From a young age, boys are inundated with messages that teach them not to cry, openly express emotions, or show any sign of weakness for fear of appearing weak or feminine. And as a result, men experience a lack of intimacy and close friendships. Host Roy Wood Jr. sits down with the co-founder of “A Call to Men,” Ted Bunch, and developmental psychology professor at NYU, Niobe Way, to chat about how boy’s friendships evolve as they get older, the additional cultural pressures that Black and Brown men face, what men can do to prioritize their mental health, and how therapy could be transformative for a lot of men.
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Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the podcast that goes deeper into topics and segments that you might have seen on the Daily Show. This is what this podcast is. This is how you gotta think about this podcast. You have a go bowling, right, you know you want to go bowling and bowling. You're just going and you have a good time the stars, the bowling pins and the bowling ball. But this podcast, we're all the extra shit that you need to be able to bowl. All right. You gotta have the goofy clown shirt, you gotta have the big ass clown shoes, you gotta have beer, you gotta have wings, you have to have an inability to bowl. All of the skills that are required to make bowling fun. That's exactly what this podcast is. So I'm roy with Junian today. We're gonna be talking about a topic that has come up on the show quite a bit, male vulnerability and intimacy and why it is important that men and go to therapy. Roll the clip. We know that women are going through it, but we have to acknowledge that men are going through it too. You guys are angry, you're depressed, and you're lonely. In fact, fifteen percent of men say they have zero zero friends, and the other eighty five they don't have friends either, but they was too sad to fill out the surveyor now, luckily there's a tool that can help you with all of this. Five That rape is amazing. You pay someone to unload all your bullshit on them. They're like prostitutes for the feelings. The problem is men don't use it. In fact, they're almost half as likely to go to therapy as women. Men out here treating therapy like Nick Cannon treats condoms. They're here to help you, Nick. But we know why men is this way, because, starting from a young age, we cheat them that they can't have feelings. Today, I'm joined by co founder of a Call to Men and co author the Book of Dares, one hundred Ways for Boys to Be Kind, Bold and Brave, Ted buch Welcome to be on the scenes. How you doing, Ted, I'm good, Roy, Thank you so much, Happy to be here with you and Niobie. You got a voice of stature right there. That's a voice of statue. And I see for the people listening, you got one of them grown men, You got one of them coach gots I just want to do whatever you tell me to do. Ted also joining me, is a professor of developmental psychology at NYU and author of the book Deep Secrets, Boys, Friendships, and the Crisis of Connection. Her book was also the inspiration for the Oscar nominated film Close Niobi Way, Welcome to the show, Naobie, are you doing I'm doing great. I'm so happy to be here Roy with you and Ted. I'm really excited about this conversation. Well, I'm happy to be a part of this as well. And as a father of a six year old, I definitely you know, if I'm gonna be honest, just up front. You know, I didn't come from a home. This is why I feel like this discussion is very important. You know, I had two parents that everybody worked odd hours. My dad worked mornings and nights, so I rarely saw him other than pick me up from baseball practice. My mother worked until nine pm because she was going to law school and PhDs and all of the secondary degrees that you get to build your income. So I didn't see my mom but right before I went to bed, and first thing in the morning, on the way to the bus stop. So this idea of intimacy and hugs and conversation, and that was not I knew I was loved, I felt love, but you know, I came up in an era with intimacy within a family. Actually, man to man was more incidental than intentional. So in coming up with ways to be intentional with my son, it's these types of stories and stuff within the show that have really helped me because you know, and and I'll start with you, Ted, because you know, the act of being a man is something that's just said, but it's never really detailed. It's never really laid out in specifics. You know, people tell you a man while you're crying, boy, be a man. What does that mean? My knee hurt? I It's okay to cry, It's okay to feel. So, Ted, let's start off with talking a little bit about, you know, defining how society views manhood and masculinity, or as you refer to it, the manbox. Explain to us what the man box and what does healthy manhood actually look like. So thank you Roy for that, and U and I appreciate what you're sharing about the difference from growing up and then the type of parent you want to be. The intentional father that you want to be around, nurturing and supporting your son. And our parents did that too, to the best of their ability. But we know much more now. And so when we talk about the man box, which is a term that a call to men coined more than twenty years ago, that's a short version of saying the collective socialization of manhood. Right. The man boxes sounds cooler, right, But when we talk about the man box, you can imagine all the things that we're taught around manhood masculinity. Even if we were to ask a six year old boy or sixteen year old boy what it is, what have you been taught about what a man is? They'll say, be tough, be strong, make money, carry a bag, right, a bag of money. Don't ask for help, don't be vulnerable, don't be weak, right because those things that vulnerability, that weakness, those things where you need to ask for help are not what men do. When they're putting that in quotes based on this male dominated society, it's what women do. And if you're a man that does that, then you've fallen short of the manhood that you're expected to live up to. So there's a few things that happen in the man box. One of them is that we're all taught that on some level, women and girls have less value than men and boys, that women are the property of men, and that women and girls are sexual objects. These are the things that we're taught, and we pass these teachings down to our children. As well as that we're not supposed to openly express emotion, that we're not supposed to show weakness of fear. You're not supposed to act like a woman or a girl. You're not supposed to ask for help. I do want to unpack, just for a moment, that less value, property, objectification. Peace Roy, if you don't mind. So we're taught our collective socialization, right, it's just kind of in the air that women and girls have less value than men and boys. So if I say to a little boy, you have to throw that ball hard, and that son, you throw like a girl. Everybody knows the answer to that. We've never had