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

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Today is the third and final episode of our special 3-part series covering all things masculinity.  Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men and a non-resident senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, joins Scott to discuss the concept of relational masculinity, the decline of male connection, and the concentric circles of masculinity. They also get into the topics of parenting and the impact of porn on young men, specifically how it’s a place that young men retreat to. After our conversation with Richard, Scott answers some listener questions on conversational skills, college admissions, and mentoring.   Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Contact today. Ready, set, grow. Go to constantcontact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to constantcontact.ca for your free trial. Constantcontact.ca. Welcome back to the third and final episode of our special three-part series covering all things masculinity. As a reminder, in episode one, we spoke to Christine Emba about where masculinity stands today and how women can help define positive masculinity and answered your questions on topics including pornography and monogamy. And last week, we spoke to Dr. Robert Sapolsky about the common misconceptions surrounding testosterone and estrogen, specifically how these hormones relate to aggressive behavior. To round out this series, we knew we had to

speak to sort of our Yoda on the topic, Richard Reeves, as he's someone we consider to be really the kind of the, have done the seminal work, really has written the landmark book on this of boys and young men. Anyways, I just absolutely love how measured Richard is. I also think he's the right face for this conversation because he's just so obviously a thoughtful, kind of gentle person who clearly has a lot of empathy for the struggles that non-whites and women have faced. And I think that's key to be taken seriously here, so you don't come across as just like some manosphere guy who's angry and, you know, I don't know, like Andrew Tate working at a think tank. That doesn't work. It has to be somebody who clearly brings data, credibility, and a sense of empathy such that these ideas get traction.

We discussed with Richard the concept of relational masculinity, the decline of male connection, and the concentric circles of masculinity. That's something I'm thinking about as a construct for my book, and you'll hear more about that. I know you're very excited. We also get into the topics of parenting and the impact of porn on young men, specifically how it's become a place that young men retreat to. So with that, here's our conversation with Richard Reeves. Richard, where does this podcast find you? I am tucked away in the mountains of East Tennessee, which is where I try and get to when I'm not running around talking about men and boys and masculinity. Oh, that's right. And isn't one of your kids a volunteer?

Yeah. Yeah, my youngest is at the University of Tennessee. And so we occasionally get over there to watch the football, which I pretend to know what's happening. Real football. And how do you enjoy living in Tennessee, or do you? Well, when I'm here, so we've only been here a few years, we're in southern Appalachia. So for those, have you read Barbara Kingsolver's novel, Demon Copperhead yet? A new one. I have not. It's set here, essentially set in Southern Appalachia. And it is an area that's been ravaged in many ways by some of the stuff you talk about a lot that we've talked around around the what's the role of men, the opioid crisis. I live right in the top northeast corner. And I found some figures the other day. The male labor force participation in my zip code here in Tennessee is 45%. I mean, that's just a different world to the world that many people probably live in where it's just, and there's a lot of issues around drugs and so on, very high rates of poverty. And so this is

deep Appalachia and it's nice for me. I lived in Bethesda before. And so Bethesda, Maryland, for those who don't know it, it's one of those super zips, high education, high income, very, very progressive. And the place we live in when we're here is the other way around. It's on the other end of most spectrum. So it's fascinating for me to get to know some of the people around here. Well, as a means of bridging into a discussion around men and boys, I would imagine that a lot of the issues and the structural shifts in Appalachia specifically impact young men. Is it the decline in the manufacturing industrial base? Is it a lack

of meeting opportunities? What ails that zip code and how do you relate it to some of the challenges facing young men? Yeah, so it is the loss of some of those traditionally male jobs that you pointed to, but it also brings in lots of other themes too. Like this is an area hit hard by opioids and there's a big meth problem here too. So once you start to despair, you lose connection. That can make you very vulnerable to addiction. And of course, once you're in the trap of addiction, that makes it harder for you to hold down work. If you're not holding down work, it's harder to form a family. If you're not forming a family, the incentives to work and stay sober get less.

And interestingly, too, when you get into these really, really low income white areas of the US, huge differences in the educational gaps. It's not that the girls are doing as well as the girls in the rich areas, but the girls are doing much better than the boys. And interestingly, more likely to move away. So you know this idea that the men would be the ones who would have to go up and go somewhere else, maybe get a job. Oh, they stay on the farm. Yeah, now it's the other way around, actually. You see that. But I saw some data on East Germany recently showing that a lot more women had left East Germany to move to new opportunities in West

Germany. And so there are now towns in East Germany where there's like 75 women for every hundred men. And it predicts support for reactionary politics, you see higher crime rates, and something not as dramatic, but is happening in US rural areas where the girls are a bit more likely to do well at school and then maybe get some sort of professional qualification, but then they move to the city. And the guys stay behind, which is maybe a reversal of what you traditionally think. And so you get these areas where the sex ratio is tipping a little bit male. And that doesn't turn out to be good for anybody to have surplus men. You know, Joe Henrich writes those books about, you know, weird and stuff.

