Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: Hey, what up, Ears Edition listeners, It's Roy Wood Junior,
Speaker 2: your correspondent for The Daily Show. You're about to hear
Speaker 2: one of our original Daily Show podcasts, Beyond the Scenes.
Speaker 2: It's the show where we dive deeper into segments and
Speaker 2: topics that originally aired on The Daily Show. We chat
Speaker 2: with the shows writers and producers and experts. This episode
Speaker 2: is about male intimacy and vulnerability and why men are
Speaker 2: in a friendship recession. I'm joined by Ted Bunch, who's
Speaker 2: the co founder of a Call to Men, and developmental
Speaker 2: psychology professor at NYU Naobi Wade to discuss how boys
Speaker 2: friendships evolve as they get older, what men can do
Speaker 2: to prioritize their mental health, and how therapy can be
Speaker 2: transformative for a lot of men. We hope you enjoy it,
Speaker 2: and if you like the show, check out the Beyond
Speaker 2: the Scenes podcast.
Speaker 1: Wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes deeper
Speaker 2: into topics and segments that you might have seen on
Speaker 2: the Daily Show. This is what this podcast is. This
Speaker 2: is how you gotta think about this podcast. You have
Speaker 2: a go bowling, right, You know you want to go bowling,
Speaker 2: and bowling, you're just going in. You have a good time,
Speaker 2: the stars, the bowling pins, and the bowling ball. But
Speaker 2: this podcast, we're all the extra shit that you need
Speaker 2: to be able to bowl.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: You gotta have the goofy clown shirt, you gotta have
Speaker 2: the big ass clown shoes, you gotta have beer, you
Speaker 2: gotta have wings, you have to have an inability to bowl.
Speaker 2: All of the skills that are required to make bowling fun.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what this podcast is. So I'm Roy Viginia.
Speaker 2: Today we're gonna be talking about a topic that has
Speaker 2: come up on the show quite a bit, male vulnerability
Speaker 2: and intimacy and why it is important that men go
Speaker 2: to therapy.
Speaker 1: Roll the clip.
Speaker 3: We know that women are going through it, but we
Speaker 3: have to acknowledge that men are going through to you.
Speaker 3: Guys are angry, you're depressed, and you're lonely. In fact,
Speaker 3: fifteen percent of men say they have zero zero friends
Speaker 3: and the other eighty five percent they don't have friends either,
Speaker 3: but they was too sad to fill out the survey. Now,
Speaker 3: luckily there's a tool that can help you with all
Speaker 3: of this. Paravey therapy is amazing. You pay someone to
Speaker 3: unload all your bullshit on them. They're like prostitutes for
Speaker 3: the feelings. The problem is men don't use it. In fact,
Speaker 3: they're almost half as likely to go to therapy as women.
Speaker 3: Men out here treating therapy like Nick Cannon treats condoms.
Speaker 3: They're here to help you, Nick. But we know why
Speaker 3: men is this way, because, starting from a young age,
Speaker 3: we cheat them that they can't have feelings.
Speaker 2: Today, I'm joined by co founder of a Call to
Speaker 2: Men and co author of the Book of Dares one
Speaker 2: Hundred Ways for Boys to Be Kind, Bold and Brave,
Speaker 2: Ted Bunch. Welcome to be on the scenes. How you
Speaker 2: doing Ted, I'm good, Roy, Thank you so much. Happy
Speaker 2: to be here with you, and Yob. You got a
Speaker 2: voice of stature right there. That's a voice of statue.
Speaker 2: And I see for the people listening, you got one
Speaker 2: of them grown men. You got one of them, Coach
Speaker 2: Goate's I just want to do whatever you tell me
Speaker 2: to do. Ted also joining me as a professor of
Speaker 2: developmental psychology at NYU and author of the book Deep Secrets, Boys, Friendships,
Speaker 2: and the Crisis of Connection. Her book was also the
Speaker 2: inspiration for the Oscar nominated film Close Neobi Way, Welcome
Speaker 2: to the show, Naobi.
Speaker 1: How you doing.
Speaker 4: I'm doing great. I'm so happy to be here Roy
Speaker 4: with you and Ted. I'm really excited about this conversation.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm happy to be a part of this as
Speaker 2: well as a father of a six year old. I
Speaker 2: definitely you know, if I'm gonna be honest, just up front.
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't come from a home. This is
Speaker 2: why I feel like this discussion is very important. You know,
Speaker 2: I had two parents that everybody worked odd hours. My
Speaker 2: dad worked mornings and nights, so I rarely saw him
Speaker 2: other than pick me up from baseball practice. My mother
Speaker 2: worked until nine pm because she was going to law
Speaker 2: school in PhDs and all of the secondary degrees that
Speaker 2: you get to build your income. So I didn't see
Speaker 2: my mom but right before I went to bed, and
Speaker 2: first thing in the morning on a way to the
Speaker 2: bus stop. So this idea of intimacy and hugs and
Speaker 2: conversation and that was not I knew I was love.
Speaker 2: I felt love, but you know, I came up in
Speaker 2: an era where intimacy within a family, especially man to man,
Speaker 2: was more incidental than intentional. So in coming up with
Speaker 2: ways to be intentional with my son. It's these types
Speaker 2: of stories and stuff within the show that have really
Speaker 2: helped me because you know, and and I'll start with you, Ted,
Speaker 2: because you know, the act of being a man is
Speaker 2: something that's just said, but it's never really detailed. It's
Speaker 2: never really laid out in specifics. You know, people tell
Speaker 2: you a man while you're crying, be a man. What
Speaker 2: does that mean? My knee hurt. I It's okay to cry,
Speaker 2: It's okay to feel. So Ted, let's start off with
Speaker 2: talking a little bit about, you know, defining how society
Speaker 2: views manhood and masculinity, or as you refer to it,
Speaker 2: the man box. Explains us what the man box and
Speaker 2: what does healthy manhood actually look like.
Speaker 5: So thank you Roy for that, and I appreciate what
Speaker 5: you're sharing about the difference from you growing up and
Speaker 5: then the type of parent you want to be, the
Speaker 5: intentional father that you want to be around nurturing and
Speaker 5: supporting your son. And our parents did that too, to
Speaker 5: the best of their ability, but we know much more now.
Speaker 5: And so when we talk about the man box, which
Speaker 5: is a term that a call to man coined more
Speaker 5: than twenty years ago. That's a short version of saying
Speaker 5: the collective socialization of manhood.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: The manbox just sounds cooler, right, But we can talk
Speaker 5: about the man box. You can imagine all the things
Speaker 5: that we're taught around manhood and masculinity. Even if we
Speaker 5: were to ask a six year old boy or a
Speaker 5: sixteen year old boy what it is. What have you
Speaker 5: been taught about what a man is? They'll say, be tough,
Speaker 5: be strong, make money, carry a bag, rite a bag
Speaker 5: of money, don't ask for help, don't be vulnerable, don't
Speaker 5: be weak, right, because those things that vulnerability, that weakness,
Speaker 5: those things where you need to ask for help are
Speaker 5: not what men do. And I'm putting that in quotes
Speaker 5: based on this male dominated society. It's what women do.
Speaker 5: And if you're a man that does that, then you
Speaker 5: fall in short of the manhood that you're expected to
Speaker 5: live up to. So there's a few things that happen
Speaker 5: in the MAOX. One of them is that we're all
Speaker 5: taught that on some level, women and girls have less
Speaker 5: value than men and boys, that women are the property
Speaker 5: of men, and that women and.
Speaker 1: Girls are sexual objects.
