The Crisis of Men and Boys — with Jonathan Haidt and Richard Reeves

0:00:07 How do we AI proof our jobs? How do we fix the deficit? How do we get our political system working
0:00:13 again? I’m Henry Blodgett, and I’m launching a new podcast called Solutions, where every week
0:00:19 I’ll talk to an innovative enterprising expert to cut through the doom and focus on how to build a
0:00:24 better world. Follow Solutions with Henry Blodgett wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:27 The first episode will be out Monday, August 18th.
0:00:38 Powders, pills, plunges. Everywhere you look, there seems to be a new wellness trend.
0:00:43 I think, like, also, we all want to feel good. And if there’s a way to feel better, I think,
0:00:45 wouldn’t you want to try it? I would.
0:00:50 What’s the cost of being well? And why are we so obsessed with it in the first place?
0:00:56 That’s this week on Explain It To Me. New episodes every Sunday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:14 Episode 361. 361 is the area code for Corpus Christi, Texas. In 1961, Ken, Barbie’s boyfriend,
0:01:20 was first introduced by Mattel. Okay, this is just too much for me to handle. What happened? Why is there
0:01:28 never pregnant Barbie? Because Ken comes in another box? Okay, so I saw a little girl playing with Barbie
0:01:35 and Tor, and I said, doesn’t Barbie come with Ken? And she said, no. She comes with Tor. She just fakes it
0:01:53 with Ken. Welcome to the 361st episode of the Prop G Pod. What’s happening? It’s scot-free August,
0:01:58 but we’re still bringing you thoughtful conversations all month long. In today’s episode, we speak with
0:02:03 Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, and Richard Reeves,
0:02:09 the founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. These two are, I’m not exaggerating,
0:02:15 they’re role models. Jonathan Haidt is fearless and is also a world-class academic. I think he’s
0:02:18 probably the most relevant scholar in the world right now. His book, The Anxious Generation,
0:02:26 has resulted in entire nations banning phones in school. I tell dick jokes, and Jonathan is
0:02:32 improving the mental health of kids all over the world. Anyways, and the other thing I love about him
0:02:37 is he’s like a hardcore researcher. Whenever I talk to him, he says, actually, that’s not true. The
0:02:42 peer-reviewed research there is really weak. I don’t know. I think he’s just an inspiration,
0:02:49 thoughtful, incredibly rigorous, incredibly creative, a great writer, and also a really nice man. I’ve
0:02:54 gotten to know him. I would call us friends. And then Richard Reeves has literally been my inspiration
0:03:00 around focusing on the struggles of young men. He does it in a thoughtful, again, rigorous way,
0:03:06 is not afraid to say things regardless of who it offends. And then also the thing I really appreciate
0:03:11 about Richard was he was at the Brookings Institute and then started a business, started a foundation
0:03:19 focusing on the struggles of young men and boys. And within about two months, raised $15 million. The
0:03:24 guy is an entrepreneur, but instead of trying to make money selling an AI company to Microsoft, he’s
0:03:30 decided he wants to make the world a better place. So I think he’s got real skills that most people with a
0:03:36 research background don’t usually have. Anyways, also a really decent, decent man. So two of my heroes,
0:03:41 two of my role models. With that, here’s our conversation with Jonathan Haidt and Richard Reeves.
0:03:54 Jonathan and Richard, where does this podcast find you?
0:03:58 I’m at our beach house, relaxing for the summer.
0:04:06 Does it say anxious generation on the front door? Literally, Jonathan has the bestselling book of any
0:04:07 academic in the last several years.
0:04:12 I’m in a hotel in Denver and I had that moment where, you know, you arrive really late at night.
0:04:17 You just settle in, you don’t think about it, and then you open the curtains in the morning and you
0:04:21 think, oh, I wonder what amazing view I’ve got. I’ll try and show you my view. That’s the view I’ve got.
0:04:22 It’s a parking lot.
0:04:23 You see that parking garage?
0:04:23 It is a parking garage.
0:04:28 Richard, I feel you. This is called working for a living, which the two of us are still doing.
0:04:34 We haven’t reached the heights of Jonathan Haidt. I’m just kicking back and doing nothing these days.
0:04:40 Yeah, he’s just taking it easy. So we wanted to kick off. These two guys are kind of role models
0:04:48 for me and Richard got me inspired about the struggles young men are facing and Jonathan just continues to
0:04:52 be a role model for fearlessness in the world of scholarship. And we wanted to come together and see
0:04:57 if there’s some work we could produce or at least try and create a whole that’s greater than the sum
0:05:01 of its parts and work on some stuff together. Jonathan, can you talk a little bit about what
0:05:02 we’re trying to do here?
0:05:12 Sure. Each of us have been writing about problems facing young people for a long time. And each of
0:05:17 us knows the other one. We’ve, you know, we’ve each known each other for a while. We each admire each
0:05:23 other. And there was one morning where, where Scott was in town in New York City, because Scott lives
0:05:29 everywhere in the world, it seems. Scott was in town. And so I arranged a breakfast with him and I had
0:05:34 just had a breakfast with Richard to talk about our common interests. And it was just so clear that
0:05:37 the three of us need to talk. And so I can’t remember how it worked, but somehow or other,
0:05:44 the three of us ended up at a table in a restaurant in a hotel in Soho. And out of that, you know,
0:05:51 the realization was each of us is expert in a couple areas of what are these obstacles that are
0:05:55 facing young people. But each of us only has part of the story. But if we draw on the other two,
0:06:01 then we have, I think, the most complete story. We can tell the most complete story that anyone has told
0:06:10 about the changes in the economy, in technology, in family life, in law, in business practices.
0:06:16 So that’s why I was so inspired by that breakfast. And we put together this Google document and we
0:06:20 gave it a grand name, the Intergenerational Compact. Don’t quote that because that’s just
0:06:24 our tentative name, but that sort of is what we’re trying to do together.
0:06:29 Yeah. And speak a little bit, Richard, about what we mean by the Intergenerational Compact.
0:06:35 I think there’s a presumption, isn’t there, that we will create a better life for our kids. This is
0:06:40 something that you’ve talked a lot about, Scott, and your own TED Talk, I think, really nailed this
0:06:47 point that we’re failing the younger generation. We’re actually distributing resources to older folks.
0:06:51 We’re not investing enough in kids. We’re not investing enough in education. They’re struggling
0:06:57 to get into the housing market. You see this rise among men, anyway, with college degrees struggling
0:07:03 in the labor market. The connection to, I think, some of the work we’re all interested in, too,
0:07:10 around gender is that my sense is how much political energy young men and young women are
0:07:16 spending on blaming each other for their challenges, rather than being shoulder to shoulder and fighting
0:07:24 for a fairer economy, a better housing market, and a better education system for them. This is really a
0:07:27 generational issue that’s being turned into a gender issue by both sides.
