Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of Week 9/25: Russian Draft, Favre Scandal, Global Markets, Edward Snowden, Men In Crisis, & More!

Episode Date: October 1, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the Russian resistance to conscription, Favre investigation, global market chaos, Snowden getting Russian citizenship, Hurricane Ian, student debt lawsuit, & American men in crisis!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Chicago Tickets: https://www.axs.com/events/449151/breaking-points-live-tickets Glenn Greenwald: https://greenwald.substack.com/Richard Reeves: https://www.brookings.edu/book/of-boys-and-men/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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mobilization. Let's put this up there on the screen. Russian's two most senior lawmakers address the complaints, saying that they might solve the, quote, excesses that have stoked major public anger. That is specifically because regional officials inside of Russia are coming to the Kremlin and to Putin and to many lawmakers, apparently, and just saying, hey, like, this is actually really unpopular here at home. What they point to here is that the mounting resistance to Putin is at all levels of society. So not only do we see, Crystal, those protests. Again, look, we're not in Russia. It's hard to gauge what exactly is going on. What we can say is there are protests. To what extent, how much popular support do they

have? I have no idea. I'm not there on the ground. But they exist and they got media attention. That's number one. Number two is at the regional level and at many of the mobilization centers and more, there are displays of quote-unquote refuseniks and of others who are doing their best to try and get out of this. There's reports and video that are coming out of people saying, you need to do your duty right now. Enough playtime, boys. You know, at people who are basically protesting at the so-called mobilization centers. They're threatened then with consequences. So the state is mobilizing to a place that we haven't seen from like the war machine in Russia since like I guess the days of the Soviet Union.

I mean it really at a very, very small level. It's not even close to the same. But this mirrors Russian tactics in World War I and in World War II in the way they treated their population and compelled them in order to, quote unquote, fight for them. Their tremendous advantage in warfare has always been they have a ton of bodies, and they're basically willing to mobilize their entire authoritarian state to force them and kill as many as possible to try and have defense. But their problem is this is a war of offense. And, you know, one of the things we pointed to in the beginning was this is a lot like what's going on when Russia invaded Finland in the Winter War in 1939.

They lost like 100,000 people. And it was specifically because tactics like this. And they had a population that was like, hey, I don't want to do that. Why do I want to conquer Finland? I got nothing to do with this. Yeah, I was listening to Michael Kaufman on a podcast yesterday, and he laid out what was kind of, you know, he's very skeptical that this mobilization is going to really make much of a difference for Russia.

But he laid out what was kind of the best case scenario for them, which is that they use these bodies, basically untrained bodies. I mean, imagine getting two weeks of training and then you're in war. Yeah, you're basically a meat shield. I hate to say it, weeks of training and then you're in war. It's insane. You're basically a meat shield. I hate to say it, but that's true. That's exactly what it is. And so he's saying, okay, use them, like stick them in the trenches and they basically hold the defensive line.

You reconstitute the forces that are on the ground, the like remaining actually trained, skilled forces that you have, and then use them for some sort of an offense. That's kind of the best case, like, strategy that they could employ at this point. And, you know, I don't think any of us should be overly certain about how any of this goes, because obviously, you know, every analyst has gotten significant parts of this wrong at every turn. But, you know, I think there continues to be a lot of skepticism that this is going to make a huge difference militarily, while domestically, you know, it does look like there is – the population previously had been kind of ignoring the war. They kind of weren't really paying attention to it. There was some independent polling to that effect.

That was in this Wall Street Journal piece that we had up before. It said recent independent polls showed most Russians had lost interest in the conflict. But now, even though what Putin is saying is that it's just for people of prior military experience, you know, they call them reservists. They're not exactly reservists in the way that we think of it. Even though they're saying, okay, it's going to be limited to 300,000 people, there's a lot of reasons to be skeptical of that claim. Every mother, wife, daughter in Russia is now worried about their man. And we're going to put up here, we can put up A6, Putin's draft draws resistance in Russia's far flung regions. So far, they seem to be, and again, you know, based on the reporting, the best that we can get, seem to be concentrating their mobilization in the sort of like more rural, less educated, more far-flung regions of Russia. And the reason they do that is because they think, you know, these are people who, first of all, they don't have a lot of as much access to the internet. So they're just fed government propaganda. So

they're more likely to be like staunch Kremlin supporters, or at least believe the Kremlin narrative. That's number one. Number two, they have lower levels of education. They think that they're going to put up less of a fight. And this article speaks to, you know, a number of people who are on the ground in these rural remote villages who are saying like they're drafting, you know, a massive percentage of our men and we're screwed for winter. And like, you know, our basic like economy and the reindeer herders and all of this, it's really at risk. So even in these places that they thought would be their strongest bastions of support, they're finding a lot of resistance, a lot of anger, a lot of fear, and frankly, a lot of desperation. So again, it's very limited what we can see into, you know, the whole of that country and how people are feeling and how they're responding to it and

all of that. But there does seem to be, there was such an attempt to shield the population from what was going on in Ukraine. Putin has really ripped the mask off with this one move and made it super, super real, tangible, and frightening for people across the country. They have a quote from a woman in one of these remote villages in that piece, and she says, on television, they say that this is about defending the fatherland, but the threat is now not so much to the fatherland, but to our own lives. So it was one thing when it was this sort of distant conflict, but now that the possibility of their sons, husbands, loved ones being sent, you know,

like meat shields into this war with little to no training, now that really changes the way people feel about it. And the last thing I want to say about this is, you know, I keep bringing up this shooting at the recruitment center. And the reason I think this is significant is up to this point, the overwhelming majority of the protest and resistance to this war that we've seen has been peaceful. Well, we know what happens in societies when peaceful avenues of dissent are shut down. Then people morph into not peaceful dissent. And we've already had, I think it was like 10 military recruitment centers that have been set on fire. Now you have this, you know, this shooting. So it's a very volatile and dangerous situation, I would say,

on the ground as best we can tell from here. Absolutely. And all it will require is more authoritarianism on Putin's part. And that's what's going to happen. And that's really what the sad part is. I mean, everybody talks about in the days of the Soviet Union, like whenever your son was drafted, you basically said goodbye. You're like, I'm not going to see this guy again. I mean, he basically had a 70% chance of dying within, I think it was like the first month on the front line. We don't know what the casualty rate is in Russia. Is it that bad?

No. Is it the 6,000 they claim are killed? Absolutely not. That's a laughable number. What we do know, you know, a little bit of open source stuff that trickles out. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is a photo from a Russian airport. Just look at the number of just young men, military age males, I guess to use a military term, that are just flooding the airport and border crossing. Some of those men don't look so young. I see some white hair in there too.

There's some dudes there who are like probably right on the cusp and they're like, I'm getting the hell out of here. And there was some really sad videos, you know, talk, you know, especially like you said from the far flung, people kissing their wives goodbye and getting on the bus. And they're just weeping. I mean, they know. They're not stupid. They know what

possible fate awaits them. And let's put the next one up there on the screen. We're talking here about Google searches in Russia or search engine searches. This is for how to break your own arm. Massive spike on the day of mobilization. Same thing. I mean, you have a lot of people who want to try and get out of combat, not get drafted, get some sort of military exemption. It really is just a terrible, terrible situation. So there's domestic strife in Russia for sure.

