Modern Wisdom - #445 - Matt Rudd - Does Anyone Care About Men's Mental Health?

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

Matt Rudd is Deputy Editor at The Sunday Times Magazine and an author. Men between the ages of 45 and 49 are at the highest risk of attempting to take their own life. In a world filled with accusations of patriarchal overreach, it seems odd that men are suffering so much with their mental health. It's not good for them, or their wives, or their children. Matt researched men of all ages to work out why men are unhappy and what we can do about it. Expect to learn why your 40's might be the weirdest period of your life, why men would rather be a workaholic than face their internal fears, the challenges with the male denial of mental health problems, why men feel indulgent shame if they're sad, why boys are trained to be competitive in school, how to tell if you're genuinely getting old and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 20% discount & free shipping on your Lawnmower 4.0 at https://www.manscaped.com/ (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on everything from Lucy at https://uk.lucy.co/ (UK) or https://lucy.co/ (US) (use code: MW20) Get 15% discount on the amazing 6 Minute Diary at https://bit.ly/diarywisdom (use code MW15) Extra Stuff: Buy Man Down - https://amzn.to/3IUKekr Follow Matt on Twitter - https://mobile.twitter.com/mattrudd  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Matt Rudd, he's the deputy editor at the Sunday Times magazine and an author. Men between the ages of 45 and 49 are at the highest risk of attempting to take their own life. In a world filled with accusations of patriarchal overreach, it seems odd that men are suffering so much with their mental health in a world that apparently they created. It's not good for them, or their wives, or their children. Matt researched men of all ages to work out why men are unhappy and what we can do about it. Expect to learn why your 40s might be the weirdest period of your life, why men would rather be a workaholic than face their internal fears. The challenges of the male denial of mental health, why men feel indulgent shame if they're sad, why boys are trained to be competitive in school, how to tell if

you're genuinely getting old, and much more. I really enjoy maths, very dry, very British way of approaching an incredibly serious topic. The male denial of mental health problems is so pervasive and no matter how many it's okay to talk campaigns there are, there's still a lot more work to be done. So I really appreciate the research that he went through for his book and all of the experiments that he did to try and make himself better and then his learnings and his openness on the other side of that. Also, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you've hit the subscribe button as it is the only way that you Also, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you've hit the subscribe button as it is the only way that you can ensure

that you will never miss an episode every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday when they are uploaded. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Matt Rudd. Matt Rudd, lock up the show. Thanks for having me, Chris. It's good to be here. Does life get any easier as you get older in your experience? No, thanks for having me. It's been great to be here. Speechy next time.

Life doesn't get easier. I think, well, people get happier when they're a lot older. That's the thing. You know about the happiness curve. So the low point is in your 40s and then where you hit rock bottom and then things start to pick up again when you don't care so much about stuff. So I'm looking forward to my 60th birthday because that's peak happiness. Why do you think that is? Why is this a U-shaped curve? Well that's the whole book isn't it? It's why, why is it, you know, the point where you've achieved everything if you're lucky that you know society expects you to do. Why is it that

just at that point you're extremely unhappy or not extremely unhappy, quite unhappy. I mean I it's there's a lot of reasons I think I think the main one in my own experience was you know I'd done all these five year plans, I'd been, you know, done the exams, done the university, got up the, you know, job ladder, climbed the career ladder and got married, had kids, all the traditional stuff, and then I kind of popped my head up at the age of 43 and Just didn't know what to do next and I was waking up in the middle of the night. I was catastrophizing Couldn't sleep and it just got worse and worse and and what was interesting? I think You have your own experience. It sounds like you know, you had quite a few extreme things going on, but for me, it wasn't a crisis.

It was more like doldrums, midlife doldrums, which I think is much more common. If you have a full-bone, blown crisis, you're forced to confront what's going on and try to change things. But for most of us, it a kind of struggling on scenario. That's something that I think about an awful lot, that if you hit rock bottom there's only one place to go from there. It's one of the reasons why when you watch a movie and the hero falls from

grace and then he's drinking and in the gutter and stuff. There's a certain amount of romanticism around that because you know that there's only one direction for him to go from there. And the same as anybody that's gone to the gym, if you try and three quarter squat and then go up from there, it's pretty difficult. But if you bounce out of the bottom, it's actually relatively easy. And I think that you have this in life too, that people can become sedated by comfort. That life's not that good, but it's not that bad either. You don't have the activation energy to actually kick you out

of the bottom of whatever you're dealing with. And yeah, that sort of sedation by comfort, complacency, like not giving up the average for the good or the good for the great. I think that's where a lot of people find themselves. And also fear, I think, for men in particular, it's fear. Oh, when I first started feeling, like I was struggling,

I couldn't really access well-being books. I just found it all too much. So I started talking to other men. And a lot of them, I talked to them, because to me, they look like they had it all too much. So I started talking to other men and a lot of them, you know, I talked to them because to me they looked like they had it all together, so I'd find out how they were managing. And after, you know, two pints into the conversation, it was clear that they were also struggling with what was going around their heads. But an alarming amount of them said, I just don't wanna talk about this

because I can't start thinking about me and life because I've got all these plates spinning. This is a real midlife thing as well. You've got dependents, you've got, you're hanging on to a lot of different things. And if you start what they saw as being indulgent and thinking about life, The whole plate spinning thing, you know, the house of cards could fall down. So there's fear, I think, is a fear. It's

easier to keep your head down, plow on German soldiers in, Rome is how one psychologist described it to me. Yeah, you've got this quote where you say, if I start worrying about the meaning of life, I'll go mad, I just have to keep going. And that's another part of sedation, right, that people find. They sedate themselves with busyness, too. Yes, and it is better to keep struggling on and keep what you've got than what I saw and what they see as risking losing it all.