0:07:35 Yeah, I’ve been parroting you, as I usually do, saying that both genders, and this is literally a quote from you,
0:07:41 have done an amazing job of blaming the other gender. And I think that’s really powerful, and the need to
0:07:45 restore the most powerful, what I would argue is the most powerful alliance in history, and that is the alliance
0:07:50 between men and women. I want to put forward a thesis, and Richard, I’ll start with you, and then Jonathan, I want you
0:07:57 to respond. My thesis is that I teach a course called Brand Strategy. And basically, brand is how do we convince
0:08:03 people to make irrational decisions? Irrational decisions result in huge margins. People who are rational do not
0:08:11 buy high-margin products. They’re smart. They say, okay, this, my dad used to come out, and he did this about 10 years
0:08:17 ago, smacked together a pair of shoes. He’s like, I bought eight pairs of these shoes. They were $2.99. They’re $24. I will
0:08:21 never wear another pair of shoes again. My dad is the worst consumer in the world. Brands hate him
0:08:27 because he’s smart. He’s like, shoes are just about protection to your feet. You can get them for $2.99.
0:08:32 People in their mating ears make irrational decisions, and they buy high-margin stupid stuff like
0:08:39 cars and Panerais and Brunella Cuccinelli, and brands love them. And that’s the basis for the most
0:08:45 profitable business model in the world, and that is to find a flaunt our instincts that results in
0:08:53 irrational behavior, specifically of young people, and that tech companies have been able to come in. They’re the
0:08:59 great white sharks feeding off this carcass. They have been able to come into the greatest gap in the flaw in our
0:09:05 instincts with technology that scales and exploits those flaws. Richard, I’d like you to respond to that thesis first,
0:09:07 and then I’ll turn it back to Jonathan.
0:09:14 Yeah, I mean, I feel like you’re really very strong in both our territories here. I’m really interested to hear what John
0:09:21 says. So look, this is not a new problem, Scott, right? I mean, the speed of development of our frontal cortex
0:09:27 hasn’t significantly changed over the last couple of hundred years. What’s happened is we have a new economic system,
0:09:34 which, as you say, can play into that. And I would say, thinking about this through the lens, particularly of young men,
0:09:41 is the frontal cortex, impulse control, we don’t get that sorted out until our mid-twenties. And even then,
0:09:49 all of life is a battle between impulse control and sensation seeking, right? All of us struggle
0:09:52 with that. It’s just that we struggle with it, particularly when we’re young. But what we’ve done
0:09:58 in the past, I think, is a better job of balancing individual freedom and the fun that comes with
0:10:03 being young with institutions and norms that have acted as guardrails against that becoming too
0:10:09 damaging. We’ve had ways to socialize young men. We’ve had peers. We’ve had mentors. We’ve had rules.
0:10:14 We’ve had norms. We have, as a society, taken very seriously the risk you’ve just described. And we
0:10:20 have found ways to create institutions and norms and supports around those young people, rather than
0:10:26 just saying, okay, you’re 18 now, whatever you want, or even younger. And so I think I see part of the
0:10:31 social deinstitutionalization of young adulthood, especially for young men, has created this real
0:10:37 opening. And then, of course, tech comes in, which is where John’s amazing work has made such a big
0:10:42 difference. And I think I would say that my goal with John has been to try and persuade him that
0:10:46 as big an issue for boys and young men as it is for women and young girls. And that’s an ongoing
0:10:48 conversation that we’re having.
0:10:53 What I would add, I think one of the things, two of the things that I tend to bring into our
0:10:58 conversations, one is going even deeper into the role of technology. And the other is a little bit
0:11:02 of sociology, especially the sociologist, Emile Durkheim. So I’ll come back to him in just a
0:11:06 second. But on the technology front, you know, as Richard said, this has been going on a long time,
0:11:11 but there’s a qualitative change. When it was the era of television, of course, television wanted to
0:11:16 market to kids. I actually remember seeing an advertisement for cigarettes on Saturday morning
0:11:21 cartoons when I was very young. And I ran to tell my mother, Mom, there’s a mint-flavored cigarette,
0:11:23 because I thought this was important news, because they told me it was important news.
0:11:28 Okay, they weren’t marketing to me exactly, or maybe they were. But there’s a qualitative difference
0:11:33 when it’s this sort of one-way, you know, marketing to kids when they’re sitting in front of a TV
0:11:40 versus the change that happened in the technosphere and in the lives of young people between 2010 and
0:11:45 2015. We go from having flip phones, which were not major marketing tools for companies,
0:11:51 to every kid carrying a supercomputer that’s hooked up to the internet that can interrupt them with
0:11:58 push notifications. We go to kids providing huge amounts of information about what they like.
0:12:06 And so now we super empower these tech companies who, you know, we’re all fans of the free market
0:12:11 system with appropriate guardrails, but suddenly you give huge new power to the most predatory
0:12:16 companies, which some of which are led by people that seem to have very poor ethics and no restraint.
0:12:25 And what we have is a multiple X increase in the ability of predatory companies. Richard and AIBM have been
0:12:29 leading the charge on studying sports gambling, sports betting, which is a complete disaster
0:12:35 for boys. So I would just bring in, adding on to what Scott said, just technology is not a continuous
0:12:40 set of changes over the last couple hundred years. There was a pivot point in the early 2010s when
0:12:45 everyone got hooked up to smartphones, especially kids. And then the second thing I’d bring in
0:12:51 is, even though I’ve only taken one sociology course in my life, I find that sociology is such a valuable
0:12:56 discipline for understanding what’s happening to us. And one of the main things happening to young
0:13:01 people, you can see it in the graphs in my book, is a sudden loss of the sense of meaning. And it happened
0:13:08 in the early 2010s. Young people, there’s a survey question, my life feels useless, or my life feels
0:13:12 meaningless. There’s a bunch of questions like that. And it was about 9% of American high school
0:13:22 seniors agreed with that from the 90s through 2010, 2011. There’s no change at all. And then over the
0:13:27 next five or eight years, it doubles. This is before COVID. It just doubles. Kids, once they enter the
0:13:32 virtual world, they have no structure. They have no sense of a stable group. They have lots of shifting
0:13:39 groups. So lots of big stuff happened to kind of just knock us all for a spin. And especially we see it
0:13:45 with kids. I’ll just say, Richard, you long ago convinced me that the boys, I actually now think the boys
0:13:49 have it even worse than the girls. When I started the project, I was focused on girls and social media. And I
0:13:54 thought that was the main story. And it was in part reading of boys and men that, of course, we draw on that
0:13:59 a lot in the book. So don’t worry, I’m right there with you that the problems are different to some extent, but
0:14:02 they’re incredibly serious for both sexes.