To what extent? Who knows? You can't have war without domestic strife. So is it very big? Is it a threat to the regime? I don't know yet. You know, there's just really no way to say. The way that these things go is, of course, they're going to get a ton of press here in the West. And, you know, we can and should cover it. We can't or nor should we overstate, though, the threat that this could be. It could all work out in Putin's favor, right? There is, you know, sometimes it's always darkest before the dawn. But I personally

don't necessarily see that. But like I said, I've been humbled by making predictions in Ukraine. Like, all we can say is it's a tragedy for the 300,000 who have been drafted here. I mean, terrible situation. And the Ukrainians, too. Yeah, that's the other way. Who knows whether it's true or not? Some of this could be support stuff. How many of these guys actually make it to the front line? Maybe 50? I mean, will that realistically change the reality on the ground? That's what Kauffman has been saying as well.

So everybody is in a wait and see. But it's bad for the Ukrainians. Obviously, you're going to have more people on there. It's bad for the actual draftees themselves and Putin himself in a very, very sticky situation of his own making. All right, we got an update for you on Brett Favre and this situation down in Mississippi. Okay, guys, it's a little bit of a complicated story, and I do have to recommend my own monologue on the matter to get the whole backstory and, like, all the details here. But the TLDR is basically Mississippi has long been one of the stingiest states, if not the stingiest state in the country in terms of welfare funds. You get a block grant from the

federal government, and states have a lot of latitude at this point post-Bill Clinton in what they can do with this money. Poor people in the state weren't getting the money, so there was a big question, okay, who is getting the money? Turns out that a bunch of like wealthy, politically connected scammers were getting millions and tens of millions of dollars out of the state's welfare fund, some for direct personal use, investments in this like sort of scammy med tech company, although it turns out that Brett Favre is the lead investor in. He was also paid to give quote-unquote speeches that, and we're talking about like $1.5 million to give speeches

that apparently he never gave. But the big focus with regard to Brett Favre is the fact that he was pushing for something like $5 million to build this stadium, volleyball stadium, for his daughter at her university. It's the same university that he went to and played football at. And he was, he's buddies with the former governor, Phil Bryan. He was texting back and forth with him, texting back and forth with this lady who was at the center of some of the other fraud and her son trying to bilk the welfare fund for this money. He denies wrongdoing. He says he had no idea that this money was coming from this fund. Well, there are new court filings that do not cast Mr. Favre in a very positive light.

ESPN has the right up here. Let's go ahead and put it up on the screen. They say Brett Favre pressed for facility funding despite being told that the legality was in question, according to this new court filing. By the way, and I'll get into a little bit more of this, the court filing is from the former governor, Phil Bryant, who is trying to protect his ass. So keep that in mind. He released some selected text messages to try to cast himself in the best possible light,

this former governor. And so what Favre texted him in these text messages that were in the court filing, he says, We obviously need your help big time, and time is working against us, Favre wrote. And we feel that your name is the perfect choice for this facility, and we are not taking no for an answer. You are a Southern Miss alumni, and folks need to know you are also a supporter of the university. Bryant responded by text, according to the filing, quote, we are going to get there.

This was a great meeting, but we have to follow the law. I am too old for federal prison. And then he did like a smiley face in the sunglass emoji. But repeatedly, even after being told by the governor, like, I don't know if this is legal, Favre continues to press. So that seems to indicate he knew this was shadier than he's letting on now that he's like,

oh, I had no idea. I thought it was all about board. The whole thing that drives me insane about this is, like you said, it's not just Favre, it's like a bunch of wealthy people in the state of...

This is funds for welfare. Yes. Like these are literally funds so that poor people can eat. Yes. Like single mothers. They literally stole funds from poor people to line the pockets of rich people can eat. Like single mothers. They literally stole funds from poor people to line the pockets

of rich people. I mean, literally welfare for rich people. And Brett is worth $110 million. Multi-millionaire. He could build the stadium by himself if he wanted to so bad for his daughter's volleyball program.

The best part, too, is when he's like, use of these funds is tightly controlled. Improper use could result in violation of federal law. And he's still like, yeah, let's do it, though. It's like, what? Yeah. And let's keep in mind, though, that this is a court filing from the former governor who is trying to cover his ass and say, look, I warned this was not, this was shady, etc. There's a lot of other information to indicate that this guy was in on the whole thing, knew what was going on, was trying, was coaching Favre and this other lady on how to write their proposal to get around, to like create legal loopholes and get around the issues.

And there was rampant tens of millions of dollars of fraud in this welfare fund while he was governor. So let's put this next piece up on the screen. This is from Mississippi Today. They have been doing phenomenal work breaking all of this down. I really encourage you to support them if you can. Former Governor Phil Bryant moves to keep text private while denying he helped channel welfare funds to Brett Favre's volleyball stadium. So he's objecting to turning over any of his records and the full extent of his text messages. In this filing, they just took out the ones that they thought were the most favorable for them.

They shared those, but they're saying, we don't need to give you anything else. If you didn't have anything to hide, wouldn't you want to release all of those text messages and say, see, here is the whole account of what happened with regards to this freaking stadium. I didn't have anything to do with it. I was telling them it was illegal. I was like saying, no, we can't go down this road. So the fact that he's going to great lengths to make sure that these text messages stay hidden is very suggestive of his role in this whole thing. And as I said

before and covered in my monologue, there were a lot of other text messages that looked very, very bad for him. And by the way, the current governor, and they're both Republicans and both know each other and similar donors and whatever, current governor seems to be helping him to try to not investigate his role and to keep these text messages hidden, et cetera, et cetera. So Governor Phil Bryant may look like he's okay in some of these text messages that came out in his court filing. But remember, there was other information that was released where he was directly involved, seemed to know where the funds were coming from, and was coaching them on how to help this avoid legal scrutiny. Right. I think that's the key is, look, Brett, you could clear your name today,

release every single text message that you got with the governor. look brett you far you could clear your name today release every single text message that you got with the governor yeah i wait for the subpoena same with all of them you guys say you haven't done anything good publish it was the record publish it release the transcript as we once used to say uh but i think it's a tremendous tale of corruption from what we've seen so far and i hope that a lot of people go to jail as a result of this, or at the very least are fined to high hell because it is repulsive to steal from a literal welfare fund to, you know, for nepotism purposes. And when you're famous and leveraging political power, all in a state, which look, Mississippi, I mean, they've, they've, they've, they're suffering, right? Itelfare already is an issue.

I think it's one of the most obese, unhealthy states in the U.S. It's either the poorest or the second poorest state in the nation. Right, it's always up there in one of the poorest places. Yeah, I mean, look at what's happening in Jackson. Yes, yeah, exactly. I mean, there's not an accident that it happens there. So already, to steal from poor people in general is terrible, but to steal from some of the poorest people in the country is like an extra level of horrific when you're already this filthy rich. And then the last piece of this that is quite

shocking, just to show you the level of depravity and disgustingness that was going on here. This text from Brett Favre, I'll go ahead and put it up on the screen. When asking Brian in 2018 for help finding funding to construct lockers at the facility, quote, it would be helpful if someone would build them on their spare time. Poncho mentioned the prison industry

possibly as a builder. So, Brett Favre there floating, I mean, he's floating prison labor, right? Isn't that what that means? That's what he's saying. Yeah. Floating, using prison labor to make a volleyball stadium for his daughter. And you're talking about a dude who's worth $100 million, is that what you look?

