Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerveldt. This
Speaker 1: week we are bringing you a special follow up episode
Speaker 1: from our Carbon Bros. Collaboration with the show Non Toxic.
Speaker 1: Daniel Penny's complete interview with Progressive Senate candidate Abdul el Sayet.
Speaker 2: El Sayet is running for Senate.
Speaker 1: In Michigan and his own pathway to climate and his
Speaker 1: take on empathetic masculinity through a breath of fresh air
Speaker 1: these days. I hope you enjoy their conversation as much
Speaker 1: as I did here it is.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming on Carbon Bros. It's
Speaker 2: a pleasure to have you, and I think I'm one
Speaker 2: of many podcasts that you've been appearing on. You've been
Speaker 2: doing the rounds, which is good to see. It's a
Speaker 2: theme that comes up quite a bit in the first
Speaker 2: episode of this mini series me and I have been
Speaker 2: working on and given your ad actually for your campaign.
Speaker 2: There's a podcast features quite prominently and there will talk
Speaker 2: a little bit about that later in our conversation. I
Speaker 2: thought maybe you could start with just like a brief
Speaker 2: introduction of who you are, why you're running for Senate
Speaker 2: in Michigan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Daniel, first thank you so much for having me
Speaker 3: excited about your projects, because I think you're talking about
Speaker 3: some really important issues. I'm honored to be here. My
Speaker 3: name is Abdul I'll say I am running for Senate
Speaker 3: in Michigan and frankly as a physician and epidemiologist whose
Speaker 3: work has been about trying to use government to make
Speaker 3: life better, easier, and more dignified for people. One of
Speaker 3: the things that has become overwhelming, I think for most
Speaker 3: of us, is that it just shouldn't be this hard
Speaker 3: to get by in the riches's most powerful country in
Speaker 3: the world. You shouldn't have to worry about the quality
Speaker 3: of air you breathether the water that you drink, or
Speaker 3: whether or not you can go see a doctor, or
Speaker 3: whether or not you can afford your groceries or walk
Speaker 3: in your community without being victimized by a neighbor or
Speaker 3: the state itself. All of these things come back to
Speaker 3: one central issue, which is that we've allowed corporations and
Speaker 3: would be all garchs to dominate too much of our
Speaker 3: lives in the ways that they can use their money
Speaker 3: and their power to buy politics and buy politicians that
Speaker 3: allow them to rig the system for them, and so
Speaker 3: we're running a campaign do three very simple things that
Speaker 3: are really hard to do, but simple things. Number One,
Speaker 3: we want to take money out of politics. We want
Speaker 3: to break the system by which corporations and oligarchs are
Speaker 3: trying to rig it. Second, we want to put more
Speaker 3: money in people's pockets, and that means standing up to
Speaker 3: huge corporations that have rigged the system that force us
Speaker 3: to pay more for the things that we have to
Speaker 3: buy from them and leave us being paid less for
Speaker 3: the work that we do for them. We want to
Speaker 3: make it easier to build and scale small businesses, and
Speaker 3: easier to join a former union. And then, finally, in
Speaker 3: the richest, most powerful country in the world, I believe
Speaker 3: people should just be guaranteed healthcare, and we can do
Speaker 3: that by passing Medicare for All.
Speaker 2: You've had a long career of service, which I think
Speaker 2: it's an important kind of segue. You didn't just go
Speaker 2: from being a doctor to deciding to be in politics.
Speaker 2: This isn't the story of doctor oz God. No. You
Speaker 2: know you're someone who's been thinking about how there are
Speaker 2: a lot of unequal outcomes and health for people in
Speaker 2: your home state, and what's driving those problems. I thought
Speaker 2: maybe we could start our conversation with how you got
Speaker 2: started in government?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it goes back to why became a
Speaker 3: doctor in the first place. I went to medical school
Speaker 3: and came to realize that the question in medicine is
Speaker 3: really simple, what's wrong and how can I help? And
Speaker 3: too often the answer to what's wrong had less to
Speaker 3: do with all the physiology I was studying, and a
Speaker 3: lot more to do with pathologies in our politics, do
Speaker 3: you get to breathe clean air or drink clean water?
Speaker 3: Do you get to afford the micronutrients that nourish a
Speaker 3: brain or the macronutrients that nourish a belly? Can you
Speaker 3: see a doctor in the first place without worrying about
Speaker 3: falling into medical debt? And when you ask those questions
Speaker 3: and you get those answers, you start to realize that
Speaker 3: the work of healing, the work of taking on those
Speaker 3: ten year life expectancy gaps, usually happens outside of a
Speaker 3: clinic or a hospital. And I followed my passion about
Speaker 3: solving these problems back out of the clinic and hospital
Speaker 3: into public health. I got to rebuild Detroit's health department
Speaker 3: after it had been shut down by the state of
Speaker 3: Michigan that forced the city into bankruptcy, rebuilt it around
Speaker 3: the well being of kids, to provide kids glasses and
Speaker 3: take lead out of schools, and stand up to corporate polluters.
