The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway: Office Hours Special: Algebra of Masculinity Part 3

Support for Prop G comes from Movember, what it means to be a man is changing.

The emotionally frozen Clint Eastwood style of masculinity is finally starting to give

way to dudes who can actually talk about what they're feeling.

We've teamed up with Movember to keep that trend going.

We want to encourage guys out there to share what they're going through and realize that

we're all stronger together.

We're going to hear from some of you later in this episode, sharing some things you haven't

told anyone before, so hang around and check it out.

The mustache is calling.

Raise funds.

Save lives.

Sign up for donate now at Movember.com.

Welcome back to the third and final episode of our special three-part series covering

all things masculinity.

As a reminder, in episode one, we spoke to Christine Emba about where masculinity stands

today and how women can help define positive masculinity and answered your questions on

topics including pornography and monogamy.

And last week, we spoke to Dr. Robert Sapolsky about the common misconceptions surrounding

testosterone and estrogen, specifically how these hormones relate to aggressive behavior.

To round out this series, we knew we had to speak to sort of our Yoda on the topic, Richard

Reeves, as he's someone we consider to be really the kind of the, have done the seminal

work, really has written the landmark book on this of boys and young men.

I just absolutely love how measured Richard is.

I also think he's the right face for this conversation because he's just so obviously

a thoughtful, kind of gentle person who clearly has a lot of empathy for the struggles that

non-whites and women have faced.

And I think that's key to be taken seriously here, such that you don't come across as just

like some man-a-sphere guy who's angry and, you know, I don't know, like Andrew Tate

working at a think tank.

That doesn't work.

It has to be somebody who clearly brings data, credibility, and a sense of empathy such

that these ideas get traction.

We discussed with Richard the concept of relational masculinity, the decline of male connection,

and the concentric circles of masculinity.

That's something I'm gonna, I'm thinking about as a construct for my book and you'll

hear more about that.

I know you're very excited.

We also get into the topics of parenting and the impact of porn on young men, specifically

how it's become a place that young men retreat to.

So with that, here's our conversation with Richard Reeves.

Richard, where does this podcast find you?

I am tucked away in the mountains of East Tennessee, which is where I try and get to

when I'm not running around talking about men and boys and masculinity.

Oh, that's right.

And isn't one of your kids a volunteer?

Yeah.

Yeah, my youngest is at the University of Tennessee and so we occasionally get over there to watch

the football, which I pretend to know what's happening.

Real football.

And how do you enjoy living in Tennessee or do you?

Well, when I'm here, so we've only been here a few years, we're in Southern Appalachia.

So for those, have you read Barbara Kingsolver's novel, Demon Copperhead yet, a new one?

I have not.

It's set here, essentially set in Southern Appalachia and it is an area that's been

ravaged in many ways by some of the stuff you talk about a lot that we've talked around

or what's the role of men, the opioid crisis.

I live right in the top northeast corner and I found some figures the other day, the male

labor force participation in my zip code here in Tennessee is 45%.

I mean, that's just a different world to the world that many people probably live in where

it's just, and there's a lot of issues around drugs and so on, very high rates of poverty.

And so this is deep Appalachia and it's nice for me.

I lived in Bethesda before and so Bethesda, Maryland, for those who don't know it, it's

one of those super zips, you know, high education, high income, very, very progressive.

And the place we live in when we're here is the other way around.

It's on the other end of most spectrum.

So it's fascinating for me to get to know some of the people around here.

Well, as a means of bridging into a discussion around men and boys, I would imagine that

a lot of the issues and the structural shifts in Appalachia specifically impact young men.

Is it the decline in the manufacturing industrial base?

Is it a lack of meeting opportunities?

What ails your dad's zip code and how do you relate it to some of the challenges facing

young men?

Yeah, so it is the loss of some of those traditionally male jobs that you pointed to, but it also

brings in lots of other themes too.

This was an area hit hard by opioids and there's a big meth problem here too.

So once you start to despair, you lose connection, that can make you very vulnerable to addiction.

And of course, once you're in the trap of addiction, that makes it harder for you to

hold down work.

If you're not holding down work, it's harder to form a family.

If you're not forming a family, the incentives to work and stay sober, get less.

And interestingly too, when you get into these really, really low income white areas of the

US, huge differences in the educational gaps.

It's not that the girls are doing as well as the girls in the rich areas, but the girls

are doing much better than the boys.

And interestingly, more likely to move away.

So you know this idea that the men would be the ones who would have to go up and go

somewhere else.

Well, they stay on the farm.

The family would farm.

Yeah.

Now it's the other way around actually.

You see that, but I saw some data on East Germany recently showing that a lot more women

had left East Germany to move to new opportunities in West Germany.

And so there are now towns in East Germany where there's like 75 women for every 100

men.

You predict support for reactionary politics.

You see higher crime rates.

And something not as dramatic, but is happening in US rural areas where the girls are a bit

more likely to do well at school and then maybe get some sort of professional qualification.

But then they move to the city and the guys stay behind, which is maybe a reversal of what

you traditionally think.

And so you get these areas where the sex ratio is tipping a little bit male and that doesn't

turn out to be good for anybody to have surplus men.

You know, Joe Henrich writes those books about weird and stuff.

He talks about the math problem of surplus men.

