Magda: I'm once again doing my three-bus combo to the airport. So I catch the bus going across 7th Avenue, or 7th Avenue, 7 Mile at 853. And then I get to Woodward and get on the bus going down Woodward. And if I catch the express bus, it goes fast. But if I just catch the regular bus, it's like 40 minutes downtown.
Doug: “If I get the express bus, it goes fast.”
Magda: I know! It's amazing. And then I catch the 10:15 bus to the airport.
Doug: All right. So even though it's a noon flight, you've got like a full day getting there.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: So what did you think about that soliloquy I sent you from John Candy?
Magda: So gut-wrenching.
Doug: I mean, right? I got the idea for this because I saw the new biographical documentary about Steve Martin on AppleTV+.
Magda: Oh, I didn't know there was a biographical documentary about Steve Martin.
Doug: :Yeah, and it's called “Steve!” with an exclamation point.
Magda: I don't know how I feel about that, but okay.
Doug: The first half is about his rise to stardom, because he was the biggest entertainer in the world, selling out arenas with an arrow through his head.
Magda: Well, I mean that was because he had a special purpose.
Doug: Right, but at one point he pulls out a script. He pulls out the script.
Magda: Talk about pulling out a special purpose.
Doug: Wow. Oh my God.
Magda: I really sound like a jerk.
Doug: Someone has had a full day, haven't you?
Magda: I'm a fan of Steve Martin.
Doug: So in his library he has all of these identical looking, you know, scripts with bindings on them. And he pulled out the one from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and showed there was a two-page kind of a soliloquy at the end of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles that was eventually cut.
Magda: Okay.
Doug: At the end of the movie, spoiler alert, he says Marie's been dead for eight years.
Magda: Eight years. Wow.
Doug: He apologizes for attaching himself to Neil, but he says, I have no choice. The holidays are always really hard.
Magda: Right.
Doug: And the real revelation is that that trunk that they've been carrying along everywhere–
Magda: –contains Marie's body.
Doug laughs.
Doug: It's like seven, but bigger.
Magda guffaws like a yeti trucker.
Theme music fades in, plays, then fades out.
Magda: What's truly in the trunk?
Doug: It's far more distressing. It's that when she died, he decided he just couldn't be in his house anymore. So he absentmindedly put a bunch of stuff in a trunk and left with it. It was like a lamp and sheets and towels and napkins and he carries around with him literally like the baggage of his marriage.
Magda: Wow. So he doesn't have a place to live in the, like he doesn't have a home base.
Doug: No, he lives on the road. Yeah, he knows everybody on the road because that's the only place he ever is.
Magda: I mean, when I was traveling a lot for work, when I worked for the video game company, like I got to know people. I had a favorite barista in the Syracuse airport. That was weird.
Doug: The point is, Steve Martin in the special said, I'm sitting here off camera watching him perform this and just crying.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: But he said, “and for some reason it was cut and I don't know why.” And I was talking to Robert about this and we kind of settled on the idea that here was this man giving up his soul, revealing such deep truths about his sadness, his loneliness. I wonder how a vulnerability soliloquy from John Candy would test with audiences.
Magda: Well, okay. I mean, as you know, I forced you to watch that movie again at Christmas time because I thought it was a comedy. Because, you know, it's John Candy and Steve Martin, right? And I thought it was just going to be hilarious laughs, I hadn't seen it in 20 years, blah, blah, blah, I used the line, those aren't pillows whenever I get stuck traveling, all that stuff. And then we watched it and like, there are some funny parts, but it's really not like... Bad things happen. They're both in a bad emotional space. And there's kind of no catharsis, right? Like Steve Martin gets home, but John Candy's wife is still dead.
Doug: Right, but he gets a family.
Magda: Well, yeah, but.
Doug: You get the impression that if there were more trains, planes, and automobiles movie, he's in Chicago. Maybe he becomes Uncle Buck.
Magda: Maybe. I don't know. I just feel like Uncle Buck is a funny movie and Planes, Trains and Automobiles is like if Uncle Buck hadn't had any family and instead had gone out on the road.
Doug: Well, Uncle Buck has got some issues, too. There's some, you know, date rape stuff and it's not aged well. It's a product of its time.
Magda: OK, so in defense of Uncle Buck. Uncle Buck knew that the date rape was wrong and said in the movie that that was wrong and went after the kid. Like so it's head and shoulders above all those movies that presented that as being OK.
Doug: Yeah.
Magda: OK, this is turning into the movie podcast, so we got to cut a lot of that out.
Doug: Well, it is, but I think the segue point I was clumsily working toward is the whole idea about perceiving men in movies' vulnerability and recognizing that there's a lot of vulnerability out there that our young boys need and want to share, and they're not finding a lot of venues for it.
Magda: Yeah, I agree with that.
Doug: Because I sent you that piece in The Times, that op-ed about boys and loneliness.
Magda: Yeah, which was written by Ruth Whippman, who wrote the book BoyMom that I'm on the list to get.