Speaker 3: Most recently, I was serving Wayne County, the largest municipality
Speaker 3: in the largest municipal health department in the state. We
Speaker 3: did things like eliminate medical debt for upwards of three
Speaker 3: hundred thousand people, put in narcan in one hundred different
Speaker 3: locations to address the opioid overdose crisis, build a state
Speaker 3: of the art air quality monitoring system, expand access to
Speaker 3: health insurance for small businesses, and that work was really
Speaker 3: important to me. If you're curious about what actually causes illness,
Speaker 3: then you have to be curious about the political system
Speaker 3: that's created it. And I think it will require us
Speaker 3: to do more than just stand up to Trump. We've
Speaker 3: got to be fighting for a solution to the set
Speaker 3: of problems that Trump exploited in the first place to
Speaker 3: come to power.
Speaker 2: I was just curious a little bit to hear about
Speaker 2: the pollution stuff that you were dealing with. I think
Speaker 2: for a lot of people, the climate crisis is this
Speaker 2: really abstract idea. It's something as far away, or maybe
Speaker 2: it's something that you see on the news in the
Speaker 2: form of a disaster. However, I think people are a
Speaker 2: lot more motivated by problems of air pollution and water pollution,
Speaker 2: which are obviously related to the climate crisis, especially air pollution.
Speaker 2: You know, if you have really bad emissions in your
Speaker 2: community from like a highway or something, it's going to
Speaker 2: increase asthma and you're going to see sick kids or
Speaker 2: older people with respiratory problems and heart disease and things
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 3: One of the hard parts of the climate crisis is
Speaker 3: that it's like a really challenging problem to clearly connect
Speaker 3: cause and effect. And that's because it exists because of
Speaker 3: a whole system of energy production in which any of
Speaker 3: our participation is really actually quite small, but exists at
Speaker 3: a level that's higher than us, which is the level
Speaker 3: of the factory that burns stuff that comes out of
Speaker 3: the ground to heat and provide energy for our homes.
Speaker 3: And then it happens on a time horizon that's not direct,
Speaker 3: in the sense that a lot of what we're experiencing
Speaker 3: now is a function of things that happen five to
Speaker 3: ten years ago. And then there's a lot of money
Speaker 3: being spent to push back on a clear understanding of
Speaker 3: cause and effect. So this is one of the naughtiest
Speaker 3: problems to solve, And the problem with that is that
Speaker 3: people who want to actually solve the climate crisis too
Speaker 3: often fixate on emblems of that crisis that people have
Speaker 3: no actual connection to. So like, for a long time,
Speaker 3: the emblem was like starving polar bears. I'm not going
Speaker 3: to change my whole life around some polar bears. But
Speaker 3: the thing we ignore is that every moment that we're
Speaker 3: releasing climate gases into the atmosphere, they're being sieved through
Speaker 3: the lungs of our children. So you can see not
Speaker 3: too far from where I am right now, images of
Speaker 3: kids playing in a playground with a smoke stack right
Speaker 3: behind them. And we've failed that in large part because
Speaker 3: I hate to say it, for a lot of us
Speaker 3: who have the privilege to be insulated from those smoke
Speaker 3: stacks right like to me. The thing that is so pressing,
Speaker 3: both about that smoke stack and about climate change more generally,
Speaker 3: is that these are going to have profound impacts on
Speaker 3: the lives of people I swore an oath to protect,
Speaker 3: and so it's not hard for me to say, hey, listen,
Speaker 3: the climate change part of this is like the chronic,
Speaker 3: long term consequence, but the acute part is that you
Speaker 3: have to breathe these gases. Your kids have to breeze
Speaker 3: these gases, and they're winding them up in the emergency
Speaker 3: room because of asthma exacerbations multiple times a week. And frankly,
Speaker 3: if we addressed that problem, the acute problem, we'd be
Speaker 3: a resting the chronic problem too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I want to talk a little bit about one demographic
Speaker 2: in particular that you're trying to reach with your message,
Speaker 2: which is men and young men who really swung for
Speaker 2: Trump in the twenty twenty four election. I think that
Speaker 2: it's been well trodden at this point that they the
Speaker 2: narrative that DEM's had about the idea that young people
Speaker 2: were becoming increasingly progressive and that all young people felt
Speaker 2: like Democrats were their party. It didn't pan out, and
Speaker 2: at least among young men. Now there's this big gender
Speaker 2: divide between women and men in politics, especially those under thirty.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot of soul searching on the part
Speaker 2: of DEM's trying to figure out what went wrong. Many
Speaker 2: attribute the failure of Kamala Harris's race to an inability
Speaker 2: to connect with men or to not go on the
Speaker 2: right podcast. I think that's a bit simplistic. It has
Speaker 2: more to do with the values and stories that you're telling,
Speaker 2: not just like whether or not you appear on Joe
Speaker 2: Rogan that I think going on Joe Rogan certainly doesn't
Speaker 2: hurt if you're trying to reach a broad audience. But
Speaker 2: I'm curious how you're thinking about winning back this demographic that,
Speaker 2: by all rights, that the Dems should have won, and
Speaker 2: how you're trying to communicate with them, like what values
Speaker 2: or aspirations you're trying to speak to, and how you
Speaker 2: think the left needs to address this crisis of masculinity.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think there's a couple of things. Number One,
Speaker 3: you know that we do play this game sometimes of
Speaker 3: people being just too precious about platforms, like how dare
Speaker 3: they do? How dare they talk to that person they're like?
