Rev Left Radio - On Fatherhood: Parenting and Marriage in an Era of Uncertainty

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

Breht is joined by Nick from MEANS TV and JT from Second Thought and The Deprogram, to have an unstructured conversation about fatherhood, parenting, role modeling, masculinity, marriage, children, and much more! ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio https://revleftradio.com/ Outro Beat Prod. by flip da hood

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. All right. On today's episode, I have on Nick from Means TV and J.T. from Second Thought and the D program as well as other things. And we're here to have a kind of a conversation about fatherhood, more or less. Nick is getting ready to have his second child, I believe. J.T. has two children himself. I, of course, have three children.

And Nick kind of reached out as he's having his second child with, you know, just some questions and some, you know, commiseration you wanted to share with me kind of privately, personally, between texts, just, you know, having some of these discussions. And it quickly became clear that it could make for a good and useful episode for others. So if you're a young parent or a young father, if you're thinking about becoming a parent or a father, you're wrestling with issues. Like, what does it mean to be a father or a man in today's society? What does it mean to navigate having multiple young children with a relationship and a job

and all the financial, social, economic, political insecurities and unknowns going on in our society? This is the conversation for you. I think I had a really interesting, great time. And it's clear that, you know, Nick is working through some shit and we're working through it with him. And, you know, when you're about to have a child or a second child, these sort of questions and this uncertainty and a lot of anxiety is inevitable. And, you know, anybody that's had children absolutely deals with it on some level. And so, you know, hopefully this is a productive and useful conversation for people in similar positions or those who may one day be in a similar position. As always, if you like what we do here at RevLeft Radio, we are 100% listener funded always have been.

Always will be. No ads. Nothing like that ever. The only way we're allowed to keep this show going eight years plus going strong is because of our supporters on Patreon, patreon.com forward slash rev left radio, where you get bonus monthly content, early releases, our RevLeft situation room. When big global news bursts, we come together in a big Zoom call. And we discuss it, work through the issue together as a community. And also we do a Buddhist sanga once a month. we kind of talk about Buddhist and spiritual themes and we meditate together. So if any of that is appealing to you and you want to support RevLeft Radio for only $5 a month, you can do so at patreon.com forward slash RevLeft Radio. If you don't like the monthly subscription model, you can shoot us a one-time donation at Buy Meacoffee.com forward slash RevLeft Radio. Both links will be in the show notes. We deeply, deeply appreciate everybody who supports the show and keeps this thing going.

All right, without further ado, here is my conversation. with Nick and J.T. About fatherhood, being a parent, being a human being in the 21st century. Enjoy. You know, I don't, you know, I don't introduce myself all that often. I am 32 years old. I run a channel called Second Thought.

heard of it. Also do podcast called the D-Program with two other YouTubers, Hakeem and Yugatnik. We've tried a number of side projects. We're desperately trying to get a news show off the ground with first thought. That didn't work. We pivoted to geopolitics. That didn't work.

So now we're going to see if we can make it a shit posting channel. So we'll see how that goes. But I have I've got two young kids, one, a daughter named Evie, who just turned three, and a son named Thomas, who is three months old now and that is me in a nutshell nice and uh yeah i'm nick hayes i uh work at means tv

we're a work around streaming service um and i you know come from a filmmaking background and uh work on developing content and kind of building out our capabilities here at means tv um and yeah i'm 28 i have a like 15 month old 16 month old son named Henry and another son on the way. And, uh, I'm really excited to talk to both you guys about this stuff. It's stuff I've been kind of, uh, really thinking about raising a son, you know, things I've struggled with my whole life. And so I appreciate both you taking the time to, to give me some of your wisdom. And so far as we have any, I'm hoping to spread it around. But yeah, no, I, I appreciate this, this happening. I've talked to N.

and JT. has been on the episodes in the past. I've been on the D program. I think Nick, you've been on Rev Left before as well at some point to promote Means TV. Love both of your work. So it's cool to get together as parents, fathers in different parts of the fathering process. Like Nick is a brand new father. You know, J.T. You've been a father for several years. Now I have a three-year-old, a 10-year-old, and a 16-year-old. My 16-year-old is my daughter and then my two younger sons. So, you know, I've been doing this for a very long time. And I've done episodes on parenting, but I think the interesting dynamic that I think Nick wants to address is the fatherhood question in particular, which is something we haven't

particularly honed in on. So I hope this will be useful to new parents out there, but also to, I think, many, many people out there who are thinking about becoming a parent in this world at this moment in history with all of the burdens that come with that, and maybe it'll be decisive for some people one way or the other. But Nick, you are the newest father here, and a lot of this conversation was spearheaded by you wanting to have a discussion and, as you said, get some of our wisdom and just kind of talk it out between all three of us. So maybe you could pick up the conversation here and kind of give us some direction on where to go next. Yeah, totally. So I think that, and

I want to get into this with you guys, but I think I've always struggled with, like, what it means to be, like, how to fill the shoes of, like, being a guy, being a man, also having a lot of empathy and, like, just, yeah, intense feeling and love and respect for all different people. and like uh sometimes that even is it odds with you know presentations of being a man that we see in popular media or in our own lives and like uh i think i also have struggled and throughout my life with a like kind of self-loathing and it's hard to say how much of that is like my own fucking mental health shit or whatever but i think some of it is uh like in like a internalized you know rejection of like being a man and like those expectations or feeling guilty for just being like a very cis het man and like having cis hat impulses and just you know whatever that kind of stuff um and yeah so it's something i've struggled with and i've been trying to like read more

about it and talk more about it with friends and you know it's been interesting hearing through that process from others who struggle with that stuff themselves and it's like oh maybe this isn't you know just like something i am challenged with maybe some of this is kind of baked into like what it means to be a heterosexual cisgendered man in 2025 and growing up in the different eras we did and whatnot and so i think that's all really been bubbling up in the last you know, like year or two leading up to having my first son and now having my son and just like seeing like a baby boy like growing up and just like seeing that innocence and seeing that like curiosity for life and that like love for people and just kind of like

what it is to be like technically he is a, you know, his sexual like his gender is a man but he has like just no inhibitions like no nothing has been placed on him like he's he's completely comfortable in expressing feelings and like these types of things and I think it's it's held up a bit of a mirror in ways to myself in like ways in which I'm really hard on myself or uncomfortable to you know acting in certain ways or expressing certain things and um and also like i'm not trying to ramble i'm just kind of trying to set up a little bit like the you know we just moved me and my wife we just bought our first house but we were living in portland main for a long time and like we had it just a wonderful community of of friends there

who were mainly women like 90% women like most of them were queer or lesbians or trans and often i was in these environments with them where I'm the only guy and definitely the only straight guy. And I, like, so enjoyed their company and, like, you know, growing close to them. And I also sometimes caught myself, like, performing masculinity or performing, like, being a guy in ways that was, like, interesting or, like, I was trying to understand, like, what is it about me being the only man? in this environment of like queer and non-binary women that like is making me feel like I need to like kind of jokingly play up that I'm like this dumb cis head guy or whatever and so yeah I think that's kind of what provoked wanting to talk to you guys and like I look at you

both with you know a lot of respect I think you both are really wonderful thinkers and I think that the political dimension to this stuff like can't be overstated, you know, trying to deal with these things while also having like a Marxist economic analysis and like a empathy and respect for like all kinds of people and whatnot. And so in addition to, yeah, like trying to read more and whatnot, I just thought maybe this would be an interesting conversation and I couldn't think of anybody better to do that with than you guys. Yeah, no, I think there's a lot on the table there. can maybe take a first stab at some of it i mean i think what you're getting at when you're talking about

your you know young infant son is that you know he hasn't been put into a box yet he hasn't been made aware of what it means to be a man or a boy versus being a girl or a woman and in that sort of liminal space of you know early childhood really up up through i mean the first five years at least maybe it starts getting into it uh by that point but certainly the first three years There's just a radical freedom for the child to be the child and to have none of these social categories imposed upon it. And I think that's kind of maybe generating in you some questions about how to navigate the inevitability of your child having to confront those categories. But also, as we were talking about before the recording, you know, being cis heteronormative or, you know, heterosexual men in a on the left is kind of an interesting dynamic to play with. not to play into this narrative that like you know we've been beaten and abused and talked down to

or anything like that but just to think of like what do you bring to the table and in those social milieus and in organizing context in what ways are you blindly um you know perhaps imposing certain characteristics that are things that as a human being you might want to overcome and just kind of being critical in that way and of course you know this is a this is a hot issue in our politics today because what is really the main appeal of reactionary and right-wing politics right now for young men in this society is you don't have to feel bad about any of that. Just let all of that go. But what they advance is a false masculinity. It's the masculinity of a machismo performance, which is always, and I always make this point, always undergirded

by insecurity, right? The guy who has to overperform his masculinity for others, reassure others that he's really a manly man is doing that from an inward basis of profound insecurity, right? This gap between who they think they should be and who they feel they really are deep down. And so it's like, can we cultivate in ourselves and then, you know, teach our children and our sons this as well, a healthy version of masculinity? Or is that even the right question, right? So I don't have hard answers quite yet, but, you know, those are some of the things that it made me think of. and I'd love to hear J.T.'s initial reactions. Yeah, so I come from a place where I'm a little fella.

Like, I'm not a big, burly, manly man type guy. Like, I'm 5'9, 150 soaking wet. So I'm not like a big, what people would think of as, like, a Gaston kind of figure, like a big, scary man. So I've never felt the need to, or even the ability, really to put forward that version of masculinity and so for me

not having that not feeling that pressure to perform as a traditional you know quote unquote man I think has been helpful to me like you Nick I've before we moved here to South Carolina when we lived

in near Dallas a lot of our friends were women or gay or just not what you would typically think of as the manly man type. And I did not have, like I never felt like people didn't trust me or were afraid of me or anything like that because I was presenting myself a certain way. So I think I've kind of dodged a bullet there, both for my own mental health and for the comfort of those around me by no virtue of my own just like because of my genetic. So that's

just how I am, how I look, how I present myself. So I may not have. the most to offer in that category, but also, I don't know, I think there's just a level of emotional health that is required to kind of shrug off those expectations. My dad is that type of person, and his dad is as well. Big, like, I'm the runt of the family, my wife is too, and there you You know, big salesman type guys, like very, you know, they'll, you know, hey, son, you need me to fix your tire. You know, they'll come out, they'll change the tire. Not that I can't change a tire now. I'm perfectly capable of doing that.