Yeah, it's um, the indulgent thing is something that I find so interesting. I had throughout my 20s, I had bouts of not super acute but depression. I wouldn't get out of bed for a few days at a time. I was running these nightclubs, I was going to bed, and I made me a sleeping pattern was disgusting and all over the place. And I wasn't eating well and I was partying a good bed and so on and so forth. And I would just have these periods

after I worked for a very long time where I couldn't get out of bed. And I was like, well, what's happening? Is this because I'm weak? Is this because I'm deficient in some way? And that was the you know, the fact that you're in bed and stuff, you don't feel very good with whatever the emotions are that are going around. But the worst thing is the second order, self-referential shame

and guilt around the fact that you know, okay, so ostensibly what is actually wrong. And you go, well, nothing, it's just the weight of fucking existence. And you think to yourself, how bourgeois and indulgent and whanky is this to say that in a life where I don't technically have anything going wrong. If someone was to come up to me and say, dude, I went, I remember I went to my GP. And this was a while ago. This was probably 10, 10 or 12 years ago. And I think and hope that mental health discussions have probably improved in the NHS since then. I went to go and speak to my GP and I said, I don't feel very good, I'm having these sort of abouts of feeling a bit low and stuff. And she said, oh, what's wrong? And I kind of said, well, I don't have any financial problems. I haven't recently split up,

but I'm not in grief. There's no, like, nothing is hanging over me other than the sheer weight of existence itself. And she gave me like a single page printout and sort of ushered me on my way. I thought, that didn't really help. And it also put a bit of a not a bad taste in my mouth, but it made me hesitant about seeking help again in future too. I'm not bad taste in my mouth, but it made me hesitant about seeking help again in future too. Yeah, and as we know, men are very reluctant to ask and seek help, either from friends or from medical professionals. So the fact that you'd actually overcome that first hurdle puts you already in a big minority. There's things going on here. It is, it, men do see it as indulgent to try and seek help for themselves because we're conditioned from a very young age to be strong and to be successful and not to fail. And you know, there are much more expert people who've been very profound about all this,

but the toxic effect of having to be strong and therefore bracket silent is a real problem. But, yeah, so fear and worrying about showing weakness are the twin pillars that mean you end up, you rock up in your forties in the place I did. Or you just plow on until you get the gold watch, which is what the vast majority of people I've interviewed for this book were doing. That was their attitude. Keep going not much longer to go, which is a really depressing concept actually. Yeah, that you have the innocent playful beauty of childhood, then just this huge swath of hiding from your existential anomy until you hit 60 at which time everything can be okay again. Yeah, and the thing is, I don't think you have to make any radical changes. That's the interesting thing. What you've got to do is, I've missed the opportunity. I'll do it from

now on, but it's just pausing, stopping and thinking, you know, what is, what am I doing here? Is this the thing? Am I too focused on that? Where's the happiness in this? And it's trying to just stop the external pressure that you must succeed, as well as your own in a monologue, telling you, keep going, don't break. You've got to try and put these pauses in and I don't think I I don't think I really stopped and thought until I was in my mid 40s I had such a clear set of hurdles to get over at each stage of life which we all have and you just don't feel that you can can stop and think, what am I doing here, even if you carry on doing the same thing.

There was one guy I spoke to who he just graduated, and he wanted to go, he wanted to be an author, and then he was, I met him and I was just talking, giving it, trying to give him some careers advice. And he was in a real panic, and he was considering doing, he just graduated, he was gonna do a masters, so another year in university,

and he described it as a panic masters. He wasn't doing it because he wanted to grow his brain or because he enjoyed education. He was doing it because he was so concerned that on his CV, there would be this sort of gap. So he was going to just do it, sit through another year of lectures just so there wasn't a gap. And so I just said this is ridiculous. How long have you been trying to be an author? How long have you been sending off your CVs five weeks? So that, I mean, that's, it is so much worse now for the next generation, although, you know, the language is better and men are more open, hopefully, than they were 20 years ago, and certainly

more than they were when my father was a kid, or a hundred years ago, we have the Victorians to thank for our very slow recovery for all of that. The pressure is just greater now. What's your thoughts on the conversation around mental health, generally at the moment and then specifically for men? Because I've really, really struggled to resonate with a lot of the campaigns around it's okay to talk and ask twice and stuff like that. struggled to resonate with a lot of the campaigns around, it's okay to talk and ask twice and stuff like that. I don't know whether the problem is bigger than that,

whether a little social change campaign in a cool hashtag is insufficient to fix it. I understand that it's coming from a good place of people trying to open up a conversation about mental health. It's never really resonated with me that much.. I'm someone that's suffered with mental health problems before in the past, incredibly compassionate and passionate about trying to help it in future. What do you think about the current conversation?

It has become, this is tricky, but it has become quite trendy. For instance, at my workplace, I get an email every week asking me to fill out a well-being survey, which is quite annoying, actually. I'd rather live with it. Is it damaging your well-being to fill out the well-being survey? It's damaging. I hate filling out surveys anyway. Every time I buy something something I have to fill out a survey. So that's not great. All I can say, and I think the more you hear something, it's good to talk, men should open up more, you kind of become blind at that, you kind of shut down. As I said before, I, you know, five years ago, I just wouldn't have listened to a podcast like this,

and I wouldn't have bought a self-help book because I just found it too much. I was not ready to be at step one. So, and that's typical for a lot of men in particular. The talking actually, and now I'm going to say it is good to talk, that was the thing that for me made a change. And it wasn't just you know, going to the pub with your mates and having a chat, you had to actually kind of force them to be serious, you know, say, look, this is how I'm feeling, which is really tricky to get through. But then once you start talking, you know, the idea that men can't talk are silent, it's nonsense. I spoke to so many men over the last three or four years, first friends and then, you know, wider.

And once they start, it's really profound. And that was for me the thing that made the biggest change that enabled me to then start accessing other things. The idea that it's not just me, I'm not the weird guy waking up at three o'clock in the morning and worrying about, if I get mortgage insurance, will I not be able to afford the mortgage, like stupid things like that. So yeah, talking is good, but it's also you've got to overcome this. There's embarrassment, shame, all of that that goes with it. So it's a three pint problem.