Doug: Well, there's a whole list of these books. Yeah, I mean, I've read about six or seven of them, but I'll either mention here or just post in the notes. But there is a lot of ink spilled over the plight of young boys and how we're educating them and raising them and socializing them.
Magda: I think a lot of that stuff has been coded more Republican.
Doug: I was going to mention that, too. Yeah, that's...
Magda: That's the thing. I've noticed that this Ruth Whippman book is the first of those books that I feel the need to read. First, there were all the books about how girls were being harmed by the culture. And as part of that discussion, a lot of feminists who were raising boys were saying, “it's not just girls. Yes, girls are being harmed. We were harmed. In many ways, the culture is the same. But now that we have boys, we're watching as our kids are going through this sausage grinder.” But there wasn't a whole lot of discussion about that except among boy moms. It was almost like the feminists who didn't have boys themselves really absolutely 100% did not want to hear that boys were being harmed. Boys are only the aggressors Everything is evil in boys. It has to be squashed, et cetera, et cetera. And so a lot of times you just have to excuse yourself from the conversation because there's nothing that can change the minds of people who really desperately need to think that there's something so evil in boys that there's nothing the culture is doing that is making things harmful for them.
Doug: And it seemed like a lot of mom bloggers that I've known over the years showed a similar set of being conflicted just because clearly they're motivated to make life easier for women, and rightly so. But they're mothers of boys, and they have to recognize taking care of boys doesn't need to come at the expense of evening the playing field for girls.
Magda: Okay, so part of this is the American lack of nuance.
Doug: Ha! Is it American? I mean, it's more pronounced in America, but I think it's pretty human.
Magda: Yeah, but I think it's definitely like, you know, we make big gestures, right? So a lot of things are really horrifically sexist. And so the response to that hasn't largely been, let's look at things and make things more even for everyone, the response has been, let's squash boys. Because surely if we squash boys, girls will be able to rise up. Instead of saying, why don't we look at things from, I don't know, like a Universal Design for Learning perspective, right? What if we changed our structures and our systems so that things were better for humans?
Doug: Do you believe there's one template that we could work with just kids, independent of whether they're boys or girls?
Magda: Ummmm. A template...
Doug: See, that's the thorny issue for me.
Magda: A “template” is kind of a strong way of saying it, but there's a school of thought. It's called Universal Design for Learning. It is a book that's up online for free. So you can read it, you can access it that way. I read it, I don't know, 15 years ago and it kind of blew my mind. And that's how I've formed a lot of my ideas about how people should be managed and how managers should operate on a daily basis. The idea is that we are constantly, in all of the systems and processes that we create in our lives, we're over-designing to guide people into specific sets of behavior. And if we could strip back to what is absolutely necessary to get to a certain perspective or to get to certain actions or behaviors or goals, outcomes, whatever, it's almost always easier, simpler, and less friction to leave things as open as possible so people can get to the ends that they need.
Doug: Okay. But how do they get to those ends? Is that reliant upon extra help that makes the, quote, template that much more variegated?
Magda: It could be. It depends on what you're talking about, right? Like, I mean, it could be something as simple as how do you pay for something, right? There is a system that is designed to push people into one kind of behavior. Remember when you used to go places and they would say, oh, we don't accept MasterCard. We only accept American Express.
Doug: Right.
Magda: Why can't you just accept all forms of payment?
Doug: Well, because it's expensive.
Magda: Well, it's a false barrier. It's all unnecessary. It creates a lot of friction. And I would argue that it's making people less money overall.
Doug: Well, that's a discussion that we get into with our economic podcast.
Magda: It doesn't make any sense to make barriers for people who don't fit into the very specific process that you have designed. And I think that that's the same way we're raising kids and that society just treats humans in general, that it's like sort of false ideas of what people are capable of and what people want.
Doug: We're talking about education, which is a huge part of raising boys, especially since if you feel like the other in an educational situation, like most boys don't see a male teacher until high school.
Magda: Right.
Doug: And so they tend to associate, oh, okay, well, law and order, the teacher's a woman, so they're the gender in charge of the adult side of us, and we boys can just be boys because we're the students. But the bigger issue is just how this one piece, which I'll link to, it's an op-ed about, I mean, everybody's lonely since, or lonelier since COVID. And we're still digging out from that and rebuilding our connections and trying to rebuild our in-real-life lives because those are the most important ones. That's when you have touch and contact and facial recognition and inflection and the true nature of communication is available to us. But loneliness is specifically a problem for boys and men our boys' age. And I read the article to Robert while we were on the phone. He's like, yeah, most of that he tracks. Just the whole idea of how if you have something to say to get off your chest, there's one side of our culture that says you shouldn't do that, rub dirt on it and walk it off. And there's the other side that says, oh, we'd love to hear your problems, but you're taking space away from other people who've had a worse time of it recently.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: So what's left? You're basically being squashed. It's a big hydraulic conundrum.
