Why We Ignore Young Men’s Struggles (A Lost Boys Special)

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Speaker 2 Hey everyone, Scott Galloway here at Scott Free August, which means we're continuing the Lost Boy series, a set of conversations we hosted with Anthony Scaramucci, The Mooch.

Speaker 2 a surprisingly well-read and insightful and thoughtful. I really have enjoyed developing a friendship with Anthony.
Anyways, Anthony and I discuss the struggles facing young men today.

Speaker 2 In this second episode, we're back with Richard Reeves to ask: why isn't anyone talking about this?

Speaker 2 We dig into the silence, the concerns many mothers are quietly raising, and why we need a positive path forward. Let's bust right into it.

Speaker 3 Welcome to Lost Boys, a podcast dedicated to shining a light on the unique challenges young men face today and an exploration about what we can do about it.

Speaker 3 In our last episode, Scott Galloway and I spoke with author and researcher Richard Reeves. He wrote the seminal book about the challenges young men face today called of Boys and Men.

Speaker 3 Last time we talked about how, by nearly every measure, young men are failing to thrive. They're doing worse in school.
They're doing worse in relationships.

Speaker 3 They're doing worse in the workplace than ever before. Today, we're going to talk about why the challenges young men face is an issue that's been ignored.

Speaker 3 And we'll ask the question: for men to do better, doesn't that mean women will have to do worse? The answer, of course, is no.

Speaker 3 Here's part two of my conversation with Scott Galloway and Richard Reeves.

Speaker 3 So, I'm going to play the

Speaker 3 progressive here. I'm going to say, guys, I hear you, but there was five, six, seven, hundred years of white male privilege throughout European society, eventually spilled over into American society.

Speaker 3 And frankly, the women were not even allowed to vote 125 years ago. They got the vote 105 or so years ago.

Speaker 3 And a result of which everything that's going on today is a counterbalance to what's happened over hundreds and hundreds of years. Again, I don't believe all that.

Speaker 3 I'm playing the devil's advocate because I want you to respond to it because that's some of the policy pushback.

Speaker 2 Well, it's some of the resistance that you get to the conversation, which, you know, until you have the conversation and get the data, you can't even have the conversation.

Speaker 2 You can't have a conversation about solutions to problems that people aren't agreed are problems. Right.

Speaker 2 And of course, it's uncomfortable to start talking about boys and men when we still know that there are so many things still to do for women and girls and because of that history.

Speaker 2 But just because it's uncomfortable shouldn't mean we don't do it. The failure to have the conversation has been a huge problem.
And actually,

Speaker 2 look, let's put it very bluntly. Yes, it's true that we've had a society where most of the inequalities went the other way.
Do we now want a society where we don't care if we just reverse all of that?

Speaker 2 Like either we care about gender equality or we don't. And right now, there's a bigger gender gap in US colleges than there was in the 1970s.
It's just the other way around.

Speaker 2 So women are further ahead of men now in college than the other way around.

Speaker 2 So we cared about it then

Speaker 2 when it was women who were behind. The question is, why would we not care about it now when it's men who are behind?

Speaker 2 And if the answer is, well, because they've had their turn, it's our turn now, that's a horrific way to think about communities. It's zero-sum.
It's pessimistic.

Speaker 2 And by the way, it won't pass muster with mums. If you say to my my wife, you've got three sons, but you know,

Speaker 2 we've had 10,000 years of patriarchy, so we don't really care about them and we don't care about their mental health and their education, then get ready for a berating.

Speaker 2 Because the idea that two wrongs make a right is actually offensive.

Speaker 2 But it does get in the way of this problem. But once you acknowledge that there's discomfort and you acknowledge the history, then I find that most people want to have a good faith conversation.

Speaker 2 So you played the part very well, Anthony, but there's almost nobody who actually thinks like that.

Speaker 2 Thank God. Yeah, I call it the Red Army effect.
When the Russians liberated Berlin or it came in, they were pissed off.