He talks about the math problem of surplus men. And this idea of surplus men, I think it underpins a lot of our shared interests around this, which is what do you do with guys who've become economically or culturally surplus to requirements in some ways? And that's been, historically, that's been very bad for societies to have too many men who don't have a clear role in society aren't needed in a very clear way and historically what we've done is sent them off to war or some other risky endeavor right what but that doesn't happen now yeah i thought of you of all of all places or all times my 13 year old and i bond over south park when mom and a 16 year old aren't in the house we sneak in and we went we've

been to watch south park and season episode 6, at exactly minute 20, because I clipped it for one of my presentations, this father is alone with his son for the weekend, and he decides to, you know, there's too many forces trying to starch out the masculinity of his boy, and so he gets strippers and starts partying and tries to get the boy to drink beer. And the boy just wants to play kind of Dungeons and Dragons. And the dad engages in all the

solicit activity. And by the end of the weekend, he's desperately calling his wife and saying, I'm a mess without you. You got to get home. And I thought of this notion of guardrails. You know, I think about two things, and you've taught me this. I often refer to you as my Yoda on the topic. One is the singular point of failure is when they lose a male role model. But the other thing I think about is just that young men, more than young women, are desperate for guardrails. Whether it's a good friend group, the prospect of a romantic relationship, parental or male involvement, a job, whatever it might be, that they literally come off the tracks without guardrails and that girls do a better job of creating their own guardrails. They're more attuned to society. They mature earlier. They're better at creating a

friend network that they can lean on for advice. How do we begin to move to solutions and construct more and more guardrails for young men. Well, first of all, I agree with you about the guardrail question. I sometimes say this, this might be the most socially conservative I ever sound. And I don't care if that's true, because I believe what I'm about to say is true, is that masculinity and the male role has always been and will likely always be more socially constructed, more guided, more created, more curated than the female role, because the female role and femininity will always have that more solid anchor in reproductive life and the obvious markers that that gives you

the obvious community that it brings you etc and so if it's true that masculinity is more socially constructed than femininity that means as you just said that those guardrail those guardrails are part of the construction those guardrails are part of like okay this is where you go the question then is how do you get it and this is where the vicious circle comes in, because as you just identified, like a male role model. And I've been talking a lot with Melissa Carney, who is a friend of mine, who has this book out on marriage. And I've also talked to a lot of educators, and I wrote for you this piece about the lack

of male teachers. So as fewer boys have had a good, strong male role model in the house or in the immediate family, also fewer of them have had one as a male role model in the house or in the immediate family also fewer of them have had one as a teacher or a coach and so rather than thinking about fatherlessness we should just think more broadly about manlessness and so i do believe that finding ways to connect boys to men and men to each other is hugely important right there's a reason why like the churches around live in east tennessee as we've discussed and so there's there's a reason why the churches around, I live in East Tennessee, as we've discussed, there's a Baptist church every mile, it feels like. It's extraordinary to me that the market sustains as many Baptist churches as it does. You walk into any one of those, there'll be a lot more women than men. And that's borne out by the statistics. Every single denomination in the church has more women than men. And even controlling for age, it's not just because women live longer controlling for age the guys are not in those churches so not in the churches they're not in some workplaces they're less likely to be in colleges and so the great irony here is that the

gender that most needs institutional support to figure out who to be i.e men and boys are the ones who are not in the institutions it's actually women who are in the institutions. So in that sense, the problem compounds on itself as we see the deinstitutionalization of male connection. Yeah, I was thinking about church when we were talking about it, and I was thinking all the sports teams. There's not only fewer after-school sports programs because of budget cuts, but a lot of boys now because of obesity aren't physically fit enough to engage in sports. I think about national service or compulsory service, you know, all these things that, you know, dual-parent households, whatever it might be, where boys get exposure to other boys or men. And I saw some stats, and I'm curious if you've seen this, that

Israel actually doesn't suffer from the same levels of teen depression as many other Western nations. And I wondered if it was because of compulsory national service or a sense of identity through national purpose. But what institutions do you think realistically we could fund that would move the needle here in America? One of the things that Bell Sawhill, a colleague of mine at Brookings and I have talked about is how about saying, look, you can go to college for free, but in exchange for doing national service. So a scholarships for service program. So you might say, look, let's make higher education a public good. But at the same time, you've got to give something to the public, right?