0:14:07 Jonathan, you said something really powerful. I want to bring this down to sort of a ground level
0:14:13 as parents, how this impacts our kids. And it really, I mean, it really shook me when you said it. And
0:14:19 I’ll start, I’ll start what you said, and then I want you to finish. You said, imagine if 50% of the
0:14:26 time that you laughed with friends in your childhood years went away. That’s what’s happened. That this is a
0:14:29 destruction in youth as we know it. Say more.
0:14:36 Yeah. So humans are an evolved species. We’re primates. Our kids need to develop in free play.
0:14:42 How do we bond with others? You don’t bond just by talking. You bond by moving together in time,
0:14:47 synchronous action. You bond by touch. You put your arm around your friends. You bond by synchronous
0:14:52 laughter. When you laugh together with people, it’s very, very powerful. You bond together by eating
0:14:58 together. So we have bodies. We are embodied creatures. And kids used to have this childhood
0:15:02 and they would develop friendships and they would feel they’re part of a group. And they, you know,
0:15:06 there was always loneliness for some kids, but they were at levels that they’d been at for a long time.
0:15:12 And then between 2010 and 2015, everything changes. Kids are now spending, it’s now about eight hours a
0:15:17 day on their phone. And that’s just the phone. Then there’s all the other screens. So a lot of kids
0:15:22 are literally spending most of their time on a screen alone. And so the way that I try to walk
0:15:29 people through just to wrap your mind around the size of this transformation of childhood is think
0:15:34 of all the times you laughed with your friends in person and cut that. It’s actually more than 50%.
0:15:40 It’s down more time with friends is actually down more than 50%. Imagine all the sunshine that came
0:15:45 into your eyes. Well, cut that by 20 or 30% because it’s just inside on a screen. Think of all the
0:15:51 exercise you got. Cut that. Think of all the books you ever read. Cut that by 70%. And so, so many of
0:15:57 the formative experiences for young people are greatly reduced. And then we’re surprised that young people
0:16:01 come out with the highest levels of anxiety, depression, a sense of meaninglessness, suicide
0:16:03 that we’ve ever seen.
0:16:11 Yeah, it really is dramatic. The destruction of childhood, it just kind of brought it home to every
0:16:16 parent. Richard, let’s talk a little bit about something the three of us have been talking a lot
0:16:21 about. And that is, I always try and I always look at something through the lens of shareholder value in
0:16:27 the markets. The smartest thing you can do on a risk-adjusted basis is to spend less than you make,
0:16:35 take that savings, put it away, and forget about it and not trade. And yet 90% of the financial
0:16:43 markets, which we are obsessed with, is essentially speculation. Again, and Richard, I want you to agree
0:16:48 or disagree with this, which reverse engineers, I don’t know if it’s an absence of free play,
0:16:55 the risk aggressiveness of men. Occasionally, you want some of that risk aggressiveness. And it seems to
0:17:02 be manifesting itself, see above tech, entering into that flaw in our species and putting a casino in
0:17:07 everyone’s pocket. I know you’ve been looking at gaming, which is a fancy way of saying gambling
0:17:12 amongst young men. Why is it happening? Talk about some of the data and the threat it presents.
0:17:20 There’s this great quote from Margaret Mead. I find anthropologists very useful in this space in the
0:17:24 same way that John finds sociologists useful, which is, she said, look, we’ll have to find a way for
0:17:30 men to demonstrate their courage and valor, even in the absence of war. And that’s Mead in the 60s.
0:17:35 And so I do think that finding what does that mean, courage, risk taking, how do we find positive
0:17:41 expressions for that, even in a world where we hopefully don’t want to do it in a martial way
0:17:46 at the front lines. One of the things I’ve noticed, and this is directly relevant to the whole debate
0:17:51 about sports betting, which, as John says, we’ve just done a huge event on that with Arnold Ventures.
0:17:55 And I just want everyone to know that Arnold Ventures is putting the biggest investment into
0:18:01 research into sports betting that we’ve seen. And it will be independent. So much of the research out
0:18:05 there is actually funded by the betting companies. So we desperately need independent research. And Arnold
0:18:11 are putting millions of dollars into understanding this better. But this getting rich slowly thing,
0:18:18 Scott, that’s not very fashionable, especially among young men. We did some research on why young men
0:18:23 aren’t going to college. And this term kept coming back, which is, I need passive income quickly.
0:18:29 They want to get rich, but they want to get rich quick. I think you’re in the space more like what’s
0:18:34 happening there, because it’s really boring to save money and wait and have a tracker fund. And I think
0:18:38 it’s this sense of, I get it right with crypto or betting or whatever, and then I’ll get a girlfriend,
0:18:42 and then I’ll, then I’ll get the nice car. And I can’t wait till I’m 50 for that because I’ll be
0:18:47 too old. And so I wonder, there’s a little bit even on the, in the online world where young men are
0:18:51 actually being persuaded that they both need to and can get rich quickly, which of course is just
0:18:56 by and large, not true. And so they’re looking for a, they’re looking for a shortcut to economic
0:19:00 success. And they’re being persuaded by some of the more reactionary figures online that they need
0:19:05 that if they’re ever going to get a girlfriend, which is by and large, not true. And so I think
0:19:09 it’s all tied up with this sense of young men, not quite knowing how to do the thing that their dads
0:19:13 did or their grandfathers did, which was slower and more boring, but more honorable.
0:19:18 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
0:19:43 This week on Net Worth and Chill, I’m joined by Alison Stoner, the multi-talented performer and
0:19:49 author of the upcoming book, semi-well-adjusted, despite literally everything. From backing up
0:19:54 Missy Elliott as a kid to starring in Disney’s Camp Rock and transitioning into mental health
0:19:59 advocacy and creative direction, Alison reveals how they’ve navigated dealing with the finances
0:20:02 of child stardom while staying true to their authentic self.
0:20:09 I uncovered that many people had been taking money in various ways since I was a child without
0:20:14 me really knowing or understanding. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on
0:20:16 youtube.com slash yourrichbff.
0:20:24 For a long time, in order to prove your age online, all you had to do was input
0:20:30 your birthday or click a box that says you’re totally over 18. That’s going away. This week
0:20:34 on the Vergecast, we’re talking about age verification and how the internet is about to get a lot less
0:20:40 private. Plus, some huge new announcements in the world of AI, including the newest model
0:20:46 for ChatGPT. Finally, Miyasato interviewed the CEO of Blogilates and the Atleisure brand PopFlex
0:20:52 about what it’s like to have your designs get knocked off all over the internet. That’s this week
0:20:52 on the Vergecast.