Speaker 3: Last I checked politics about persuasion, which means you have
Speaker 3: to talk to people who don't agree with you. Number Two,
Speaker 3: I can't credibly call myself young anymore. I just turned forty,
Speaker 3: so that puts me in some like weird another region
Speaker 3: and I've got my own kids now who are definitely young.
Speaker 3: I got a whole feeling about this, But I remember
Speaker 3: what it was like to be very young. And let
Speaker 3: me just tell you the thing about being young is
Speaker 3: that you want to be bold, you want to have fun,
Speaker 3: and you don't really like rules very much. I gotta
Speaker 3: tell you I'm still that way. The problem with Democrats
Speaker 3: is culturally, let's think about what the stereotype of Democrats
Speaker 3: are not very bold, not very fun, and seem to
Speaker 3: really like the rules, and so it's not like from
Speaker 3: a cultural standpoint, part of me is is like you
Speaker 3: kind of forgot what was transgressive about what it meant
Speaker 3: to be a Democrat where you were willing to fight
Speaker 3: against these big, powerful corporations to try and win on
Speaker 3: behalf of the little guy. Like, to me, that's pretty bold.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do something, have some fun with it, let
Speaker 3: loose a little bit. And Democrats these days, too often,
Speaker 3: because of the way we do politics, bought off by
Speaker 3: big corporations. So you're not gonna be transgressive at all
Speaker 3: because you're not gonna stand up to the corporation to
Speaker 3: or funding your campaign. And then because you're kind of
Speaker 3: lying to voters that's not very fun. And then from there,
Speaker 3: like a lot of what we focus on is, oh,
Speaker 3: but they're breaking the rules. What would we do if
Speaker 3: they break all the rules? You're like, Look, the thing
Speaker 3: you have to get at is who set the rules
Speaker 3: in the first place and who are they working for?
Speaker 3: And I just think we have a clear message that
Speaker 3: can be bold, fun and willing to take on the
Speaker 3: status quo of who wrote the rules in the first place,
Speaker 3: and I think that we need to lean into that.
Speaker 3: The problem is that the majority of the Democratic Party
Speaker 3: cannot because there is nothing transgressive about asking a corporate
Speaker 3: pack to write you a check to uphold the status
Speaker 3: quote that they wrote. Let's just be clear about that.
Speaker 3: And then the final point that I'll say is this,
Speaker 3: because we're not willing to do anything structural, we've leaned
Speaker 3: in on this whole social conversation and so we end
Speaker 3: up sounding like a nineties era sociology textbook. And there's
Speaker 3: this trope of like toxic masculinity, And every time you
Speaker 3: hear the word masculinity among people on the left, it's
Speaker 3: usually it usually comes with that toxic trope. Now, if
Speaker 3: there's not another option about a non toxic masculinity. Then
Speaker 3: at some point you're basically condemning a whole group of people.
Speaker 3: And if you don't offer anything, why is it surprising
Speaker 3: that they're going to go in a different direction. And
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that I want Democrats to be Democrats again.
Speaker 3: There's this thing that's happened that like Republicans have gone
Speaker 3: maga and a bunch of Democrats have become like Republican curious.
Speaker 3: They're like, ah, we could just do this thing that
Speaker 3: Republicans used to do back in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 3: and that's a perfectly great lane. And you're like, no,
Speaker 3: but that's not our lane. That's not the thing we're
Speaker 3: supposed to be doing. So I'm just saying, let's let's
Speaker 3: let democrats be democrap.
Speaker 2: You don't need to go back to trying to be
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton. I think you know that chapter is closed,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's time to move forward to your point
Speaker 2: of Okay, but Democrats weren't offering young menic compelling vision,
Speaker 2: or they were explicitly signaling to them that they weren't
Speaker 2: really interested in who they were, their concerns, their grievances,
Speaker 2: some of which are real, some of which are have
Speaker 2: been genmed up by by Republicans. What is it that
Speaker 2: you're offering them? What is your vision? I mean, obviously,
Speaker 2: as a senator, you're one of many. You alone do
Speaker 2: not control the legislative agenda. But what is the vision
Speaker 2: that you have for these young because yeah, I think
Speaker 2: Mega at least offered this idea that you're being oppressed
Speaker 2: by women and the woke mob and the elites, and
Speaker 2: we're gonna get you money, right, give you a tax cut.
