because they're some of the oldest or if not the oldest cave paintings that have ever been found. And the famous ones are the ones where there's kind of very violent. There stabbing and spearing and stuff like that. But the most haunting one is actually of a group uh clearly the tribe and then another figure who's moving away from them. >> And the interpretation of that is this an ostracism. >> This personel by the tribe and actually yeah because the tribe saying we don't want you anymore and they're spitting you out. we don't need you and in fact you're kind of wor you're you're worse so we got to now we'd probably incarcerate but but ost to ostracize someone there was social death and then very often kind of physical death too this has been this is not a new thought around how do we kind of make sure that the tribe needs you >> that's true but when you unmass ostracize an entire sex all of them feel like they're being pushed out of the tribe >> if you do that yeah and so the message I think too many young men have got is that that we do we need you we got it from here boys All right, thanks for the last x thousand years. Don't need you anymore. We got it from here. Or get on board the futurist female train. Right, that is a fatally flawed message. And I actually don't think if you get away from the culture war, it is not the overwhelming majority of people think, right? Most people think moms and dads are a bit different and that's cool. Most people think, you [clears throat] know, men and women bring some complimentary skills, right? That's the whole argument for DEI, right? Is that you want a mix of skills. You want a mix of backgrounds, right? And so most people get that if you get away from the culture war. So most people believe all this stuff. I think that most people believe to one degree or another that different groups are different. But when you start to create a value stack based on who is more or less worthy around that, it's no longer we bring complimentary or different skills to the table and therefore everybody should have a seat. It is you and your particular skill set are surplus to requirements or actively negative or tyrannical in some sort of a way uh therefore you should change. >> That seems to be the message. >> That's right. And then then no surprise that then people will lean into that identity. Right. If you if you really want someone to lean hard into an identity, all you have to do is threaten it >> and that and that will be the result. And I think we've seen some of that. But of course, I don't think that the answer is to go back to a more kind of reactionary kind of conservative view about the role of men and women or to introduce some kind of gender re bring back gender inequality in order to resupply men with their purpose. That's not the answer either. And it's also not what most people want. I mean, we're about to publish some work showing that we've just seen the biggest increase in the amount of hands-on fathering that we've seen for probably half a century. So, American dads are just doing more. Wasn't it that uh uh millennial fathers spend as much time with their kids as uh uh silent generation or baby boomer mothers? >> That's exactly right. Yeah. The the amount of the amount of direct child there's gets complicated because it's secondary and and primary childare, but the amount of primary care child care being done by dads now is uh as high as was being done by moms in 1985. Uh and and of course moms are doing even more >> deadbeat dad thing. >> Yeah. I mean, I this is a bit of a a rant coming now because I think the whole the whole deficit framing around fatherhood and dads, right? Either deadbe or doofus is is really upsetting me. And I think partly as a dad and and one of the things that upsets me and here I'm going to really take aim at some folks on the left is this idea I just exposed to again recently that if you look at full-time mothers and full-time fathers so working full-time in in the labor market that moms are doing 25 to 30% more of the housework and childare right that's the fact that's out there's a book by Eve Rodsky fair called fair play this the second shift and then the idea of the second shift yeah women working the double shift etc. And I just saw it again a woman's group just kind of put out same thing like and the stat this is this is a good example of a category of statistics that feel true. Go with your intuition but on close examination collapse but they're not actually false. So it is true that men and women living together with kids both working quotes full-time >> she's doing more of the house work and the child care than he is. But what they've done is defined full-time as 35 hours or more. He is doing more hours. So full-time working dads are doing more hours than full-time working moms. And if you add >> 45 versus 35, >> if you add it all up, it's about six 60 hours a week each. It is to quote Suzanne Bianke from a paper like 20 years ago. She describes the contributions of mothers and fathers in those households as quote amazingly similar. And that remains true to this day. So dads are doing about 8 hours more paid work a week and moms are doing about 8 hours more unpaid work a week and they're doing exactly the same amount of work. They are putting in the same work week. But this idea somehow that like dads aren't doing their they're not pulling their share. They're not doing it's just untrue. And every time I see that, it infuriates me as a dad and on behalf of dads and also because it's just a colossally terrible social science. And it's going to be blown up within 3 minutes by anybody that wants to destroy it. And so it's actually not even in the interest of the women's groups to put out this bad social science because it'll get destroyed. >> I understand what you mean, but the problem is the more simple headline always wins. In our current age, I'm This is an iron law. the simplest headline always wins. >> I don't think that's true anymore because because we'll come here and talk about it and your audience isn't gonna listen to it and they will and they they might not have read that headline and so I think I actually think you're being modest. >> Maybe not. Okay, but I mean I'm one guy I'm one guy like tossing a drop of >> people want people want to know the truth >> and people are actually a little bit sick of this thing going. Now, of course, some people just want a stat that goes with their priors and that they can say over dinner and say, "Did you know that women do more 30% more of the housework even even when they both work full-time?" >> Yeah. >> Right. Good. That but then I say and then I come on say, "Yeah, but if you look at the whole thing, they're actually doing doing the same amount." It's a kind of I actually think enough people listening to you and to others and I want to give you some credit here, Chris. I think that one of the reasons you're successful is because you are curious and you do have good faith discussions about these issues, right? So, and you will change your mind about things. And I actually think the hunger especially among young people for that is huge. And I think it's one of the reasons why a lot of podcasters are actually have a lot more credibility than you think. And I actually really like one of the things I like listening to you uh [laughter] this moment and we may have had this moment ourselves when we first spoke but I love this moment a few times recently where you get this expert comes on right on whatever it is like something and they get and they don't know who you are right they're an academic and they've been told by their PR company it's great he has a huge platform and maybe they haven't done the time right um and you've had it with my friend Melissa Carney you've had it with other people where they get about 10 minutes into the interview and you're quoting these papers at them [gasps] or you're saying, "Yeah, I had them on or whatever." And they go, "What?" And actually, one of them I think actually said out loud, she said, "God, you really know know about this, right? >> I should have prepared better." Yes. >> You can see this kind of shot because they look at you, they look at the vibe, they look at the thing, and they kind of go into, "Wait, what? Wait, what?" Um, I think it's a credit to you and I think it does make you somewhat different to many of the other people in the so-called manosphere because I do think that even when I disagree with you or disagree with some of the folks you've had on, I think there is an attention there to trying to get this right. The only thing I'd say on the household thing, and this is actually something I wanted to bring up with you because it's it's bugged me a couple of times in some of the conversations you've had. So, I think it's it's just us, right? So that's a a spoonful of sugar to get the the medicine down as well. >> Yeah. The trouble is the sandwich doesn't work anymore because everyone knows what's coming, right? Although some young people are saying, "No, no, still give me the nice thing. I know there's something bad coming, but I still want the nice thing first." >> I know it work. I will I will take the only child in me will take a shameless compliment. >> I mean, it helps, right? But um and I and I don't know how you think about this, but I've also noticed like I've just done my rant about like the the anti-dad rhetoric of the left, right? But I've also kind of noticed just in a lot of these conversations, there's this kind of implied return to a world where the dad is the head of the household where we're going to reassert this idea of kind of gender inequality within the household. And I I wish I could remember who it was, but you had somebody >> CEO COO. Yes. Someone said that the mom she's had a hugely important role. I'm not saying the mom's like the COO of the household, right? And somebody else will say like men need to lead their families, right? But the COO one really stuck with me, right? Because okay, so she's COO. What? Who's the dad again? He's CEO. >> Okay. So what you've just done there is you said we're going to go back in a way to a world where there was this implied gender inequality within the household. >> Do you think that there's an inequality between CEO and COO when it comes to the household? I think there if you're going to use that as an analogy, Rick, the CEO is the boss of the company, right? And the COO reports to the CEO. >> Interesting. I think so. Look, I think it was Arthur Brooks. Have you got any more Have you got any more to say on that on why you had an issue with it? >> Um that framing >> just because that framing, but I I'm hearing it elsewhere generally more on the sort of conservative side of this argument. And it's here's what I don't like. It's very rarely stated explicitly. The explicit version of it would be we need to get back to stable families and families where men feel a sense of purpose. And so we need to go back to to families where >> he is the head of the household. He is the ultimate decision maker. He is the leader of the family. Whatever language you want to use which and and therefore women are going to have to kind of recognize that they are in the end >> subordinate. >> Yes. >> What do you think about the feminization of society? >> Has there been a feminization of society? >> Helen Andrews thought so. Yes, I know. But um well, it's interesting. I mean, Helen Andrews, have you had her on, by the way? I didn't come to >> No, she didn't. She I can't get her on. I don't know what she thinks of me or the show, but we can't get her on. >> Yeah, I mean, I did. It's one of those things where I tried to ignore it because it was a culture war thing, right? Um everyone's