All right, is that the optimal inebriation level? Maximum, yeah. Maximum inebriation level. I've tried both those things. I've tried not drinking and I've tried drinking far too much and that doesn't Tiki work either. Is it really true? Just a said book, so you're completely that you haven't seen with now and I. Yes, it's true and I feel like I'm being gasslet into an alternate universe. I've never heard of it. I don't know what it is.

Mary Harrington looked like I'd killed her brand new puppy when I said that I hadn't done it. And then I tried to reach out to my own audience on Twitter in a desperate attempt to get some sort of backup and was further lambasted by them. So yeah, I don't know what it is. This is the other contributing factor to the midlife doldrums, is you start referencing incredibly famous cultural moments and people haven't heard of it because they were too when it came out. Did you see there was this meme that went hyper viral after the Super Bowl?

Did you see there was this meme that went hyper viral after the Super Bowl? And it was a tweet and someone said, I realized whilst watching the Super Bowl and thought, oh, really good that they're bringing out all of these current artists and not those old throwbacks for people that are way older, when they then realized that Dr. Dre and 50 cent and M&M and Mary J. Bludge came out in like 20 years ago and realized at that moment that you are now the boomers that previously you would have been insulting. So here's a question, when do you become old or how do you know when you're starting to get old?

I wrote about this in my column this week actually and I've got a fairly graphic answer. Do you want the graphic answer? Absolutely. A very wise friend of mine once told me that in order in order to deal with the post-P dribble,, you have to you've got a trick it Chris. Okay, so you finish you shake three times no more definitely no more You and then you put it away and as you're putting it away you mustn't your brain mustn't connect To know what's coming next, but then you whip it out again and it comes out. And when you know your old is when you have to do that twice. And I wrote that in a paper at the weekend and a friend got in touch and said, wait till you're 60, then it's four times.

That was not a serious answer to your question, and I apologize, but what is happy, a happy thought is that when I talk about getting old in the newspaper, I get lots of readers getting in touch saying, I'm 78 and I've never felt younger. So I do think what I think actually is the trick is to navigate through the midlife and get out the other side intact without feeling like you've just been working. Yeah, this is something that I want to have a conversation about more. So I'm 34 right, I was 34 last week.

It feels very strange because at 34, you're definitely out of young adulthood, I think. You're definitely out of the stage where all of the rules that you used to have in your twenties could work. People are expecting you to kind of have your shit together at least a little bit more. And you are, for the first time ever, each year that comes by, you're not necessarily fitter in terms of what you can do athletically or in terms of the way that you look, than you were the year before. Whereas throughout your 20s, each year, you're getting whatever, you're in the gym, more muscle mass, you're getting stronger, you're more confident year you're getting whatever you're in the gym more muscle mass you're getting stronger you're more confident you're whatever it might be and then there is a point where you reach like attractiveness, apogee even as a man and then you start to say oh hold on a second where's this progress coming from it's actually taking me longer to recover from workouts you know it's taking me forever to recover from a hangover for quite a while now, but everything starts to get a little bit... And there is a sense of, like at the top of a roller coaster ride,

that weightlessness, and you're going, whoa, hang in a second. And that's something that, you know, for the people that are below the age of 30, you'd start to realize you're chronically aware of your own mortality when you start to understand that you're not as unbreakable as you thought that you were before. I snapped to a Achilles a couple of years ago, playing cricket, like the most British way to rupture an Achilles ever. And yeah, I think that the conversation around aging for men as well is a different one because everybody is so hyper aware of the implications of aging for women and the

fact that women are very often judged by their beauty and the way that they look and aging kind of runs against that, whereas for men to say about aging, you're supposed to become the hairy-ass bloke with a pint in his hand. That's kind of one of the tropes. Yeah, but it is easier for men. It is easier because it's okay to go gray or bald or whatever happens. I think the change is to go back to what I was saying earlier. It's when you don't have an immediately obvious road map anymore. So for me, with having three kids, once, when they're very young,

you've got a load of mechanical processes to get through, just to get out of the door in the morning. And then it's the same with your job. You've got, you're at the bottom of the ladder, the only way is up. And then you reach this point where the kids are becoming more self-sufficient and they're leaving home. And you get to the point in the career

where you kind of don't want to go up anymore because to go up is more pressure and more time and all the rest of it. But in our culture, people who don't want to go up is more pressure and more time and all the rest of it. But in our culture, people who don't want to move up are viewed with suspicion and it can be seen as a negative that you want to do the same thing or you don't want to take on more responsibilities. And so there's this kind of just the certainty of youth falls away into this kind of less, certain, less obvious way of moving forward. And that's, that isn't old, that's not old, but it's the sort of, you can see, you can see backwards to where you come from. And then there's

this kind of blur that feels scary, you know, your forties and your fifties and then, you know, then you are old. You said that the system largely set up by men, for men, isn't working for the vast majority of men. And I think that this is where attention lies that you have this, you know, for a very long time, patriarchal society that was created to and largely facilitated in an attempt to try and encourage men and assist them. And, you know, we've recently only just about reached gender equality with stuff. So for men to start complaining about the fact that there's a problem with this society, does feel indulgent, not only on the individual level, but on a system-wide level too.

And it's quite easy, I think, to wave away the concerns of men. Because you say, well, look, look at all of the things that you've had for all of this time. You know, is this just you complaining about the fact that finally you haven't got the situation the way that you want? You go, well, no, it's a fact that neither men nor women are fantastically happy all the time at the moment. Exactly. And that is the point of the book because if it's not working for us, then it's not working for anyone is the point. And if you look at the figures, there is a real spike in depression and suicide with

men in the, particularly in the 45 to 49 bracket. So it's trying to work out how on earth we got there. And I had written a lot of this and done a lot of the research for this before the pandemic. And I was kind of doing the revises as we were moving into lockdown. And suddenly a lot of the things that I was saying might be better that men do want to have a work like balance. They do want to be involved with their families. All of those things, suddenly that was thrust upon us. The pandemic was the magic answer to everything I was winging about in the book in a fairly extreme and dark way. But now we're at a point where we're coming out of it, hopefully, and very quickly.