0:21:06 Isn’t this some of this, aren’t we to blame? I mean, there’s technology, there’s over-parenting,
0:21:11 but also some of, isn’t some of this a value system where we have basically say to young people,
0:21:16 people, we have figured out that the downside of democracy is that old people and people of our
0:21:22 generation can continue to vote themselves more money and we continue to do that. Do they have no
0:21:28 choice but to create their own volatility in their own casino, hoping to get lucky? Jonathan, any thoughts?
0:21:34 Wow. That’s super interesting. I think this is a great example of how the three of us each bring
0:21:40 different perspectives on the same phenomena that we’re trying to understand. And that had never
0:21:48 occurred. Richard heard this phrase from young men, I need passive income quickly. Scott, you pointed out
0:21:52 something I never thought about, which is the changes in the market that make it harder for men to get
0:21:57 started. So what I’d like to add is something that I covered in chapter four of The Anxious
0:22:03 Generation, which was about puberty and initiation rites. I studied cultural psychology long ago with
0:22:08 Richard Schwader at the University of Chicago. And one thing I learned in reading ethnographies is that
0:22:13 most societies have ways of turning girls into women and boys into men.
0:22:19 For girls, it in a sense happens naturally in the sense that they tend to be anchored around
0:22:24 menstruation and then women come in, not the mother, it’s other women come in and sort of
0:22:29 induct them into the secrets and the rites and the religious practices of being a woman. But wherever you
0:22:36 have initiation rites, they’re always harsher, stricter, tougher for boys because it’s a much bigger jump
0:22:42 to turn a boy into a man than to turn a girl into a woman. Girls and women traditionally are defined by
0:22:47 their roles as reproductive, as mothers, as wives. Boys have to, they start off in the women’s world,
0:22:52 they’re little, they’re feminine, they’re surrounded by girls and women. And then somehow they have to
0:22:58 make the jump to making their way in the world of men. And they have to both join in and stand out
0:23:04 because their mating success is going to be based on, are you the most appealing, the highest ranking,
0:23:11 the best earning, the best hunter? So the boy’s journey is longer and more fraught. And you see this
0:23:16 in fraternity initiations. Sorority initiations, they exist, but they’re like, let’s love bomb you.
0:23:21 Let’s have a big sister who gives you secret gifts. Whereas boys, my son just went through this,
0:23:26 they have to do a lot of painful and disgusting stuff and dangerous too. So I just want to bring in that
0:23:33 without that, boys will tend to just vegetate. They don’t turn into men on their own. And especially
0:23:37 once we took away risk, we overprotected, we said, you know, sometimes like no running at recess,
0:23:42 no wrestling, no physical, you know, we take away rough and tumble play. We take away so much from
0:23:47 boys. And then we expect them to somehow turn into men who are going to be protectors.
0:23:54 Also, in this crucial period of, usually it’s around maybe 11 or 12 to 15 is when initiation
0:24:00 rights tend to take place. This is exactly when our young people are becoming full devotees of social
0:24:05 media. They’re hooking up gigantic data pipelines into their eyes and ears and stuffing their head full of
0:24:10 thousands of times more information that would ever come in any other way. And who’s this from?
0:24:16 It’s from influencers who are stressing a certain kind of masculinity, which is, I’ve got, look, you know,
0:24:21 I’ve got my passive income. I’ve got my fancy car. I’ve got, so it’s about material success and also
0:24:28 having a flat abdomen. They’ve got body dysmorphia issues more than they used to. So the idea of
0:24:33 abandoning our boys saying, we’re not going to give you any guidance. We’re not even going to use words
0:24:39 like gentlemen anymore. No guidance on what it is to be a man from adults. And then we’re going to put
0:24:43 you in front of a screen and hook you up to influencers that don’t have your best interests.
0:24:48 We’re going to, we’re going to completely renege on our responsibility to socialize the next
0:24:54 generation. And so of course they don’t know what it is to be a man and they’re very vulnerable to
0:25:00 being led off in different directions. And so the, the, the urge to make money quickly and show that
0:25:04 you’re smart and that you’re then rich, and that’s going to give you mating success.
0:25:07 Of course, a lot of boys get sucked into it with disastrous results.
0:25:12 Yeah. I want to, I want to really want to add to that because, uh, John and I’ve talked quite a bit
0:25:17 about this, the rights of passage point, um, for boys. And I just happened, I had a conversation
0:25:23 yesterday with a woman who’s a psychologist and, and she said, pain produces growth. We grow through
0:25:30 pain and for women pain is built in, right? We have a menstrual cycle, there’s childbirth. And so like
0:25:35 whereas with men, we’re actually, if they’re going to grow through pain, actually there’s a way we have
0:25:40 to create that. Now at an extreme, of course, you don’t want it to be dangerous, except there’s a kind
0:25:44 of line here, but there’s something about growth through pain, growth through discipline, growth
0:25:49 through some kind of hardship. All of these rights of passage that John’s talking about will involve
0:25:53 some kind of hardship, some kind of anxiety, some kind of difficulty, and it will require
0:25:58 discipline. And so there’s a weird thing, Scott, I was thinking about what you said earlier about like
0:26:04 the search for volatility. That’s sort of true, but it’s also true for, I would say there’s a hunger
0:26:13 among young men for a solid framework within which to grow through pain. Institutions, uh, mentors,
0:26:18 et cetera. And absent that they’re simultaneously searching for some of that risk-taking stuff,
0:26:24 maybe in an unproductive way, but they’re also desperately searching for the solidity and the
0:26:28 structure that we used to give them. Just very anecdotally, I mentioned earlier I was in Denver,
0:26:35 so I went to the Latin Mass at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Denver on Sunday night. It was full
0:26:43 of young men, most of them on their own. Why are they going to two-hour Latin Mass on a Sunday evening?
0:26:48 And I think it’s because at least some of them are searching for structure and discipline and purpose
0:26:53 and institutions that will help them become men. And so this is weird contradiction. I think that they
0:26:59 are hungry for the things that we’re not giving them. Uh, and so how we give it to them, it doesn’t
0:27:02 have to be through church. It doesn’t have to be through, through Boy Scouts. It doesn’t have to be
0:27:08 through fraternities, but we, we, we certainly have to find ways to re-institutionalize the passage
0:27:14 from boy to man. And we have to stop only saying what boys shouldn’t do and also give them an idea
0:27:19 of what they should do and why we need them. And I think that gap, and actually President Obama said
0:27:24 on his wife’s podcast last week that on the left, all we’ve done is say what’s wrong with boys. We’ve
0:27:30 never said what’s right with them. And he’s absolutely right about that. And I wish he’d said it perhaps
0:27:34 six months or 12 months ago, but it’s great. He’s saying it now.
0:27:41 The, the statement I referenced earlier that really struck me of yours, Richard, was that the genders
0:27:49 have done an amazing job of convincing themselves that it’s the other gender’s fault. And also we have
0:27:55 a tendency I find in our society to give women the benefit of the doubt and to pathologize men.