talking about this great feminization piece that she wrote. In the end, I just did something on my own Substack about it. Um where uh I don't see the field she talks about law, etc. they've only just approached 50/50, right? Uh for one thing, and so I just don't see the evidence empirically that that's driving any of the changes in those fields. What upset me most about it was there are some fields that are being quite strongly feminized. Mental healthcare, psychology, social work, and K12 education. There was no mention of that. And so, actually, I'm very worried about the real feminization problem, which is that a lot of these occupations are skewing more and more female over time. That has implications for the people in those professions, the kids being served or the patients, but also for men. Like last as we record this, the last jobs report showed that three times as many women had gone into the labor force as men. Now, it was just one month. We be careful about that. And the reason was healthare jobs. Right. >> Right. And so again, one of my differences with some of the folks on the right, political right, is that I'm saying, look, this is the jobs are going to be coming from areas like healthcare, etc. And so we have got to get more men into them with AI. >> Yeah. And they're like, no, no, those aren't jobs for men. you know, we need to get men into men's jobs, you know, into factories and mines and stuff like that. I'm like, okay, good luck with completely reordering the economy again to make that happen. But in the meantime, I see where the jobs are actually coming from. Um, and so I think that's a real problem. I think that the the idea that, you know, the legal profession has somehow become less good because women are in it. I just don't think >> the legal profession is not going to be around for that much longer and certainly not in it. >> Well, AI is AI is better than men and women. So, correct. Gender becomes irrelevant. >> Ah, funny. What do you think about the the feminism movement at the moment? I spend all of my time >> thinking about this through the lens of what's happening to boys and men. So even feminism for me is a reflection of how is it going to impact the thing that I care about most. Um not that I don't care about women, but again like I've got my I've got my priorities. >> What's the current status of the feminism movement? How do you think of it when you come to think about these factions? It's very hard for me to answer that because I see it through the lens that I approach it and I am at quite a lot of meetings and conferences stuff now you know which would be described as feminist meetings. Uh and I would say that slowly but surely the women's movement or feminist movement is coming to realize that demonizing or dismissing men is not a good strategy. >> It's happening pally and slowly but surely but it is happening. Uh I'm seeing a lot of leaders in those spaces saying okay we have got to do better about the boys and the men. Now you might say well they're only doing it for tactical reasons or political reasons and they will very often say because it's good for women right and I have this interesting disagreement with them and I'm very open about this. They say we should care about boys and men because we care about women and I'm saying we should care about boys and men. I just end the sentence earlier than you. Right? Um in the same way that we don't say we should care about women because it's good for the economy or good for men. Right. I I just I I I think >> I've had to do I've had to do that too. I had this piece about um uh zero sum empathy and I tried to legitimize the reason it there was a lot of things and it wasn't just this but I remember I I sort of tossed this coin into the pool that I knew would be effective which was if you if you don't care about boys and men falling behind and also whine about there being no good men to date that is the equivalent of sort of mating logic sepuku that you are creating the precise birth of eligible partners that you say that you and your daughters and your friends and your sisters are looking for. Like if you're not prepared to help boys and men, you can't go where are all the good men at? Because that's precisely what is causing the lack of eligible partners that you're talking about. But I didn't want to have to couch good men are good in as much as they can be of service >> partners. Yeah. >> To you as a woman. It's just that we should care about the falling behind of any group. we should care about human flourishing, right? If there's a group in society that aren't doing well, then we should care about them. I I just I just think that's just for me that's just a straightforward moral proposition. Now, I'm also attend, you know, obviously different groups of different agendas, right? And so if you care about this group or that issue because it affects that other issue, I'm fine with that. So when people kind of say like Melinda French Gates has, you know, supported me and Gary Barker because it's part of a gender equality thing, right? And she's very clear. She says it's not good for women and girls if boys and men are struggling. Right now you might say, "Okay, so this is where the kind of again the reactionaries will be like, oh, of course she has to couch it as that and it's kind of I'm like, guys, for the love of God, she is a global feminist. Like, what do you want?" Right? And she's supporting my work. She's supporting boys and boys and men's work. And like, no, no, no. They're like, they're the purists. They're the ones who are saying, "No, no, no. She has to completely come over to our side." I'm like, "Guys, take a win." Right? Of course, as a feminist, she says she's going to couch it that way. Right? That's okay. Um, do you find yourself doing the same thing, couching it that way? No. No. I know. I do it openly with with uh Melinda and with others. I was at Recuic Forum with the with um some of the leading women. I'm just like, no, I'm like my position and the position of the American Institute for Boys and Men is just very straightforward. Like we care about boys and men doing better and flourishing, right? We just care about that period. Now, is that also good for the economy? Is it good for families? Is it good for women? Is it good for Yes. Yes. Of course. Yes. Right. In the same way that the women's services prevention initiative, their tagline is when women are healthy, communities thrive. I'm like, true. Also true that when men are healthy, communities thrive. But you don't have to condition it. And I honestly think there's a deeper point there, which is that men in particular, I kind of >> kind of see the conditioning coming. You see it like, oh well, if there's something bad happens like men men do bad thing, a oh, now we should care about boys and men. Yeah. And they see that conditionality. They see, "Oh, you only care about me if X if I do something bad or something bad happens." And what they actually need to hear is, "No, dude. We just care about you." >> Yeah. >> What do you make of the current state of mating and dating? >> Well, as a 56-y old man who's been married for my almost my entire adult life, my >> You're expert subject. [laughter] >> Fortunately, I have three sons in their 20s at various stages. That helps. Uh and a bunch of bunch of younger friends. I mean, I do um I I it comes back a bit to this politicization point, which is I worry that the message that young women are getting from the left is life's really tough for women now and it's the fault of all those men and the patriarchy. And the the message that young men are getting from the right is life's pretty tough for young men right now and it's the fault of all those woke feminists and those women. So they're being they're being encouraged respectively to blame each other for their real problems. That is a colossal waste of political energy and not true. It's also creating some difficulties I think around dating, mating etc. because we do see now that that political polarization is affecting dating and mating. I worry a lot and Dan Cox has written for us on this that you see this decline in dating in high school and among kind of young young adulting. a huge problem >> because that's where you develop the relational skills, the ability to endure and deliver rejection gracefully, etc. I worry a lot about that. >> But I also worry that and maybe this is something we could talk about that the there's something about the marketplace mate value evosych stuff I know you're very interested in. >> I've revised my Paul Eastwick has a book out called Bonded by Evolution. Do you know his stuff? >> Yeah, I had him on the show. >> Oh, you don't? >> We had a long debate, >> right? And I'm not going full Eastwick on you here. >> Please don't. >> But I do find that something here's the bit I do like about it like is that if we're serious about thinking about kind of ancestral mating patterns, we do have to take seriously the fact that we didn't live in cities of 10 million people with a phone, >> right? >> That wasn't the marketplace we faced. We were in smaller groups. So maybe you've done this with him. Smaller groups and we kind of would know these people and they'd kind of come with us and and the whole idea of kind of mate value doesn't does shift a little bit over time. And so my middle ground here is that it's clearly insane. Not to suggest that there isn't something, you know, quai market or mate value thing going on. But there's also something quite interesting about this idea that kind of knowing somebody or someone being known by the people among you that becoming socially sanctioned like someone you meet through the workplace, friend of a friend, etc. That that's very powerful as opposed to someone you just algorithmically got attached to on an app on the other side of New York. I don't that's that's not that's not how we evolved. I agree. Right. A quick aside, there is a stat that genuinely surprised me when I first heard it. 95% of people don't get enough fiber. Not because they're being careless, but because hitting your daily fiber target through food alone is actually quite hard, but that's why Momentus built Fiber Plus. See, fiber isn't just a digestion thing. It's the foundation of your gut health, which drives how well you absorb nutrients, how stable your energy is, and how quickly you recover. 