But, you know, they're the type of guy that you, growing up, you look at and you're like, wow, I want to be just like my dad. He's, you know, he's strong, he's capable. Like, my dad could beat up your dad kind of type thing. And I don't know. I think my, the fact that my dad wasn't around all that much when I was a kid and the fact that I was raised primarily by my mother may have had an influence on how I view masculinity not as like a negative thing. My dad was not like absent. He was just working. His job made him travel a lot. But because of that, like I really appreciated the time I got to spend with him,

but also my mother was the primary person teaching me how to navigate life. And I think that is a pretty healthy balance to have the mother figure or whomever, you know, who is not so hypermasculine kind of drip feed you through your entire life like, hey, it's okay to cry. Hey, it's, you know, empathy is always the best approach. You know, hey, you need to be kind to this person.

They are afraid of X, Y, Z, don't make fun of them. You know, that sort of thing. They're like, oh, okay, cool. So it's, you know, it's good to be empathetic. it's good to be, to feel your feelings and things like that. I think that, so luckily I come from a very healthy emotional background and I think that is the main factor for me. Quickly, I don't want to talk up too much and I would love to hear your responses, Nick, but just, you know, I kind of think about it and kind of what J.T. was saying, you know, less in terms,

although it does come up and we'll get into this later about what it means to be a man, you know, after my father died, I kind of, I kind of take the place of the patriarch of the family in a lot of ways with my siblings. I'm the oldest sibling and with my family. And, you know, I do take that question seriously, but internally, I've always framed it as how can I be the most well-rounded person, human being. And so, like, I do have these weird characteristics of both where, you know, I have on the masculine side of things, like, you know, I don't know, like I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, in the Midwest, in Montana, shooting guns, fishing, you know, driving trucks, all of that stuff. All my buddies are kind of union guys. It's like that, that milieu is definitely

one I'm comfortable in. But I've also been organizing for many years on the radical left, engaged in very, very progressive milieus as well that have, you know, questioned critically some of those, you know, imposed characteristics that a lot of these guys over here that I've grew up with might never have come into those social millues and had to deal at all with some of that. And so, yeah, I kind of frame it in myself as how to be a well-rounded human being first and foremost and kind of see how if I can synthesize a whole spectrum of behaviors that are healthy and I can role model a sort of humanity that I think hopefully transcends narrow categories. But yeah, so those are just some thoughts. But Nick, go ahead.

No, I mean, I think that stuff's really interesting context. And I think it's really hard to extricate our experiences of manhood from the way in which we were raised. And I think that gets at why I'm so curious in talking to you guys about, you know, how to be a father and how to, like, raise sons and whatnot. Like, I think that the background, for example, JT, that that you provided, like, makes a lot of sense. And, like, I come from this background of, like, I had a very stable home. I was raised by my father just as much as my mother. my dad was a sports writer and was like a college athlete and so i was always around like this kind of hyper masculinity in terms of not in terms of like toxic or abusive behavior but just in

terms of like like football and you know like thing like very physical stuff like that and i was always much bigger than the other kids and you know was playing sports and things like that and so and I think that there was always this kind of feeling of not being able to live up physically to like the athlete that my father was for a number of reasons like just not being as interested in it but also just physically not being committed to that you know what he was able to accomplish and he comes from this background of like being raised in bumfuck Illinois like on a as a corn farmer and in the you know early 60s and he has two brothers and like his mother kind of I mean did abandon them like ran off with the family attorney when they were like eight years when he was eight years old or something and so he was raised primarily by his father and his grandmothers and like all of the men on that side of the family I think there is this like uh it's really fascinating like he talked about JT like you know the being raised by primarily like a woman and whatever like i think that there's something to like the single parent experience almost or something where like uh because they had to get kind of what they need their emotional needs fulfilled by their father who was this burly like man's man farmer guy um like they were able to be emotionally vulnerable with him and like

you know all of them are very emotionally open for the most part i mean they're they you know struggle with elements of that but like i think having their hearts broken as small children and having their mom abandoned them feeling that rejection and then having to get that love and all that's their buckets filled by this paternal figure in their life like gave them this gentleness and this kind of empathy for what it is to be a man and that like being a man can encompass all of these different things and like you can be all these archetypal ways of being a man but you can also be really sensitive or emotional or present or whatever that means and so that was like the contradictions that I grew up with was like I watched cowboy movies and spaghetti westerns

and my dad wrote about the NFL and football and stuff like that and so I'm like I love cowboy movies and all this like cheesy guy shit and like uh stuff like that but I I also was able to like cry in front of him or be vulnerable in front of him and tell him things that were going on and have him respond with empathy. And so it's like an interesting model sort of as a starting point. Like I don't think he had the political or social framework to understand like, you know, feminism and like patriarchy and things like that. But it's an interesting jumping off point for like kind of my grappling with those things. And I think like, what you said, J.T., like, it's been interesting reading about, like, I've been reading

a lot of books about this and one that I've really enjoyed is Bell Hook's Will to Change book about, like, how, like, men are inherently valuable as men and that they, like, are a critical part of destroying the patriarchy and that they are also not served by the patriarchy. Like, they are, like, although they, it enables them to occupy positions of power, potentially and things like that, they're emotionally wounded by the existence of the patriarchy and, like, should be, you know, working in tandem with women to destroy it. And, like, the idea that, like, mothers and women can also be supporting the patriarchy or advocates of patriarchy, I think is fascinating.

And I see that in, like, friends I have who were raised by single mothers, but who have very have you know a very confined box of like what it means to be a man or this and that and like even in ways my mother who's wonderful and all those things you know in certain ways kind of seeks out traditionally patriarchal like things to be fulfilled and like um so anyway i'm talking a lot but it's uh it's it's yeah it's just interesting understanding i guess that we can be powerful advocates in trying to destroy the patriarchy as well and that we're also it's victims and I see that like in my own experience as a kid growing up and also like I fear that for my son.

Yeah, I mean, I would say that, you know, the majority of men that I know, um, from friends that are more or less my age to younger people that I come across and certainly at the older generations. I mean, many amazing, you know, character traits for sure, but I would say the majority do suffer from, you know, being sort of deformed by the expectations of masculinity and the inability, our social expectations and the perceived inability to not live up to it. And what does our society tell us is masculine? Well, you know, the old cliche of being a provider and a protector but the provider thing comes first and in a in a economic context that is less and less stable with less and less mobility higher and higher forms of inequality you get less and less

men being able to live up to that particular expectation and then the the sixth side of it is you go online in the manosphere and what does every one of those assholes tell you you got to be rich you got to have girls you got to be you know a chad and if you know if you're an in-cell that's bad and And so they glorify not only patriarchal norms of what it means to be a man in this way, but also capitalist norms of the hyper-emphasizing the provider aspect, like get risk, get on your grind, blah, blah, and for more and more and more people, no matter what you do, you're never going to be able to reach levels of financial stability, let alone excess. And so that, I think, is internalized by especially younger men coming up as failure. as a personal failure to be a man.

And then what often happens is forms of self-loathing, depression, isolation, you know, nihilistic internet subcultures, or at least susceptibility to fascist and reactionary narratives that make them feel for a moment like this is the direction I can go in. But again, it's coming from a place of insecurity, and it never actually fulfills them. and so a lot of these people in those areas are miserable fucks, you know, because the thing that they thought would make them who they wanted to be never actually does deep down.

And so, you know, that's kind of a sickness of reactionary politics. Even when they win, they never get the fulfillment because it's always like this deferred thing. And so it never feels complete. And that just creates more and more resentment and bitterness. And it's like, well, if we can't be happy, then at least we can hurt. hurt other people. That's a huge part of the reactionary psychology, but yeah, J.G. Absolutely. I mean, like looking back at any past fascist movement, that's why it always gets smaller and smaller and smaller what's acceptable in the in-groups. Like, well, okay, we got rid of those people. That guy,

that guy's subhuman now. Like, he's not good enough. Like, okay, well, you know, then you end up with two dudes who are exactly, you know, it's just, it's pathetic and it's sad. And we see it happening a lot with kids in the suburbs, like, you know, this is speaking as someone who grew up in the suburbs, has lived all over the country, and has moved my family to the suburbs, at least in Texas. And you see these teens, white, black, doesn't really matter, but you see it a lot with the white boys that are so fundamentally bored and alienated because they are not able to get anywhere themselves they they lack any kind of autonomy they lack mobility they lack connection to to their peers because they are in these isolated bubbles where the only thing

you can do is is rely on mom while dad's at work being the sole breadwinner or whatever to drive them where they want to go between these isolated bubbles of capital like i want to go to the mall i want to go to the store and in the suburbs there's nothing there's you got chilies and a strip mall and then you've got five miles of highway and then you've got a mall and then you've got like a pet smart over there and that's all like that's it's

incredibly soul crushing and I think a lot that's where a lot of this reactionary stuff comes from it's because the aesthetic is so wildly different than what their reality is like it's like man what happened to Rome

you know what happened to the beautiful pillars and I could go and walk and wear a to and all that, you know, making silly examples. Yeah, like the Marlboro Man type shit. Exactly, yeah. Or even in the westerns or in kung fu movies or anything like that. Like, wow, my life doesn't look anything like that and I'm really, really bored. And so I'm going to consume all this media, most of which now is geared towards people like me because we are an underserved group that is really, really bitter and needs something to latch on to.

And that is, it's so sad to see. and it's like anything it's structural like you can't what are you going to do fix the suburb you're going to bulldoze them all and do higher density housing and stuff like that it is such a big issue that touches on so many things that it sounds to people on the outside it sounds like we're just talking out of our ass like it's not be a man or don't whatever who cares and it's not like well it's it's not that easy. Like, it's not, it's, this is such an interconnected issue that you need to address it from multiple angles. Um, yeah. And it's, it's hard to even know where to start. Yeah. I mean, I think this,

I think the, the, the infrastructure of capitalism lends itself to social isolation for young people for sure. And I think men find, yeah, just insular radicalized communities online that just feed into that. And I think like, like, like one thing that has been interesting in reading about, about this and in thinking about it is like this idea that bell hooks talks about which is that like men's value so in society or in relationships or whatever is defined by what they can do and not who they are like it's not about just you're not valued for just being yourself your value like what people want from you is the things you can do and I think that at least resonates very strongly with me like and i again i think that is like this larger idea of like the

male provider and all this shit but even like in terms of like being handy and like fixing shit around the house or like uh doing jobs you know oh the toilet overflowed and there's shit all over the floor it's like that's when you step in as a guy it's like that's on you because it's gross or whatever like in many ways and i think we're valued for what we do And I think that when I look back as a kid, like, I think I felt that, you know, when I was seven, eight, nine, and kind of realized that there was this pressure to, like, do great, do things, do good, like, things that would make me valuable to somebody. Like, I think, like, we men, women, like, we want that partnership.