this conversation, but we know the answer, right, And it's not that it's true, but we know what the answer to that is. Just recently, at a golf tournament, you had Tiger Woods slide a tampon to another golfer as a way to say that that shot he just drive, he just took kidding me. Oh yeah, that happened recently. That's amazing. Oh they got on Tiger Tiger Woods thought, oh, there's surely no cameras here at this televised golf tournament. I will slide you a woman joke. Yeah, I didn't mean to cut you off, Tiger. That's it. That's that's a great example because this is done everywhere because like that six year old boy, right, what does he what does he leave that situation when that man he looks up to says you have to throw her that like you throw like a girl and girls still just fine, Right, But does he leave that interaction thinking that girls were equal to him or less than him, less than And we're giving him those messages all day long, and Tiger continues to give those messages. So it's not just Tiger, it's all of us. That's our collective socialization, and that women on some level of the property of men. So if I'm in New York or La or Cargo or Texas, and I walk over to a man today who's hitting his wife or girlfriend, I say, knock it off. He says to me, say, so that's it. Mind you of business one way or another, and the other is around the objectification. Our boys are actually taught to objectify girls. And they're taught that by men in their life. They're taught that by messages they're getting in all different areas, right, And it's not that we're doing things well. This is gonna give a quick example. High school boy in your community, or in your community, Niobi, or anyone who's listening. Here, a great kid, seventeen year old kid who wants to take a young woman out to go to a movie. He's just taking her out right, takes her out to the movie. His name's John, her name is Keisha. He takes John, takes Keisha out and gets on a group text with a couple of his boys and says, hey, guys, I'm taking Keisha out to the movie. They give him a little prep for that, but he takes her, takes her back home, perfect gentleman. He gets it back on the group text and says, hey, guys, I'm back. Is the first thing those boys, good boys ask him is how was the movie nor right? So where did they learn that from? So that's the man box that collective. So did you get the Kissa, did you get the grand right? Because the only purpose to spend time with her is the conquest. That's what they're taught. Okay, So, Niobe, you've studied young boys friendships and how these relationships change as they get older. Can you tell us more about what you found in your research. No, I've been listening to boys and young men since nineteen eighty seven, a long time, and I started off as a high school counselor listening to boys and thinking about surprise that what they were talking about was not was what I expected. They were talking about their friendships, their desires for close friendships, their desires for intimate connection with other guys, and that led really to a lifetime of being fascinated by First of all, was this typical of a lot of boys? But secondly, why aren't we telling this story? And so what's interesting to me is that when you listen to young people, when you listen to boys, I would say, anywhere from your son's age all the way up to basically twenty four to twenty five, they tell something very different in terms of their socialization, especially when they're younger and they're less pressure to man up, which is that they want close friendships. You hear twelve thirteen fourteen year olds talking beautifully about their desire for friendships, their desire to really trust someone, to not be laughed at. That not being laughed at, by the way, is a big one. Being able to share something that they're not laughed at, that being able to trust them. And then as they get older, they basically the pressures to man up starts to happen and they start to disconnect from what they want. They start to sort of everything that becomes a joke, even though even though basically that they don't see it as a joke because they're looking for that connection. And right at the point where boys start to disconnect with their own desires for closeness, especially with other young men, you see the suicide rate goes up. You see all kinds of stuff. Mass violence happens right at that age between sixteen twenty five, where men are being asked by the culture young men to basically disconnect. And this is the part I really want to say Roy on your show, this is a human desire. This is a human desire. It's not a girl thing, it's not a guy thing. It's not a gender identity. Thing, or a sexuality thing, a gay thing. It's a human desire to want to connect to other people deeply emotionally. And the only way we connect, Roy, this is the whole point, and this is the whole part of Ted's work too. The only way we connect is that we're vulnerable, we're expressive, we share our feelings. We're also stoic, right, Ted, I mean in relationships you need to be able to be stoic, you need to be able to be soft. But we only value half of our half of ourselves, and especially for young men. So if we only have value the side, the hard side of ourselves, then don't value the soft side. First of all, we're not going to have relationships. We're not gonna have good relationships. Secondly, we're going to be in trouble. So if we raise kids to go against their humanity, go against their nature, which is to be loving human beings, and we raise them to go against that and to actually value the sort of only the hard side of themselves, that's the manning up part, then we shouldn't be surprised that a lot of them struggle when they get older and need therapy. Right Right, I mean that you know why do so many men need therapy in the first place? All of the causations that you've just laid out, is that part of why you think men are stuck in I think, as you've called it, a friendship recession in a way, because you can't be real with your friends, you can't be open and honest with for fear of being teased or being called a girl. Man, why you crying? Exactly? Everything that I'm saying comes directly from the mouths of boys. I mean, they will say things like, it might be nice to be a girl because then I wouldn't have to be emotionless. I mean, I just want adults listening to that to register that comment it might be nice to be a girl because then I wouldn't have to be emotionless. We are asking human beings to be emotionless and then we expect them to have healthy relations. It is a human desire and that our boys, as they will be said, start out with all of these things that they want to express, and actually when we allow space for them to talk about it, they're thirsty to talk about it. They really are, and so are men. By the way. Once once we remove that, it's uh the it's that there's a shaming of being vulnerable and talking about it. So we start teaching. We start teaching our boys not to experience those feelings. When we tell our boys to