Liz Plank

[0] Welcome to a Halloween episode of Armchair Expert.

[1] Yay.

[2] We love Halloween.

[3] We do.

[4] We vaunt.

[5] Sorry.

[6] Go ahead.

[7] We vaunt.

[8] What do we want to do, though?

[9] We want to suck your blood.

[10] Yeah, that's what you want to do.

[11] Yeah, suck that blood.

[12] I think I'm going to be Minnie Mouse for Halloween.

[13] Oh, that will be great.

[14] You already have the bow.

[15] It's pretty on the nose.

[16] Will you be wearing the kind of dress she always wears with the tops off?

[17] tops off.

[18] Doesn't she always wear a dress that's like a half?

[19] It's almost like a brazier.

[20] She wears like a polka dot skirt and a shirt.

[21] Oh, a normal shirt.

[22] I think.

[23] I have her in a betty boot kind of dress in my mind.

[24] That's not what she wears.

[25] I don't think that's it.

[26] We have a very exciting guest on today.

[27] This will be the reveal of a mystery.

[28] That's right.

[29] If you listen to the fact check, you know, and it's too long of a story to try to condense.

[30] But the long and the short of it is, because I had a little accidental toot while I was taking a picture with this guest.

[31] A lot of people have been wondering over the last month.

[32] if each female guest was that person.

[33] No, they weren't.

[34] This is that person.

[35] Liz Plank.

[36] Yeah.

[37] Liz Plank.

[38] I'm so sorry, Liz, that that's the honor that's been bestowed upon you.

[39] Liz got the fart.

[40] She got an unexpected to, most most unexpected by me. Yeah.

[41] Well, Liz, aside from that exciting accolade, is an award -winning journalist and the executive producer of several critically acclaimed series at Vox Media.

[42] her first book for the love of men a new vision for mindful masculinity is out right now she has a very interesting take on this big big topic that we all keep finding ourselves in the middle of yes i really really enjoy talking to her and really really regret farting in front of her so please enjoy miss liz plank wondery plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[43] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[44] He's an opportunity.

[45] Liz Plank, let's just start with the fact.

[46] Great name.

[47] You should have been an actor.

[48] Because isn't it?

[49] Very sellable name.

[50] We just talked to Liz Banks yesterday.

[51] And it's virtually the same name.

[52] And it's so you hear it, you remember it.

[53] It's good.

[54] Thank you.

[55] You know that, so I'm French Cane.

[56] And so no one calls me Liz back home.

[57] And so sometimes as a joke, my family will go, hey, Liz.

[58] You know, because it's like I'm Liz and my professional life.

[59] Your show business life.

[60] My showbiz life.

[61] But I love it too.

[62] I think it's easy to say.

[63] Wait, do they call you Elizabeth?

[64] They call me Lisa.

[65] It's very strange.

[66] And Idi, which is the short name in French.

[67] I was always Idy.

[68] Ellie.

[69] Similarly, Kristen grew up Annie, which is her middle name.

[70] And I do think, like, when we're back in Michigan, And people are almost frustrated.

[71] You know, it's like, that's her shit.

[72] That's not Kristen.

[73] That's Annie.

[74] Yes.

[75] I guess understandably so.

[76] But I do wonder being Canadian and then having left and work here, is there a little bit of shaming that happens?

[77] Oh, so much.

[78] I talk to people.

[79] I'm like, you're going to be here.

[80] And they'll be like, no, here is Canada.

[81] Like, yeah, your home is, like, breaks their heart.

[82] But then I also get a lot of question marks like, why are you here right now, right?

[83] especially in this current situation when there's much better alternatives in Canada.

[84] Oh, sure, sure, sure, politically, you know.

[85] But we have our own problems.

[86] What province did you grow up in?

[87] Quebec.

[88] Montreal.

[89] Montreal.

[90] Now, I'm embarrassed to admit this.

[91] Again, grew up across the Ambassador Bridge from Windsor, Ontario, threw trash out the window in London on the way to Toronto as a kid.

[92] Bend to BC.

[93] Never been to Montreal.

[94] And I'm told it's like the sex.

[95] He's so sexy.

[96] European, you think you're in Paris.

[97] Yes.

[98] It's sent a lot of actors to treatment who have worked there.

[99] They've then had to eat, Monica's boyfriend.

[100] He's not my boyfriend, but he's my want -to -be boyfriend.

[101] Okay, okay.

[102] Her dream boyfriend.

[103] My dream boyfriend.

[104] Your imaginary boyfriend.

[105] There was this famous interview where there's this French -Canadian interviewer that's very, like, sexy and sweet, and she sat in his lab for an entire interview.

[106] I've seen it.

[107] Yes.

[108] It went viral and, and it was, you meet.

[109] So I watched that, and this is very on topic for what we will discuss today.

[110] I watched that and I was like, oh, fuck, you know, I met a journalist in Toronto one time when I was young and we flirted so outrageously in the interview.

[111] And then I'm not excusing condone or any.

[112] I have no judgment event, that situation at all.

[113] I only just went to myself and gone like, you just completely forget that you're being recorded and you're talking to someone.

[114] And if they're giving you lots of rhythm and you want to give it back, you know.

[115] You're connecting.

[116] Yeah.

[117] I definitely thought, oh, wow, edited or just the highlight.

[118] It looks fucking crazy.

[119] Has anyone ever taught you how to flirt?

[120] Like, do men talk about this with other men?

[121] Like, what works, what doesn't work?

[122] Because we, like, ghosts write each other's text, right?

[123] Women, I feel like there should be like, there should be credits at the end of our text messages of like this text message is brought to you back her entire group chat.

[124] And I wonder if men have those conversations.

[125] Because when it does happen, it feels like it's in these, you know, pickup artist communities who are saying, like, treat women like trash?

[126] Yeah, nagum and.

[127] Yeah.

[128] But are there, like, real ones, like healthy ones and productive ones?

[129] Yes.

[130] So, again, I hesitate to speak for men.

[131] I have no clue.

[132] I know that.

[133] Friends will, like, a girl, and then they'll say, she wrote this.

[134] What should I write?

[135] So I'm involved with that.

[136] I'm also, like, sexual stuff, one of our best friend.

[137] I won't out him.

[138] But he was like, how are you making your wife orgasm?

[139] And I'm like, well, you've got to get you.

[140] you got to get this vibrate or I recommend this position and he's like I'm 48 no one fucking told me this what what and I'm like yeah I my dad was you would label him a pervert probably but he would talk endlessly with me about girls and having sex and it was just something I certainly got a ton of info from him I also was lucky enough to have like an older lover when I was 15 and she was like listen this is how you go down on a girl thank God I didn't know why the fuck you know that thing works unless someone tells you And you know it's the Golden Trio, right?

[141] Through studies, women to orgasm, it's three things.

[142] It's clitoral stimulation, oral, and hard kissing, like hardcore kissing.

[143] Oh, I didn't know that.

[144] And see, and it's not just that men don't know this, but also a lot of women don't know this.

[145] Well, and here lies the problem, and this is something that we will keep circling back to, given the book you've written and the different studies you've had, which is I've been with lots, too many women.

[146] I'm a cliche.

[147] That was one of the definitions of being a man and I fucking did it.

[148] There's no goddamn consistency.

[149] I know gales that you can just barely graze that clitoris occasionally.

[150] I know people that love ain't.

[151] I know people that hate ain't.

[152] You know, there's people that can't come through penetration, some that only can't.

[153] There's no consistency.

[154] And I do think therein lies this huge problem with their even being two groups, male, female.

[155] It's kind of preposterous.

[156] I certainly share more in common with my wife.

[157] at night, lying in bed, then she shares in common with most women, or I share in common with most men.

[158] Yeah.

[159] So that's my little bit of hesitation to us breaking into these groups, because they're just, they're not really representative of any individual, generally.

[160] Yes, they're not real.

[161] I know this through researching and really investigating this idea of gender, right?

[162] Because we know that gender is a social construct and that sex is supposed to be biological.

[163] But even sex, scientists are saying this, and I outline it in the book, that, they're recognizing that it's actually a spectrum too and that these things are not as fixed and as binary as we sort of admit them.

[164] And we're seeing new generations, you know, really young generations.

[165] I've interviewed some of them for the book.

[166] I talked to David Hogg and had the really the privilege of talking to him about all kinds of stuff.

[167] I was talking to them about masculinity, about the intersection of masculinity and gun violence, which I share in the book this amazing quote about, you know, hearing his sister crying after the shooting because she lost four friends that day and not being able to be in the house.

[168] and realizing that because he had never felt empathy.

[169] He didn't know how to feel empathy.

[170] But then he also, as he's leaving with his friends, I hear them sort of laugh and be like, what's gender anyways?

[171] Right, like sort of laughing even kind of at me, like this 32 -year -old dinosaur, for even inquiring on this idea of gender.

[172] Or believing in the concept.

[173] Let's backtrack for one second.

[174] In 2000, when I graduated college, there was X, Y, 45, and 46.

[175] You either had two X's or you had an X, Y. So how is that variable?

[176] So basically you can look at chromosomes, you can look at genetics, or you can look at hormones.

[177] So depending on what you're looking at, you can come up with a different definition of what sex is, right?

[178] And so, yeah, just looking at the chromosomes, obviously there's some variations even within those two.

[179] But then if you look at Castro Simeania, right, this amazing Olympic athlete in South Africa.

[180] Well, for her, it was a hormone difference, right?

[181] And so she produced more testosterone than is, quote, unquote, I don't know, the definition of how much a woman should be creating testosterone.

[182] But obviously, she's a woman.

[183] She identifies as a woman.