And this idea of surplus men, I think it underpins a lot of our shared interests around this,

which is what do you do with guys who've become economically or culturally surplus to requirements

in some ways?

And that's been historically, that's been very bad for societies to have too many men

who don't have a clear role in society aren't needed in a very clear way.

And historically what we've done is sent them off to war or some other risky endeavor, right?

But that doesn't happen now.

Yeah, I thought of you of all places or all times.

My 13 year old and I bond over South Park when mom and a 16 year old aren't in the house,

we sneak in and we went, we've been to watch South Park.

In season 26, episode six at exactly minute 20, because I clipped it for one of my presentations,

this father is alone with his son for the weekend and he decides to, you know, there's

too many forces trying to starch out the masculinity of his boy.

And so we say, I get strippers and starts parting and tries to get the boy to drink

beer and the boy just wants to play kind of Dungeons and Dragons.

And the dad engages in all the solicit activity and by the end of the weekend he's desperately

calling his wife and saying, I'm a mess without you, you got to get home.

And I thought of this notion of guardrails, you know, I think about two things and you've

taught me this, I often refer to you as my Yoda on the topic.

One is the singular point of failure is when they lose a male role model.

But the other thing I think about is just that young men more than young women are desperate

for guardrails, whether it's a good friend group, the prospect of a romantic relationship,

parental or male involvement, a job, whatever it might be that they literally come off the

tracks without guardrails and that girls do a better job of creating their own guardrails.

They're just, they're more attuned to society, they mature earlier, they're better at creating

a friend network that they can lean on for advice.

How do we begin to move to solutions and construct more and more guardrails for young men?

Well, first of all, I agree with you about the guardrail question.

I sometimes say this, this might be the most socially conservative I ever sound.

And I don't care if that's true because I believe what I'm about to say is true is that masculinity

and the male role has always been and will likely always be more socially constructed,

more guided, more created, more curated than the female role because the female role and

femininity will always have that more solid anchor in reproductive life and the obvious markers

that that gives you the obvious community that it brings you, etc.

And so if it's true that masculinity is more socially constructed than femininity, that means,

as you just said, that those guardrails, those guardrails are part of the construction,

those guardrails are part of like, okay, this is where you go.

The question then is how do you get it?

And this is where the vicious circle comes in because as you just identified like a male role

model. And I've been talking a lot with Melissa Carney, who has a friend of mine who has his book

out on marriage. And I've also talked to a lot of educators and I wrote for you this piece about

the lack of male teachers. So as fewer boys have had a good strong male role model in the house

or in the immediate family, also fewer of them have had one as a teacher or a coach.

And so rather than thinking about fatherlessness, we should just think more broadly about manlessness.

And so I do believe that finding ways to connect boys to men and men to each other

is hugely important, right? There's a reason why like the churches that I live in East Tennessee,

as we've discussed, and so there's a Baptist church every mile, it feels like, is extraordinary to

me that the market sustains as many Baptist churches as it does. You walk into any one of those,

there'll be a lot more women than men. And that's borne out by the statistics, every single denomination

in the church has more women than men and even controlling for age, it's not just because women

live longer, controlling for age, the guys are not in those churches. So not in the churches,

they're not in some workplaces, they're less likely to be in colleges. And so the great irony here is

that the gender that most needs institutional support to figure out who to be i.e. men and boys

are the ones who are not in the institutions, it's actually women who are in the institutions.

So it's in that sense, the problem compounds on itself as we see the deinstitutionalization

of male connection. Yeah, I was thinking about church when we were talking about it, and I was

thinking all the sports teams, like there's fewer, not only fewer after school sports programs,

because of budget cuts, but a lot of boys now because of obesity aren't physically fit enough

to engage in sports. I think about national service or compulsory service, all these things that

dual parent households, whatever it might be where boys get exposure to other boys or men.

And I saw some stats, and I'm curious if you've seen this, that Israel actually doesn't suffer

from the same levels of teen depression as many other Western nations. And I wondered if it was

because of compulsory national service or a sense of identity through national purpose,

but what institutions do you think realistically we could fund that would move the needle here

in America? One of the things that Bell saw here, a colleague of mine at Brookings and I

talked about is how about saying, look, you can go to college for free, but in exchange for doing

national service, so a scholarships for service program. So you might say, look, let's make

higher education and public good, but at the same time, you've got to give something to the public,

right? And so you do your service. And so it's not absolutely mandatory, but it would be in

exchange and make that something that people do. The really interesting idea is, of course,

Israel has national service for both, but the Scandinavians have national service for the men,

and that's much more common. And I guess if you forced me to choose between no national service

and national service for men, I might be persuaded that it's probably more important to get men

into national service for the physical reasons you've talked about, but just because of these

institutional reasons, and it also gives them a bit more time to mature, learn some discipline,

all that stuff that just makes you sound like, you know, an old Lieutenant Colonel or whatever,

but you're running the risk of saying that. So national service for sure. And I think we should

be things like the Boy Scouts, the scouting, the scouting movement has a long history of helping

to institutionalize male connection, where we shouldn't be cavalier about the loss of them.

And last but not least, the coaching gap in many of our schools, right? We need something like a

Coach for America program, where we help these middle schools that can't get a coach for their

soccer team. And meanwhile, you have these men wanting what to do with themselves. So there's

clearly something there, like we could just, it's unconscionable that in low income schools,

they can't run after school clubs because they don't have anyone to coach them or mentor them.

