Episode 59: Transcript

"He Thinks, She Thinks"

Doug French: And now, sure enough. “You elegant, floofy gentleman. What's the story here? You gonna go back out? Because if you go out, you're staying out. Okay, yeah, it's dark out.”

Magda Pecsenye Zarin: He's not really staying out. He's gonna go out, and he's not gonna stay out.

Doug: This is his peak time to go out and pillage. Like, if I'm up late editing every so often, he'll get a reprieve, and I'll actually let him go out at like 11 o'clock at night, and he just looks at me with such adoration.

Magda: Ha ha ha!

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Doug: I gotta say, recording these things, this time of night, on days like this, I mean, I feel about the same way as I did when I just finished that ridiculous bike ride.

Magda: You're getting your second wind, right?

Doug: Yeah, it is. It's a weird endorphin rush after a full day of Wow.

Magda: Why don't you tell the people what you did today?

Doug: You know, we could just have a conversation, just you and me. But I mean, you know, most of it, I guess.

Magda: I just think it's funny that you did this thing today and you had so much fun with it because, you know, like I'm a people person. I would not want to do what you did today. I mean, and I have done what you did today, although not with the people you did it with.

Doug: I think my brain broke, but in the best way possible, just because canvassing with people is so much fun. I love when people end up talking to me. I don't care if people blow me off. I don't care if I show up at a house and there's an open garage with three cars and the windows are open but “nobody's home.” You know what I mean? It’s like, “I'm being avoided. That's fine.” I don't care if someone just looks at me and says, “I don't want to talk, man.”

Magda: Oh, okay. Like, everybody has their way of hiding from somebody. If they have somebody who knocks on their door and they don't want to be seen in the house. Like, in my house in Detroit, I have a couch right up against my big picture window. So I have many times seen someone coming up the walk with some sort of paraphernalia that they're from a campaign or, door knockers or selling candy bars or something like that and hurried up and scrunched down in the couch so they can't see me.

Doug: Yeah.

Magda: And in your house and I’ve have seen you hide in that little space between the edge of your window and your door.

Doug: It's the one place I can't be seen because I have these two big windows. And so there's only one little space where the angles are not visible from the street. And it's just this little area right by the stove. And I get myself real skinny.

Magda: And it's like when, you know, in one of those Warner Brothers cartoons, when somebody has to hide behind a tree, they can't quite hide behind the tree, right? Like it's not Bugs Bunny because he's skinny, but like Elmer Fudd has to hide behind the tree or like Foghorn Leghorn or somebody has to hide behind the tree. That's what you look like.

Doug: But except in those Tex Avery cartoons, you know, people can change their body shape entirely. So if they need to hide behind a sapling, they will become two inches wide and hide behind the sapling because all those weird surreal cartoons that are making their way around Instagram a lot right now, by the way, people are like, “oh, I miss the old cartoons.” Taking advantage of the fact that you are animating something, you don't need to make it obey the physical realm.

Magda: Right.

Doug: But the physical realm that I found myself in, first of all, I go to my canvassing appointment…

Magda: Okay, we didn't even say that this was about canvassing. I think we should introduce this by saying this was the big day that you went canvassing.

Doug: Oh, for God's sake. I'm getting there, woman. Whose story is this?

Magda: You're just like, “oh, my appointment.” I didn't even have an appointment, right?

Doug: Well, you have to make appointments, yes. There are five specified times to show up at the headquarters. So that they can train you or assign you a stack of houses to go see.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: They have five shifts a weekend, and they space them out so that people have enough time to finish their shift and come back for more, which I'm totally going to do because I'm jonesing for this nonsense. So I show up for my appointment at three and I knew that this was going to be a completely unannounced, unpublicized thing that Mark Kelly and Gabby Giffords were going to show up and just kind of motivate the troops. You know, black SUVs and walk in the back and come out and say hi and press the flesh and turn around and leave. They were there and they took pictures with us all and whipped up the crowd, but good. And the cool thing is I actually knew that he grew up like five miles from me and is also my same age. He's only a year older than I am. So our high schools were about five miles apart and our senior classes were only one year apart. So we had so much in common and then our paths kind of, you know, they diverged a bit, but I was able to mention that because he surely was not expecting to come across some dude from Essex County, New Jersey, while he was campaigning in Ypsilanti, Michigan. So that was fun. That was a nice perk. You know, you meet them both and then you head out. And I was assigned to this, like, it's like a Toll Brothers community. I mean, it's awesome for canvassing because every house has its house number etched into the exact same point in the facade.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: There is absolutely zero work to find out which house you're going to. And I had 58 houses to get to. (Boy, it's good for getting your steps in, by the way.) And just a gorgeous day to do it. And the best conversations I had were with people who weren't on my list because you have designated houses to go knock on based upon, I guess, previous Democratic activity. Which is bullshit. I want to talk to everybody. And the best conversations were with people that I bumped into on the street. Like one guy I talked to, he was delivering DoorDash. The house didn't answer the doorbell.  By the way. And everybody in this complex has one of those high-tech, got-to-see-who's-coming doorbells.