[184] But these categories are a little bit difficult.

[185] They are.

[186] And all that Olympic stuff, you can be swayed by both sides of it.

[187] Sure.

[188] But back to the X way.

[189] So, yes, again, in biology of 20 years ago when I was still reading about it, you have your DNA and you would say you're genotypically male or female.

[190] But you can be phenotypically male or female.

[191] So, yes, you could have Kleinfelters, right?

[192] Or you could have X, X, X, Y, or X, Y. You can certainly give those examples.

[193] They exist, but they are also very anomalous.

[194] Also, yes, your hormones, I take a fuck to keep my hair, I keep a testosterone inhibitor.

[195] Had my wife had a boy in her, when her body started sending testosterone down to tell the ovaries turn in testicles, had she touched my fucking, she could have made the baby phenotypillar.

[196] typically female, even though genotypically would have still been male.

[197] I'm probably old in this on the wrong side of history, but the genes part of it to me isn't even a debate worth having.

[198] I feel like that is perhaps an attempt to go, you're not believing me that I'm a woman.

[199] And your defense of why I'm not is this piece of data.

[200] And so now I have to undermine that data to, but why?

[201] You don't have to go undermine that, Dan.

[202] You have to convince the person, it's not related to that data.

[203] I'm a little suspicious of trying to attack or redefine the data.

[204] But why does it matter how someone else identifies, right?

[205] It doesn't at all.

[206] It doesn't at all.

[207] I'm saying, let's say you're a trans person and you say, I am a female.

[208] And then there's some other person going, well, no, you're a male.

[209] And then she says, no, I'm a woman.

[210] And then he says, know your genes.

[211] I did a DNA test.

[212] You are X, Y. Now the, the, the, the, the, the trans female is in a position to try to what debunk what he just said to win the argument.

[213] That doesn't deserve debunking because it's not relevant.

[214] Right.

[215] This person definitely feels and identifies as female and that's enough.

[216] Right.

[217] Enough sad.

[218] I just, I'm quite, I don't know why we have to go try to reconfigure how we interpret the genetics.

[219] Well, probably because there are people in that position saying that.

[220] Yeah.

[221] I mean, there are people like Ben Shapiro who say trans people don't exist because you either have.

[222] have a penis or you don't have a penis.

[223] Right.

[224] And I'm barely paraphrasing.

[225] Right.

[226] Sure, sure.

[227] Which I totally disagree with.

[228] Right.

[229] Of course.

[230] And it's almost in so much of this, we end up, and by we, I mean, I don't know, progressives or people who are pro -human rights and pro -self -expression, we end up playing into the framing that they cause us to work in.

[231] So here we are arguing about chromosomes and, you know, the biology, none of us have any of this sort of knowledge.

[232] We're not scientists.

[233] when actually what we really want is a society where everyone can be free to be who they want to be and where these social constructs, right, that we've assigned - Which are more important than our genetics.

[234] Exactly.

[235] What matters is that no matter what you have between your legs, you shouldn't be conditioned to believe that you don't have a full expression of your emotions or that you don't have the same need for intimacy and connection.

[236] Or that if you don't have that between your legs, that you are inherently, I don't know, passive and need to be fragile and all of these stereotypes like we've made up that that is made up that is gender performance it's doing gender we do gender every day and did it this morning I do it all that I'm doing it right now you know and and it's great that we're the reason why I wrote the book is that I got so much freedom and and pleasure out of a conversation around feminism and around me basically discovering who I really was and leaving a side of the the things that I had taken on because of society, because of the movies I'd watched, because of the things that I'd been told by my friends.

[237] And I just want that same freedom for men.

[238] This is actually a conversation about freedom.

[239] And again, when we get lost in this, well, how does testosterone actually, well, this study, right, we were talking about this, you can use any study to prove anything.

[240] But what I wanted to do in the book is just show a different perspective.

[241] Because if you read in the newspaper, if you read in the media, if you look at TV and film, testosterone and masculinity is, always presented in a very monolithic way.

[242] And there's these assumptions out there that men are just inherently more violent, men are just inherently more stupid.

[243] I mean, this is, I get this said to me even on this book tour, right, by men, not just women saying, well, men are just dumber.

[244] And I'm like, I don't think so.

[245] I don't believe that half of humanity of this human speech is just dumb, like by virtue of, yeah, what's in between their legs.

[246] Yeah.

[247] Let's go, the Olympic thing for one second.

[248] Because that one's really fascinating.

[249] Yes.

[250] Because here on one hand, you have the right of that female athlete that people are coming to the rescue of, understandably so, as they should.

[251] But what no one really wants to bring into that conversation is, well, we divide male and female for a reason.

[252] Because if you look at all Olympic results, in general, men are doing 20 % faster or bigger or stronger, whatever.

[253] It seems to be the gap in physical events at the Olympics.

[254] By the way, I mean, again, this is data -approved data, but yes, you know, testosterone makes your muscle, again, we're going to go on this biological conversation.

[255] But if you look at high levels of endurance, for example, so these ultramarathons, women actually tend to do as well or better than men.

[256] So there is a difference, but yes, generally speaking men.

[257] You turn on track and field.

[258] Sure.

[259] The men are running, whatever they're running, three, two, 40s.

[260] They're jumping a couple feet longer, you know, all that stuff.

[261] I don't think anyone wants to get bogged out in that.

[262] Yeah.

[263] So yes, you want to protect this one female athlete who is shown to now have testosterone on par with any male that's competing.

[264] And we've also isolated that being the hormone that's creating these results in the men.

[265] So you're protecting her, which is valiant and honorable.

[266] But you're also throwing away now every single woman who's competing.

[267] So you devalue their implicit right to compete on a level playing field.

[268] It just becomes a very utilitarian, contian thing.

[269] Are you doing the right thing?

[270] Because it's.

[271] the right thing for her, but is it at the expense of all these other people?

[272] And who has the most rights to be at the Olympics?

[273] I'll add into it, no one has a fucking right to be in the Olympics.

[274] Guess what?

[275] I can't be in the Olympics.

[276] There's not a chance in hell.

[277] I don't have whatever it takes, whether it's mental or physical or whatever.

[278] People aren't born with a right to compete in the Olympics.

[279] Sure.

[280] Am I in trouble yet?

[281] Yeah.

[282] No. I mean, so this is what I'll say Because, again, I think that this is, first of all, like a debate that's worth having, and it's complicated.

[283] These things are not easy.

[284] And that's why it's important to have these conversations and to have space to talk about these conversations.

[285] Here's what I'll say.

[286] I think that if Castor was a white, blonde, traditionally attractive, right, thin woman that was an athlete, and she had the same levels of testosterone, all of the data points would be the same.

[287] I wonder if we would be questioning whether she's a woman or not.

[288] Right.

[289] Or allowed to be.

[290] Exactly.

[291] I also wonder if the Olympic committee would look at her and even, I don't even know if it would be.

[292] They might think their test was wrong.

[293] Exactly.

[294] Right, right, right.

[295] I think we have a view of femininity.

[296] We have a view of womanhood and that's racialized.

[297] That's gendered, obviously.

[298] And so, again, that adds a layer to this.

[299] And a layer that I think is worth discussing, too, in women and sports.

[300] I mean, there's so many layers there of inequality.

[301] It's only going to get more and more complicated.

[302] Yeah.

[303] Well, I just, I think, I guess what I'm pushing for is like, we'll have to make a decision.

[304] And that is the nature of life.

[305] And quite often, you're choosing between two bad decisions.

[306] Either these women have to compete with someone that has three times the testosterone level that they have.

[307] Or we're going to tell this woman she can't be in the Olympics because she just naturally has a high testosterone.

[308] Neither are fair.

[309] Both suck.

[310] Right.

[311] And that's why I think police stuff gets oversimplified.

[312] It's like, look, there is clearly a horrendous systemic racial bias among police.

[313] There's no question.

[314] also police work is a fucking dirty business you're walking into strangers houses where someone is called screaming on the other line going come help you don't know what you're going into and the notion that any human's going to walk into a situation that chaotic and then perform perfectly in all levels is a little delusional we have to admit that hey unless you want to go clean up the fucking dirty work we have to have some margin of error that we're all going to accept right so Renee Myers she's actually the head of diversity at Netflix, but she's done a lot of work on unconscious bias.

[315] And she says, if you have a brain, you have bias, right?

[316] And in this conversation around the violence with police officers and the killing of unarmed, mostly black people, of course, is we individualize these cases, right?

[317] And it's really easy to go after the man who shot Michael Brown.

[318] It's really easy to go after even George Zimmerman, right?

[319] And to say, this man was racist, this man was motivated by all of this internalized racism and externalized racism.

[320] But we also have to acknowledge that there's a system that we're all born into and out of.

[321] And that also comes back to the conversation around masculinity.

[322] That in the Me Too movement, in this amazing movement, you know, powered by Toronto Burke and so many women who have been so brave and courageous and men also who have come forward as victims, we're like, okay, Harvey Weinstein's in jail.

[323] We're just going to jail all these people.

[324] We're going to exile them to another planet.

[325] And this seems like Russia would take them all with open arms.

[326] I think so, yes.

[327] Judging by my comments, yeah, a lot of Russian bots were super pro, however you want to see.

[328] I want to say one more thing, last thing on Olympics.

[329] Okay.

[330] No one's evaluating the amount of testosterone among each person.

[331] Everyone has a different amount of testosterone.

[332] We have different amount of testosterone.

[333] And it varies across your life, by the way.

[334] You had less when you had kids.

[335] You're dead right.

[336] But there is a parameter that they've decided is, again, they have to enforce men taking testosterone and anabolic steroids.