Magda: You know, Robert and I have had a lot of discussions about this over the years. Like he verbalized when he was, I don't know, 15 maybe, that he thinks the reason so many kids his age, and he's 22 now, feel so depressed and anxious and incompetent is that they've never had the ability to actually confront real danger. You know, we as parents of his generation have been so afraid of our kids being hurt by things, that we haven't let them struggle. But we also haven't let them have these core experiences that kids always used to have, like with real danger. Like a lot of kids aren't even allowed to go out and poke things with a stick anymore anymore. Let alone go ride their bikes off to some weird place and pop wheelies.
Doug: Right, but I think that's generational. That's not boys versus girls, though, is it?
Magda: I think that boys and girls are hormonally pushed into different types of activity at certain ages, and that girls have been channeled into different kinds of risky behavior traditionally than boys have been. Does that make sense? I also think that the world is a riskier place for girls in general a lot.
Doug: I'm not sure that's true.
Magda: I think that's part of the other problem, which Robert also verbalized a lot to me, which is that he thinks a lot of boys just feel like they have nowhere to go. They have nobody to talk about their real feelings with, so they just have to be sort of robots or automatons that are performing at a very high level, have no chance to have any experiences that really test their mettle or their skills or anything like that. And they have nobody that they can say that to. And there was a point at which he started looking at incels online.
Doug: Oh, yeah.
Magda: All the time he used to say to me, if there's no one for them to talk to, they're going to start talking to these other dudes online. And these dudes online, the pickup artist people and the incels, are offering them...
Doug: An appreciative audience, yeah.
Magda: Yeah, they're offering them a place to say, “I feel really horrible.” And nobody else wants to hear, I feel really horrible, because if a boy, especially a white boy, says, I feel really horrible, somebody is going to say to them, well, that may be true, but everybody else has it so much worse than you do.
Doug: Right. And that's the point I wanted to stress, because a lot of the stuff we talked about was boys and how they're having a much tougher time being vulnerable with themselves, even with women. And I actually was curious about this too, because I remember when Brene Brown came to Dad 2.0 and was talking about men and fatherhood and all that stuff. And she said the biggest conundrum she came up with was, we want you men to be sensitive and embrace equality and open up your feelings, but we also secretly hate you for it. And I was blown away by that. It's like, all right, so what are you saying here? What are our options? How small is that eye of the needle so that we express just enough to keep your respect?
Magda: I don't think that that conclusion applies to the kids our kids’ age. What I think is the problem of this generation and by “this generation,” I really mean everybody under the age of 45, right? So millennials and Gen Z and Gen Alpha, the girls have been given permission and told that that they don't have to clean up these messes for these boys. And that's not something that previous generations were told. They were told, “You can fix him. You're the only one who can fix him,” right? And so girls felt like they needed to be the repository of boys' feelings because they were the only ones who could coax it out of them. Look at people talking about Pride and Prejudice. You know, people are like, oh, well, he could only, he could finally open up to, you know, Mr. Darcy could finally open up to Elizabeth. And I don't feel like that's what's happening in the book at all.
Doug: Yeah, people are talking a lot about pride and prejudice.
Magda: But I think there's this idea that girls don't owe boys anything anymore, right?
Doug: True. Yeah, absolutely.
Magda: However, we haven't done a good job of saying you don't owe anybody anything because the truth is boys don't owe anybody anything either, right? Nobody owes anybody anything. However, you can have genuine, kind, caring, mutual relationships with people of any gender in which you are holding somebody else's feelings for them, acknowledging their feelings, helping them work through their feelings, not because you're the girl and you're supposed to take care of the boy's feelings, but because you're friends. And I remember that it was sort of a big deal, maybe, oh, it's been about 10 years, probably, when people started figuring out that boys were having problems because often the only people they'd ever been able to talk about their feelings with were girls. I mean, of course, all of this is the most heterosexist conversation of all time, right? But the idea was that boys always got love and sex twisted up because the only people they could ever share their feelings with were the girls that they were having sex with.
Doug: Yeah. Yeah. That's that's Peggy Orenstein's book was amazing.
Magda: And that that was all screwed up. And so I went in hard with our boys on trying to help them be able to identify and communicate their own feelings and figure out who they knew, boys and girls, that could just be platonic friends of theirs that they could actually talk about feelings with. Their feelings, the other person's feelings, that kind of stuff. Because I did not want my boy children to end up in this situation which they were dating somebody because they just needed somebody to care about their emotions, even though they didn't really want to be romantic with the person anymore. I wanted them to be self-sufficient about developing close emotional relationships with people of all genders.
Doug: Which is interesting because you were the one who championed him going to a boy school.
Magda: Well, yeah, because I wanted them to learn how to be friends with other boys. I knew they were going to be able to be friends with girls because they were able to be friends with our friends who were girls. You know, my friends’ girls, stuff like that. I wanted them to learn how to be friends with other boys. And I also did not want them marinating all day long in a school system that was talking shit about the girls that they were sitting next to, constantly. And say what you will about all boys school, they are not hearing girls being insulted to their faces every day.