Yeah, over $100 million. Just, I have no words. No words. It's just so, it is genuinely crazy. Like, whenever you consider everything going on with this. And look, it's on Mr. Favre and all them can clear their name. They can tell us exactly what's going on. That's what we're calling on them to do.

Release the emails, release the texts. Let's see it all. Absolutely. This is really interesting, digging into some of the economic numbers. Let's go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen. This is what really sort of sparked this conversation for us anyway. Every single major currency, this is from Joe Weisenthal, is lower against the dollar today except the ones that haven't started trading yet. So I don't want to get too much in the weeds here so that eyes glaze over. But effectively,

what is going on is because our Federal Reserve is hiking interest rates, that is causing massive ripple effects throughout the world economy. And in particular, this is a problem for countries that have a lot of dollar-denominated debt or that rely on a lot of imports from around the world because the dollar continues to be the global reserve currency. It continues to, like, 40% of the world's transactions are done in dollars. So when the Federal Reserve increases their rate, it usually increases interest rates throughout our economy. That tends to make the dollar stronger. That attracts investment capital from investors abroad seeking higher returns on bonds and interest rate.

Not necessarily a bad thing for us. But for the rest of the world, now it costs them more to do basically anything. And again, this is especially a problem for places that have a lot of dollar-denominated debt or that have to import things like food, like basic or fuel, basic items. Now everything is more expensive. And this becomes an issue for us as well, because obviously the economy is incredibly globally integrated. So it's not like we're this little island and we can protect ourselves from what's going on around the world. So that's why this is something to really pay

attention to. I was reading an article and there was an economist here who put it this way. Central banks, of course, have purely domestic mandates. However, because economies are more interdependent than they have ever been, and so closer cooperation is needed, I don't think central banks can have the luxury of not thinking about what is happening abroad. This has been particularly a dramatic story in the UK. Let's go ahead and put this piece up on the screen. You've got the Bank of England saying they won't hesitate to hike rates because they are very nearly in crisis after the pound fell to a historic low against the dollar. Now, they have something that is a little bit different going on there because not only do they have the impact of our Federal Reserve Bank hiking rates, but their issue seems to be more directly related to the domestic political situation there, which is that the new prime minister announced this massive package of tax cuts largely for the rich and for corporations, including such populist moves as lifting the cap on banker bonuses. Sounds like what the UK needs. It really is a total throwback

kind of policy. I mean, it's quite astonishing when you read the details here. But I think Liz Trust kind of expected the market to be like, yay, tax cuts. And there was instead essentially a meltdown because they worried so much about the financial position of the country with, you know, taking so much revenue out of the budget with these huge tax cuts. So that's a big part of the story of why they're having such an issue right now. Yeah. And actually, it's going to have major problems for them on inflation, because part of the thing is that a strong pound made it so that imports were less expensive. Whenever the pound is cheaper with regard to the dollar, then the imports become more expensive,

which means that British companies are going to have to raise prices to compensate for higher costs, which puts pressure on inflation, which is already at the 40-year high in Britain. So they have some serious economic troubles. It's related, like you said, to the fiscal policy. But the fact is, is that all currencies globally are having problems with regards to the dollar. And the strong dollar as it is, it's not necessarily, this is why it's complicated. From our perspective, not a bad thing. Right. Because it makes imports a lot cheaper. Well, it makes it, it helps us with inflation. And there's no accent that even as inflation

continues to bite here, we actually have low inflation compared to a lot of other nations because the strong dollar means when we are importing goods- Cheaper for us. They're cheaper for us. And that helps keep our own inflation in check. The risk is that you have blowback from, you know, it relates very much to the monologue you gave yesterday, Sagar, about how when you have countries where their population is stressed out because of food prices or fuel prices or housing prices or whatever it is, you are more likely to have a lot of instability, a lot of chaos. And, you know, these things don't just stay in one place. If you have, you know, if you have a country collapse and you have massive migrant flows, guess what? That can really have a big impact on your politics and your economy and everything else here at home.

And because the economy is so interconnected, you know, the problems over in other places don't necessarily stay in those places. So it is a complicated story. Liz Trust is so interconnected, you know, the problems over in other places don't necessarily stay in those places. So it is a complicated story. Liz Truss is a fool in my opinion. She really is coming back full back to Thatcher. And she just misunderstands like the European moment. If you look at what just happened in Italy, Sweden, what's happening in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, everything we've pointed to, it's clear what's going on. You have major economic stress and that is leading to like massive social turmoil. She's instead just pivoting back to Thatcherite.

I believe it's the first tax cut in the UK since 1972. And at the same time, it has 40-year high inflation and also massive energy prices, which are a result of a foreign conflict. So she's digging down to what she was raised in, I guess. But there's no real answer. I was seeing Ross Douthat talk about this yesterday. She is setting the stage for probably an eventual labor victory and then for the re-rise of UKIP-style populism, which led to Brexit. And that's going to leave the island in chaos for no reason

whenever she could just be like a forward-looking thinker. And instead, it's like we've seen a reversion past the gains that I thought we had seen with Theresa May and with Boris Johnson's governments. I mean, I cannot imagine anything more tone-deaf than lifting the cap on banker bonuses. When energy prices are so high for like small businesses and pubs in the UK, which are all needing either closing or on the verge of laying people off. Like you found this yesterday, this underscores like how tone deaf this is, put this up there, which is that in the UK, most people's mortgages reset every two to five years. So that means 1.4 million homeowners in Britain are soon going to see a massive monthly payment spike, which they did not expect at all, Crystal. I don't really know why fixed rate mortgages don't exist in the UK. That's an interesting question kind of in its own right. But that's just the

system that they have over there. So when you have a reset every two to five years, well, I don't think anybody thinks that rates are going to come down two years from now, that means a huge portion of the UK public is about to pay a ton more in mortgages and in energy costs to heat set homes. Like the fixed costs that these people have are going to go up by like 20, 30%. That's crazy when you also consider, I mean, think about how much of their income already goes to taxes. So like their disposable income just took a huge haircut for events that are totally out of their control and up to the government. And the answer from the government is, how about we cut taxes for the wealthy? How about that? Would that help you out? That feel good? So crazy. Let's make sure those bankers are getting what they deserve. I'm all

right. It really is wild. I mean, when I dug into the details of it yesterday, I was actually shocked because it did feel like such a throwback. I mean, then again, it's not all that different from what Trump did when he was in office with the Paul Ryan suite of tax cuts. But it is pretty wild to look at. And, you know, you've had markets that are really in turmoil around the world. And typically, you know, usually in any country, there's sort of like a double-edged sword. Like when their currency is strong, it's sort of like a double-edged sword. Like when their currency is strong, it's good for some groups and bad for other groups. And when it's weak,

it's, you know, vice versa. Typically, when your currency is weak, you can sort of offset the problem because, oh, then your exports are more in demand because they're comparatively inexpensive. And so you can sort of like make up for it by shipping more goods around the world. But because you have either recession or mounting fears of recession in a lot of quarters of the globe, you also have decreased demand in a lot of places. So that's not really helping them out at this point. So in any case, it's just another sort of sign of the precarity of the global financial system and of, you know, with a lot of potential ramifications for our own economy here at home. And I'm going to take a look at more of that in my monologue today and a lot of new signs that the Fed policy is really going too far too fast

and could cause a severe recession here at home. So we're going to take a look at that as well. Joining us now is great friend, very special friend, the original friend, perhaps the best friend of the show. Glenn Greenwald, it's great to see you, sir. Thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, thank you. I accept all of those titles. I think they're all appropriate and I appreciate the invitation. It's nice to see your face and be the subject of your mockery again, Glenn. That's right. It's been far, far too long. One of the reasons we wanted to talk to you, Glenn, on top of just checking in in general, let's put this up there on the screen. President Putin yesterday granted Russian

citizenship to Edward Snowden. Now, there's been a lot made of this by the U.S. media as some evidence that Snowden himself is like further a traitor, as if he himself should be pushed to the front line by Putin. What did you make of this move and then the general treatment by the Western media of this obvious stunt by Putin? So first of all, just look at the framing of this, like Putin grants citizenship to Snowden. This happens all the time whenever the U.S. media wants you to hate a particular country. They start personalizing everything to the leader. When we wanted to invade Iraq, it ceased being Iraq did this, Iraq did that. Everything was Saddam did this. Same with the war in Yugoslavia. It was no longer Serbia does this. It was