Magda: Do those have a special ring sound to them?

Doug: Yes. And one of them says, “hello, you're being recorded.” So, cool. All right. I guess they've had the problem with porch pirates in that neighborhood.

Magda: I think every neighborhood has had some problems with porch pirates.

Doug: Well, I have never. I mean, and this is what makes me a hick because I leave my house open wherever I leave it.

Magda: Oh, God. Why don't you just announce that?

Doug: And my address…

Magda: Look, anybody can look up and find your address, Doug.

Doug: It's the freedom of not owning anything valuable. I mean, you know what? Come in. Pillage around the place. I don't care. There's nothing in here I'll miss.

Magda: You are such a man. To you, the fact that somebody could get into your house is only about them stealing your stuff.

Doug: Yes. And that's actually, you know what's now that's an excellent segue to what we were going to talk about. How men think about things versus how women think about things. Because that came through in the conversations that I had as well, even with the DoorDash dude, the DoorDash dude, he's bulletproof, you know, and it's still not sure why he even has to vote. And I talked to him. I was like, “oh, okay.” And I think I got him to at least consider showing up because I told him all the ways he can do it. But also I was talking to a bunch of women on this route as well. And women who are out walking their dogs or walking around with their kids. And I would just, you know, walk up all friendly-like and say hi. And I'd introduce myself from like 20 yards away so that no one's startled.

Magda: Okay, so let me ask you a question. Were you wearing a uniform or a t-shirt for a campaign or anything like that? Or did you just look like a regular big guy with a big voice?

Doug: I had a clipboard full of Kamala Harris paraphernalia and a button and some stickers.

Magda: But you weren't wearing, like, a polo shirt with, like, “Blue Wave” or anything on it.

Doug: They don't have those.

Magda: I don't know. The Ann Arbor Democrats are probably a lot fancier than the Detroit Democrats are.

Doug: Well, these are the Ypsilanti Democrats who are not fancy.

Magda: Oh, oh, oh.

Doug: That was the amazing thing about having Mark Kelly show up because this was a small thing. I mean, someone was off buying the fire marshal lunch when this happened because there were more people in that building than had any right to fit in there.

Magda: You should cut that part out.

Doug: Yes, people come to my house.

Magda: People are going to be like, “oh my God, we've got to invalidate the election. Ypsilanti Democrats had too many people in their room.”

Doug: And I bet one or two of them don't have their updated license plate registration like I don't.

Magda: Okay, so you go there. You're about to be Gregarious Doug, the version of you that we all know and like to talk to. And you show up and there you had looked up and discovered that Mark Kelly grew up very close to where you grew up.

Doug: Well, I was reasonably certain I had nothing in common with Gabby because she grew up in Tucson.

Magda: If nothing else, her heat tolerance puts her out of range for having anything in common with you.

Doug: I guess, well, to grow up in Tucson, you live in a microwave. I guess you're used to it at this point. It's a dry heat, et cetera.

Magda: It's a dry heat. It's not a microwave. It's more like a convection oven.

Doug: The main thing I was getting to is one of the questions I asked everybody that wanted to talk to me was, “is there one issue that stands out among all others that you're voting on in particular that stands out as something very specific that differentiates the two candidates?” And every woman I talked to talked about reproductive care. And one dude said, “Bitcoin.” He says he wants us to have a nationwide registry of backup currency in Bitcoin. I was not expecting that.

Magda: That is a very interesting single issue.

Doug: Yes. And it was not on my bingo card.

Magda: Seriously. You had to, like, go to check the “other” box. Fill in “National Bitcoin registry.” So basically... Since we're off the gold standard and have been off the gold standard for like a gazillion years, he would like us to go on the Bitcoin standard?

Doug: There is no Bitcoin standard.

Magda: I know! He wants to create a Bitcoin standard. Is that what it is?