[337] So they have to state a level that they think is the high end of what could be possible.

[338] So even the male athletes are getting tested for testosterone to make sure they're not doping.

[339] Well, are they tested for extra?

[340] Like, are they testing everyone's testosterone levels coming in?

[341] Yes.

[342] Just, yes, they were testing.

[343] So then maybe the new variants can be that.

[344] Meaning.

[345] It can be a level of tests.

[346] Like, it can be broken down into those sections as opposed to like men, women.

[347] Sure.

[348] When everything's so like a man could have the same amount of testosterone as one of the females.

[349] And so, you know.

[350] That seems like a compelling solution.

[351] But again, someone has to figure out how we're going to divide people to make it semi -fair.

[352] Yes.

[353] The point you're making, which I thought was so well illustrated in the OJ documentary, it was Rodney King.

[354] The evidence of systemic racism wasn't the four cops hitting them with the batons.

[355] That was so obviously and egregiously racism.

[356] But it was the 12 people that lied in their report when they got back to.

[357] the station.

[358] That tells you that they knew what part of a system they were involved in and how you should act.

[359] And that is the proof of the systemic racism.

[360] Right.

[361] But yes, inherited bias and this, and do you know who Talib Quali is?

[362] Yes.

[363] Okay, so he's a good friend of mine.

[364] I love him.

[365] He's been on here and argued with me a bunch.

[366] I went on his and argued with him.

[367] We have mostly the same viewpoints, but we do differ enough that we can argue.

[368] And one of the things I was saying, we have constructed rules to this game.

[369] where the stakes are so high that you're never going to get people to own whatever level of racism they have.

[370] Let's say it's out of 10, everybody's on the fucking spectrum.

[371] I'll give myself a three on it.

[372] But if the only options are binary, racist, you're like a white nationalist or fucking not racist at all.

[373] If those are the two options, guess what?

[374] I'm going to defend the shit that I'm not a Nazi.

[375] And so there's no latitude or room for anyone to really own what level of racist they are or what level of inherent bias they have because the stakes are such that you'll be eradicated from Netflix if that label should befall onto you in some convincing way.

[376] Yeah.

[377] Yeah.

[378] So those are very dramatic stakes or at least appear to me to be very dramatic.

[379] And it makes us think that we're solving the problem by attacking individuals and right, canceling people and going after them and further isolating them.

[380] I did this amazing spiritual racial justice workshop with Rachel Ricketts, which I recommend to everyone.

[381] And she starts out by saying, if you're white, you're racist.

[382] And that can feel, I think, difficult for a lot of white people to hear.

[383] If you're a man, you're sexist, right?

[384] And that's not because you're a bad person.

[385] It's because you have been brought up in a society that is racist.

[386] You've been brought up in a society that is sexist.

[387] And even to a certain extent, too, which I think is, again, comes back to what I'm trying to do with the book, which is showing that patriarchy told you to hurt women and to hate women.

[388] It also kind of tells you to hurt yourself and to hate yourself, too.

[389] So the same systems that hurt women in our society actually are hurting men.

[390] The same systems that hurt black and brown people in this country are also hurting white people.

[391] We all lose out when we are living in these societies and when we don't have the space, right, to talk about this.

[392] And to your point, I think that we're all being watched and scrutinized and we're proving that we're not racist by calling someone else racist or we're calling.

[393] Virtue signaling, which is just to me as, you know.

[394] The Virtual Olympics, right?

[395] And I identify as a progressive, but I'm almost more annoyed by progressives right now than I'm by conservatives.

[396] The best part, and it was actually illustrated on Bill Marr of all places this week.

[397] Oh, yeah.

[398] Which Monica's always talking about, and I love, which is you're off in a position.

[399] Monica's in a position to have to comfort some fucking white person.

[400] White people feelings.

[401] Oh, I mean, talk about a double whammy.

[402] It's like, all right, so you've already, you know, excluded me. And then now you've come around, and now I've got to comfort you and absolve you of I don't want to deal with any of this fucking shit.

[403] Just pay me and give me the opportunity and shut the fuck up.

[404] I also appreciate an effort and a reaching out of, I know that I affected you.

[405] Like, I appreciate that because that means they're thinking about it.

[406] And I prefer someone to be thinking about it than not thinking about it.

[407] So, you know.

[408] Well, and again, you know, all this stuff is so complicated that does not make for good tweets.

[409] It doesn't make for good sound bites.

[410] But one of the things I'm always hoping to delineate the difference between there is.

[411] is abject racism.

[412] There are white nationals.

[413] There are people who I think they are the supreme ethnicity and everyone else is less than.

[414] They definitely exist.

[415] And then there's a situation, which I'm sure you're aware of, a photojournalist admitting that early in his career, he took a picture of like a dying black woman on the street, went to the editor.

[416] And the editor said, stop taking pictures of dead black people because at best you're going to, to be on the fifth page of the newspaper.

[417] It'll never be on the front, right?

[418] And the point of this thing we read was that that's systemic racism.

[419] But I said, well, hold on, though.

[420] Let's take the whole world into consideration.

[421] The New York Times sells newspapers in New York City, and 70 % of the city is white.

[422] So 70 % of their consumers are white.

[423] People have limits of empathy.

[424] You identify more if you're white with someone suffering that's white.

[425] And that is just biologic and evolutionary.

[426] Black people are going to be more empathetic to other black people.

[427] And Latinos will be more empathetic for Latinos.

[428] So if 70 % of your buying audience is going to empathize more with their color on the front of the newspaper and they're in the business of selling newspapers, is that racism or is that the failing of empathy?

[429] It's bad.

[430] It shouldn't be that way.

[431] Black people deserve to be on the front page in the New York Times.

[432] but let's just be careful about what we're explaining it with because if it's not the right explanation, we're going to put a lot of time and energy into fixing something that's the wrong root of the cause.

[433] We're beginning to know more about empathy.

[434] There's some great studies by Paul Bloom.

[435] Have you ever heard?

[436] No. Paul Bloom is amazing.

[437] You know, you give these examples of like if you show a picture of two starving kids on a poster, people will donate.

[438] If you put three, they'll donate less, right?

[439] And then if it gets to 100, because you no longer can relate to that situation.

[440] And you're also overwhelmed by the situation.

[441] So just your empathy breaks down and that's just a human limit.

[442] And we should transcend it and we should have tools to transcend it.

[443] And we should figure out how to increase and expand our empathy.

[444] But we have to know what we're fighting.

[445] This is so interesting.

[446] So I agree.

[447] We as a person who works in the media, right?

[448] Blaming the media is always so easy.

[449] Saying the media is just covering his tweets and the media, right?

[450] They're blaming the media for Donald Trump.

[451] It's like, okay, yes, who are execs are making decisions based.

[452] on what you're going to watch.

[453] And so the problem is all of these people are watching, you know, this really bad television.

[454] And so if we consumed more about international affairs, right?

[455] If we consume more stories about, if white people read more stories about black people, then those would be the stories that are on the front page.

[456] So it's, yeah, the media is a reflection of us, right?

[457] Our government is a reflection of us.

[458] The other thing I'll say, though, is so there's all these studies about children, too, and the toys that they choose.

[459] So there's this tragic study that was done on very young girls picking dolls, basically.

[460] And so the white girls were more likely to pick the white doll.

[461] And to think that the white doll, when she was hurt, they were able to have more empathy for them when they were hurt.

[462] The black girls were also more likely to pick the white doll and to have more empathy and think that she is more hurt when she is hurt.

[463] And I'm saying that wrong, the hurt thing.

[464] Maybe we can look it up.

[465] But there's something about, I don't know how they measured.

[466] empathy, but they were able to measure it.

[467] And it wasn't just white girls who had more empathy for white dolls.

[468] It was the black girls, too.

[469] And so, yes, there's an anthropological, biological, evolutionary explanation for why I all have more empathy for a white woman who's asking for money than a black woman who's asking for money.

[470] I hate to.

[471] Or a man. Or a man, exactly.

[472] Or whatever in -group, out -group, you find yourself in.

[473] Absolutely.

[474] But I also think that that empathy comes from the images that we see.

[475] I totally agree.

[476] And from the friends that you have.

[477] In America, one of the things that I was struck by, to be completely honest, is how segregated friend groups are here.

[478] And not to say that everything's perfect in Canada, but white people hang out with white people and people of color hang out with people of color.

[479] And that segregation, I actually think we could solve, and this is, you know, my little, maybe I'm too hopeful.

[480] I'm simplifying everything.

[481] But I think that sexism can be solved by men being friends with women and believing in that.

[482] in that, and that's happening more with young men who just have more friendships with women than they used to.

[483] So they're not just interacting with women that they want to sleep with.

[484] They're interacting with people as, you know, people and as human beings.

[485] But I also think that's - Wait, there's women men don't want to sleep with?

[486] I know.

[487] That's crazy.

[488] I've never met one.

[489] It's shocking.

[490] Maybe they still want to sleep with us, but they're still, yeah.

[491] And we want to sleep with you too.

[492] I know, I know.

[493] If we control for violence and shaming, yes, you do.

[494] We can create the utopia.

[495] Yes, I heard that on your point.

[496] I love that study.

[497] That study tells you everything.

[498] And so the easiest way to break down that bias and that unconscious bias, sure, you could take a workshop and do the whole thing and read all these books and you should do all those things.

[499] You can also just have friends who are not like you, right, who have a different experience.

[500] And then you're going through the world with them, right?

[501] You don't have to read a book about what it's like to be a black woman in America if you are surrounding yourself by black women, right?

[502] And living through their experience with them.

[503] We're hardwired for empathy.