Doug: And let's be clear, I was for it too, just because a lot of information had come out about the power of single-sex education. And I taught in an all girls school for six years. And I had seen, for example, when I would teach these girls math, they were focused and they were students and many of them really gifted students. And then once a year, there was a brother school that came in for the day and it just, everything was different with them. They suddenly became coquettes. They suddenly were like putting their head side to side and, the socialization was there to appear dumb as a form of attraction. It is amazing to see girls and boys get together. And I think I haven't mentioned it on the show yet, but you know, my favorite gender specific story of all time is when I was on the playground at Madison Square Park. And Robert was two years old. And this three-year-old came in with his Little Tykes pickup truck. And he's driving in and all the kids Robert's age descended on this truck. But all the boys ran for the steering wheel and all the girls ran for the cab to sit in the back. It was phenomenal. These were three-year-olds.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: You can't actively teach a kid to want either of those things.
Magda: At the same age, Robert really wanted a toy stroller. You know, the stroller that was kid-sized.
Doug: Oh, yeah. We rode it to the park all the time.
Magda: Drive around, yeah. Well, he really wanted a stroller. And so somebody gave him one that was neutral-coded, right? It was blue. And he did not like that one. He wanted the pink one. He wanted that bubblegum pink one that everybody had. OK, so I got him the bubble gum pink stroller and we would put a baby doll in it and he would tip it over and dump the baby doll out and he would put a truck in the stroller and he would push the stroller around the playground and ram into things with it.
Doug: Well, you can blame, you know, Bob the Builder for that.
Magda: I mean, there's specific ages at which kids are wondering about different things, right? Like there's an age at which kids are really wondering about the nature of good and evil. Kids start to talk about “bad guys” a lot when they're three and a half and four. Kids get really into Darth Vader.
Doug: Yeah, they've seen some Disney villains and they're forming their binary nature of that. Sure.
Magda: Yeah, boys have a testosterone surge at that age and they're wondering about good and evil and they just physically get a little bit wilder at that age than the girls do. And that to me was the first time that I remember seeing people kind of recoiling in fear from the boys. I observed that people didn't see that as an opportunity to help boys figure out what to do with their emotions when they were feeling aggressive and physically aggressive. And that there were all kinds of things that boys could do when they were feeling physically aggressive that wasn't hurting somebody else, right? But people didn't seem to know how to channel boys into doing something that sort of tapped off that aggression and didn't make them feel bad about themselves. And then as those hormonal surges kept going, and the kids kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, society started getting more and more afraid of them. I remember there, both times, I sort of watched the difference between the way people had looked at first Robert and then Thomas when they were just walking. And people would look at these boys who were very cute and have this soft look on their faces like, “oh, I'm looking at Beaver Cleaver” kind of thing, right? And then at a certain point, they transitioned into teens and the people started looking at them with scorn and with fear.
Doug: Which people? What are their names?
Magda: Right. I mean, it was heartbreaking to me because I was like, wow, people really are scared of my baby now.
Doug: Right. Because as we've seen, it's all about judgment.
Magda: You know, also thinking it's got to be so much worse for people whose kids have always been coded as aggressive or scary.
Doug: And sometimes if you are told you are aggressive and scary, you kind of morph into that. You know, it's becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Magda: Yeah. But I mean, you know, there have been studies that say that people look at Black kids and estimate their ages to be much older than they are when they don't do that with white kids. Right. So, you know, looking at my scary-looking 14-year-old versus looking at somebody else’s Black 14-year-old who the people think is scary and also think is 18. Right? There just doesn't seem to be room in our culture for this space for boys to figure out who they are, and being wild being part of that without being threatening. Because most 14-year-olds are just tripping over their own feet. They do need to just run around and be a little wild.
Doug: I keep thinking about that Questlove essay about how he has to make himself as small as possible in his own elevator. Because he's a big Black man in a building in New York that doesn't have a lot of big black men in it. This could go on in any number of different directions about, I mean, at this point, you know, we're not raising our kids so much as seeing how they fare in the world. It's now kind of a wait and see thing. Can we be prepared at least to talk about it when they call us?
Magda: It doesn't matter if they can call us.
Doug: Right. Because we can't call them and say, “Hey, you feeling lonely, kid?”
Magda: Right. But I mean, the time for them to be talking to us about it is when they are kids and teenagers. And by talking to us, they should be learning that somebody cares what they feel. And that if they later are talking to somebody else who doesn't care what they feel, that's just not the person that they need. You know, and they can still be buddies with that person. But the idea is that it is possible to find people wherever you go who will be good enough friends to you that they care about how you feel.
Doug: Yeah. And there's only so much we can do for them. You know, I mean, we're right. Our love for them is boilerplate. That's baked in the pudding. So right. You know, it's a bigger issue to find empathy from someone who's not related to them.
Magda: Right. But the problem with this is that it's all a big game of prisoner's dilemma, right? Like I have raised my kids to be able to talk about their feelings. However, have enough people raised their kids to be able to talk about their feelings that our kids will intersect with those people and they'll be able to talk about their feelings with them? That's the question.
Doug: And have you had discussions about that with other friends who have boy children?
Magda: Yeah. It is a thing that I think especially women talk about. It would be great if we could get all of our boy kids to want to live on the same street and just be friends with each other. But that's not really how it all works out.