Milosevic does this. They always personalize it on a particular leader as though now Putin is sitting in the immigration office as an immigration clerk reviewing Snowden's application for citizenship and stamping it approved. Of course, it's done in the name of Putin. So many documents are signed by Joe Biden that he wouldn't have the capability to even read, let alone analyze and process. But that's already the framing. Snowden has lived in Russia for nine years now. He lives there with his American wife and their two young toddlers. And the reason they're there, of course, is because the US government has made clear that if he steps one inch outside of Russia, they will arrest him and prosecute him and imprison him for the rest of his life under the Espionage Act of 1917. So all this is, is the natural byproduct

of living in a country for a long enough time. I've lived in Brazil 17 years. I'm eligible for citizenship with my family. And yet the American media tried to depict this as some cunning move on the part of Putin and worse, some sinister evidence that it means Snowden all along was a Russian spy. I want to pick back up on Snowden. But first, I actually want to ask you more about that point about like personalizing the governments

because I think that's interesting because I actually try to, when we're covering Russia, talk about the Kremlin or talk about Putin versus Russia as a whole, because when you're dealing with a basically authoritarian system, I sort of want to intentionally separate out the ordinary citizens who may or may not support what's going on or may or may not understand what's going on versus the leadership, like the elites who are actually, you know, running the show. Do you think there's an argument for that? Or like, how do you see those things in the language there and its importance?

Yeah, I mean, for sure, Russia is an authoritarian and an autocratic regime. A lot of countries in the world are, but it's also a complex country of 70 million people or so. It has all kinds of different power centers and factions and competing interests. The same is true of almost any country that you talk about where there's this extremely exaggerated attempt to depict it as this totalitarian regime when maybe North Korea and a handful of other small countries really are appropriately characterized that way. There's all kinds of interest in Russia. There's lots of divided public opinions. Putin does have a lot of support, as does the war in Ukraine. Maybe that's because of our propagandized media. Surely that is part of it. But I think it's just so overly simplified the way that the Western media ends up talking about the countries that we're supposed to hate.

Yeah, I think that's true. Very important. I wanted to get your response to what Snowden himself tweeted in response. He said, after years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our sons. After two years of waiting, nearly 10 years of exile, a little stability will make a difference for my family. I pray for privacy for them and for us all. I mean, I think this is the key point, Crystal, is let's go back and just remember because before this obsession with Russia completely consumed American discourse in 2014, every major media outlet fought to publish and report on the Snowden documents,

and virtually every major media outlet throughout the West did so. Obviously, The Guardian and The Washington Post won a Pulitzer for it, but The New York Times fought for those documents. I remember getting badgered by all the reporters for access to the archive, Globo in Brazil, Le Monde in France, El Mundo in Spain, all over the Western world. People were competing to be able to report these documents because they revealed an incredibly newsworthy story, which was especially here in the United States, many of the spying programs that were instituted but were on terror and then increased radically under the Obama administration were found by courts to be unconstitutional and illegal. So what American would be so surf-like in their mentality as to believe that that's not a positive thing? And yet in response to that, the US government has done nothing but try to imprison Snowden for eight years. And as he says, he has a family, an American wife, American children.

He's always said he wanted to come back to the United States. And so, yes, he does need stability because he can't leave that country. And citizenship is a way that gives him and his family that stability. And to try and depict it as something nefarious on his part, when in reality the fault lies with the Obama administration that went after whistleblowers using this 100-year-old repressive statute more than any other administration in history, I think is really misguided. And Glenn, when you pointed out on the Washington Post, which I thought was completely crazy, was that they described Snowden as just a intelligence leaker, which was floated by Matt Taibbi, but also described him as, quote, who considers himself a whistleblower. And as you pointed out,

Fett, it's especially weird because they shared that Pulitzer Prize for helping report on some of the Snowden documents at the time and considered it worthy not that long ago in 2014. I mean, the Washington Post could not heap enough praise on themselves and their courage for the work they did on Snowden documents, when in reality, the Washington Post was too scared to even allow the reporters to go visit Snowden in Hong Kong the way Laura Poitras and I did. The story kind of fell into their lap. He never chose to work with them, but they exploited those documents to their benefit. And the amazing thing is, Sagar, two years afterward, when the New York Times was calling for Snowden to be pardoned, the Washington Post editorialized

against a pardon for their own source, advocating that their own source be in prison. And their argument was that Snowden's documents weren't just about domestic spying, but also spying on other countries. But let's remember all of the choices that were made about which Snowden documents would be concealed and which ones would be published weren't made by Snowden, but were made by the newspapers with whom he worked. And the Washington Post did more than any other media outlet,

way more than I did, in publishing documents about how the US was spying on other countries. So it was they who revealed those secrets, not Snowden, and then turned around and used their own behavior as a way of arguing that he shouldn't get a pardon. Where do you think that this ideological positioning of the Washington Post comes from? Does it represent a break with past traditions or a continuation of a long tradition that perhaps was temporarily broken so that they could bask in the limelight of prizes from reporting on the certain documents?

So I've never been somebody who thought that the corporate media is, quote unquote, liberal, nor did I ever think they were conservative. I believe the ideology of the corporate media is pro-establishment. And in particular, they're particularly deferential when it comes to the U.S. security state. And all the stories that we've seen over the last 20 years that received so much criticism from the Iraq war to Russiagate to the 2008 financial crisis were all about these media outlets being completely subservient to ruling elite power centers. And the reason why media outlets dislike Snowden and Assange and so many people like them, even though those people are the ones enabling journalists to do

the job they claim they're there to do, is because their sources inside the CIA and the FBI and the Justice Department and the White House hate Snowden and Assange. And therefore, they just reflect reflexively those same biases. That is what these media outlets are for. Right. And I mean, what's the future here for Snowden and just by the Biden administration? I saw, I don't know if you saw this yesterday, Glenn, but the White House referred all questions on Snowden's citizen to the DOJ, indicating that the prosecution, the current policy continues under this administration, which was considered, I mean, extreme even at the time under the Obama administration when they were also in charge. Let me just use your question, Sagar, to make two points that are actually related.