[504] So we're actually going against our nature when we're segregating each other in these, you know, tribes based on arbitrary characteristics.

[505] Stay tuned for more armchair experts if you dare.

[506] What's up, guys?

[507] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[508] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[509] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

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[511] And I don't mean just friends.

[512] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[513] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[514] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[515] We've all been there.

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[517] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing.

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[520] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

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[523] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[524] Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon Music.

[525] What is your explanation for the segregation?

[526] Because like all these things, I think there's probably like nine contributing factors, and we all are inclined to label one of them.

[527] But I have my opinion.

[528] What do you think that segregation stems from?

[529] As an observer, you know, I've lived in America for six years.

[530] Race is such a taboo topic that people don't want to talk about and don't want to acknowledge.

[531] And what I find happens is that there seems to be half of us who don't want to talk about it, don't want to acknowledge it, say it's all in the past, we want to focus on good things now.

[532] And then the other half that's constantly forced to talk about it because they're trying to convince the other half that this is happening.

[533] And then they're confirming the other side's view that that's all you want to talk about.

[534] You just want to divide us.

[535] And it creates this, yeah, this self -confirming bias, right?

[536] It confirms these two divisions.

[537] Really.

[538] I mean, that's my perspective as just an observer.

[539] I'm wondering what you think.

[540] Well, I do remember learning in college that like one of the biggest steps forward in race relations in this country was Vietnam because it was the first time that the soldiers were not segregated.

[541] And just by living with one another, recognizing the humanity in one another and recognizing that we're fundamentally all carrying around the same fears and are threatened by things, you know, that that was one of the biggest.

[542] leaps forward, just because being forced to live with one another.

[543] I mean, I think a good deal of it's socioeconomic.

[544] People hang out with the people that make the same amount of money as them.

[545] It happens, you know, there's millions of strata within white people.

[546] There's millions of strata within black people.

[547] And it seems to just generally be socioeconomic.

[548] But it's before you even have a choice.

[549] When you're a kid, you're in a school system amongst kids who have parents who make the same amount of money as used.

[550] You're going to be around the, like you don't even, You're born and you're not making the decisions.

[551] They're just coming at you.

[552] So when you get to a certain age, it's like that's what you've seen your whole life.

[553] But that's been my philosophy forever to it.

[554] Because there's a study about like you can retain 40 or 50 like real relationships at once.

[555] And I was like if each of those relationships is a different type of human and you can connect when there's racism or sexism or whatever it is, if you're like, oh, that's like Mary.

[556] If that was Mary, I'd be so.

[557] so sad about that.

[558] Like, if you have a real person to connect, you generally are doing okay.

[559] Yes.

[560] But if you don't, it's not forced, right?

[561] Exactly.

[562] It's not this like, you must educate yourself.

[563] And it's like, oh, by virtue of just be.

[564] Yes, I'll have empathy for you.

[565] Well, and one of my little pet peeves is when I go back to Detroit, I'm always immediately, like, aware of the fact that many of my friends who I grew up with are in Detroit with multiple black friends, multiple Latino friends.

[566] They all only talk in racial slurs.

[567] Everyone in the group.

[568] And then I come back here and I have rich white liberal friends who are the word police.

[569] And I'm like, great.

[570] You're not even fucking friends with anyone.

[571] Like, you know, you have these ideals.

[572] But my friend who's using the language you think makes him a racist, it lives with all black people, like, or lives with Latinos or just, and they're all fucking with each other.

[573] And so that, I don't know why that bothers me. But it's like, There's a lot of ivory tower ideals to me that are like, they have not earned the right to be that judgmental of everyone else's spot on the spectrum of racism.

[574] Right.

[575] And white progressives are the worst, right?

[576] White progressives think that, you know, Trump, now that there's Trump supporters that they've alleviated themselves of all of the internalized racism that they do, right, or that they take part in.

[577] And it's like, well, now that there's these neo -Nazis, you know, we got to fight these people.

[578] We're got to go to these protests.

[579] But what are you doing in your everyday life, right?

[580] Do you have friends who are not white, rich people?

[581] And actually examining your own proclivities for that and your own internalization of that is where to start.

[582] It's so much easier to just blame other people.

[583] Joy Bryant and I were on a TV show for six years together.

[584] And from day one to the last day of the six years, I'd say 80 % of our conversations were about race.

[585] We loved it.

[586] It's so fascinating.

[587] She says car note.

[588] We say car payment.

[589] She puts Vaseline on her face in the winter.

[590] We didn't.

[591] You know, it's just endlessly amusing and interesting.

[592] the same way as if I had a friend that had grown up in New York City and I grew up in the country.

[593] Like that stuff's fun and yet some people think that somehow is a signal of racism to even be acknowledging you're aware of it.

[594] And I just think you're just being a little dishonest.

[595] Right.

[596] And again, it comes back to this.

[597] Monica and I talk nonstop about being Indian and white.

[598] We love it.

[599] Yeah.

[600] We never tire of it.

[601] Yeah, but you're talking more about like with joy culture differences.

[602] Like, but you'd find that to be interesting.

[603] about someone who grew up in the city or in the south.

[604] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[605] Completely different upbringing than you.

[606] It's this equal level of fascinating.

[607] But if you're only interested because it's like, what about you is different than me?

[608] And clearly there's going to be differences because even though maybe we grew up in the same city.

[609] You know what I mean?

[610] Yes, but I think people have a fear that just that inquiry is in itself racism.

[611] And I actually think it's curiosity and I think the curiosity leads to friendship and friendship.

[612] leads to like empathy you know and but also though you're saying like she puts vaseline on her face and you put cream but it's like everyone's putting shit on their face at the end of the day everyone needs a moisturized face and everyone's getting car tickets does it but what's different is you get ashy I don't get ashy I don't get my friend or joy's not my friend I don't even know the fucking term ashy yeah I've never had a white friend go like I gotta get my fucking elbows are getting ashy I never heard that until I guess as long as you're not like ew after you hear it, like, which happens sometimes, right?

[613] Yeah.

[614] And that's the thing that you, you know, where are you from?

[615] What do you do?

[616] What's that thing you're eating?

[617] What's that smell, right?

[618] And that's when I think it can get, I mean, I'm not a person of color, so I don't, I don't know what that feels like, but I can assume it doesn't.

[619] You've got kind of a nice olive.

[620] I am Hungarian.

[621] Oh, yes.

[622] Don't brag.

[623] Suspiciously tall.

[624] I want to test your testosterone before we read.

[625] Yes, I can't wait.

[626] I can't wait.

[627] So let's talk about you a little bit.

[628] Boy, we had fun.

[629] We were just spinning.

[630] But we already talked about the fact that you grew up in Quebec and you went to McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, where you were a synchronized swimmer.

[631] Yes.

[632] How do you know that?

[633] Whoa.

[634] I mean, Monica.

[635] Monica.

[636] I've never met one, I don't think.

[637] Me, I don't think I have either.

[638] Do you get ashy?

[639] I don't probably.

[640] I had whatever, I mean, I had whatever chlorine, being in chlorine, like, you know, five days a week.

[641] week is, which is green hair.

[642] I mean, just bad.

[643] And then you co -founded their Women's Week.

[644] Yeah.

[645] So that's really cool, just in and of itself.

[646] It was mom strong and feminist and liberal and all these things.

[647] Yeah.

[648] So I grew up in a very progressive household, yeah, with two parents who basically were, you mean, full -blown communists.

[649] And like, literally, sometimes people would call at home and they'd be like, did they ask about the part?

[650] Like, it was like you couldn't be a socialist.

[651] And so they were extremely politically engaged and and you know I grew up also my mom is a survivor and so I learned about very horrible things at a very young age about what can happen to women yeah and so um I just had that awareness from a very young age and gender was always something that I was just fascinated by yeah so I remember going to McGill and seeing women studies as a potential major I was like you can do this that can be your job um so I did a double major in women's studies and international development for the money.

[652] Sure, you got to get the paper.

[653] Yes, that's, you know, that's how you make the big box.

[654] And then I did a master's at LSC, too, in gender theory.

[655] And that's in London.

[656] She went to London, town.

[657] Yes, I did.

[658] These are unifile situations, too.

[659] McGill's very impressive.

[660] Is it?

[661] I was, I believe you.

[662] It is.

[663] The reason why I went to LSC is because it was the cheapest option because it's only a one -year master's.

[664] And so it was affordable.

[665] Yeah.

[666] So I was a research assistant.

[667] I was doing my master's.

[668] and I was really isolated.

[669] It was a really hard year for me. Very lonely, I would imagine.

[670] Very lonely.

[671] And I didn't cope with that in the right way.

[672] I didn't, you know, seek out.

[673] I withdrew a lot.

[674] And I was just always at the library and always trying to, yeah, just work harder as a way to, you know, be more compassionate, which did not work.

[675] It was a 2012 Olympics.

[676] And there was going to be female boxing for the very first time as a discipline, which I found really exciting because I am an athlete.

[677] I love to do sports.

[678] And so I was actually boxing at the time with this.

[679] coach that was Irish.

[680] I didn't understand anything he said.

[681] Scottish, actually.

[682] Scottish is worse.

[683] That accent is very hard to understand for me anyways.

[684] And so I got really upset when I saw that they were going to force female boxers to wear skirts in the ring because it would make them more elegant, was their explanation.

[685] I always want the women bludgeoning each other to look elegant.

[686] Exactly.

[687] I would have insisted that they had clutches too so that they could only be fighting with one hand at a time and they could switch hands with their clutch.

[688] That's how we should.

[689] And then in the, And then in the breaks between rounds, I would insist that they would touch up their makeup.