Speaker 5: These are the things that we're taught and we pass
Speaker 5: these teachings down to our children as well as that
Speaker 5: we're not supposed to openly express emotion, that we're not
Speaker 5: supposed to show weakness for fear. You're not supposed to
Speaker 5: act like a woman or a girl. You're not supposed
Speaker 5: to ask for help. I do want to unpack just
Speaker 5: for a moment, that less value property objectification piece Roy,
Speaker 5: if you don't mind. So we're taught our collective socialization, right,
Speaker 5: it's just kind of in the air that women and
Speaker 5: girls have less value than men and boys. So if
Speaker 5: I say to a little boy you have to throw
Speaker 5: that ball hard on their son, you throw like a girl.
Speaker 1: Everybody knows the answer to that.
Speaker 5: We've never had this conversation, but we know the answer, right,
Speaker 5: And it's not that it's true, but we know what
Speaker 5: the answer to that is.
Speaker 2: Just recently, at a golf tournament, you had Tiger Woods
Speaker 2: slide of tampon to another golfer as a way to
Speaker 2: say that that sho he just the drive, he just check.
Speaker 4: The on.
Speaker 2: Tiger Woods thought, oh, there's surely no cameras here at
Speaker 2: this televised golf tournament that will slide you a woman joke.
Speaker 2: I didn't mean to cut you off taking No, that's.
Speaker 5: That's that's a great example because this is done everywhere
Speaker 5: because like that six year old boy, right, what does
Speaker 5: he what does he leave that situation when that man
Speaker 5: he looks up to says, you have to throw her
Speaker 5: on it, you throw like a girl and girls still
Speaker 5: just fine?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: But does he leave that interaction thinking that girls are
Speaker 5: equal to him or less than him, less than And
Speaker 5: we're giving him those messages all day long, and Tiger
Speaker 5: continues to give those messages. So it's not just Tiger,
Speaker 5: it's all of us. That's our collective socialization, and that
Speaker 5: women on some level of the property of men. So
Speaker 5: if I'm in New York or LA or Chicago or
Speaker 5: Texas and I walk over to a man today who's
Speaker 5: hitting his wife for girlfriend, I say, knock it off.
Speaker 1: He says to me, shit, you wales though that's my
Speaker 1: business one way or another. And the other is around
Speaker 1: the objectification.
Speaker 5: Our boys are actually taught to objectify girls, and they're
Speaker 5: taught that by men in their life. They're taught that
Speaker 5: by messages they're getting in all different areas. Right, And
Speaker 5: it's not that we're doing things well, this is let
Speaker 5: me give a quick example, high school boy in your community,
Speaker 5: or in your community, Naobi, or anyone who's listening here,
Speaker 5: a great kid, seventeen year old kid who wants to
Speaker 5: take a young woman out to go to a movie.
Speaker 5: He's just taking her out, right, He takes her out
Speaker 5: to the movie. His name's John, her name is Keisha.
Speaker 5: He takes John, takes Keisha out, gets on the group
Speaker 5: text with a couple of his boys and says, hey, guys,
Speaker 5: I'm taking Keisha out to the movie. They give him
Speaker 5: a little crap for that, but he takes her, takes
Speaker 5: her back home, perfect gentleman. He gets it back on
Speaker 5: the group text and says, hey, guys, I'm back. Is
Speaker 5: the first thing in those boys good boys ask him
Speaker 5: is how with the movie no right? So where did
Speaker 5: they learn that from? So that's the manbox, that collective
Speaker 5: social that.
Speaker 1: Did you get? I guess did you get their grab
Speaker 1: my mood? Didn't she right? Because the only purpose to
Speaker 1: spend time with her is the conquest. That's what they're taught.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, Niobe, you've studied young boys friendships and how
Speaker 2: these relationships change as they get older. Can you tell
Speaker 2: us more about what you found in your research.
Speaker 4: So I've been listening to boys and young men since
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty seven, a long time, and I started off
Speaker 4: as a high school counselor listening to boys and thinking
Speaker 4: about surprise that what they were talking about was not
Speaker 4: was I what I expected. They were talking about their friendships,
Speaker 4: their desires for close friendships, their desires for intimate connection
Speaker 4: with other guys, and that led really to a lifetime
Speaker 4: of being fascinated by First of all, was this typical
Speaker 4: of a lot of boys? But secondly, why aren't we
Speaker 4: telling this story? And so what's interesting to me is
Speaker 4: that when you listen to young people, when you listen
Speaker 4: to boys, I would say, anywhere from your son's age
Speaker 4: all the way up to basically twenty four to twenty five,
Speaker 4: they tell something very different, and in terms of their socialization,
Speaker 4: especially when they're younger and they're less pressured to man up,
Speaker 4: which is that they want close friendships. You hear twelve
Speaker 4: thirteen fourteen year olds talking beautifully about their desire for friendships,
Speaker 4: their desire to really trust someone, to not be laughed at.
Speaker 4: That not being laughed at, by the way, is a
Speaker 4: big one. Being able to share something with or not
Speaker 4: laughed at that being able to trust them. And then
Speaker 4: as they get older, they basically the pressures to man
Speaker 4: up starts to happen and they start to disconnect from
Speaker 4: what they want. They start to sort of everything that
Speaker 4: becomes a joke, even though even though basically that they
Speaker 4: don't see it as a joke because they're looking for
Speaker 4: that connection. And right at the point where boys start
Speaker 4: to disconnect from their own desires for closeness, especially with
Speaker 4: other young men, you see the suicide rate goes up,
Speaker 4: You see all kinds of stuff. Mass violence happens right
Speaker 4: at that age between sixteen and twenty five, where men
Speaker 4: are being asked by the culture young men to basically disconnect.
Speaker 4: And this is the part I really want to say
Speaker 4: Roy on your show. This is a human desire. This
Speaker 4: is a human desire. It's not a girl thing. It's
Speaker 4: not a guy thing. It's not a gender identity thing,
Speaker 4: or a sexuality thing, a gay thing. It's a human
Speaker 4: desire to want to connect to other people deeply emotionally.
Speaker 4: And the only way we connect, Roy, this is the
Speaker 4: whole point and Ted, this is the whole part of
Speaker 4: Ted's work too. The only way we connect is that
Speaker 4: we're vulnerable, we're expressive, we share our feelings. We're also stoic, right, Ted,
Speaker 4: I mean in relationships you need to be able to
Speaker 4: be stoic, you need to be able to be soft.
Speaker 4: But we only value half of our half of ourselves,
Speaker 4: and especially for young men. So if we only have
Speaker 4: value the side of the hard side of ourselves and
Speaker 4: don't value the soft side, first of all, we're not
Speaker 4: gonna have relationships. We're not gonna have good relationships. Secondly,
Speaker 4: we're going to be in trouble. So if we raise
Speaker 4: kids to go against their humanity and go against their nature,
Speaker 4: which is to be loving human beings, and we raise
Speaker 4: them to go against that and to actually value this
Speaker 4: sort of only the hard side of themselves, that that's
Speaker 4: the man up part, then we shouldn't be surprised that
Speaker 4: a lot of them struggle when they get older and
Speaker 4: need therapy, right right, I mean that you know why
Speaker 4: do so many men need therapy in the first place?
Speaker 2: All of the causations that you've just laid out, is
Speaker 2: that part of why you think men are stuck in
Speaker 2: I think, as you've called it, a friendship recession in
Speaker 2: a way, because you can't be real with your friends.
Speaker 2: You can't be open in eyes for fear of being
Speaker 2: teased or being called a girl.
Speaker 1: Man, why you crying?
Speaker 4: Exactly? Everything that I'm saying comes directly from the mouths
Speaker 4: of boys. I mean, they will say things like, it
Speaker 4: might be nice to be a girl because then I
Speaker 4: wouldn't have to be emotionless. I mean, I just want
Speaker 4: adults listening to that to register that comment it might
Speaker 4: be nice to be a girl, because then I wouldn't
Speaker 4: have to be emotionless. We are asking human beings to
Speaker 4: be emotionless, and then we expect them to have healthy relationships.