Doug: I think the main takeaway from this is that even though you'll find lots of stories in the media, in books, I mean, the subject sells a lot of paper.
Magda: But there aren't a lot of solutions offered, right? It's just like, “ohhhhh, these kids.”
Doug: Yeah. Let's get people riled up, you know? And so get a book you can nod vigorously at.
Magda: Okay. So this BoyMom book is coming out, but I've seen so much more press about the fact that somewhere 26 or 27% of Gen Z people reported bringing a parent to a job interview.
Doug: Hmm.
Magda: I’ve seen it all over the place, and it’s like really, I’m not convinced that, you know. I just didn’t want to take the time to go in and dig back to whatever the original research paper was on it.
Dog: Yeah.
Magda: Because research gets interpreted in the media in a certain way that makes it sound the exact opposite of what it was. Which, I mean, we know from the WHI study. But I just thought this is a weird thing for people to be absolutely fascinated by because it also seems like a self-limiting problem. Like if you bring your mom to the job interview, you're probably not going to get the job. So this isn't going to be like some epidemic that just increases itself. Instead, it's going to be something that people are like, oh, I shouldn't bring my mom to the job interview.
Doug: Unless like the salary is like a 70-30 split. Yeah.
Magda: I know, but it's such a funny thing for people to have focused on when I think the issue of boys specifically being lonely is a much bigger problem. There was a quote from the article written by Ruth Whippman that I thought was really interesting. She said, “Almost without exception, the boys I talked to craved closer and more emotionally open relationships, but had neither the skills nor the social permission to change the story.” So it's not even that boys don't know how to talk to each other. They don't know how to expose their emotions. They don't feel like they're allowed to.
Doug: Yeah, they'll get slapped back for doing it, for trying.
Magda: Yeah, they'll get slapped back.
Doug: And there's a level of homophobia in there.
Magda: Well, I think there's a level of homophobia, but there's also like, “how dare you even think that you have problems, because everybody else has it so much worse than you do.” And, you know, I really think that misery poker doesn't do anybody any good at all. If you are having a bad time, there's always going to be somebody who's having a worse time than you are. But that doesn't mean that you're not having a bad time. And that doesn't mean that talking about it won't make you feel better. And it also doesn't mean that you shouldn’t be looking for solutions to help yourself feel better.
Doug: And that reminds me, as a brief sidebar, I don't know if you saw this, but I posted this on Instagram stories, but there is a kid who pitches and his last name is Titsworth. And my first thought was, if you've been teased because of your last name, there's somebody out there who has it worse than you.
Magda: I am amazed that some ancestor didn't add a T or change something, a T to a D or something like that, just to get out of that, that mess.
Doug: Like how John Cleese's grandparents changed their name from Cheese.
Magda: Right. But I mean, Tidsworth is so much better or Titesworth or. it wouldn't be that difficult.
Doug: Yeah, that was a tough one. Anyway, back to the story. We were talking a lot about, yes, I agree. Someone's got it worse than you. But in our own little subjective reality, we're the hero of our story. And all we're looking for is empathy for what we need to say and what we need to share. And therapy is, I mean, I'm all for therapy. But I have to say, I haven't had the best therapists.
Magda: It's not a panacea. It doesn't fix everything.
Doug: Well, no.
Magda: Even if you have an amazing therapist, there are certain things that you can resolve, help alleviate with therapy and other things that just are not really the domain of therapy.
Doug: Right. Well, making the attempt is better than not making the attempt.
Magda: Well, it's true. But like cultural pressure, your therapist can't do anything about that. You know?
Doug: Well, I think some of them can. Sure.
Magda: Therapists can fix cultural pressure?
Doug: No, they can kind of help us control what we can control, which is our response to it, which is why...
Magda: It's true.
Doug: That's why Stoicism is so huge right now. Everyone's quoting Marcus Aurelius and saying, the only thing we can control is our own reaction to events. And the Stoics were more about like, all right, that happened. We're going to do as best we can to guide myself through this and get on the other side.
Magda: I mean, right, but then you're 85 years old, and you've never told your kids you love them, right? I mean, that's where stoicism gets us.
Doug: No, no, no, no. I don't think those are mutually exclusive. I just think in terms of coping with bad events, and it's kind of like the behavioral theory and how you're trying to change the size of your brain to think in certain ways.
Magda: Right.
Doug: It's fascinating. Just like yoga or TM. I mean, a lot of comedians are devotees of Transcendental Meditation. And I don't know enough to know how to distinguish it from regular meditation, but it's...
Magda: Well, it's transcendental. Yeah, I don't know.
Magda: OK, so you were talking about the Questlove essay about this. I just wanted to mention the really classic essay by Brent Staples called “Just Walk On By: Black Men in Public Space,” which was originally published in Ms. Magazine in 1986. And it was about exactly that. And the fact that Questlove had to write an essay about the exact same thing 40 years later is kind of crushing.
Doug: Well, and someone's going to write an essay like that 40 years from now.
Magda: Which makes me feel horrible.
Doug: Right, but we can't control the world. We can't change the world, but we can change our own little corner of it or do the best we can just to live the lives the way we think best serve the people we love.