And everyone's saying, I can't wait for it to get back to how it was. But we need to be careful not to, you know, we're with, it was such a dramatic shift. And everyone I'd been speaking to was suddenly saying, it's great, I can do the, well, not the school run, but I can get the kids ready in the morning. I can be there in meetings on Zoom. You could see, you know, kids running in and out of the background. It was like, yeah, we do actually have a family.

We, you know, we are men, but this is our family. And it's all the things that women have been juggling with for a lot longer. And it's been really interesting to see all of that. I just think it's very important that particularly for the next generation who are obviously more eager than us old folks to get back to how life was, that they hang on to this kind of weird hybrid part working from high and part working from office thing as we as we return to whatever normally is. If it goes back to how it was that's going to be a disaster.

How would you what's your post-mortem of the working from home with a family situation? Like you say do you do you feel like you should be careful what you wish for? I don't know what it was like for you. Before we started this, I had to go and shout out to everyone to get off the Wi-Fi. So I'm saying how wonderful it all is, but there's pressures. I think we all got quite tired of it, and it's nice to be going back. But I certainly feel that I'd known my kids better at the end of all this than I did before. And that's, that is a, I keep mentioning kids and work, but that's the real part of all of this, all of the reasons why this system that has supposedly was set

up for men and is supposedly for men hasn't been working. It's that kind of patriarchal, you're the provider and the women's looking after the kids. What's happened is women have, and it's a great thing, obviously, been moved into the workplace, but the hasn't, men haven't made any real effort to move the other direction. Oh, so women have been facilitated at moving into the workplace, but men haven't been facilitated at moving back into the household. Yeah, and you see it in particular with parental leave, so I got a week off for each kid. I go have to watch my wife nearly dying, 72 hour labor.

It was worse for her, I know that, but watching it is also bad. And then finally get home, try and clear the debt tritus of the remnants of the failed home birth up to get it ready. And then I'm back at home, a day a day later and my colleagues go, everything right and I say yes and that's how you did it. So but now just you know 15 years on that's already beginning to change. 15 years on, that's already beginning to change. I spent some time with an insurance company that had decided to give, both to give shared parental leave, regardless of gender you get six months off. And I had to go and talk to these really annoying people who were all just so happy and balanced. They returned to work, all excited about being

back at work, they established a bond with their sons and daughters, you know, it was great. And I would be very, very surprised if in 10, 15 years that's just not a universal policy, because it also helps the employer, productivity had gone up. I don't know if it was because the dads were just so relieved to be getting back to the office or whether it's because they'd had a little break from the rat race, you know, they'd got off the hamster wheel to name another rodent and you know, it's all just trying to disrupt that idea that you're just slogging away from age 18 to age 65 or in your case, 68. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with people who are increasingly in the gig economy. You know, we've had this recent opening of working from a home of people being able to determine

their own working hours, freelance, fiverr, all of these sorts of organizations, or people that are just starting businesses, you know, you can have this show as a business on its own. You know, it doesn't have a premises. Who am I going to get leave off? Who's going to pay me the leave? No one. So, very much with an increase in people,

perhaps starting small and medium sized companies or just commercializing themselves and their own talents, that's going to be another challenge that more and more men and women are going to have to face. You know, when it comes to no one's paying you maternity or paternity leave in that way. Yeah, and there's an illusion there that you have more freedom.

You're working for yourself almost and you can pick and choose your hours and etc. But workers' rights go out with that. It's difficult. I mean, starting your own business is a different thing, isn't it? Which you know much more about than I do. But that has all the same associated pressures. And it's the broader theme of, you know, pursuing stuff and pursuing success and how important is that. And I would argue that it is such an obvious thing to say, but it's far less important than happiness and balance. And this is where

you're in danger of ending up sounding like a full-on, munkish, self-help guru who, that's really, really hard when you've got responsibilities and overheads and all the rest of it. So letting go of chasing commercial, monetary, status-full, possessional success is, I keep on having this a lot at the moment. And I think that it's because there really isn't much of a aspirational, especially for men, an aspirational role model or archetype that they can follow that isn't the monk that just recounts all worldly possessions and decides to go live upon a hill. It's not very cool to say, do you know what it is? I'm good. Materially, I'm fine with this position, with earning this many thousand pounds per year without just

ruthlessly chasing whatever the next. You said it earlier on, more promotion, more stress, more responsibility. There isn't, I'm not seeing many conversations between people, especially men, saying, I'm good where I am. I've reached the position that I need to be at. I've reached the monetary wealth that I need to be at. And now I can actually use the time that I've to be at, I've reached the monetary wealth I need to be at, and now I can actually use the time that I've invested so far to pivot me to a lifestyle that I want to have, a much more sort of holistic view of progression and self-improvement and growth and earning. It is difficult, and I'm saying all of this, but I still have, you know, I'm still envy other people, and I still look at all someone's got that. And it's really built into things from the very beginning, you know. There's so much keeping up with the Joneses.

And I don't know what the answer is. I know the answer isn't people like me saying don't have so much stuff, but it is very, you know, a tele and a flash car is definitely not the answer. How you convey that, because I think everyone knows it, but it's kind of, there's a beneath the surface envy and a need to keep up with other people that is, it's really difficult and it has, it must all be built into early life and being encouraged to succeed again. It all goes back, you know, how do you show that you are successful if you don't have all the stuff? And that's, that's a difficulty. You know, when you are describing not, you were describing not accumulating stuff, that would be classed as quite sort of beta male.