Speaker 5: It is a human desire and that our boys, as
Speaker 5: Nao be said, start out with all of these things
Speaker 5: that they want to express, and actually when we allow
Speaker 5: space for them to talk about it, they're thirsty to
Speaker 5: talk about it. They really are, and so on men.
Speaker 5: By the way, Once we remove that, it's it's that
Speaker 5: there's a shaming of being vulnerable and talking about it.
Speaker 5: So we start teaching. We start teaching our boys not
Speaker 5: to experience those feelings. When we tell our boys to
Speaker 5: stop crying, then they don't they don't get to express
Speaker 5: what they're feeling. When we tell them to stop crying,
Speaker 5: we're also saying stop feeling, and so then they push
Speaker 5: that those emotions down and the only thing that's expressed
Speaker 5: with that's accepted is anger. Aggression, that's what's seen as
Speaker 5: an emotion that men can express. And lust you can
Speaker 5: express that as well. So those are the harmful things,
Speaker 5: and it directly ties to anxiety and depression and suicide.
Speaker 5: All of those things are tied to this. So the
Speaker 5: boys don't develop a language to express how they're feeling.
Speaker 5: So we become these men who also don't have that language,
Speaker 5: and so we don't no doubt to ask for help
Speaker 5: because when we tried to ask for help, that's spends
Speaker 5: seeing as a weakness or something that men don't do.
Speaker 2: How much of all of this that we've been laying out,
Speaker 2: because what's interesting about this whole discussion is that men
Speaker 2: are going through Hey show your emotions, Hey, women can
Speaker 2: do it too. Meanwhile, women are cooking on the feminism
Speaker 2: side of the game, and go on, we are girls, girls, strong,
Speaker 2: girl power, we gon march, we can do whatever we want.
Speaker 2: So it almost seems as if both sides are getting
Speaker 2: or having two different types of awakenings concurrently. That also
Speaker 2: kind of but hits. How much did the lack of
Speaker 2: women's rights in the thirties and the forties and the fifties,
Speaker 2: and even if you really want, because I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: put this solely on slavery, but I also want to
Speaker 2: put it in the context that for a long time
Speaker 2: in America, the man had to go do the work,
Speaker 2: and the woman was at the house and you was
Speaker 2: in the kitchen, and maybe the man felt that he
Speaker 2: could never share because no matter what the burden of
Speaker 2: providing was passed on, he has to do it. And
Speaker 2: then we got to a time where we didn't have
Speaker 2: to live like that anymore, but men were maybe subconsciously
Speaker 2: passing on that rhetoric to their next generation and then
Speaker 2: their next generation, and by the time we got to
Speaker 2: the nineties, the idea of what a man should be
Speaker 2: was molded by what a man had to be at
Speaker 2: that time, and we thought that that, Like someone said
Speaker 2: to me, something I thought was very profound, don't confuse
Speaker 2: the tact that you use to survive with the tactic
Speaker 2: you need to go on. How much does the history
Speaker 2: of gender dynamics play a role in a lot of
Speaker 2: these bad habits being passed down from generation to generation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So in a male dominated society, right, because that's
Speaker 5: what it is, and it's patriarchal society to male dominated society,
Speaker 5: and then you do have women who are seeking liberation
Speaker 5: because coming out of all of that, in the same
Speaker 5: way that in a white supremacy society you have people
Speaker 5: of color who are seeking liberation. Right, all of those
Speaker 5: things because these constructs exist, and there is an antiquated
Speaker 5: notion of manhood and masculinity that I think is so
Speaker 5: woven into the fabric of our society that when it's challenged,
Speaker 5: then sexism rears its ugly head right and seeks to
Speaker 5: put down what women have achieved or are doing in
Speaker 5: those kind of things, as if it's taking away from men.
Speaker 1: But it's not.
Speaker 5: It's not just this one pie and that everybody's pieces
Speaker 5: a little smaller. It's an expansion of a pie, right,
Speaker 5: It's much bigger than that.
Speaker 1: So this allows men right to really look.
Speaker 5: At our authentic selves too, that we don't just have
Speaker 5: to be this rigid notion of manhood. That there's so
Speaker 5: much more to you and to me and to the
Speaker 5: men who are listening. There's so much more to who
Speaker 5: we are that we can now embrace our full authentic selves.
Speaker 1: Also, because there's things.
Speaker 5: That you may have wanted to do or your son
Speaker 5: may want to do that the man box says, oh, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: you're not supposed to do that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: I have flowers in my picture all the time when
Speaker 5: I'm on zoom.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: It took me years to accept that, Oh, I can
Speaker 5: go buy flowers because I like flowers in the house.
Speaker 1: I don't have to bring them to a woman to
Speaker 1: have flowers in the house, or to my wife to
Speaker 1: have flowers in the house.
Speaker 5: That actually, I'm the one who likes the color. I'm
Speaker 5: the one who likes the smell of the flowers. And
Speaker 5: it took me. It took me a while to really
Speaker 5: accept that. Now that's my authentic self. I love flowers.
Speaker 5: So now I'll go to the floorers and I pick
Speaker 5: out what I want. They say, do you want me
Speaker 5: to do it? Put in a vas for you, mister bunch. No,
Speaker 5: I want to take them home and arrange them, because
Speaker 5: you know what, Roy and Aobi, I like flowers. So
Speaker 5: there's so much that we're missing as men that these
Speaker 5: rigid noses of manhood patriarchy harms all of us. It
Speaker 5: really does. There's lots of wonderful things about being a man.
Speaker 5: I don't want to not be a man. I don't
Speaker 5: want to not be a father. And this is not
Speaker 5: an indictment on manhood. Actually, it's an invitation of man.
Speaker 5: It's not about calling men out for wrong behavior. It's
Speaker 5: about calling men in to a healthy, respectful manhood.
Speaker 4: So what boys have taught me is that we've split right,
Speaker 4: our culture, our modern culture, I call it boy culture,
Speaker 4: but it's called we call our modern culture has split
Speaker 4: us into thinking that thinking is masculine and feeling is feminine.
Speaker 4: Herd is masculine and feminine.
Speaker 2: Right, you get where I'm going, right, Get where I'm gowk?
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, you get what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Masculine, feminine. Right.
Speaker 2: That sounds like every argument I've had with everybody I've
Speaker 2: dated in my life.
Speaker 1: Goodness gracious.
Speaker 4: If you live in a culture that says, basically independence,
Speaker 4: thinking the self stoicism is masculine, and vulnerability, emotions, sensitivity
Speaker 4: is feminine, you're going to be messed up because ultimately
Speaker 4: you are half hard and half soft as a human.
Speaker 4: And again, I'm not doing the human thing because it's
Speaker 4: my own you know, ideology. I'm doing it really because
Speaker 4: that's what the boys are yelling at us about. Like
Speaker 4: they are. They're saying exactly what you just said, Ted,
Speaker 4: They're saying, I am actually half what you call feminine.
Speaker 4: I am vulnerable, I am sensitive, I'm emotionally intelligent. I
Speaker 4: like flowers or I don't like you know, whatever it is,
Speaker 4: but things that have been associated with femininity, and you're
Speaker 4: trying to push that down in me. And that's how
Speaker 4: I actually build relationships and friendships. So like, what's your problem?
Speaker 4: And I feel like young people, honestly, Roy, have been
Speaker 4: yelling at adults for almost a century and saying what
Speaker 4: is wrong with you people? You know that basically we
Speaker 4: get it. Young people get it. Ted. You know that
Speaker 4: young people get it all the time. And so I
Speaker 4: think when it comes to the women's issues, this is
Speaker 4: what I think, Roy. I think that women, obviously, and
Speaker 4: I definitely identify as a feminist and I'm definitely part
Speaker 4: of the feminist movement. Women are angry because for lots
Speaker 4: of different justified reasons. So you know, I'm not diminishing
Speaker 4: that in any way, but the reality is that we
Speaker 4: keep on seeing the symptom as the problem. So we
Speaker 4: keep on thinking that it's basically from women's from a
Speaker 4: feminist perspective, we keep on thinking, well, it's men's problems,
Speaker 4: so if you fix men, then the problems should go away.
