E562 Richard Reeves
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Who is Richard Reeves and what is his background?
Today's guest is a writer and a social scientist. He's also a dual citizen. He's the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. I'm grateful that he's here today. Today's guest is Richard Rees. Richard Reeves, thanks for joining us today, brother.
Yeah, I'm really thrilled to be here.
Yeah, we appreciate it, man. You want to move that in a little bit for me, if you don't mind? Yeah, sure. And you are British.
By birth, I'm American now. Okay, you're American now. Yeah, I became a U.S. citizen in 2016, so I'm very, very proud of this country.
Oh, welcome. Nice. Thank you. And you're the president for the American Institute for Boys and Men. Yep.
New think tank. God knows we need more think tanks, right? That's what America's really clamoring for, is more scholars sitting in think tanks, producing charts. Honestly, I was in another think tank for 10 years before that, the Brookings Institution. Huge think tank in Washington, D.C. Great job. And I got to tell you, it was not in my life plan. To be in a think tank? To create another one. No, actually, being in a think tank is great. What that means is you basically just get paid good money to write stuff and say stuff that you're interested in.
And what happens to a lot of that information from think tanks?
Well, that depends who you ask. If you ask the critics, they say it just gathers dust on people's shelves. Maybe like two people in Congress read it. One New York Times journalist reads it. So there is this whole thing now that think tanks used to produce policy papers and then grateful – legislators, members of Congress, would say, thank you, we'll go and turn that into a law. And ta-da! That's not how it works anymore. And so the whole question of how do you influence law, how do you influence policy, I think is a really big question now. And so there's a big question mark against this whole idea of a quotes think tank. I certainly didn't plan to start a new one, but...
But it seems like this one is important. That's one of the reasons, yeah, that I wanted to get to talk to you today because, you know, a lot of our listeners are men and boys. I know Scott Galloway was on and he had mentioned that you were kind of his godfather of information or somebody that he really looked up to, you know. And I did also see you were born on the 4th of July. Is that right? Correct. Do they kick you out of Britain if you're on the- That would be great.
I think you should just have a rule, right? Everyone who's born on the 4th of July gets automatic US citizenship, but then gets deported from the UK, right? But it's kind of weird because I've always had that. And then I actually came to the U.S. in the 90s for the Guardian newspaper. I was a journalist for quite a few years. I just always loved America. Ended up marrying an American.
Do you think it was because of your birthday at all or no? You know... Because it's just interesting.
It would sound weird to say yes, wouldn't it? But... If you think there's no such thing as a coincidence, I've always loved the fact that I was born on the 4th of July, and now I'm here. It's great. Everyone has a big party for my birthday. And actually, one of the things that I've really thought about as an immigrant, and when you say immigrant, you probably don't think of someone like me, but I'm a proud immigrant, is that people who are born here don't actually appreciate what it means sometimes to be a citizen. And my citizenship ceremony, which I did in a hurry, actually, because I wanted to be able to vote and wanted to get into the whole civic life, I was surrounded by people in tears. Really?
Yeah, there's people from Iran, there's people from Afghanistan, Iraq, whatever, refugees, a whole bunch of different people, some people from Mexico, and they're waving their flags, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, you're welcomed by the president, and there wasn't really a dry eye left by the end of it. And so I actually now think that every high schooler in the U.S.
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