Speaker 2: Somehow they never quite made sense to me how that
Speaker 2: money was going to appear. But there are promises of
Speaker 2: money and that we're going to make America more traditional
Speaker 2: its values and back when men were in charge, and
Speaker 2: you're going to feel that power and that permission again
Speaker 2: to be who you really are. And obviously, yeah, there
Speaker 2: are a lot of lies baked in there, but that's
Speaker 2: a good story and I can understand why a lot
Speaker 2: of people fell for it. So what's the story that
Speaker 2: you're offering.
Speaker 3: The first one is I'm not going to talk down
Speaker 3: to you, right, Like I've been a young man, I
Speaker 3: know what it's like to be talked down to and I
Speaker 3: know it doesn't really quite work. So I want to
Speaker 3: have an honest conversation. Two, I want to talk about
Speaker 3: what masculinity is that doesn't feel shitty. And the Andrew
Speaker 3: Tait version of masculinity is one where you're told that
Speaker 3: the thing about being masculine is that you could put
Speaker 3: down other people. And I come at this, Daniel, as
Speaker 3: a father of daughters, like, I don't want anybody in
Speaker 3: the world thinking that my daughter's success came at the
Speaker 3: cost of theirs, because I know that's just not how
Speaker 3: the world works. And so let's talk about what masculinity means.
Speaker 3: Does it mean that you punch down at people you
Speaker 3: perceive to be weaker than you, or does it mean
Speaker 3: that you are a promoter and protector and empower of
Speaker 3: other people, that you can do that in a way
Speaker 3: where you can live in a society where everybody's got
Speaker 3: a great shot at things and you can still enjoy
Speaker 3: doing the things that you know bros enjoy doing, which
Speaker 3: I enjoy doing all the time. I come at this honestly, like,
Speaker 3: I'm not A lot of democrats are like, let's pretend
Speaker 3: like we like working out. You're like, if you don't
Speaker 3: like working out, don't work out, Like, just be who
Speaker 3: you are number one. But I say this is a
Speaker 3: guy who grew up doing the traditional bro things who
Speaker 3: still enjoys doing these things and can demonstrate that, like
Speaker 3: they're not mutually exclusive to having what you do if
Speaker 3: you don't my my asking Like I played football in
Speaker 3: high school. I captained my wrestling team and lacrosse team
Speaker 3: and my football team. I played lacrosse in college. I
Speaker 3: work out I mountain bike, Like those are like things
Speaker 3: that bro code. But let's be clear, some of the
Speaker 3: like gnarliest lifters I've ever seen in the gym are women,
Speaker 3: like including my own wife, who deadlifts one point five
Speaker 3: x body weight for reps, which I'm just like, that's incredible.
Speaker 2: I saw your bench press three fifteen. Congrats on that.
Speaker 3: Thank you. It was interesting, right because it was like
Speaker 3: I hesitated with the idea of doing it in large
Speaker 3: part for one reason. Right, there's been this effort to
Speaker 3: make my Republicans, to make Democrats look weak, and for
Speaker 3: most of these Republicans, part of me is like, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not even close to what my life PR was like.
Speaker 3: I'll never hit my PR again. I was in college
Speaker 3: and it was a lot we'll just say a lot
Speaker 3: more than three fifteen. But part of it is also
Speaker 3: this idea that if you're going to take them on
Speaker 3: that point, the best way is to show, not tell, Right,
Speaker 3: Like I challenged Donald Trump or frankly any Republican in
Speaker 3: the US Senate on anything, because you guys pretend to
Speaker 3: be strong, but it's fickle, and so at some point
Speaker 3: like show not tell. So we were like, all right,
Speaker 3: we're gonna do this video, and I dare you to
Speaker 3: come and call me week, especially Dai to come and
Speaker 3: call me a week to my face. I just think
Speaker 3: it's important to demonstrate that you don't have to seed
Speaker 3: on strength to be willing to be empathic. Right, those
Speaker 3: two things are not It's not a lack of strength
Speaker 3: for which you show empathy for other people. I think
Speaker 3: it's actually deep strength to be able to bring that.