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He thinks mate value simply doesn't exist. That there are no there is no way that beyond the first look anybody is more or less preferable than somebody else. That revealed bonded preferences over time end up flattening the mating dynamic down. That tens could get with threes and that threes could get with 10. >> That wasn't how I read him. I I I didn't read him that way. Uh I think that's an exaggeration, but maybe maybe I'm wrong about that. I think he just it just gets flatter. Not that it flattens completely. He said there is no there is no such thing after a couple of meetings there is literally no such thing as mate value. >> There is no such thing as a disparity. >> Why? So well he's more of the expert on his work than I am. But I read it as like mate value is a more complicated idea. >> I would agree with that. >> I would agree with make value is a more complicated idea. Uh what makes me sort of bristle a little bit or what makes me concerned is if you've got this world that basically flattens it make it makes egalitarian the mating market >> is is one way that you could read it. Right. That >> no one's hot. >> Yeah. No one's hot and no one's ugly. >> Yeah. What's the uh Kurt Vonagut uh short story? Um Harry Burggeron. Someone could check this where the min the Do you know this story? No. the min the ministry for equality um uh levels everybody out, right? And so uh it's a satire. So it's like if you're a really good dancer, you have to wear weights around your feet. If you're if you're beautiful, you have to get have plastic surgery to make you less so. And if you're ugly, your plastic surgery make you more so. But one really like the the main character story is like if you're intelligent, if you're high IQ, um that's right. >> Yeah. Harrison Bj. Yeah. um that if you're intelligent, they put a thing in your ear that's just making a noise all the time to distract you. >> Distract you. >> Yeah. And it's obviously like a kind of flattening type thing. So look, I if the idea is like there is just no difference in how attractive someone is as a mate >> uh to anybody else. I think that's not I think that's batshit crazy. But I don't over time even with what even with the revealed uh preferences the revealed >> um value that occurs as you get to know somebody a little bit better that um >> this is how beautiful elements of someone's personality and the way they hold themselves and their poise and their patience and their regulation and all the rest of it sort of appear over time. Uh I think that denying the fact that there are more and less preferable mates and this isn't just idiosyncratic that if you were to take a big broad survey >> that many people would rank as more preferable even if you knew them for four years >> and more other people would rank less preferable even if you know them for four years. >> Yeah. my understanding of it and again like I'm talking about we're talking about his work now but is that over time you learn more about someone and so more of their kind of different the different elements of mate value come to the four right so if I just if you just see me you don't you can't you don't hear me speak right you just see me maybe I'm muing >> Mhm. >> Yeah. So, I look great. Yes. Right. Right. Or but then or I don't I look I don't look great. But then we talk for a while and let's say I'm kind or funny or let's say I'm an right? >> That's going to change very significantly, right? And then you see me doing something hard for somebody else, >> right? You see me taking care of my mom, you see me, you see me working hard, right? All these things are adding up field over time. >> Yeah. That was the best that was the best bit of what of what Paul said. I really I really thought it was a nice um twist on the very shallow sort of typical understood and this is the internet interpretation of mate value. Right. And what's interesting about this is it's almost exclusively for short-term mating. >> Absolutely. >> Almost everything all of the mating advice is for short-term mating as well. >> It's not it's not like so actually I got into this argument with Shahi Hamid for a piece of the post where he said, "Are you telling me to settle?" because I said that we're talking about marriage and I think the problem with the marketplace uh idea is that it sort of suggests that it's over once you've mated. >> But of course that's just the beginning and the story you tell about your relationship and the way that the relationship evolves over time within that story you're telling and the way you treat each other as you become different people over the decades. That's the job. >> And so the other problem with the marketplace is it doesn't capture this. It's about that maximizing and you match and so then you cash out. Yeah. It's like and you made a great match and that's the solution. No, no, no. >> And I said this to Shia and said to others too, is that sure you obviously if you're lucky, you'll fall head over heels in love and it will just be obvious and you'll find somebody, but it is much less about the wife you choose than it is about the husband you become. >> I that's 50 years. >> Yeah, I think you're right. the the the EVO script as Paul said it >> it's definitely a book of the moment because evolutionary psychology is second only to behavioral genetics as the unspeakable topic but it's very predictive and the guy I have a particular bias here because I'm in the city of David Bur and William Costello and they're about as well-meaning of a scientist as you're going to get right they're not they're not curating their data. They're not trying to push some ideological bent as far as I can see. Um, so >> and they change their minds about stuff too. I've seen David do that. >> He's moved back and forth between a bunch of different theories that were cornerstones of what it was that he was [clears throat] pushing for a while. Um, but you know, there was another element in that. So, there was the uh mate value doesn't exist. There was a denial of sex differences really in preferences between men and women that that they simply not. >> Yeah. Which I don't. And I'm like, okay, I'm starting to construct a little bit of a corkboard Sherlock Holmes style thing here. Anyway, okay. So, many and dating some problems. >> Some people have argued that women entering the workforce has caused fertility rates to drop. >> Yes. >> What's your perspective there? >> Didn't you have someone say that? I feel like I've heard someone say that on your >> Danny Solicowski definitely pushed back against a lot of what women are doing at the moment. I think she implied it. I don't know whether she's >> Yeah, I think she did. I think well and I've definitely heard other people say it which is this this idea and again this is this is a great example of this category of claim that feels intuitive >> fits with your prior and is wrong. Uh, and so you just got to those are the ones I always worry. So if someone brings a claim to me and I'm like, "Yeah, that feels true." And as it happens, I was thinking that myself, that's when I always like triple check it because it worries me. And there is this claim that the fertility decline is being caused by the entry of women into the workforce, right? Again, that sounds perfectly plausible, right? Like women are too busy earning to be sprogging, right? Can't do two things at once, etc., But you look at the data and you look at from the period from 1975 to 2005 [gasps] the labor force participation rate of women went up by 20 percentage points >> absolutely massive like that was a huge period of growth and over the same time period the total fertility rate went from 1.8 8 to 2.1 rough, right? Something like that, right? This is just this is me and Claude figuring this out. So, hands above the table. Haven't done a peer-reviewed academic article on this, but and then the women's labor force participation leveled out. >> It's basically been pretty flat since. And then it just had a a little bit of a spike >> since when? >> Since about 2007, 2005, 2007 I just drifting up. So, went and then like that, right? uh unlike in other countries actually where it continued to go up. And that's when the fertility rate really went down in the in the US. And so it just it seems to me there's got to be something else going on here. And the fertility rate convers I know you're very interested in this. You just had Stephen on again, right? Um the fertility rate conversation is a great example of where >> people take their priors and explain the fertility rate based on what they already thought, right? And so Jennifer Schuber who I know it's a TED talk she she's got a book um co-authored a book toxic demography and her basic conclusion is the thing that's causing the decline of fertility rate is a lack of gender equality right Korea [laughter] Japan etc right gender equity right right and and that might be true uh there's some evidence against it but there's some evidence for it and then conservatives will say uh you know the thing that's causing the rate is feminism and the entry of women into the workplace Right. Okay. Again, you can see the arguments. There's evidence for it and I've just given some evidence against it and truth no one knows. >> Um, and so it's a really dangerous subject because it is one of those things that we don't know yet and we should have a lot of humility by the way about projecting population trends forward. If we have not learned anything is don't take a straight line and project it forward. We don't know what's going to happen, right? >> Uhhuh. >> Um, uh, so be careful. I I would say I'm thinking about the population bomb thing, right? Right. >> Yeah, of course. But the population the population bust seems more reliable to be able to predict going forward. >> But it [clears throat] seemed like that about the population bomb which is like more people are going to have more people which means more people. [sighs] >> True. Yeah. Maybe you might be right. >> So fewer people having fewer people means fewer people. I mean I'm obviously simplifying it horribly but but like pretty accurate. >> I just don't. So now there is a thing like mechanically so I I'm I'm I will just come out and say look I don't think a rapidly declining population is a good thing >> right for some right I just don't I just don't um but it's very interesting because people when you actually try and push people on why they why they think it's a bad thing you get into all kinds of discussions and I think people are bringing lots of prize and lots of they are I think Jennifer's right about this there's a lot of morality being brought into this people bringing a lot of ethics so a lot of very pro-life people I think if they're honest are saying like we don't like there to be less life because we like life and we want more of it, right? That's a very like more life is good, >> less life is bad. That's a perfectly legitimate religious and ethical position. And it could be for institutional reasons, it could be for fiscal reasons, it could be because it's or it could be for me it's more symptomatic. The reason I worry about it more is like I think if you got to a point where you're significantly below replacement rate and your society is rapidly declining in size that should be seen as a big flashing signal that all is not well >> somehow or other. Now what's not well we don't know yet. Okay. Some things that I've thought of to do with this. It seems to me that births are just downstream from coupling for a large part. If you look at the number of couples who are together that are together for a while and get married. >> Well, yeah. A lot's going to depend on how you define coupling in this example, but yeah, >> marriage, married couples. >> Well, no, because one of the reasons the fertility rates gone down is a decline in teen pregnancy, and most of them were not coupled. It was an accidental pregnancy. >> Okay, that's interesting. At least from from I was speaking to Stephen. I actually asked him after we went for dinner last night. I asked him what his thoughts were. he agrees with you that his whole thing is this vitality curve which was the most recent episode that I did with him and that that's kind of >> kind of a measure of the society's forward-lookingness and vitality and energy and >> no so the vitality curve is basically um when are people looking to start families and if you have a graph that's like this and it's the age across the bottom and if it's goes from 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 it does that >> I see >> if you're looking to go to the dance with someone and you're looking for another dance partner. It's really easy if everybody is dancing at the same time. >> Yeah. >> But if you're 21 looking for a dance partner and the curve is now flatter and longer and shifted, right? Right. Half the people think a dancers 5 10 years from now. >> Exactly. Exactly. This is his point. >> And also if you shift it later, there are just some raw physics