Magda: Well, OK, then why are we doing this episode? I think like you and I have done a whole lot to our two individual children to help them try to make good emotional connections with other people. And so if all it is, is changing our little corner of the world, then why would we even care that everybody's lonely?
Doug: The corner of our world expands with every new person who subscribes to the podcast, engages with us on Facebook. And the whole point was I wanted to share some resources that I think have helped me. You've shared some that have helped you. I mean, Peg Tire's book is still the classic from 2009, I think it was. I mean, that predates Dad 2.0, The Trouble with Boys. Did you ever read Masterminds and Wingmen?
Magda: No, I don't know anything about Masterminds and Wingmen.
Doug: That's the sequel to Queen Bees and Wannabes.
Magda: Oh, okay. I thought Queen Bees and Wannabes had some interesting insights about the way girls behave with each other, but I'm not convinced that there are such straightforward analogs with boys.
Doug: Well, there's no straightforward analog to anything, I think. The point is just find some resources that you trust, read them and evaluate them a la carte, I guess, because I'm sure there are other listeners here who have boys who are sharing similar concerns, I guess, in terms of... Do your boys have friends? Do your boys feel that they can unburden themselves to their friends? And you don't need many. All you need is a couple, you know, if you're lucky. As a straight white man who grew up in the ‘80s, I grew up not thinking I had to change myself for anybody. You know, we were the part of the species that just kind of walked in like we owned the place. And now I think the next generation is realizing that everybody puts a mask on or everybody has to conform to a certain bit of behavior. You know, our boys,
especially when they feel very specific about how they approach girls they’re interested in. I mean, there are lots of boys out there who think the pickup artists of the world who are like, let's just be aggro guys about it. And, you know, unfortunately that works.
Magda: Do you think it works?
Doug: It works enough that it's propagating itself. Yeah.
Magda: I think that the pickup artist stuff is exactly the same as all of these internet marketing experts who want to sell you a thousand dollar course on how to market your own thousand dollar course, but they have not actually ever marketed anything. They're just telling you that this is the way to do it. I think the pickup artists are the same thing. I think they do not have any kind of meaningful relationships with women at all. I think it may work for them to get somebody's phone number in a bar, but it might not be the real phone number. Like I think a lot of girls can spot these guys a mile away and are either messing with them or are afraid to say, no, I don't want to talk to you, because a lot of times guys like that will go off and get violent if you tell them no.
Doug: Right.
Magda: So a lot of that, I think when they're claiming success, it's just women placating them to get out of a dangerous situation.
Doug: That could be true, too. I think, again, the term “works” means if you're using it and you see women as a conquest, you know, if that's your mindset of like, I'm going to get that girl in bed.
Magda: Right. But do you really think that many girls are hopping into bed with these guys because they're like, “Oh my gosh, he told me I'm dumb and stupid and fat. That must mean that I need to have sex with him.” Like, because that's what they're saying, right? Is if you neg girls enough, they're going to fall for you.
Doug: Well, but that was what our boys heard all the time at that all boys school. Kids would come in bragging about women, about drugs, about how fast they could drive their parents' cars, all that aggro bullshit.
Magda: Yeah, but did they believe them?
Doug: I don't know. I mean, our boys didn't. And if they did, they didn't care, for what it's worth. Thank God. You think about all of the middle school teachers who talk to their male students about Andrew Tate, how much his message has propagated around tweens and teen boys as a way of living your life. It's staggering. It's shocking and it's pathetic. And that's the kind of thing that's kind of been on the rebound ever since politics took that shift in 2016.
Magda: I mean, absolutely. If you've got a president who is himself a wannabe pickup artist, then suddenly there's permission for all of them.
Doug: Don't ruin my dinner. Jesus. Yeah, we're just changing our own little corner of the world. However big that corner gets remains to be seen. Frankly, I don't care. I love doing what I'm doing and I love organically attracting the people who want to hear more about what we have to say and want to contribute to what we're talking about. But we didn't anticipate what life as a man would be like now when the kids were born 20 years ago. And I think a lot of us, like everything else, we're trying to catch up and be there as a resource for our boys to when they come to us and say...
Magda: I don't know that things were less toxic when our boys were born.
Doug: No, they were more toxic. I'm saying when I was 22 years old, I felt nowhere near the situational angst that our kids feel.
Magda: And you think that makes things better?
Doug: No, I'm saying...
Magda: I just think things are different.
Doug: Yes, that's exactly my point.
Magda: I think boys are in a slightly different trap now than they were 20 years ago or 40 years ago.
Doug: Right. And so I'm curious to hear from other parents of young adult boys slash men what they're thinking about. I mean, I've been lucky enough. I had like hour-long discussions about politics with both the boys in the past week and what they think their role in the future of this world is because they're feeling pretty shut out of it so far.
Magda: Yeah. And I don't think that they think there's much of a future for the world either.
Doug: Right. You look at, we have the most prisoners in the world, even more than China, which has three times as many people as we do. And like 93% of them are men. Suicides are like five to one men. It's ridiculous. And those are the examples that our boys are seeing. And so I'm guessing we parents are still thinking about ways that we can keep them in conversations with us, see how they're doing, seeing how their mental health is holding up.