Oh, right. He doesn't need things. So great. But I want to show my, to, I want to get external validation. And in order to do that, I need stuff. And by stuff, it can also include, you know, success at work, job titles,

women, achievements, followers online. I can't remember women because I've been married for 16 years, but that's definitely Instagram followers. I know, Anna, you know, when I was getting ready for this, I did have a little peek at how many Instagram followers you've got, and you've got loads, like loads, and I thought, ah, I've got not that many at all. You see, it's all the time. It's not as simple as my neighbours got a nicer car than me.

Here's a couple of insights around, especially the alpha-beaten sigma. There's sigma now, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, but there's a sigma male too. That's basically anyone who tries to be Keanu Reeves. One of the insights around this is, most of the guys that I know that are unreservedly chasing accomplishments and women really should be looked on with pity. I think dude, like this is you filling a hole inside of yourself, the sense of insufficiency that you have, the only way that you can satisfy that is by continually chasing women and achievements and money and external validation and success and all of this stuff. And it's that quote, what is it? This person's so poor that all they have are money to keep them going.

Another side of this is that if you have, if you're the sort of person, especially a guy who is not materialistically driven, I think that that should be seen as a competitive advantage, realistically driven. I think that that should be seen as a competitive advantage. You can be happy at a hundred grand a year. You can have the same level of happiness at a hundred grand a year versus your friend who grew up maybe in a more materialistic household. Maybe people showed their love and affection by buying each other gifts. Maybe there was a keeping up with the Jones's environment or whatever. And that person's got to get to a million. Now, maybe it's not ten times harder to get from 100,000 to a million as it was to get from not to 100,000.

But still, you can say, look, I'm good. This is where I want to be at. And really genuinely leaning into that and understanding having a low materialism set point or a lower comparatively materialism set point is I mean how many people pity the guy that's in a in a marriage and yet still feels the need to message girls on Instagram or keep on you know when he's away on a stag do on a weekend with the boys because he knows his Mrs isn't gonna find out decides to sleep around you pity that guy because you think you haven't been able to find a sense of security and solace in your relationship to the point where you're having to go and do things that your

integrity and your virtue aren't aligned with. And if they are aligned with it, then your integrity and your virtue are fucked. So yeah, I think that there's, there are some solid places for men to stand with this. Again, like I'm saying this to myself as much as I'm saying it to anybody else, right? I'm not the role model. I simply kind of have an idea of the path. But I think increasingly, as you see, these archetypes of guys relinquishing that materialistic push, relinquishing those external measures of success as being them internal measures of self-worth, the more that we can try and do that, and I do think it's happening

more. I think the better it's going to be for everybody, including the wives of the men that this is happening to. Yeah, and they've been loads of studies over the years where they've tried to put a price on happiness. And so in the States, you need to earn X $1,000 in order to be happy. And then it diminishes very, very quickly after that. But I don't think it's not really, there isn't a price. Obviously there isn't a price because there's so many different circumstances. I mean, for me, I was quite pleased with myself when I was in my 20s because I deliberately picked journalism as opposed to friends who were going on to become lawyers, management consultants, I still don't know what a management consultant does, but they were all earning a lot of money when they were young. And I felt superior to them, I mean, it's just ridiculous. It's more kind of weird comparing yourself

to other people, because I was choosing what was then a noble art of journalism and I, you know, how great is that? I felt good about it, but then the reality is I was doing it so I could see my name in a paper or a tiny little tractor magazine or whatever it was back then. And you just, so it's still doing things for the wrong reasons. And I think, so, and now when you talk to younger people, they're going through all of those different emotions and thoughts, but with this huge pressure to get moving and get going. And that's much higher than it used to be. You know, you didn't used to have careers, advice, fairs starting from the age of 14 and you didn't used to have such vocational,

you know, it's all about what are you going to do when you leave school? What are you going to do? Are you going to do a degree in? If you do a degree, how useful is that going to be? And what job are you going to, you know, there's this pressure to keep going, moving forward. And that's all wrapped up with a focus on you have to be a success, particularly as a bloke, not what is it you actually want to do, what is it you want to do with your life? So, sorry, go on. Just how do you think school plays a role here at defining the framework that men step

into, the boys that will later become men? So so much in the way that the classroom is and also in the way that peer groups work. So you've got on the one hand this, it's all about grades. Whenever you hear the government talking about education, it's all about getting good grades. There's nothing, there's no kind of holistic approach to how to be a man. Sex education when I was at school was one biology lesson, whether embarrassed teacher showed you a cross section on the overhead projector of a sliced penis. I know what an overhead projector it is, will you? Now I'm going to feel old together.

This is my world as well. Right, fine. And now it's kind of a bit more involved. But in Sweden, they have sex week, a whole week where everyone's discussing not just sex, but relationships and what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman, and the whole of kind of relationships, well-being, and how to live a life is built not just into that week but throughout the curriculum in all the different classes. So it's just completely natural for people to be analogue for Swedish kids to be analysing what they expect out of their life when they get older, not just out of their job. And so, you know, that's, it's, it's

really fundamental. And then you've got the, you know, the, the peer group where it's, you know, it's pack mentality, they're recovering from the having to sit still and be polite and etc. in the classroom. So outside of that, it it's it's kind of Lord of the flies an interesting undercurrent to the fact that grades are so important I don't know whether this is the same in America, but certainly in the UK it is a zero-sum game when it comes to the way that distributions for grades are done because they can't have, it's always the same proportion of A stars, A's, B's, C's, D's,

etc. Right? And that means that if the entire school improves, nobody actually moves. If everyone improves at the same rate, So it embedded that competitive nature is literally embedded into the structure of how school works, at least in the UK. It was, which is crazy when you think about it, because we're all talking about how do you improve education? And if they're fixated on grades, having that, you know, a finite number of A stars,

how can you possibly improve? It doesn't, it's not mathematically possible. And the other thing that happens in the states I think and particularly in the UK is start them earlier, we need to get them going, you know, let's have a sure start, so get them into school at four, but get them thinking about school before that. In Germany, they don't really start formal education, you know, sitting at a desk, which is not an ideal place for any kid, but in particular, a boy until they're eight, and they have better results coming out of the other end. So they have a chance to be a kid and to climb trees is what I'm

romantically thinking but it's probably just sitting on an iPad in Hamburg. Whereas our kids from the age of four are sat at a desk being told to behave and if they behave they get a gold star. So that's external validation and off we go. And you could, everything you've ever discussed on all your episodes of your podcast, if we got the first four years right, that a huge amount of the problems that come up in later life would be dealt with. Do you think that's right? Yeah, absolutely. Everything is, I mean, that's the most developmental stage of the brain.