We want to be loved by somebody else. And I think for a lot of men, it feels like in order to be lovable or to be worthy of any kind of thing like that, it's about what you can do, what you can accomplish, how much money can you make. And I think that is what funnels young men into this like hustle grind shit or this idea that like the more Andrew Tate kind of stuff of just like actually women women are this and that and like sort of attacking. like their value and things like that and i think that's a it's like a salve for that that feeling of of like um inadequacy because it's you as a man you it's always about what you can do and you're never doing enough and so it's really hard to ever feel like you're living up to your expectations for yourself or others expectations for you and so just sort of that straightforward rejection of like actually no like women are dumb and they don't they don't understand like what it's like

to be a man and they this is their place and you know this is ours i think that is a salve but i don't think that it it like it doesn't heal the heart of those young men who feel rejected or who feel inadequate because they have to go out and live in the world where like women aren't often like they're still going to get that negative feedback from women like they're still like women are going to be like why are you being such a dick like why are you like what's what's your fucking problem and then they have to instead of like allowing themselves to be vulnerable and introspective they have to just like push that off and throw that back at women and that makes it really hard to like build loving relationships and forge bonds with

people um but i think it i do think you know it's like i understand this idea of like like young men in our country in the crisis of young man and all this shit like in the kind of right wing shift of that and whatever and i think there's there's a real sense like you're alluding to j t from young men that there's like no opportunities for them and that the increasingly i think it's really hard to be a child or a young adult and feel like you have the latitude to like explore the boundaries of what it means to be a man and like what's appropriate and what's not like I think that it's it's you're more and more boxed in like we have police officers in schools now and

like when you know like I remember being in high school and like if you got into a fight there was like a zero tolerance policy and you would get like arrested and then like suspend it's like some of this shit is just like kids or their emotions are all over the place sometimes it's like you there's going to be conflict or you're trying to figure out ways to navigate like challenging relationships or whatever and increasingly it's like this militarized thing that there's really confined boundaries about what is acceptable you're moving through the school system just to like get you through it so they can say they did it and you're out and uh yeah I just think it's a very disaffecting experience, and I think that there's elements of, like, popular feminism, like, in terms of, like, the waves of feminism, like, third wave feminism being this idea of, like, you know, women's struggles are interconnected across the world.

It was, like, a kind of rejection of, like, the Western white lady feminism, sort of this inclusive idea of, like, oppressed peoples and the kind of capitalist economic nature. of oppression, whatever, and I think that there is certainly in like high level discussions of modern feminism, this kind of, um, like inclusion of men as like having value, whatever. But I think in sort of like boilerplate, people who are like just getting into feminism or just getting radicalized, there's this kind of derivative of that, which is like men bad. And I think a lot of young men encounter that in their peers or online and there's like a real pain in that rejection of their value because it's like they didn't choose to be straight cis head guys like they just are and it's like okay well I guess I'm worthless I guess I'm bad or whatever it's like all right

fuck you you know I'm going to go be as bad as I can be like you saying I'm bad fine I'm going to go do Nazi shit you know I'm gonna like I'm gonna yeah so I I really think that expanding that empathy and like that love and that appreciation of what men do bring to the table for young men today is important and giving them space to like have love and care for themselves well yeah i mean i think as socialist as communists we are universalist in the final instance that there's a there's an importance and understanding the particularity meaning the particular difficulties of you know being a certain minority in a certain context we have to grapple with that to create a robust universalism, but ultimately our vision for the world is one that is good for

everyone. Even the fucking guy down the street wearing the maga hat right now would benefit from living in our world and we have to in some part of our heart keep that open and emphasize that universal aspect because you're right. When high level feminism or socialism or theory trickles down to the lowest common denominator, it can get super simplified. And if you're on whatever, Tumblr, Instagram, whatever, TikTok, and you're just getting hit with the boilerplate, lowest common denominator versions of these ideas, then yeah, it can come off as like, yeah, all men bad, this and that.

And I think it was especially a phase our culture went through that we're kind of coming out of. And there's an importance to it, right? We all know the importance of understanding the struggle of women, the struggle of, you know, black people in the U.S., the struggle of indigenous people throughout the world. and there's like a necessary dialectic

phase of going through that society is kind of coming out of it but coming out of it in a reactionary way and what we should come out of it is like a synthesis way like synthesizing the knowledge of the particular and refusing it to a universalist vision still and a universalist vision makes room

for the sort of people who might have previously felt like they were excluded from this thing and you know being a white dude or a cis heterosexual dude that talks about these politics is in a way that I think I always try to do it in this way that does emphasize or implicitly emphasize the universality of our vision that this is for everybody at the end of the day now if you're coming in as a racist as a sexist or whatever you're going to you're going to run into the buzzsaw on this side of the political spectrum and that's for the better right we can't allow those things to go unchallenged or uncritiqued and undismantled. But at the same time, if you're willing to be humble a little bit, to put down your defenses, to create some of that vulnerability and that willingness to learn, you know, we should have our arms wide open for those sorts of people. And a couple of the things I wanted to say is the irony of the reactionary version of

masculinity, which is really this machismo performance, and this projection of that onto women, the irony of that is that it alienates you even further from women. Because now your whole thing is like, fuck you, you're the problem. And it is a psychological projection, right? You were saying, like, if I can't live up to expectations, maybe I can tear them down, right? There's no sense of I'm trying to elevate. There's now just to fuck you.

Let's see if I can drag you down. And that is fundamentally an outward projection of self-loathing. You know, and we see that all over the right. I think one of the main things, and I'll end it on this, and I would love to shift into like thinking about what do we teach our sons in this context. But one of the main things that we lack as a hyper individualist society and almost all cultures before us had is communal rights of passage for men and women, right?

But specifically for young men coming up in more communal cultures, you had at a certain time in your development various social rituals that you would engage in and these run the gamut all over, you know, the cultural landscape and historical landscape. But there is a specific ritualistic symbol. thing that you did that accepted or that that sort of you know was this doorway into this this this echelon of being now a man in the community that is totally missing from a hyper individualized society so we have no rights of passages we're all incredibly alienated we have this reactionary slop appealing to your lowest common denominator base emotions and we have in the last 20 years an

identitarianism on the liberal left and the conservative right, which is always a distraction ultimately from a universalist class politic, that tried to even further hyper-individualize and separate people based on inborn characteristics that had some benefits and it was an awakening for some people, but ultimately hit a hard limit and started giving rise to social pathologies that we're dealing with now. Yeah, I think a little bit of I don't know if you want to call it cynicism you want to call it realism is called for as well it's like all right so you've got these these chuds

these you know 17 18 year old kids who are like you know what fuck women they're stupid they should make me a sandwich whatever guess what happens they select themselves out they're you know what maybe some of them become shooters that's usually who it is but most of them they're not going to end up getting married having kids and teaching their sons to be the same way because no one's going to put up with, like, women won't put up with their bullshit anymore. Like, if you look at the data on the dating apps and stuff, the biggest turnoff, like, the biggest red flag is people who speak like that.

Like, people who are into the manosphere stuff. Women are just done with it, you know, and they're always going to be exceptions. Obviously, that's going to appeal to some people who are raised in, like, super, super conservative areas. Like, that's what a man should do. You know, this is the, you know, traditional gender roles, that sort of thing. But for the majority of people, that's just not going to fly. You're just an asshole. Like, no one wants to be around that.

So, I'm, like, living in an area that is very conservative. There are a bunch of reactionaries, but they're also a ton of just kids in general in this neighborhood. Like, I'll just watch and see what they do, like how they talk to each other and stuff like that. And I'm always generally, pleasantly surprised. Like, they're going to poke fun at each other and stuff. They're going to be kids and kind of be assholes among the boys and stuff. But, like, they've got girls that run with their crew and stuff, and they're not nasty, which is, good. I think, really, I do think

the kids are going to be all right. Like, they're, for me, like, growing up, thankfully, it was before this really became a crisis, the manosphere stuff. But I started to slip down that, that slippery slope of the reactionary stuff,

and I know a lot of my friends did too. And then after a point, we're like, hey, this kind of feels bad. Like, this doesn't, like, this is not, my dad didn't talk to people like this. My mom certainly didn't talk to people like this, and it's making people not like me. I'm going to stop, and then I stop, and lo and behold, life gets better. And so I think a lot of kids, this is just

something that they have to do for themselves. They have to struggle. They have to suffer a little bit, and then they're going to find out. Kids are naturally reactionary in a way that is just like anti-parent, like anti, whatever my dad told me or whatever my mom told me, I'm going to go do the thing they said not to do, oh, this sucks. All right. And you know what? Some of them are just stubborn enough that they're a lost cause. You can't save them all, just like we can't win them all in trying to bring people over to our side.

And that's just a reality that we have to deal with like throughout history. If you look at successful revolutions, guess what? Most of them, not a majority. Most people are either apathetic or reactionary in some way. And that is a bummer. it's sad that we can't just take the truth and the basic human decency and say, hey, you know what, come on over, let's talk about this, we can all get on the same page. It just doesn't work like that.

So that's something that I've kind of been thinking about recently. It's like, all right, take the wins we can, help the kids we can, especially the kids, because they've got a rough go of it right now with everything being online forever. Like you say one wrong thing. fucked um but that's just something i've been i've been kind of mulling over it's like what is what is the amount of energy we need to expend trying to win over people with that we can't win over um and and when do we need to cut our losses i mean i i agree j t i do think that it's kind of a phase i think that a lot of adolescent men are like kind of at odds with their own bodies

that are changing yeah they're they're encountering like a surge of hormones that is very sudden and also often like unmatched by like certain like women in their schools and shit like that you know it's like they might be coming in a little hot and then feel like that's a rejection and sort of you know seek uh answers for that in a way that are not healthy i think i think that i hope what you're saying is the case i am a little I do feel like I see, even in, like, adult friends I have or friends that are a little younger than me, like, they're, I'm often shocked by the extent to which women are willing to tolerate men who are not introspective or men who are toxic or are not capable of, like, being emotionally intelligent, being honest with themselves and vulnerable. And I think that, you know, there's plenty of reasons for that. I think the desire for being loved by men in the same way that men desire to be loved by women is very strong.