[690] Yes, sure.

[691] There we go.

[692] Those should be our priorities.

[693] That's what the people want.

[694] That's what the people want.

[695] Give them what they want.

[696] But you took action.

[697] Monica, she changed the Olympics.

[698] I mean, I...

[699] You changed the Olympics.

[700] Oh my God, that's great.

[701] We love the Olympics, too.

[702] They're exciting.

[703] And so I, yeah, I created this petition demanding that they would revoke this decision.

[704] And I shared it to, yeah, my 33 Twitter followers, whoever was following me. And it basically went viral.

[705] and then I was doing interviews with the BBC from my little shitty five -pound phone that was all fucked up and I wrote this article that changed .org asked me to write and then suddenly they published in the Huffington Post.

[706] And that was like me being able to publish an article in the Puffington Post was something I couldn't even imagine I would do with the most of my entire life.

[707] I was 25.

[708] Oh, geez.

[709] So it was unique and amazing and then they revoked their decision and female boxers got to wear whatever the fuck they wanted.

[710] Yeah.

[711] And that was my first point of entrance.

[712] entry into...

[713] I'm going to start a petition that they fight nude like in the Greek times.

[714] Yeah, only men though.

[715] Greco, we're open.

[716] I think I've long made this argument.

[717] I think all the athletes should be naked.

[718] Because Monica and I watch the Olympics with such detail.

[719] Our eyes are peeled.

[720] And we often won't be watching together and I'll get a little video sent to my phone and I'll be like a male sprinter where his penis just got loose in the middle of the 100 -yard dad.

[721] Then you see.

[722] You know what's up.

[723] You know what's down.

[724] Oh, we get such amusement out of being unable to see genitalia move around when they're running.

[725] I love that.

[726] I want there to be the same shots for volleyball.

[727] You know how the volleyball, they'll be like, they'll go into their butts for the women.

[728] And like do the pan up and pan down.

[729] I want that for the men too.

[730] Sure.

[731] I would enjoy that so much more.

[732] I remember when I was doing synchronized swimming, I was a teenager when I started and my shoulder started really expensive.

[733] And I didn't like it.

[734] I was like, I look like a man. Like I, and I had a lot of shame around that.

[735] And you're already tall too.

[736] I'm already, exactly.

[737] I'm already like towering all these little boys.

[738] And so then I have the big broad shoulders.

[739] That's nice.

[740] Okay, so you change the Olympics forever.

[741] Stop great.

[742] No, that's true.

[743] I would imagine it can be a very encouraging thing if at 25 you've started something and then there's an actual result of it.

[744] I would imagine just being very encouraging to keep going.

[745] Like that's a unique early experience to have where you could actually feel like, oh, goodness, I actually have some sway over some stuff as one person.

[746] But it's also not even just as one person, right?

[747] With this social media, which was, you know, really new at the time.

[748] I mean, not that new, but how important it was in terms of dictating news cycles and, yeah, dictating people's decisions, right?

[749] Where people had to answer based on what they were tweeting or based on what was sort of on Facebook.

[750] and the news started really being directed by what was going on on social media.

[751] If something was hot on Twitter, then it was covered.

[752] They had to cover it.

[753] Exactly.

[754] And what are your feelings on that in general?

[755] I think that we've gone a little probably too far on that point.

[756] I think that the tail is wagging the dog.

[757] Yes.

[758] You've got like a million people that are active on that fucking platform.

[759] And it's everyone in the news is following what the consensus on there is.

[760] Absolutely.

[761] And I think, yeah, I think there needs to be a difference.

[762] I enjoy Twitter.

[763] Yeah.

[764] And I would love it if everyone was like, all right, we're done.

[765] Let's turn it off.

[766] I just, I just, yeah, it's just for a day.

[767] You know what they should do?

[768] It's just after 6 p .m. Twitter just stops.

[769] Okay.

[770] And then we spend time with our family or our friends and we don't just like tweet in bed when we're frustrated about whatever, right?

[771] Yeah.

[772] Or we actively try to figure out how to get people to feel heard without yelling at strangers.

[773] I see the underbelly of it is something that's sad, which is so many of us feel disconnected or we feel like we don't have a voice or we're not invited in the conversation and this is this outlet for it.

[774] And that part's sad.

[775] But, you know, I feel like if those people went into their fucking community theater or they were involved in a church in their town.

[776] I just think there's better ways to be heard and recognize.

[777] We're further isolating ourselves because we think we're connecting.

[778] Yeah.

[779] And we're not.

[780] It's misleading.

[781] Okay.

[782] So you got out of the London School of Economics and you changed the Olympics forever going forward.

[783] We'll keep saying that every five to ten minute.

[784] In fact, in the intro, I'm going to say Liz Plank Olympic altar.

[785] Oh, my God.

[786] But ultimately, you landed at Vox.

[787] Okay, how did you come to be at Vox?

[788] So I basically was poached to cover the 2016 election and build a video series around the campaign because it was just ramping up.

[789] It was very early 2016 when we knew this was going to be a pretty historic election.

[790] And I joined as one of the first sort of members of that video team that was doing incredible work already and doing explainer videos.

[791] But yeah, I wanted to really discuss what I'm an expert in in terms of gender, but also I love humor.

[792] I love sketches.

[793] I like disarming people with humor.

[794] I like making people uncomfortable.

[795] I was already doing this series called Flip the Script at Mike where I was before Vox.

[796] It was like a punked before activism angle.

[797] So I pranked my improv class, my all -white improv class with Arturo Castro, who now has this amazing show on Comedy Central, Alter Latino, at the time he was on Broad City.

[798] And we asked these white actors to act whiter because he was always told, can you do it just like a little bit more Latino?

[799] Can you, like, add a little, like, and so...

[800] Well, the code word is like urban.

[801] Oh, totally.

[802] Some of them don't even, yeah, some of them don't even use that.

[803] They just go full on with the overt racism.

[804] We were picturing something blacker.

[805] Yes, exactly.

[806] And you're like, okay.

[807] If you're white, you can be a variety of characters and people, right?

[808] But if you're black, if you're Latino, if you're a black woman, right, you're the sassy best friend.

[809] And we're seeing that change and...

[810] Can I push back a tiny bit on that?

[811] So, yes, and I can say person.

[812] And anecdotally, no, I look like white trash.

[813] I am white trash.

[814] Many of the roles I've been hired to play, I have to lean into being white trash.

[815] I'm Carl Loomis and baby mama.

[816] And I am my neighbors.

[817] And Danny McBride started saying, I don't know if they're ever going to let me be in a movie where I have sleeves on my shirt.

[818] So, and all that, again, is socioeconomic.

[819] Yeah.

[820] It's not equivalent.

[821] It's not nearly as bad.

[822] But it's all, like, that's why I'm so, I wish everyone recognized, like, I wish everyone recognized, like, the whole system is fucking everyone.

[823] We're trying to break into what groups getting fucked the most, but it's like most of us are suffering from a system that needs some pretty radical change in it.

[824] And so, yeah, I mostly was hired to play lower socioeconomic white trash people, which wasn't representative of me having gone to college.

[825] But there's more than just the hillbilly role for white people is the point.

[826] There's more than that.

[827] There's the billions of other kinds of white roles.

[828] For anyone of color, there's a black person role.

[829] There's a Latino role.

[830] There's an Indian doctor role.

[831] Well, no, you can own a convenience store too.

[832] Sure.

[833] You're fucking limiting yourself.

[834] Exactly.

[835] Exactly.

[836] You could drive a cab in something.

[837] But it's, yeah, you're both right.

[838] One of the people I interview in the book is Dustin White, and he's a seventh generation Appalachian, and he talked to me about all of the stereotypes about redness.

[839] Right.

[840] The term redneck is actually from the largest workers' uprising in American history, which was white men and coal mining companies who were being exploited and they were fighting to have better health conditions and the mines.

[841] And they got gunned down literally by, they were called gun thugs.

[842] They were hired by the coal mining companies to squash that uprising.

[843] And so in order to find themselves and know who was part of the protest and who was like a gun thug, they wore these red.

[844] Bandanas.

[845] Bandanas around their necks.

[846] And that's where the term redneck comes from, right?

[847] Which is kind of a cool.

[848] It's amazing.

[849] It's a workers, right?

[850] It's a worker.

[851] Yeah, proletariat uprising.

[852] 100%.

[853] And now the term redneck is this negative.

[854] It's this insult about a white trash.

[855] Sleeping with your sister.

[856] No voting for Trump.

[857] No education.

[858] Absolutely.

[859] So, yeah, we can, I think we can be critical of all stereotypes.

[860] And I think a lot of people in the South, a lot of people who are in West Virginia, so much of my.

[861] conversation with Dustin, this man was fascinating.

[862] One of the things that he talked about was everyone thinks that we voted for Trump, right?

[863] West Virginia is seen as, you know, Trump country.

[864] Sure.

[865] Most people didn't vote for Trump.

[866] Most people didn't vote.

[867] Right?

[868] So people are in pain.

[869] People feel abandoned by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

[870] They also feel abandoned by the Republicans.

[871] They feel abandoned by everyone.

[872] Most of West Virginia, the land doesn't belong to the people of West Virginia.

[873] It belongs to coal mining companies.

[874] It's all owned by corporate entities.

[875] and Dustin, who's all of the men in his family, had been coal miners.

[876] And all of them died from Black Lung, from cancer, from working in the mines.

[877] And as we know, the Trump administration, who are supposed to be the champions of these workers, are actually making the regulations less tight when it comes to Black Lung funds.

[878] So coal mining companies actually don't have to put as much money in those funds for men who are literally dying at now younger ages than ever before.