It's when things are being hardwired of what to expect. And is this a loving world or is it a tough world? And you're flinging them off into school at such a young age. It's hardwires that life is is hard and you need to succeed, which is really not a great thing to be teaching kids, you know, toddlers. What do you thoughts about the relationship between men and technology? Well, you know, my thoughts, because we started this conversation with you telling me I needed to restart my computer computer and that led to a

20 minute running around the house trying to find another computer that hadn't automatically updated itself. So thank you for that, Chris. My blood pressure has almost gone down. I mean, it's really obvious that technology is in some ways great. We're talking to each other now remotely. I'm able to, you know, have fed the kids before we started this. That wouldn't be possible without the joy of whatever thing we're on. But as everyone has been saying for a long time, it's all pervasive. You can't get away from it. It's again, it's done all sorts of damage to childhood and it has a huge impact on relationships in teens and young adults. I mean, it's just depressing. It's depressing talking to 20-somethings about dating because it's all blind dates. I'm going to say I'm like a really cont anchor a soul man, but I'm also talking to the wrong guy here as well, blind dates.

Anyway, we didn't have blind dates 20 years ago, but now it's all done on the apps. done on the on the apps. So I would love, and as soon as I do get to the gold watch, I will have as little technology as possible. And I reach that conclusion when we got a smart smart thermometer. No, smart thermostat. Do you have one of these? No, but I've been in houses like a nest type thing. That thing. I didn't know we were going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions.

I'm going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions. I'm going to start with a list of the questions. technology makes life so much more efficient, we have the nest with an app that you have to set and it has a life of its own because it has decided and I agree with the thought that it has decided it needs to be eco, it's impossible to turn it off eco. So it comes on for 20 minutes in the middle of the night and I should say that,

you know, three years after my sort of midlife doldrums, I was starting to sleep through the night, but now the thermostat puts the eating on so I'm up and we can't, anyway, I, it met a hammer and that hammer and that will be my... That will be what I do as soon as I don't have to be on technology I won't. So you're, I'm not being a cantankarist old man but also being a lidate at the same time, we've managed to blend these two worlds together have we? Yeah, well what do you, I mean what do you do? Because your whole life, your whole work is, you know, technology is critical to it, but how do you, how do you, do everyone always says don't take your phone to your bedroom, don't check your phone after a certain, are you able, are you able to have limits, do

you have balance, or do you just have your iPhone shouting at you because you've been on the phone for 36 hours this week? Permanently attached to my right hand. Well, it feels like fighting a losing battle, right? I'm very, I have been ever since I started this podcast four years ago, very skeptical around technology in our relationship with it. Tristan Harris from the center for humane technology was a huge influence on me and has been for half a decade now. So yeah, sleeping with the phone outside of the bedroom, doing intermittent fasting for your phone so you don't use it before a certain time and you don't use it after a certain time. But it does feel an awful lot like we are putting band-aids over bullet wounds here that the fundamental technology, the limbic hijack,

the addictive nature of it, the fact that it gives a social approval, the fact that it is necessary, and there's a kernel of truth in the fact that you need to use it because you've got to get the uber or you need to navigate where you're going on Google Maps or what about if somebody needs to message you or whatever. I wonder whether we're gonna be looked back on

by future generations in the same way as, I don't know, people that held slaves or something, just like this primitive, ridiculous situation that we managed to put humanity into that you couldn't bear thinking was ever going to happen again in future. I wonder whether I think in future we're probably going to look back on factory farming with a fair bit of disgust and say, like this is how on earth were we so unscivilized and so sort of terrible. But I wonder whether we're going to look back on this period and say, or alternatively, we are going to fuse

and become ones with the machines, in which case, it's just gonna be the genesis of our leveling up. Yeah, the singularity where we're all living in the meta. Let us that's that's a very bleak bleak note Chris, but I I liked what you were saying about the I've lost my train of thought completely. My apologies. That's fine.

Fighting back against it. Well, what about you mentioned relationships there, apart from the technology element of this, what did you learn about men's relationship with relationships? Well, when I've... This all started, as I've said, with conversations in pubs that morphed into wider conversations that became an article in my newspaper, entitled,

Why Are Successful Midlife Men Unhappy? That's quite a baiting title in the current environment. And I was thinking this is going to end in disaster. But what actually happened is a huge amount of men, so that's describing me, but interestingly, a huge amount of their partners said, this is describing my partner. And I think that you can get into a trap that it is a battle of the sexes, but the reality is most of us live in a relationship with someone from the other opposite sex. And it's important that we work together rather than in opposition. So for me, I found that doing a bit of work rather than being this repressed guy who's just, I can't talk about anything because if I do, everything will fall down. By doing a bit of work myself, I'm married to someone who has been doing the work for a much longer than me because she's

much more open, she's more emotionally intelligent, all of those key shades, but our relationship is stronger now I've made the effort. And it is an effort, you know, as you know from the book, I haven't got any master plan, there's no easy solutions to any of this, and those books where they promise that there is are definitely lying. But there are little things that I've picked up along the way, and little snippets of conversation, like the happiest guy I met in the whole research, the little things he said just have made things better, and that's obviously if I'm happier, my relationship is better. What was some of the takeaways from that guy? I've got, I'll tell you about the guy.