stop crying, then they don't they don't get to express what they're feeling. When we tell them to stop crying, we're also saying stop feeling. And so then they push that those emotions down and the only thing that's expressed with that's accepted is anger. Aggression that's what's seen as an emotion that men can express, and lusty you can express that as well. So those are the harmful things, and it's directly ties to anxiety and depression and suicide. All of those things are tied to this. So the boys don't develop a language to express how they're feeling. So we become these men who also don't have that language, and so we don't no doubt to ask for help because when we when we tried to ask for help, that's spend seen as a weakness, is something that men don't do. How much of all of this that we're that we've been laying out because what's interesting about this whole discussion is that men are going through Hey, show your emotions. Hey, women can do it too. Meanwhile, women are cooking on the feminism side of the game and going we are girls, girls strong, girl power, we go on march, we can do whatever we want. So it almost seems as if both sides are getting are having two different types of awakenings concurrently. That also kind of but heads, how much did the lack of women's rights in the thirties and the forties and the fifties, and even if you really want, because I'm not gonna put this solely on slavery, but I also want to put it in the context that for a long time in America, the man had to go to work and the woman was at the house and you was in the kitchen, and maybe the man felt that he could never share because no matter what the burden of providing was passed on, he has to do it. And then we got to a time where we didn't have to live like that anymore. But men were maybe subconsciously passing on that rhetoric to their next generation and then their next generation, and by the time we got to the nineties, the idea of what a man should be was molded by what a man had to be at that time, and we thought that that, Like someone said to me something I thought was very profound, don't confuse the tactics you use to survive with the tactics you need to go on. How much does the history of gender dynamics play a role in a lot of these bad habits being passed down from generation to generation. Yeah, so in a male dominated society, right, because that's what it is, and it's patriarchal society, it's a male dominant society. And then you do have women who are seeking liberation because coming out of all of that, in the same way that in a white supremacy society you have people of color who are seeking liberation. Right, all of those things because these constructs exist, and there is an antiquated notion of manhood and masculinity that I think is so woven into the fabric of our society that when it's challenged, then sexism rears this ugly head, right and seeks to put down what women have achieved or are doing in those kind of things, as if it's taking away from men. But it's not. It's not just this one pie and that everybody's pieces a little smaller. It's an expansion of a pie. Right, it's much bigger than that. So this allows men right to really look at all authentic selves too, that we don't just have to be this rigid notion of manhood. That there's so much more to you and to me and to the men who are listening. There's so much more to who we are that we can now brace are full authentic selves. Also, because there's things that you may have wanted to do, or your son may want to do that the man box says, oh no, no, no, you're not supposed to do that. Right. I have flowers in my picture all the time when I'm on zoom. Right. It took me years to accept that, oh, I can go buy flowers because I like flowers in the house. I don't have to breathe them to a woman to have flowers in the house, or to my wife to have flowers in the house. That actually, I'm the one who likes the color. I'm the one who likes the smell of the flowers. And it took it took me a while to really accept that now that's my authentic self. I love flowers. So now I'll go to the flowers and I pick out what I want, they say, do you want me to do it? Put in the vast for you, mister bumps. No, I want to take them home and arrange them because you know what, Roy, and they will be I like flowers. So so, there's so much that we're missing as men that these rigid nooses of manhood patriarchy harms all of us. It really does. There's lots of wonderful things about being a man. I don't want to not be a man. I don't want to not be a father. And this is not an indictment on manhood. Actually, it's an invitation of men. It's not about calling men out for wrong behavior. It's about calling men into a healthy, respectful manhood. So what boys have taught me is that we've split right, our culture, our modern culture, I call it boy culture, but it's called we call our modern culture has split us into thinking that thinking is masculine and feeling is feminine. Hard is masculine and feminine. Right, you get where I'm going, Right, where I'm we got to marinate on network? Yeah, right, you get what I'm saying. So thinking is masculine feminine? Right? That sound like every argument I've had with everybody I've dated in my life. Goodness gracious. If you live in a culture that says basically independence, thinking, the self stoicism is masculine, and vulnerability, emotions, sensitivity is feminine, you're going to be messed up because ultimately you are half hard and half soft as a human. And again, I'm not doing the human thing because it's my own ideology. I'm doing it really because that's what the boys are yelling at us about. Like they're saying exactly what you just said, Ted, They're saying, I am actually half what you call feminine. I am vulnerable, I am sensitive, I'm emotionally intelligent. I like flowers or I don't like you know, whatever it is, but things that have been associated with feminity, and you're trying to push that down in me. And that's how I actually build relationships and friendships. So like, what's your problem? And I feel like young people, honestly, Roy have been yelling at adults for almost a century and saying what is wrong with you people? You know that basically we get it. Young people get it. Ted. You know that young people get it all the time. And so I think when it comes to the women's issues, this is what I think. Roy. I think that women, obviously, and I definitely identify as a feminist, and I'm definitely part of the feminist movement. Women are angry because for lots of different justified reasons. So I'm not you know, I'm not diminishing that in any way. But the reality is that we keep on seeing the symptom as the problem, so we keep on thinking that it's basically from women's from a feminist perspective, we keep on thinking, well, it's men's problems, so if you fix men, then the problems should go away. But it's all of our problems, right, it's the culture that we have all created with obviously, this hierarchy that some men have been more influential than other men, you