[879] There was just a front line about it.

[880] It was kind of like, if you think Black Lone's a thing of the past.

[881] Oh, it's not.

[882] And it's young.

[883] It's men in their 20s and 30s.

[884] It used to be older men.

[885] And now it's, there's a real epidemic.

[886] And one of the things that he told me is that his father said if he literally died because of contaminated water during the West Virginia water crisis.

[887] So because of the coal mining companies again, he had to boil snow for his dying father of cancer.

[888] And one of the things that his dad said was never go into coal mining.

[889] Don't do it.

[890] And so he's actually working in helping find other, you know, energy jobs in West Virginia.

[891] environmental reconstruction and one thing that happens when he goes and speaks at these conventions and there's a lot of coal miners who are in the audience often he is heckled by those men and the thing that they say which has happened more than once is when he goes on stage they say where's your dress right so it's just like you're not a man yeah you're not a man would never come man's up and gets his black lung shut the fuck up exactly yeah exactly all right so your book for the love of man a new vision for mindful masculinity.

[892] What urged you to tackle that?

[893] In the midst of clearly, there's tons of still women's issues that need fighting for.

[894] Did you go like, I'm going to extend an olive branch to men?

[895] What made you do that?

[896] So at first, the book was actually called How to Be a Man, a Woman's Guide, and it was a very different tone, right?

[897] And I started working on this four years ago.

[898] So it was before the Trump election and all that stuff.

[899] And the world was, you know, very different.

[900] And I was just noticing I was in these feminist rooms and these feminist.

[901] spaces and women's media.

[902] And we were all in agreement that women were people and women were deserving of safety and protection.

[903] And we were all like, okay.

[904] And then, you know, we'd thank like the one guy in the back.

[905] And we all be like, cool, like go tell the guys.

[906] And then we'd all go break.

[907] And then I just was like, that doesn't seem like a good plan.

[908] That doesn't seem like the right way that we're going to fix these problems.

[909] So I went on this sort of journey really to examine masculinity.

[910] And through interviewing so many different men, through doing a lot of data and of investigation through data and research, I started realizing that masculinity was always presented as the problem.

[911] And I was really interested in how masculinity could be presented as the solution.

[912] And as I talked to men, I realized that they didn't want to talk about masculinity, right?

[913] That there was this male code that was really discouraging any conversation or any self -examination or self -analysis around masculinity.

[914] Well, even to self -evaluate as gay.

[915] Absolutely.

[916] I saw this on Twitter literally last week where it's a guy who took a Snapchat of a beautiful sunset and it says I'm straight, but this is really cool.

[917] You can't enjoy a sunset.

[918] Oh, dude, so many so many guys will give me a compliment on Twitter and then they'll hashtag no homo.

[919] And I'm like, I'm like, you know.

[920] Isn't that?

[921] Look, if I were you guys and if I were gay, I'd be offended by that, I feel bad for that guy.

[922] I'm like, I feel bad.

[923] Yeah, like to be vulnerable and give someone a compliment and open yourself up, requires you to then put a safety net under you that I'm not like, that's just a sad state of affairs.

[924] And if it's in that one tweet, imagine what it's like in the rest of his life, right?

[925] Imagine what it looks like.

[926] And that's where, again, through talking with so many men, I realize, oh, wow, you're hurting me because you've been hurt.

[927] And you're hurt by the same structure and that same system that's hurting me. And not acknowledging that pain is actually going to worsen that pain and it's going to make you go further into that system.

[928] And I started seeing what I think is literally a man crisis in our society at every level in education.

[929] We see it when we open our TVs and we see there's a mass shooting every single day in America.

[930] A lot of those people are women.

[931] Who are doing mass shootings?

[932] Yeah, 1%.

[933] And they're black, too.

[934] They're black and they're female.

[935] Right.

[936] But and then you look at gun violence and you realize actually two -thirds of gun deaths in America are death by suicide, and most of those people are white men.

[937] So white men are buying guns to protect their families or to protect their wives.

[938] That's what they're saying.

[939] Protect themselves from black people and brown people.

[940] But most of them are using it against themselves.

[941] And that is, again, that's a health epidemic.

[942] Women actually try and commit suicide more often than men, but men are far more effective.

[943] We're better at it.

[944] We're better.

[945] Because men tend to use more violent means that they were committed suicide.

[946] Can I also add something?

[947] The shame of having had a failed suicide attempt for a man is different than it is for a woman.

[948] I've known so many women that have been honest about a suicide attempt, and there's this whole path to recovery for them.

[949] And I don't know any men who have admitted to trying to kill themselves outside of AA.

[950] Wow.

[951] And I have a lot of friends within AA that will talk about, like, suicidal ideations, like there's all these steps before you commit suicide.

[952] And even if someone hasn't gotten to that point, they've gotten to the point where they're starting to event.

[953] evaluate it, you know.

[954] Right.

[955] But yeah, you just don't hear guys go like, oh, yeah, I tried to kill myself four years ago.

[956] Doesn't really happen because that's such a weakness and a failing of a, it's an impotency that you didn't succeed, and it's also a weakness that you even did it in the first place.

[957] And yeah, there's no room for that.

[958] Well, there's no room for weakness, period.

[959] No, we can't have it.

[960] Male shame is something that I discuss in the book and that I just realized we weren't, I mean, there's just no one addressing it.

[961] And I've had so many men write to me saying, you know, that chapter on male shame gave me a language to speak about something that I felt my entire life that no therapist or no person could ever, you know, what was ever able to do for me. And Brne Brown talks about the difference between shame with women.

[962] Women, we, first of a language, we have a culture that acknowledges our shame, right, our shame of not being perfect.

[963] It's always, I don't have the perfect body.

[964] I don't have the perfect thighs.

[965] I'm not the perfect mom.

[966] I'm not the perfect friend.

[967] And we've had a language in order to be able to talk about that.

[968] And even amongst women, right?

[969] We obviously try and be perfect.

[970] on Instagram and whatever, and, uh, but we also are able to acknowledge that.

[971] And for men, it's that you're weak.

[972] You have to hide every sign of weakness.

[973] So that starts from such a young age.

[974] And again, it's our definition of weakness, right?

[975] So weakness is trying to kill yourself and failing at killing yourself.

[976] Yeah.

[977] That's a double weakness.

[978] I mean, that's, you know, strength should be, I wanted to kill myself and I called a therapist, or I called my friend, or I, you know, seek help.

[979] Because that's actually a sign of strength, admitting that you you need help is really hard.

[980] Anecdotally, I do think male shame tends to be more isolating than female shame.

[981] Like women seem to rally, they open up about it, they get a group, and guys just get deeper and deeper in isolation.

[982] But you know that the stress response as human beings, we release oxytocin.

[983] And oxytocin is a hormone of connection.

[984] So we are actually hardwired to connect and to go through stress as a community.

[985] and get support through our social networks.

[986] And men release that oxytocin too, but when you withdraw and you isolate and you're told, first of all, you don't need other people and if you're feeling weak, there's something wrong with you, then men are not properly able to deal with the stress that they're feeling, right?

[987] Men don't deal with less stress than women.

[988] They just don't really have the language to be able to even know that they're stress.

[989] Alcohol consumption and drug use and sex abuse.

[990] Exactly.

[991] There's two routes when men do feel shame.

[992] they withdraw, they isolate, or they act out, right?

[993] They act out in often hyper -masculine ways, right?

[994] That's me. I'm going to raise my hand.

[995] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[996] I think the great appeal of alcohol for most men is, and this is in John Barley Corn by Jack London, that's the only place in his whole life where he could go and men would talk to each other.

[997] Yes.

[998] Like, you go to a pub, four drinks in, and you can.

[999] could say I love this girl.

[1000] My mom died.

[1001] I love you.

[1002] Yeah.

[1003] And we need that lubricant.

[1004] And it's so needed.

[1005] And the only way we can get it is through this medicine.

[1006] And so, of course, it's appealing.

[1007] And I, and I was aware of that that's what attracted me to drink.

[1008] Oh, you knew.

[1009] Yeah.

[1010] That you were, it was allowing you to connect with other men.

[1011] Yes.

[1012] I loved.

[1013] I lived to be with my five best male friends in Detroit getting hammered.

[1014] And my best friend, Aaron and I, everyone go to bed around three, we'd keep drinking until 10 in the morning, and invariably it would be about our stepdad's.

[1015] We'd start crying.

[1016] We'd cry almost every night together.

[1017] And it's like, we certainly, although we could do that sober, really we needed booze.

[1018] Right.

[1019] The fact that that was the inevitable cycle we always got into where one of us cried at night was like, oh, we got a lot of shit to get out.

[1020] And we kind of need this thing to help us do that.

[1021] There's a whole chapter about friendship.

[1022] So men tend to have less friends than women, less in -depth friendships than women.

[1023] And there's this idea that actually men do this horizontal like shoulder -to -shoulder friendship where men do an activity together.

[1024] Yeah, they don't want to look at each other's faces.

[1025] Exactly.

[1026] They sit side to side and they're looking at their beers and not looking at each other, right?

[1027] Can't we make space for men to connect just for connection, right?

[1028] Can't we have, you know, not a special term bromance for two men going to dinner together, right?

[1029] Then we have to say, you know, hashtag no homo when two men are connecting because the thing I hear so much is that men are really hungry for connection and they get connection through the ones who are straight through their relationships with women.

[1030] A lot of them are actually seeking connection with other men.

[1031] Yeah.

[1032] But they've been hurt the most by men, right?

[1033] And so where they're so hungry for the connection is that same place that they were hurt by and that there may be at one point we're vulnerable, right, when they were kids.