Speaker 4: But it's all of our problems. Roy it's the culture
Speaker 4: that we have all created with obviously, this hierarchy that
Speaker 4: some men have been more influential than other men. You know,
Speaker 4: you're talking about white supremacy, et cetera, et cetera, and
Speaker 4: some you know, and some women have been more powerful
Speaker 4: than other women. But basically we have a creative society
Speaker 4: that doesn't make any sense where we've gendered basic human qualities.
Speaker 4: So then that means is that women are getting mad
Speaker 4: at men when we really what we should be doing
Speaker 4: is trying to change the culture. And the more we
Speaker 4: sort of blame it on men, actually the more men
Speaker 4: just feel attacked. I've heard that a lot, you know,
Speaker 4: the men just feel attacked when we have to see
Speaker 4: it as a collective problem.
Speaker 2: Before we go to the break, I want to I
Speaker 2: want to delve in for a second with you iov
Speaker 2: about your work that you did where you essentially walked
Speaker 2: me through this. You had one hundred and fifty boys
Speaker 2: ages thirteen to eighteen.
Speaker 4: Well, I followed them over over four years. So I
Speaker 4: followed them, Yeah, I from twelve to thirteen and follow
Speaker 4: them over four to five years.
Speaker 2: Okay, how did you measure intimacy and see it slowly
Speaker 2: start to dissipate in their relationships with other boys at
Speaker 2: the same age, because you were essentially looking to see
Speaker 2: how they related and how they spoke to other boys.
Speaker 2: And when did the dissipation of feeling and turning into
Speaker 2: creatures of action when that started happening.
Speaker 4: When you listen to twelve year old boys, they will
Speaker 4: use the language of love. They will talk given a
Speaker 4: safe space, right, not getting a safe space, they won't
Speaker 4: do it. When they talk about their friends, they say
Speaker 4: I love him, I can't live without him, or I
Speaker 4: want to find a friend that I could really rely
Speaker 4: on and not be you know, and be myself and
Speaker 4: be a real self. So the language, it's right there
Speaker 4: in the language. It's literally they're talking love. They're asking
Speaker 4: questions about love. They're thinking about love, both heterosexual love,
Speaker 4: romantic love, platonic love, all sorts of love. They're wanting,
Speaker 4: they're having questions about it, and it given a safe space,
Speaker 4: they actually ask it. Then as they get a bit older,
Speaker 4: it's incredible because remember it's the same kids. So it's
Speaker 4: the same kids. Over time, you start to hear this,
Speaker 4: I don't care ted you know this language, I don't
Speaker 4: care whatever. It's all good. It's all good, you know, like, no,
Speaker 4: I don't have you know, I don't connect to someone
Speaker 4: that much anymore, but it's all good. You know, that
Speaker 4: whole pressure to sort of sound like you're totally and vulnerable.
Speaker 4: So you hear in the language, and then you also
Speaker 4: hear the anger, You hear the sadness, and then sometimes
Speaker 4: in the worst case scenarios, you hear the depression and
Speaker 4: the sense of feeling totally isolated and not knowing what
Speaker 4: to do about it, and a lot of anger at
Speaker 4: why is not anybody paying attention? Why is not anybody
Speaker 4: paying attention to these basic human needs? And everybody's calling me?
Speaker 4: You know, in some cases mass shooters, I've read the
Speaker 4: mass shooter manifestos, it's the same thing. They feel like
Speaker 4: nobody's paying attention to their suffering.
Speaker 2: Right there, I want to take a break, and I
Speaker 2: want to come back and jump more into that, and
Speaker 2: this is beyond the scenes, will be right back they
Speaker 2: will be before the break. We were just talking about
Speaker 2: how men feel like they don't have a way to
Speaker 2: express their feelings without being criticized or compared to being
Speaker 2: a woman or having their feelings not be received properly,
Speaker 2: and so as a result, it can bubble up in
Speaker 2: a number of different ways. Now, this study that you
Speaker 2: conducted with a number of boys over the course of
Speaker 2: four or five years in their teenage years, you're seeing
Speaker 2: that a lot of the conversation in verbiage as they
Speaker 2: became more emotionally disconnected, was similar to some of the
Speaker 2: verbias that you've seen in some of the mass shoot
Speaker 2: of manifestos. What are some of the other ways that
Speaker 2: this type of you know, and I don't want to
Speaker 2: say dysfunction, but the absence of vulnerable that's not a word,
Speaker 2: you knew what I was trying to say, Just Dan.
Speaker 1: Don't laugh.
Speaker 2: Vulnerability the lack of stop laughing, ted, I see, how
Speaker 2: does the lack of the inability to be vulnerable?
Speaker 1: There? I did it?
Speaker 2: What are some other negative ways that it manifests itself?
Speaker 1: It can show up in a lot of ways.
Speaker 5: It can show it outwardly, right, because these are hurt
Speaker 5: kids and it can show it outwardly where they're hurting
Speaker 5: other kids, maybe it's bullying or gun violence, all of
Speaker 5: these other things where they're trying to establish some sort
Speaker 5: of power, some sort of affirmation. And when we talk
Speaker 5: about the emotional disconnection that NAO be brought up and
Speaker 5: then you leaned into a little bit there, roy, I
Speaker 5: do want to say this that those emotions when they
Speaker 5: stop from that first year of the research to the
Speaker 5: last year of the research where they're not vulnerable, where
Speaker 5: they're not looking for that connection, or at least admitting
Speaker 5: they're not. They're looking for it, they're not admitting it
Speaker 5: is because they're becoming more and more indoctrinated.
Speaker 1: In the man box.
Speaker 5: And the glue that keeps that man box together is homophobia.
Speaker 5: Yeah right, So in other words that yeah, so that
Speaker 5: when they start saying that there's an emotional connection other
Speaker 5: boys or men in their life even or even women
Speaker 5: in their life, because we're all social, we're all swimming
Speaker 5: in the same water, right ye are saying oh no,
Speaker 5: you don't don't say that, you don't do that, they
Speaker 5: push them back into the manbox because that glue, that
Speaker 5: homophobia is the glue that keeps that man box together.
Speaker 5: It doesn't work without it, right, it doesn't work without it.
Speaker 5: So they're punished when they show their emotions. They're punished
Speaker 5: when they're vulnerable because it's seen as weakness. So they're
Speaker 5: really being taught that, okay, I can't it's not safe
Speaker 5: for me to talk about it. It's not safe for
Speaker 5: me to hug my friend and say, hey, man, you
Speaker 5: know what, I really do love you, you know, and
Speaker 5: I'm glad you're in my life. And then they're saying
Speaker 5: things like you know, things that I don't even want
Speaker 5: to say it, right, yeah, they push them back into
Speaker 5: the manbox.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, yeah, they say things I know, homo. So
Speaker 4: my my, my, and my interviews you get things directly.
Speaker 2: Which to define just real quick for I listen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: when you say no, homo, it's like a man, I
Speaker 2: love you, no homo, as if to say I love you,
Speaker 2: but not in a gay way, which assumes that love
Speaker 2: means intimacy.
Speaker 1: And exactly well between men and boys, it does. We
Speaker 1: don't say it. They don't say it when they talk
Speaker 1: to a girl.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, so it really is there's homophobia within that, right, yes,
Speaker 5: it's so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if we didn't live in a homophobic society. No
Speaker 4: homo actually wouldn't necessarily be homophobic, but because we because
Speaker 4: we right, so so the idea, right, the idea don't
Speaker 4: be such a girl or no homo is misogynistic and
Speaker 4: homophobic because we live in a homophobic, misogynist society. So
Speaker 4: it's it's but I think I really like that image
Speaker 4: that I'm going to use it again too and quote you.
Speaker 4: Of course, is the glue. It's the glue. It's it
Speaker 4: forces young men to actually adhere because there are consequences
Speaker 4: if you don't, and the consequences I hear about in
Speaker 4: older men and I mean older teenagers sorry all the time,
Speaker 4: the consequences of being teased, pushed around, if you don't
Speaker 4: play sports, if you don't man up, if you don't
Speaker 4: do things that make you look straight. And this is
Speaker 4: the thing roy in our culture right now, it's okay
Speaker 4: according to the kids in New York City right now,
Speaker 4: it's okay if you have an aunt who's gay, you
Speaker 4: have an uncle who's gay, maybe you even have a
Speaker 4: you know, a brother who's gay. But I'm not gay.
Speaker 4: So there's this weird sort of almost backlash going on
Speaker 4: that like it's cool. It's cool that, you know, you
Speaker 4: if people do that, people love each other. But don't
Speaker 4: think I'm gay. Yeah, let me clarify, don't put that.
Speaker 4: What I mean. So, the men who are the least
Speaker 4: secure of their masculinity are oftentimes the most likely to
Speaker 4: adhere to masculinity. So, you know, the oftentimes you get athletes,
Speaker 4: for example Roy, really well known athletes who are actually
Speaker 4: breaking the gender boarders all the time, you know, hugging
Speaker 4: each other, kissing each other because they don't have to
Speaker 4: prove their manhood because everybody else slaps on the exactly
Speaker 4: exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: Ying is allowed that the Super Bowl, you lose, the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl crime.
Speaker 4: Crime exactly exactly exactly. You see some of the most
Speaker 4: tender things between well known athletes. And so it's just
Speaker 4: interesting to me to think about the homophobia drives and
Speaker 4: that's part of the culture. I mean, come on, I
Speaker 4: just it's stunning to me that we still think in
Speaker 4: a culture we still raise our kids Roy that thinking
Speaker 4: that thinking is masculine and straight of course, and feeling
Speaker 4: is feminine and and gay because obviously femininity is linked
Speaker 4: with being gay in a homophobic world.
Speaker 5: I also like that thinking is masculine feeling is feminine,
Speaker 5: and that when women.
Speaker 4: Think exactly exactly.
Speaker 5: When women right, When women exactly and show their intelligence
Speaker 5: and all those things, men say things like, yeah, well
Speaker 5: she need to be in the kitchen or she you know,
Speaker 5: they're doing things that that that diminished that right exactly
Speaker 5: because it challenges again this patriarchal notion of male dominance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when we talk about that as parents. So last
Speaker 2: year I had the pleasure of going on Finding your
Speaker 2: Roots with the wonderful doctor Henry Lewis Gates. And amongst
Speaker 2: all the things that I found out about my family tree,
Speaker 2: I knew that I did not have when I was born,
Speaker 2: I had one living grandparent. What I did not know
Speaker 2: before that television show was that my father lost his
Speaker 2: father when he was four and from that time on
Speaker 2: there was no male head of household per census data
Speaker 2: every eight years. That was done when my father was
Speaker 2: living with his mother, you know, well into adulthood. So
Speaker 2: as far as I know, there was never another man
Speaker 2: of the house in my dad's life, and so it
Speaker 2: really reconstituted a lot of how I viewed how he
Speaker 2: raised me. And so there was one thing that always
Speaker 2: came up with that, I'll getting into like this isn't
Speaker 2: me like unearthen family trauma and drama or anything like that.
Speaker 2: But I just know that one thing my dad would
Speaker 2: always say whenever he was losing an argument with my
Speaker 2: mama was I pay the bills. Because my mom was
Speaker 2: pouring all of her money into grad school and second
Speaker 2: degrees and third degrees and law degrees.
Speaker 1: You ain't run the house, you know. You know, we
Speaker 1: get to when we lose the argument. We started bringing
Speaker 1: up for seeds.
Speaker 2: But what I didn't realize until I became a father
Speaker 2: myself was that was the first thing that I defined
Speaker 2: as manhood was my ability to provide and clothe and feed.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't about feeling and connecting with my son.
Speaker 2: I knew that was important, but it was not what
Speaker 2: I prioritized because the idea of paying the cost to
Speaker 2: be So the example you get is the example you see.
Speaker 2: There was no book, There was no doctor SEUs for this.
Speaker 2: There was no beasting bad about fatherhood. So you know,
Speaker 2: how do how do fathers provide you know, a model
Speaker 2: not only to their sons but to their daughters about
Speaker 2: what they need from a man when they go out
Speaker 2: and start dating, Like, how can we as parents, especially
Speaker 2: as fathers, set a better example and roadmap to what
Speaker 2: masculinity looks like. Because I feel like the issue that
Speaker 2: I'm dealing with as a as a forty four year
Speaker 2: old man, I can say that the issue I'm dealing
Speaker 2: with is trying to relearn something while also teaching it
Speaker 2: to someone at the same time.
Speaker 5: So, your father, with the belief that I'm the provider,
Speaker 5: I pay the bills all the things, those things are important.
Speaker 1: Being a provider paying the bill are.
Speaker 5: Very important, and that's an important thing and so but
Speaker 5: whatever the woman in the household does, right, your mom working,
Speaker 5: somebody's taking care of children to whatever she's doing is
Speaker 5: also just as important.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: So the problem is that are again women have less
Speaker 5: value than men and boys. So whatever men are doing
Speaker 5: is always elevated. Our default setting is to give men
Speaker 5: the benefit of the doubt. Our default setting is to
Speaker 5: elevate what men do over what women do. So what women, Oh,
Speaker 5: she stays home and takes care of the kids. Have
Speaker 5: you stayed home to take care of the kids.
Speaker 1: You run back to your job.
Speaker 5: That's work, right, So it isn't like that's not work,
Speaker 5: but it's.
Speaker 1: Not valued because women do it, and honestly, when men
Speaker 1: do do it, it is valued.
Speaker 5: Oh what a great dad, He's doing all of those
Speaker 5: things right when women are juggling this all day long
Speaker 5: work and home and their relationship with their spouse as well.
Speaker 5: So we often put much more value on what men
Speaker 5: do and not on what women do. And that's that's
Speaker 5: really the way it plays out. Which is which is
Speaker 5: which is harmful and it's disrespectful.
Speaker 4: And I want to add something one other division that
Speaker 4: we do. We don't listen to young people. So we
Speaker 4: think we know, we think we know how it is,
Speaker 4: we think we know how we should do it. And
Speaker 4: if you actually listen to five year olds up until
Speaker 4: as I said, up until whatever in the twenties, they
Speaker 4: tell you a story about who we are as human,
Speaker 4: what gets in the way, and how to solve it.
Speaker 4: A five year old boy says to his mom who
Speaker 4: comes into the kitchen of the mom's going through a divorce.
Speaker 4: The mom doesn't want to have a sad face a
Speaker 4: sad home, so the boy says to his mom. Within
Speaker 4: a split second, seeing his mom with a big happy
Speaker 4: smile on her face, he says, Mom, Mommy, why are
Speaker 4: you smiling when you're feeling sad. And what that five
Speaker 4: year old is showing is he can he's or he
Speaker 4: is asking why are you faking in emotion? That's a
Speaker 4: deep feeling. That's a deep feeling. Another five year old
Speaker 4: boy said to his mom, Mommy, are you yelling at
Speaker 4: me because your mommy yelled at you? I mean, think
Speaker 4: about how genius we come out into the world as
Speaker 4: humans with that natural intelligence, and then what happens is
Speaker 4: we grow up and we become less intelligent. And I'm
Speaker 4: not just being snarky when I say that we really
Speaker 4: do become less intelligent. We become more cowed over by
Speaker 4: our cultural norms, and we don't listen to our heart,
Speaker 4: we don't listen to our minds. We start believing in
Speaker 4: things that we know are not true. My daughter asked
Speaker 4: me that at eight, why do we believe in things
Speaker 4: we know aren't true? You know, and we start believing
Speaker 4: in things about ourselves because seven year old boys were
Speaker 4: I promise you they know this stuff we're talking about
Speaker 4: right now. They don't even be taught this stuff.
Speaker 2: What role does society play, especially in black and brown fathers,
Speaker 2: you know, dealing with all of these extra cultural pressures
Speaker 2: when they're outside the home and being able to or
Speaker 2: not being able to partition those stresses and bringing that
Speaker 2: into the house because I'm sure to some degree my
Speaker 2: dad not to some degree, my dad dealt with a
Speaker 2: lot of racism because that was his calling journalistically. So
Speaker 2: you get a nice full day white folks yelling at
Speaker 2: you at a couple of protests, and you come home, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you might be a little bit more on edge, and
Speaker 2: you probably are also a little bit more disconnected with
Speaker 2: your child because you're still processing your own stuff that's
Speaker 2: going on out there in the real world.
Speaker 1: How does mental.
Speaker 2: Health play a role in men sometimes misplaying the role
Speaker 2: of father?
Speaker 5: Fortunately, mental health, talking about mental health, accepting mental health
Speaker 5: is becoming more and more acceptable among men. And it's
Speaker 5: really because men who have an influencing platform, people like yourself, Roy,
Speaker 5: who can talk about mental health being important. Other men
Speaker 5: are listening to that and saying that, oh, okay, so
Speaker 5: you know, maybe it's not about weakness. Maybe I do
Speaker 5: need to do that because we know on some level
Speaker 5: that this isn't working for us either, right, men know that.
Speaker 5: But when we talk about again the construct of racism
Speaker 5: that so we have men who living in this man
Speaker 5: box and distressors around that not asking for help, so
Speaker 5: we don't go to the doctor when we need to,
Speaker 5: We don't ask for help when we need to. All
Speaker 5: these other things, anxiety and depression are really off. The
Speaker 5: charge suicide is about three and a half times higher
Speaker 5: among men than among women. Men are living only about
Speaker 5: six years five and six years less than women for
Speaker 5: all of these things, including not getting medical checkups for prevention.
Speaker 5: But we go in more for intervention all of those things.
Speaker 5: But then when you have the issue of black men
Speaker 5: and men of color, the trauma, as you said, of
Speaker 5: just dealing and walking around every day a racist society
Speaker 5: is a very traumatic thing, so much so that we
Speaker 5: do it so much that we it's kind of like
Speaker 5: we don't even pay attention to it anymore until it's extreme,
Speaker 5: like you know, some like George Floyd or something.
Speaker 1: But we're dealing with these traumas all the time, and.
Speaker 5: Our boys are too, right, the boys are also, so
Speaker 5: they have to have a place to be able to
Speaker 5: talk about that, to debrief about it, to see that
Speaker 5: it's not about them, that it's not that anything wrong
Speaker 5: with them. It's actually the opposite that they're that they're
Speaker 5: good and that they're worthy and that they are enough,
Speaker 5: but they're not getting these messages. So we need to
Speaker 5: lean in, especially for our boys and for our black men.
Speaker 5: But again because of this, they need to prove that
Speaker 5: yourself in this man box. And black men haven't really
Speaker 5: had the opportunity in the same that white same way
Speaker 5: that white men have, right, because white men can do it,
Speaker 5: and so black men can do it. You know, you'll
Speaker 5: see it more in sports, entertainment, music, that kind of
Speaker 5: thing where you'll see many more images of black men
Speaker 5: who are really successful, where white men get to play
Speaker 5: out this power and control thing in all areas. Right,
Speaker 5: So it can be exaggerated also, but it also can
Speaker 5: be something where it's really harmful for us because it
Speaker 5: limits us so much as black men. It really is
Speaker 5: a limiting thing, but it's also a way of protecting ourselves.
Speaker 2: I Naobi, I want to direct a question to you,
Speaker 2: and Ted, feel free to jump in. I'm gonna paint
Speaker 2: you the scenario. Yeah, and you tell me what the
Speaker 2: hell I should have said to this child? Okay, So
Speaker 2: I take my boy to a kid's birthday party and
Speaker 2: like a five year old just turns to me and
Speaker 2: we're just watching.
Speaker 1: It's not my child, it's someone else's child.
Speaker 4: I don't know whose child.
Speaker 2: And he asked, with a straight face, why do men
Speaker 2: work harder than women?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just.
Speaker 2: And you know, you don't want to give the wrong
Speaker 2: answer and poisonous child. And then he takes it back
Speaker 2: to his family, goes and then yeah, telling those Daddy
Speaker 2: told me that me and oh, and I was like, hey,
Speaker 2: we all work hard and we have to look to
Speaker 2: make sure that the work that we see the work.
Speaker 2: Just because you don't see the work doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: the work isn't happening. And I just kind of ate
Speaker 2: my pizza and drifted away from this child. Before you
Speaker 2: ask more deeper philosophical questions, what role does media play
Speaker 2: in influencing the perceptions of you know, what it means
Speaker 2: means to be a man, what fatherhood means. You know,
Speaker 2: there's the type of content that we're exposing our children
Speaker 2: to also kind of perpetuate those roles just a little
Speaker 2: bit absol.
Speaker 1: As I became more.
Speaker 2: Conscious of gender equity within the home, Like there was
Speaker 2: a show as a pepper pig, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: let me make sure Mama Pig out there doing some
Speaker 2: stuff too, and then it ain't just Daddy Pig coming
Speaker 2: in the house with a briefcase.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I had to run every show through a filter.
Speaker 2: But what role does media play in a lot of this?
Speaker 4: Okay, So first I want to ask I want to
Speaker 4: give you some support for how you responded to that point.
Speaker 4: But I do think that when people say things that
Speaker 4: make as if what we're trying to fight against real,
Speaker 4: like men work harder, men are more human than other people,
Speaker 4: or men are smarter or whatever, it is the best
Speaker 4: way to deal with that, whether it's little kids or
Speaker 4: your colleagues, roy is to ask questions about it. So
Speaker 4: tell me about why you think they work harder. So
Speaker 4: what's the example? And then the idea is to say, okay,
Speaker 4: so tell me about what your mom does, like, tell
Speaker 4: me what right, so that you're engaging the conversation, because ultimately,
Speaker 4: what I learned from working with college students is if
Speaker 4: you say you're wrong that you know it never works.
Speaker 4: So I basically try to figure out what is the
Speaker 4: mindset that's making them think that, and then all of
Speaker 4: a sudden, introducing like, let's think about what women do
Speaker 4: let's look go into what your mom does you know
Speaker 4: and so that they can begin to recognize it without
Speaker 4: being told they're wrong. And I think media, of course
Speaker 4: reinforces I mean, it reinforces this incoherent, immoral, amorl story.
Speaker 4: We tell about ourselves that there's some humans that are
Speaker 4: more human than others, there's some human qualities that are
Speaker 4: more valuable than other human qualities, and we repeat that story.
Speaker 4: So media just reinforces it. And I don't care what
Speaker 4: kind of media it reinforces it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 4: Obviously shows like this are critical because this allows us
Speaker 4: to disrupt those narratives. So I don't want to make
Speaker 4: media all blankets, but obviously it does. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: we are living right now in an immoral, a moral,
Speaker 4: immature culture, and we got to disrupt it with these
Speaker 4: kind of conversations.
Speaker 2: On the other side of the break, we're going to
Speaker 2: talk solutions. And I want to know how hopeful you
Speaker 2: all are for this next generation of men coming down.
Speaker 2: How hopeful are you from a six year old, I
Speaker 2: want to know. I want to hear it straight out
Speaker 2: your mouth. This is behind the scenes. We'll be right
Speaker 2: back beyond the scenes. We are around in third and
Speaker 2: headed for home. It's been a wonderful, wonderful discussion here.
Speaker 2: How can somebody prioritize their mental health? And if you
Speaker 2: are a man that is in a friendship recession. Now
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about teenagers. We're talking about grown men.
Speaker 2: What tools can men take to build and deepen and
Speaker 2: strengthen the connections that they already.
Speaker 4: Have normalize it. When I'm in classes, I will get
Speaker 4: a switch within four seconds. I'm not exaggerating. Boys will
Speaker 4: tell I will read a quote for twelve year old
Speaker 4: boys that says something soft, you know, I love him
Speaker 4: so much from my book Deep Secrets. They will start
Speaker 4: cracking up. I'll say, why are you laughing? They'll say,
Speaker 4: the dude sounds gay, and I'll say, well, I didn't
Speaker 4: look at his sexuality. I'm just telling you that eighty
Speaker 4: percent of boys sound like that at some point in
Speaker 4: their teenage years. And they will say inevitably, for real,
Speaker 4: And I'll say, oh, yeah, for real, that's really what
Speaker 4: what teenage boys say. And guess what happens roy within force.
Speaker 4: I'm not kidding. They will immediately start talking about their
Speaker 4: own friendships, their desire for friendships. All they need is
Speaker 4: the permission to feel and the permission to ask. And
Speaker 4: once they know it's normal that they want friendships that
Speaker 4: they then they can. Then they know how to do
Speaker 4: it. It's natural. I wish the world could hear that the
Speaker 4: questions that twelve year old boys ask when given a
Speaker 4: safe space, because they are geniuses. They're geniuses in terms
Speaker 4: of understanding how love works, how relationships works, how humans work,
Speaker 4: and so I just they normalize it and then in
Speaker 4: their homes and teachers and bosses, you just got to
Speaker 4: make it normal so that you create spaces where friendships
Speaker 4: are valued. Teachers, put don't separate out kids that are friends,
Speaker 4: put them together. Put them together and then talk about
Speaker 4: how they can help each other learn the material that
Speaker 4: they learn it better with each other than by themselves.
Speaker 4: So don't do that thing. And we're going to separate
Speaker 4: you because you guys are friends. It's like no, no,
Speaker 4: Actually use that relationship to learn. There's a beautiful study
Speaker 4: at UVA that shows has been replicated. The subject of
Speaker 4: the research stands in front of a hill and has
Speaker 4: to estimate the steepness of the hill with a backpack
Speaker 4: on their back. Okay, it's an experiment, a research experiment.
Speaker 4: They're standing next to a best friend in one condition,
Speaker 4: standing there a stranger in another condition by themselves or
Speaker 4: with someone they know who they don't know very well. Okay,
Speaker 4: so in each condition they have to estimate the steepness.
Speaker 1: Of the hill.
Speaker 4: You got it right, Hm, Those that are standing next
Speaker 4: best friend see the hill as less deep. So what's
Speaker 4: incredible is that we actually see the world as less
Speaker 4: difficult when we're standing next to someone who loves us.
Speaker 4: We see that the math problem, the whatever you're doing
Speaker 4: is less difficult when you're next to someone who loves you.
Speaker 4: So use that in education, Use that in the workplace.
Speaker 4: Put people who are close together working on teams together.
Speaker 4: You see what I'm saying, So you disrupt the even
Speaker 4: at home, talk about friendships. We got to think as
Speaker 4: parents to say, tell me about, you know, thinking about
Speaker 4: our own friendships. Talk about with your kids. I don't
Speaker 4: share the intimacies of my own friendships, but I talk
Speaker 4: about when I feel get my feelings hurt with friends.
Speaker 4: I talk about how that made me feel bad when
Speaker 4: so and so didn't return my text and I wrote
Speaker 4: her three times that you didn't write back, and that
Speaker 4: made me feel bad and then I asked them for advice.
Speaker 4: They're teenagers, so I'll say what do you think I
Speaker 4: should do? What do you think I should say? And
Speaker 4: I see you do that with my son as well,
Speaker 4: by the way, and so they what the message they
Speaker 4: get for and this is this is normal, This is normal.
Speaker 4: This isn't some weird thing that you have to you know,
Speaker 4: you have to get special help for.
Speaker 5: You bring up a lot of great points and you know,
Speaker 5: and you're talking about your kids, and I'm a father also,
Speaker 5: they're between twenty one and thirty three now. But would
Speaker 5: it was not unusual at all for me to ask,
Speaker 5: especially my boys, on scale of one to ten, how
Speaker 5: do you feel today?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 5: Or to have those conversations that were informal conversations around
Speaker 5: how they're doing, and to really lean in and ask
Speaker 5: more and more questions. So that's really important to your question, Roy.
Speaker 5: For men, it's normalized that we're taught to not ask
Speaker 5: for help, to not need any more, pull yourself up
Speaker 5: by your bootstraps, all those kinds of things. And when
Speaker 5: we do spend time with each other, it might be
Speaker 5: around going and having a drink, or it might be
Speaker 5: around a sporting event or watching a game. That's where
Speaker 5: the bonding happens, right, And what we need to be
Speaker 5: able to do, And what's helpful is that we really
Speaker 5: lean into the strength and vulnerability, right, Like, I'm really
Speaker 5: going through something, right and I want to share that
Speaker 5: with you, and I don't. What men often say is okay, man,
Speaker 5: well you know it'll get better.
Speaker 1: Let's just move on.
Speaker 5: They don't really lean in and process in the same
Speaker 5: way that women are taught, honestly in our society to
Speaker 5: use more language and ask more questions, right, Because I'm
Speaker 5: sure I'm sure your wife asks more questions about what
Speaker 5: you're feeling that you might ask her. You just want
Speaker 5: to know you're okay, good, okay now to talk about
Speaker 5: anything else, right, So.
Speaker 2: You don't ask enough questions. Therefore you don't care. It's
Speaker 2: like I do care. I pay the bills. Don't you
Speaker 2: see this fee? This warm heat in this house?
Speaker 5: We absolutely care, but we're not comfortable asking those questions
Speaker 5: because we've been told you don't go into that emotional space.
Speaker 1: You stay away from that emotional space so much.
Speaker 5: So that even when we go to and thinking about
Speaker 5: your listeners, I bet if there's a woman listening to
Speaker 5: the podcast there's a man in her life, her brother,
Speaker 5: her father, Mancy's dating her husband who's going to the
Speaker 5: she gonna make sure she goes with him.
Speaker 1: Why because he's not going to ask the questions that
Speaker 1: he needs to ask.
Speaker 5: Because even that, for us is vulnerability, right, Even that
Speaker 5: for us it is like, oh, I don't know, I
Speaker 5: just want to get in and out.
Speaker 1: You go to doctor, yes, but you ask them about
Speaker 1: this well? Truth? Right?
Speaker 5: So vulnerability is a strength, it really is. And honestly,
Speaker 5: when men become vulnerable, they're respected for that because other
Speaker 5: men see that, Wow, that was vulnerable, and that's his strength.
Speaker 1: So it isn't something we need to run away from.
Speaker 5: And that's going to give us a better sense of
Speaker 5: well being, a better sense of mental health, to really
Speaker 5: have health mentally and to be able to support everyone
Speaker 5: else along the way. And it's going to really make
Speaker 5: us feel better too, and it's modeling it for our
Speaker 5: children as well.
Speaker 2: How does therapy play a role in this? Men are
Speaker 2: half the country, We are eighty percent of the suicides
Speaker 2: according to the CDC. Where does therapy of any kind
Speaker 2: help with anything that you all have just been talking about.
Speaker 4: I want to say something that's very specific to me
Speaker 4: being a woman, and I hear this from other women friends.
Speaker 4: So therapy is huge because it allows the space. And
Speaker 4: this is what happens Roy in between heterosexual relationships almost
Speaker 4: always is women feel I'm going to now be the
Speaker 4: voice of all women across the world, Roy, are you ready?
Speaker 4: So basically that we are a burdened with the care
Speaker 4: of our children and the care of our husband, and
Speaker 4: now with this new emotional awakening of men, we now
Speaker 4: have to be the therapist for our husbands as well
Speaker 4: and our partners, and there's a lot of anger about that, like,
Speaker 4: we can't be the therapist, we can't be the caretaker
Speaker 4: of the therapist that everything you know for our husbands.
Speaker 4: And then the dynamic I see in my friends. I
Speaker 4: do not do research on this, but I see it
Speaker 4: in my community is resentment. Is that the woman doesn't
Speaker 4: have time to be the therapist to her husband. He
Speaker 4: wants her to because he feels safe talking to her.
Speaker 4: So I would say, therapy, that's not your wife, it's
Speaker 4: not your partner, that's not your romantic partner. Whatever it is.
Speaker 4: It could be a friend, could be a friend, but
Speaker 4: a professional who really knows basically how to make you
Speaker 4: reconnect with your own humanity. So I would very much
Speaker 4: encourage therapy, especially in terms of understanding that you need
Speaker 4: multiple people to support you. This whole notion that we
Speaker 4: could rely on one person in our life, you know,
Speaker 4: our spouse or our partner to be the end all
Speaker 4: be all is getting in the way. It's getting in
Speaker 4: the way. We need multiple people. We need our moms,
Speaker 4: our grandmas, our aunts, our uncles, our therapists, our best friend,
Speaker 4: our partner, we need we need a community to build,
Speaker 4: you know, to make us fully human and so that
Speaker 4: we act like humans. And we're still stuck in this model, Ted,
Speaker 4: you know this, We're still stuck. We put all our
Speaker 4: emotional eggs into one romantic basket and then expect us
Speaker 4: to be happy with this one person, and that's just
Speaker 4: not real.
Speaker 5: Therapy is very important and we don't need to even
Speaker 5: call it that. When I encourage men to get therapy,
Speaker 5: I'll say, man, you just need you need a sounding board,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. You need somebody who can
Speaker 5: share objectively what they might think not you know, it's
Speaker 5: great to have a friend, but we're not always objective,
Speaker 5: and we kind of want things to get better for
Speaker 5: you and it me. It may not require us leaning
Speaker 5: in to really ask more questions that really get to
Speaker 5: a real solution that's meaningful, that's more meaningful. So really
Speaker 5: encouraging therapy for men. I encourage therapy for men. I've
Speaker 5: been in and out of therapy for different things throughout
Speaker 5: my life. My children know that my children have also
Speaker 5: engaged in therapy at some point in their life because
Speaker 5: it's not something to run away from.
Speaker 1: It's actually they needed a sounding board too. And I
Speaker 1: would say even just.
Speaker 5: Go to share any frustrations you have about me or
Speaker 5: your mom, like, just go to start talking about things
Speaker 5: where you can share some things that you may not
Speaker 5: feel totally comfortable sharing with us at this point. So
Speaker 5: therapy is essential. It will prevent depression. The anxiety among
Speaker 5: manager is off the charge. As you said, suicide is
Speaker 5: really three and a half times higher than women and
Speaker 5: eighty percent of suicide, I believe you mentioned for the CDC.
Speaker 5: So there's something that's not right, that's not working for
Speaker 5: us as man. So this is the fix. So with
Speaker 5: all of that being said, let's end it here. We've
Speaker 5: already kind of unpacked ways that we can try and
Speaker 5: change the culture. What hope and optimism do you have
Speaker 5: for the future of manhood?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a lot of hope. Yeah. Ahead, it
Speaker 1: looks like you're not finished. Really well. You know, we
Speaker 1: gonna see how this will grow up.
Speaker 2: You know, you got to understand my sample size is one, y'all,
Speaker 2: the one studying one hundred and fifty people and writing books.
Speaker 1: I'm not writing books. I'm just raising one. He seems
Speaker 1: to be doing good so far.
Speaker 2: He's definitely in tune with his emotions and expressive about it,
Speaker 2: way more so than I was at the same mile marker.
Speaker 1: And that's what we need to allow, right.
Speaker 5: We really need to allow our children like your son
Speaker 5: to embrace and express his full range of emotions.
Speaker 1: And we need to do that too.
Speaker 5: When he's going through fear, we can say, you know,
Speaker 5: I feel afraid too, and this is what I do,
Speaker 5: and I want to work through that fear because on
Speaker 5: the other side, no matter how it turns out, it's
Speaker 5: always good that I've worked through that fear. So we're
Speaker 5: not saying don't push our children to confront things even
Speaker 5: if they're difficult.
Speaker 1: We want them to, but we.
Speaker 5: Don't want them you know, we don't want to motivate
Speaker 5: them by denigrating them or using girls or women or
Speaker 5: others to say, don't be like that or don't be
Speaker 5: like this.
Speaker 1: Right, those are the kind of things that we really
Speaker 1: want to do.
Speaker 5: We want to help them express through their language what's
Speaker 5: going on. So I have a lot of optimism about men,
Speaker 5: about manhood. I think that we've reached a point where
Speaker 5: it's clearly not working and we know that, and so
Speaker 5: now it's just a matter of time of how do
Speaker 5: we need to purge what needs to happen so that
Speaker 5: we can start talking in real ways that really connect
Speaker 5: with our humanity. That's the real thing, really connected with
Speaker 5: it on it just as there's a racial awakening in
Speaker 5: a lot of ways, and it's.
Speaker 1: Difficult, it's painful.
Speaker 5: People are being triggered all the time, right, So it's difficult,
Speaker 5: but we have to get through it. And the same
Speaker 5: thing here around our own mental health and our own
Speaker 5: sense of well being.
Speaker 4: I think first of all, we have to make sure
Speaker 4: we're locating the problem where the problem is. So the
Speaker 4: problem is not men, the problem is not women. The
Speaker 4: problem is not non gender conforming people, right, the problem
Speaker 4: is not black people, it's not poor people, it's not immigrants.
Speaker 4: The problem is a culture that doesn't align with our
Speaker 4: nature and a culture that doesn't nourish the best angels
Speaker 4: of our nature. Right, So the idea is, if the
Speaker 4: focus is on valuing both the heart and the soft
Speaker 4: sides of ourselves equally, equally, men and women, non gender conforming,
Speaker 4: I don't care what your identity is. Your heart is soft.
Speaker 4: If that's our goal, which it should be, then it
Speaker 4: becomes easy because we're naturally hard and soft. And the
Speaker 4: hope is and I work with. Remember I teach at NYU,
Speaker 4: so I see one hundred college students a semester, and
Speaker 4: the hope with I see those young people across race,
Speaker 4: across class, across nationality, all sorts of young people. They
Speaker 4: are starving roy for this conversation. They are starving for it.
Speaker 4: They are literally, I'm not I'm not even exaggerating, they're
Speaker 4: yelling at us in those in my classes I teach
Speaker 4: of like, what is wrong with you people? And this
Speaker 4: is what we want? Why are you still saying academic
Speaker 4: achievement is more important than close friendship? Like why are
Speaker 4: you still saying that? Because that's not what's important in
Speaker 4: the world. I just have to say the fact that
Speaker 4: they even this close scot this nomination. It's just about
Speaker 4: boys friendships. That's all the film is about. And then
Speaker 4: something happens because the friendship gets in the way, and
Speaker 4: the enormous response to it means that cultural change is
Speaker 4: already happening, right, It's already happening.
Speaker 2: This has been a wonderful conversation. I cannot thank both
Speaker 2: of you enough for giving me a piece of your
Speaker 2: time and given our viewers a little bit of knowledge.
Speaker 2: That's all the time we have for today, ted Naobi,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for going beyond the scenes with me.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
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