know, you're talking about white supremacy, etcetera, etcetera, and some you know, and some women have been more powerful than other women. But basically we have created society that doesn't make any sense where we've gendered basic human qualities. So then that means is that women are getting mad at men when we're really what we should doing is trying to change the culture. And the more we sort of blame it on men, actually the more men just feel attacked. I've heard that a lot. You know, the men just feel attacked when we have to see it as a collective problem. Before we get to the break, I want to delve in for a second with you, know about your work that you did where you essentially walk me through this. You had a one hundred and fifty boys ages thirteen to eighteen. Well, I followed them over over four years. So I follow yeah, from twelve to thirteen, and followed them over four to five years. Okay, how did you measure intimacy and see it slowly start to dissipate in their relationships with other boys at the same age because you were essentially looking to see how they related and how they spoke to other boys. And when did the dissipation of feeling and turning into creatures of action when that started happening. When you listen to twelve year old boys, they will use the language of love. They will talk given a safe space, right not give them a safe space, They won't do it. When they talk about their friends, they say I love him, I can't live without him, or I want to find a friend that I could really rely on and not be you know, and be myself and be a real self. So the language, it's right there in the language. It's literally they're talking love. They're asking questions about love. They're thinking about love, both heterosexual love, romantic love, platonic love, all sorts of love. They're wanting, they're having questions about it, and it given a safe space, they actually ask it. Then as they get older, it's incredible because remember it's the same kids. So it's the same kids. Over time, you start to hear this, I don't care ted. You know this language, I don't care whatever. It's all good. It's all good. You know, like, no, I don't have you know, I don't connect to someone that much anymore. But it's all good. You know that whole pressure to sort of sound like you're totally invulnerable. So you hear in the language, and then you also hear the anger, You hear the sadness, and then sometimes in the worst case scenarios, you hear the depression and the sense of feeling totally isolated and not knowing what to do about it, and a lot of anger at why is not anybody paying attention? Why is not anybody paying attention to these basic human needs and everybody's calling me. You know, in some cases mass shooters, I've read the mass shooter manifestos, it's the same thing. They feel like nobody's paying attention to their suffering. Right there. I want to take a break, and I want to come back and jump more into that. And this is beyond the scenes. Will be right back, they will be before the break. We were just talking about how men feel like they don't have a way to express their feelings without being criticized or compared to being a woman or having their feelings not be received properly, and so as a result, it can bubble up in a number of different ways. Now, the study that you conducted with a number of boys over the course of four or five years in their teenage years, you're seeing that a lot of the conversation in verbiage as they became more emotionally disconnected was similar to some of the verbiage that you've seen in some of the mass shoot of manifestos. What are some of the other ways that this type of you know, and I don't want to say dysfunction, but the absence of vulnerable, vulnerable, that's a matter of word. You knew what I was trying to say, just then, don't laugh. Vulnerability, the lack of stop laughing, Ted, I see you. How does the lack of the inability to be vulnerable? There? I did it? What are some other negative ways that it manifests itself. It can show up in a lot of ways. It can show outwardly, right, because these are hurt kids, and you can show it outwardly where they're hurting other kids. Maybe it's bullying or gun violence, all of these other things where they're trying to establish some sort of power, some sort of affirmation. And when we talk about the emotional disconnection that Naobi brought up and then you leaned into a little bit there, Roy, I do want to say this that those emotions when they stopped from that first year of the research to the last year of the research where they're not vulnerable, where they're not looking for that connection, or at least admitting they're not they're looking for they're not admitting it is because becoming more and more indoctrinated in the man box, and the glue that keeps that man box together is homophobia. Yeah right, So in other words, that, yeah, so that when they start saying that there's an emotional connection other boys or men in their life, even or even women in their life, because we're all social, we're all swimming in the same water, right, are saying, oh, no, you don't, don't say that, you don't do that. They push them back into the man box because that glue, that homophobia, is the glue that keeps that man box together. It doesn't work without it, right, it doesn't work without it. So they're punished when they show their emotions. They're punished when they're vulnerable because it's seen as weakness. So they're really being taught that, okay, I can't it's not safe for me to talk about it's not safe for me to hug my friend and say, hey man, you know what, I really do love you, you know, and I'm glad you're in my life. And then they're saying things like, you know, things that I don't even want to say it, right, But they push them back into the man box, right, yeah, yeah, they say things I know, homo. So my in my in my, in my interviews, you get things directly which to define just real quick for our listeners. When you say no, homo, it's like, hey man, I love you, No homo, as if to say I love you, but not in a gay way, which assumes that love means intimacy and sessions exactly well between men and boys. It does. We don't say it, they don't say when they talking to a girl. Yeah, right, so it really is it's homophobia within that right, Yes, it's so. Yeah, if we didn't live in a homophobic society, no homo actually wouldn't necessarily be homophobic. But because we because we're right, so so the idea, right, the idea don't be such a girl or no homo is misogynistic and homophobic because we live in a homophobic, misogynist society. So it's it's but I think I really like that image that I'm going to use it again too and quote you. Of course, it is the glue. It's the glue. It's it forces up young men to actually it here because there are consequences if you don't, and the consequences I hear about in older men, I mean older teenagers sorry all the time. The consequences of being teased, bullied, pushed around, if you don't play sports, if you don't man up, if you don't do things