Doug: You can't pick fights with these people. I didn't see it. He was there. He's walking his dog and his three-year-old son. And it didn't strike me as the best opportunity to say, “are you out of your goddamn mind? That's what bothers you.”

Magda: Wow.

Doug: OK, that's dudes, right? That's different.

Magda: People are at different places in their lives. And like the idea that that is a thing that you would worry about, like when a stranger on the street comes up and asks you, like, what's your big concern in this election? Like, what's your big issue? And you whip out with a Bitcoin standard, a Bitcoin registry like, God, there's 500 things I would come up with before that. If we're talking about the difference between men and women and how men and women approach things, I would hazard a guess that your average man would come up with about 50 other things to talk about before they came up with Bitcoin also.

Doug: I know! I mean, just the whole species is so odd, but so endearingly so. You know what I mean? I don't know why talking to these people gives me energy.

Magda: I don't know either.

Doug: It's just so many weird stories that I just can't get enough of.

Magda: I think that's kind of charming about you. I mean, after the Bitcoin thing, I probably would have needed a little break. What do you have for me back at headquarters? Do you have some Kit Kats? I can use a Kit Kat.

Doug: They do. In fact, we couldn't get to the kitchen because the kitchen was where all the security was. They locked off the back half of the building. So I couldn't get to the kitchen to get my fun-size Snicker bars before I head out.

Magda: Fun-size Snicker bars! Did they have LaCroix? LaCroix is like the national drink of the Midwest.

Doug: Well, but it's too sparkly. You don't want to drink too much LaCroix. Then you have gas and try to talk to people. I think it's all water.

Magda: Oh, yeah, you're right. Ask them questions and you just burp at them.

Doug: Yeah, exactly. [makes burp sound] Anyway, so yes, these discussions have been absolutely illuminating and energizing. And I have so much faith in the future and so much skepticism at the same time. I'm just experiencing all of these things at once.

Magda: What is it that's been energizing about it? Is it that people are really feeling positive? Everybody's going to vote for Harris or like what's energizing about it? Because I just feel like a lot of people have a lot of problems.

Doug:  They do, but everybody's cordial about it.

Magda: Oh, okay. All right.

Doug: You know, even the Republicans. I mean, I had one conversation with a dude with a really big aggravating dog. I mean, this dog was upset and demanded to walk and was about three feet at the shoulder. And I wasn't going to mix it up with him. And he gave me a little bit of attitude, too. He's like, you know, “no soliciting, brother.” And we've been trained. When you're trained, they say No Soliciting signs don't matter to us because we're not selling anything. And you can say so.

Magda: Right. You're not selling anything. Yeah.

Doug: One guy actually opened the door and tapped the sign.

Magda: That seems like it defeats the purpose. 

Doug: I know!

Magda: We should develop and market some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption that you can affix to the underside of your porch. So when somebody rings your bell and you've got a No Solicitation sign, you can click something from inside and it shines a laser pointer right on the no solicitation thing.

Doug: See, now this is how men and women think differently, because here I was thinking you read the No Soliciting sign to a plunger that jolts out of the wall and hits the wherever-it-was in the solar plexus.

Magda: That would result in lawsuits. My idea results in nothing but profit.

Doug: Well, sure. We'll sort that out when the smoke clears. And again, I've seen too many Three Stooges episodes.

Magda: He tapped the No Solicitation sign.

Doug: And too many Tex Avery cartoons, for sure. Yeah, because in Tex Avery cartoons, people get absolutely walloped and nothing happens.

Magda: So do you remember my idea about how when I was living in that house in Ann Arbor, how I used to get Jehovah's Witnesses coming to my door all the time?

Doug: Yep.

Magda: And my problem with Jehovah's Witnesses is not that they come to the door. Like, they think that they need to do that for salvation. Who am I to get in the way of somebody else's salvation, right? Yep. their theology is bad.

Doug: Oh, yeah.

Magda: They would come and tell me all this stuff about fire and brimstone. And I had to do this specific list of stuff to be quote unquote saved. And like, you know, that's not the kind of Christian I am. I'm the social justice kind of Christian. So I was this close to making up a tract and having it Xeroxed that all had the like pro women in Christ. “There is no man, nor woman, no slave, nor free,” like all of those “pro people, be yourself, God loves you no matter” what verses printed up and then try fold it and just have a big stack of them by the door so they could hand me their watchtower and i would hand them my tract. If you came to my house with your Kamala stuff, I might have given you one of my tracts, but it would have been more like swaps more like friendship bracelets.