And I think we're all willing to make excuses in order to, like, feel like we are attaining that love. But, yeah, I mean, I hope that that's the case. Like, I think that I've also seen this kind of, well, okay, I also. wanted to just touch on, Brett, you were talking about the kind of we have no cultural right of passage. I think that's a really fascinating idea. I think that we lack any sense of community totally. You've covered that on your show so many times, JT, you've made so many videos kind of addressing that. I mean, I think that's just a truism of individualist, capitalist society. I do think that we have cultural rights of passage, though. It's in the form of

channeling male violence through things like high school football or through like the hypersexualization of young women and um i think that also like one of the big rites of passage that i felt i experienced as a kid was like the ability to abuse substances like when you're 15 16 and you get you know that friend's basement like no parent's around for the first time and you get absolutely hammered, like, that felt like a rite of passage to some extent. It was like, I'm doing, this is, you know, bad, I'm doing this for me, this is what the adults do, I think, more importantly, or this is what I've seen other men do, is drink and smoke weed and, you know, use substances in a way to get completely inebriated. And so I think

that we have rights of passages. I don't think it's coherent culturally, but I think that they're just very perverse. It's about, okay, you're a man, therefore you're violent, so we're going to channel that into this insane version of rugby in which you're like knocking heads with people and giving yourself brain damage and shit. Or you're going to get super fucked up and a lot of you are going to develop dependencies on substances that you struggle with throughout your life. um i think that the the thing about like kids and stuff today and this is getting us closer to this thing of parenting i know we've been got talking around it is like it's interesting seeing being a parent now and i'm sure you guys have dealt with this too like seeing how other people

approach parenting like just maybe it's distant family or it's people that you know your kids got a daycare with or school or whatever and i i i i I have seen this kind of phenomenon of like a very protectionist parenting. Like obviously it's our job as parents to like protect our kids and make sure that they're safe and they feel secure. But I think that in the kind of like the wake of like therapy becoming mainstream, like in this kind of idea of trauma becoming this like very pervasive framework to understand lots of different things socially. I see a lot of parents that are very almost like isolationists. Like they don't want their kids around people.

They're very protective of like, you know, a kid going to a sleepover or a kid, you know, being entrusted with other adults, you know, to have those adults, you know, take care of them for any period of time and kind of use their own best judgment and whatnot to like, you know, make sure that the kid is safe and whatever. a lot of like it's not even like helicopter parenting it's just a like it's very fear based and i think that uh i see that happening and it's it's happened in people even in my extended family and i think what it has the effect of doing is really limiting the amount of adult figures that a kid has the opportunity to develop a relationship with and i think like when i

think about my experience as a kid and i would get like shipped around for in a week with my grandparents go visit a cousin go visit an aunt and through doing that you kind of get these little views into different worlds and lifestyles and even as a young kid it's like you're you're analyzing these people without really knowing you are but you're like i really love this characteristic of this person but i would not want to live this life or like uh you know this is this is kind of freaky i don't this is a little more like this is a little chaotic maybe i i'm not a little uncomfortable. It's kind of fun, parts of it, but I'm grateful for when I get to go home and, like, be in my bedroom and feel secure. And I think that that speaks to this lack

of community and, like, raising kids, like, the, it takes a village kind of shit. Like, there's, there's not a lot of role models, therefore there's not a lot of male role models that sort of give kids this ability to, like, pick and choose traits and qualities that they want to adopt themselves. I think that's incredibly insightful, and actually it resonated so much with me because my 10-year-old son, for like just kind of de facto, like it wasn't something I consciously orchestrated, but he does live that sort of life. Like we have extended family, my sister, and her husband have four kids.

You know, I have nieces and nephews in that regard, so I get to see a whole spectrum of ages. And, you know, like my nephew is a high school varsity football player. and yeah um you know my niece is now 18 and going out into the um the world and my my 10 year old son though he was closest in age to his female cousin and um the other half of rev left dave has a daughter who is more or less his age as well so he's come up with his best friend being his you know his girl cousin um since since infant you know since infants and now they're they're nine and 10 years old and their house is very different than ours in some ways it's much more hectic than ours he's overstimulated in a lot of ways but he has to he has to deal with that and wrestle

with that and then he also has you know his guy friends from school who we do allow and we are conscious of this like this impulse within ourselves to protect and isolate and we fight against it and say no like i grew up a classic 90s kid where like i woke up on a weekend and i went out and i was gone for nine hours no cell phones or nothing and came back when the when the street lights came on it's now a cliche and we're getting old so we're like when back in my day we used to stay out to the lights came on but it was true and it was liberating and it made me have to deal with a bunch of shit without having a parent to immediately turn to um and yes sometimes it was dangerous sometimes we got in trouble sometimes we got in fights but you know you kind

of develop a self in that context and you're right some of the isolationism which is fear-based it's a product of our hyper individualistic culture it's a reaction to previous social eras and i think it's a subconscious reaction to a sort of an era of unraveling, that just on a subconscious animal level, we feel the social foundations of our society being much shakier. And we don't consciously think of it in those terms, but it manifests through our behaviors and our sort of fear-based behaviors in particular. So I think you're on to something really important. And I think that is why, and I've been blessed with this with my kids, to have to live in a spot where all my family and friends live, right? I was born and raised here in Omaha. All my family and

friends are still close. My wife's family is like three blocks away, you know. We have grandparents, retired grandparents who now watch my youngest son every week, and they get to engage with each other. And, you know, they get the reward of being in their 70s and being able to engage with two, three generations down the line. So I'm very blessed in that way. But, but yeah, in lieu of that, you get an isolationist approach to parenting. And I think that turns a lot. of kids inward and it turns them to what's available which is the internet and well you know if you're a young kid and you're not out socializing you're not having those face-to-face encounters you're not in a social milieu with people that are different than you with guys and girls and you are more and more

isolating onto narrow subcultures and silos then i think you you can become deformed in that way and one of the main things that you lose and Nick you hit on this perfectly is emotional intelligence and I think that is emotional intelligence is like a huge pillar of this conversation and and consciously cultivating it within ourselves is essential and then role modeling it to the young men and young women in our lives as parents and as a member of a community right I also have nieces and nephews and my kids have friends that come over and to parent that and role model that emotional intelligence is really important. And it's difficult, right? It's not easy, but I think that's a key thing to cultivate within yourself so

that you can teach it to others. I think really what it boils down to is what makes good humans is interaction with humanity, like actual humanity. Like I see around us, like I said, there are a lot of kids. Some of them are iPad kids. And, you know, our parents used to say it's those dang phones. Well, it really is those dang phones. Like, you watch these, you know, you go out to eat at a restaurant, and there's a table with parents that are engaged with their children and the kids are speaking and looking around and they're curious and their, you know, active minds. And then you see the parents that are on their phones and the kids on the iPad. And you're like, well, shit, that's not a good start, is it? Like, they're already on this pipeline of slop because that's

all that is available to kids now is this mass-produced farmed slop. So, yeah, where are they going to end up? Of course, they're going to end up on the slop for higher ages. But also, like, every new relationship with a new person, especially an adult for, like, Evie at the moment, has drastically expanded her perspective, her abilities, her eagerness to learn from people and to engage with different types of people. So it started, we moved here to South Carolina to be close to my parents

because Kelsey's parents are in Zimbabwe and she never gets to see them. So we're like, we need the multigenerational thing. That is, it is so human. And sure enough, once Evie moved from just hanging out with Kelsey and me, with just the parents, and started to hang out with Mamie and Gov, she just blossomed. Like she, like my parents will say, oh yeah, she ate a great meal. She tried all these different foods.

Like, man, she doesn't do that with us. And my parents are like, yeah, that's how it works. There you have different relationships as a kid with different relations. Like, she is so different with her aunts. I've got two sisters over there still with my parents. She has a different relationship with them than she has with my parents. Then she has with Kelsey and me. And then she just started school, preschool.

school. It's a multilingual school, so they learn Spanish in class as well as English, and she has students from different socioeconomic backgrounds, different cultural backgrounds. And she has just, it's incredible the change that six months will make when you expose children to things that are outside of their little bubble. And I think that's, for me, that is the best possible thing you can do for any kid, is to just give them community. yeah i i completely agree and it's it's been wonderful we moved here same reason we wanted to be closer to family and it's it's just great it's i can see it being so good for you know the the the like elderly people in our life and for my parents and whatever and i it's great i just love to be like all right dude have a great day and he just kind of has to like cope with mom and dad aren't here and I have to like soothe myself I have to like find some sort of inner security you know and it's like we're completely you know we're heaping love on the guy you know when he's around us obviously and whatever but it's like it's important that he knows that he's he's safe and secure I mean

he's little he's like 14 15 months old so it's like I don't know how much is going on but uh you know whatever uh but yeah I think uh now I want to get into some of these questions I have for you guys I think the iPad thing is very true JT. I see that a lot myself and it's made me very aware of having my phone out and just trying to I mean my kids also if he sees it

he wants to look at it and he wants to look at pictures of himself on it which is hilarious so I just have to hide it from him all the time but like I can I think the iPad phenomenon some of that also I think is just like there's a lot of parents who cannot afford child care who are not near support networks and it's like if i was in that position i can

understand being like i need a fucking break like you know watch fucking cocoa melon it's not good for you like i but i need 15 minutes to just like look at my fucking phone and like chill out it's like i i try to have empathy for that too and but yeah it's uh you could see that it's not great And the thing I've struggled with is like even I have like a young nephew through my my wife and like we really get along and I have a niece and you know, we've, whenever we're with them, we really try to make it like a special memory and take them to do fun stuff. And like I would come from this family of, yeah, like you get shipped around, you spend a couple days with people and you see how they live and what the rules of their house are and what kind of food they eat. and I'll like encourage my brother-in-law like hey ship them out dude you know like you know let him come hang we'll watch them for a few days whatever and I can sense this like uncomfortability with that in them as parents of like I don't think it's that they don't trust me or my wife or

whatever I think it's just this like like uh giving up control kind of a thing and I I just it's like obviously you don't push that it's not my kid I'm not going to press it whatever but it's like i see them being deprived of that opportunity at these like formative ages and i like feel bad that they're being denied that or whatever um but yeah i i i wanted to get at brett throw this to you first i think j t maybe uh your your daughter's a little young for having experienced this but one thing that has come up in in the reading like and like the spell hook's book specifically. And something I remember distinctly, and we talked about at the very beginning, is, like, kids are just unencumbered by, like, expectations or gender roles and whatnot.