Speaker 3: But like, these are things that oftentimes this conversation we've
Speaker 3: had says they code too much as being masculine ergo,
Speaker 3: like these things should be shunned. And I think a
Speaker 3: lot of folks have said no, Like, you can do
Speaker 3: things that you enjoy that build strength, that don't come
Speaker 3: at the cost of someone else's power. And I think
Speaker 3: that is the thing we need to do well. But
Speaker 3: there's something more here which I think is really important
Speaker 3: and I really want to talk through. I think a
Speaker 3: lot of the reason that so many young men have
Speaker 3: been fed to the likes of an Andrew Tates or
Speaker 3: Jordan Peterson is because they feel really profoundly disempowered in
Speaker 3: their lives. And I actually think we need to talk
Speaker 3: about why. And I think it goes back to this
Speaker 3: question of corporations and their power in our society. I
Speaker 3: don't know a young man who doesn't feel like they've
Speaker 3: got a really awkward, if exploitative relationship with one of
Speaker 3: the following weed porn, video games, sports betting, and if
Speaker 3: you think about all of these industries, they are industries
Speaker 3: that exist to prey on a risk reward cycle and
Speaker 3: dopamine spikes in people's minds, specifically young men's minds. I
Speaker 3: got a friend of mine. Our whole relationship like existed
Speaker 3: around watching sports, right, Like our whole relationship consists of
Speaker 3: bringing up names of bygone athletes and just talking about
Speaker 3: what they used to do so well, and then pulling
Speaker 3: up their clips on YouTube and watching them like that
Speaker 3: was our whole relationship. And like I know many people
Speaker 3: who have relationships with people like that. This friend of
Speaker 3: mine can't watch sports anymore. And the reason why is
Speaker 3: because no matter where you watch your sports, it has
Speaker 3: become a long ad for sports betting. And this friend
Speaker 3: of mine has problematic gambling, and so he's already almost
Speaker 3: gambled away his whole home and his four oh one
Speaker 3: K and he's like, look, man, I just can't watch
Speaker 3: sports anymore. And I'm like, man, that is so sad,
Speaker 3: Like this was a big part of your life, and
Speaker 3: it shouldn't be this hard to turn on ESPN and
Speaker 3: not be fed an ad for something that could have
Speaker 3: you losing your home in a month, right, And this
Speaker 3: is where we are. And so you've got corporations who
Speaker 3: basically are working to write the rules so that they
Speaker 3: are deregulated so that they can pray on the dopamine
Speaker 3: cycles of young men. And we got to talk about that.
Speaker 3: And look, I'm not for banning any of these things,
Speaker 3: like I think any of these things ought to be
Speaker 3: in like one ought to be able to enjoy them
Speaker 3: if they choose. But the idea that you're pushing them
Speaker 3: into people's faces and you're not taking on the problematic
Speaker 3: nature of some of this is a problem I think
Speaker 3: about like young men that I mentor in their teens,
Speaker 3: and the number of them for whom their for you
Speaker 3: page on TikTok or Instagram is basically an advertisement for
Speaker 3: some kind of porn. That number zero, Like nobody I
Speaker 3: know doesn't have that. Everybody I know is like, here's
Speaker 3: my for you page, and it's always right a couple
Speaker 3: clicks away from some kind of porn. And I'm just
Speaker 3: saying that, like, pornography is a thing that consenting adults
Speaker 3: ought to be able to enjoy, but fourteen year olds
Speaker 3: and fifteen year olds are not consenting adults. And we
Speaker 3: got to talk about the ways that big tech has
Speaker 3: played games around regulation to enable this kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And so part of the problem is if your dopamine
Speaker 3: cycles are fried by some combination of all of these things,
Speaker 3: and then you feel this empowered in your own life
Speaker 3: because you can't muster the capacity to go and show
Speaker 3: up in your life. And then you're online and somebody
Speaker 3: like Jordan Peterson is telling you that it's because of
Speaker 3: women that you're in this situation. You may just be
Speaker 3: liable to believe them. And I just think we got
Speaker 3: to have an honest conversation about the way that corporate
Speaker 3: power is being wielded against men's neural transmitters in ways
Speaker 3: that leave them disempowered and frankly exploited in their lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the sort of the dopamine addict has
Speaker 2: become a figure of the last few years, this idea
Speaker 2: that young men are being bombarded with various addictive services
Speaker 2: through their phones and become dependent on them and then
Speaker 2: retreat from social life and all of the things that
Speaker 2: sort of matter that we would say, oh, this is
Speaker 2: work and relationships and family and friendships and all of
Speaker 2: that kind of receives, and it leaves it very open
Speaker 2: to radicalization as well and susceptible to disinformation.
Speaker 3: I want to just make a finer point on this,
Speaker 3: because I think it's easy for us to blame young
Speaker 3: men for quote unquote falling into it, right. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like how many traps are there? And why is
Speaker 3: it that nobody's actually going after the trap setters? And
Speaker 3: these are simple things about the conversations we ought to
Speaker 3: be having about regulation. The reason that we don't do
Speaker 3: it is the same reason that you have, like monopolies
Speaker 3: in the meat packing space and why we pay so
Speaker 3: much for meat in this country. It's the same reason
Speaker 3: why we get our paychecks garnished every two weeks and
Speaker 3: four weeks to get insurance that we then have to
Speaker 3: pay again for if we get sick. It's all connected
Speaker 3: to the same issue. And part of the thing I'm
Speaker 3: trying to get people to see is that like you
Speaker 3: are taking being taken advantage of, and you've got one
Speaker 3: group of people telling you that to be strong, you've
Speaker 3: got to go in same misidigonistic things about women, right
Speaker 3: while actually this other group of people are literally exploiting you.
Speaker 3: And I just think that it's important for us to
Speaker 3: actually take on the things that are powerful, that are
Speaker 3: disempowering people in their lives. And I want folks to
Speaker 3: be paying attention to those things because those are things
Speaker 3: we can actually take on. You shouldn't have to be
Speaker 3: worried about whether or not you're going to lose your
Speaker 3: home in a month because you turn on ESPN. That's
Speaker 3: not a thing that should happen in America, and it
Speaker 3: doesn't have to happen. That's a choice we make as
Speaker 3: a matter of public policy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we made rules about how you could advertise alcohol,
Speaker 2: how you can advertise cigarettes, and this is generally accepted.