of the system that come in to sort of squish down what you're able to do. if you are cycling through partners, if there's a more permissive culture of casual sex, of moving on, so on and so forth, more options, which means that you don't need to quite invest so much. Um but his point around the uh labor force entry for women thing the dips that you see 1970 then 2007208 what's interesting there is because you now need a two parent uh income in order to drive the household people are much more sensitive to economic indicators and that means that if you have a turn that's why he thinks in 2007208 uh 2007208 g global financial crisis saw sudden accelerations in the delaying of first births like a ratchet. And as we discussed in our last podcast, once first births move later, the whole starting a family system shifts for everyone as the vitality curve shows delaying the median age of first birth predictably raises childlessness and lowers total birth rates. And that goes in line with what you said. There's fewer teen pregnancies, right? If you shift this all rightward, this begins to skew. His position is that >> it's a ratchet that it never snaps back because you need to lose a lot of the things that people want. You you need to uh uh sequester your independence. You need to do things that makes you feel like you're falling behind. One of the points that my friend who I spoke to, I told you the story about her friend saying she wished that she was with her when she had more going on. Uh she made this point, I wish I'd had a kid during co because it wouldn't have felt like I was missing out on anything. rest of the world's moving forward. And I think that that's a oneperson microcosm of why why is it a ratchet? Why does the average age of first motherhood move only to the right and never to the left? Well, because it feels like you're missing out. All of your friends are continuing to do things in the real world and you're not. He's got this this line here. Um, vitality curve shows delaying the median age of first birth predictably raises childlessness and lowers total birth rates. In that sense, childlessness is largely a timing problem. And so even if women no longer worked, hypothetically of course, my thesis from data modeling is that birth rates would not fundamentally change unless family formation also happened sooner, which arguably it could. This is cross-cultural. Economic uncertainty pushes parenthood later across nations, religions, and political systems. It all comes back to timing. P.S. Historically, the US managed this better than most countries. Women could work and start families at the same time, although that balance has clearly started to break down since the 2007208 crisis. Well, that would be consistent with what we were saying earlier about the need to kind of just economically for boys and for men to do better so that they can actually we know that particularly in low- income areas where men are doing better, the marriage rate is higher. >> Mhm. >> And so I think there's two one one thing I do worry about is that the bar that you have to clear now before embarking on kind of parenthood is just wildly higher than it used to be. >> Right. If you've got to have your >> feels like it's wildly higher. >> Yeah. And it's just and I they I really really don't I really want to stand against that idea. People set the bar so high. How much parenting, how much you got to bought your house, you got to be career like the number of boxes you're supposed to tick now is terrifying to me. This was the discussion that we had last night which it doesn't matter where people are. It's where people feel they are compared to where their parents were and where they feel like other people were. It is all through the interpretation. And this is this is like I can't think of a way to emphasize how much this is the driver of so much that how much money do I think I need to have? How much do I think I need to be earning? How big do I think my house needs to be? How secure do I think my life needs to be before I can do this thing? And where do I think my parents were at my stage? And where do I think their lifestyle is like? And what do I think that everybody else is doing with their life? And how easy do I think that they have it? Because all of this is being filtered through what we feel like we should have and what we feel like our level of exposure to risk is. >> Mhm. >> And it's not necessarily objective and that >> Yeah. Yeah. And it goes against people and then people come along and say, "But that's not true." And here's my chart and here's my data and like and you try and argue people out of a feeling which you can't do. But that feeling of e What did you say? Economic precariousness or whatever. Um it's a a challenge. But it maybe maybe I'm going to change my mind about something here because I one of the things we do know about men is that becoming a father actually does significantly change their behavior in the world, right? and not least economically to towards themselves etc. Right. And we now know that changes their brain. Darby Saxby has this book coming out Dad Brain >> and how kind your brain changes as well. Um and we obviously know the stuff about testosterone etc. >> Right. Yeah. And so I just I feel like we actually used to use marriage and fatherhood as a way to kind of help men grow up and Yeah. Exactly. I just really hate that word and to say we have to domesticate men because it sort of feels >> keeping them feral is good. >> Yeah. just also just like it's cuz the alternative is feral, right? I mean, it's like we have to and also it tends to put the burden on women. Like we basically say to women, would you mind domesticating the men for us? And like no, I'm not like >> there's a manchild over here. Marry him and make him a normal person. >> I mean, like the women want the men wants their house trained, right? They don't think it's their job to house train the men anymore, >> right? And I I I find that a difficult position to argue against. But the problem is that if that takes, you know, what's going to happen to the men in the meantime? Are the are the men getting themselves ready? Are they getting their competence skills up ready? Yes. If so, yes, maybe. But I worry that continued delay misses out for this kind of this moment, this kind of and I, you know, as I'm a dad and there is just this imperceptible feeling of this kind of cog inside you just going click and you become a different kind of creature. >> You you do uh I mean it's very hard. In fact, some philosopher whose name I've forgotten now, she had this great analogy was like trying to explain to someone who doesn't have kids what it's like to have kids is like trying to explain to someone that's not a vampire what it's like to be a vampire. Right? So, I'm the vampire. I'm like, "Yeah, well, I, you know, I like to go out at night. I like to suck blood, you know, I hang upside down, etc." And, and you're like a human. You're like, "Right." And she uses that as an analogy between the the chasm of the different kind of creature you become. And it's like you suddenly it's just existentially obvious to you that there are lives there is a life or lives in the world that are just unambiguously more important than your own >> and for whom you would do anything you would give your life for them. >> It's very pro-social. >> You would throw yes you would throw and so it changes men in this massively kind of positive way. This is why fatherhood fatherhood is some one of my colleagues put this to me the other Fatherhood is the last male institution, right? You don't have institutions anymore that are kind of just like male. I'm not saying there aren't still some that are predominantly, but like actually fatherhood like that is always going to be a male institution. And it is it is so in a way that isn't just like a fact. It's actually a thing. It's an institution that changes us. It it it transforms us from the inside out. And so if that's not happening to enough men and you do see this rise in >> childlessness, I mean for all the discussion about incelss, it's the kind of what would be the equivalent of like not having a kid and in involuntary >> dads but yeah >> that's a much more troubling trend because without that pro-social structure and script and implication for men that's a huge problem. So maybe maybe it going later is bad. But I also think that the way free societies work as opposed to communist China where they just said wait there's going to be too many children you're only allowed one even happened in Singapore. I just learned recently that like your third the government would pay for the birth of the first two kids but you're on your own after that. So you'd have to pay for the medical costs of your third child. Right? [snorts] So because they read Eric's book and they just freaked out. So you saw it um in a free society what happens is we learn from not our only from our own mistakes but from other people's mistakes. And so if we're starting to see more and more women say or men start saying, you know what, I kind of regret not doing that earlier, I kind of wish I'd done that, etc., then that learning will get passed on. >> Do you hear many women saying that? Is that a popular topic that's being pushed much at the moment? >> There I will have to plead ignorance. But I but I just think as a general point, cultures learn if they're free. And so if it's not working out for people, people will see that it's not working out for people and they'll do it differently. >> Yeah. I I think that's how progress happens. I I would love that to be the case. I would really love for there to be uh at least par between the different types of life paths that people can take. Yeah. And at the moment it doesn't feel that way. If you look in the media, if you look in popular culture, if you look in music, you know, there's a a really fascinating song by Kelsey Ballerini and it's called I Sit in Parks. >> Uh and what she talks about is she was in a a long-term relationship. She was 30, her partner was 37 and he was ready to have kids. She said she wanted to freeze her eggs and that was her gift to her and him on her 30th birthday because she wanted to go and chase her music. She wanted to go and play music and do this to her. And he said, "I'm ready to have kids now. If we're not ready to have kids now, I'm going to move on." She said, "I'm not." He moved on. And then this song and the album, the EP got released two or three years later. And it's a story about her sitting in the park and watching this family, this mother and father. and she sits on the bench and she rips her vape and she says, "Rolling Stone is telling me that I'm doing all the right things, but I wonder if I've left it too late to be a mother. I chose to do the damn tour instead of going back." So, I take my Lexa Pro and I I make my next song and she's watching this family sort of have a wonderful Saturday morning to to themselves and wondering whether or not she's made the wrong decision. That was so shocking. and she's a country artist anyway. But that was so so shocking and the comments are filled with women who agree. But that is not I'm saying what's the equivalent song from the parents >> who are obviously like everyone's glamorized there, right? The parents song is like, "God, I wish I could have gotten up late like her and had time to make myself up and have a dress and have be free." Maybe the maybe the mom is looking at her thinking like, "Why did I have kids with this guy when I could be like her on a on a swing in a gray dress?" The grass is always greener when you've got optionality. >> I know. And also like she probably got a good night's sleep kind of last