But there's this shift that happens, like, particularly, I think, with, or in this case, not particularly, but in this case, we're talking about boys and men, where, you know, they hit a certain age and they kind of realize certain behaviors are viewed in a negative way and that they have to maybe conform or kind of stuff down those parts of themselves in order to, you know, not be mocked or to get along with kids at school or to fit in. And I wonder, Brett, like, have you seen that experience in your kids and how did you try to help them navigate that in a way that, like, protected that very special kind of part of themselves that's fragile and that, you know, is curious and it isn't confined in those ways no it's it's a great question and yeah for that I have a 10 year old boy and of course a 16 year old daughter so they I get you know a multitude of experiences with that my son is very and he has been since he was incredibly young very sensitive very cerebral very like anxious and cautious naturally my my three year old son is the exact opposite he just throws his body at the world we've had to take him to the ER like three times my my older son we never had to take him to the ER like three times my my older son we never had to take him once because he is just naturally cautious. But what I do see in emerging from him is like he likes watching sports with me,

right, but he is not interested at all at playing. And we try to be like, hey, let's go play, you want to get you in a soccer league? We'll get you in a softball league or baseball, football, not football, but you know, my wife would never allow that and I wouldn't either, but basketball, anything. And he'll like sit and watch a game with me and cheer on the Huskers and the Packers and all this stuff. He's like, dad, I just like watching it. I don't want to play it.

And when he was very young, we got him in there and, like, you know, a soccer scrum happened. And he just was, like, incredibly overstimulated and uncomfortable with it. He's the sort of kid that is, like, like I said, cerebral. Like the other day we, like, even when he was very young, he'll, like, have me come in and he'll, like, talk about, like, dad, one day I'm going to, like, die. And, you know, everybody I love is going to die. I'm like, I'm having this with an eight-year-old kid. And just the other day, we had this long conversation that he initiated about, like, the rational basis for

religion like he's interested in this he's interested in jesus and this christian thing um but then he started just like coming up with his own arguments like this doesn't make sense you know what about this part you know and like just fascinating you see this mind clicking this mind that is very intellectual and at the same time that high level of awareness creates this sort of like overwhelmedness sometimes that comes out in like hypersensitive or overstimulated behavior um so you know as a father I grew up. My thing as a kid was like sports, right? I played baseball, basketball, football. When I was like eight years old, I was begging my dad to get me into like full contact football. And he was like, not until you're nine. You're not allowed to until you're nine. And then when I'm nine, I'm smashing my head into other people, get like three, I got like three concussions playing peewee football. So I was like, I'm not doing that to my kids. Um, but uh, when you taste the metal in the back of your mouth because you just like hit a kid so hard. And you're like, absolutely. It's not good. It's fucking not good. I wish my parents would have stopped me. Um, but. So, so. So, So, okay, you know, maybe there's a latent hope that my son would take to one of these sports. He doesn't.

Totally fine. What does he like doing? He likes music. He likes playing piano. And so we, even though it's fucking hard sometimes to afford, we get, you know, nothing crazy, but just basic weekly piano lessons. And he is musical. He wants to express himself through art.

So somebody that is very sensitive, very cerebral, struggles with the bigness of his emotions, isn't interested in sports at all, we make sure that he has this artistic form of expression that he can go to. And you know what? When we get in, like, fights or, you know, he gets really worked up about something. Often what will happen, like, go to your room and calm down for a bit,

you know, during a meltdown, he'll go in, and like two seconds later, you'll hear the piano playing. So it's already an outlet for his emotions. And I think, okay, that's just how he is structured. And one thing I've seen from having three kids, and I think both of you probably already do see it, definitely will continue to see it is like 80% of their temperament and sort of baseline personality orientation is kind of inbuilt like all three of my kids it's crazy it's crazy

yeah and so you like i got like 10 to 20% to work with here i shouldn't try to impede on that other 80% i'm just fascinated by it just like if you plant three different seeds the trees are going to grow different kids are like that and so it's like it's kind of like toning in on what their specifics are and not trying to impose anything on them, just cultivating what's already there instead of trying to make it into something. But the other side of that is my daughter. And I think this is where it's really come out for me as a father, as a man, as somebody that is aware of all these social issues, is you see a sweet little girl that is so performative and theatrical and so ready to stand in front of a crowd and do things, start that insecurity

of a teenage girl starts descending and starts closing her up. So, like, she's, like, one example of this is, like, she's always loved playing volleyball. And she actually, we play on a sand volleyball, multiple sand volleyball league. So me and her get to play together. And we're like, it's awesome to play with my 16-year-old daughter. She sets me ass pike. It's fun. But what she won't do, she won't try out for her high school team.

Why? Because she doesn't want to be watched by others and fail in that way or not live up to her ex-based. So even though she's great at volleyball, she loves it, she's always played it as a kid, it's her insecurity that's stopping her from doing it because she doesn't want to do it in front of her high school friends, right? And so seeing my daughter kind of be boxed in by physical insecurities, you know,

and dealing with high school boys, which are just fucking trash bags when it comes to this shit. I've had, and I have an 18-year-old niece who went through the same thing. And so I've had like long, multiple, long conversations. helping them work through insecurities talking about it's not just girls you know young teenage boys if you're a if you're from fucking age 13 to 25 you're going to be wrestling with insecurity and you know maybe girls traditionally deal with it in one way and guys kind of repress it up in another and perform masculinity as a way of compensating but guarantee if you're dealing with

the late teens early 20s person they have insecurities they're dealing with and there's almost they'll never be vulnerable and open about that to most people um and so just like helping young women in my life navigate that from a male perspective has has been interesting and edifying and rewarding in many ways right as it as it does click but um yeah i've i've definitely what are you doing like how are you doing that like how do you as a as a father figure as a like a male role model how are you like trying to intervene in that stuff and like validate or like yeah how are you doing it i first and foremost i normalize and universalize it so i'm like What you're going through is not you personally have this feature that you don't like or something.

I say, this is what I had when I was a kid. This is my insecurity when I was your age. My wife will say, here's my insecurity when she was your age. These are very common things you have to wrestle with. And what you have to do is find, you know, deeper levels of acceptance. We talk about needing external validation verse just giving rise to your own uniqueness and being unapologetically and authentically you and letting people come to you if they like it or not, but not trying to, you know,

shift yourself to make other people happy. And just saying that this is a normal process, but it's hard. It's a constant fight because they are still worried about it, right? Like, my daughter has recently, like, started, like, kind of compulsively weighing herself. And we have conversations about, like, what is, what are you doing?

Like, what is the fear here, right? What are you worried about when you weigh yourself so much? You know, are there healthier ways to address this concern you have? that don't shift into this sort of compulsive behavior or this low sense of self-worth, it's not easy. And it's very particular, right? Because you have to deal with the particular insecurities of, you know, my niece or my daughter. And as my other kids grow up, certainly they're going to have it. So it's not easy. But so much of just like talking through it, expressing that this is incredibly normal and really highlighting this deeper sense of like self-acceptance. Like we're all insecure. We're

all like where nobody's perfect like what what standard are we even trying to live up to we're fucking monkeys that evolved and we look like this and it's like can you can you accept that can you love yourself for who you are and then accept that when you do that people will actually be attracted to you naturally because of the sort of baseline just acceptance and authenticity that comes with or the authenticity that comes with that acceptance um so again it's not easy and it is very specific to each person what they're going through but universal it as a human experience and showing you know giving them advice on how to if not overcome it because you're not nothing you're going to say to a 16 year old girl is going to magically make her be

totally happy with every part of you know or a 16 year old anybody but but working with them through that and not letting it be something that they feel like they have to deal with in the shadows of their own of their own self or that they're isolated from others or can't be honest about right not easy though i uh yeah i i i think that the the idea of of normalizing it, universalizing it, like, it does a lot to kind of, like, take the air out of that. I think that young people, when they're experiencing something like that or some intense feeling, often it's, there's, like, shame is a really powerful emotion for young people

because they, I don't know if it's something to do with, like, the straight up, like, brain chemistry of young, but, or just not having lived enough to understand that everybody's kind of going through various things as well. But there is this hyper or extreme like individualization of that stuff where you're like, I'm the only one who's like fucked up like this or I'm the only one feeling this way. And yeah, I think a parent coming in and just kind of like saying everybody feels this way. And it's completely okay. And your feelings are normal and valid.

And like I'm here to talk about them. I think it makes a lot of sense. Like I'll go a little crazy right now. I'll tell this wild story when I was a kid, like, I was maybe 11, and I was, I was physically developing faster than anybody else, like all my friends. Like, I hit puberty really early. And so I was, like, a sexual being, I mean, there's a lot of people who talk about, like, all humans, even from, as babies, have, like, there's, like, are sexual beings, whatever.

but like the post-pubescent sexuality was like kicking in hard and none of the girls at my school were in any way up to that level or whatever and so I had like kissed one of my dude friends and like whatever in this moment and I felt so much shame and guilt around this and I was like it was like this horrible secret and I was like oh my God I'm fucking I was like I'm gay I'm totally gay now like there's no going back like I'm I just must be gay or whatever but i don't think i'm gay like i feel like my fear i think was being a deviant like a fear of being a pervert or being deviant but also that i'm like i now have to be gay and i'm not gay and i remember like opening up to my dad about it late one night and just

being like dad like i kissed his friend and i like i don't you know whatever and he's like yeah that's like normal and you know it doesn't mean you're gay i don't think you're gay you know it's not a you are gay whatever but uh i don't think you're gay and um i was just like oh my fucking god like the relief of just feeling like you know he's like yeah the kids your age sometimes that shit happens you know like they experiment or whatever just it took so much weight off that like if i had to like hold that in and just keep that bottled up for years or if he was like dan that's weird as fuck dude like maybe you are gay or something i would have been like you know not in a good place um but yeah i think

applying that level of like making making your kids feel like they can talk to you about anything and that there's like a sanctity in that that like you're in their corner like again my parents would do a thing called the the cone of silence where I could tell them anything like that I did it was like illegal or whatever and and the idea was like it would never leave that space or whatever I could tell one parent and they would they would say they're not going to tell the other parent. I'm sure they did. But, you know, it was like this perceived feeling of security as a kid. And I think, yeah, that hearing you say that reminds me of that, like, Brad, of just, yeah, this idea of just normalizing it, you know, making them aware that this experience

is being had by their peers as well. That's, that's essential. And that's, that is what I have, you know, for any failures I might have as a parent. That's one thing that I've succeeded, not only with my kids, but with my nieces and nephews. You can talk to me. And that's, you can talk to me about anything there will never be judgment there will never be anger there will only be me having your back and trying to help you get through a problem and i've fostered that um with my all of the kids in my life from the moment we had any sort of relationship at all and uh it it pays dividends still like my niece will reach out to me before anybody else to talk about her issues you know my daughter can come to me about absolutely fucking anything my son any weird fear or thought that he has you know

he knows he can come to me and that there's not going to be judgment or condemnation. And I think that right there is so, so important and, like, is a foundation for this sort of relationship that will pay dividends going forward and create the foundation for positive relationships when your kids are adults because we forget, but most of our lives with our children will be as both of us being adults. And how your childhood relationship went really shapes the trajectory of how your adult relationship will be. Yeah, totally.