And so you do your service. And so it's not absolutely mandatory, but it would be in exchange and make that something that people do. The really interesting idea is, of course, Israel has national service for both, but the Scandinavians have national service for the men and that's much more common and i guess if you forced me to choose between no national service and national service for men i might be persuaded that it's probably more important to get men international service for the physical reasons you've talked about, but just because of these institutional reasons. And it also gives them a bit more time to mature, learn some discipline, all that stuff that just makes you sound like, you know, an old lieutenant colonel or whatever, but you're running the risk of saying that. Things like the Boy Scouts, the scouting movement has a long history of helping to institutionalize

male connection. We shouldn't be cavalier about the loss of them. And last but not least, the coaching gap in many of our schools. We need something like a Coach for America program where we help these middle schools that can't get a coach for their soccer team. And meanwhile, you have these men wondering what to do with themselves. So there's clearly something there. It's unconscionable that in low-income schools, they can't run after school clubs because they don't have anyone to coach them or mentor them. And then we have this vast army of men looking for purpose. So that's the sort of policy area we need to be looking hard at and pushing for. Any parent with boys, and I guess some girls, but it feels like more boys,

ultimately faces this discussion around drugs that address or purport to address ADHD. And I'm one of those people that initially was, no, we're over-medicated, and all they're trying to do is feminize our boys to such that they study to the test of academia, which is biased towards girls. But at the same time, I know a lot of success stories. I know a lot of people who said that their kid, bottom line, is just happier and doing better. What are your thoughts on what is a pretty substantial increase in the prescription of ADHD drugs for boys? It's so interesting you're asking about this when I am literally hours out of a conversation with one of my own kids about the, he's really, really struggling. And it's partly because he really doesn't want to take the medication, but he, but it works.

And no question that that's, you know, we're clear about the fact that in his case, it's appropriate. And as long as it's managed correctly, he does have quite significant ADHD and the meds help period right so the difficult question here and i don't have a good answer to this but it's reasonably clear to me that there is some over medication going on reasonably clear it's also reasonably clear to me that there was a lot of under diagnosis going on previously and there was under medication before i don't know what the middle ground here is i can't look at the rise in the medication and think that all of it is the result of appropriate, carefully thought through and

effective medication. And I have enough stories as well of inappropriate use of the medication to basically pacify. And that's the difficult one. And I just don't know how to think about that except case by case. I hear the success stories and what I what I realize is that the people who immediately assign it or Dismiss it is over medication. It's like you can almost tell okay. They don't have kids It's just I wish there was some sort of like a PSA test that you're above this level of PSA or cholesterol This is when we put you on drugs. And there's no kind of test for it. But so it's, I think it's something a lot of people are struggling with. So the last time we spoke, you said something that struck me.

And that is, you know, I've always thought that now we're talking about younger men or boys or older boys, that porn was the largest unsupervised experiment on young boys. And I haven't seen a ton or young men. I haven't seen a ton of research here. And you said that you weren't as worried about it as some people, that a disproportionate amount of it was consumed by, you know, it's kind of the 80-20 rule. Have you done any more research or encountered any more research

on the impact of porn on young men? I haven't. And I think that the problem is there isn't much good research and it's difficult to do good research because you don't have a control group because it's ubiquitous. I have had conversations with people like Christine Ember, who has done quite a bit of work on this more recently. She has a fab, a landmark essay in the post on, on, on boys and young men. And so young women, they're just reporting like from, you know, from the front lines of the dating world, if you like, the ways in which porn has changed men's views about sexual relations and and so i take that serious more seriously perhaps than i did when we we last spoke because i'm just so out of this right i just like i'm not entirely sure i just i'm just reading this this book by this um i said i've just been in scandinavia i got as a gift this book from this Norwegian. It's by a pretty famous Norwegian. I think his name's Per Peterson.

The book is called Men in My Situation. And it's a very sad book about a guy whose wife leaves him and his daughters don't want to see him and he's despairing. And there's this line in there he's trying to date. And the line is, he was caught in the twilight space of so many men caught between pornography on the one hand and bashfulness and so what he's saying is actually just his ability to have agency and confidence in an actual interaction was terrible and he has had porn to retreat to and so i guess i would revise my view to say look i want to hear more about what's happening in the dating market specifically. But I would also, I probably hardened my view since we last spoke about the fact that it's just this place to retreat to. You're exploring the notion or developing the

notion of relational masculinity. What do you mean by that? There's this lovely, lovely term in anthropology from Gilmore when he studied men across societies and across history. And he talks about this idea of a in the idea of relationships it's the opposite of what i call lone lone ranger masculinity is like i just stand on my own i build a cabin in the woods i just i i eat what i kill i don't need anybody you even see it online in this kind of men going their own way movement the mug towel movement like men who sort of boast about the fact that they just don't need anybody else and that no and that no one's going to rely on them or vice versa. And I think that's just completely wrong anthropologically. That's not how masculinity has been defined in human cultures and also very dangerous psychologically because isolation is so... You've had a lot of people on recently