Doug: That's a fair trade, yeah. I think it's a good barter system.

Magda: I don't have any need for any Kamala merch because I, you know, I'm voting for Kamala.

Doug: Well, and the best part was I came home from canvassing and found the exact same merch that I was distributing in Superior Township wrapped in my screen door.

Magda: Do you remember when my mom, who lives in Minnesota for people who don't know, was in a room phone banking for Tim Walz? This was, I don't know how many years ago, whenever Tim Walz was running last time. Her cell phone, she was on the phone on one of the like house phones they had in the Democratic headquarters. And her cell phone rang right after she got off a call with somebody and she picked it up. And it was somebody from in the room with her calling her to phone-bank her. She just stood up and waved at the person in the room. “Oh, so nice to talk to you. I'm right across the room.”

Doug: I mean, the conversations are amazing, but I know when we talked about this idea, this idea came from the VP debate. Just because of the visceral way people are reacting to JD's performance. And I touched on it a bit in Friday Flames last week. Just the whole idea of how when I was listening to this guy just lie his head off, but do it in such glib, straightforward, polished ways. I just wanted to get up into his grill and just call him a liar to his face. But you had a much more visceral opinion of it or just reaction to it.

Magda: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I saw people saying, “oh, no, J.D. Vance is winning.” And it's like, but I don't know what you mean by win, right? Like if he was a debater in high school, yes, he won because he got a whole bunch of points. But he is clearly a psychopath who was lying the entire time. He was lying about everything! Lying his head off. And so who really cares how many rhetorical flourishes he did? And people are like, “oh... Tim Walz looked kind of nervous.” Well, yes, I think any normal human being when on a stage with this slimy liar would look a little bit like they were fumbling in comparison. And he just, to me, was terrifying because he looked like. that abusive guy that everybody knew and one of your friends had dated and then had narrowly gotten away from. I mean, he just terrified me. And then Kate Anthony, who was on a podcast with us–I don't remember which episode number it was–but Kate Anthony is a divorce coach in Los Angeles. And she was on the show with us talking about how to get a divorce when you know to get a divorce, that kind of stuff. And she posted a post that I thought was very, very accurate. She said, “JD Vance is the abusive husband who agrees to go to couples therapy and manages to look charming and empathic and reasonable to the therapist so that they think they're dealing with a normal and open-hearted person. And even the wife begins to have hope until she later realizes that every single thing he said in therapy was a lie designed to make the therapist like him and think she's crazy for not seeing how great of a guy he really is.” And I don't know how many times I saw that shared. Because every woman who's been in that situation herself, her sister, her friend, her cousin, her mother, her grandmother, like every woman knows at least one guy who's like that, who's just a chronic liar, but who's so slimy and slithery and smooth that he makes everybody else think, “oh, I don't know what's wrong with me that I don't like this guy. He's so likable.” 

Doug: Yeah, I mean, like, he makes up for the fact that his wife is not white, and he manages to love her anyway. I mean, what a good guy.

Magda: I know, right? That was just so gross. I mean, when he said that, he said, well, “Usha's not white, but I love her anyway. She's such a great mom.” Oh, my God. Right? What? “I love her anyway.” Can you imagine if your spouse said, “I love you anyway”? That's not what's supposed to happen in marriage. It's supposed to be, “I love you because of all this stuff.” It's not “I love you anyway.”

Doug: I'll say, I have told you this. Those are my four favorite words, but not for that reason. If you can say to someone, “you drive me crazy about this, but I love you anyway. Because you're flawed, I'm flawed, but we're okay for each other.” You know?

Magda: I think you might want to work on that a little bit because I think first of all, somebody who drives you crazy enough that you say, I love you anyway, it might be a trauma bond. It might not really be meant to be. I think there's a level of somebody being able to get your goat perfectly, but that's not, “I love you anyway.” That's I'm so proud of you for being able to get my goat perfectly.

Doug: But I'm thinking if there's one thing that your spouse likes to do and is out doing right now so you can record a podcast.

Magda: Okay. I love him anyway because of that.

Doug: Yes! Yes!

Magda: But, you know, you don't have to have the same interests as the person.

Doug: No, I agree, though. It's much more reliant on context than I initially thought. And I think you're right. “Anyway” can take on a very benign situation or it can be a really malignant one.

Magda: It's like “I love you anyway, even though you like Pepsi versus Coke” is fine. “I love you anyway, even though you're not white” is not fine. Not fine at all.