that make you look straight. And this is the thing roy in our culture right now, it's okay according to the kids in New York City right now, it's okay if you have an aunt who's gay, you have an uncle who's gay. Maybe you even have a you know, a brother who's gay. But I'm not gay. So there's this weird sort of almost backlash going on that, like, it's cool, it's cool that you know, you you if people do that, people love each other, but don't think I'm gay. Yeah, let me clarify, don't put that by me. So the men who are the least secure of their masculinity are oftentimes the most likely to adhere to masculinity. So, you know, the oftentimes you get athletes, for example Roy, really well known athletes who are actually breaking the gender orders all the time, you know, hugging each other, kissing each other because they don't have to prove their manhood because everybody else slaps on the right exactly exactly exactly. Buying is allowed that the Super Bowl, you lose the Super Bowl, crying, crying exactly exactly exactly. Now you see some of the most tender things between well known athletes. Yeah. Um, and so it's just interesting to me to think about the homophobia drives and that's part of the culture. I mean, come on, I just it's stunning to me that we still think in a culture we still raise our kids roy thinking that thinking is masculine and straight, of course, and feeling is feminine and gay because obviously feminine is linked with being gay in a homophobic world. I also like that thinking is masculine and feeling is feminine, and that when women think exactly punished for that exactly women right, When women exactly and show their intelligence and all those things, men say things like, yeah, well she need to be in the kitchen or you know, they're doing things that that diminished that because it challenges again this patriarchal notion of male dominance when we talk about that as parents. So last year I had the pleasure of going on Finding your Roots with the wonderful doctor Henry Lewis Gates, and amongst all the things that I found out about my family tree, I knew that I did not have when I was born, I had one living grandparent. What I did not know before that television show was that my father lost his father when he was four, and from that time on there was no male head of household per census data every eight years. That was done when my father was living with his mother, you know, well into adulthood. So as far as I know, there was never another man of the house in my dad's life, and so it really reconstituted a lot of how I viewed how he raised me. And so there was one thing that always came up without getting into like this, this isn't me like unearthened family trauma and drama or anything like that, but I just know that one thing my dad would always state whenever he was losing an argument with my mama, was I pay the bills. Because my mom was pouring all her money into grad school and second degrees and third degrees and law degrees. You ain't don't running the house, you know, you know, we get to it when we lose the argument. We started bringing up the seats. But what I didn't realize until I became a father myself was that was the first thing that I defined as manhood was my ability to provide and clothe and feed And it wasn't about feeling and connecting with my son. I knew that was important, but it was not what I prioritized because the idea of paying it cost to be the bo So the example you get is the example you see. There was no book, There was no doctor SEUs for this, there was no Bearsteain bears about fatherhood. So you know, how do fathers provide, you know, a model not only to their sons, but to their daughters about what they need from a man when they go out and start dating. Like, how can we as parents, especially as fathers, set a better example and roadmap to what masculinity looks like? Because I feel like the issue that I'm dealing with as a as a forty four year old man, I could say that the issue I'm dealing with is trying to relearn something while also teaching it to someone at the same time. So your father, with the belief that I'm the provider, I pay the bills all the things, those things are important. Being a provider and paying the bill are very important, and that's an important thing. And so but whatever the women in the household does, right your mom working, somebody's taking care of children, to whatever she's doing, is also just as important. So the problem is that in our again, women have less value than men and boys. So whatever men are doing is always elevated. We are default setting is to give men the benefit of the doubt. Our default setting is to elevate what men do over what women do. So what women, Oh, she stays home and takes care of kids. Have you stayed home and take care of kids and you runs back to your job? You know that's work, right, So it isn't like that's not work, but it's not valued because women do it. And honestly, when men do do it, it is valued. Oh what a great dad, he's doing all of those things right. When women are juggling is all day long work and home and their relationship with their spouse as well. So we often put much more value on what men do and not on what women do. And that's that's really the way it plays out. Which is which which is harmful, it's disrespectful. And I want to add something one other division that we do. We don't listen to young people. So we think we know, we think we know how it is, We think we know how we should do it. And if you actually listen to you know, five year olds up until as I said, up until whatever in the twenties, they tell you a story about what we who we are as human, what gets in the way, and how to solve it. A five year old boy says to his mom who comes into the kitchen. The mom's going through a divorce. The mom doesn't want to have a sad face a sad home, so the boy says to his mom. Within a split second, seeing his mom with a big, happy smile on her face, he says, mom, mommy, why are you smiling when you're feeling sad? And what that five year old is showing is he can he's where he is asking why are you faking an emotion? That's a deep feeling. That's a deep feeling. Another five year old boy said to his mom, Mommy, are you yelling at me because your mommy eld at you? I mean, think about how genius We come out into the world as humans with that natural intelligence, and then what happens is we grow up and we become less intelligent. And I'm not just being snarky when I say that, we really do become less intelligent. We become more cowed over by our cultural norms, and we don't listen to our heart, we don't listen to our minds. We start believing in things that we know are not true. My daughter asked me that at eight, why do we believe in things we know aren't true? You know, and we start believing in things about ourselves because seven year old boys were I promise you they know this stuff we're talking about right now. They don't even be taught this stuff. What role does society play, especially in black and brown fathers, you know, dealing with