And then we have this vast army of men looking for purpose. So that's the sort of policy area we

need to be looking hard at and pushing for. Any parent with boys, and I guess some girls,

but it feels like more boys ultimately faces this discussion around drugs that address or

purport to address ADHD. And I'm one of those people that initially was, no, we're over-medicated.

And all they're trying to do is feminize our boys to such that they study to the test of

academia, which is biased towards girls. But at the same time, I know a lot of success stories.

I know a lot of people who said that their kid bottom line is just happier and doing better.

What are your thoughts on what is a pretty substantial increase in the prescription

of ADHD drugs for boys? It's so interesting you're asking about this when I am literally

hours out of a conversation with one of my own kids about that he's really, really struggling.

And it's partly because he really doesn't want to take the medication, but he, but it works.

And no question that that's, you know, we're clear about the fact that in his case,

it's appropriate. And as long as it's managed correctly, he does have quite significant ADHD

and the meds help period. Right. So the difficult question here, and I don't have a good answer

to this, but it's reasonably clear to me that there is some over medication going on.

Reasonably clear. It's also reasonably clear to me that there was a lot of under diagnosis

going on previously and there was under medication before. I don't know what the middle ground here

is. I can't look at the rise in the medication thing that all of it is the result of appropriate

carefully thought through and effective medication. And I have enough stories as well of inappropriate

use of the medication to basically pacify. And that's the difficult one. And I just don't know

how to think about that except case by case. I hear the success stories. And what I, what I

realize is that the people who immediately assign it or dismiss it as over medication, it's like,

you can almost tell, okay, they don't have kids. It's just, I wish there was some sort of like a

PSA test that you're above this level of PSA or cholesterol. This is when we push on drugs.

And there's no kind of test for it. But so it's, I think it's something a lot of,

a lot of people are struggling with. So the last time we spoke, you said something that struck me.

And that is, you know, I've always thought that now we're talking about younger men

or boys or older boys that porn was the largest unsupervised experiment on young boys. And I

haven't seen a ton or young men. I haven't seen a ton of research here. And you said that you

weren't as worried about it as some people that a disproportionate amount of it was consumed, but

you know, it's kind of the 80-20 rule. Have you done any more research or encountered any more

research on the impact of porn on young men? I haven't. And I think that the problem is there

isn't much good research. And it's difficult to do good research because you don't have a control

group. Because it's ubiquitous. I have had conversations with people like Christine Ember,

who has done quite a bit of work on this more recently, which has a landmark essay in the post

on boys and young men. And so young women, they're just reporting like from, you know,

from the front lines of the dating world, if you like, the ways in which porn has changed

men's views about sexual relations. And, and so I take that serious more seriously, perhaps

than I did when we last spoke, because I'm just so out of this, right? I just like, I'm not entirely

sure. I just, I'm just reading this book by this, I said I've just been in Scandinavia. I got as a

gift this book from this Norwegianist, by a pretty famous Norwegian, I think it's named Per

Peterson. It's the book is called Men in My Situation. And it's a very sad book about a guy

that whose wife leaves him and his daughters don't want to see him. And he's despairing. And

there's this line in there he's trying to date. And the line is, he was caught in the twilight

space of so many men caught between pornography on the one hand and bashfulness. And so we're

saying is actually just his ability to have agency and confidence in an in an actual interaction

was terrible. And he has had porn to retreat to. And so I guess I would revise my view to say,

look, I want to hear more about what's happening in the dating market specifically.

But I would also probably harden my view since we last spoke about the fact that it's just this

place to retreat to. You're exploring the notion or developing the notion of relational masculinity.

What do you mean by that? There's this lovely, lovely term in anthropology from Gilmore,

when he studied men across societies and across history. And he talks about this idea of

a boy becomes a man when he generates a surplus for the group. This idea that you generate more

than you need for your own survival. And I love that idea. And it embeds this idea of masculinity

in the idea of relationships. It's the opposite of what I call loan, loan ranger masculinity is

like, I just stand on my own, I build a cabin in the woods, I just I eat what I kill. I don't need

anybody you even see online in this kind of men going their own way movement, the mug towel movement

like men who sort of boast about the fact that they just don't need anybody else. And no one's

going to rely on them or vice versa. And I think that's just completely wrong anthropologically.

That's not how masculinity is being defined in human cultures and also very dangerous psychologically,

because isolation is so you've had you've had a lot of people on recently talking about this.

I think you had Senator Murphy on talking about that you've had certain generals you've met Murphy

and so this idea like we know isolation is a killer. But relational masculinity by contrast is

judged by how much you're providing for other people. And as soon as you say provider, the

dangerous people think, oh, you're calling for men to just be the economic provider again. And

sure, actually, that is important. But there are so many other things that men can provide love,

time, energy, strength, play, joy, you should be producing more of that you should be

providing for the community for the for the family. And I actually wrote this article

about it for comment magazine. And I started I started the piece with my father and I ended

with my son. And I talked about how my my own father, who did fulfill many of the traditional

roles too, but he was on he was in the community. He helped people as my mother did too. He was

he judged himself by the relationships that he was providing into. And I finished the piece of

my son who went to university very near where my parents live in Cardiff in Wales. And my son told

me and he's really struggled through the education system. And he said that when he walks to his

classes at university, he could look north and two miles to the north, there's a tower, an old

Victorian hospital tower. And that hospital is right next to where my parents live. And he says,

I look up there. And I know that's where grandpa is. And I know that if I need him, he's there for

me. And it helps me get through my day, just knowing that a couple of miles away, his grandfather's

there. So even now, my father, to my son, to his grandson, is just providing security,

joy, love, support, etc. And so this idea that masculinity is not defined in isolation from

others, but quite the opposite. Yeah, first of all, I always try to stop in every podcast.