Doug: Have you seen that guy? I forget his name, but he's on Instagram and he basically talks about red flags.

Magda: There are a lot of guys on Instagram. Is it Therapy Jeff?

Doug: It's a comedian, I think. And he just kind of, like, runs across the screen carrying an enormous red flag going, “oh my God, red flag, red flag, red flag.”

Magda: No, I have not seen him.

Doug: Luckily, again, from the days of parent blogging, I have a bunch of mom bloggers who I can still contact and chat with from time to time. And one of them said, “he's one of the reasons why women walk to their car with their keys between their knuckles.”

Magda: Uh-huh. Yup. I think there are a lot of us who just sort of assume that a quote unquote normal, typical man isn't going to get physical. Like even if he calls us names, even if he, I don't know. But J.D. Vance just has that chaos energy that is terrifying.

Doug: Well, and first of all, I'm not going to sit here and say someone won the debate or not. I think anyone saying that a debate was won? Unless it was a stomping, like with Kamala over Trump, because Trump is out of his mind screaming about dogs.

Magda: I don't think Kamala won that debate. I think Kamala went to a debate and Trump went to some other event.

Doug: But it's all about subjective reality. And that's what I get so invigorated by witnessing everybody else's subjective reality and how completely weird we all are. And your lens is going to dictate who won the debate. I was pulling for Tim, but I think, in the end, the two sound bites that came to me were, one, 

“hey, you said you weren't going to fact check me,” which is hilarious when it's not terrifying.

Magda: Right.

Doug: And the other one was, “will you say now that Trump lost?” And he's like, “I'm thinking about the future.” And there are people now that I've talked to who are like, “yeah, I was on the fence about that dude, but now for him to say he won't even admit that Trump lost,” even though Trump in his weaker moments has admitted he lost by “a little bit.” And Mike Johnson won't say it either. He was on with, what's his name? Stephanopoulos today. And he wouldn't, you know, “why are you obsessed with this?” It's, you know, I'm focused on the future.” Yes, because talking about what happened in the past to make sure this doesn't happen in the future.

Magda: I think those were the two things that really came out of it were those moments. But for me, the thing that was most striking was when they were talking about reproductive care and abortion rights. Vance kept pulling out women's stories.

Doug: Which he had locked and loaded thanks to whoever supplied them for him.

Magda: But I'm not convinced that whoever supplied him those stories gave him permission to use those stories. Like every time he tells a story, it makes somebody look bad. Like he just kept telling stories about his mother. And I was like, “oh, my God, would you ever say those things about your mother? Is his mother actually proud of him for airing every bad moment she had in his pursuit to get to the top?” But he, you know, he pulled out all these stories of these women who really regretted it and all this kind of crap. And Tim Walz just kept sticking to it and just calling it “reproductive care.” You know, and I mean, Vance was like, “you can get an abortion when the baby's viable.” Like, oh my God, people, that doesn't happen unless there's something so wrong with the baby that carrying the baby to term would kill the baby and the mother, right? Like it just, it's not even a thing that happens. And Walz just stayed on point and just kept referring to it as reproductive care. Like, you know that this man isn't going to sell you out, that he's not going to get in and then be like, oh, “let me shut this down.” Vance just kept saying, well, “what it shows me is that we have to work harder to make women trust us.”

Doug: Hahaha!

Magda: Like he's just going to come up with a megaphone and scream into our ears, “trust me” until we trust him instead of changing policies that we can't trust. So the entire thing was just very frustrating to me. And, you know, Mike doesn't get frustrated at all, but he was sitting there and he was like, “Oh. Oh! Is saying something. And so if you can get Mike riled up with your lies, you're a lying liar.

Doug: That is an achievement. Man. We were all, the bar went absolutely ballistic when JD said he was focusing on the future. I mean, I thought the roof was going to come offI was.  hoping somebody would say, can we talk about the 700-800 people who have signed a letter saying we've worked with him once and we'll never work with him again, and he's unfit for office? Why was nobody from his cabinet there? Why is Mitch McConnell speaking out against him? Why is every Republican except the little fuckhead apparatchiks saying anything?

Magda: When Mitch McConnell doesn't like you, I mean, oh my God, you're the lowest of the low.

Doug: Well, and we're getting into another…

Magda: Yeah, we're ranting. So can we get back to talking about what you see as the differences between the way men and women look at this? Were you talking to people specifically about the debate, or were you just talking to people about the election? Because you said you talked to people at church, too. And this was before you were canvassing.