all of these extra cultural pressures when they're outside the home and being able to or not being able to partition those stresses and bringing that into the house. Because I'm sure to some degree my dad, to some degree, my dad dealt with a lot of racism because that was his calling journalistically. So you get a nice full day of white folks yelling at you, had a cup of protests, and you come home, Yeah, you might be a little bit more on edge, and you probably are also a little bit more disconnected with your child because you're still processing your own stuff that's going on out there in the real world. How does mental health player role in men sometimes misplaying the role of father? Fortunately, mental health, talking about mental health, accepting mental health is becoming more and more acceptable among men. And it's really because men who have an influencing platform people like yourself, Roy, who can talk about mental health being important. Other men are listening to that and saying that, oh, okay, so you know, maybe it's not about weakness. Maybe I do need to do that because we know on some level that this isn't working for us either, right, men know that. But when we talk about again the construct of racism, so we have men who living in this man box and distressors around that not asking for help. So we don't go to the doctor when we need to, we don't ask for help when we need to. All these other things, anxiety and depression are really off the charts. Suicide is about three and a half times higher among men that among women. Men are living only about six years five or six years less than than women for all of these things, including not getting medical checkups for prevention, but we go in more for intervention all of those things. But then when you have the issue of black men and men of color, the trauma, as you said, of just dealing in walking around every day in a racist society is a very traumatic thing, so much so that we do it so much that we it's kind of like we don't even pay attention to it anymore until it's extreme, like you know, some like George Floyd or something. But we're dealing with these traumas all the time, and our boys are too. Right, the boys are also, so they have to have a play to be able to talk about that, to debrief about it, to see that it's not about them, that it's not that it's anything wrong with them. It's actually the opposite. That they're that they're good and that they're worthy and that they are enough. But they're not getting these messages. So we need to lean in, especially for our boys and for our black men. But again because of this um they need to prove that yourself in this man box. And black men haven't really had the opportunity in the same white the same way that white men have, right because white men can do it, and so black men can do it. You know, you'll see it more in sports, entertainment, music, that kind of thing where you'll see many more images of black men who are really successful where white men get to play out this power and control thing in all areas. Right, So it can be exaggerated also, but it also can be something where it's really harmful for us because it limits us. So much as black men. It really is a limiting thing, but it's also a way of protecting ourselves. I naobe, I want to direct a question to you and tell you feel free to jump in. I'm gonna paint you the scenario. Can you tell me what the hell I should have said to this child? So I take my boy to a kid's birthday party and like a five year old just turns to me and we're just watching. It's not my child, someone else's shop. I don't know who's child. And he asked, with a straight face, why do men work harder than the women? Yeah? And I just o and you're not. You don't want to give the wrong answer and poisonous child. And then he takes it back to his family goes, yeah, so it those daddy told me that men. Oh, And I was like, hey, we all work hard and we have to look to make sure that the work that we see the work. Just because you don't see the work doesn't mean that the work isn't happening. I just kind of ate my pizza and drifted away from this child before he asked more deeper philosophical prices. What role does media play in influencing the perceptions of you know, what it means to be a man, what fatherhood means. You know, there's a type of content that we're exposing our children to also kind of perpetuate those roles just a little bit. As I became more conscious of gender equity within the home, There's like, there was a show as a pepper pig. I was like, oh, let me make sure mama pig out there doing some stuff too, and then it ain't just daddy pig coming in the house with a briefcas Yeah. Yeah, so I had to run every show through a filter. But what role does media play in a lot of this? Okay, so first I want to ask I want to give you some support for how you responded to that point. But I do think that when people say things that make as if the what we're trying to fight against real, like men work harder, men are more human than other people, or manner smarter or whatever, it is the best way to deal with that, whether it's little kids or your colleagues, roy is to ask questions about it. So tell me about why you think they work harder? So what's the example? And then the idea is to say, okay, so tell me about what your mom does, like tell me what right, so that you're engaging the conversation. Because ultimately, what I learned from working with college students roy is if you say you're wrong that you know, it never works. So I basically try to figure out what is the mindset that's making them think that, and then all of a sudden introducing like let's think about what women do, let's look go into what your mom does, you know, and so that they could begin to recognize it without being told that they're wrong. And I think media, of course reinforces I mean, it reinforces this incoherent, immoral, amorl story we tell about ourselves that there's some humans that are more human than others, there's some human qualities that are more valuable than other human qualities, and we repeat that story. So media just reinforces it. And what I don't care what kind of media it reinforces it. Now, Obviously shows like this are critical because this allows us to disrupt those narratives. So I don't want to make media all blankets, but obviously it does. I mean, you know, we are we are living right now in an immoral, amoral, immature culture, and we got to disrupt it with these kind of conversations. On the other side of the break, we're going to talk solutions. And I want to know how hopeful you all are for this next generation of men coming down. How hopeful are you from a six year old, I want to know. I want to head straight out about this is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back beyond the scenes. We are around and third and headed for home. It's been a wonderful, wonderful discussion here. How can somebody priloritize their mental health? And if you are a man that is in a friendship recession. Now I'm talking about