And I see something that I think or hear something that I think is especially insightful or moving.

And, you know, when I was younger, I wanted to be wealthy, wealthy slash awesome. That was my goal.

And then as I've gotten older, I thought my ultimate goal is to have a positive influence. And

what you just described, I think is kind of really, if I, if there's anything I really want

over the course of the rest of my life, it feels quite frankly, a little bit elusive,

I don't know if it's going to happen, is that I'm that grandfather you're talking about,

is that my sons, and if I'm fortunate enough to live long enough, my grandkids,

think of me as someone who's a source of comfort, because they can come to me and they want to

come to me for advice. I think that's, I mean, literally, you just described what is my,

you know, my end goal right now. I've been thinking a lot about masculinity, and I'm actually

thinking about writing a book on it. And I'm curious, I want to bounce this construct off of

you and have you respond to it, because you just sort of articulated it. And that is concentric

circles, if you will, of masculinity. And at the very center is taking care of yourself and being

self-sufficient. You know, Rambo can go into the forest and kill things and make an arrow and bow

an arrow out of sticks and survive and take care of himself. He's that strong, he's that resourceful.

But at the end of the day, that's not, that's the first stage of masculinity, being able to take

care of yourself, to fix your own oxygen mask. And then you go one circle out, take care of the

people in your family, right? Be a good dad, be a good partner, provide for them. And then sort

of the ultimate expression of masculinity is you get to the point where you can go so many circles

out, because you're so good at what you do, you're so thoughtful, you're so kind, you're so resourceful,

that you can take care of people who are never even going to know your name.

And that that's kind of the ultimate expression of masculinity. And then even taking it one step

further, I know a lot of people that I think of it as like almost like hollow masculinity that are

very good at the outer ring. They give millions of dollars away, they're leaders in the community,

but they lose sight of the inner circle, their families are struggling. And they're so focused

on the affirmation from that outer circle of masculinity, being a leader in the community,

that their home, quite frankly, is a shit show. Anyways, what do you think of this idea of kind

of concentric circles of masculinity? I really like it, just been sketching it out. But I also think

it's important that you start from the middle, as you say. I mean, if you're basing it in this

idea, and I love what you shared about your own story, if you move from this idea of like, what

can I get to what can I give? Then it exposes the hollowness of that external, because even if these

guys are giving away all this money and apparently doing all this great stuff for the world,

if they're doing it because of what they get, social affirmation, oh, you're so generous,

have a seat on the air, but that it doesn't fucking matter how much money they're giving away,

right? It is hollow, I love your description of it, it's kind of hollow because it's still what they

get, rather than what they give. But if you do start from, the reason why you take care of yourself

is not selfishness, it's selflessness, it's so that you can do the stuff in the next ring and

the next ring, and the next ring, and they all kind of flow and kind of blur into each other,

and I certainly grew up in, I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where those lines were

being blurred all the time, and people knew, people knew that our home was the place you could come.

We had teachers coming to our house after traumatic events kind of in tears, because they knew that

our home and my mom and my dad would be a safe place to go, and then we were always forbidden

from telling, meant breathing a word of it, which we never did. And so I grew up with the sense of

like, my mom can't drive past someone in the pouring rain, and not offer them a ride, right?

She can't. That can only happen if it's flowing out, if it's this surplus, and because compassion

and love aren't finite, the more you're generating it in the kind of furnace of the family,

then the more there is to go, like it just spills, it goes and goes, and you generate so much joy and

play. Now I'm sounding sappy, but I agree with it, and the trouble is that a lot of the debate

right now is between, like if you think about some of these manfluences to use Christine Ember's

term, right? There's sort of a combination of the first ring and the outer ring. It's like,

yeah, take care of yourself, go to the gym, kind of work out and then provide, you know,

have all this show that you're doing, but actually it's really about the thick of everyday life

to use a term from the philosopher Jerry Cohen. It's like, real justice and real joy are found

in the thick of everyday life. The other thing I've been thinking about and I want to get your

reaction to is that, so a lot of times men from a media standpoint or an assessment,

you know, all the stats, right? 92% family court kids being awarded to the father, you know, the

stats go on and on that by virtue of being born a male sometimes in certain instances or a lot

of instances, you start from lesson zero. I also wonder if there's a bias or a lack of recognition

for how powerful the household combination is of someone who is born as a man and someone who

is born as a woman or brings the attributes that are more common to those two groups and that is

having a household and an approach to the family and life and career that includes someone who is

aggressive and more of a risk taker and more impulsive and someone who's more practical and

more thoughtful. And usually those are values that are disproportionately assigned and reflected