talking about this. I think you had Senator Murphy on talking about that. You've had Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. And so this idea, like we know isolation is a killer, but relational masculinity, by contrast, is judged by how much you're providing for other people. And as soon as you say provider, the dangerous people think, oh, you're calling for men to just be the economic provider again. And sure, actually that is important, but there are so many other things that men can provide. Love, time, energy, strength, play, joy. You should be producing more of that. You should be providing for the community, for the family. And I actually wrote this article about it for Comment Magazine. And I started the piece with my father and I ended with my son. And I talked about how my own father who went to university very near where my parents live in

Cardiff in Wales. And my son told me, and he's really struggled through the education system. And he said that when he walks to his classes at university, he could look north and two miles to the north, there's a tower, an old Victorian hospital tower. And that hospital is right next to where my parents live. And he says, I look up there and I know that's where grandpa is. And I know that if I need him, he's there for me. And it helps me get through my day, just knowing that a couple of miles away, his grandfather's there.

So even now, my father to my son, to his grandson, is just providing security, joy, love, support, et cetera. And so this idea that masculinity is not defined in isolation from others but quite the opposite yeah i i first of all i always try to stop in every podcast and i see something that i think or hear something that i think is especially insightful or moving and you know when i was younger i wanted to be be wealthy, wealthy slash awesome. That was my goal. And then as I've gotten older, I thought my ultimate goal is to have a positive influence. And what you just described, I think is kind of really, if I, if there's anything I really want

over the course of the rest of my life, it feels quite frankly, a little bit elusive, I don't know if it's going to happen, is that I'm that grandfather you're talking about. Is that my sons, and if I'm fortunate enough to live long enough, my grandkids, think of me as someone as a source of comfort because they can come to me and they want to come to me for advice. I think that's, I mean, literally you just described what is my, you know, my end goal right now. I've been thinking a lot about masculinity, and I'm actually thinking about writing a book on it. And I'm curious, I want to bounce this construct off of you and have you respond to it, because you just sort of articulated it. And that is concentric circles, if you will, of masculinity. And at the very center is taking care of yourself and being self-sufficient.

You know, Rambo can go into the forest and kill things and make an arrow and bow an arrow out of sticks and survive and take care of himself. He's that strong, he's that resourceful. But at the end of the day, that's not, that's the first stage of masculinity, being able to take care of yourself, to fix your own oxygen mask. And then you go one circle out, take care of the people in your family, right? Be a good dad, be a good partner, provide for them. And then sort of the ultimate expression of masculinity is you get to the point where you can go so many circles out because you're so good at what you do, you're so thoughtful, you're so kind, you're so resourceful, that you can take care of people who are never even going to know your name. And that that's kind of the ultimate expression of masculinity. And then

even taking it one step further, I know a lot of people, and I think of it as like almost like hollow masculinity, that are very good at the outer ring. They give millions of dollars away, they're leaders in the community, but they lose sight of the inner circle. Their families are struggling. And they're so focused on the affirmation from that outer circle of masculinity, being a leader in the community, that their home, quite frankly, is a shit show. Anyways, what do you think of this idea of kind of concentric circles of masculinity i really like it uh just been sketching it out but i also think it's important that you start from the middle as you say i mean if we if you're basing it in this idea and i love what you shared about your own story if you move from this idea of like what

can i get to what can i give then it exposes the hollowness of that external because even if these guys are giving away all this money and apparently doing all this great stuff for the world if they're doing it because of what they get social affirmation oh you're so generous have a seat on there but that that it doesn't it doesn't fucking matter how much money they're giving away right it's just it is hot i love how much money they're giving away right it's just it is hot i love your description it's kind of hollow because it's still what they get rather than what they give but if you do start from the reason why you take care of yourself is not selfishness it's selflessness it's so that you can do the stuff in the next ring and the next ring

and the next ring and they all kind of flow and kind of blur into each other. And I certainly grew up in, I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where those lines were being blurred all the time. And people knew, people knew that our home was a place you could come. We had teachers coming to our house after traumatic events, kind of in tears, because they knew that our home and my mom and my dad would be a safe place to go. And then we were always forbidden from telling, breathing a word of it, which we never did. And so I grew up with the sense of like, my mom can't drive past someone in the pouring rain and not offer them a ride. She can't. And that can only happen if it's flowing out if it's this surplus and because compassion and love aren't finite the more you're generating it in the kind of furnace of the family