And JT, if you want to jump in on that stuff, I'm super interested in what, like, you think. But I'm also interested in how it's been going for you, having two kids now and, like, navigating, having two kids under five and the strain that that puts on you personally and on your relationship, on your ability to work. And, you know, how have you been dealing with that stuff? Yeah. the first question yeah you're right Evie's still a little young for that we're starting to get into the

the questions about everything phase and so I'm sure the question about death is coming soon she's like what would happen if I stood in front of that car I'm like oh no you'd get really hurt that would be there would be no more Evie so we're talking around it at the moment

but as for the two kids thing I'm not going to lie it's hard and we would have been more in your boat, Nick, we had a miscarriage. We tried before, and so the kids would have been closer in age, but I'm glad that the age gap is the way that it is, because Evie is more capable of entertaining herself to an extent. She's more understanding that we have limited time or less time for her, because we've got to deal with Thomas.

But it's exhausting. I mean, I remember with Evie, when we just had her, that was the tiredest I had ever been. And I think that's the story for a lot of parents, like just waking up every 15 minutes because the baby's crying and you have to rock them for an hour. And then they put them down. You're like, oh, thank goodness they're asleep. And then they wake up again. And you just got to do that for the, you know, whatever, first two months. and then you're not there yet, but you will be soon where your son is less,

you're suddenly like, oh, where'd the baby go? This is a toddler now. This is a kid. I can talk to this little person. They can understand some things. They, you know, they can fall over and not immediately break down in tears. They'll get back up and try it again. And that is such a breakthrough.

So just hold on until you get. there because when the second kid comes, that is the biggest challenge. And I've spoken to some people who had similar age gaps. It's like, yeah, two young kids, especially two under two, that's, that will put a strain on everything. Work, relationships. Like Kelsey and I are, we have a very strong relationship, complete trust, complete transparency. We have been, we just had our 10-year anniversary in September. So we waited to have kids until we'd been married eight years, I believe. So we had a really strong foundation.

And Evie was exhausting, but it wasn't a challenge. Like, there was no relationship strain there, really. We're like, yeah, we knew what we were getting into. We're tired. Give each other grace. And that was that. With Thomas, we have had some challenges. We're still communicating, like really,

will, but we both, you know, we can tell when the other is fried and we're like, okay, what am I doing wrong? That's setting you off now because we want to communicate about it, but, you know, there's something there. So that has led to some friction. And that's natural. And you just, like, the only, as unpleasant as it is, as bitter or resentful as you may feel, the only way through it that is healthy is to communicate about it.

It is to be open and say, hey, this is going to suck. we're probably both going to end up crying, but can we talk about this for 15 minutes? I know we just want to watch TV at the end of the day, but that has, that has to be the foundation in my experience. And now we're getting to the point where Tommy is out of the baby baby phase. He's now alert more.

He's awake more. He's realized he can cry whenever he wants to now. He was such a chill infant, such a chill baby. Like he cried way less than his sister. almost never up until like I don't know a month and a half he he didn't cry for more than five minutes at a time he barely cried for like three seconds when he was born but now of course he knows that he can cry to get the attention he can he will throw a fit if he's upset in his in his car seat or whatever so at the risk of rambling here like this this space that I'm in this shed um I built it or I had it built so that I had a place to escape where I could do work because like I work from home. I do YouTube and office space around here is way too expensive.

So we're like, I'm just going to build a shed and that'll pay for itself in two years. And we finally got to the point. Kelsey and I, after one of our big talks, are like, I need to be out of the house for like a chunk of time every day where I can work uninterrupted. And so we're doing this thing where it's like I try from like 10. to four I'm out here working and I can get my work done in that period and then as soon as before that when I'm in the house after that when I'm in the house I am 100% on for the kids and for Kelsey and that we because we struggled we're like we're both getting really irritated at

ourselves at each other and at the kids and I'm like this something needs to change I think it's that I'm stressed that I feel like I can't get my work done and that is seeping into our home life. Can I have a chunk of time? Can we try this like a like a quote unquote normal person job? And she's like, yeah, let's give it a shot. We gave it a shot. It's a miracle. Like it's it's it has worked so much better. I have the bandwidth for the kids. I have I am so much happier to see everybody when I get home from from from, you know, from my commute of 30 steps. But it's yeah, you got to like part of the reason I wanted to stay in the house and work from home, from home, from home, was that my dad wasn't around all that much, and I really wanted to be there as much as I possibly could, and I still

do. But I realized, like, if I'm shooting myself in the foot and making it so that I can't work, which is stressing me out, it's not pleasant for me to be around all that much. Like, for Kelsey, I'm stressing her out. So, you're going to try to do the best you can, and then if you're you will probably mess it up somehow. And then you just need to reassess. Like, nothing is permanent. And that is the thing that Kelsey and I have realized, like, we can make a change.

We don't have to do this thing like the way, exactly how we planned it. And it'll, for us at least, like that, that mindset shift has really helped. But yeah, I won't lie. It's going to be that the move from one kid to two kids is, is a monumental shift. dude i always say that i'm like if you have one kid and you you're going to have another kid

you think it's going to be twice as hard it's exponential four times as hard three kids 10 times as hard eight times you know um it is it is having multiple children in particular um you know i have a 10 year old and a three year old boys my my daughter was like a really easy kid and all this stuff but when i had um when we had our last boy we also had a miscarriage in between so my heart goes out to you i know how hard that is um so my my first son in our our second kid, we're going to be much closer in age, but it got spread out. He was seven when our new son was born. And so for me, over the last three years, it's still two small children.

And it's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. And not only will it be an incredible burden on your psychology and your finances and your relationship, it brings out parts of you that you didn't. You know, you think like you're like a calm, well-rounded person that's always kind of like, I'm level-headed about stuff. I don't get too worked up. Dude, have two small kids and you will be like melting down.

And it's kind of like it's a humbling experience. Like you're not as you're not the stoic you thought you were, dude. But it will do, it will shoot a bullet through a, through a weak relationship. There's two reactions here. Either it makes your bond stronger because you do have that sort of approach, radically open communication,

thinking about the other person, you know, being vulnerable and having tough. tough conversations and working things out or it will destroy you and and you know if that's just the fact and it's been it's been incredibly hard and it still is and one of the worst things about having multiple small children is that both of you in a partnership feel and it's true are on 24 seven and when you are just so overwhelmed you look at the other person and just it's unfair but you're like are they doing as much as like you know they should they should do this and then my

wife's feeling the exact same way towards me and I'm like I just came home from work you know I'm exhausted and she's like I've been working all fucking day too and like we're both right and like there is no days off and none of us get like hopefully like you know she'll get some time out of the house and when I see she's really struggling I'm like you know I got it go over to your sisters for a few hours or you know even go spend the night at your mom's house and just relax because it's fucking hard and now that I have this this job I get up at 5 a.m. and I go to work for you know eight hours a day she is with the kids my older son goes to school my younger son still doesn't um and that is harder than what i do i do like physical fucking labor and it's hard and challenging but i truly

think one of the hardest things to do is to be by yourself at home with multiple young children it is the most existentially psychologically psychologically emotionally challenging and draining experience that anybody can go through and of course in our society it's wholly uncompensated which you know adds insult to injury but but yeah all of that resonated with me uh so so much and yeah having multiple young children is is a is a real challenge so be prepared for that going in and humble yourself and let i mean having children multiple children is like it melts your ego because before you have children we you know you're about yourself and there's nothing wrong with that i think there's a time in all of our lives where we can be self-indulgent and egoic um but once kids

come along dude you are no longer in some real sense you are no longer living for yourself your first and main priority is taking care of your kids and that is a complete subordination of the self to another which is actually a good thing

for a character to go through but it's incredibly fucking challenging when you're going through it sick so I'm cooked basically yeah but I knew what I was getting into I mean honestly I had no idea what I was getting into with the first one, I was like, I was like, we'll figure it out, you know, not a big deal. And then it was like a big learning curve. Like, I was even in like the hospital, I was like, you know, what do you

think your reaction to the baby being boy is? And I'm like, I'll probably be like so stoic and just be like sick, nice. And then I just had like a full blown panic attack as soon as the baby came out. Like, like, it became like annoying. Like the doctors were like, are you okay? And I was like, I have to like leave. So yeah, it's something about it has, it just brings that shit that you don't even like expect or no is in you you know like yeah and you try to be like all cool and still like you know about shit and it's like no dude so i appreciate the the the preparation i'm like my we just bought this house i'm kind of like fucking get all this broken shit fixed and like all this stuff ready to go just assuming like as soon as this next baby drops it's like

you know all hands on deck situation so um yeah and and yeah it's it's yeah it's like the relationship stuff is really hard it's like uh we try to do the same thing in terms of communication and we also work together and my wife naomi works it means tv with me and so you know when we first started doing that that was a whole bunch of just like you know your co-workers and it's like oh your co-worker didn't do something that you needed them to do or but like how do you how do you have like that kind of work relationship and this relationship where your significant other you love them and like how do you navigate those and how do you how do you communicate frustration or disappointment in a work environment and have that not translate to some

like larger feeling or of that in your personal relationship and so yeah i uh i i you know i i'm i i imagine it's going to be really challenging and um i don't really know why i'm like driven to do it i don't know if you guys felt that too where it's like i'm like why am i doing this to myself but i do feel like i want to have kids i want to i want to try to have maybe even another kid after this like i i i want to do that i don't really know why and even when i think on it i don't really know why but i'm uh i you brought up uh brett the new job which congratulations i uh i heard you talking on the episode about all the shit that You had to jump through to land that.