[1034] that they did come out fully as themselves.

[1035] And then they were told, don't do that.

[1036] Don't be a pussy.

[1037] Don't be a fag.

[1038] Well, generally, elementary school that's happening.

[1039] And then you get to junior high and all that info gets weaponized.

[1040] Yes.

[1041] It's like you know shit about kids back when you still shared about that stuff.

[1042] And then everyone just gets fucking scarred.

[1043] Yes.

[1044] And then we just all shut it down.

[1045] 100%.

[1046] And I was severely bullied in junior high and only by boys.

[1047] And it was my best friend basically like turned against me when I got a boy.

[1048] friend.

[1049] And we were like the closest friends.

[1050] And then all of a sudden it was just like death threats and threatening to burn my hair down and kill me and all this stuff.

[1051] So I had to change schools.

[1052] And when I look back at that time, I obviously see how it was so gendered, right?

[1053] They were groping me. There was sexual harassment.

[1054] It was also really disgusting.

[1055] But they also went after other boys in such a gendered way.

[1056] They would have this ritual where they would choose one guy that was like out, right?

[1057] that, like, they were going to reject, basically.

[1058] And it was always based on him being gay or being thought of as being effeminate, right?

[1059] At one point, I remember being like, why are you not friends with, like, Martin anymore?

[1060] Well, he fell off his bike and, you know, hit his balls and he didn't even hurt him.

[1061] So we don't think he has balls.

[1062] Like, it was just the most ridiculous things.

[1063] Pretty sound argument, if you think about it.

[1064] And so we talk a lot about the hierarchy between women and men in terms of the patriarchy.

[1065] We say, you know, men are at the top, women are at the bottom.

[1066] We don't often talk about the hierarchy within men.

[1067] Patriarchy is like a pyramid scheme, right?

[1068] There's like guys at the top who actually benefit.

[1069] Yeah, about 6%.

[1070] 6 % or even less than that, right?

[1071] And then the rest of men, a lot of them play along, right?

[1072] And some of them have to play along because it's unsafe for them not to play along.

[1073] And some of them are waiting for the trickle -down to economics.

[1074] Like they just want the trickle -down effect and it never fucking happened.

[1075] That's what I'm interested in in this conversation.

[1076] You know, men actually talking about this hierarchy, talking about how uncomfortable they are in these environments too.

[1077] Me too, because I got into trouble, rightly so, one time in an episode with Amy Schumer.

[1078] Oh, yeah.

[1079] And it was great because it happened real time.

[1080] And then she and I both apologized to each other and we both saw each other's point.

[1081] But she was saying, you know, you have to imagine being a woman and just living in fear of men harming you.

[1082] And I was like, men live in fear of other men.

[1083] My stepdad's were violent.

[1084] The guys two grades older than me were violent.

[1085] When I go out on the street and I see three dudes, I'm thinking of fighting too.

[1086] Now, is it equal?

[1087] No. But what I'm saying is we can relate to your point.

[1088] I don't think that we should assemble in groups of male, female, gender.

[1089] We should assemble in groups of who's victimized by this system.

[1090] And again, she was right and I was wrong in that.

[1091] The comparison I used, it's worse for women.

[1092] It's worse for women.

[1093] What I can acknowledge is what I was doing was I was the white person saying, wait, black lives matter.

[1094] All lives matter.

[1095] And it's like, well, no, it's a given white lives matter.

[1096] I agree again with both of you.

[1097] When we talk about gender violence, for example, that is code for men's violence against women, which is rampant in every society across the world and is something that we need to obviously talk about and something that I've experienced personally, my mom, you know, that I have in my family, and something that I've thought about every day of my life.

[1098] The other thing, though, that we don't acknowledge is that, yes, most perpetrators of violence are male.

[1099] Yeah, for sure.

[1100] But also, most victims of violence are also male.

[1101] So if you look at, again, coming back to gun violence, it's coming back to men committing suicide against themselves or against other men.

[1102] It is extremely common for men to be victims of violence from other men.

[1103] And that's again where people say, after every book event, I've had someone come up to me to be like, why are you saying that women should stay with their abusers?

[1104] That's not what I'm saying.

[1105] I'm saying the opposite, right?

[1106] That just because you have empathy for someone, it doesn't mean that you can't hold them accountable.

[1107] And just because you actually understand why this person is doing this, that this is the best that they can do with what they have.

[1108] And yeah, they've been molested or they've been abused.

[1109] or they were handed, you know, this patriarchal system that made them fear what makes them vulnerable instead of lean into it.

[1110] Brene Brown had to study about this.

[1111] Women who are victims of domestic violence, if they believe that their male partner is doing the best that they can, they're more likely to leave because they're not likely to think that they can change them, right?

[1112] And this comes back to every conversation we have in, you know, in this gender war that women think that they can change men, women think that men are inherently bad, so I need to stick around and, right?

[1113] What if we thought that men were inherently good?

[1114] And that they were handed a system that made them do bad things.

[1115] And that instead of assigning those behaviors to them as people that we're going to shame these human beings because they're bad human beings, why don't we talk about the behaviors?

[1116] And whether they even enjoy those behaviors, right, whether Billy Bush enjoyed being in that bus and wheezing and laughter.

[1117] Oh, God, I've been Billy Bush.

[1118] I was abnormally sympathetic to him.

[1119] I'm like, what are you going to do?

[1120] Pick a fight with this guy, challenge his worldview in the next five minutes.

[1121] Exactly.

[1122] And the PC, like, talking point about this is men need to challenge men and other.

[1123] spaces and when I'm in these rooms on book tour I've asked the room I'm like have you ever seen a man do that every man just shakes his head like no absolutely not yeah because yeah you can't be that guy or it's extremely hard to be that guy and it's hard to be the good that girl it's absolutely it's hard to stand up to someone you like or you admire or whatever and if you're in the middle of the rung and you want to call out the alpha it comes at great risk yes yeah and it's bonkers but and again I just I want to admit I have been a bully for certain I have made tons of kids in elementary school feel terrible because I was getting made to feel terrible and I fucking relished the few times I had control over something.

[1124] So I just want to admit to that.

[1125] Like I've been on both sides of it.

[1126] Yeah.

[1127] I mean, imagine if all of our bullies had gone to therapy, right?

[1128] Imagine if Donald Trump had gone to therapy, how the world would be different, right?

[1129] Imagine if Donald Trump's dad had gone to therapy instead of projecting his own issues and onto him.

[1130] I have a quote from Donald Trump in the book because I just think is, is so revealing of this entire conversation, which is I don't like to analyze myself because I probably won't like what I'll see.

[1131] Right.

[1132] That the reason why he's not interested in going to therapy and you can't even imagine Donald Trump in therapy is because that's exactly the prototypical ideal of masculinity that he embodies.

[1133] Yeah, Tony Soprano wasn't allowed to be in therapy.

[1134] He wasn't allowed?

[1135] That was the premise of the show, is that the mafia would have, like, kicked him out of being a boss if they found out he was, oh, that show is littered with great little roadmaps of masculinity because it's like they can't, They can't publicly claim they eat pussy.

[1136] That was a weakness in early mafia culture.

[1137] Isn't that bonkers?

[1138] Ew.

[1139] They couldn't go to therapy.

[1140] They couldn't, you know, there's all these like...

[1141] Women are just like, great.

[1142] That explains all my fucking problem.

[1143] If he only went to therapy and ate more pussy.

[1144] We wouldn't have any problems.

[1145] That's even a thing in a lot of 70s and 80s black movies, too, guys won't say they eat pussy or...

[1146] DJ Khaled.

[1147] Oh, is he saying?

[1148] Yeah, two years ago.

[1149] There was this huge, I mean, thank God there was a backlash to him, He was like, oh, no, I don't do that.

[1150] I don't do that.

[1151] You know, on breakfast club or something.

[1152] And then they're like, well, does she go down on you?

[1153] He's like, yeah, of course.

[1154] Then you look at the data, which is like most women, again, not to generalize, but most women actually need oral sex in order to come.

[1155] And so if men are just not doing that because they're men.

[1156] Also, what does not make sense.

[1157] I don't even get the rationale behind it.

[1158] Oh, I've heard this.

[1159] It's somehow that you're like lowering yourself to her, right?

[1160] It's your, you're submissive.

[1161] You're submissive or something, right?

[1162] Is that right?

[1163] I mean, you tell us.

[1164] I can't begin to give you the logic behind it because I, you know, I can't imagine not wanting to do that.

[1165] But so I don't really understand the logic other than maybe I'm supposed to fuck chicks.

[1166] I'm supposed to put it in.

[1167] I'm supposed to, you know, I'm supposed to hammer them.

[1168] And I'm supposed to kiss that, you know, like that's gay.

[1169] I don't fucking know what it is.

[1170] It's like so the opposite of gay.

[1171] So that's why I don't understand.

[1172] Exactly.

[1173] Making women come seems like the least gay.

[1174] You could do it.

[1175] Well, 1 ,000 % if you want repeat business.

[1176] Oh, repeat.

[1177] Okay.

[1178] Now, just for shits and giggles, I want to take one element of the opposite argument, just for one second.

[1179] Not even because I believe, I'm increasingly believe that this is less necessary.

[1180] Okay.

[1181] But I will say we need roles in society, right?

[1182] We need someone's got to chop up bodies.

[1183] Someone's got to shoot people.

[1184] someone's got to do there's so much ugly business to be done on planet earth now i can i can fast forward to a utopia where the the skill set's not needed and again i acknowledge increasingly it's not needed but for 140 000 years on planet earth other tribes came in and tried to steal the women and children men seem to have this weird compartmentalized brain where it's time to get ugly and i can click into psycho mode and i can handle this and it's going to get bloody and gory and it's fucking gross and i'll think about it later, but it needs doing and I can do it.