Magda: I don't have a real response to that. I mean, my response is, yeah. What you said makes sense.
Doug: I know I'm at a time now, and I think a lot of men that I've talked to, I've been fortunate enough to talk to about maybe a dozen guys my age about their adult sons in the past couple of months. And we're at this point now, it's like you're kind of easing back your chair and saying, all right, how'd this turn out? I'm just wondering what our listeners think in terms of the boys they've raised and the situations they've gotten into and successfully or otherwise worked their way out of.
Magda: I think that... Oh, my thought just flew out of my head. Let me get it back.
Doug: Well, hello, Senior Moment. It's our first Senior Moment brought to you by Bonine.
Magda: Right, exactly.
Doug: All right, shall we play Find the Thought Back? We were talking about... Talking about suicide in jail. Was it before that?
Magda: Oh, okay. So I think that the big thing that really needs to happen is that the larger dialogue needs to accept and allow for the fact that toxic masculinity and these really toxic structures that are incredibly harmful to women are also incredibly hard and destructive for men and boys. And until we understand that we are crushing our boys' hearts and souls, and that's turning them into people who are harming girls, the solution to that is not to say, let's just put all the boys on an island, let's freeze them out, let's not let them talk about their thoughts, let's tell them to shut up, let's tell them they don't get to have an opinion about abortion or about anything like that. If we can say, this is a problem that is crushing humanity. Why don't we roll it back and try to make all genders aware of the ways in which they and the other genders are being harmed, so that we can help each other out?
Doug: Yeah.
Magda: Like if boys weren't being told they were shit all the time, maybe they would not be so afraid to speak up when they see girls being hurt. If boys were not being told that the only value they had was as workers.
Doug: Or as sexual beings.
Magda: Right. Maybe they wouldn't be afraid to take parental leave. You know, I mean, I know so many men who would have been thrilled to be at home with their kids for three or six or 12 months, but absolutely could not say that at all. And were afraid to take the two weeks that their offices technically allowed them.
Doug: Oh, yeah. Well, now we're getting into your management issues and, you know, family friendly workplaces for sure. Yeah. And that's. It's a pressure because you get back, you say, listen, I'm allowed to have this time and I'm going to take it. And you come back and half your client base is gone.
Magda: Right, exactly. And I mean, there are other countries where they figure that out. But I mean, the thing is, men not being able to take parental leave, absolutely a zillion percent harms women. It derails them from their careers. It makes things unequal. It makes them the primary parent just by default. And it's so harmful to them, but it's also harmful to men. Because if you don't get that time with your kids when they're new to you, then you feel like you're always trying to catch up. And that's not fair either.
Doug: So to sum up, fuck the patriarchy.
Magda: Yeah, basically.
Doug: And recognize that fuck the patriarchy does not mean punish men. It means the patriarchy puts pressure on everybody. And it's all about how you want to lend yourself, lean into your capabilities, play to your strengths, and recognize that Whatever gender you were assigned at birth has nothing to do with the talents you have or the work you can do.
Magda: Right.
Doug: Anyway, well, yeah, that's it. Did we do anything that was of any use? I don't know. This is a topic for me as a father of sons. And again, if I had a nickel for every time, as a father of daughters, I really like, no, you're a father. You're a person. Of course, you don't need to be a father of daughters to want the women in your life to succeed and be safe and protected.
Magda: You know, every time I hear those dudes say, “now that I have daughters, I really understand.” I just always think like, wow, how do the other women in their lives feel, right? How do their mothers feel that they are basically saying, “well, I treated women like shit until I had a daughter.”
Doug: And the interesting flip side of that is I've heard almost as often, well, now as a mother of sons, you know, it works both ways.
Magda: I don't think we've treated men like shit. I think we've just underestimated the level of physicality that little boys have.
Doug: Right. But I think in terms of, like you say, mothers of daughters have a different approach than mothers of sons. I think there's a lot more antipathy toward male hegemony and much of it rightly targeted among mothers of daughters than there are mothers of sons. That's, I think, what you said, isn't it? Am I getting that wrong?
Magda: Not exactly. I think that people get really locked into the ways they see their specific children being harmed and they don't necessarily look around and see other people's children being harmed, to notice what those differences are and the different ways that other people's kids are being harmed.
Doug: And I think we should revisit this some point down the line with another either parent of sons or another expert who's maybe a therapist who works with boys or something that can add more information than we can offer. But I do think a discussion about this would be useful. Leave a comment, talk to us. I'll put something up in the Facebook group and we'll see what responses we get, if any.
Magda: All right. I think that's good. And I don't know what else there is to say about this, right?
Doug: No, there isn't.
Magda: Too long didn't read: It sucks.
Doug: Exactly. Well, that's the problem with us. You and I tend to agree more often than disagree and it makes for a boring conversation.
Magda: Oh, we disagree all the time about things that you think I should have watched.