in people born as a specific gender and that there is evidence showing that in terms of happiness,

economic productivity, raising healthy, prosperous children, that that combination of attributes,

and I'm not saying those attributes can be reflected in two women raising kids or two men

raising kids, but it's that combination of those types of attributes that typically are associated

with one gender or another, but there is a chocolate and peanut butter here. What are your

thoughts? Yeah, I'm actually encouraged by the way in which social science has really come to

its senses around this issue of the distinct roles of mothers and fathers, like distinct but

overlapping. So there's no debate now really in sensible social science circles that dads matter

and they matter in some ways that are different and complementary to moms, right? 15 years ago,

that wasn't the case. 15 years ago, there was still a discussion of it and I will say that

you still face it. I gave a talk at a pretty liberal college recently and I did my spiel about

why dads matter distinctly and one of the first questions I got was why are you being so heteronormative?

And what it said was if stating the evidence that I find compelling that dads matter in ways

that are complementary to but also distinct from mothers, if that makes me heteronormative, fine,

I'll pay that price. If that's the price I have to be accused of, the way I think about this is that

the evidence is strong that moms and dads bring something and men and women bring

something different to the parenting enterprise and you've identified a couple of them,

around risk-taking, learning, etc. And I've been hugely influenced by an anthropologist out of the

UK, Anna Machen, who wrote a book called The Life of Dad and she talks about the ways in which

where dads really come into their own is about calculated risk-taking, it's about helping you

navigate the world, develop networks, etc. And so to sort of simplify it horribly, like moms are

really good at looking after the kids in the nest and making the nest and dads are really good at

helping them get out of the nest. Now, a lot of the tasks that moms and dads perform are

substitutable for the other, but some of them around those things about taking some risks,

getting out in the world, learning how to be in the world, actually dads seem to be better at that.

Yeah, I say to my wife that generally speaking, her job is to make sure the kids don't get into

too much trouble and my job is to make sure that they find some. And she says, how come you get the

fun job? And it's just, she's out of town, we're both out of town a lot doing our, you know, we

have different professional lives that anyways, I have the boys for a week. And within about 24

hours, one has lost his binder within 72 hours, I noticed one hasn't showered in four days. I mean,

everything just comes off the tracks logistically, we're having a great time. And there's a lot of

growth there. We're doing fun stuff together. But it's just funny how we, I can't help it,

we do seem to digress to these traditional, these traditional roles. So you, you did something

pretty bold for someone, you're at the Brookings, it's at the Brookings Institution, is that,

is that the actual name? Yeah, I'm a non resident there now, but yeah,

yeah. So Brookings, the Brookings Institution in DC, this is a pretty prestigious appointment,

a great platform, regular salary, healthcare, and you decided to go start, basically do a startup,

but it's called the American Institute for Boys and Men. And you founded it this year to raise

awareness of the problems of boys and men and advocate for effective solutions. Talk about

this, this your process of starting an enterprise, what has been rewarding, what has been more

challenging than you thought? Well, first of all, thank you for mentioning it. And you're right,

it was a difficult, I'd been at Brookings for 10 years. And honestly, what happened was that,

that I just, I came to believe, and you've been in this space for a long time, Scott, and really

helping create, create the environment where I thought this was a good idea. So I'm gonna blame

you if it goes wrong. But it's, but I really came to believe that the debate about kind of boys and

men and what's happening to them just has an, this is an institutional problem, back to

institutions, this is no research-based organization. It's just that if you have

lots of institutions whose job it is to draw attention to the problems of one group and no

institutions trying to attach that to the other group. So I came to believe, I had a long conversation

with Ezra Klein for his podcast, and I came away from that, I think I basically just lamented the

lack of institutions who were doing this work. And I came away from that, I was talking to my wife

about it. I was like, you know what, we need a think tank for boys and men. I need to go find

someone to run it. Two days later, I came back to her and she said, how's it going? Have you found

anyone to run it? I said, well, no, it needs to be someone with a research background who's known

in the space, who's run think tanks. And she was like, yeah, do you know anyone like that? And so

in the end, it was like one of those moments where I just felt like, look, if not me, then like, then,

then who? And so I decided to jump, raise some money, building up a staff with a small team,

like half a dozen people probably at this rate. But I've been really pleased by the fact that

by framing it in the way that I think you and I both try to, which is not zero sum,

we're massive supporters of women's rights. We just want to pay more attention to what's

happening with boys and men, we want to get past this toxic debate about boys and men,

and we want some research, we want some facts, we want some evidence, we want to base this on fact.