night. I remember like when when I when when our kids were really young, we kind of lived on this flat in uh in Beliz Park in London and I would, you know, get I did the early shift like a lot of dads did. I remember like I would my wife would be sleeping and I'd be there with the kid kids both had two under three at one point and like and I would wait would break I'd be tired waiting for a couple and then this gay couple these gay guys lived opposite us right the other side of the street kind of gay couples right [laughter] I thought I watched I watched they would get up they had lovely bathroes they'd make a great great coffee machine you were watching two gay guys through the window listen it's like a long night okay and I'm just watching them and they had this kind of terrace and the point it's And I and and I just I say they'd get up late, they'd have nice coffee, they'd read the paper on their thing, they didn't have kids crawling on me. So yeah, the grass is always greener. But here's I actually think I think you're making my point. You're making my point for me. >> Mhm. >> Which is there you have this incredibly breakout country artist, >> right, with this strong message >> which is maybe I waited too long. Like maybe this wasn't maybe this wasn't the right thing for me to do. It's a it's a story of regret, right? Song of regret >> that is going to be listened to >> as you said by like millions and millions and millions of women. Right. That's how cultures change is that we get stuff a bit wrong and we try it and we try this and that didn't work. We do this and we all learn from each other's and we and we adapt as a culture as a as a eternal pessimist. Uh I I really hope that that's the case. I you're right. >> It's too early not to assume it won't be. That's all I ask. >> Cool. I mean it it the the reason that it seems surprising to me is it's so rebellious. Like that is a much more rebellious song to put out than sleep with him and not catch feels. You >> I don't think that's true anymore. I actually suspect that song is going to do pretty well. >> Oh, it is. I But but that is more obviously famous anyway. >> That's not the main culture at the moment. I don't get the sense. And look, I'm >> What's the main culture? If she's not the main culture, right? She's one country artist with the two million play. [snorts] >> I think I I I really worry that you like see the main culture as like the New York Times, right? um which is like a peripheral counterculture at this point. I shouldn't say that because I you know occasionally right occasionally right for them [laughter] at some point. I guess that I guess that road's closing up, but they're just like they do not like or or even like CNN or that's like actually the mainstream culture it's her it's you it's it's it's you know country music is top now number one. You just like there's this really interesting thing going on now where I just think the young people in particular they're trying to figure out how to take the best of what came before but not be landed with the worst of it. And part of that is to rethink this whole kind of gender relationship thing. And they're doing that and it's hard. complex and they're not going back there. As I said, like dads are doing more. >> Um, but I think she's the one also, right? Like he opens the door and like is very courteous and stuff like that just really lands. So I I I hope you won't mind me saying my youngest son went to the University of Tennessee and um like he always opens the car door and close the car door for his girlfriend or who's kind of with and his friends who are up from the northeast like oh god is I have to start doing that now because they went to liberal colleges where that's like the non-feminist thing to do. >> Okay. But by and large, even the kind of liberal women don't hate it. And so I think that actually the mainstream culture is kind of moving on this thing. I hope so. I that that would be that would be great. >> And we have to make them feel like we've got their backs. Before we continue, I wish someone had told me 5 years ago to stop overthinking nutrition and just find something that works. I've simplified mine down to one scoop a day and it's made hitting my nutritional bases an awful lot easier. AG1 includes 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food ingredients. And that is why I've been drinking it every morning for over 5 years now. And they've taken it a step further with AG1 NextGen, the same one scoop ritual, but now backed by four clinical trials. In those trials, AG1 was shown to fill common nutrient gaps, boost healthy gut bacteria by 10 times, and improve key nutrient levels in just 3 months. They've been refining the formula since 2010, 52 iterations in counting. 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Um, so Derek Thompson came back from paternity leave and it was actually the first thing he did uh was go on Scott Galloway's podcast and he said it's not just like the first day back, it's the first hour back and he'd been I think on paternity leave for a couple of months and that just triggered this debate where Scott said, uh, you're just back from paternity leave. How, you know, how you doing? I'm finding my way back. I won't be as coherent as usual. Of course, Derek was incredibly coherent. Um, h and Scott just said, "Well, honestly, I don't understand this whole paternity leave thing or even why men should go to the births. I don't think men should be at the births. It's disgusting. Uh, the men should be outside smoking cigarettes like the old days and then they should go back to work." Um, I just think it's ridiculous. Basically, and Derek was like, "Uh, well, actually men do need to take time time off to come be with their kids because otherwise like women are the only ones doing it and you'll have gender inequality in the workplace, right?" What I found interesting about that, I haven't like said anything about this publicly yet, but I think they were both wrong. I think that Scott was wrong in suggesting that men and dads are of no use in the kind of early months. They are of a different use to moms for sure, but they are very often the main aloe parent now, right? They're very often the kind of one that's around and they very often are the one that's like getting stuff done. They're like, have you heard of the owl monkeys who are like the best dads in the in the natural world apparently? No. Owl monkeys, right? Where the dads are kind of around all the time and basically moms are doing the breastfeeding, nurturing, dads are doing everything else, right? Dad is getting done, right? He's getting the food, he's getting organizing, right? He's around them, but he's still around them, right? That's kind of how it is. I think that was certainly my experience, right? So, you're not going to you can't do what mom's doing at that point. You also don't feel the same way that mom does about the baby. You just can't, right? Just just can't. You're not wired to at that point. Um, so you're still useful. So Scott was wrong about that. Um, but I didn't like the way Derek framed this as like men should take time off so that women aren't the only ones taking time off so that we can get close the gender pay gap. He he framed it as a gender equity issue, right? Okay. >> And I I my view is dads should actually be able to take time off and should take time off their kids not just when they're young, etc. Not because they can do what moms do, nor in support of gender equality, but because dads are awesome and kids are awesome and kids do really well with their dads around them, right? So, I don't I I don't I don't want to be the deputy, the kind of malfunctioning mom, the kind of, "Oh, if only you could be a mom." Like, no, no, dads are amazing. And so, I'm I'm really pushing for this idea that kind of fell between those two stools of like the old idea of like dads, you should go back to work, smoke a cigar, have a cigar. I think he meant cigar actually, but have a cigar, a whiskey, back to work. And Derek Singer is like, "No, if you're a good gender egalitarian, you've got to take time off." >> Yeah. >> Right. Even if you hate it and you suck at it, right? Because that's the way to get [laughter] gender equality. I'm like, "Guys, guys, what about just saying >> dads are cool." >> And being a dad and the way dads are with their kids a bit different to moms on average in many ways. Amazing. So I want like a again a pro- dad argument rather than a gender equality argument for fathering. Should dads be in the birthing room? The evidence and actually interesting Darby Saxby who I mentioned earlier dad brain she did write a response to to this kind of thing which people can find and [snorts] she kind rightly pointed out that actually the evidence on how the unprecedented trial of dads being in the birthing room uh is going is really mixed. We don't know and actually kind of sometimes in surveys afterwards like moms have mixed feelings about it if the birth doesn't go well. I think you talk to animation about this it can be quite traumatizing for the dad. So I think look I might get in trouble for saying this now but I think that we have to be honest the evidence is a little bit mixed and I think it shouldn't you shouldn't be like you shouldn't be shamed for doing it or shamed for not doing it. And moms, by the way, should also feel like if they feel that they'll be better off with their mom or their friend or kind of somebody else, they should feel okay saying that to their partner too for the actual birth, right? Either are obliged to >> I Yeah, I just sort of because as Darby points out, we've never done this before, right? This is >> how men been in the birthing room about 30 40 years. I shared this with my with my wife. I said, things blew up and she said, "Oh, Scott says that men shouldn't even be in the birthing room." She said, "Yeah, I probably wish you hadn't been." What? I said, "What?" It's like 25 years later. I said, "What?" She like, "Yeah, >> I thought it was really What about all of my words of encouragement? >> You were more harm than good. You did more harm than good. I mean I mean I don't I haven't I'm now sort of litigating something personal on air like we just go back to it. But there are pros and cons, but but I honestly think like it's not it wasn't I mean the real truth is it was a very hot day and I'd ordered a fan because I knew it was going to be hot, but I didn't realize the fan wasn't made. So I opened the box and she went into lab. [laughter] She went into labor. She's in labor. She's in labor. And I'm shouting from the other. I go to the other room, right? She's having contractions. So we do that at home, right? And um and I said, "Uh, do you know where the Phillips screw? She says, she said, I don't need a Phillips screwdriver to have a baby." I'm like, "No, but I need a Phillips screwdriver to make the fan." [laughter] I'm not great at DIY anyway to be honest. But so like I said, do you know where it is? She's like, "I've already addressed something. I'm in the other room. I'm trying like this huge pressure now, right? This is like [laughter] I'm trying to make I'm trying to make it and she's like, "Forget the fan." Just like I'm having [laughter] the I'm having the baby. I'm having the baby. Fan or no fan, the baby's coming. I'm nearly done. I'm nearly done. I'm I'm on like I'm on like step seven with the Philips screw. So I you know, I didn't I wasn't amazing from that point of view. So I think that the fan thing it ja about my view to be honest [laughter] to be honest and then uh anyway the other one I I'm all in now the other one so was in the birthing pool right cuz I was very into that >> and the birthing pool and