One is that this whole idea of Snowden being in Russia and the way they used that to suggest he was a Russian spy, let's remember that he didn't choose in the first instance to go to Moscow. He went to Hong Kong and he was there when he contacted us. And at the time, you can go back and read the same stories from the same outlets. We're accusing him of being a Chinese spy. Why, if he were a Russian spy, would he have gone to Hong Kong and called us there instead of to Moscow in the first instance? But the more important point is, when he left Hong Kong, he was trying to get, everybody knows, to Ecuador Ecuador and Bolivia where he was going to ask for and receive asylum the way Ecuador had given asylum to Assange. And he had to transit through Moscow on his way to Havana. And the Obama administration led by Joe Biden did everything

possible to block him from leaving Moscow. Ben Rhodes boasted, bragged in his own book about he called the Cubans and said, if you want us to lift this embargo, if you want to have better relations with us, you better not do anything to help Edward Snowden get out of Moscow, because if you do, there'll be no political space to do it. The reason he's in Russia isn't because he chose to be, it's because the Obama administration forced him to be precisely so that they could turn around and get morons to think, oh, well, if he's in Russia, he must be a Kremlin spy. And that is the problem is it was the Trump administration considering actively pardoning Snowden. I think it was one of Trump's more cowardly moves

not to have done that. The reason he didn't was because the second impeachment trial was hanging over his head and Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham made clear and Mitch McConnell, if you pardon Snowden, we're gonna vote for your own impeachment. But he didn't and now the Biden administration was a part of the Obama administration is continuing this repressive attack on whistleblowers that led to Snowden not being able to come back to the United States in the first place. Yeah had never heard that before, Glenn, that there was a threat from Rubio and Graham and some of the more hawkish pro-security state Republicans to potentially vote to convict Trump in that impeachment hearing over Snowden. Is there, just explain that a little bit more to me,

because that's a new piece of information for me. Yeah. So, you know, obviously, I was somebody who was working very actively, both publicly advocating, but also in private, doing everything I could to secure a pardon for both Assange and Snowden, Snowden being my source and Assange being someone I regard as heroic. And there was real movement inside the Trump administration to give particularly Snowden a pardon. It came much closer to Snowden than they did to Assange. And if you think about it, why would they have initiated an impeachment proceeding

against a president who within a couple of weeks was on his way out? And the reason, Crystal, was that they were very afraid that on his way out, Trump was gonna do a bunch of stuff, including not just giving pardons to Snowden and Assange, but also declassify all kinds of documents he had been threatening to declassify about the CIA, about the Kennedy assassination. had against Trump doing what they considered crazy stuff on his way out was the second impeachment trial. And they explicitly communicated to Trump, multiple Republican kind of hawkish senators did, that if you do what we know you're thinking about doing, what Rand Paul and Matt Gaetz and others were encouraging him to do, which was pardon Snowden, that will severely jeopardize your

chances of getting out of this impeachment trial with an acquittal. And that was the kind of sword of Damocles hanging over his head during that transition. All right. Does that relate to the documents that he then takes to Mar-a-Lago? Because there's some reporting that the documents that he took there were, you know, related to Russiagate. They were things that, you know, he had flirted with declassifying before, but didn't for whatever reason. Do you know if there's a connect there? What I know for sure is that Trump was threatening to declassify all of those

documents relating to Russiagate because Trump believes, I think with a lot of validity, that there were crimes committed or at least ethical transgressions committed during the 2016 election to create and manufacture Russiagate. It came out of the CIA. And I don't know exactly which documents he took. Nobody really knows exactly which documents he took. But it certainly seems to align with everything I knew at the time, which was that Trump wanted those documents public, had the power to declassify them. And now his defense is that he did. I'm not saying that those are the only documents he took.

He probably took a bunch, being Trump, just kind of did it all recklessly. But I would think there's certainly a relationship between his belief that documents were being hidden that should be seen and his decision to remove a lot of documents

out of the White House tomorrow. Yeah, that corresponds with some of the reporting that Ken Klippenstein, for example, has been doing. Well, we covered a lot more ground than I even expected us to get to. A lot of interesting revelations there. Glenn, it's genuinely great to see you. Great to see you, sir. Thank you. Yeah, congrats on your success. Always happy to come back anytime. Absolutely. Thanks very much. See you guys.

As you guys know, Hurricane Ian slammed into Florida's southwestern coast yesterday. It was a Category 4 hurricane when it made landfall. Let's go ahead and put this first piece from the AP up on the screen. They say Ian makes landfall in southwest Florida as a category store form. This is one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the U.S. Swamped southwest Florida on Wednesday, turning streets into rivers, knocking out power. The number they have here is 1.8 million. This morning, it is over 2 million Floridians without power and threatening catastrophic damage for their inland. You know, the thing with Ian, which is strength at landfall, tied it for the fifth strongest hurricane when measured by wind speed to strike the U.S.

I mean, this is an incredibly strong storm. And the thing that made this so difficult to deal with is it was strong. It was huge size-wise. You're talking about an eye. And actually, I think we have an image we can show here. An eye that was 40 miles across. It's crazy. I heard yesterday on the Weather Channel, they said for 360 miles, you were talking about tropical storm force winds. That's how gigantic this thing was. And then you were also talking about a huge amount of rain, partly because it was also very slow moving. So places in Florida getting a foot of rain dumped on them. You can imagine the issues

in terms of flooding that you're ultimately going to have. We do have some images here that we can show you from yesterday as this was making landfall. I believe this is from Fort Myers. You can see, I mean, you can see the wind. You can see the trees just whipping there. And then massive flood waters just surging all around. So that was the scene in Fort Myers. You also had, you know, Weather Channel's Jim Cantore. Let's go ahead and put this one up. He's out there trying to report and getting blown back by this wind.

He actually gets hit by a tree branch that, you know, hits him down in the legs. He appears to be fine. He's sort of stumbling around, trying to grab onto a sign to keep his footing. I mean, this is what this man is famous for. This is what he does for a living. But I got to tell you, it was not, would not be a position that I would want to be in. You can see there just how strong those winds were ultimately. And then the other piece of this that Sagar was pointing out yesterday is, you know, everybody knew the storm was coming. There were a lot of areas that were told to evacuate. You still have Floridians this morning that are now subject to, it's been downgraded to a tropical

storm that are trying to flee. But Sagar, you heard this on CBS News that many are riding out the storm, just they can't afford it because of how high gas prices are, which is horrible. And actually, so what the newscaster said, by the way, I wasn't intentionally watching CBS. For some reason, my TV, when if I turn it on, CBS automatically turns on. Blame Samsung, not me. Listen, in these storm coverage events, these are the things that they actually do well. Right. But people were like, why are the things that they actually do well. Right. But people were like, why are you—I'm like, I'm not. I just happened to turn on my television.

It defaults to CBS. Here's what he was saying, which is that the price of gas being so high and also the price of travel, most people who wanted to flee—or sorry, many of the people who stayed, a lot of them just could not afford to actually go. And the reason why, and this really is so grim, motel prices were very high. A lot of them couldn't afford shelter. You need to afford food. I mean, ask yourself, can you afford two straight weeks of eating out elsewhere? Not a lot of people have relatives

who are necessarily within the area. This is why most personal financial advisors are like, you should always have two weeks or whatever of expenses. But the truth is we know that, you know, the most, I think the average American cannot even afford a financial crisis of $500, like a.k.a. a quote-unquote blown tire away from bankruptcy. So this is exactly, I mean, many more than that considering the scale, considering how much people charge, like gas shortages as well. So he was specifically referring to the price of gas. And it just really struck me. It's like, what a tragedy. Because I remember that that happened in Katrina in New Orleans that everyone was going after them. Like, why didn't they flee? It's like,

well, where are they supposed to go? And it's like, well, you really want to go to the Thunderdome? And we saw here too, some of the shelters were filling up and all of that. I also talked to a local reporter who was down there. Actually, he said something even sadder, which is that some people just didn't believe that it was going to be that bad. Yeah. And this always happens. I don't know where it comes from.