So the guy was in his mid-twenties and he was doing, he was on his way, doing all the things that are expected of him, got, you know, done school, left school, bottom of the career ladder, and set up a burglar alarm installation business. And it was going, well, he had a house with a mortgage, he was just starting to pay off, he had a serious long-term girlfriend. But the people who have burglar alarms installed tend

to be older. So he was having coffee every day with an oxygenarian who said, always, how old are you? He'd say 27 and then they would spend the next five minutes talking about all their regrets and how much they wish they were 27 again. So this obviously got to him, finished with his girlfriend, got rid of the house, been to the business and moved to a caravan in next to Loch Ness in Scotland. And he has lived there for the last 30 years. And so journalists have talked to him before and he's always the sort of the crap pop nessie hunter. But we were talking for and I was kind of in the middle of all this fog of midlife, and he was describing, I was saying, come on, you know, how can you

possibly, how can this be a fun way to live? And he just spoke for about 10 minutes, about a, a weather front coming across the log and lights coming down, and it just shifted in a way that he'd never seen before and he felt the lightness inside him and I've tried a lot of meditation over the years and I've never quite got that kind of moment of enlightenment that the real black belt monks talk about. But I could feel I got what he was saying and I just thought that's we can't all go and live next to Loch Ness right that be billions of caravans wrecking Loch Ness but ever since that conversation I've found that there are always moments in the day, regardless of how shit the day is, where you can stop and just appreciate it. And this is something the self-help Guru say,

all the time, live in the moment, live in the present, it doesn't work when you're talking to stressed out mid-life man. it took that conversation with that guy to realize there was some truth in it, it doesn't have to be onerous or hard work, and that's what's been one of the changes that's helped me. What was some of the other characteristics or traits that you found that were common amongst the men that seemed to have it together

or some part of it together? Of the reasons that they were struggling? No of the reasons that they were doing well. What were the characteristics or traits that were common amongst the men that were doing well? Well, the first one, the older men, the ones who were through it all, that that was something that they were all, a metal whole group of old guys and it was really interesting talking to them because the traits they all had in midlife were the same that me and my midlife mates all had all

depressing and they now they were older and retired. They were completely checked. They weren't thinking about the future. That was not because they were about to drop dead, but because they didn't have to worry about things in the future other than dying. Illness and death is quite depressing, I suppose. But they were just living in the present. And I think I think the younger people I spoke to, the ones who were successful in life, not in not in stuff or careers were the ones who somehow had managed to stop giving so much of a shit. They just didn't care. And it's not that that's not to say they were kind of just

slubbing around, not trying. They just weren't what ifting about everything. They weren't like thinking three steps ahead and being negative. They're just really not quite case or ars or ars, but because they've you know they've still we've all got pressures, but just if something bad happened, well that happened, and I would love to be better at not caring so much, you know, not always imagining the worst case scenario, and I'd say I'm 10% better than I was five years

ago. How much of that do you think you can leapfrog? I read this in Johann Harry's most recent book where he said that so many of the things that we ascribe to our own personal development are simply byproduct of us getting older. And as someone that spends a good bit of time trying to expedite that process, it does, it fills me with a sense of kind of futility that all of the shit that I might be doing and all of the progress that I'm celebrating my wins for might just be coming along for the ride as the days go past. But I wonder how much you think we can, we can expedite getting from where you were to them or how much of it's like a convey about that you're just waiting for that moment to arise? Yeah, that is nonsense. I think loads of... you can do a lot. I mean, the mere fact that

you're talking about this, I wasn't even thinking about all of this stuff when I was your age. And I've had a brilliant conversations with people in their 20s who have read the book and, and really, you know, as I keep saying, it's not a self-help book, but they've read what awaits them and thought, no, I'm definitely not going to, I'm definitely not going to, I'm going to start dealing with all this stuff now. And it's, it's, it's due with talking, it's to do with opening up, it's to do with pausing. And I wish I'd started, I really wish I'd started earlier, but then of course, that's me being regretful and negative. But I think there's, there's amazing opportunities, even in this more stressed and even more high pressured

environment that young men are faced with now, just by merely discussing it, thinking about it, that's just very positive about that, for you, not for me. I think that the conversation is progressing. When I think about the guys that I'm around and the sort of conversations that we have, I got a buddy out here who randomly out of nowhere got some travel anxiety, been on planes millions of times before, right?

He travels all over the place. And he really struggled to get on a plane twice in a row. And he told me the story. And he said, dude, I felt like such a loser. And I was going back down the escalator or Austin airport, having had my girlfriend come to collect me. For now, the fourth time, she dropped him off and collected him once, then dropped him off and then had to collect him again the second time when he couldn't get himself onto this plane. And he was like, dude, I was going down the conveyor belt and I felt like such a loser and

I had tears streaming down my face and I just felt like I was a complete waste of space. And even in that moment for me, I'm a pretty open guy. I was like, wow, that's such a showing of, you know, like you'd say that that's brave and courageous to open up in that sort of a way. And you know, that was a really stark moment where I thought, fucking hell, I wouldn't have spoken like that to my friends 10 years ago. He's having to admit to you that he's not a manly man in that specific instance. But once you start having that level of relationship, it's really great.

I mean, I've so many friends are relationships have evolved because we're not just taking the piss out of each other and making light of everything. You know, it's not, I mean, the opposite end of that is kind of those very serious men's circles, which I'm not saying are a bad thing, but they're not for everyone. You know, where you're sitting in a circle and you get 10 minutes to talk about how awful everything is. There's a balance where it's more organic, and I think men aren't as shamed by mentioning things they're worried about as they used to be. Definitely, if you look at how it was in the 19th century, just crazy.