then the more there is to go like it just spills it goes and goes and you generate so much joy and play now i'm sounding sappy but but i i agree with it and the trouble is that a lot of the debate right now is between like if you think about some of these man fluences to use christine ember's term right there's sort of a combination of the first ring and the outer ring it's like yeah take care of yourself go to the gym kind of work it out and then provide you know have all this show that you're doing but actually it's really about the thick of everyday life to use a term from the philosopher jerry cohen it's like real justice and real joy are found in the thick of everyday life the other thing i've been thinking about and i want to get

your reaction to is that so a lot of times men from a media standpoint or an assessment, you know, all the stats, right? 92% family court kids being awarded to the father. You know, the stats go on and on that by virtue of being born a male, sometimes in certain instances or a lot of instances, you start from less than zero. for how powerful the household combination is of someone who is born as a man and someone who is born as a woman, or brings the attributes that are more common to those two groups. And that is having a household and an approach to the family and life and career that includes someone who is aggressive and more of a risk taker and more impulsive and someone who's more practical and more thoughtful. And usually those are values that are disproportionately assigned and reflected in people born as a specific gender. And that there is evidence showing that in terms of happiness,

economic productivity, raising healthy, prosperous children, that that combination of attributes, and I'm not saying those attributes can be reflected in two women raising kids or two men raising kids, but it's that combination of those types of attributes that typically are associated with one gender or another. But there is a chocolate and peanut butter here. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I'm actually encouraged by the way in which social science has really come to its senses around this issue of the distinct roles of mothers and fathers, distinct but overlapping. So there's no debate now really in sensible social science circles that dads matter and they matter in some ways that are different and complementary to moms,

right? 15 years ago, that wasn't the case. 15 years ago, there was still a discussion of it. And I will say that you still face it. I gave a talk at a pretty liberal college recently, and I did my spiel about why dads matter distinctly. And one of the first questions I got was why are you being so heteronormative? And what it said was, if stating the evidence that I find compelling that dads matter in ways that are complementary to, but also distinct from mothers, if that makes me heteronormative, fine, I'll pay that price. If that's the price I have to be accused of. The way I think about this is that the evidence is strong that there are, that moms and dads bring something, and men and women bring something different to the parenting enterprise and you've identified a

couple of them around risk taking learning etc and i've been hugely influenced by an anthropologist out of the uk anna machin who wrote a book called the life of dad and she talks about the ways in which where dads really come into their own is about calculated risk-taking. It's about helping you navigate the world, develop networks, et cetera. And so to sort of simplify it horribly, like moms are really good at looking after the kids in the nest and making the nest. And dads are really good at helping them get out of the nest. Now, a lot of the tasks that moms and dads perform are substitutable for the other, but

some of them around those things about taking some risks, getting out in the world, learning how to be in the world. Actually, dads seem to be better at that. Yeah, I say to my wife that generally speaking, her job is to make sure the kids don't get into too much trouble. And my job is to make sure that they find some. And she says, how come you get the fun job? And it's just, she's out of town.

We're both out of town a lot doing our, you know, we have different professional lives. Anyways, I have the boys for a week. And within about 24 hours, one has lost his binder. Within 72 hours, I noticed one hasn't showered in four days. I mean, everything just comes off the tracks logistically. We're having a great time and there's a lot of growth there. We're doing fun stuff together, but it's just funny how we, I can't help it. We do seem to digress to these traditional roles. So you did something pretty bold for someone. You're at the Brookings Institution. Is that the actual name? Yeah. I'm a non-resident there now, but yeah, I'm still affiliated. Yeah. So the Brookings Institution in DC, this is a pretty prestigious appointment, a great platform, regular salary, healthcare. And you decided to go start, basically do a startup, but it's called

the American Institute for Boys and Men. And you founded it this year to raise awareness of the problems of boys and men and advocate for effective solutions. Talk about this, your process of starting an enterprise, what has been rewarding, what has been more challenging than you thought? Well, first of all, thank you for mentioning it and and you're right it was a difficult i've been at brookings for 10 years and honestly what happened was that that i just i came to believe and you've been in this space for a long time scott and really helping create create the environment where i thought this was a good idea so i'm gonna blame you if it goes wrong um but it's but i really came to believe that the debate about kind of boys and men and what's happening to them just has an this is an institutional

problem back to institutions there's just no research-based organization it's just that if you have lots of institutions whose job it is to draw attention to the problems of one group and no institutions try to catch that the other so to a point, I had a long conversation with Ezra Klein for his podcast. And I came away from that thing. I basically just lamented the lack of institutions who were doing this work. And I came away from it, I was talking to my wife about it. I was like, you know what, we need a think tank for boys and men. I need to go find someone to run it. Two days later, I came back to her and she said, how's it going? Have you found anyone to run it?

I said, well, no, it needs to be someone with a research background who's known in the space, who's run think tanks. And she's like, yeah, do you know anyone like that? And so in the end, it was like one of those moments where I just felt like, look, if not me, then who? And so I decided to jump, raise some money, building up a staff, a small team, like half a dozen people probably at this rate. But I've been really pleased by the fact that by framing it in the

way that I think you and I both try to, which is it's not zero sum, we're massive supporters of women's rights, we just want to pay more attention to what's happening to boys and men, we want to get past this toxic debate about boys and men, and we want some research, we want some facts, we want some evidence, we want a basis on facts. It turns out that once you get past the crazy 2% on each end, on each fringe, everybody wants to talk about that. The appetite for this, because it's not like people can't see the boys and men in their lives struggling and suffering. And so once you get, if you frame it the right way, so look, we'll see. And you know, someone's, one of my friends said, well, you're out on this limb now. You might as well stay on it until they saw you off which is a dark way to put it but i i strongly

believe that sometimes you need institutions to do this work and so i've set out to build one it's not something i've done before uh so i am learning as i go um all kinds of stuff. In some ways, it's not really what I think I'm best at, but sometimes the right thing to do isn't the thing that you're best at. It's the thing that you're called to do at that particular moment in time, and you feel like you're uniquely positioned to do. And so I'm just hiring people who are much better at this stuff than I am. And let's see, in five years, I hope this will be a well-established, boring institution doing work that newspapers cover and that we talk about on podcasts like this. And it's not seen as a controversial or risky thing to do that we've normalized the

debate about boys and men. My goal is to normalize it, get it away from the culture war. Richard Reeves is the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, which he founded in 2023 to raise awareness of the problems of boys and men and advocate for effective solutions. He's also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where he previously directed the Future of the Middle Class Initiative and the Center on Children and Families. His 2022 book, Of and men, why the modern male is struggling, why it matters and what to do about it, was described as a landmark in the New York Times and named a book of the year by both The Economist and The New Yorker. He joins us

from Appalachia in Tennessee, which I just wouldn't have guessed. But Richard, like I said, you continue to be my Yoda around this stuff. And I hope that if people want to be supportive of your work, either downloading the research or supporting it financially, where once we go live very shortly, it'll be AIBM.org. And I'm on Twitter, LX, as I have to learn to say, at Richard V. Reeve. So you can find me in all those places. And let me thank you in return, Scott, for your time, but for your leadership on this space. This is, you know, it takes a village. Well, it's taking a village of men in different ways and with different roles to just raise

this issue up. And I know how much work you've done. Long before my book came out, you were talking about this and you were one of the reasons that I went down this path. So at the risk of praise inflation, I just want to really thank you. Thank you back for the huge work you've done and the leadership you've shown in this space. I appreciate that. It means a lot coming from you. Thanks, Richard. We'll be right back after this break to answer some listener questions on conversational skills, college admissions, and mentoring. Welcome back. Let's bust into some office hours questions. Question number one. an increasing number of clients in their 20s and 30s, men who are sponsored slash cajoled to come to me by their parents to help them get a job. But in addition to the career that they are missing, these men also need the motivation of a partnership when it comes to it. Many of them just don't have basic conversation skills, the art of curiosity and being unguarded and honest and the back and forth. And I'm wondering if you know of anything that can help young men particularly develop these conversation skills. So short of a $250 an hour coach,

do you know of any ways to really give the real life practice that some of these men need? I honestly think that sometimes it just comes down to these very practical questions of real life. Sophie from Arlington, thanks for the thoughtful question. I don't know. I don't have any research to point to here. And as usual, there's obviously people more qualified than me. I'll tell you what I'm doing with my boys. I think about this a lot.

And that is, if you think about masculinity as being a provider, I think that ideally you want to be a provider for yourself, first and foremost, be scrappy, take care of yourself so that you can then take care of your family, and then ideally take care of others. And ideally, at some point, take care of people who never even know your name or that you indirectly provided for them. There was this wonderful man, I think his name was Richard Feeney, who just passed away. He made $8 billion in duty-free shops and anyways, gave it all away and didn't want credit, did it anonymously. And I thought that is really kind of ground zero for what it means to be a citizen and a man. But anyways, also a protector, you know, firemen, cops, military, but also a procreator. And that is someone who pursues relationships. Most surveys show that women still want men to initiate romantic contact. Now, why do I think that is so important? And why do I think it's important for young men, especially boys, to get used to talking to not only other men, but the opposite sex? When my son went to boarding school, he wanted to go to a boarding school

that was two-thirds boys and one-third girls. And I said no and encouraged him. And he ultimately agreed to go to a boarding school that was half and half. I force my 13-year-old when we're out to occasionally talk to a stranger. He'll say, where's the tube stop? And I'm like, I don't know, but you need to ask somebody because I'm not going to ask. We're in a store where we were buying a Tottenham kit. Where is where can we find it, dad? I'm like, I don't know. Go up to this lady and ask her. And also, occasionally I invite people over and host an event or something social for my kids and task them.