Doug: And thank you, by the way, for giving people advance word of why I missed church when I was off riding my behind off. I got a lot of, “wow, what the hell have you been doing?” Thank you.

Magda: Did people say, “why are you such a nut?”

Doug: I got that, yes. A couple people were like, “are you out of your mind? I mean, that's amazing, but wow.”

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: And this dates back to the last conversation about menopause too, because I was there listening to you and MaryBeth talk a lot about what you're going through and what her patients go through. And all that time I was thinking “men have so little idea about what's going on and we're not socialized to care about it.” And I think it's really important to speak out to partners to say, you got to understand what's going on here because this is the time when there's so much pressure and stress on women as they try to navigate this that that's the kind of thing that can lead to real marital problems.

Magda: It can, absolutely. I mean, I know people whose marriages have broken up because, and these are heterosexual marriages. I'm trying to think if I know any lesbian marriages that have broken up because one of them was in menopause. I don't think so.

Doug: It doesn't seem likely just because you'd think there'd be some level of empathy involved there.

Magda: I mean, even if there was like a big age difference, so one of them had gone through it earlier than the other one did or something like that. And, you know, women have different sets of ailments, too, and afflictions with it. You know, like I tell my mom what's going on with me in perimenopause and she's like, “holy crap. None of this stuff happened to me.” She had a totally different pattern. Like she had symptoms after she went through menopause, but not before that she could perceive. Of course, now, you know, I mean, we got that whole list of symptoms from MaryBeth. I think if we asked my mom, “did you have joint pain and some of the other physical symptoms?” she might realize that she had had them, but she didn't perceive herself to be having a difficult time in perimenopause. And when she went through perimenopause, they didn't even call it “perimenopause.” They didn't have a name for that stage. So I know a number of women whose marriages have broken up because their male partners didn't understand and didn't attempt to understand how completely affected they were by perimenopause. And I know that I just don't feel good now like I did 15 years ago, you know, and I've been in perimenopause now for nine years and it's fluctuated. I feel much better now that I'm on HRT and have been on it for almost three years than I did before I went on it. I mean, there was a time before I went on it where I was like, I think I could just literally die. Like I feel so weird and not like myself. I just, every morning when I woke up, I was kind of amazed that I hadn't just died in the middle of the night from just, you know. And so I feel much better now, but I still don't feel good on a daily basis. And sometimes it's symptoms that I could tell you about. Sometimes I just don't feel like myself and I feel weird. I think if. You had a male partner who was really unwilling to process that because I think sometimes men are trained not to acknowledge anything that they can't fix. And so if a man can't fix what's wrong, then I think a lot of times he's been socialized to just kind of deny that it's happening. That'll destroy your relationship. you know? And also if one of the big characteristics of perimenopause is being cranky, you're just much crankier in general. And then your partner isn't going to feel good because you're cranky at them all the time. And if they don't understand that you are just cranky all the time and it has nothing to do with you. And sometimes it doesn't even have anything to do with the things that are happening around you. There's no control for it. Yeah. Marriages just fall apart.

Doug: I'm now wondering, what if Holland Taylor and Sarah Paulson are going to have this discussion?

Magda: How old is Sarah Paulson?

Doug: I think they're about 30 years apart. I think she's in her late 40s or early 50s.

Magda: Holland Taylor is 83. I know that. I think I know that. Okay, Sarah Paulson is 49. Oh, and Holland Taylor is 81. She's not 83.

Doug: Now, I was told you weren't going to fact check this.

Magda: So, I'm guessing that Holland Taylor probably was put on estrogen back when she went through menopause because this was before that horrible WHI study. And so they were still prescribing estrogen for women back then. And so she probably just, you know, muddled through it with estrogen. And I would hope that Sarah Paulson has doctors who have access to the latest research and are putting her on whatever she needs to go on, too. I don't know.

Doug: Well, because I was thinking about this in terms of the main things that afflict men and women at our age. And women, we've made it clear. I think they've just, and you correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think there's a level of resignation there because women have been super focused on what their bodies do since they're 12.

Magda: Yeah, you have to be.

Doug: And men don't have to worry about that. They just have to be told to feel their balls up every once in a while and look for lumps. But then you hit your 50s, and you are thinking about your prostate, and you're thinking about your heart, but you're also thinking about how much more prevalent suicide is among men my age. I mean, a lot. It just leaps off the page. And when you think about why that is in terms of what we're supposed to have accomplished by now, or whom we're supposed to be loving by now, I mean, there's just a level of despondency and anger which gets turned sideways and gets turned into a red cap or whatever else. I wonder what the other side of that would be as far as, do women even want to figure out what's going on with their male partners because they're too busy figuring out what the hell's going on with their own bodies?