Speaker 2: Like you can't show someone actually drinking a beer in
Speaker 2: a beer ad on TV. I mean, our cigarette ads,
Speaker 2: I think are pretty much gone, right. I can't think
Speaker 2: of anywhere where cigarettes are allowed to be advertised. So
Speaker 2: it's certainly possible as a society to come together and say, Okay,
Speaker 2: if you want to smoke, you can still smoke, but
Speaker 2: we're not going to make it easy to convince new
Speaker 2: people to start doing this because we recognize that this
Speaker 2: is really bad for our society and it's just not
Speaker 2: worth living in a world controlled by these interests. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I think you raise a good point, Like the problem
Speaker 2: is not the individual who falls for these highly engineered
Speaker 2: and well tuned tricks. You have one hundreds thousands of
Speaker 2: people whose job it is to make these products attractive
Speaker 2: and to keep your eyeballs glued to the screen. So
Speaker 2: if you aren't able to resist, like, it's because it's
Speaker 2: been designed really well. I want to talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about the sense of I guess skepticism among young men,
Speaker 2: particularly around science. This can connect up to climate but
Speaker 2: also things like vaccines and other public health you know
Speaker 2: RFK right now, is doing a number on the on
Speaker 2: America's public health, and I think it speaks to a
Speaker 2: larger yeah, skepticism around science and the validity of scientific expertise.
Speaker 2: I think young men also maybe feel a little invincible
Speaker 2: in a way that as they get older they may
Speaker 2: realize isn't quite so true. But we're living in this
Speaker 2: period where a lot of people don't seem to believe
Speaker 2: in the realities of basic science. And as a doctor,
Speaker 2: I imagine this confounds you. You can't just hit them with
Speaker 2: the facts. It doesn't really work. We've seen this, at
Speaker 2: least in the climate debate, that just trying to prove
Speaker 2: to people, yes, climate change is real, Yes this is
Speaker 2: really happening. When they're climate skeptics, and it's become like
Speaker 2: a part of their identity, it's just not something that
Speaker 2: really penetrates. And I think you've probably experienced this with
Speaker 2: people who have vaccine hesitancy or now anti vaxxers, that
Speaker 2: once this becomes like an article of faith, it's very
Speaker 2: difficult to dislodge. And Yeah, I think all of these
Speaker 2: are interrelated in the sense that they really put the
Speaker 2: bonus on the individual and say like it's up to
Speaker 2: you to make yourself healthy, and that you're someone who
Speaker 2: deals with public health.
Speaker 3: Look, I think it's important to understand what some of
Speaker 3: these more dangerous ideas swim with. And what I mean
Speaker 3: by that is, usually we pay attention to, oh wow,
Speaker 3: there's a lot more vaccine hesitancy, if not frank vaccine
Speaker 3: denihilism out there. But ask yourself what waters they swim with.
Speaker 3: It's usually this MAHA pilled make America healthy again pilled,
Speaker 3: which on its face is insane because America is about
Speaker 3: as nearly healthy as it's ever been, just if you
Speaker 3: look at the statistics. But the whole idea of MAHA
Speaker 3: is there's a couple of things that you can do
Speaker 3: to protect yourself from any and all diseases. You don't
Speaker 3: need any of these other things, and these are all
Speaker 3: grifts to take advantage of you. That's the frame. And
Speaker 3: so usually it's not the vaccine denihilism that is itself enticing.
Speaker 3: It's this idea that you are the captain of your
Speaker 3: own ship and the captain of your own destiny, and
Speaker 3: if you just do these things, you can protect yourself
Speaker 3: from everything. Right, And it's the same people who are
Speaker 3: telling you that somehow beef tallow is a healthy thing,
Speaker 3: like no beef tallo is just another version of fat,
Speaker 3: in fact, probably a less healthy version of fat than
Speaker 3: the one they told you was so unhealthy. That's the
Speaker 3: same people who tell you that because they made the
Speaker 3: change in the sweetener in coca cola, that somehow now
Speaker 3: coca cola is a healthy drink. No. Look, if it's
Speaker 3: cane sugar or hyphroctose corn syrup, neither of them are
Speaker 3: particularly healthy for you. This is a marginal difference. And
Speaker 3: they tell you that if you.
Speaker 4: Get yourself sugar, does you taste a little bit better?
Speaker 4: I think it tastes better, And look, it does taste better,
Speaker 4: but it's not better for you. If we got rid
Speaker 4: of the ultra processed forms of sugar, I think we'd
Speaker 4: be marginally better off. But do not pretend that because
Speaker 4: you made it cane sugar, that the two hundred and
Speaker 4: forty calories in your twenty ounce coke are somehow not
Speaker 4: two hundred and forty calories of sugar anymore.