we'd been to one of these very >> I said yeah I think I can share this we've been to this very >> very like progressive lawy like midwifey thing right about birthing a home and if you have it in the pool that's kind of great which is good by the I mean I'm I think the whole like overmedicalization of child birthing like I'm I'm I'm really persuaded by that argument now that actually doing it more naturally is really good. So I've only misunderstood here it >> put in the pool. But she said but guys just can I just say something to you? She said like it's quite it can get quite murky in there. Can't see it right which is true. Um and she said and so the only thing I'll say is if you get in the pool with your partner to support them right put something on. Put some swimming trunks on. She said, "Because there have been occasions when I've seen something spherical and hairy in the water, and I've assumed that it's the baby's head crowning, and I've gone in to help it, and it wasn't the baby's head crowning. It was the dad's testicle." And so I've grabbed him by the bollocks, [laughter] etc., right? And literally every guy in the room is like, "Fucking." [laughter] So this is the other child, right? So So this time she's having a baby. She's like, "You know, I want you to get in and rub my back and do all I'm cool. I'm here for you, honey. And then I go into the other room and then I'm shouting out, "Where are my swimming trick? What are you talking about? I need my swimmers." She's like, "I don't know where they are. [laughter] I can't find them. I'm slamming trots open." And the midwife is like, "For God's sake, she's having the baby. Get in the pool. I don't care. I don't care." I said, "It's not about modesty." I said, "The lady at the thing, the lady at the Lamar's class." She said, "You got to you've got to wear swimming trunks." I said, "I'm not getting in there without [laughter] [gasps] so anyway." So my main advice and then I guess you know the other one the other trial was like you get to cut the cord and I was terrible at it. I couldn't cut it. I was hacking through it. I thought you'd have these massive shears you know be like no like like opening up a new city hall. It's a tiny little pair of scissors and you're trying to hack through it. It's really gristly. Took me ages near the nursing I'll do. To this day, my eldest son has got this really weird belly button and he blames me for it because it so so all the fathers out there [snorts] key key items if you are going to be with a Phillips fan driver or make pre-make the fan or have a Phillips screwdriver, a really good pair of scissors cuz the ones they give you are crap and swimming trunks >> and then you'll be [laughter] fine. me. >> Oh god. Well, is the idea of um not being in the B. I didn't know that it has only been four decades. >> Yeah, I guess 70s. I don't know. That's really when it came in was like 70s and 80s. >> Wow. >> And it went from being like it's a really interesting cultural change. I mean, if you look at uh I didn't have the numbers to hand, but but it really flipped very fast >> and as I say like, you know, it's too soon probably to get this kind of strong evidence around it. Um, and it was a great example of how like the internet I think Scott ended up kind of collapsing kind of you know on him and kind of kind of apologizing but but as I said Darby Sax was saying actually we don't really know yet about the dads in the birthing room thing because we've that is a completely unprecedented cultural and she came out in favor of it and said but you know dads are great putting them on with my kids like you put the you put the kid on your on your chest and one of them pooped all over me and but actually that skin-to-skin thing or building skinship to use a term that uses. That's all true. Um, and that's great. Uh, but that got lost, of course, in, you know, the positions that people had to take on. >> Paternity leave seems a little bit more of a like easy discussion to pass >> much easier now. And it's interesting like it's not most states are doing something on it now. So the basically the Democrat states are passing some sort of paid leave policy for dads and the Republican ones are having tax credits to encourage employers to offer paid leave. And so the idea that dads, you know, dads are parents too, uh, and bring something different, uh, that's not really a controversial idea anymore. And we have seen a massive increase, I mean, I mentioned earlier in parenting by dads. Um, and a massive increase in the uptake. There are some states now where sort of the new parental leave policy is as likely to be taken by dads as by moms. And so there's been this I find this very interesting like a way you get these culture wars right where either we're being overrun by woke feminists who like you know demonizing men and you know running everything into the ground or you get these kind of you know reactionary podcast you know people reactionaries who are kind of taking us back to the handmaid's tail and then you just go to the data and you say huh interesting dads are doing more parenting than before. It's not like a note significant kind of increase, right? Labor force participation for women's actually hit its all-time high after the pandemic. Yeah, I mean it was it was up a little bit. Um violent crime is way down. It's halved in the last you know decades. The number of boys fighting at school also halfed in the last kind of few dec etc etc. And so um away from with the clicks to use your language from earlier and away from the culture war, what I see is by and large ordinary people, moms and dads, young people, boys and girls trying to figure this out and figuring it out one way or the other. And it's bumpy and it's difficult and it's messy. But I think that the progress line is there. And I'm I'm I'm a little bit sick of the pessimism. I'm a little bit sick of the deficit frame. Right? My hero John Stewart Mill once said, "Everybody who knows anything of the world is supposed to think ill of it." >> Right? So that intellectual snobbery in favor of pessimism has always been there. Right? And he was like, and so uh I'm trying to recalibrate some of my own talking about this because there is a danger that you're like, we could talk about stuff we've talked about before about wages and male suicide and you know, real problems, but I just kind of worry that it becomes a bit of a almost cultural race to the bottom. It's like, who can describe exactly how we're going to hell in a hand cart >> in the most grave terms the fastest? >> And then you'll get on podcast, then you'll get clicks, then you'll get book deals. And and the market for that is it's not a new it's not a new problem. Actually, think about the number of books that start with the end of, right? Actually, at one point I thought it might be the end of endings or something because I'm just sick of those as well. Like everything's the end of everything, right? Rather than you know what, we're figuring this out. It's a bit difficult. We should help each other out. we should have some supportive policies. We shouldn't demonize each other. We should definitely not pathize men or women or anybody else. >> Um and we should try and figure this out. Um but but onwards and upwards because otherwise pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I think it's a real problem particularly for America. I mean we're in America now, right? And things I love about America. Things I hated about our old country was that everyone lived in the past. And this definition of an old person is you know you're old when you spend more of your time thinking about your past than your future. I think the same is true of societies. Once societies start thinking more about their history and their you know and all of that which you want you want that sense of history and patriotism but you want to be spending more time thinking about the future. I just heard this guy on a podcast and I I can't remember who somewhere he's a guy left Harvard actually um and he sort of said Americans the thing about America is that it's obsessed with progress and innovation. I'm like >> yes yes that's why I'm here. >> That's why I'm a proud American. >> That's why I'm here. Uh, what's happening with men's life satisfaction at the moment? >> Uh, I don't know the latest data on that actually. Um, I don't I don't >> Well, you mentioned here's a bunch of reasons why stuff's maybe not quite as as people think it is. >> Yeah. >> But I think if you were to lick a finger and put it in the air and take a cultural temperature of how people are talking about the situation, >> I think more people would What's the number one reason for why people uh the Pew research data around why they don't have kids just don't feel ready yet? Uh yes. And then the second is couldn't find the right person. >> Couldn't find the right person. The second one, but just don't feel ready yet. It's like unfinished article, a little bit unsure of myself. Yeah. I mean there's there's there's a mixture of objective and subjective measures here. There was this really interesting paper looking at the kind of five milestones to adulthood like finishing education, getting a job, leaving home, getting married, having kids. And it was very what it found was that 20 years ago, men were more likely to hit those milestones and now men are less likely than women to hit those milestones. So the milestones to adulthood are being hit more by women now than by men. The co the coefficient has has flipped. As far as the well-being stuff goes, my last time I looked at this, it was relatively stable if on the kind of good subjective well-being measures. Um we do know that men are much more affected by relationship breakup and unemployment. And so e negative economic and social shocks damage male well-being more than female wellbeing. So you might expect um some of the recent shocks to have affected men more. The trouble with this honestly is that there's just so many bad surveys out there that will ask these kind of point in time questions uh from both sides. I'm not throwing anybody under the bus here, but just like and it gets clicked and it some of the surveys like there's so many surveys on young men now. I mean like if I get another email saying we want to do a survey on what young men are really thinking. No, please don't because you'll just ask some stupid questions and then you'll over interpret the answers and we won't be able to repeat the question because it doesn't it's there's no time series on it and people just in that moment like they'll just react to the question in that kind of particular cultural moment and then we'll over interpret it. >> So if you're in the middle of the Iran war you're going to feel differently than if it's >> Yeah. Yeah. Or even like and also we've seen massive swings in some of these things just like one side of the other of a presidential election. You think really if like who's in the White House is massively changing how you feel about the world, then that's telling us that this is highly subjective. >> What was that nuance on Title N that I texted you about? I thought this was really interesting. I swear I texted you about um some guy had done a video and it was actually of the episode that I did with Scott, just Scott talking. >> Yeah. >> Oh, that's right. And Scott had said, "Yeah, Title N is used to sort of pull back men, but yeah, >> the guy's video said it could also be used for raising up men." >> Yeah. >> What's the nuance? >> T Yeah, the nuance there is that Title 9 is a is anti-ex discrimination in higher education, right? It basically just takes the idea of you can't discriminate on the basis of sex and it makes it clear