It's like, wouldn't you rather, if you have the money, would you not rather say air on the side of caution? They were like, yeah, it'll just be like Irma. It'll be like Charlie. It'll be fine. I mean, you saw that picture. Fort Myers is like, they had what, like 12 feet storm surge? The storm surge was insane.

I saw a, there was a, I don't know if it's real. I hope it was real. Of a shark literally swimming. I don't know if I buy it. I never want to say if it's real or not because I've been duped by the shark photos. Yeah, this was in dispute. AKA Sharknado is real. It's a joke.

But anyway. It was in dispute. Regardless, there clearly was 12 feet of water in the streets of Fort Myers. And I was telling you, one of my good friends actually just bought a house in the Tampa area. They had 40 inches of rain in 24 hours. He has no idea how his house is. I mean, that is insane. Absolutely insane.

And, you know, it's still, it's now downgraded to a tropical storm. This is still very dangerous, though. I mean, that means really high winds, and the water, I think, is the part that continues to be a real concern for now. It's going to move out to hit Georgia and the Carolinas before the track they have it on now has it sort of moving inland towards Appalachia as the last storm track that I saw, at least.

So, yeah, just thinking about everybody, yeah, I'm just thinking about everybody in Florida. I think just this morning, we'll be getting more images and more of a sense of what the damage and the devastation looks like. This could very possibly be one of the most expensive storm cleanups, and we just hope everybody escape with their lives because the water and the flooding was truly catastrophic. And across such a wide swath of this state. I mean, there's hardly a part of the state that ultimately wasn't impacted just because of the massive size of the storm. And we're all going to get a washout here in the D.C. area, the entire eastern seaboard. Not nearly as bad.

I'm just saying, like, it's going to rain now for the next, like, four days. Right. I mean, that's just, again, a sense of how large this storm ultimately was. So it really packed a punch in terms of its strength, like how fast and hard the winds were, how large it was, the amount of rain, and then on top of everything, super slow moving. So people were just getting hit and hit and hit for hours and hours.

All right, so we have an update on the Biden student loan debt relief. We have the first lawsuit, legal challenge, which is something that Republicans have been telegraphing. They wanted to move forward with. I think it's like a libertarian aligned law firm that has filed this first suit. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Robbie Suave, I think, was among the journalists who broke this news. He did. Over at Reason. The headline here is flagrantly illegal law firm files lawsuit to stop Biden's student loan forgiveness. So let me break down some of the details here and I'll try to keep it out of the weeds. But, you know, ultimately, there is a real question of over the legality of this program, in part because of what, in my opinion, was the foolish way that this was drafted and the legal justification that the administration has done. I'm also not so foolish as to believe that the courts are anything other than basically partisan at this point.

The Supreme Court, if this ends up in front of the Supreme Court, would be very likely to look askance at anything the Biden administration was doing here and look favorably on the conservative argument. So I think in terms of the ultimate case against this, that's sort of the least of their issues. The problem has always been finding someone who quote has standing to sue because you have to show that you have been injured by the law in order for a court to assess that you have standing and that, you know, you can be the plaintiff that ultimately files. So this conservative group, libertarian group, thought they found someone because of the peculiar, like, details of Indiana tax law. You have this guy, his name is Frank Garrison, and he actually was receiving debt relief already under a different loan forgiveness program,

the public service loan forgiveness program. And under his, in the state where he lives, under the tax law there, that loan forgiveness is not taxable. So it's not like he's getting money. They're just, they just say, okay, it's wiped clean. You don't have to pay taxes on it. You're all good. However, the Biden loan forgiveness, which he would now be eligible for, would be taxable. So he would have, he would take a tax hit because of the Biden student loan program, again, because of the intricacies of this state law. So that's why they're saying this individual was injured because he wasn't going to have to pay these taxes and now he is going to have to pay these taxes. However, there is a new filing from the government this morning, or I think yesterday actually this came in, that basically points

to a provision which says, no problem, if you want to opt out of the Biden loan forgiveness, then you can. And they go on to say that actually, upon receiving the lawsuit and receiving plaintiff's filings, the department has already taken steps to effectuate plaintiff's clearly stated desire to opt out of the program and not receive $20,000 in automatic cancellation of his federal student loan debt. And so notified plaintiff's counsel today. So they're basically saying like, you don't, you are not automatically in this thing. You can easily opt out of it. And we are already, because you stated that you want to opt out, we are already opting you out.

So guess what? No injury anymore. So just to wrap it all up, because I know that was a little bit complex, this guy was saying basically, like, I'm going to have to pay taxes that I didn't have to pay because I'm being put in this program. I don't even want to be put in this program. And the government came back and pointed to a specific provision that says, actually, you can opt out, and we have opted you out, so you're no longer injured. Yeah, so he may not have standing. But I think the reason why we're covering it just shows you is that this is just the first of many. I mean, you have to remember Obamacare and some of the other policies in that time.

They hunted around for the best possible plaintiff in order to bring the case. So I think this is probably, Crystal, the first of many in order to bring cases against student debt. But this is the challenge for this, is finding someone who can actually claim injury. You probably need the processor, right? At the end of the day, it has to be one of the processing companies themselves to say that they were bilked out of X amount of revenue

from not being able to process the debt. Maybe. Yeah. From what I have read, the issue is a lot of those people don't want to piss off the government. Right. They don't want to—right. You'd have to find one that was, like, very ideological. Yes.

That was willing to basically risk their business in order to be the plaintiff here. So, you know, again, like, obviously I support the student loan debt relief. From what I've read, I don't think that the legal justifications they put forward were the best ones or that they're going about this in a particularly intelligent way. I think it is vulnerable to a court challenge because of the conservative makeup of the Supreme Court and how partisan they are at this point. But yeah, the challenge is going to be finding that person who's willing to be the plaintiff who actually can claim that they were injured by the student loan debt relief. And, you know, from looking at these filings,

it seems to me like this person is probably not going to pass muster. Yeah, I think you're right. And this, we're going to keep a very close eye on this. And this is also always the problem by legislative, by executive order. If you're going to, you know, claimed like the pandemic or whatever as your justification, they actually, there were several other things that they could have used to try and do it that's exactly like the heroes act of 2003 there's a couple of other things what they used ultimately but there were many other ones legal justifications would probably would have put them on better ground what i've heard is this goes down probably seven two with the supreme court if the right plaintiff uh brings it which you know and that means even one legal, uh, liberal justice is likely to cross over. Yeah. Well, and that'll be, I mean,

when that, if that happens, ultimately if they're able to find someone withstanding and, you know, I would believe that it would get struck down by the Supreme Court because again, I mean, I, I'm not even going to particularly care about the legal details because I just think the court is so partisan at this point. But I think there could be a massive public reaction when you have people who have already benefited from this policy and had their debts erased or nearly erased. You're talking about 43 million people benefiting from it. And then if it gets pulled back, I think there'd be quite a reaction to that. Certainly. Well, we should also remember they had a chance to put it in reconciliation and

they didn't do it. Specific Democratic senators are also the ones who killed it. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, there you go. Won't let that one off the hook for sure. Joining us now, Richard Reeves. He's a senior fellow with the Brookings Institute and is the author of a very interesting new book, Of Boys and Men, Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to Do About It. Richard, thank you so much for joining us.