Magda: Um, I think women are figuring out what's going on with their male partners all the time because I think women are just default level trained to do that. Like, you know, we're scanning our own bodies, but we're also scanning our environment constantly. I think women are also just resigned that men are often not going to take care of themselves. Like even knowing what's going on with our male partners doesn't mean that there's any effect we can have on it.

Doug: Really? There's a resignation about the influence you have over your male partner?

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: Because I wouldn’t have guessed that. I would think, certainly the women in my life, you included, have been particularly insistent on certain things, until it’s time not to be anymore, and I get that. And let’s be clear that women are not a monolith. Let's not group all women in this one bloc. But I do think that there are a lot of women who will go the extra mile and will stay on their partners to get to the doctor and go to the cancer screening and get your colonoscopy and all that other stuff. Like when Bill came on to talk about his hip replacement and he confessed, it's like, “yeah, my wife did everything. You know, I was looking at a magazine and I looked up and she was talking to the doctor and she was scheduling the appointment.”

Magda: OK, but she scheduled the appointment and he went to it. That's a big difference between what a lot of women experience, which is they cannot get their partners to do anything about anything that's wrong. Like they could make an appointment. They could trick their husbands into getting into the car and they could drive them to the appointment and open the door into the revolving door. So he has no choice but to just go into the lobby of the building and these men still won't go. So I'm not talking about women not being able to help because I do think we just have this role of being the ones who make the appointments, identify what's wrong, you know that kind of stuff. I'm talking about men who possibly have alexithymia–you know what alexithymia is?

Doug: I don't know that. I don't know what that is.

Magda: It's when you can't identify the sensations in your body or your emotions. A lot of men have just been so conditioned to just keep going no matter what, but they don't even know how to identify when something physically is wrong with them. Like, you know, you hear about these guys who are quote unquote workaholics, right? Who will just be at their desk plugging away or doing something like that and they forget to eat. Well, forgetting to eat is a form of alexithymia. It means that you're not obeying your body's hunger signals. And then suddenly they'll be like, “why does my stomach hurt?” And then it's like, “oh, because I haven't eaten in 10 hours.” But it's also a form of alexithymia to just have aches all over your body or to be sad all the time and not know why, to be angry all the time and not know why. You know, a lot of times that happens when people are grieving something. that they just start feeling physically bad. But I think a lot of men are just trained not to even identify what's going on, not to put a name to it. And so, a lot of times if a woman says, “you need to go in and see someone about it,” well, the guy doesn't even know what he's feeling. Who's he going to go see? Are you going to go see a cancer doctor? Are you going to go see a therapist? Are you going to go see, like, an orthopedist? If you don't have any idea what it is that's making you just feel bad, where do you even start? And there are men who are not willing to even go with the process.

Doug: This is another reason why I can feel siloed in a way, because all the men I know and have become friends with, they're the ones who will listen to such a thing. I mean, every once in a while, there's one guy who's an alcoholic who won't stop drinking. That's happened entirely too often, I'm afraid. And he won't stop drinking until his guy friends take him aside and say, “you got to stop drinking,” no matter what his wife says.

Magda: But that's because people who are like each other and have the same approach to life usually end up sticking with friendships. You know, like you might start out being friends with somebody who has a different approach to life. By the time you're our age, like your friends are the people who are like you. So yes, you, Doug French, probably do not know a lot of men who are unable to identify when they're hungry or unable to identify when they need to drink water or unable to identify when they're feeling sad, right? Or are unwilling when somebody says, “you don't seem like yourself. Could I help you book an appointment with your doctor?” Right? Like they're not going to say, “No,” because the people you know are people who are more like you.

Doug: Right, but I think the difference is because women tend to talk a lot more about these things amongst themselves and just share more intimate details about things that upset them. You know, guys just get in there and they quote Monty Python lyrics and that's all we do.

Magda: Right. Yeah, you guys go play basketball, right?

Doug: But I think you have a lot more experience just talking with other women about issues they're having with their partners about “how he's got this. I know exactly what it is. He won't act on it. I don't know what to do.” Because I don't have access to that because it's just the nature of who we are. I think if we all have the same blind spots, we're not going to know about them.