0:28:02 And that everything is a derivative of, of the Simpsons, that Homer and Bart are reckless and stupid,
0:28:08 maybe a heart of gold. And Lisa and Marge are just these incredibly high character, flawless people
0:28:16 who are underappreciated. And what I have found in this war of convincing that the other side is the
0:28:23 problem, you do have a lot, you do have some young men who feel that the ascent of women has come at
0:28:26 their cost. I would argue that’s mostly the far right, not young men.
0:28:31 Correct. They’re being convinced of that, Scott. I think I will correct my statement is that they
0:28:34 are being convinced of that rather than that they’ve convinced themselves.
0:28:40 Because a lot of young men, and I found this in your data, a lot of young men are actually quite
0:28:48 progressive on gender equality. And I’ll get shit for this. But when I go on TikTok, I do see a lot of
0:28:55 women saying things like, why would I ever go out on a date? Why would I not expect to get an Uber when
0:29:02 there’s a huge chance I might be unalived? But the dude going out on a date with you is 16 times more
0:29:13 likely to go home and hurt himself than hurt you. It feels as if the algorithms love really positioning
0:29:22 men unfairly, and women have bought into it, or a lot, I’m being very reductive, into this notion that
0:29:27 men are just more, young men are just more dangerous than they actually are. Richard, any thoughts?
0:29:33 Well, there was that meme a while ago, wasn’t there? Would you rather run into a bear or a man in the woods?
0:29:40 Which I managed to avoid commenting on. But it was exactly this line, because most women said they’d prefer
0:29:47 to run into a bear than a man. And so there’s an online phenomenon around that. But I would say it cuts
0:29:54 both ways. I would say that, and it genuinely saddens me, because I think that it is true that on the left,
0:29:58 the messaging has been around, if young women are struggling, it is because of the patriarchy,
0:30:04 it’s because of young men. It’s really sort of pointing the finger horizontally at young men,
0:30:09 which is by and large, completely unfair, for the reasons that you’ve just said. But I think it’s
0:30:13 true now increasingly on the other side too, which is that young men are being told, yeah, you’re
0:30:16 struggling. And it’s the fault of all those young women. It’s the fault of feminism. It’s the fault of
0:30:22 the women’s movement. And so it’s almost like a conspiracy between the progressive left and the
0:30:27 reactionary right to get young men and young women to blame each other for their problems rather than
0:30:33 the economy, rather than the institutions that are failing both of them. And so I’m not saying it’s
0:30:38 deliberate, but my God, if you really wanted to kind of avoid the political energy of young people being
0:30:43 directed at the institutions of the economy and education and housing market, this is a brilliant
0:30:48 way to do that because the energy instead gets spent blaming each other, mostly completely
0:30:53 incorrectly. Do you agree with that, John? Yeah. Yes. Well, let me add on to what you just said.
0:30:57 You’re tracing out a trend in which boys have been increasingly demonized in toxic masculinity.
0:31:03 I’ve been studying the trends, the ways that ideology captures institutions, especially universities,
0:31:08 for a long time. Really, since 2011, I began studying that. And that led to me being concerned about
0:31:13 the lack of viewpoint diversity and founding Heterodox Academy and writing a lot on this.
0:31:17 And then writing The Coddling of the American Mind with Greg Lukianoff. And so what I can say is that
0:31:22 as our society has gotten more polarized, institutions that have leaned left, which is a lot of them,
0:31:27 then have gotten more concentrated, more extreme, more ideological. And that process
0:31:33 got worse and worse. There was never a reversal. It got worse and worse through—certainly 2015 was a
0:31:40 big year on campus for protests and extension of this way of thinking. And then with summer 2020,
0:31:46 with George Floyd and COVID, things got more intense. And this has brought about a huge backlash against,
0:31:52 you know, call it wokeness, call it the progressive activists. So this trend of demonizing boys and never
0:31:57 say anything good about them, I fully agree. This has been happening, and it goes back to probably the
0:32:04 70s or 80s. And it’s gotten worse and worse. But I actually think that it’s good. It’s turning around
0:32:10 now. What I mean is, I think many on the left have realized that going this extreme into the
0:32:15 identitarianism, that some groups are good, some groups are bad based on gender, race, that the
0:32:20 identitarianism is what is destroying the Democrats. It’s what is keeping them in the wilderness. You might
0:32:25 have just seen the finding. The public opinion of the Democrats is the lowest it’s ever been,
0:32:30 or at least lowest since they started collecting data in the early 90s. So I am seeing among people
0:32:37 on the left a much greater willingness to break with that tradition of boys’ bad, girls’ good.
0:32:41 And so—and Richard, and you’ve been a part of it. I mean, I watch because I’ve known you since
0:32:45 that we met in, I think, 2015, or 2014, we were working on that big Brookings AEI report together.
0:32:51 I’ve watched you thread the needle carefully and try to, you know, bring up, you know, bring up
0:32:55 attention to boys without saying, no, don’t worry, we’re not saying that it’s going to be at the
0:33:01 expense of girls. But I think—and tell me if I’m wrong here—I think that to make those arguments today
0:33:06 is so much easier, and you’re finding so much more receptivity than you would have, say, you know, in 2017.
0:33:14 So much easier. I mean, the fact that Obama’s talking about it now, and that we’ve got—sorry,
0:33:19 and then we’ve got governors talking about it. So Gavin Newsom is about to drop an executive order,
0:33:24 specifically focused on boys and men. He follows on the heels of Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore.
0:33:30 The penny has absolutely dropped, John. You’re right. And I’m even finding now that when I talk to
0:33:34 some women, even from much progressive organizations, they’re saying to me, “Yeah, yeah, I get it’s not
0:33:39 zero-sum. I know you still care about women and girls. Let’s talk about boys and men.” Whereas
0:33:43 previously, I’d have had to spend 50 percent of my time doing all of that. Now it’s like,
0:33:47 “Yeah, yeah, we get it.” So it’s—you’re right. It’s part of a general move. It’s not just about gender.
0:33:52 Which is very healthy. That is one very positive trend we can report. I think we can think more
0:33:54 openly about these issues than we could have a few years ago.
0:34:00 Richard, why are young men so much more susceptible to gambling apps than women?
0:34:05 They are more risk-taking. They want—they think they’ve been persuaded that they can
0:34:14 get rich quick through some of these activities. Their frontal cortex is way behind girls, just stay
0:34:21 mature, kind of much, much later. And they are more isolated. The evidence on this is kind of
0:34:27 fuzzy, to be honest, but it seems pretty clear that they’re more isolated from communities,
0:34:32 from institutions, etc. And then maybe lastly, they’re struggling economically, educationally.