We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. He's also the author of a great book, Dream Hoarders. We were just talking about that. Phenomenal book. I highly recommend. We'll have links down in the description for you guys to go ahead and buy it. So Richard, first of all, why did you decide to write this book? And what were the social kind of impetus and why you thought it was important to society to have this conversation? Well, the first thing to say is I've raised three boys myself to adulthood and I think all scholarship is a little bit autobiographical.

Yep. Because the question of whether we admit it or not. My last book, Dream Hoarders, is partly about the experience of being in the American upper middle class. This is the experience of raising boys. But actually in my day job, so I'm worried about boys at night because I've got three. But in my day job, as I was working on issues of inequality in education, in employment, in the family, I just kept running across this gender gap and not the way you'd expect to see it. I kept seeing ways in which it was boys and men who were really struggling. To be clear, it's mostly working class boys and men, black boys and men.

It's typically not the dream orders. It's not the upper middle class. But I don't think we can understand inequality in the US without understanding what's happening to boys and men. It's typically not the dream orders. It's not the upper middle class. But I don't think we can understand inequality in the US without understanding what's happening to boys and men. I also felt, frankly, there was a bit of a gap because both sides politically are so dug in, in the culture wars around issues of sex and gender, that it's even hard to have a book with that title without getting a reaction from people. And so I almost felt like as a Brookings scholar, given the work I've done, that trying to create a better conversation, we need a better conversation about re-scripting masculinity than we're currently getting. And this book is my attempt to do that. Fascinating. So part of why you get that pushback is because when we look around at society,

you say, all right, look at the US Congress, still overwhelmingly male. We've still only had men as presidents. You look at the CEOs, they're like, still overwhelmingly male. We've still only had men as presidents. You look at the CEOs. They're like, there's some stat. There's like more CEOs named Bob than there are female CEOs or something like that. I think you've talked about, you know, venture capital and what a small proportion of that goes to female founders. So when you look at those things and then you're like, yeah, but the real problem is with men, I can imagine why people are like, well, wait a second. It seems like the issue is on the other side. So how do you sort of square that circle? Yeah, it depends where you're looking. If you're looking around the apex of society and you're looking at those sorts of institutions, then clearly there's much further to go. And I've

written about the need to get more women into Congress. The US is a real laggard on that front. And as for not having a female president yet, as you can probably tell, I come from the UK and we're in our third female president. This one doesn't seem to be working out so well. We'll just leave it for that aside. Having back another day. But the point was, it was just no big deal. And you're right, in Fortune 500 companies, only 44 of them are led by women right now. Now, go back 20 years and it was zero. So that's 44 more than it used to be, but it's very, very far from parity. But if you look down, if we look down at what's happening in the rest of society, most American men today earn less than

most American men did in 1979. There's a huge gender gap in education. Men are three times more likely to die from a death of despair, from alcohol, suicide, drug overdose. And so the trouble is that people who are just living in these elite circles look around and go, well, I don't see it. Well, partly it might be there and you're not seeing it, but also just look down, look at the rest of society. We've seen such a big increase in economic inequality that we have to think about both those things at once. And partly this book is a challenge to say, can we think two things at once? Can we think there's much more to do for women in certain sectors of society? But now we also need to look at boys and men. And right now it's proving very difficult to have that conversation. Even breaking into that paradigm is just so tremendously hard. As you said,

without getting coded right wing, I've almost frankly given up, so I admire you for being able to try to fight the good fight. Point to some of the important data that you're saying there about the lifespan, about overall earnings, about deaths of despair, and why should women care about it? Why should women care about how men are doing in society? Yeah. So in education, I think just to put a few data points on it, we've long worried about gender inequality in education, but it's typically been worrying about getting girls and women to catch up with boys and men. And so in 1972, the US passed the famous Title IX legislation to try and get more girls and women into college in particular. At that point, men were about 13 percentage points more likely to get a college degree than women. Today, it's 15 percentage points more likely that a woman will get it than a man.

Wow. So the gender gap is actually bigger in college education today than when Title IX was passed. It's just the other way around. It's flipped. If we look at high school, high school GPA, you've got a high schooler and I've had some recently. High school GPA is a really good measure because A, it's increasingly important in college admissions, and B, it's quite a good proxy for overall success. Let's look at high school GPA. The top performers in terms of high school GPA, those in the top 10%, destined for good colleges, two-thirds girls. The bottom 10%, two-thirds boys. And that is actually found in pretty much every country in the world, pretty much every level of the education system. So a massive reversal in the gender gap in education.

What that means is that struggling to hit the labor market. In the employment, you've talked a lot about this. Yes. In automation, free trade, like what's happened to working class men. Working class men can't get the jobs their dad got with the same level of education. And so this has been a really difficult adjustment for men in the labor market. And one of the consequences of that is for family formation. So we see a number of men now who effectively get benched

because they're not fulfilling the traditional male role. We haven't re-scripted a role for them. And so they end up out of touch with their kids' lives, which is particularly bad for their sons, actually. That's one of the things I think is most important is, you know, especially I think in American society, we have this concept of masculinity that is centered around being the breadwinner. Correct.

And then when you make it more and more difficult to fulfill that role, it's like, okay, well, what am I then? You know, what is the role that I'm supposed to in? Or am I just a failure? Like, am I terrible? And that opens up a window for people who maybe don't have the best messaging to come and say, well, here's, it's these, I was going to say these B words. Yes. It's these ladies over here who are really your problem. It's the feminist's fault.

That's right, it's the feminist's fault. There you go. And that's exactly the debate we're having right now. And I think what we see on the left is an unwillingness to acknowledge some of these issues at all for fear that that means betraying your commitment to women, which we've already talked about. But on the right, there's this sort of magical thinking, which is, yeah, let's go back to the way things used to be. Let's go back to the way men and women knew their place and to marriages based on economic dependency. We live in a world now where 40% of women earn more than the average man.

Right. That was 13% in 1979. And so 41% of households have a female breadwinner. This has been a huge change and a wonderful change, arguably the biggest economic liberation in human history. What it means though is that that old model of masculinity and of masculine success is not coming back. And politicians on the right who somehow think they can wave a magic wand and bring it back are selling everyone a lie. So the left are effectively turning their backs on boys and men, but the right are trying to turn back the clock on women and girls. And everybody I know is just trying to figure this out. And we need a model of mature masculinity that is compatible with gender equality. One of the things I think is important about your book is you actually offer some potential solutions.

So let's talk about it. What are some of the things that you offer, societal-wide changes, that could be piloted or at the very least thought about experimenting in America? Well, first of all, thank you for asking that question. Because I do think books suffer sometimes. They become like the book of lamentations. Everything's wrong with the world and then maybe one idea at the end. So I felt I did want to offer some solutions.