Magda: What you have access to is guys who are saying, “I was feeling X for a while,” and my female partner said, “hey, have you thought about getting that looked at?” And I said, “oh, yeah, that's a good idea. And I made an appointment,” Right? That's what you have access to. But that's not everybody. And I don't even know if it's the majority of people. I don't know. I just know a lot of women are... really at the end of their ropes with it, and they know there's nothing they can do about it.

Doug: Being at the end of your rope is a very particular sense of exasperation, especially given the nature of politics the past eight years. So what I really think men need to have a better sense of is just how exasperated women are, because a lack of awareness about that, which is only going to get more pronounced ,as you age that's where the real shit hits the fan because now when you start seeing these fundamental rights being taken away on top of all the other bullshit–the pay gap, being catcalled–there's a lot of that that men just can't relate to,including all of the shit that goes down with however menopause is ravaging your insides and outsides. But I think there's an insight there as far as recognizing that if couples are going to last after their kids are gone and after they have every reason to consider diverging from each other, this is a big part of it. Just kind of having discussions like this.

Magda: And I think it's not just when your kids are gone, because I think there's this idea that a lot of times there are couples that are great at being parents together and then the kids leave the house and they realize they have nothing in common. I don't think it's exactly that. I think there are years and years and years and years and years and years of resentments built up on both sides, but they're holding it together for the kids. And then once the kids are gone, they have nothing to look at except those resentments.

Doug: And I think that's what we're going to end with here is just the idea of this is kind of a leaping off point to kind of start dialogues about how our relationships are going. And how our insights into those relationships are evolving. And I'll tell you, it's funny you mentioned what you mentioned. The coup de grace of this whole day, this whole afternoon was I went up to this house and the garage is wide open. There's bicycles, athletic equipment strewn everywhere. Three cars in the garage. The front door is wide open. So I'm like, okay, they're home. I knock on the door and four kids run by. I'm like, “okay, so this is going to be a short discussion because there's a lot of stuff going down here.” So I open the door and this very nice woman comes out and says, hi. I was asking her the issue question. There's the one issue that you think this election is based on. And she said, “well, yeah, I think it's all about character. I'm very concerned about understanding of what reproductive health care is. I think it's really amazing that they won't admit about losing the election four years ago. They're just not trustworthy.” And she went on this whole educated, well-rounded, well-informed view of what the political situation was. I'm thinking, oh, great. Well, and so do you have a voting plan? “Oh, no, we're Jehovah's Witnesses. We don't vote.”

Magda: GASP! Oh, my God. Oh, my God!

Doug: After I picked myself off her front stoop, she was like, “yeah, we don't believe humanity can govern itself. This is God's kingdom, and he'll come down and hash everything out eventually. We pay our taxes. And we're grateful for government. We have roads and stoplights and all that and great infrastructure. And we recognize that government serves a purpose. But as far as voting for a president, we don't do that. But thank you so much for talking to me.”

Magda: Wow. Wow.

Doug: The line was, and I don't understand the worldview. I can't get inside Trump's mind to inhabit the world that he inhabits to think that all the things he says are true. And I'm thinking to myself, “you've got your own world that you're kind of living into, lady.” It's not my job to understand it. It's not my job to try and change it. It's just my job to just reach out to a human being and say, “this is your life and God bless, but wow.”

Magda: Wow. I think that closes out this episode.

Doug: It wouldn't be a podcast without getting a handful of wows out of the lady.

Magda: Oh, my goodness.

Doug: So the crescendo of all that, how we were talking about everything, about the debates, and then, oh, yeah, but I'm not involved. Clearly, because she's too busy chasing however many children live in that house, because it's at least, you know, 30.

Magda: Anyway, thank you all for listening to episode 59 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been the different lenses in which men and women view the world, and then all the different lenses within the men and within the women and how subjective reality will destroy us all. What do you think? Too dark?

Magda: For you? No. For everybody else? Yes.

Doug: Wait a minute. All right, fine. I'm in a good mood and I remain in a good mood.

Magda: You're the happiest cynic I know.

Doug: Hey, I'll take it. It makes sense. We're doomed, but we're going to have a great time on the way out. 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 there for our weekly episode every Wednesday and our newsletter every other Friday, Friday Flames. So we'll see you for episode 60 next time. Until then, bye-bye.

Magda: That was something.

Doug: It was something else. And as on cue, Dingus is out meowing and wanting to come in.

Magda: Oh, that's funny.