It turns out that once you get past the crazy 2% on each end on each fringe,

everybody wants to talk about that. The appetite for this, because it's not like people can't see

the boys and men in their lives struggling and suffering. And so once you get, if you frame it

the right way, so look, we'll see. And you know, someone's, one of my friends said, well, you're

out on this limb now, you might as well stay on it until they saw you off, which is a dark way to

put it. But I strongly believe that sometimes you need institutions to do this work. And so I've

set out to build one. It's not something I've done before. So I am learning as I go, all kinds of

stuff. In some ways, it's not really what I think I'm best at. But sometimes the right thing to do

isn't the thing that you're best at, it's the thing that you're called to do at that particular

moment in time, and you feel like you're uniquely positioned to do. And so I'm just hiring people

who are much better at this stuff than I am. And let's see. And in five years, I hope this will

be a well-established, boring institution doing work that newspapers cover, and that we talk

about on podcasts like this, and it's not seen as a controversial or risky thing to do, that we've

normalized the debate about boys and men. That's my goal is to normalize it, get it away from the

cultural war. Richard Reeves is the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men,

which he founded in 2023 to raise awareness of the problems of boys and men and advocate for

effective solutions. He's also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in

Washington, D.C., where he previously directed the Future of the Middle Class Initiative and the

Center on Children and Families. His 2022 book of Boys and Men, Why the Modern Male is Struggling,

Why It Matters and What to Do About It, was described as a landmark in the New York Times and named

a book of the year by both the economist and the New Yorker. He joins us from Appalachia in Tennessee,

which I just wouldn't have guessed. But Richard, like I said, you continue to be my yoda around

this stuff, and I hope that if people want to be supportive of your work, either downloading the

research or supporting it financially, where do they go? Do you have a website?

We will. My sub-stack is called Of Boys and Men, so the updates will be there. And then once we

go live, very shortly, it'll be aibm.org. And I'm on Twitter, LX, as I have to learn to say, Richard

V Reeve. So you can find me in all those places. And let me thank you in return, Scott, for your

time, but for your leadership on this space. This is, you know, it takes a village. Well,

it's taking a village of men in different ways and with different roles to just raise this issue up.

And I know how much work you've done. Long before my book came out, you were talking about this,

and you were one of the reasons that I went down this path. So at the risk of praise inflation,

I just want to thank, really thank you. Thank you back for the huge work you've done and the

leadership you've shown in this space. I appreciate that. It means a lot coming from you. Thanks,

Richard. We'll be right back after this break to answer some listener questions on conversational

skills, college admissions, and mentoring. This is Advertiser Content, brought to you by

Movember. Okay, so Movember came to us when they heard we were doing this miniseries about

masculinity. And they said, look, we're trying to get a conversation started about men's mental

health. So we decided to open up the space to you guys. We put out a call asking for men to

share something they haven't been able to say to anyone else. Maybe you heard it, it sounded like

this. Guys have been silent about what's really going on in their lives for years. It's a macho

thing, and it's stupid. Now Movember is inviting men to feel the power that sharing those unspoken

things can offer. We gave you guys a link to use. We made a really lovely submissions page,

and it was a whole thing. Last week, we checked to see how many people stepped up to the plate.

Many guesses? Zero, none, not one submission. But honestly, I feel like that really shines a

light on what we're trying to say here. Opening up, whether that's with your friends, partners,

or a whole bunch of podcast listeners you'll never meet is not easy. And as men, we're basically

allergic to it. But our friends need that. Our fathers, our brothers, our sons need that. We

all need that. There are a lot of people to talk to out there, and they're ready to help when you

need them. It might be too late to share your story on the air, but it's never too late to open

up to someone you trust. Movember is the leading charity changing the face of men's health.

Visit movember.com slash profg today to sign up or donate to the cause. That's movember.com slash

profg. Welcome back. Let's bust into some office hours questions. Question number one.

Hi, Scott. My name is Sophie, and I'm a career coach in Arlington, Virginia. I'm

particularly immersed in your work right now on this hidden male malady that we have as a society.

And I've had an increasing number of clients in their 20s and 30s, men, who are sponsored slash

cajole to come to me by their parents to help them get a job. But in addition to the career

that they are missing, these men also need the motivation of a partnership when it comes to it.

Many of them just don't have basic conversation skills. The art of curiosity and being

unguarded and honest in the back and forth. And I'm wondering if you know of anything that

can help young men particularly develop these conversation skills. So short of a $250 an hour

coach, do you know of any ways to really give the real life practice that some of these men need?

I honestly think that sometimes it just comes down to these very practical questions of real life.

Sophie from Arlington, thanks for the thoughtful question. I don't know. I don't have any research

to point to here. And as usual, there's obviously people more qualified than me. I'll tell you

what I'm doing with my boys. I think about this a lot. And that is, if you think about masculinity

as being a provider, I think that ideally you want to be a provider for yourself first and foremost,

be scrappy, take care of yourself such that you can then take care of your family and then ideally

take care of others. And ideally at some point, take care of people who never even know your name

or that you indirectly provided for them. There's this wonderful man, I think his name is Richard

Feeney, who just passed away. He made $8 billion in duty-free shops and anyways, gave it all away

and didn't want credit, did it anonymously. And I thought that is really kind of ground zero for

what it means to be a citizen and a man. But anyways, also a protector, fireman, cops, military,

but also a procreator. And that is someone who pursues relationships. Most surveys show that

women still want men to initiate romantic contact. Now, why do I think that is so important? And why

do I think it's important for young men, especially boys, to get used to talking to not

only other men, but the opposite sex. When my son went to boarding school, he wanted to go

to a boarding school that was two-thirds boys and one-third girls. And I said no and encouraged him

and he ultimately agreed to go to a boarding school that was half and half. I forced my 13-year-old

when we're out to occasionally talk to a stranger. He'll say, where's the tube stop? And I'm like,

I don't know, but you need to ask somebody because I'm not going to ask. We're in a store

where we were buying a Tottenham kit. Where can we find a dad? I'm like,

I don't know, go up to this lady and ask her. And also, occasionally, I invite people over

and host an event or something social for my kids and task them. And they're usually up to it to

inviting a bunch of their classmates over and encourage them to socialize as much as possible.