that that's true in higher education. There is one exception to that which is undergraduate admissions to private colleges which I'll come back to because it's relevant to the answer. Um but what it basically says is you can't discriminate on the basis of sex. And so it was really an anti-discrimination measure uh not a strongly affirmative action measure. So it's not it didn't say to colleges everything else equal. You should let women in not men. And there's no evidence that that's happening. Right? There's no there's no evidence that the reason there are more women in college now than men [gasps] is because there's a thumb on the scale in favor of the women. They're just better in terms of the Is there a thumb on the scale against the favor of men? >> Uh no, not not I have seen absolutely no evidence for that. In fact, if anything, most colleges, public or private, although the publics don't have this carve out, actually are quite worried about this. We've got a whole uh we've got a thing now higher education male achievement collaborative working with colleges because they like they they start to worry once they hit 60 40 65 because not only do their male applications drop their female applications start to drop too because the dating market on a college campus where there are twice as many women as men is not awesome for women. So maybe it comes back to a little bit people who don't think there's any difference between men and women should look at the difference in the dating market on college campuses that skew to where there are two women for every man. And I have had young women saying that they they look at the gender ratio of colleges before they decide to apply because this message has gone out there now that it's not awesome to be among uh in a college where there are twice as many. So no no strong evidence for a thumb on the scale in against men. The exception is title 9 carves out private undergraduate colleges in undergraduate admissions and the reason they did that was otherwise you would have at a stroke abolished the single sex colleges. You wouldn't have been able to have single sex colleges. they have to let Welssley only admit women, right? But the result of that is that those colleges do have a thumb on the scale in favor of men now to try and stay closer to 50/50. So, it's an open secret that it's a bit easier to get into those elite colleges if you're a guy than if you're a woman. Did you see there was a dating um singles mixer that happened in New York and women were charged $100 to attend >> and men were let in free. >> You're a nightclub promoter. The ratio was still 3 to1 women to men. >> So the sex ratio in New York is similar to well it's a bit more but it's not far off what it's going to be on college campuses. >> Yeah. No the sex ratio is not like that in New York as a whole. In fact, we we have empirical data on this. We've looked at the sex ratios by county, >> right? >> And you've seen a shift. So, there are twice as many u majority male counties today as there were 20 30 years ago. >> Okay. >> Largely because of out migration, we think out migration by women. And then there are some urban counties of course where it's the sex ratio is kind where there are a lot more >> into singles than the sex ratio of singles. >> No, but we did look um within age cohort and we do see a difference, but it's of course nothing like as dramatic as >> 3 to one. Yeah. skews a little bit. >> You know, there's something going up. Maybe it's a selection mechanism that >> guys have checked out of the dating market. Uh maybe it's that women are pushing more toward trying to find partners. But >> yeah, but your example suggests like the men like there are more women than men of dating age, let's put it that way, in New York and >> who are motivated to >> but then the question is like who's out, right? Like who's motivated? >> Yeah. Who's in who's like you can are you in the market to come back to the analogy that I didn't like earlier, but like are you are you out there doing it? And so there we might see and you see like women are more like to travel now than men. I do think it's like I I don't see any empirical evidence for this but my anecdotal sense of it just sort of traveling around as I do kind of a bit now is like when you're in a restaurant or a kind of bar now if you see a group of young people together for a night out I think it's more like to be women now. Again no strong empirical evidence on that but I just think those kind of public spaces um if anything maybe a little bit more more female. M if you zoom out for 50 years, what do you think happens for men over the next few decades? Are you optimistic, pessimistic? What are you most concerned about? What are you most hopeful for? Uh I look, I'm an invent optimist. Uh I do think the glasses are full. But for me, I've come to realize is that my optimism isn't just an orientation or a personality trait. it is that I think for me it's getting close to something like a virtue >> that to think well of the future um is is valuable in and of itself um because I think other otherwise the kind of messaging to young people more generally is just so relentlessly negative and then we kind of blame them for feeling down right [snorts] um I'm so I'm pretty optimistic and the reason I'm optimistic is because it's it's a hell of a mess right now like it's very messy it's goopy figuring ing it out. Some of the stuff we've talked about here and argued about here just shows you that particularly for kind of young men and young women just kind of figuring out this new real these new realities. >> But I think we're kind of past the sort of we're breaking past I hope more of the zero sum. We are getting more to a kind of world where young men and young women are kind of trying to figure this out in good faith and I think they will figure it out. I don't know how but we always have one way or the other and I think we will again. And I think that people are ready to get past some of the ideological traps that people have been trying to put us in for too long. I really think there's a hunger for that. I hope so because one of the byproducts that you have of lots of conflicting messages, you know, you said the the pinball or male vertigo, masculinity, >> masculinity, vertigo. Um where men don't know what they're supposed to be. that's supposed to be masculine on a Monday and then soft on a Tuesday and then a tyrant on a Wednesday and then you know in therapy on a Thursday >> yoga on Friday. >> Yeah, exactly. Um, one of the problems I think that can come out of that is a type of if there's lots of conflicting messages, it doesn't convince you of any one particular message. It just makes you immune to being convinced. Apathy, right? that this is what a disinformation and a misinformation campaign is supposed to achieve when it's done on mass as a information warfare by a foreign adversary. It's not to convince the populace of one thing or another all the time. Sometimes it's just to make them distrust all advice. Yes. And I think that you know the checking out of men as a retreat >> that you have uh a pull in uh screens, video games, porn. >> Yeah, this is your weed sedation >> hypothesation. This is another twist of it which and you're right but this is a >> there is an attractor which is >> it may be difficult to convince men to uh not go out into the real world and try to make stuff happen through conflicting messages if it wasn't for the fact that there's something else that they can do like these two things need to be happening at once. >> Yeah. There's push and a pull point. Yes. >> Correct. And they're both going in the same direction. That's why I mean you've talked I think I know you've talked a lot about that's why I think it's consistent with crime going down even as more young men are disengaged which is historically I think unprecedented which is the kind of sedation or some like like they're on the screens not on the streets >> is another way to think about this um and in some ways I think that makes it a harder thing to get attention to right I think if there was if we did if we saw an increase in crime among young men if we were seeing like more antisocial behavior etc then I think it would be very close to the top the alarm >> yes >> because it's more of a silent retreat and very often you know, turning inward, that's less like to sound the alarm. But I actually think in the end, most people do want to flourish and they do want to find someone to be with. And I think that women and men are both seeking partners and people, someone who's got someone about them, right? It's got agency. It's got forward momentum, got optimism. I think that's going to win. I think it always has one. I don't know how it'll win this time, but I'm sure it will. Yeah. I just hope that uselessness doesn't be more useless. sedation doesn't beget more sedation because it's you're going to have to reverse the trend here, right? Like you can say we're worried about there being too many people on the planet and the population bomb is a really big deal. You go, well, if that's going to stop or if that's going to slow down, it's going to require reversal of the direction. And the same thing is true now. If the trend is moving in the right direction, and you're right, the the line is between do we want more useless men or do we want more dangerous men? If that if those are the two options that we have in front of us, that's not a particularly good scenario. I would say 5149, it's better to have useless men than dangerous men. But that's only because we're in peace time. I would much sooner have competent, peaceful, right, than useless or dangerous. Um, I got sent this morning a new Institute for Family Studies survey. There's some cool stuff in here which I think you might like. uh Institute of Family Studies survey of 2,000 young men >> aed 18 to 29 challenges nearly everything being said about the male crisis in America including by its most prominent voices on both left and right. 68% of unmarried men want to get married with another 21% unsure the crisis isn't lacking desire its circumstance. 59% are not in a romantic relationship but 74% of those men are open to dating. So, there was that famous uh uh twothirds of men say that they're 50% of men in that age bracket say that they're not looking for casual or long-term relationships. That looks like it's changed. 62% of childless young men want to be a father. Less than half of men aged uh 24 to 29 feel like adults, but the benchmarks most related to feeling like an adult are the traditional ones. Marriage, parenthood, full-time work, completing education. Young men's number one role model is their mother, 79%. Followed by their father, 69%. Andrew Tate ranked last among all prominent figures. 89% say manhood requires willingness to sacrifice for others, challenging a manosphere narrative. Young men who completed trade school programs are employed full-time at almost identical rates to college graduates. 