So in education, for example, I have three ideas. One is that we should start boys in school a year later than girls because their brains mature later. A 16-year-old boy and a 16-year-old girl, I think you have a 14-year-old boy. And I've raised them. They're not the same. We know that boys' brains develop more slowly, which is one of the reasons for those GPA gaps we've talked about. So start them, redshirt them, is sometimes how it's described. We need a massive

recruitment drive of male teachers. I think the fact that the teaching profession is becoming progressively more female is a problem. 24% of K-12 teachers now are men, only 1 in 10 elementary school teachers, and getting fewer by the year. Interesting. And that does seem to have an effect on boys, especially in subjects like English. And then we need more vocational education, a big investment in apprenticeships and vo-tech and so on, which do seem to help boys and men a little bit more. So there's always focus on college, this unitary path and loan forgiveness, which again, I know you've talked about. But meanwhile, what we see for boys is that hands-on learning seems to work better for them. And so just in education, those are the sorts of ideas that I'm offering. Sure. One thing that I thought is, so I don't

necessarily, in fact, I don't agree with this, but what would you say to people who are basically like, okay, you opened up the education, you made it so that women could compete, women are competing, and actually they're better at this than boys. What's the problem? This is supposed to be a grand meritocracy, and now you want to do like affirmative action for boys to like tilt the system in their favor? That doesn't seem fair. Well, it's actually, I half agree with you, even if you don't completely agree with me, because that's exactly what's happened. What's happened in education is that we've created a playing field which is much more even. And what that's demonstrated is that actually women and girls

are a structural advantage in the education system. So we've created a level playing field, and it turns out that the women and girls are better players. But they're better players largely because of the developmental differences, because their brains develop earlier, and especially the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is a bit of your brain that says, do your chemistry homework rather than going out to party. Maybe you should care about your GPA because that will help you get into college. It's about future orientation.

It's about the ability to control yourself. And it just develops a year or two later in boys than girls. And so I actually think that we're seeing one of the great ironies is that by taking the brakes off girls and women in the education system, we've revealed the structural advantages they had all along. We couldn't see it because they weren't going to college. Under conditions of sexism, we couldn't see the advantages that girls and women had in education. And nobody expected this overtaking, by the way. If you go back to the 70s when everyone was pushing hard correctly for girls and women to do better, nobody said, well, wait, what if the lines keep going?

And does it matter? Well, to the extent that education matters increasingly in the modern economy, I think we should be worried about any inequalities by group, whether that's race, gender, etc. So I don't think on its face there's any reason to be more relaxed about the gender gap now than in the 1970s, just because it's the other way around. Well, something you alluded to also is at the individual level, parenting.

What do you think, if any, changes need to come to the way that people parent, especially in either a mixed-gender household, or in your case, if you have three boys, at the individual level, at the end of the day, we could talk about solutions. We have a lot of people listening to this show. Maybe they have kids. What should they be thinking about with regards to your book?

Well, I think the first thing is something not to do. And I think that's not to fall into the trap of thinking there's something toxic about masculinity. I do think that this term toxic masculinity has become itself toxic, frankly, because the message that society is then sending, which I think parents can absorb and inadvertently pass on, is there's something wrong with you. And so if you're behaving in a particular way, which on average is more associated with being male, then I think that to pathologize that, say physicality or more potential for aggression and so on, is not the way to help boys learn to manage that. So recognize there are some differences between them. It's a myth. There are no differences. Absolutely, you want equality of opportunity for both. Interestingly, now there's some evidence that people are starting to think

it's more important for their girls to go get a good education than their boys. And that's not true. And I'm very worried that in some households, and this seems to be particularly true in more working class households, that educational success itself is being seen as more feminine. And it's incredibly important to send a message to the boys that actually you succeeding at school, you having chances at college or apprenticeships is just as important as your sister. It feels weird to be saying this. Because it's so recent. But the educational overtaking is so fast and so recent that honestly, our heads are spinning. It's like the poles on a compass reversing, like north became

south overnight. And so I understand why we're all struggling. I've struggled with it, frankly, as I've been writing the book. But the evidence is pretty clear now that if we're worried about education, we need to worry about boys. So if the old story we've told about what it means to be a man is not functioning well in society, What does a new story sound like? Yeah, we definitely need a new script for masculinity. I think that what's happened for women, I'd be interested to know if you agree with this, is there was an old script, which was get married, get kids, have a stable family, et cetera. I'm simplifying. Yeah.

The new script is get educated, get yourself independent, make sure you can take care of yourself. You go, girl, right? Make sure you can stand on your own feet very strong script So we've replaced an old script with a new script for women the old script for men become a breadwinner make look after your family the new script for men Yep, not sure yet right and that's the problem and so a Rescripted positive vision of masculinity has to be founded on, I think, some things that sound quite old, which is you do provide for your kids, but not just money, time and care, etc. So I think we need to start with fatherhood. The danger is that as the old model of masculinity has collapsed in the face of the changes that we've just mentioned, is that fathers get benched.

The message that they get from themselves very often, and from women and from society is, you failed as a breadwinner, ergo, you don't matter as a father. That's absolutely the opposite of the truth. And so we need equal paid leave for fathers. Fathers who are not married to mothers need much stronger rights than they currently get. We have to send a message through policy and through rhetoric that fathers matter, period. Go back to the speech Barack Obama gave in 2008 about the importance of fathers. That's right. It was actually a great speech. He was on the money, absolutely on the money, and didn't really touch it again since. And so I don't think we're going to reconstitute marriage in the way that conservatives think we can,

but we need to put fatherhood back on a pedestal, just a new kind of pedestal. That's what I love about your work. You're trying to reform and recognize the realities, the social progresses we made, and not diminish them in any way, but just say, no, we need to find a new equilibrium. And that isn't always rooted in like being in 1960s individual. You don't have to go back to go forward. And I did want to ask you one other social trend that I actually did a monologue on, which is that far fewer young people, either Democrat or Republican, are identifying as feminist now. Correct. That's right. Yes, I saw your thing on that. It's very interesting. Yeah. Why did you think that? What did you make of that?

What's happened, I think, is that there's a few things. One is a lot of boys are hearing the message that we live in a patriarchy, we need feminism, et cetera. And they're looking around and going, wait, what? This is not the world that they're experiencing. And so they're struggling to fit the rhetoric about patriarchy and gender equality with their own lived experience. I think that's one thing. I think the other thing is that feminism has morphed into more of a cultural movement. For some good reason. It's not just boys.

It's women, too. Younger women, much less likely than their older counterparts to identify as feminists. Yeah. And there is some polling, I can't remember if you mentioned this in your monologue, but they're dug into why don't you say you're a feminist? And feminism has gone too far. Today's feminism doesn't represent true feminism and feminism has become anti-men. And so there's, I think that feminism at its best is an equality movement. It's an equality movement and a liberation movement. And to the extent that, if you ask people, do you think that women and girls should have equal

opportunities to men and boys? Everyone says yes. Everyone says yes. And if there are remaining barriers to women and girls succeeding, should we take those barriers down? Everyone says yes. So they're clearly not thinking that's what feminism is. And instead, they're seeing feminism more of this cultural movement, which has taken on some of these, the aura of anti-men, toxic masculinity, etc. And I think has been a bit blind to some of the problems that boys and men are now facing. That creates, as you alluded to earlier, a massive opening for other people to come in. Well, I encourage everybody to go buy the book. It's right here. We're going to have a link down in the description.

Go ahead and purchase it. And I think supporting people like you who do this work in a very measured way, with data, thoughtful, no culture war, or any of that is just the most important thing. So go ahead and support Richard. If you can, link is in the description. Otherwise, we will see you all next week.

We've got the counterpoints. Tomorrow, go ahead and take advantage of the discount if you can. Live show, y description. Otherwise, we will see you all next week. We've got the counterpoints. Tomorrow, go ahead and take advantage of the discount if you can. Live show, yada yada. You guys know all of that. We'll see you guys later. Love y'all.

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