teenagers, we're talking about growing men. What tools can men take to build and deepen and strengthen the connections that they already normalize it. When I'm in classes, I will get a switch within four seconds. I'm not exaggerating, boys. I will tell I will read a quote for twelve year old boys that says something soft you know I love him so much, from from my book Deep Secrets. They will start cracking up. I'll say, why you're laughing. They'll say the dude sounds gay, and I'll say, well, I didn't look at his sexuality I'm just telling you that eighty percent of boys sound like that at some point in their teenage years. And they will say inevitably, for real, And I'll say, oh, yeah, for real, that's really what what teenage boys? And guess what happens roy Within four I'm not kidding, they will immediately start talking about their own friendships, their desire for friendships. All they need is the permission to feel and the permission to ask. And once they know it's normal that they want friendships that they then they can. Then they know how to do it. It's natural. I wish the world could hear that the questions that twelve year old boys ask when given a safe space, because they are geniuses. They're geniuses in terms of understanding how love works, how relationships works, how humans work, and so I just they normalize it and then in their homes and teachers and bosses, you just got to make it normal so that you create spaces where friendships are valued. Teachers, put don't separate out kids that are friends, put them together. Put them together, and then talk about how they can help each other learn the material, that they learn it better with each other than by themselves. So don't do that thing, and we're going to separate you because you guys are friends. It's like no, no, Actually use that relationship to learn. There's a beautiful study in UVA that shows has been replicated. The subject of the research stands in front of hill and has to estimate the steepness of the hill with a backpack on their back. Okay, it's an experiment, a research experiment. They're standing next to a best friend in one condition, standing there a stranger in another condition by themselves or with someone they know who they don't know very well. Okay, So in each condition they have to estimate the steepness of the hill. You got it right. Those that are standing next to a best friend see the hill as less steep. So what's incredible is that we actually see the world as less difficult when we're standing next to someone who loves us. We see that the math problem, whatever you're doing as less difficult when you're next to someone who loves you. So use that in education, Use that in the workplace. Put people who are close together working on teams together. You see what I'm saying. So you disrupt the even at home talk about friendships. We got to think as parents to say, tell me about, you know, thinking about our own friendships. Talk about with your kids. I don't share the intimacies of my own friendship, but I talk about when I get my feelings hurt with friends. I talk about how that made me feel bad when so and so didn't return my text and I wrote or three times that you didn't write back, and that made me feel bad. And then I asked them for advice their teenagers. So I'll say, what do you think I should do? What do you think I should say? And I see you do that with my son as well, by the way, and so what they what the message they get from this is this is normal. This is normal. This isn't some weird thing that you have to you know, you have to get special help for you bring up a lot of great points, and you know, and you're talking about your kids, and I'm a father also they're being twenty one and thirty three now, But I would it was not unusual at all for me to ask, especially my boys, on a scale of one to ten, how do you feel today? Right? Or to have those conversations that were informal conversations around how they're doing, and to really lean in and ask more and more questions. So that's really important to your question. Roy. For men, it's normalized that we're taught to not ask for help, to not need any here, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, all those kinds of things. And when we do spend time with each other, it might be around going and having a drink, or it might be around a sporting event or watching a game. That's where the bonding happens, right, And what we need to be able to do, And what's helpful is that we really lean into the strength in vulnerability, right, Like I'm really going through something right and I want to share that with you, and I don't What men often say is okay, man, well you know it'll get better. Let's just move on. They don't really lean in and process in the same way that women are taught, honestly in our society to use more language and ask more questions. Right, Because I'm sure I'm sure your wife asked more questions about what you're what you're feeling, then you might ask her you just want to know you're okay, good, okay, Now I don't have to talk about anything else, right, So you don't ask enough questions therefore you don't care. It's do care? I pay the bills? Don't you see this? Feel this warm heating this house? We absolutely care, but we're not comfortable asking those questions because we've been told you don't go into that emotional space. You stay away from that emotional space. So much so that even when we go to um and to think about your listeners, I bet if there's a woman listening to the podcast, there's a man in her life, her brother, her father, man, she's dating, her husband, who's going to the doctor, she's gonna make sure she goes with him. Why because he's not going to ask the questions that he needs to ask. Because even that, for us is vulnerability. Right, Even that for us it's like huh, I don't know. I just want to get in and out. Do you go to doctor? Yes? But did you ask him about this? Right? So, vulnerability is a strength, it really is. And honestly, when men become vulnerable, they're respected for that because other men see that, Wow, that was that was vulnerable, and that's the strength. So it isn't something we need to run away from. And that's going to give us a better sense of well being, a better sense of mental health, to really have health mentally and to be able to support everyone else along the way. And it's going to really make us feel better too, and it's modeling it for our children as well. Yeah, how does therapy play a role in this? Men are half the country, We are a percent of the suicides according to the CDC. Where does therapy of any kind help with anything that you all have just been talking about. I want to say something that's very specific to me being a woman. I hear this from other women friends. So therapy is huge because it allows the space and this is what happens in between heterosexual relationships almost always is women feel I'm going to now be the voice of all women across the world, Roy, are you ready? So basically that we are burdened with the care of our