0:34:35 I mean, if you’re looking for someone who’s struggling in the education system, struggling
0:34:38 to launch, still living at home with their parents, you’ve said a lot about this, Scott.
0:34:43 Much more likely to be men. And so if you add the fact that they are biologically more likely to
0:34:50 be risk-taking, they’re sociologically much more disconnected now from society, and they’re
0:34:55 exposed to these risks. I mean, the sports betting thing is just—it’s hitting young men. Something like
0:35:02 98% of the problem gamblers we’re seeing now are men. I mean, John just published, and then we republished
0:35:08 a piece by Jonathan Cohen and Isaac Rose Berman on sports gambling particularly. And what they say is,
0:35:14 because of the change in law in 2018—we’ve just seen this massive explosion, as we know—and
0:35:19 they describe it as making the gambling fully frictionless.
0:35:25 —fully frictionless. And it’s the friction that has saved us, and it has particularly saved the young
0:35:32 men. Because we are predisposed in any circumstances to this kind of risk-taking activity, and then we don’t
0:35:39 have the same social institutions, and we’re struggling in life. To make it fully frictionless then, to go to this
0:35:45 other shiny place that might make all your dreams come true, it is absolutely perfect storm. And it
0:35:49 couldn’t be worse timed. It couldn’t be worse timed, given what’s the struggles that young men are having
0:35:56 right now. And so if you were to choose the worst year to legalize casinos in your pocket, especially
0:36:00 the casino thing in your pocket, it’s probably 2018, which is exactly when the Supreme Court did it.
0:36:05 There’s just a couple of things. And you can comment on this, Richard, and I’d love to get your thoughts,
0:36:11 Jonathan, is that 50—supposed to be 50 percent of college-age males, I mean, the ones that are supposed
0:36:18 to be smarter, right, bet on the Super Bowl. So one out of two men on a college campus bet on the Super
0:36:26 Bowl. My understanding is that, as a percentage, gambling addicts have the highest suicide rate of
0:36:31 any addiction because you can get in so deep. If you’re addicted to meth, people figure it out and
0:36:34 they try and intervene. And that’s a helpful thing. You can get in so deep with gambling,
0:36:41 no one has any idea, and you decide that it’s too late. And then in states that have legalized gambling,
0:36:48 they immediately see a spike in bankruptcy filings. Immediately. And it’s not—and when you look at the
0:36:53 the leakage, it’s not a great way to grow an economy. Richard, any ideas on or public policy
0:36:59 solutions around how we attempt to cauterize what appears to be a pretty negative trend? And that is,
0:37:01 as you put it, putting a casino in everyone’s pocket.
0:37:09 Yeah, so you’re right. The bankruptcy rates go up. They particularly affect young men in low-income
0:37:15 communities. And so this is really laser-focused on the men that I’m most worried about.
0:37:21 And I think we’re just in the early stages of understanding this. The states who haven’t
0:37:26 legalized yet should think very hard. I don’t think we’re going to or probably should undo all
0:37:30 of the legalization of sports betting. I think it’s different for casino betting.
0:37:36 And we’re going to have to develop much better regulations and norms around this. I think the
0:37:40 challenge with this one, and you’ve just alluded to this, I’m brilliant to know what John thinks of
0:37:46 this. I was thinking about what John said about us being embodied creatures, right? Is that the very
0:37:52 privacy of this online betting makes it very hard to socially regulate. I was thinking about alcohol,
0:37:58 right? If you go, I know some of you are interested in Scott, but if you drink in a pub or a bar when
0:38:02 there are other people around, you know, your spouse, your friends, your teachers, your whatever,
0:38:07 then it’s very different to being on your own. And the trouble is with this online thing is it’s very
0:38:11 solitary. And so I think it makes it much harder for us as a society to develop those social norms
0:38:15 and those reflux, you’re almost holding each other to account. And so you can’t even see it happening
0:38:20 very often. And I think that makes this a very, very different kind of problem. And I don’t have
0:38:24 a quick solution because I think we’re still in the early stages of fully understanding this and
0:38:28 developing some of these muscles that we need to develop. So I’m not in full-scale panic on all of
0:38:34 this, but I am deeply concerned. And I think John’s further along the panic spectrum than I am.
0:38:37 John, I’m a six out of 10. You’re a nine out of 10.
0:38:39 You’ve leaned into the panic, Jonathan.
0:38:45 Yeah. I think what’s happening is so vast and accelerating so fast. Yeah. I think, well, of course,
0:38:50 you know, panic itself isn’t productive, but I think communicating that this is,
0:38:56 that the damage here is almost beyond comprehension. One thing, so one thing I’ll add to this discussion
0:39:05 about gambling and men, you know, I’ve been studying why is it that boys and girls and so
0:39:09 many people start getting much more depressed and anxious at a certain time. Critics say, oh, well,
0:39:13 of course, because of the state of the world and the financial crisis. But when you look at how
0:39:20 economic changes affect mental health, you don’t generally find that much. Mental health, depression,
0:39:25 it’s not based on your thoughts about the world. It is based on how connected you are and how
0:39:30 your state. So in general, we don’t see that connection. But I remember there was some data
0:39:36 set I saw where it was about suicide rates. And it was that men, when there’s a big economic downturn,
0:39:42 you do get a big increase in suicide for men, but not for women. And I think what’s going on here,
0:39:47 if we also bring in the case, there was a number of years ago where the price of taxi medallions in
0:39:52 New York City plunged. And all of these immigrant men, all these men from South Asia and elsewhere who’d
0:39:56 borrowed from their whole, everybody in their family to get the million dollars or whatever it is to get a
0:40:02 taxed them and down. Now, suddenly they’re bankrupt. They’ve let down, they’ve wasted the investment of
0:40:06 their whole family. What do they do? A lot of them kill themselves, even though they still have
0:40:12 obligations. If you’re a man, especially a man who is a provider and you’re taking a risk to make a
0:40:19 better life and it fails, for many men, suicide is the only way out. And so I suspect, you know,
0:40:25 Richard has told us about how much bankruptcies go up in any state that legalizes gambling, online
0:40:31 frictionless gambling. You’re going to have dead young men, because if a man gets into that situation
0:40:37 in great debt, suicide is going to loom very large as a solution to his problems. And so I would go
0:40:41 much stronger than Richard. Richard says, “States that might consider gambling, they should be sure
0:40:45 they have.” No, they shouldn’t do it. They just should not do it. I mean, this is a terrible,
0:40:50 terrible thing. And so that’s just one thing I would add as a psychologist.
0:41:02 We’ll be right back.
0:41:06 We’re back with more from Jonathan Haidt and Richard Reeves.