And I hope it's going well. The experience that you talked about of trying to find a teaching job pissed me off from afar that it's that hard to, like, someone like you would be so incredible as a teacher or in that environment and that you couldn't find somebody to like take a chance on you is like insane, total bullshit, especially when you invested all that time and money and energy into the certifications. the schooling and all that shit uh yeah fuck that shit that's insane how how was how is how is the new job going and like how has like doing this job and like you're working the fucking trades you're a union man like how has that uh you're you know physically doing you're doing shit that's like very physically demanding like how has that changed how you show up as a man in your life or as dad like doing this traditionally masculine kind of job like have you noticed things shift within you have you noticed like a understanding or empathy for people in your life that you were like

why are they so like fucked up or shitty and you're like oh because their job was like really intense or yeah like how has that impacted you in that in many way yeah it's been it's been a huge shift you know i've worked all different types of jobs but a lot of my 20s and most of my 30s is doing this, going to school. I went to a PhD program for philosophy. I dropped out of that a long time ago. I was going through this master's program for many years. So my whole life, you know, I've been, I fish and I shoot guns and I camp and I do some of that stuff. But my jobs were very intellectual, heady, cerebral stuff. And they always have academics, sort of the world that I've been in. So this transition to like putting on a fucking hard hat

and carrying a lunch pail and going into a really, you know, know construction site you're working in the elements you're using your hands i'm not even like a really handy guy like you know like use this drill or stuff like that i've my parents weren't really my dad wasn't really like that um so i never really had that skill set and i always kind of wanted it right i kind of wanted to be able to like put up drywall or fix an electrical issue or something like that um so now i'm learning those skills and there's something edifying about that i feel like i am cultivating a new dimension to my being so you know there's very intellectual cerebral aspect in my being is like, you know, cultivated and I'll always cultivate that.

But I've never been this sort of thing. I've never, you know, so I see this as a fascinating challenge and a way to cultivate these new things. And it's, you know, you're building things with your hands. It's like a team sport, right? When I go in, I'm in a crew with like seven other dudes. And we have like a project we got to do. And that project could take a day. It could take weeks. It could take months. And a lot of it is like physically challenging stuff. And where everybody has to be in position and doing something at the same time, coordination. And so it's like it gives you that sense of kind of like being on a sports team where like you're doing a hard kind of shitty thing together.

But there's the camaraderie that is built when you have to do that. And, you know, just like talking shit to each other and just no HR department to be seen. Like the shit you say on the job side is like, if I said that at any of other jobs, you'd be fired immediately. And there's something fun about that. And obviously it's how dudes get them. through that shit is like fucking around like that and it's not only it's not only i think it's like 98% men but you know there are women in the trades as well and and god bless them and there's a through the union there's like respect like if you are actually a racist or actually a sexist

like that like people will not like you and will call you out even though the jokes and stuff can be very you know edgy at times and it's also this idea of doing socially necessary work like building infrastructure so on one hand that's been very edifying for me and and and maybe in some sense it has like filled out a sort of element of masculinity that is nice. You know, when I come home from work and I have a hard hat on and I'm sweaty and my boots are all full of mud and shit. You know, I do feel like maybe I'm, it's not the only thing that I'm role modeling to my sons, but it's one thing. Like it's hard work to provide for my family. And that's what it's about.

And if I didn't have kids, it was just me and my wife, I could have made the podcast media stuff work, you know? we were not living super comfortably, but we don't really need hardcore health insurance and you know, all these other things. But with kids, it's like, that's not enough. So I had to find a different path. And so it was either become a high school teacher or become a union tradesman and whatever offered me first I was going to take. And so I kind of, I did what I had to do. And then I let life unfold and take me where it was going to take me. And this is where it took me. But here's another aspect of it. I'm 36 years old and I'm a first year apprentice. Right. So there's this radical humbling experience in this world maybe left wing media organizing circles

i have a reputation i'm well respected you know people know who i am there's a certain amount of dignity that can come with that and now i'm right next to like a 19 20 year old dude with the you know earning apprentice wages being taught how to use a drill by a dude that's 10 years my junior and so that is actually like um kind of an interesting attack on my ego and my sense of masculinity as well. So it's kind of this catch-22. And so my approach to that is like just completely subordinate myself to that process

that I am learning a new skill set in this world. I am fucking new. Nobody gives a fuck about this other stuff that I do. You know, it's like they don't even care. Like, oh, you do a podcast. They don't even ask me what the podcast is name. Like, anyway, come over here and let's do this thing. And I, this, it's refreshing.

but um but there is it's that it's that sense of like i'm starting over in a way um and and here's one way that my ego manifested with this is uh when you when you start a trade you get apprentice wages and it's like you know 1995 an hour and uh whatever you know that's a wage and people make less than that and god bless them i have three kids though and so i'm sitting with 19 20 21 year old dudes with no families making that much money and there's a part of me that wants to tell them like I do this other stuff, you know, it's not just this. Like, I don't want to be like, like, my ego is like you're a 36 year old guy and they think that you're only making this much money with three kids and like, what have you done

with the previous 36 years of your life, right? This is my ego coming in. So it's simultaneously like an edification of my being and probably my masculinity, as well as a radical humbling of my ego and a sort of assault on the idea of, you know, that I have to kind of subordinate myself to, in many cases, like my foreman as young. than me my journeyman is younger than me and they're teaching me how to how to do basic shit so it's this fascinating this fascinating balance that is happening but again i'm subordinating myself to the process my life motto anything worth and this goes back to the kids think

anything worth having is fucking hard right the things that are easy sleeping until noon getting drunk going to the bars and having casual hookups those are easy there's a lot less friction and so sometimes people can just live their lives but where does it lead right building a relationship with another human being and dedicating it and not giving up on it and working through all the problems raising other human beings being totally stressed out having all the weight and all this responsibility on your shoulders it's fucking hard lots and lots and lots of friction but it creates a life of meaning of purpose and long term there's a lot of satisfaction and reward that you get out of taking that stuff on and your character is deepened and wizened and more

compassionate because of it. So I take it in that spirit. And so, you know, I'm very, very open to learning and I subordinate myself to the process. But yeah, it's been a trip. It's been a trip. I bet it has, dude. I mean, I had to leave Means TV for maybe a year or so before we had our son to, I worked as like a maintenance tech for like a like going in people. apartments and like fixing sinks and shit and yeah it was a humbling experience it was like uh yeah there was a lot attached to it it was like i'm doing what i need to do to provide for my family to you know make sure that this this project this business we're running is able to to continue operating you know like taking my wages off of the the books and everything and but uh yeah it was

and then you're also just like you're saying you're surrounded by like the most dude kind of dudes and like that is a departure from being in like a political environment or organizing environment and so it's it's always like like there's a lot it's fun like it's fun to be around those types of people and you hear some absolutely wild shit um but uh but yeah so i'm glad it's going good dude i uh i really hope it it continues to go well and and that you get get that pay bump yeah thank you well i know i know you guys are like this has been a long episode. I don't want to take up too much of your time. I got one more question for both of you if you have the time. Yeah, of course. So it's a two-parter. I'm curious with both, like, J.T.,

you spend so much of your time professionally, like breaking things down for people in your videos, like trying to convey this politics of empathy and caring for one another and like a anti-capitalist framework and things like that. And, A lot of that can be said for you as well, Brad, and your work. And I'm wondering how each of you approaches conveying and, like, trying to share your worldview and your politics with your kids in a way that doesn't feel like you're dictating that for them or you're saying, like, this is the way to think and whatever. Like, I think all of us as socialists, as communists, we feel, like, deeply that there's

nuance to things and that people are bringing their own experiences and we wouldn't want to impose our particular worldview and stuff on our kids. But I'm sure there's also this desire to give them that context because the world can be a very confusing. It is a very confusing. It can be as a very scary place generally, but having that viewpoint, like a Marxist analysis, applying historical materialism and dialectics and things. it helps to make sense of a very chaotic world and I'm wondering how each of you have approached like trying to share some of that with your kids and I'm also curious like when you've encountered people who are want to have kids but because of the political climate or straight up the climate

being fucked are saying like I don't I just don't think I want to bring kids into this or I don't want to have kids because the you know the climate change or whatever like how have you approach those people in your life and and how do you kind of interact with that point of you so um but j t i'm very curious what how you've approached this obviously your your daughter's very young and whatever but you know i'm i'm sure you've it's something you've thought about yeah to address the the question about for for other people um who are looking to who think they want have kids but are nervous about it the thing that always that's made the most sense to me it's like there has always been there have always been reasons throughout history not to have kids like

rewind to any period in history it's like oh yeah a lot keys but what fucking boobot makes plagues on any like you know so it's like yeah yeah so there's a plague so there's there's war so you know famine whatever um there's only ever been one reason to have kids and that is wanting kids and that i think is that's the question. The only question you need to answer for yourself is do you want to have kids? And if you do, you will find a way to make it work. Everything else, you know what? I would hate for anyone to arrive at the end of their life and think, man, I really regret not having children because I was scared of this thing that was happening back then, because there's always going to be something. But as far as teaching Evie and

And Thomas, he's pretty stupid at the moment, since he's only three months old, but Evie, she's a smart little girl. But, I mean, she's still only three. She just turned three. So we're very much in the kindness and empathy teaching phase right now. It's like you don't need to understand the base and superstructure just yet, but here's why you should be kind. Like, you know, that doesn't feel good when that kid in your class throw sand at you or bit your hand or whatever. So what would make you feel better if that kid did? And like, oh, you know, it would be fun to draw together.

That's great. So keep that in mind when you're interacting with other kids, right? You want to do the things that feel good when they happen to you, you know, that sort of thing. So I don't, I unfortunately don't have much to offer there besides, you know, start with the basics of empathy and kindness. How are you thinking you're going to approach that stuff, though? like yeah like what are um i'm sure you i'm sure you thought before you had kids you're like how do i not create like a pete bootig like marxist boomerang child who goes on to like be a black rock CEO or something yeah and i don't know like it's it's like brett was saying like the the seeds

the tree's going to grow how it's going to grow all you can do is do your best to kind of prune it as needed. But for me, I think the way my parents did it was pretty good. I never knew what their politics were and they never spoke unkindly about anyone in the house. And that was, I think, very helpful because it let me navigate what I thought of people and political ideas on my own. And it's risky to do it fully like that because, as I told you guys earlier, I started to slide down the wrong path and they did not correct me. They just let me end up where I ended up. And looking back now, it was probably because they're like, hell yeah, dude, he's becoming one of us. But thankfully, I was able to get out of that. But I think what I intend to do is like, I'm not

going to say you need to be this way, but I'm not going to hide what I think either. What I do, like, hey, yeah, I explain things from this perspective because this is what I believe. If you are ever interested, we've got some books on the bookshelf. That's a good one. to start with, you know, stuff like that. Because I've got, you know, dozens of books, and some of them are, you know, accessible to 15-year-olds, maybe a little younger. But I don't know. I'm, I don't know if I'm just naive or if I'm overly optimistic, but I think as long as you

model thoughtfulness to your kids and don't try to force anything down their throats, I think they will at least not resist that as much as they would if you did try to, you know, quote, unquote, indoctrinate them or whatever. I don't think they're going to resist as much if you're just like answering their questions when they have them. You know, an interesting thing I think about that is not true for us is that our kids are going to have all this work of ours if they ever are so inclined as adults to go through. They're like, well, if you want to know what your dad thought about shit, there's like, seven years of it right there. It was hot, too.