Because here's the bottom line. We've trained boys, or we trained society to think that young men

who approach women in unsupervised situations without being in the lobby of MSNBC or having

their lawyer present is somehow predatory. No, it's not. I'd like to see in high school a class

taught on mating dynamics. And as it relates to boys, how to approach a woman or maybe another man

and express romantic interest while making that person feel safe. Because here's the bottom line.

Those skills, the ability to endure rejection, the ability to establish a conversation,

the ability to make conversation, the ability to try and make someone laugh, the ability to look

into their eyes, the ability to think, wow, they're more likely to engage in a conversation if I'm

wearing a good-looking shirt and maybe I've showered and maybe I've taken the time to get to the gym

every once in a while. Maybe I have something I can talk about that I'm affiliated with

interesting organizations or I have some interests or who knows, maybe I can drop that I work at a

good company because I am successful or I go to a good school, whatever it might be. How do you

open? How do you open? Because here's the bottom line. Young men and boys who learn how to open,

those same skills serve them well professionally the rest of their lives. So what do you do?

What would I tell parents to do? Put your kids in as many unsupervised situations as possible

with other kids. I mean, other than that, I don't have a lot of suggestions other than maybe you

get them involved in communities and situations, whether it's sports leagues, Christ Even Church,

or religious institutions, or a community service. My kid's mother takes them to do volunteer work,

which I think is absolutely wonderful. And I remember my dad, I remember going to Myrtle Beach

with my father and I was maybe 15 or 16 and we were on the beach. I remember my dad like elbowing

me because he saw another girl my age and he's like, go talk to her. Go talk to her. I'm like,

no, I don't want to talk to her. And he's like, just go talk to her. And then I wouldn't talk to her.

So he went over and spoke to her and her parents and then waved at me and I almost

melted. I was so embarrassed. But then I went over and talked to them and she was a nice girl,

that shit's important. So yeah, the means, the means, putting them in the context of strangers

and encourage them or even sometimes what I do with my boys, force them to speak to strangers.

Thanks for the question, Sophie. Question number two. Hi, Professor Galloway. This is Davis from

Johns Creek, Georgia. People in my neighborhood are now referring to UGA as surf city, as there are

at least two girls where every boy offered admission. My question is, do you believe the

flagship state universities have an obligation to better balance male and female enrollment?

Thank you. And I enjoy the show. Thank you, Davis from Johns Creek, Georgia. I did not know that

that University of Georgia, the Bulldogs, that sounds like it'd be an amazing place to go to

school. I've always wanted to go to Athens because probably my two favorite bands, R.E.M. and the

B-52s both hail from Athens. So there must be something in the water there, the great, great

alternative music. Anyways, yeah, in some this is happening everywhere. Supposedly there's some

liberal arts colleges up in the Northeast that ended up like with three to one accidentally last

fall because more women ended up enrolling. So just some stats. According to Brookings,

boys not only start school less prepared than girls, but they're also less likely to graduate

from high school and attend or graduate from college. So from day one, you would argue that

you the boys are less prepared or the education industrial complex is biased against them.

Data from the U.S. Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics shows

that in the fall of 2021, female students made up 58% of total undergraduate enrollment translating

to 9 million students, whereas male students made up 42% or 6.5 million students. The education

gap has been slowly widening for 40 years. Douglas Shapiro, the Executive Director of the

Research Center of the National Student Clearinghouse, told the Wall Street Journal that two women will

earn a college degree for every man. If this trend continues, the drop in male enrollment

has prompted many colleges to implement a form of affirmative action for men. Title IX, which

guarantees equal educational opportunities for men and women, doesn't prohibit gender-based

affirmative action admissions at all schools. In fact, in 1972, a lead private university

secured an exemption from Title IX for their admissions policies, fearing that a rapid increase

in female enrollment might affect fundraising and academic offerings tailored to men. This

exemption remains in effect and allows private colleges and universities to get preferential

treatment to male applicants. According to The New York Times, some experts believe this

advantage is equivalent to an extra 100 points on standardized tests, including the SAT. So

in some, in some, we just have a lot more women than men going to and graduating from college.

Now, why is this a bad thing? One, if you like to think that we want to provide the same economic

opportunities to both genders and people of different ethnicities, then when one is dramatically

different than the other, you level them up. And a lot of people say, well, Scott, where were you

when it was 60, 40 male to female, which is what it was 40 years ago? And I would argue,

you know what? Where were we? We were here. Specifically, we were here for you. There was

gender-based affirmative action. And we've had race-based affirmative action until just this

last year, actually 1997, California struck it down. But 51% of Harvard's freshman class is

non-white. And by the way, I think that's a wonderful thing. Mission accomplished. Let's do

away with it. I think it should be affirmative action should be based on income as the gap,

academic achievement gap between black and white used to be twice as large as between rich and

poor 60 years ago. And now it's flipped in the academic achievement gap between poor and rich

is twice as large as it is between black and white. Now let's talk about that Harvard freshman

class, 51% non-white. That's a victory. Yeah, it is. But 70% of those kids come from dual

current households where their household income is greater than the US national average. So all

we've done is reshuffle the elites. Now it's about income and class versus race. So as it relates

to your question, there are real knock on effects, specifically women made socioeconomically

horizontally and up men horizontally and down. And when the pool of men who are seen as viable

mates, right, is getting smaller and smaller, and women are getting taller and taller economically,

there's just less mating and less household formation. And we can scream at instinct,

but it doesn't have to listen. I think telling women that they should consider dating and mating

with men less economically prosperous for them. Yeah, good luck with that. And also,

I don't think that women should be responsible for servicing men or you need to tell women to

lower their standards. I don't think that's productive either. What do we need? We need to stop

having this argument over who gets in. Because it's not, the word isn't who, the word is more.