0:41:13 Just in our remaining time here, I want to bring up a couple of kind of current events,
0:41:18 because I thought of you, Jonathan, on one of these and you on another Richard. But I couldn’t
0:41:26 help but think, I wonder what Jonathan thinks here. Coldplay. Shaming has played a really important
0:41:32 role in our society. And you talk about it. And it seems like we have industrialized and scaled
0:41:39 shame. I would just love to get your thoughts on how this whole Coldplay thing is playing out.
0:41:47 So what I would say is, in a couple of my books, because I study morality, my main area of research
0:41:52 is moral psychology, how to become moral creatures. And so in two or three of my books, I talk about the
0:41:56 importance of shame and embarrassment. If you didn’t have shame and embarrassment, you wouldn’t have
0:42:02 people feeling they’re bound into a moral matrix that constrains their action. So these are healthy,
0:42:08 normal things. Good for society when they’re within limits. But what happens when you create a potential
0:42:14 for shame that is a hundred times greater than what we would have experienced previously? And when you
0:42:20 expose children to it, when children, when teenagers have to face the risk, not just that a few friends
0:42:26 will laugh at them, but that their whole school will know instantly and be sharing photos and commenting on
0:42:33 it. And so there’s a savagery that the online world has introduced, uh, in which shaming and
0:42:42 embarrassment are, are so powerful that we, um, uh, uh, we feel afraid. My sense about a lot of young
0:42:48 people is that is like, imagine growing up in a minefield, like literally a minefield and lots of
0:42:52 people, you know, are missing a leg. You would walk really carefully. And I think that’s part of why we’re
0:42:59 seeing kind of the anxiety and a drop in risk-taking among young people. And so while I, I don’t have
0:43:04 many deep thoughts about what happens to a, you know, 50 year old man caught cheating, uh, a man and woman
0:43:12 caught cheating. Um, but I will say that before, um, before social media developed the feed, when it was
0:43:19 just, here’s my page, it wasn’t so viral. Um, life was one way. And once we have instant,
0:43:25 unlimited shaming possible for all of us at any time, life is a different way, much more savage,
0:43:27 uh, much more inhumane.
0:43:32 But wasn’t at the end of the day, wasn’t shaming meant to be a means of maintaining the social
0:43:38 fabric. You’re not supposed to, you know, beat up other people’s kids. You get shamed, potentially
0:43:43 expensive from the community, which could mean death as a means of creating social cohesion.
0:43:48 And hasn’t it just gone crazy and now it’s ripping us apart where there’s no economic incentive and
0:43:54 shaming anyone for anything. And then I talked to your, um, colleague, John, uh, Greg Lukinoff,
0:44:00 and he’s totally convinced me that there needs to be a movement to separate shaming from your
0:44:06 livelihood. Like we made that connection. You know, no one ever gets canceled for being too woke,
0:44:13 but the idea now that the go-to is a partner at Sequoia says something indelicate, off color,
0:44:18 whatever, inappropriate. Well, let’s go after his livelihood. I mean, that’s a new thing, isn’t it?
0:44:24 Isn’t, isn’t, hasn’t shaming, what used to be a means of social cohesion has become a means
0:44:29 of social destruction. Well, I think if you’re publicly shamed, you know, for centuries,
0:44:35 um, you would step down, you know, Japanese business people would commit harikari. I said,
0:44:40 you know, I suppose that’s true. Um, so I think the connection has been there for a long time.
0:44:47 It’s a question of proportionality and frequency. And I think what we’re all agreeing on here is once
0:44:52 everybody is commenting on everybody and everybody has a camera and everybody, uh, you know, it’s like
0:44:55 growing up in East Germany where there are spies everywhere and cameras everywhere.
0:45:00 And so I think that’s part of Greg’s point is the idea that if you are caught doing something
0:45:05 wrong or just alleged to have doing, done something wrong, we, we, we need to have a clear rule. No,
0:45:09 you don’t lose your job for that. We don’t fire people for that because it’s, it’s coming for all
0:45:14 of us. Um, and with AI, even if you haven’t done anything wrong, if anyone wants to get you,
0:45:19 they can just make a video or misinterpret or reinterpret a video of you. So yeah, we have to get,
0:45:25 we have to develop defenses against this because, uh, you know, shaming, you know, this sort of savage
0:45:30 frequent shaming is rising and is part of our future unless we do something to constrain it.
0:45:38 Richard, I had a, I’d love you coming. I’ve had a clip go somewhat viral. Um, they got several million
0:45:44 views of a podcast I did with a woman named Liz Plank, who I, I think is fantastic. And she has a
0:45:50 podcast, I think called man troubles. And I said that I think men should pay for everything on a
0:45:55 date, at least initially. And that if you look at the gestation period window, which is much shorter
0:46:00 for women than it is for men. When you look at the research that you have produced, that actually
0:46:04 there’s a myth that women benefit more from relationships. No, actually men benefit more
0:46:10 from relationships. And the downside of sex is so much greater for women than men. And the majority of
0:46:16 men date with at least a decent hope of sex, that there’s an asymmetry in what the woman is offering
0:46:20 in terms of her time, in terms of the risk presented. And then one way you attempt to show
0:46:27 that you recognize the asymmetry and kind of level up is to economically sacrifice and pay.
0:46:34 And this got all sorts of, it was hugely polarizing. A lot of people very much in support of it. A lot of
0:46:38 people saying, “Oh, so you want to continue to own us. And I do not want to own men.” I’m curious what
0:46:45 you think about the dynamics between men and women and economics around the early stages of mating.
0:46:51 Yeah. Well, it leads very well from the conversation that we just had and John’s
0:46:58 point about suicide risk and feeling unneeded, unwanted among men. I think that’s absolutely
0:47:04 right. We’ve just published work showing that separation is just massively spikes suicide risks
0:47:10 among men, not among women. And interestingly, the most recent surveys show that actually men are now
0:47:14 more likely to say that getting married and having kids is important to them than women are.
0:47:22 So like men know at some level that the idea that like men don’t want to settle down,
0:47:26 they just want to go their own way or whatever, it’s just absolute bullshit. And the vast majority
0:47:32 of men know that. They know they’ll have a better life. The question of economic resources and signaling,
0:47:37 I just talked to my sons about this. So one of my sons is a, he’s a fifth grade teacher in Baltimore City.
0:47:42 All my sons are very thoughtful on these questions, as you can imagine. And we ended up, all three boys
0:47:48 had this conversation about paying on the first date. And their interpretation of it was,
0:47:55 what the signal here is not to the, is between the man and the woman, is not, I’m going to pay for
0:48:02 everything. I’m the provider. Don’t you worry your pretty head about making money or anything. The signal is,
0:48:08 I have some economic resources. It’s not necessarily that I’m going to, but it is just
0:48:13 something, it’s a signal that I, and it’s a signal I’ve got resources, so I’m bringing something to this
0:48:20 relation. And it’s a symbol of some of this kind of sensor provider, et cetera, right? And so I think
0:48:26 it has both symbolic value, which remains even in this new world, and it’s a signal is that I am not going
0:48:30 to be relying on you. So that’s where I land on it.