Look at him now. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, to answer in the order, J.T. I just want to echo J.T. sentiment. And I made this argument in full on an upstream podcast I recently did about parenting and some of this stuff. But if you don't want kids for any other reason, like if you have rational reasons, like I just, this is my life, totally fine. We're talking to the people who are saying, I'm on the fence. I do want a kid.

I do want children. and but the world is so fucked up and chaotic and I don't have any clue where my future is going to be and go and for those people in particular always go for it if you really want to go for it and exactly what JT said

think when in fucking human history has it been convenient to have children almost every single epoch in human history before now was worse than now at least we have modern medicine and fucking internal plumbing right at least we figured out you got to wash your hands before you deliver the baby

so it's like you're actually this is the best time in human history to have a kid all things considered and even you know i had a kid when i was 20 years old not planned it wasn't an accident but you know me and my my partner at the time we said we're going for it i was broke as shit dude i was working at a fucking gas station um you know i dropped out of my uh i dropped out of college and my partner at the time was a server and it's like yeah it was fucking hard and it sucked thank god for family and those things and you do have to think about it a lot little bit but you really can and will make it work my parents were broke as shit too they made it work all throughout human history every ancestor you've had has reproduced and they have been you know

think about that um that human will to create life in the depths of the worst conditions during the bubonic plague during the fucking ice age right humans always always through love have created life and it's a beautiful fucking thing and the right wing fetishizes it you know fucking Elon Musk is out here trying to have a hundred different fucking kids you got like evangelical Christians with like 20 fucking kids and it's like it's the left that's saying like we shouldn't have chill we shouldn't reproduce I mean if you want to do it celebrate life in the midst of the challenge life will never be easy the world will never be situated such that it's always stable with the perfect vision of how things are going to go that's a level of

control you will never fucking have so so yeah and I am actually anti anti-nautie natalism. Antinatalism is this belief that is like morally wrong to have children. And I think that is nihilism. I think that's a postmodern nihilistic strain of thought that is anti-human and anti-life to its core and should be outright rejected and confronted. We as communists have a vision that is celebratory of life, that is a vision for the continuation of the human species, which is why we oppose things like natalism, but also this trans, trans, humanist techno oligarchic fantasy world that we're going to somehow become more than human or transcend the human and look at the people leading that charge they're fucking reptiles you know like

fucking peter teal and elon musk are going to us into the next phase of humanity no thank you um so yeah that's that's my position and i've made that that clear but when it comes to children here's what i've always done with my kids and it's paid off enormously and with my nieces and nephews my niece is very politically conscious. She's always coming to me for questions. My daughter has always been very thoughtful and my son is very intellectual and cerebral. We often have these questions and these conversations. My son, 10 years old, has come into political consciousness largely through the Gaza situation because for the last two years, I've been engaging with it, right? We're driving a car. I'm listening some stuff about it. He's in the back seat, just absorbing it. He's seen me

break down and weep over it many times. And, you know, when you're a kid and you see your parent, much less your dad, like break down in tears over something that seems so not in the immediate moment, right, is like listening to the suffering of other people. He becomes curious, right? And so obviously you don't want to push too much on a little kid, but navigating that has been very interesting and seeing him make sense of the world. But what I always tell my kids is challenge me. Like, this is my belief, but if you think I'm wrong, tell me I'm wrong. And what I'll often do, and I did this a lot with my daughter, and now with my son is whatever position they're articulating, I will robustly defend the other position, just as a game. Just like,

okay, what about this? How would you respond to that? And I also try to give them other people's views, right? So, like, I know what the MAGA guy thinks. Let me see if I can articulate it in a way that doesn't dehumanize that position. Well, I understand that, you know, you've heard me say these things and you agree with me. But, you know, this person might say this about that issue. Like, well, how would you respond to that? And that really gets them thinking. So the goal is not to impose your beliefs on them. Certainly not to impose your beliefs because if you try to, if you take the authoritarian approach to child rearing, they will rebel against it. They, you know, and you will not have a good relationship with that kid because you're trying to force something

on to them. So it's all about cultivating a natural curiosity. teaching them how to think, not what to think. And when you have children, you realize that 99.999% of them have an inbuilt sense of justice, of basic fairness, of what's right and what's wrong. And so you don't need to teach them that from whole cloth or social beings. It's in our DNA to think in those terms. You just need to cultivate that sense of justice, right? And for the Palestine issue, I always tell my son, like, the people in Palestine are just like me and you.

Like, there's kids in Palestine that love their dad and mom just as much. as you love your dad and mom. There are dads that love their kid just as much as I love you. And it is absolutely unacceptable to hurt those people. And my son gets worked up. He sees it. He, you know, and now that's his politics. So he'll go to school and he'll talk to his friends about politics. He's like, I can't talk to my friends about politics. Dad. He's like, you know, they'll be like their dad, like watches Fox News and they'll be talking about, you know, Trump being the best president ever. And he's like, you know, I don't even get into it with him because I just can't even have a meaningful conversation with the and so then I'm like sometimes well you know

you know you know what son like I could be wrong about this stuff they their parents probably disagree with me and all this stuff like you know tell me if you think I'm wrong he's like no I understand I can disagree with you but you know you are right about these things so it's kind of a cute thing but the close relationship I think is most determinative like if you're imposing stuff on your kids you're alienating your kids if you're being open and vulnerable and letting them come to you about anything you're creating that bond that will be able to navigate these higher level issues right yeah i think that that's beautiful yeah posing it back to the to your kids and and like really letting like opening yourself up to be like you know this is what i think but you know i don't

know these aren't hard and fast you know these aren't like laws of the universe and shit like you know, I'm interested in what you think about this, and let's talk about it. I think that's a really wonderful way to, like, take them seriously on an intellectual level and give them that autonomy to, you know, articulate their own beliefs. And, yeah, I totally agree. I think kids and people and just have that innate sense of right and wrong and justice. So, yeah, I think that's beautiful. And, and JT, I think the, the,

stuff you were saying is very true as well and just like being kind of hands off like i can point you in this direction if you're interested in this like you know i had to wait to be 20 years old to encounter the communist manifesto or whatever and you know it would have been a little helpful to whatever but that was just my journey and you know if you want to try to understand some of those concepts now that's cool and um but yeah i i really appreciate you guys taking the time to do this and i know both of you are busy as fuck you have kids and work and shit and so yeah just just thanks for for making the time for this i know there's a lot of stuff like that we didn't get into that i think is all really interesting like how to talk

about death with your kids and um like how to help your kids navigate you know public school and and like the school system and shit like i think that's something i have a lot of hangups about is like how to help them through that very challenging period of like going through those systems and and also talking about like uh i think there's a lot more we could talk about in terms of feelings of inadequacy or not measuring up as a man you know whether it's your own expectations or expectations that are put upon you or how substance use or abuse you know factors into the the performance of being a man and And yeah, so anyway, I think there's a lot of stuff that, you know, like we could we could talk about it maybe in the future or something. And, but I, yeah, I really appreciate you guys taking the time. And I have a lot of respect for both of you. And I hope that if, you know, we were originally, Brett, you and I were just going to talk about this shit one on one. I was just like, you know, I think very highly of you. I'd love to talk about this stuff. And then I was talking with J.T about, you know, how's it going with?

the second kid and all this. And so that was kind of the impetus for like, maybe we just record this and just kind of be willing to, you know, be vulnerable and talk about this. And maybe somebody gets something out of it. And I hope that's the case. But, um, yeah, thanks both of you for taking the time. Yeah. And thank both, both of you. I admire both of what, you know, both of your work and what you do. And the one thing I say to, to, to new parents or parents that are having another child is like, if you're thinking about these issues, you're already a good parent. Like, you know, you're never going to be perfect a lot of these don't have answers you're in for a ride but if you're already sensitive enough to be worried about these things and anticipating them then that already

puts you in the echelon of a good engaged fucking parent and so i think you're you're going to do great and um yeah having a good heart and doing your best and trying to communicate with your partner is so important trying to try to make time for you and your partner is is increasingly important so thank you both for coming on and and talk having this conversation i hope it's helpful and useful to other people. But before I let both of you go, can you please let listeners know where they can find your wonderful work online? Sure. You can

find mine. YouTube.com slash, I don't know I don't think it's actually slash second thought. It's a bunch of letters and numbers, but you can search second thought. I'll come up. And we've got the podcast, the D-Program. You can find that wherever podcasts are hosted as well as a video version on

YouTube. Hell yeah. Nick. You can also find J.T. on Means TV. Dang it. you can find i don't i'm not on camera i'm uh i work in the background but uh i work in means tv it's a cooperatively run streaming service we have tons of amazing youtube creators from the left and like folks like j t and adi martin and just wonderful uh wonderful perspectives on means tv we also have a ton of documentary films and narrative films we produce original content we're

actually shooting later this month one of the the first original children shows that I'm really excited about. It's a puppet show. And so check us out. You know, there's no ads. And it's a project we're really proud of. And there's, you know, over 100 cooperative members now. And yeah. I really, really encourage. Thanks again, guys. Yeah, I really encourage listeners to support Means TV. Support this sort of media production. This is a crucial aspect of our vision and seeing it through. and building it, and then what JT does on the D program as well as on YouTube is really, really important stuff as well.

And I think you approach these subjects in such a way that is very accessible to people who might not already agree. And I think that's really a crucially important work. And it's very convincing and it's evidence-based and it's inspiring. So I really love what both of you are doing. I've been with Means TV. Since it launched, we've been back and forth and trying to make a collab happen. And we've done collabs on shows like this and stuff.

but I just always love watching Means TV continue to power on and I encourage people to check it out. So that will do it for today. Love and solidarity. You know, Thank you.