Speaker 3: Like they're just sugar. But like this idea that you
Speaker 3: can be the agent of your own future and that
Speaker 3: you don't have to worry, it's enticing. But it's like
Speaker 3: a form of it's a form of ostriching. Right, It's
Speaker 3: like you are being intentionally ignorant to things that are
Speaker 3: outside of the degree of your control. And the one
Speaker 3: point I always make the folks is actually, like the
Speaker 3: man flu, I'm like, you know this idea of the
Speaker 3: man flu, right, if there is some evidence to suggest
Speaker 3: that in younger men influenza is more severe, and the
Speaker 3: reason why is actually because you have a very intensely
Speaker 3: tuned immune system, and it's the immune response to the
Speaker 3: influenza that is so extreme that then causes the kind
Speaker 3: of death. And there are a bunch of hypotheses about
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighteen flu pandemic. It killed a lot of
Speaker 3: young men. Part of that is because young men were
Speaker 3: concentrated in the barracks during World War One, but part
Speaker 3: of that may actually be that it was just more
Speaker 3: severe among young men. And so part of me says, okay,
Speaker 3: so like, you go, you work out, you run, you lift,
Speaker 3: you become very healthy, and now you've got an extremely
Speaker 3: robust immune system, and now you get the flu, and
Speaker 3: now your flu is so much worse because of all
Speaker 3: the amazing workouts that you did, so it just so
Speaker 3: happens that I'm not going to tell you to stop
Speaker 3: working out. Yes, in general, you should do this thing.
Speaker 3: But what that tells you is if there is an
Speaker 3: added thing you can do to stop yourself from getting
Speaker 3: the flu, maybe you should do that. Shit Like it
Speaker 3: should be kind of obvious, right, And so there's this
Speaker 3: idea that somehow I can do I can control everything
Speaker 3: about what happens to me, and that is a fallacy
Speaker 3: of modernity. That's just not how the world works. And
Speaker 3: so I think we need to start breaking that down,
Speaker 3: which is to say, hey, I look at I understand
Speaker 3: why you get some security and thinking. I do all
Speaker 3: the right things, I eat all the right foods, I
Speaker 3: do all the right workouts. Ergo, I'm going to protect myself.
Speaker 3: But I want you to ask yourself big picture questions
Speaker 3: about the things you can't control, like the weather or
Speaker 3: the climate, or whether or not you get infected or
Speaker 3: exposed to flu or covid. And so there are other
Speaker 3: things that you want to do and live in a
Speaker 3: society that do for you, so that you can be
Speaker 3: protected against these things should they happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also that you have a responsibility to other people.
Speaker 2: I think that was one of the things I saw
Speaker 2: in COVID. My wife has a suppresed immune system, and
Speaker 2: I was pretty aware of the risks that we were
Speaker 2: living with and what could happen to her if I
Speaker 2: got sick or if she got sick. And it was interesting.
Speaker 2: It seemed like very early on the manosphere got really
Speaker 2: restless with the idea of vaccine one getting vaccines, but
Speaker 2: two just the restrictions and having to wear a mask
Speaker 2: and not being able to do the things you want
Speaker 2: to do. And I think that there was a sense
Speaker 2: of I should be able to do me, bro, and
Speaker 2: what do my actions have to do with you? Like
Speaker 2: they don't affect you? And there was this real kind
Speaker 2: of denial of the relationship between oneself and other people.
Speaker 2: And I think that was something that that has only
Speaker 2: gotten stronger and intensified in the following years. It used
Speaker 2: to be an important part of traditional masculinity. It was
Speaker 2: this idea that like, hey, you have a duty to
Speaker 2: other people, Like you're part of a community. You're not
Speaker 2: just out there like self maximizing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and look, I think this is the to go
Speaker 3: back to the point about labeling all masculinity as toxic.
Speaker 3: Is like we have inadvertently made the stereotype of masculinity
Speaker 3: toxic because we haven't presented an alternative form of maxeculinity
Speaker 3: that is not toxic. And that point that you made
Speaker 3: about duty and about empowerment and about protection, I think
Speaker 3: that's a really important part of a more like benevolent
Speaker 3: mass sculinity, and I think we need to be punching
Speaker 3: that up now. The zeitgeist has basically said that because
Speaker 3: all masculinity is toxic, ergo, we're going to get rid
Speaker 3: of all masculinity. And I think we missed the opportunity
Speaker 3: to say, actually, the masculinity I grew up with was
Speaker 3: one where you are someone who takes the risk first,
Speaker 3: but you always eat last, in the sense that you
Speaker 3: protect resources and you protect for the people who have
Speaker 3: to come first. And that part of it I think
Speaker 3: we've lost because we've basically labeled all masculinity is toxic.
Speaker 3: I would much more have wanted to be able to say, actually, no,
Speaker 3: don't be an asshole. This is extremely selfish behavior, and
Speaker 3: it's small and it's petty, and it's unbecoming of the
Speaker 3: way that I understand masculinity. It's unmanly to be this way,
Speaker 3: and I think in a lot of cultures if you
Speaker 3: said that, you would be making a very powerful argument, right,
Speaker 3: And a lot of folks would say no. It's my
Speaker 3: duty to people who don't have the same strength or
Speaker 3: capacity that I do to make sure that I'm doing
Speaker 3: the things to protect them right in the society, because
Speaker 3: part of my identity is as a protector and as
Speaker 3: an empower and I think we've lost that, and I
Speaker 3: think we've lost that to some really detrimental consequences.