60 77% versus 80%. An even college educated young man is skeptical of college with half saying it wasn't worth the time or money. >> There's [snorts] a mixed bag in there. I'd say, wouldn't you? Like I'm I'm going, "Yeah, it was good." That's what that's the landscape. >> That was an emotional roller coaster for me, Chris. I got to tell you, like I I was cheering up. I was like, "Oh, that's good. That's bad." Only 62% of childless men want to be a father. That sounds way low to me. >> Childless young men, right? That's under 29. >> Wow. [sighs] Want to be a father. I don't know whether intend to become a father. It would be interesting to see how they worded the question. >> Become a father because it's interesting. There was this NBC poll that came out not that long ago. It got a lot of attention where they ranked uh men and young men and young women by whether they'd voted for Harris or not, right? Uh or Trump. And like number one for the Trump voting men was family and kids. And actually men are a bit more likely to say that they want to have marriage, get married and have kids now than women are. That's a reversal. So I'm finding that that 62% number is low. I I think the anti-ol thing worries me because the ROI on college is the same for men as it is for women roughly speaking and >> presumably could increase if you were to go to college now if in 10 years time we were to look at how valuable a male college graduate is in the workforce because they're going to be increasingly rare. >> Uh yeah, just in terms of I mean it's this is another thing I've had this argument with Scott about which is that actually uh college graduates are getting married as much as they they have for the last 40 years, right? There hasn't been a collapse in marriage among college graduates, even though there's this massive gender gap in college, >> right? >> The collapse in marriage has been among those without a college degree. That's a huge class gap. And so the kind of ftting, the ftting about who will my daughter marry now that she's got a college degree. It's like that's just completely unfounded. There's a flat line. >> Um and in fact, if anything, maybe a bit more like to stay married than their mothers were because the divorce rates gone down a bit. So because fewer people are getting married. >> Yeah. Well, not among the college educated. That's the thing. like the the line the the marriage rate it's about 90%. The marriage rate among college educated American women basically hasn't changed for the last 40 50 years. >> What about among men? >> College educated men >> the same because they're matching with college educated women at about the same rate even though there's a smaller number. >> Exactly. But the I mean it's a bit of a nuance here. We published on this is actually college educated women have always been willing to marry non-oled educated men um and continue to. So like 20% of them of the women with a college degree married color to blue collar. >> Yeah. And it's like it's a very elitist conversation this because people when they're talking about this they're talking about someone who went to some sort of fancy college. Right. But I'm in my family I've got nurse married to a plumber. Right. Nursing requires a college degree. Right. Does anyone out there think that nurses are looking down their noses at plumbers if he's making a good living and he's doing well? He's working hard. No I don't. The idea that that somehow you know or a teacher won't marry a you know carpenter or just it's just nonsense. Um so the marriage and the marriage rate is actually if anything slightly up. So there was mixed in there. I didn't like the character. But yeah, what the thing also think was untrue. It said challenging this idea in the manosphere that men don't sacrifice themselves. >> Uh 89% say manhood requires willingness to sacrifice for others. Challenging the manosphere narrative. >> Well, as a prominent proponent of the manosphere, you think men should sacrifice a gentle manosphere. >> I think that they've been kicked out of the manosphere. >> I don't know which manosphere they're talking about. I mean, I guess and also the tape thing, of course, the tape thing was really interesting and I don't remember if we talked about this last. I mean, it really came back and there was a kind of I I guess I've lost my friends at the New York Times by this point in the interview anyway, but like there's a New York Times uh headline drove me mad. I I think I read about it publicly. Tate returns, MAGA celebrates. And so I went through I was like that's really interesting because I've actually I've actually heard or read Josh Hol Megan Kelly uh Dantis Dantis AG all condemning tape >> Shapiro doesn't like him Shapiro condemned him. They all like they all condemned him in that moment. Right. All that. So I'm like who are you talking about? And it turned out that it was the young Republicans of so and so county in Florida had said we're happy he's back and we'd love him to come speak to us. It was literally the only people they could find celebrating. But the headline was MAGA celebrates. Yeah. >> Because again that kind of fitted, right? We we like this idea that kind of MAGA wanted Tate back. But like actually the truth was I I did write about this. It was like everyone hates Andrew Tate, right? [laughter] And that should be when when radical feminists are shoulderto-shoulder with Josh Hol and Ben Shapiro condemning Andrew Tate, then surely we can take that as a win. Like isn't this a win? >> Yeah. Isn't that the headline? I think we're going to see I think we're going to see more around the men's movement MRA come manosphere come incell black pill lux max in mogan community especially after Ross Camp and this Louisu documentary I can't wait for you to watch it this Louis the thu documentary on Netflix it's his first ever Louis Thuru documentary on Netflix >> and he said it's the final video game boss of his entire career because it's all of the things it's casual sex with only fans It's um sort of uh conspiracy theorists which he's done a turn. It's sort of almost cultlike behavior which he's done previously. It's financial grifts which he's been a part of as well. All bundled up into this sort of Tik Tokification version for 2026. >> And I with adolescence with the way that Louis doc was presented uh I do think that we're going to see more of a moral panic around what's happening with young men. I think that it's going to look a lot like um these guys are being led astray by bad actors. Uh there is limited hope socially. Uh they are uh learning not to sacrifice for others but to uh dominate and be doineering. Yeah. Very much so. It's very very self- serving. >> Um, it's not >> great. And, you know, for all that, I can keep on doing podcasts that >> I think are accurate and balanced and and and hopefully really educate people about what's actually going on. Um, I don't have the reach of huge documentaries or or or series, right? Like Adolescence was a global phenomenon. >> It was a huge hit and it was great drama. It was a great TV show apart from >> some of the way and again back to I just think there's a lag here. >> I actually think that >> it's a little bit out of step now and that enough people are starting to say the moral panic around men, the pathization of young men, the demonization of young men is exactly the wrong thing to do. and and that kind of narrative rut that everyone's in like the easy thing to say. I just think it's out of date and people are realizing that and they're realizing hasn't it has not worked out well for anybody for us as a society to point our fingers at young men and say what the hell is wrong with you? You're either lazy or useless or you're being radicalized or what kind of this long litany of things that are wrong with you. I just think enough people are kind of realizing that that's a just unbelievably lacking compassion and b massively counterproductive. So you're right, the the place that I actually think is doing the worst at this is uh online. It's streaming culture and it's YouTube because there are not many reasonable voices that do big plays on social media. There's just not. There's >> Wouldn't you count yourself among those reasonable voices? Were you a big platform? >> I were. Yeah. And but I think, you know, if you're talking about people who are genuinely engaging with the issues of boys and men and of of mating and dating and birth rates and stuff like that, it it's certainly in the minority to be a part of the gentleman sphere than it is to be a part of sort of militant aggressive feminism >> or to be a part of sort of classic reactionary anti-feminism. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> Masculinism. >> Yeah. Um it's this is not it's not superbly sexy. You know, when I when I sort of look around at whatever mly weird Avengers group that I've got, it's like me, you, Arthur Brooks, Scott Galloway, Mack and Murphy, William Costella, Rob Henderson, maybe Andrew Thomas, uh, like it is it's a Alexander dates, but he's sort of stepped away from things now. It's I'm not Stephen Shaw kind of he's not really talking to men like you know it really sort of runs flat pretty quick. I don't know who else is is engaging with this stuff. And then when you were to look at who does huge plays that push the narrative in a much more bombastic way like it's I don't know. I mean I the long run way to win this is just to keep doing it Chris. >> Right. I think this whole idea that there needs to be this kind of huge play is going to change. This is going to change slowly. And I also think we should give a little bit of credit to some of the people consuming this content. I think a lot of young men in particular are perfectly willing to listen to this conversation and agree or disagree with us, but probably agree that we're having a good faith conversation as you do with others and realize that that is different to what they're going to get from certain other producers, right? I I go there if I want a quick laugh or an eye roll. It's whatever. But I come here if I want a more serious conversation and then if I get sufficiently enticed, I'll go and read some of AIBM's policy briefs. Right. >> No question it's going to go viral. It doesn't get any better than that. But I just think people are able to be more discerning about the difference between these content types. >> And if you look at their actual behavior and what's happening, I'm just much more hopeful. But it just keep doing the work and then over time I don't know whe this is going to be a good example or not but I have although he put me on his reading list not always been thrilled with the way President Obama has talked about this issue >> especially in the run-up to the last election but on the podcast he did with his wife not long ago he said and I quote we've quite rightly invested in the girls create a level playing field so that we could have equality. We have not been as intentional about investing in the boys and that has been a mistake and people are starting to recognize that >> when Obama is saying that. Now, of course, the only bit that got covered from that podcast was the brief discussion about their so-called marital difficulties in the first 3 minutes. the remaining one-hour long conversation about the challenges of boys and men that he had with his wife uh and his wife's brother whose name I've forgotten um that didn't get covered but it's there uh and so I just think bit by bit person by person governor by governor you know Ruben Gier goes out there with his very episode by episode and because because it's actually it's actually what people want in the end >> also because it's the truth >> it's true the truth will in the end I do think is and people can tell the difference between something that's truthful and not. >> Heck yeah. Richard Reeves, ladies and gentlemen. Richard, where should people go to keep up to date with whatever you got going? >> Well, those policy briefs I mentioned are all reading our policy brief on sports betting is the best best piece of policy work out there on the very live issue of sports betting. So, am.org. >> Cool. Richard, I appreciate you. >> So fun. >> Goodbye, everybody. >> Dude. Yes. So good. Go. That was so fun. It was a lot better. >> Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, YouTube knows who you are deeply. It thinks you're going to like this one even more. Come on, press