children and the care of our husband, and now with this new emotional awakening of men, we now have to be the therapist for our husbands as well and our partners. And there's a lot of anger about that, like, we can't be the therapist, we can't be the caretaker, the therapist that everything you know for our husbands. And then the dynamic I see in my friends, I do not do research on this, but I see it in my community. Is resentment, is that the woman doesn't have time to be the therapist to her husband. He wants her to because he feels safe talking to her. So I would say therapy. That's not your wife, that's not your partner, that's not your romantic partner. Whatever it is, could be a friend, could be a friend, but a professional who really knows basically how to make you reconnect with your own humanity. So I would very much encourage therapy, especially in terms of understanding that you need multiple people to support you. This whole notion that we can rely on one person in our life, you know, our spouse or our partner to be the end all be all is getting in the way. It's getting in the way. We need multiple people. We need our moms, our grandmas, our aunts, our uncles, our therapists, our best friend, our partner. We need a lot. We need a community to build, you know, to make us fully human and so that we act like humans. And we're still stuck in this model, Ted, you know this, We're still stuck. We put all our emotional eggs into one romantic basket and then expect us to be happy with this one person, and that's just not real. Therapy is very important and we don't need to even call it that. When I when I when I encourage men to get therapy, I'll say, man, you just you need you need a sounding board, you know what I mean? You need somebody who can share objectively what they might think not. You know, it's great to have a friend, but we're not always objective, and we kind of want things to get better for you and it may not me, it may not require us leaning in to really ask more questions that really get to a real solution that's meaningful, that's more more meaningful. So really encouraging therapy for men, I encourage therapy for men. I've been in and out of therapy for different things throughout my life. My children know that my children have also engaged in therapy at some point in their life, because it's not it's not something to run away from. It's actually they needed a sounding board too. And I would say, even just just just go to share any frustrations you have about me or your mom, like, just go to start talking about things where you can share some things that you may not feel totally comfortable sharing with us at this point. So therapy is essential. It will prevent depression. The anxiety among men is off the charge. As you said, suicide is really three and a half times higher than women and eighty percent of suicidect believe you mentioned from the CDC. So there's something that's not right, that's not working for us as men. So this is the fix. So with all of that being said, let's end it here. We've already kind of unpacked ways that we can try and change the culture. What hope and optimism do you have for the future of manhood? Yeah? I have a lot of hope. Ye're not finished really well, you know, we're gonna see how to go. You know, you got to understand how my sample size is one, y'all, the one studying one hundred and fifty people and writing books. I'm not writing books. I'm just raising one. He seems to be doing good so far. He's definitely in tune with his emotions and expressive about it, way more so than I was at the same mile marker. And that's what we need to allow, right, We really need to allow our children like your son to embrace and express his full range of emotions. And we need to do that too. When he's going through fear, we can say, you know, I feel afraid too, and this is this is what I do, and I want to work through that fear because on the other side, no matter how it turns out, it's always good that I've worked through that fear. So we're not saying don't push our children to confront things even if they're difficult. We want them to, but we don't want them, you know, we don't want to motivate them by denigrating them or using girls or women or others to say, don't be like that or don't be like this. Right, those are the kind of things that we really want to do. We want to have them express through their language what's going on. So I have a lot of optimism about men, about manhood. I think that we've reached a point where it's clearly not working and we know that, and so now it's just a matter of time of how do we need to purge what needs to happen so that we can start talking in real ways that really connect with our humanity. That's the real thing, really connect with our Just as there's a racial awakening in a lot of ways and it's difficult. It's painful. People are being triggered all the time, right, So it's difficult, but we have to get through it. And the same thing here around our own mental health and our own sense of well being. I think first of all, we have to make sure we're locating the problem where the problem is. So, the problem is not men, the problem is not women. The problem is not non gender conforming people. Right. The problem is not black people, it's not poor people, it's not immigrants. The problem is a culture that doesn't align with our nature, and a culture that doesn't nourish the best angels of our nature. Right. So the idea is, if the focus is on valuing both the heart and the soft sides of ourselves equally, equally, men and women, non gender conforming, I don't care what your identity is. Your heart is soft. If that's our goal, which it should be, then it becomes easy because we're naturally hard and soft. And the hope is and I work with Remember I teach at NYU, so I see a hundred college students a semester, and the hope when I see those young people across race, across class, across nationality, all sorts of young people. They are starving, Roy for this conversation. They are starving for it. They are literally, I'm not even I'm not even exaggerating, they're yelling at us. In those in my classes I teach of like, what is wrong with you people? And this is what we want? Why are you still saying academic achievement is more important than close friendship? Like, why are you still saying that? Because that's not what's important in the world. I just have to say the fact that the Even This Close got this nomination. It's just about boys friendships. That's all the film is about. And then something happens because the friendship gets in the way, and the enormous response to it means that cultural change is already happening. Roy, It's already happening. This has been a wonderful conversation. I cannot think both both of you enough for giving me a piece of your time and giving our viewers a little bit of knowledge. That's all the time we have for today, Ted Naobe, thank you so much for going beyond the scenes with me so much. Listen to the Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts,