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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Every episode of It's Been a Minute, NPR's What's Happening in Culture podcast starts by asking three questions. Who? How? Why now? If the culture's asking it, we're talking about it. At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious and indulge your cultural curiosity. Follow It's Been a Minute wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll break down the zeitgeisty topics that are filling your feed.
Chapter 2: What crisis are boys and young men currently facing?
This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.
You just don't know what you're going to find.
Challenge you.
We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy?
And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show, what does it mean to be a man today? Returning now to an issue our next guest has been sounding the alarm on for years.
The current crisis facing boys and young men in this country.
Our boys are in a crisis. Yes, this debate has been raging for a while. But since the 2024 presidential election, it has intensified.
you want men to be better or do you want phrases like toxic masculinity the manosphere or the male loneliness epidemic they pepper conversations used to blame some and to rally others it may start with simple ideas about being an alpha male or toxic masculinity doesn't even exist the only thing that is toxic across a man or a bear and the women like unanimously said i'd rather come across a bear and
There are those who want to shout about these issues. But there are also people who would rather not talk about them at all.
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Chapter 3: How has the discussion around masculinity evolved recently?
And there's this dissonance. And I think what the book helped some people to do at least was to say, you know what? You're not alone. And it's okay to care about both. This is a time of considerable concern about gender equality and what some people fear is a backlash against the rise of women and so on. It's been a very contested and difficult time in our culture.
I don't think that's a controversial thing to say. And really a sort of pick your side sort of moment. And one of the reasons I was motivated to write the book is we actually see a lot of men being attracted to more authoritarian impulses. And that's not necessarily a right-left conversation. comment. So actually now's the perfect time to do it.
We have to engage with this because if sensible, authoritative institutions aren't dealing with and noticing these issues, what that does is it gives ammunition to the reactionaries who are saying, you don't care about this stuff. I wanted to find a way to say, you know what?
We actually do have a lot of work still to do for women and girls, but we can't do that in a way that makes the boys and men feel like it's somehow at their expense or vice versa. And so ignoring a problem in the hopes it'll go away, it won't go away. All that will happen is it will turn into a grievance and then that grievance will get exploited.
And so this is a necessarily uncomfortable conversation, but it is also a necessary conversation.
Richard is wary of saying that boys and men are in crisis, but he agrees that over the past few years, the discourse over modern masculinity has reached a fever pitch. Do the fears and the data line up, though? What is the best way to support them when men's roles in families and the economy have changed so much over the past generation?
Today, a conversation with Richard Reeves that is pragmatic, thoughtful, and yes, at times, even boring in a good way.
Thank you for calling me boring. I mean this sincerely. That is an incredibly important compliment to me.
starting with what's happening in schools. Here he is on the TED stage.
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Chapter 4: What role does education play in the struggles of boys and men?
When we come back, more from Richard Reeves on what we can do to support boys and men and define a new kind of masculinity. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.
This week on All Songs Considered from NPR Music, we ask what song defines the millennial generation? There was a general anxiety about what was coming next. And to sort of assuage that, you're like, well, I might as well have a good time while I can. And I'm doing that to this day. Hear new episodes of All Songs Considered every Tuesday wherever you get podcasts.
Hey, it's Manoush here. I have a fun announcement before we start today's episode. We're doing a special virtual event just for PLUS supporters like you. It is happening on Zoom next week, Wednesday, June 10th at 3 p.m. Eastern, noon Pacific. We are going to talk about how to live better with our technology, how to feel better in our bodies and think more clearly. It's going to be me.
I've just written a book called Body Electric, which is a lot of it based on a project we did with NPR listeners. I will be joined by Columbia University Medical Center physiologist Keith Diaz. We are going to take your questions about movement, about being on screens all day, about how we can live better with our tech, about how we can be healthier. Keith is super fun.
I think I'm kind of fun, too. I think the whole thing is going to be really fun. So bring your questions. It's just for supporters like you. So I really hope you'll join us. You'll be getting an invite in your email inbox soon with all the details. Look out for that. Thank you, as always, for your support. And I hope to see you next Wednesday. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR.
I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, a conversation about boys and men with Richard Reeves. Richard is a writer and president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. And based on what we see online, most people might think that the discourse over masculinity is loud and aggressive. But Richard says that in real life, things are actually playing out very differently.
On the one hand, you do see these cultural and political signs of reaction, especially among men, arguably. But at the same time, in real life, we're seeing the onward march on most fronts towards gender equality. So, for example, my institute just published a paper on gender. the amount of time that mums and dads spend doing childcare as opposed to paid work.
We've just seen the fastest reduction in that gap, convergence between mums and dads, that we've seen probably for half a century. Now, again, I'm not suggesting... that we don't need to do much more on all those fronts.
But there's this odd thing happening where online you have reactionaries, the manosphere, trad wives, no one wants kids, everyone hates each other, no one's having sex, take it whatever it is. And then you go into the real world and you say, well, but wait, the women are working more and earning more and the men are doing more parenting and actually divorce rates gone down and...
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Chapter 5: How do economic changes affect men's roles in society?
That's a huge problem. Some of the others, it's just a little bit less clear with gaming, pornography, et cetera. I think if I'm ā as I think about this as a parent myself and ā
certainly when my kids are at home, when I talk to other parents about it, the way I think about it is for boys and young men, it's less that what they're doing online with some of the exceptions we've just mentioned is directly harmful, right? It's not much evidence that gaming is harmful in and of itself. It's more, what are they not doing when they're doing that? What is it displacing, right?
And so if it's displacing in real life activity and particularly, and I think this picks up your point about relationships, developing relational skills, In the physical world. And the thing that I really worry about is the atrophying of those relational skills, which are not just very important, but more important. We talked about AI a minute ago.
We also talked about how marriages and relationships now need a lot more negotiation. I think actually relational skills are getting more important by the day. And yet, if you're spending all your time online, you're not developing those skills. And so it's really, for me, it's about how it displaces the in real life activities, the way you really learn how to be in the world.
And that's the bigger problem for boys. I think it's more directly harmful to girls and young women in some ways because of the visual elements and the bullying elements you see online and the self-harm that will very often come. From the body image problems. And so they're just playing out differently for boys and girls.
But if I'm a parent, I'm thinking, look, it's not that your boy being online is bad. And probably most of the content he's seeing, he's discerning and he's arguing about it. And you should be curious about that. Like I had one of my sons sit down. We watched Andrew Tate videos together. Andrew Tate's this online. Probably most people know who he is now. Hmm.
We sat and we watched some of the videos together actually with one of their girlfriends. What do you like about this? What do you like about that? Well, that's pretty horrible. We don't agree with that, right?
And so just engage with the content because it's all coming at them and the question is how are they discerning it and how are they filtering it and which bits do they believe and which bits do they not believe and how is it shaping them? And the solution to it is not to sort of ā have a moral panic. We don't need the sound of slammed laptops across the country.
What we need is the sound of curious parents engaging with their kids about their content and having honest conversations about it and correcting them, which is what I did with my son, right? But that's not true, is it? Let's look into that. Or do you really believe that? Or just have that argument with them rather than just going, oh, no, internet, Manosphere, bad, slam shut.
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