And they're usually up to it to inviting a bunch of their classmates over and encourage them to socialize as much as possible. Because here's the bottom line. We've trained boys or we've trained society to think that young men who approach women in unsupervised situations without being in the lobby of MSNBC or having their lawyer present is somehow predatory. No, it's not. I'd like to see in high school a class taught on mating dynamics and as it relates to boys, how to approach a woman or maybe another man and express romantic interest while making that person feel safe. Because here's the bottom line. Those skills, the ability to endure rejection, the ability to establish a conversation, the ability to make conversation, the ability to try and make someone

laugh, the ability to look into their eyes, the ability to think, wow, they're more likely to engage in a conversation if I'm wearing a good-looking shirt and maybe I've showered and maybe I've taken the time to get to the gym every once in a while. Maybe I have something I can talk about that I'm affiliated with interesting organizations, or I have some interests, or who knows, maybe I can drop that I work at a good company because I am successful or I go to a good school, whatever it might be. How do you open? How do you open? Because here's the bottom line. Young men and boys who learn how to open, those same skills serve them well professionally the rest of their lives. So what do you do? What would I tell parents to do? Put your kids in as many unsupervised situations as possible with other kids. I mean, other than that, I don't have a lot of suggestions other than maybe you get them involved in communities and situations, whether it's sports leagues, Christ's even church, or religious institutions, or a community service. My kid's

mother takes them to do volunteer work, which I think is absolutely wonderful. And I remember my dad, I remember going to Myrtle Beach with my father, and I was maybe 15 or 16, and we were on the beach. I remember my dad like elbowing me because he saw another girl my age and he's like, go talk to her, go talk to her. I'm like, no, I don't want to talk to her. And he's like, just go talk to her. And then I wouldn't talk to her. So he went over and spoke to her and her parents and then waved at me and I almost melted. I was so embarrassed. But then I went over and talked to them and she was a nice girl. But that shit's important. So yeah, the means, the means, putting them in the context of strangers and encourage them or even sometimes what I do with my boys, force them to speak to

strangers. Thanks for the question, Sophie. Question number two. Hi, Professor Galloway. This is Davis from Johns Creek, Georgia. People in my neighborhood are now referring to UGA as Surf City, as there are at least two girls for every boy offered admission. My question is, do you believe the flagship state universities have an obligation to better balance male and female enrollment? Thank you, and I enjoy the show. Thank you, Davis from Johns Creek, Georgia. I did not know that. The University of Georgia, the Bulldogs, that sounds like it'd be an amazing place to go to school. I've always wanted to go to Athens because probably my two favorite bands, REM and the B-52s, both hail from Athens. So there must be something in the water there that creates

great alternative music. Anyways, yeah, in some, this is happening everywhere. Supposedly, there's some liberal arts colleges up in the Northeast that ended up like with three to one accidentally last fall because more women ended up enrolling. So just some stats. According to Brookings, boys not only start school less prepared than girls, but they're also less likely to graduate from high school and attend or graduate from college. So from day one, you would argue that either boys are less prepared or the education industrial complex is biased against them. Data from the U.S. Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics shows that in the fall of 2021, female students made up 58% of total undergraduate enrollment, translating to

9 million students, whereas male students made up 42%, or 6.5 million students. The education gap has been slowly widening for 40 years. Douglas Shapiro, the executive director of the Research Center at the National Student Clearinghouse, told the Wall Street Journal that two women will earn a college degree for every man if this trend continues. The drop in male enrollment has prompted many colleges to implement a form of affirmative action for men. Title IX, which guarantees equal educational opportunities for men and women, doesn't prohibit gender-based affirmative action admissions at all schools. In fact, in 1972, elite private universities secured an exemption from Title IX for their admissions policies, fearing that a rapid increase in female enrollment might affect fundraising and academic offerings tailored to men. This exemption remains in effect and allows private colleges and universities to give preferential treatment to male applicants.

According to the New York Times, some experts believe this advantage is equivalent to an extra hundred points on standardized tests, including the SAT. So in sum, in sum, we just have a lot more women than men going to and graduating from college. Now, why is this a bad thing? One, if you like to think that we want to was 60-40 male to female, which is what it was 40 years ago? And I would argue, you know what? Where were we? We were here. Specifically, we were here for you. There was gender-based affirmative action.