Speaker 2 And there was a lot of unfair and unnecessary violence and just brutalization and criminal acts. And I was on MSNBC and I was talking about: you know,

Speaker 2 are we going to hold a 19-year-old kid from Appalachia responsible for the advantage I received?

Speaker 2 Is it their fault that I was sort of born on third base because I was white, had outdoor plumbing, and was born in 1964? Should he pay the price for that?

Speaker 2 And the host said, well, of course there's going to be an overreaction and we should expect that. I'm like,

Speaker 2 you're justifying injustice.

Speaker 2 The flip side of that is that I think the people on this podcast, having recognized the advantage we did, the unfair advantage we had, I didn't even, it's so weird.

Speaker 2 You didn't even, I don't know about you guys, at the time, I didn't even realize it was an advantage.

Speaker 2 I was raising tens of millions of dollars in my late 20s and early 30s in San Francisco in the internet generation. And I didn't stop to think: why are no women or black people raising money?

Speaker 2 Is it because they don't want to be entrepreneurs? It just never dawned on me. I didn't think I had an advantage.
And then, as I've gotten older, I recognized I had an enormous advantage.

Speaker 2 So I feel as if we we do have a debt and we have to try and make sure that people

Speaker 2 of all genders, races, have the same types of opportunities we did.

Speaker 2 But also at the same time, I think we have a debt to say, okay, if a young man doesn't have a fraction, if it's gone from advantage to disadvantage, we also have a debt.

Speaker 2 to those young men and young people. But I have been shocked at people's willingness to accept, well, your dad and your granddad had big advantage, so we're going to penalize you.

Speaker 2 I mean, that just makes no sense. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 We don't need to throw anybody under the bus, do we? That's the problem, is that the direction of the-

Speaker 2 Absolutely not. Who are we going to throw under the bus?

Speaker 3 That's the pushback, and I think you've done a good job of rebutting the pushback.

Speaker 2 But let's talk about the moms.

Speaker 3 Moms are very concerned. I'm not trying to inject politics into this thing, but

Speaker 3 people thought that Vice President Harris was going to do better better with women. It turned out that 54% of the white women voted for Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 And when they did the exit polling, 47% of all women voted for Donald Trump. 54% of the white women, they did the exit polling.
They said, well, we voted for our sons.

Speaker 3 We sort of feel like the playing field has gotten unbalanced. The rhetoric in the community, the

Speaker 3 language usage, the threat to white men, we voted for them. So let's talk to the moms for a second.
So Richard, what would your message be to a concerned mom?

Speaker 3 Let's use the three children. She had three sons, ages 10 to 14.
She sees the anxiety in them. She sees this cultural shift.
What do you say to her? And how do you get her to feel better?

Speaker 3 And how do you get her to do actionable things that help them?

Speaker 2 If you're worried about your sons, you're not alone. You should be worried about your sons and you should be worried that the education system and broader culture is not serving your sons very well.

Speaker 2 And so you should should absolutely acknowledge that that is a real concern and that we're not going to get anywhere by pathologizing her boys and saying there's something wrong with them.

Speaker 2 There's a slight problem in schools in particular where boys are treated like malfunctioning girls. It's like, why won't they sit still? Why aren't they more like their sister?

Speaker 2 Why aren't they more like their female classmates?

Speaker 2 And so if you feel like the education system is not quite working or society is not quite, you're right. And then I would say, so are you advocating for more male teachers?

Speaker 2 Are you advocating for more technical work at school?

Speaker 2 Are you doing the change? Great. I hope so.
And then I would say, but by the way, that's not because women are doing better.

Speaker 2 It's not because the woke feminists left have taken over the world and have a conspiracy against men. This is largely the unintended consequences of some policies that we have to address.

Speaker 2 And so what's happened is that the more reactionary message is boys are struggling. We're not paying enough attention to their concerns.
That's because the woke feminists have taken over.

Speaker 2 And the problem with the argument is it's only the third that's wrong. The first two are absolutely right.