Higher education is meant to be a public servant, not fucking Birkenbeck. We're not here to try and

figure out who are the elite at the age of 18. Nobody can predict greatness at the age of 18,

set a 2.27 GPA from UCLA who got into Berkeley with a 2.27 GPA. So what do we need? More

freshman seats. And what's happening also across your question as it relates to male

affirmative action, here's the bottom line. It's happening, but it's happening informally.

I can tell you, I speak to a lot of admissions directors and they are informally trying to

create affirmative action for young men. They don't write it down and it's not formal because

they're worried about the political backlash, but the bottom line is for the first time in a

long time you have an advantage. You know who the most underrepresented group in colleges is now?

White men from red states. They aren't applying to college. And for whatever reason, whether it's a

lack of maturity, their prefrontal cortex not evolving, an educational system where boys are

twice as likely to be suspended as girls for the same behavior, whatever the reason is,

there are some graduate schools at NYU where if we were totally admissions blind,

they wouldn't be 70% female. They'd be 70% Asian female. The Asian American community has done

such a fantastic job preparing its kids for the criteria or the attributes that universities

look for that they disproportionately, massively outnumber every other cohort. So do we want to

reduce the number of Asian American kids coming to our great institutions? No, we want to increase

it. We want the numerator to get much bigger. And yes, we do need some form of affirmative

action, but rather than engaging in a hostile political debate where we say, okay, a non-white

kid doesn't get in or a woman doesn't get in so we can let in more boys or more white boys,

now fuck that. Let's not go there. Let's find more reasons to get along. And let's expand the size

of the pool. Let's not try to figure out who the needle in the haystack is. Let's make the haystack

just a shit ton bigger. Thanks for the question. Question number three. Hey, Scott. This is Eric

from San Antonio, Texas, currently living in Germany. You often mentioned that the world seems

to be not favoring the development of young men. I'm curious what you do to help young men develop

and whether that's something that I can contribute to. Thank you.

Eric, that's a really nice and generous question. And I'm self-conscious about virtue signaling,

but that's not going to stop me. So what do I do? And what can you do? First and foremost,

if we want better men, we need to be better men. And the singular point of failure, if you try to

reverse engineer where young men come off the tracks and end up alone, angry, addicted, incarcerated,

suicidal, if you try to reverse engineer those terrible things to one point where this young

man came off the tracks is the following. It's the absence of a male role model. And

my dad wasn't around when I was younger. I was raised by my mother who lived and died a secretary,

so I was literally alone a lot. And here's the thing. I still had wonderful men in my life.

I had a stockbroker who took an interest in my life, my mom's boyfriends, even after they broke

up, stayed interested in me. I had a camp counselor who taught me how to program. I had these nice

men in my life that tried to stay involved. My uncle Bernard tried to, when he was in town from

London, kind of spend time with me. There is so much paternal and fraternal love out there.

And the fact that you're asking that question means that you have it. So what can you do?

You can get involved in a young man's life or a young man's life. Can you coach? Can you lead a

Boy Scout group? When you find neighbors who have sons, especially sons to single mothers,

are you in a position to kind of get involved in that kid's lives and even approach a single mom and

say, I'd like to spend some time with your son? Because that's the key is just getting involved

in their lives. And you don't have to be some icon. You just have to be a dignified person

that's living a virtuous life that kind of listens and convinces that young man that he

matters, that he has meaning. I'm specifically getting more involved in vocational programming.

I'm funding a program, a joint program between UCLA and Berkeley for vocational programming,

which will be open to both young men and young women. But I think it'll appeal mostly to young

men. I want to create more on ramps into the middle class for young men who aren't cut out

for college, can't afford it, aren't capable of it, don't have the skills of the desire to go.

But what can we do as men? Simple. We need to be better men. We need to get involved in the

lives of young men. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question,

please email a voice recording to officehours at PropGmedia.com. Again, that's officehours

at PropGmedia.com. This episode was produced by Caroline Chagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our

associate producer and Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening

to the PropG pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No

Mercy, No Malice as read by George Hawn and on Monday with our weekly market show.

Support for this episode of PropG came from November. For over 20 years,

November has been at the forefront of men's health. They've helped fund cutting-edge tests

for prostate cancer encouragement to check their testicles for bumps. And yeah, they got all of

us to grow mustache that people in our lives hated. Now, they're locking in on men's mental

health encouraging guys to open up with each other. And this November, they need your help.

It's time to bring back the stash, raise some cash with your buds and help change the face of men's

health. The mustache is calling. Raise funds, save lives, sign up or donate now at Movember.com.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.