And we've had race-based affirmative action until just this last year. Actually, in 1997, California struck it down. But 51% of Harvard's freshman class is nonwhite. And by the way, I think that's a wonderful thing. Mission accomplished. Let's do away with it. I think it should be, affirmative action should be based on income as the gap, academic achievement gap between black and white used to be twice as large as between rich and poor 60 years ago. And now it's flipped and the academic achievement gap between poor and rich is twice as large as it is

between black and white. Now let's talk about that Harvard freshman class, 51% non-white. That's a victory. Yeah, it is. But 70% of those kids come from dual-parent households where their household income is greater than the U.S. national average. So all we've done is reshuffle the elites. Now it's about income and class versus race. So as it relates to your question, there are real knock-on effects, specifically women made socioeconomically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down. And when the pool of men who are seen as viable mates, right, is getting smaller and smaller and women are getting taller and taller economically,

there's just less mating and less household formation. And we can scream at instinct, but it doesn't have to listen. I think telling women that they should consider dating and mating with men less economically prosperous for them, yeah, good luck with that. And also, I don't think that women should be responsible for servicing men or you need to tell women to lower their standards. I don't think that's productive either. What do we need? We need to stop having this argument over who gets in, because the word isn't who, the word is more. Higher education is meant to be a public servant, not a fucking Birkenback. We're not here to try and figure out who are the elite at the age of 18. Nobody can predict greatness at the age of 18, said a 2.27 GPA from UCLA who got into Berkeley with a 2.27 GPA. So what do we need? More freshman

seats. And what's happening also across your question as it relates to male affirmative action, here's the bottom line. It's happening, but it's happening informally. I can tell you, I speak to a lot of admissions directors, and they are informally trying to create affirmative action for young men. They don't write it down, and it's not formal because they're worried about the political backlash. But the bottom line is, for the first time in a the reason is, there are some graduate schools at NYU where if we were totally admissions blind, they wouldn't 70% Asian female. The Asian American community has done such a fantastic job preparing its kids for the criteria or the attributes that universities look for that they disproportionately, massively outnumber every other cohort. So do we want to reduce the number of Asian American kids coming to our great institutions? No, we want to increase it. We want the numerators, the numerator to get much bigger. And yes, we do need some form of affirmative action,

but rather than engaging in a hostile political debate where we say, okay, a non-white kid doesn't get in or a woman doesn't get in so we can let in more boys or more white boys. Now, fuck that. Let's not go there. Let's find more reasons to get along and let's expand the size of the pool. Let's not try to figure out who the needle in the haystack is. Let's make the haystack just a shit ton bigger. Thanks for the question. Question number three. Hey, Scott. This is Eric from San Antonio, Texas, currently living in Germany. You often mention that the world seems to be not favoring the development of young men. I'm curious what you do to help young men develop and whether that's something that I can contribute to. Thank you.

Eric, that's a really nice and generous question. And I'm self-conscious about virtue signaling, but that's not going to stop me. So what do I do? And what can you do? First and foremost, alone, angry, addicted, incarcerated, suicidal. If you tried to reverse engineer those terrible things to one point where this young man came off the tracks, it's the following. It's the absence of a male role model. And my dad wasn't around when I was younger. I was raised by my mother who lived and died a secretary. So I was literally alone a lot. And here's the thing. I still had wonderful men in my life. I had a stockbroker who took an interest in my life. My mom's boyfriends, even after they

broke up, stayed interested in me. I had a camp counselor who taught me how to program. I had these nice men in my life that tried to stay involved. My Uncle Bernard tried to, when he was in town from London, kind of spend time with me. There is so much paternal and fraternal love out there. And the fact that you're asking that question means that you have it. So what can you do? You can get involved in a young man's life or young men's lives. Can you coach? Can you lead a Boy Scout group? When you find neighbors who have sons, especially sons to single mothers, are you in a position to kind of get involved in that kid's lives and even approach the single mom and say, I'd like to spend some time with your son. Because that's the key, is just getting involved in their lives. And you don't have to be some icon. You just have to be a dignified person that's living a virtuous life that kind of listens and convinces that young man that he matters, that he has meaning. I'm specifically getting more involved in

vocational programming. I'm funding getting more involved in vocational programming. I'm funding a program, a joint program between UCLA and Berkeley for vocational programming, which will be open to both young men and young women, but I think it'll appeal mostly to young men. I want to create more on-ramps into the middle class for young men who aren't cut out for college, can't afford it, aren't capable of it, don't have the skills or the desire to go. But what can we do as men? Simple. We need to be better men. We need to get involved in the lives of young men. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice

recording to officehours at propertymedia.com. Again, that's officehours at propertymedia.com. This episode was produced by Caroline Chagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropGPod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly market show.