Speaker 2 And so I see this as partly a reaction on the part of many parents to a sense that the political establishment, especially on the left, has been woefully neglecting the real problems of boys and men and at worst has been pathologizing them and blaming them for their own problems.

Speaker 2 And there is enough truth to that to make a very strong political argument. Scott and I were among the people banging our head against the brick wall to say, for the love of God,

Speaker 2 talk more about what's happening to boys and men. Talk more about what's happening to boys and men, particularly to those on the left.

Speaker 2 And on the right, we would say, have some positive solutions for boys and men.

Speaker 2 And so I'd say to that mum, you're right to be worried, but don't fall into the trap of somehow blaming women for the problems of your boys, which, by the way, most people do not. They don't.

Speaker 2 We'll be right back after a a quick break.

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Speaker 2 But Anthony, and you'll have a a view here.

Speaker 2 I think that Donald Trump was re-elected because of this issue.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 if you look at the three groups that pivoted hardest from blue to red, who switched, it was first and foremost Latinos.

Speaker 2 The second group was people under the age of 30, who for the first time aren't doing as well as his or her parents were at the age of 30. That's never happened before.

Speaker 2 So they're like, okay, I feel rage and shame in my household because I can't move out. I don't want the incumbent.
I don't care who the incumbent is.

Speaker 2 I just don't want at you lost me at incumbent or the establishment in Trump painted, Trump painted Harris and Biden as the incumbents pretty easily.

Speaker 2 And then the third group that swung hardest from blue to red with respect to 2020 versus 2024 was women aged 45 to 64. And my thesis is that that's their mothers.

Speaker 2 So when your son isn't doing well, you don't give a flying fuck about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine. You don't care about transgender rights.
You just want change.

Speaker 2 And let's be honest, he represented change and he flew into the manosphere. He wasn't apologizing for men.
He wasn't pathologizing them. He was crypto, Rockets, Joe Rogan.

Speaker 2 I mean, he flew, he said, I am where,

Speaker 2 I call him President T. This was supposed to be an election, or the election was supposed to be a referendum on women's rights.
I thought it was going to be, guess what? Women's rights didn't show up.

Speaker 2 It just didn't show up. What showed up was people, mothers and young people saying, the kids are not all right.
So I don't care. I just want change, even if it means,

Speaker 2 even if it means chaos.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 what I, you know,

Speaker 2 the example, I went to the Democratic National Convention. It was a parade of special interest groups.
Make sure we have a disabled veteran up there.

Speaker 2 Make sure we have Asian Pacific Islanders up there. Make sure the gay community gets a might.

Speaker 2 Everyone,

Speaker 2 every topic, you know, well, maybe someone needs to tell the president that this may be one of those black jobs, you know, just all these righteous, and I'm inspired by that stuff, and I can see why it gets us excited and ginned up.

Speaker 2 No one got up there and talked about the struggles of young men. And if you go to the DNC.org site, the Democratic National Committee's website, there's a page that says who we serve.

Speaker 2 And it lists 16 demographic groups from Asian Pacific Islanders to veterans to disabled immigrants. I counted it up.
I think it adds up to about 74% of the population.

Speaker 2 So when a party says we're purposely and explicitly advocating for 74% of the population, you're not advocating for 74% of the population. You're discriminating against 26%.

Speaker 2 And guess who that 26% are? Young men. So So the Democratic Party basically instituted into its policies a bias against a group that, quite frankly,

Speaker 2 is arguably struggling the most.

Speaker 2 And what do you know, young people, including young women who want more viable young men and their mothers who had traditionally been Democratic voters, swung towards change and chaos.

Speaker 3 I don't know what you think, Richard, but I completely agree with every word of that. And by the way,

Speaker 3 like or dislike Donald Trump, he's got good political instincts. He's still hammering that.
We've had a plane crash and he's talking about DEI policies facilitating it.