What's some things that you've kind of referenced that a couple of times now, that sort of Victorian era, whatever stoicism or idiocy? What are some of the examples that you're referring to there? Total stoicism. I mean, Rudyard Kipling, who was early 20th century. The guy that does the cakes, right? He's the man that does Apple, Bakewell, Tarts. Yes, the Kipling. Before he was doing the Bakewell Tarts, he was, he forced, I think I'm right in saying, his son, who wasn't passed fit to join the First World War, to he got him in anyway, and then of course he was killed. You know, because it was far more important that Rudyard Kipling's son was a manly man, and he not get killed. I mean, the repression around sex was ridiculous. The way kids were

educated was, I mean, obviously, it's a long time ago, but what is interesting is that a lot of that stuff was still around until the 60s really, and then it was a whole generation to move forward from that for it to start filtering down into the kids. So we're alive at an interesting time, things are more progressive, more positive, but the pressures are also always ramping up as well. And we're supposed to remember, we're supposed to have robots doing all the work by now and that obviously hasn't happened. have robots doing all the work by now and that obviously hasn't happened. So it's a very creative picture.

There's a concept called conceptual inertia. I spoke to an ideas historian and his book was about existential risk, but he identified that a lot of the time even wants something, let's say that you go from the earth being the center of the universe to the Earth orbiting the Sun, right, that that movement from one type of view of the night sky to another one. Let's say that first off it's not accepted, then it is accepted by society at large downstream from the scientists, but people still don't act like it's accepted for a while, and this is this conceptual inertia that it takes time for things to sort of filter and bleed through, because culture moves very, very quickly on the surface, but I think that the subtexts and the assumptions that

people have, they are these big sort of lumbering behemoths that get dragged along behind, and it takes a long, long time. And I think back, man, I think back to university and there wasn't even the ability to satirically talk about someone being a lad. So in the UK, that was like, the in-betweeners was one of those moments where the super hyper lad, the J from the in-betweeners person, was mockable. You would take the piss out of that person because that was someone that had taken masculinity and

just tuned it up to a million but wasn't ever actually delivering on any of the stuff. And that was before that was even a trope. Before you could even, there wasn't an archetype for me to take the piss out of the guys from being that way or for us to do it to each other. So when you think about how quickly stuff on the surface has changed, yes, but you go, okay, but there's still all of these assumptions around the way that men are supposed to be about them taking their lay count as one of the fundamental sources of value that they have. It's how many girls have slept within the last year and stuff

like that. So yeah, I think that the conceptual inertia plays a big role in this dispensed with what was Victorian, but what did Victorian cause and then what was downstream from that and then how long is it going to take to get rid of it? Yeah, it's um... That's such a great way of pushing it and it's depressing in a way because things do move slowly, but I think we've got to, it will be another couple of generations, but so we need all these big societal changes and they're happening, they really are, but then it's the small things that you do for yourself that are equally

important and that's things like having the conversations for me taking a 20-minute break and doing nothing every single day. All the really little practical things, but in order to get to that point, I had to go through quite a lot of stop struggling, stop trying to be a man, a manly man, and just carrying on as if everything's fine, and all of that nonsense. And write a whole book. And that as well, yeah. I think that that,

the going through the trenches and the discomfort of arriving at those realizations, I think that that is quite a big part of it. And it's one of the reasons why I would agree with you, you can expedite your progress towards certain things, but it's not simply effective knowing whatever the strategy is and then implementing it. A lot of it is the journey of discomfort along the route to finding the strategy, to falling off, to dropping

the habit, to rediscovering the habit, to realizing what life's like without it and so on and so forth. Because that is what gives you, it's what connects you to the reason that you're doing a particular practice, because you realize what life is like without doing that thing. And you realize that having a 15 minute walk first thing in the day makes my day better. Oh, wow, I've just discovered this thing,

and then over time you go through a really bad day, and you think, well, I'm gonna go for this walk, and you get back and you go, well, I feel better, but without the bad day, you wouldn't have the polarity that actually explains to you why this is an important strategy. It's not just about arriving at some perfectly optimized life routine where all of the problems have gone away. The problems that you work through on root to achieving that particular routine and having those practices and having that world view, I think, is the thing that makes the difference. And also, you know, people like yourself that are breaking the fourth wall around what

it's like to be in a, like a kind of a weird period of life. Like what, what, what is your forties really? What are they? They're just this, they're just this point at which you're probably supposed to be a dad for a bit, and then you're maybe supposed to be a dad for a bit and then you're maybe supposed to let your kids go off to uni for a bit or something or maybe not. Like what is it? Yeah, you're supposed to be a grown-up and you're supposed to be successful and you're

supposed to have it all together. And I can assure you, I don't feel different to when I was your age. That's the odd thing. I don't feel, I mean, I feel old one day and I feel like I was 35 minutes ago the next day. So it's tricky, but you're right. All of this stuff, it does take time and effort. And you know, when I first started to use the wellbeing term, forest bathing, which means just walking to the end of the road, standing under a tree. You know, which we're always told you've got to do that. It's good to clear the head. And for years, obviously, I just thought, I don't need to do that, I'm alright.

And then I started doing it out of just desperation to find some way of pausing thought. And I'd say it was about three months, I was sitting under the tree still worrying about the mortgage. What it did, because I didn't have my phone or an audio book to plug in. I was just like having a special time to worry about stuff a bit more. And it took months to get to the point where yes, finally, I don't care anymore. I've got the whole, I really think that's, I'm really done a lot of whaffling today, but the not caring is the thing that I think's worked most, not worst case scenarioing everything. And I can now do that under a tree every day, like some kind of proper monk. The rest of the day is all the same as it always was still worrying about everything. But that special moment is really good. And that's taken three, four years

to get to in total. Matt Rudd, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up to date with what you're doing or harass you online, where should they go? I think we've discussed how I feel about technology. If people want to shout at me, they can do that on Twitter, but otherwise just leave me alone, deal with your own problems. That's the right point, is it? You see? Not so out of guru. I know we're signing off. When people have gotten touch, I've had some amazing conversations, and so I'd love to chat. Thanks, Matt. you