Doug: You just disagree with me just now. There you go. You should totally watch Sherlock Holmes. Why haven't you watched that yet?
Magda: I don't know. No, I'm just kind of like, Benedict Cumberbatch isn't my dude.
Doug: And like, do you have to have a dude? Can you just enjoy the character studies?
Magda: Like Sherlock Holmes has always just been kind of a misogynist. And so I just like, it's just not my jam, man.
Doug: You know, speaking of which, you know what Robert mentioned on the phone call today?
Magda: What did he mention?
Doug: He was talking about, you know that movie Pirates Band of Misfits?
Magda: No. Was this a movie in wide release?
Doug: Oh yeah. It's an Aardman film. It's got, it's animated. It's about.
Magda: Oh, oh, oh. It's by the same people who did Wallace and Gromit.
Doug: Yeah.
Magda: Which, by the way, I'm very excited for the new Wallace and Gromit coming out.
Doug: Right. Yes. The sequel. Yes. That's going to be something. And it's all stop motion, right? No CGI. They did one CGI film and said, screw that. We're going back to clay. And it's going to take 17 years to make and we don't care.
Magda: I don't… Okay.
Doug: All right. Now we're getting back to the meaty here. Now we're going to talk about disagreements in terms of pop culture. But.
Magda: Yeah.
Doug: Anyway, Robert was saying like, it's just a great movie that I enjoyed as a kid. And I read this whole op-ed piece about like, it's a complete exercise in misogyny in terms of who the characters are and what characters the women serve. And it's like, can't you just enjoy a movie?
Magda: No, you can't. Like, no, I can't. I could have been watching a good movie or at least a movie that was interesting and had a different perspective. Or frankly, I could have been watching the chase to see if Stefano DiMera was still alive, which by the way.
Doug: Oh, come on.
Magda: He may still be alive on the show. The actor who played him is dead. But I mean, who is Victor Kiriakis' son? Is it Alex or is it Xander? I don't know. We got to find out.
Doug: Right. Even, you know, Dr. Evil went to the good side, but his son, Scott Evil, went to the dark side.
Magda: Mm-hmm. Yeah, but, you know, the thing is, the answer to the question, can't you just enjoy the movie, is no. When the movie is lazy and tired and sexist and misogynist, then no. There is so much great writing and acting and directing in all genres out there in the world. I don't need to watch things that are just tired.
Doug: Yes. And as we know, you're ignoring all of those and watching Project Runway reruns.
Magda: Yeah, but they're not, you know, those are interesting. They're about people putting things together.
Doug: As opposed to everyone else who's taking stuff apart.
Magda: Oh my God. That would be the funniest reality show ever. If you like to see who could take things apart faster and in a more organized way. Oh my God. They could give everybody like an old appliance every week and like a very limited set of tools, and then time them and then have them take it apart. And then they get a break to like eat a banana and drink a glass of water and go pee. And then they start the timer again to have them reassemble it.
Doug: Or just call it DIY. Destroy it yourself. See, I thought you were thinking they were doing Project Runway, but they also, unbeknownst to the competitors, there was some person who was sneaking into the dressing rooms and tearing up gowns and things.
Magda: Well, no, all you would have to do is you would just have to have dissolving thread as the thread in the bottom bobbin.
Doug: There's a such thing as dissolving thread? You mean like what they use for sewing wounds?
Magda: Yeah, exactly. And so you would just like, I think if when you get it wet, it would activate. And so they would sew the whole thing and then they would just like get it wet and half their stitches would be gone. You're going to have to take this out.
Doug: No, this is great. We're going to create a whodunit. There'll be the big mystery. “Who put the dissolvable thread in the bottom bobbin?”
Magda: I have like 40 ideas for reality TV shows.
Doug: All right, then you and I are going to collaborate to make sure one or two of them get made.
Magda: Okay, well, one of them requires Paul Hollywood, so get right on it.
Doug: All right, I'll get on it. I'll get his people onto my people.
Magda: Okay, and part of the deal with Paul Hollywood is if I signed him to a show, he would be required to come to my house and have me make him an actual American s'more so he wouldn't be walking around the entire world talking about what s'mores are and talking out his ass.
Doug: But would it have a soggy bottom or would it be a bit dewy?
Magda: Neither! It's made with a graham cracker!
Doug: See, now what happens if he comes to your house? And if you don't get that handshake, what happens then?
Magda: I have enough beer at my house and am good enough at making s'mores that I feel assured that I could make Paul Hollywood feel at home.
Doug: Oh, and that reminds me, I have plenty of beer, too. I'm about to have one.
Magda: All right.
Doug: So, with that, thank you for listening to episode 49 of the When The Flames Go Up Podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Neville Deggs.
Magda: Oh, God. Why? Why are you like this?
Doug: Why are you not? I am Doug French, as you may remember. Our guest has been our boys in absentia and their mental adjustment to what the hell's going on in the world. When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles LLC and is available on all the usual platforms and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe for our weekly episode every Wednesday and our Friday Flames newsletter every Friday. If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, please leave us a review. We'll see you next week. Until then, thank you for listening once again. Have a great week and buh-bye.