Speaker 3 Whether that is true or not, it hammers the bludgeoning, if you will, of the issue.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's consistent, I guess, consistency on that. But yeah, I shared Scott's frustration.

Speaker 2 And in fact, somebody told me when the Democrats put out their economic opportunity agenda, somebody said to me, look at the photographs of Harris and Waltz meeting voters and see which demographic you think is missing.

Speaker 2 And I couldn't quite believe it. But of the, every single photograph features female voters.
There isn't a single man.

Speaker 3 It's like... I got myself in trouble because I said about the Democratic Convention to one of the senior leaders, as I watched it on TV.

Speaker 3 If I was an alien coming in from Mars, I would have thought that the only people on planet Earth were blacks and women. Those are the only people they were showing on the television.

Speaker 3 And they got really mad at me for saying that. know.

Speaker 2 You know, and what's what's so infuriating about this is that I think too many people felt that in order to be credible with women, they had to not ignore these issues.

Speaker 2 And I got to tell you, like, I talked to some super progressive young women, and I said, as long as they continue to talk about the issues you care about, reproductive rights, whatever, would it upset you if they also launched a campaign on mental health of young men, a campaign for male teachers, a campaign, a Coach for America program to connect young men to underserved communities.

Speaker 2 If Tim Walsh stood up and gave a speech saying, we have a plan for our young men, would that upset you?

Speaker 2 And not a single one of them said yes, because they're worried about their brothers and their boyfriends and their dads. So it's back to this point about Scott's point about not zero sum.

Speaker 2 It was actually, I'll go a step further, it was insulting to women to think. that they couldn't advocate for men without those women thinking that somehow they weren't going to care about them.

Speaker 3 Let me key off of the coach for America, and I agree with what you've just said, because that's where I think we need to go.

Speaker 3 I think that there needs to be a system, you know, and I've said to Scott, I call it belay.

Speaker 3 That's the term when you're rock climbing and you're trying to help somebody up the up the rock mountain, you're belaying with each other.

Speaker 3 The system of coaching. What would the components be, Richard, if you were going to devise a system of coaching?

Speaker 2 I love that belay idea, by the way, because it speaks to this idea of helping each other up and actually of older men and older boys helping and mentoring kind of younger ones.

Speaker 2 So it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful image.

Speaker 2 Well, I just want to start with some facts, which is that one of the reasons I care about male teachers is because between 30 and 40% of male teachers are also coaches.

Speaker 2 And so if you want more, and there are lots of schools now where there just aren't enough coaches and the share of boys doing sport is going down.

Speaker 2 That's what the Aspen Institute Project Playwork shows is that we're seeing fewer boys doing it. So what would it it look like? First of all, more in schools.

Speaker 2 I think we should pay teachers a lot more, period, but we should definitely pay them more for doing extracurricular.

Speaker 2 I think we need to find ways to encourage volunteering through things like Big Brothers, Big Sisters, etc., so that underserved communities can connect to young men who are looking for a coaching opportunity, get past some of the suspicion that we've had around all of that.

Speaker 2 And there are organizations doing this, to be clear, but I think that the underlying message has to be to young men: we need you,

Speaker 2 The tribe needs you. I've come to believe that there is always a contest for the allegiance of young men.

Speaker 2 The question is who wins it. And I think young men always need a bit more structure, a bit more script.

Speaker 2 They need a cause, an institution, a tribe, a community, a nation to become part of and we have we are failing to say to young men I just addressed a group of young men. And some of them said,

Speaker 2 Who should be the role model of the kind of kids who don't have fathers and who are struggling? And I said, Well, how about you?

Speaker 2 How about you all go out of here and volunteer for Big Brothers, Big Sisters, find your local scout group, find your local school that will be desperate for an assistant coach for their soccer team, and then find ways to have dollars, federal and state dollars, flow to support that?

Speaker 2 Because the share of men volunteering and coaching and mentoring is collapsing.

Speaker 2 And that is a disaster, not just for the men who end up lacking kind of purpose, but for the boys they would otherwise be serving.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and that goes to a call out. It's,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 this is virtue signaling, but I have found it so remarkably easy to positively impact a boy's life.

Speaker 2 And that is, you don't have to be a baller. You don't have to have training in it.

Speaker 2 You know, I have boys. I now, as a practice, say, I want you to bring one of your friends.

Speaker 2 Because what's strange is, or what's interesting, even if it's not the son of a single mother, which I think corporations have a role here to figure out mentor programs for young men who have paternal and fraternal concern and love to give.

Speaker 2 They just don't know where to put it. Maybe they don't have their own families yet.

Speaker 2 Identify women in the organization who maybe have single mothers who have boys who could use a little bit of guidance or just male companionship. These boys are everywhere.

Speaker 2 And you literally like invite them over to help you wash your car.

Speaker 2 They just start asking questions and then they get comfortable with you. And then they see that you find value in them, that you think they have worth.

Speaker 2 They start asking you questions, and you can tell them very basic, no, your mom's not your enemy. Stop it.
Like, how often are you getting high?

Speaker 2 Well, no, no, no, I'm getting high three, four times a week. Okay.
Is that a good idea? I mean, it's just not hard.

Speaker 2 The bar, it's not hard to add a lot of value. And, you know, and there's a very unfortunate dynamic.
I experienced this when I was on Bill Maher.

Speaker 2 I said, if we want to be, if we want more, you know, if we want better men, we have to be better men. We have to get involved in a boy's life.
And I'm like, they're everywhere.

Speaker 2 And Bill Maher said, whoa, I get involved in a 15-year-old boy's life and people are going to suspect me.

Speaker 2 We have to stop that. We have, I've said Michael Jackson and the Catholic Church fucked it up for all of us.
There are a ton of good men out there, not heterosexual and gay men.

Speaker 2 When I was applying to be a big big brother in L.A., basically the entire due diligence process was trying to figure out in as polite a way possible, are you gay?

Speaker 2 And the reality is there's no more greater

Speaker 2 incidence of pedophilia among gay men than straight men. So you want to check for evidence of pedophilia, but it doesn't matter what their sexual orientation is.

Speaker 2 And I think there's a lot of men out there who there's a great, I think it's a, it's a Western Paul Thomas Anderson film called Magnolia.

Speaker 2 And this bartender says, I have love to give, I just don't know where to give it.

Speaker 2 I think there's a ton of really good men in their 20s and 30s and 40s who wouldn't mind hanging out with a young man or a teenager or a boy every once in a while or including him in their family activities.

Speaker 2 But they feel like they're going to be suspected of something.

Speaker 2 And then just going very meta, and I'd love to get Richard's reaction because this is one of the few topics we haven't talked about. When I think about, I worry that we're falling into the same

Speaker 2 trap we fall into with the middle class.

Speaker 2 I feel like sometimes the right believes that the middle class is a naturally occurring organism and it'll just heal on its own if you let the market take, do its own thing.

Speaker 2 The middle class is an accident. You know, we had 7 million men return from World War II.
They had proven heroism. They looked good.
They were in shape. They were in uniform.

Speaker 2 And we gave them a shit ton of money and formed the National Highway Transportation Act, the GI Bill. In sum, we made them very attractive to women.
And then that set off the baby boom.

Speaker 2 And we had this incredible rush of prosperity where people had generous-loving households and said, let's bring women into this prosperity. Let's bring non-whites into this prosperity.

Speaker 2 And it kicked off this wonderful liberal society. But it took massive investment.
And now there's this notion that the middle class will survive on its own. And it doesn't.
I worry that the same

Speaker 2 The same notion that men will figure it out on their own, because if you look throughout history, what generally is the norm is a small number of men get all of the economic and all of the mating opportunities.

Speaker 2 80% of women have reproduced, only 40% of men. So if we don't actively move in, and the reality is if you have a tribe of 50 men and 50 women and 30 of the men die, the tribe survives.

Speaker 2 If 30 of the women die, the tribe goes out of business. So men have always been a little bit disposable.

Speaker 2 But if you don't weigh in and figure out a way to lift up young people through investment, we're going to go back to where we've been through most of our history.

Speaker 2 And that is life is awesome for a small number of men, and it is really difficult and awful for the majority and a violent place for the majority of them.

Speaker 2 I love this thought, Scott. It's

Speaker 2 the idea is that mature masculinity is not a naturally occurring phenomenon.

Speaker 2 And I strongly agree with that. In practice, in every known human society,

Speaker 2 we have to make men. Boys don't become men just with the passage of time.
You need rites of passage. You need institutions.
You need a call. There has to be a call.
There has to be a role.

Speaker 2 And that will change in different societies at different times, but we have to make our men. And I agree that there's a real naivety about the idea that we just don't need to do that anymore, right?

Speaker 2 They'll figure it out.

Speaker 2 It'll be on the internet. It will be somewhere, right?

Speaker 2 We don't need to curate or form our men anymore, but we do. We've always needed to form our men and we need to continue to do that.
The question is just how?

Speaker 2 And I was thinking a bit when you were talking, Scott, about the institutions that used to do that.

Speaker 2 I think to some extent, you do, you need institutions that help that formation of boycott, whether that's schools, churches, clubs boy scouts camps i don't you know whatever it what

Speaker 2 wilderness rides i don't care like every society will do it differently but but you do need to do it it has to be an active thing and it takes men to do it comes back to your point about we need men to staff those institutions and run them and what you discover is if you stop saying to men we need you to come and do this you as men to come and do this they don't do it and women end up doing it which is bad for the women because they end up carrying more of the burden.

Speaker 2 But it's also bad for the men that they don't feel called by the tribe. I think at some level, every man needs to hear the tribe needs you.

Speaker 2 And as soon as they stop hearing that call, that's when things go badly for them and for everybody else. So the question we have to answer now is, what's our call to men?

Speaker 2 What is the tribe saying to them? What do we need them for? Do we need them as fathers? Do we need them as workers? Do we need them as protectors? Do we actually need men?

Speaker 2 And I think as long as we don't, if we don't have a strong, positive answer to that question we're going to keep losing them

Speaker 3 i i'm i'm reflecting on what what you're saying and um i'm i'm wondering if there's something actionable something more formidable and and you know scott one of the problems i've always seen with the educational process and i've listened to some of your podcasts we've got great educators but we're asking local people to do the education process in their local neighborhoods.

Speaker 3 You know, we don't have George Lucas coming in to do the stage photography or the direction of the local movie, if you will.

Speaker 3 But you could take leaders like Richard Reeves or Scott Galloway and get their wisdom imparted into the local communities. We do have the technology.
We do have the skill set to do that.

Speaker 3 And I guess the question is,

Speaker 3 is that something that you think could catch on? Is that something that you think people would be interested in?

Speaker 2 I think the dissemination of kind of thought leadership or scaling people who might have interesting viewpoints, I think that's, I think it's more important that

Speaker 2 I don't think that gets, I don't think that creates systemic structural change.

Speaker 2 I think systemic structural change, I think guys like Richard will play a role in highlighting the issue such that one, there's legislation that stops this transfer of wealth from young to old.

Speaker 2 And by the way, I wouldn't focus on young men. I would focus just on young people because it'd become too politically charged to start giving

Speaker 2 money to young men. I think a tax holiday in Portugal, they basically said because they were losing so many young people, between the ages of 20 and 30, there's a tax holiday.

Speaker 2 And you could justify that, one, because it wouldn't cost that much money because people age 20 to 30 don't make a lot of money. And two, we have been soaking them.

Speaker 2 They pay 6% Social Security tax up to 160 grand, which means all of them pay 6%. Meanwhile, you and me, Anthony, will make a lot more than that.
We pay $9,000, right? It's a regressive tax.

Speaker 2 Two biggest tax deductions, mortgage interest and capital gains. Who makes their money from stocks and owns homes?

Speaker 2 People on this pod. Who makes their money from current income, wages, and rents? Young people.

Speaker 2 I feel like every major legislation, whether it's COVID relief or tax loopholes, is nothing but a transfer of wealth from young to old. And I think the data bears that out.
So there needs to be

Speaker 2 legislative economic change. And I think there needs to also be just a ground level, a change in the zeitgeist and family court.
All right, you're getting divorced.

Speaker 2 You realize the boy is now very vulnerable. And we're going to have programs.

Speaker 2 And it's probably easier to just have programs that focus on the kids, but quite frankly, the boys are probably going to need more help. National service.

Speaker 2 You know, I would love to see, I was just in Israel and I met with a battalion.

Speaker 2 120 kids, I say kids, 19-year-olds, with semi-automatic weapons, learning to how to handle enormous responsibility, work in the agency of something bigger than themselves. They're fit.

Speaker 2 They're outside. They're meeting friends, mentors, co-founders, mates.

Speaker 2 And if you look at Israel, despite the existential threats it faces being surrounded by enemies, it has some of the lowest levels of young adult depression of any Western nation.

Speaker 2 But I think the real structural change probably has to come out in the form of tax policy, things like national service, what Richard was talking talking about, programs to get more men in schools, more third places.

Speaker 2 I'd like to see, I mean,

Speaker 2 one of my pet peeves, remember the Presidential Fitness Awards? That was huge for me. I remember I had a gross spurt and I got, they put numbers on them, one, two, three.

Speaker 2 And then I had a gross spurt and I couldn't do the pull-ups and I didn't get number four and I freaked out and I started doing pull-ups because we used to celebrate strength.

Speaker 2 And now it's seen as fat shaming. You know, let's celebrate strength again.
Let's

Speaker 2 Let's celebrate some of the things, you know, let's celebrate some of the things that more naturally come to men. And by the way, let's celebrate it for women as well.
But we have done,

Speaker 2 I think these things need to be

Speaker 2 on a legislative and a very structural change in our society to kind of, if you will, re-level up.

Speaker 2 And I think the majority of those programs are focused on young people, not just focused on young men, but focused on young people.

Speaker 2 And the really good news here is I find when I talk about this, I'm a partisan.

Speaker 2 People know I'm a progressive or a moderate, whatever you want to, center left, whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 2 I find this is a bipartisan issue that you get people nodding from both sides of the aisle. There are just as many Republicans out there worried about their boys as Democrats.

Speaker 2 And so this to me seems like something that if you came up with a legislative package that said, we're going to try and level up young people specifically. I mean, think about it.

Speaker 2 Biden didn't even want to talk about the Democrats, the Infrastructure Act, 70% of those jobs created were for non-college educated men, but they didn't want to talk about it for fear it would piss off the left wing, right?

Speaker 2 So it's a change in zeitgeist, it's a change in complexion, it's a change in the approach. But I think that it has to be real fundamental structural legislative change.

Speaker 3 Any last words? We're going to let you go in a sec, Richard, but any last words?

Speaker 2 So I agree with everything Scott said in terms of the call and the tribe needing you. I also think that there's a slight challenge.
Maybe it's a gentle challenge to Scott.

Speaker 2 That when you say we should focus stuff on young people, we should not focus it specifically on boys, the evidence suggests that unless you actually find a specific way, a call to men, call to boys, they don't take the opportunities.

Speaker 2 They don't step forward in quite the same way.

Speaker 2 And so it's an uncomfortable thought, but the idea that build it and they will come seems to be much more true for girls than for boys.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 this may now be among my most socially conservative thoughts that actually, unless you say specifically to boys and to men,

Speaker 2 we need you to do this,

Speaker 2 that they might not do it.