0:48:36 I’d like to add to that, because I’ve had this discussion with every one of my MBA classes. I
0:48:44 teach a course called Work Wisdom and Happiness at NYU Stern. It’s about 35 to 50 MBA students. These
0:48:49 are young men and women in their late 20s, mostly. Most are single, most are on the apps. And every
0:48:54 year I guide them, we talk about what this is doing to them and how to play the game. And every year we
0:49:00 have this conversation because I want them all to see what always comes out, which is almost all of the
0:49:05 women agree the man should pay on the first date. And the man, it’s just like, there’s no question about
0:49:11 this. Like if a man who offers to split the check or it doesn’t offer to pay is a real turnoff.
0:49:19 And the way that I understand this is that monogamy is pretty rare among mammals. But where you do find
0:49:24 monogamy in birds and occasionally mammals, you have courtship rituals. We evolved to have certain
0:49:32 courtship rituals. And mating is a dance and hooking up is not. But if you want to actually fall in love,
0:49:39 or if a young man wants a woman to fall in love with him, he should engage in the courtship ritual.
0:49:45 And the courtship ritual is the man needs to take the initiative and offer to pay while,
0:49:50 and this always comes out in conversation, while being incredibly sensitive for signs that the woman
0:49:55 would prefer it a different way. So as long as you offer and if she insists, okay, that’s a different
0:50:02 story. But you should take the initiative. Again, we’re an evolved species. We’ve evolved for
0:50:09 heterosexual sex. Obviously, there’s five percent or more people are gay. But we have deep within us
0:50:16 courtship rituals that we can’t erase, no matter what our conscious ideology is.
0:50:22 I’m going to suggest and I’m going to tease a second episode here or a part B where we go through
0:50:28 a half a dozen to a dozen policy recommendations and talk about the upside and the downside and how
0:50:33 viable they would be to address some of these issues. Because to your credit or to your point,
0:50:39 Richard, I think I can’t tell you, and I know you sense this, how much more productive the conversation
0:50:45 has become. Five years ago, you said anything, quote unquote, talking, referencing the struggles
0:50:50 of young men. You’re a misogynist. You’re Andrew Tate, you know, teaching at a business school. Now
0:50:55 your hair is on fire. And all of a sudden, and the real allies here have been mothers who say,
0:51:01 I sense something. I’m a feminist. Something is up with my son or relative to the daughter. So I’d like
0:51:06 to do a second, and I know you guys are up for this, a second podcast where we go through each of the
0:51:12 policy solutions. And Richard’s proposed the most from red-shirting young men to more men in
0:51:16 K through 12. I have some ideas around tax policy, but I’d like to just go through each of them and
0:51:21 get each of your responses. But before we wrap up here, I would just love to hear something around,
0:51:29 something you did recently with one of your boys and any insight or advice for young fathers or any just
0:51:36 sort of the world of dadding, the world of being dad from Jonathan Haidt and Richard Reeves.
0:51:40 Okay. Well, sure. Well, I’ll go first because Richard will have more to say having three sons.
0:51:51 I have just one. But about two or three years ago, I took my son and a good friend of his to a gun range,
0:51:57 and they learned to shoot. And in our social circles, I don’t think very many people who
0:52:04 live in Greenwich Village are shooters. But it was an exciting day for my son and for his friend,
0:52:14 and it was just a really fun day of bonding. So yeah, just do things with your kid, give them experiences
0:52:17 and excitement. That’s one example.
0:52:22 I live in East Tennessee now. I’ve got to tell you, my sons love the gun range.
0:52:31 That is a big part of the attraction of where we live now. But actually, I was thinking about you the
0:52:38 other day, John, when I was thinking about this. My son and I would play tennis together. And he would
0:52:43 get so distressed when he lost. There was one particular day, he came home and he was like,
0:52:46 his head was down. He’d lost again. He’s better than me at this point, just couldn’t beat me.
0:52:52 He’s really upset. And he goes in the house and he’s still can’t beat dad. And my wife said to me,
0:52:57 she said, well, can’t you just let him win just once? He’s so upset. Because she’s doing a maternal
0:53:02 thing. She’s like, he’s so upset. And I said, well, he should be upset. I just beat him again.
0:53:08 And then I said, he will know if I back off. He will know. He will sense it. And it will mean all the
0:53:12 more to him when he beats me. And then that day came when he beat me. It was a long game and he
0:53:19 beat me and I played. I tried to beat him. I tried, but he beat me. And so you’ve got to make your kids
0:53:23 work for it. You’ve got to make, it’s got to be painful. You grow through pain. And so it was very
0:53:27 painful for him to keep losing to his middle-aged dad at tennis. But I got to tell you, and now he’s a
0:53:34 very good tennis player, but, but I said to my wife, he’s got to win real. He’s got to suffer.
0:53:39 And then it will mean all the more when he wins. And so that’s probably one of the best things that I’ve
0:53:47 done with my sons. I love that. Um, so I’m going to go, I recently took my youngest to Chicago.
0:53:52 I like to do one trip a year with them just solo. I find the dynamic is so different when you have them
0:53:58 alone as opposed to with their siblings. And we went and saw, you know, we did all the stuff,
0:54:03 pizza, tallest building, river tour. And we went and saw the movie F1. And at the end of the movie,
0:54:08 he said, I love the end of Fantastic Four as we’re walking out. And I said, let’s go in and watch it.
0:54:13 And my son, kids are so, at least my kids are so politically correct now. He’s like, no,
0:54:19 we can’t do that. And I’m like, sure we can. And I grabbed him and I passed on the age long tradition
0:54:23 that I was fantastic at as a boy. I used to sneak into movies all the time when I was a kid.
0:54:29 And sneaking into movies now is you sit in the back and you watch the last two minutes and he’s
0:54:33 sweating. He’s so nervous. And I told his mom about it. She said, you know, you’re teaching
0:54:36 him really bad values. And I’m like, look, your job is to make sure he doesn’t get into too much
0:54:41 trouble. My job is to make sure he gets into a little. So anyway, sneaking into movies with my
0:54:47 youngest, teaching him poor values. Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist and author of the
0:54:52 Anxious Generation. Richard Reeves is the founding president of the American Institute for Boys and
0:54:57 Men. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. We’re going to do a second one where we speak specifically to
0:55:02 policy recommendations and try and dissect them. Gentlemen, thanks so much for your time today.
0:55:03 Thanks, Scott.
0:55:15 Scott, great to be on the show with you.