Speaker 2: You've been traveling all around your campaign, is it a
Speaker 2: full gear? What have you in your experiences with the
Speaker 2: citizens of your state and voters like? What have you
Speaker 2: been learning along the way? Democrats are all trying to
Speaker 2: crack the same code right now for twenty twenty six,
Speaker 2: and means for some of them the answer is just
Speaker 2: shoot a video and edit it like Zoron, But I
Speaker 2: think others are going a little bit deeper and trying
Speaker 2: to actually incorporate some real changes in voter sentiment and
Speaker 2: understand how people are feeling. What are you like sharing
Speaker 2: with your fellow Democrats who are trying to reach those
Speaker 2: same suspected young men who are maybe not quite cracking
Speaker 2: the code, yet be who you are.
Speaker 3: I just think when I ran in twenty eighteen, I
Speaker 3: was always being coached around. I literally member of people
Speaker 3: have being like, oh, your bro is showing I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: let me interested. And this time around, I'm like, you
Speaker 3: know what I am? Who I am. I've always been
Speaker 3: who I am. My challenge has never been that I
Speaker 3: don't know who I am. And I just want folks
Speaker 3: to be authentically who you are, because I think if
Speaker 3: you can be who you are, even if you know
Speaker 3: you don't code in one way or another, I think
Speaker 3: people will respect and appreciate what you can bring to
Speaker 3: the table. And I think, more than anything, what people
Speaker 3: have a very high intolerance for right now is bullshit.
Speaker 3: If I think you're pretending to be like me, or
Speaker 3: you're pretending to say things that you know you think
Speaker 3: I'm going to like to hear, people can see through it.
Speaker 3: I think one of the consequences of modernity is that
Speaker 3: we're always being fed like now it's like truly ai slop,
Speaker 3: like inauthentic junk. And I think we've gotten really good
Speaker 3: at looking for the things that are real, and I
Speaker 3: just think it's really incumbent on politicians to be as
Speaker 3: real as they are, and I think leaning into the
Speaker 3: things that make you who you are and bringing people
Speaker 3: into that part of life is important. But there's another
Speaker 3: piece of that, which is you've got to be willing
Speaker 3: to be vulnerable. And I think to the point that
Speaker 3: we've been circling around here, one of the things about
Speaker 3: masculinity that I think has been a real challenge is
Speaker 3: that a lot of the way we've been taught has
Speaker 3: been to hide your vulnerability, right, Like men no cry right.
Speaker 3: And I just think that right now, this is a
Speaker 3: moment to be willing to be vulnerable, to be able
Speaker 3: to let people in and recognize that some people are
Speaker 3: gonna be asholes about it and that's okay, Like it's
Speaker 3: just part of the process. And I think when you
Speaker 3: decide to put yourself out there, what you are signing
Speaker 3: up for is a willingness to be vulnerable with people.
Speaker 3: But if you're willing to show them that vulnerability, I
Speaker 3: think the vast majority of people will embrace it and
Speaker 3: appreciate it. And also what happens is you can unlock
Speaker 3: their ability to be vulnerable for themselves, because at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, our argument is the world is
Speaker 3: an imperfect place and there's a lot of things that
Speaker 3: could be fixed, and it takes us being willing to
Speaker 3: admit that there's a challenge in a problem rather than
Speaker 3: pretend that no, we're all good, that we actually can
Speaker 3: only solve together. That requires us to be vulnerable about
Speaker 3: how those problems affect us. And so if you want
Speaker 3: to be somebody who is a leader to solve those problems,
Speaker 3: you better lead first with your own vulnerability. And so
Speaker 3: I just think that being able to do that thing
Speaker 3: of putting yourself out there, it makes the argument that
Speaker 3: needs to be made because people just see it and
Speaker 3: it's like show don't tell.
Speaker 2: Doctor bel say. Thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 2: the show. It was a pleasure to get to talk
Speaker 2: to you. And here's some of your insights. I wish
Speaker 2: you luck on this campaign. I know it's going to
Speaker 2: be a long marathon. Thank you again.
Speaker 3: Appreciate you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I have a good rest here to day. I'm sure
Speaker 2: there's plenty of more campaigning today.
Speaker 3: We're just getting started.
Speaker 2: Man. Carbon Bros.
Speaker 5: Is an original series from Drill and Non Toxic, written
Speaker 5: by me Amy.
Speaker 2: Westervelt and by me Daniel Penny.
Speaker 5: Our senior producer and sound designer is Martin Zoldsaus. He
Speaker 5: also composed our theme song, Check A stuff Out.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Peter Duff. Fact checking by Shilba Jindia.
Speaker 2: Original artwork by Matthew Fleming.
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