Speaker 2 And, you know, you can then, you can imagine people dialing in right now to say, well, there you go. You see, they won't even step up when we give them the opportunities.
Q, I roll,

Speaker 2 you're blaming women for taking those opportunities. But I just think culturally, we have to sometimes find ways to signal to boys.
It's why I think things like Boy Scouts or kind of roles for men and

Speaker 2 these mentoring programs that are very specific. Like you mentioned Bigs.
I don't know if I said this before, but I just signed up for Big Brothers, Big Sisters as well.

Speaker 2 And where I live, the waiting list for boys is nine months compared to three months for girls.

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 they don't get male volunteers and they've got more boys being referred, and all they've done is a general call for volunteers. So I actually think, Scott, we need a call for male volunteers.

Speaker 2 We need to say to men, we need you as men to show up. Not instead of women,

Speaker 2 but I think there has to be a specific call.

Speaker 2 Does that make sense to you? It's a site amendment to your idea. 100%.

Speaker 2 The one question I would have for you is: if you could pass, if you had a magic wand to pass one law or have one program get funded right now, what would that one thing be?

Speaker 2 A massive recruitment drive for male teachers.

Speaker 2 If we can't get back to Reagan-era share of male teachers, which was 33%, and the coaching that comes along with that, on current trends, we're just emptying out.

Speaker 2 If we can't address the decline of share, the one place we can intervene, Scott, with a reasonable degree of certainty is during K-12 education.

Speaker 2 And I actually think that the failure to act as we have emptied the men out of our classrooms is

Speaker 2 a cultural shame. And even now, it's quite hard to get people to think that that's anything we should do anything.

Speaker 2 But does anybody think that we would think it was a good idea if the teaching profession became all male?

Speaker 2 Like the idea that we shouldn't have more men in front of our boys, I'm so proud of my son for standing in front of that classroom and being this dude teaching these kids.

Speaker 2 And so at a visceral level, I feel like.

Speaker 2 And anybody who can't get on board with that, the idea that we shouldn't be encouraging more men into our classrooms, into our playing fields, I just don't think they just,

Speaker 2 I very rarely say, I don't think they deserve a place, honestly, in the conversation because there is nobody, even like Josh Hawley in his book on masculinity.

Speaker 2 And to say that Josh Hawley and I don't agree on anything, on everything would be an understatement. But even he says, maybe some more male teachers would be a good idea.

Speaker 2 The American Psychological Association, one of the most progressive organizations in the US, says maybe it would be a good idea to have more male teachers. So, when, for the love of God,

Speaker 2 is a policymaker, a governor, a president going to say, all right,

Speaker 2 we need a volunteer army, we need an army of men in our teacher, in our classrooms. That's the one thing.
If I could wave them once, Scott, that's what I would do.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Yeah, actually, just come back to where we're at.

Speaker 2 Love your work now. Now that we know each other, the praise inflation comes around.

Speaker 2 You're awesome.

Speaker 3 You have no idea how much I need it. It doesn't feel good.

Speaker 3 I'm surrounded by people that are bringing me down, Richard.

Speaker 2 No, men need to be here for each other. There you go.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 The feeling is mutual, my friend. Thank you again.

Speaker 3 Hopefully you'll come back and

Speaker 2 continue this discussion.

Speaker 3 Thank you for joining us for this episode of Lost Boys. If you'd like more information, please go to our website, www.lostboys.men.

Speaker 3 In our next episode, Scott and I talk with Dan Harris, the best-selling author of 10% Happier, who has a lot of good advice about how young men and really all of us can manage the stress and anxiety in our lives.

Speaker 3 You don't want to miss it. So be sure to like, follow, and subscribe to Lost Boys wherever you get your podcast.
And please share it with someone who cares about this or should care about this.

Speaker 3 And let's spread the word. Lost Boys is a production of Salt Media and Casablanca Strategy Group.
Barbara Fadida and Keith Summa are executive producers.

Speaker 3 Tanya Solani is our researcher and Holly Duncan Quinn and Stanley Goldberg are editors. Special thanks to Christina Cassesi and Mary Jean Rebus and Drew Burroughs.

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