[1185] I do think there is some evolutionary evidence that we have this gear, which is a kind of disassociated, less emotional, blah, blah, blah, because so often that was required.

[1186] Again, it's largely not required now, but I do wonder by getting rid of all this, we're all empathetic and emotional and wonderful.

[1187] It's rah, rah, maybe it ends all those situations that even require the dirty work, but shouldn't someone still be capable of the messy, gnarly work?

[1188] Yeah.

[1189] So a few things.

[1190] I think that's such a good point.

[1191] First of all, emotional intelligence is not crying.

[1192] My whole thing is let boys cry, not make boys cry.

[1193] Like, I don't want it to be mandatory for men to be crying all over the place.

[1194] I don't think that every woman cries all the time, and that's the way that she expresses sadness.

[1195] I think that we should be elevating emotional education as something that's just as important as all the other education that we have in our system, right?

[1196] We think about you have to learn math, you have to learn algebra, but why aren't we teaching attachment styles?

[1197] Why are we teaching kindness and everything?

[1198] Yeah, exactly.

[1199] And we all end up being in our 30s or 40s and we're like, oh my God, I didn't even know that I was insecurely attached, what the fuck?

[1200] And you wish that you would learn this far earlier.

[1201] And what we're seeing now is that EQ is becoming a far better predictor of overall happiness and financial success, over IQ, twice as likely.

[1202] Totally believe it.

[1203] So I don't want men to be more emotional.

[1204] I want men to be more emotionally capable.

[1205] I want men to know what emotions they're feeling so that they can manage them so that I don't have to do it for you.

[1206] So that you don't end up drinking, going and shooting up a school or whatever other activities we're seeing men really unhealthy behaviors that they're taking part on that aren't good for our society and aren't good for them.

[1207] I want men to be able to know what they're feeling so that they don't have just two emotional states that are I'm angry or I'm not angry.

[1208] Angry or horny.

[1209] Exactly.

[1210] Or both.

[1211] Right?

[1212] And so this is a self -discovery conversation.

[1213] This is about empowering men and having more control over their lives and not trying to control externally, right?

[1214] I'm going to control my girlfriend and I'm going to buy a gun.

[1215] I'm going to drink.

[1216] These are ways that men are trying to have control over their lives that are not fundamentally giving them any control.

[1217] Yeah.

[1218] One last kind of countered all this, which is we talk incessantly about the mask you live in on here.

[1219] I assume you've seen it.

[1220] So great.

[1221] Yes.

[1222] And I watched it with Kristen.

[1223] And then at work, I went and I told my friend Ashton to watch it.

[1224] He told Mila to watch it.

[1225] And they all watch it.

[1226] And then I told Alicia my other co -star to watch it.

[1227] She watched it with her hockey player husband.

[1228] We all agree.

[1229] We all agree.

[1230] But I had to say at one point, you can say what you want, but to pretend that this isn't one blob of interwoven everything, it's not a male -female issue.

[1231] So if you don't want the jock dickhead bully to be that way, don't reward him with your attention and affection.

[1232] So women are playing a part too, because guys are going to do whatever the fuck lands up girl.

[1233] I mean, that's just, that's 101.

[1234] So it's like, we're all playing a role.

[1235] So I was like, yes, we all agree.

[1236] But Kristen, you married a fucking gorilla.

[1237] Mila, you married a fucking gorilla.

[1238] And Alicia, literally your husband is a bruiser.

[1239] in the NHL.

[1240] Like, so all that said, you guys were attracted to fucking, the more I think we can all go like, ooh, this is a group problem and we're all going to have to do some stuff.

[1241] Well, it's just a cycle, though, because girls are under the exact same pressures as the men are.

[1242] So the girls think, oh, if I have a guy that's the most popular guy, if I have the captain of the football team, if I have the biggest guy, then your status will go up.

[1243] So it's just a bizarre thing.

[1244] And all I'm asking for is for us to recognize it's, it's everyone's past.

[1245] big circle we're all in.

[1246] To say to all parents now, raise your boys differently.

[1247] Yes, raise your boys differently.

[1248] But guess what?

[1249] Also, raise your girls differently because they're intermingling as one system.

[1250] Raise everyone the same.

[1251] Raise boys and girls the same, right?

[1252] Yeah.

[1253] Everyone should ride a dirt bike.

[1254] One hundred percent.

[1255] And one thing that I talk about in the book is it's so badass for girls to act more like boys, right?

[1256] It's badass if she's like an engineer and she's learning how to code and she's on a dirt bike.

[1257] And why isn't it cool for boy to do what a girl does, right?

[1258] Why isn't it as cool and badass?

[1259] And that's because fundamentally of misogyny, right?

[1260] We devalue what is feminine in our society.

[1261] So it's been like a unfinished gender revolution.

[1262] And of course women are part of the system, right?

[1263] This saying about, you know, if you're a fish in water, they don't know that they're in water.

[1264] We don't see it.

[1265] We're just part of it.

[1266] And so for the book, you know, part of the journey of writing the book was realizing how I was part of the problem too.

[1267] And that in my relationships with men, I was demanding that they open up, but then I was also demanding that they man up, right?

[1268] was perpetuating this culture of, we split the bill.

[1269] Like, I had to pay for my own french fries.

[1270] So I'm not sure that we're really meant to be, right?

[1271] I was buying into the system.

[1272] So I actually went on a chivalry diet for the book where I just stopped buying into all of these things.

[1273] I started paying half of it for everything.

[1274] I was like, this is going to suck.

[1275] Lina, I have to pay for my own drinks.

[1276] And in the end, I discovered so much more about my relationships and how when I was buying into these preordained rules, again, that are made up, that a guy had to pay for the drinks or a guy had to, if we went on a weekend, get away, like, he would offer to pay for the house.

[1277] I was basically inviting this weird power dynamic where I just didn't say what I needed as much.

[1278] I just gave in to certain things.

[1279] And I didn't realize I was doing it until I stop.

[1280] Absolutely.

[1281] And again, I was choosing, I think, people who weren't right for me. Well, right.

[1282] If his value proposition is that he can pay for shit, that's his value proposition.

[1283] Absolutely.

[1284] It doesn't need to be that he's.

[1285] emotionally aware.

[1286] Exactly.

[1287] And then if he's not doing that, he needs to show his affection and show that he cares for me in other ways.

[1288] And that also made our relationship much more rich.

[1289] And then you have the data about same -sex couples, right?

[1290] So same -sex couples.

[1291] And I also came out as queer through the writing of the book, too, and I started dating women.

[1292] And I learned more about men when I started dating women, actually, and realizing that, again, this was just watered to me and I just didn't see how the system operated until I was out of it.

[1293] Same -sex couples actually have far greater happiness in their relationships and they share domestic chores more equally because if the guy wants to cook he has to say that he wants to cook and it's a whole thing it's just like oh I really enjoy making lunch and you really enjoy cleaning the bathroom so we're just going to do it that way I wish Kristen would start enjoying changing breaks that would be awesome no you like doing that I know I do so there you can do the things you like no one's telling you to stop liking the things you like that's the thing but we don't let people do that Well, and I would just say, so for men who are listening, what I would delineate, so you're saying, you know, open up more, but be a man, man up.

[1294] I think there's an actual difference there that we can advise people on, which is there is a line between vulnerability and neediness.

[1295] Yes.

[1296] And what is unattractive is neediness.

[1297] And what is unattractive is you knowing someone need you for their own identity.

[1298] That's what's unattractive.

[1299] Being vulnerable and saying I'm scared is as hot.

[1300] Yes.

[1301] It's brave.

[1302] So what you really, forget the parameters of male -female, just evaluate where that line is between neediness and vulnerability.

[1303] And I think that's the one you've got to figure out which side to be on.

[1304] Do you think we need a new term for vulnerability?

[1305] Do you think vulnerability inherently, like women get it and they know it's strength because we've read like six Brune -Brown books?

[1306] But do you think like resilience or like another term would be more appealing to men?

[1307] Because I think a lot about even making therapy more appealing to men.

[1308] Yeah, yeah.

[1309] Like how can we, because a clinic box and a sofa, right, is a lot of men think about that and they feel emasculated.

[1310] Or I think words are so important.

[1311] They are.

[1312] I took out the word toxic masculinity almost entirely out of the book.

[1313] I'm glad.

[1314] Because, you know, I pointed out to women, I'm like, imagine that there was a debate going on.

[1315] And we were regularly using the term toxic femininity.

[1316] Mm -hmm.

[1317] Just imagine hearing toxic femininity over and over again, you'd be like, well, wait a minute.

[1318] It's implicit infemininity must be, you know, it's not the route.

[1319] It's not inviting.

[1320] It's not inviting.

[1321] And, yeah, I took it entirely out, and I thought idealized masculinity was a better term, right?

[1322] Offer the aspirational part.

[1323] Offer the solution instead of the problem in the concept.

[1324] I totally agree.

[1325] Well, I like you a lot.

[1326] And I'm really glad you came in Liz Plank, actress and CEO.

[1327] Fixer of Olympics.

[1328] Yeah, a fixer of Olympics.

[1329] So everyone should read your book.

[1330] For the love of men, a new vision of mindful masculinity.

[1331] you know what I was told?

[1332] I was told men will not buy this book.

[1333] You're so cute.

[1334] You think like they told me men don't buy books.

[1335] And then in the end, what I've seen, first of all, I had this amazing moment where there was a big publisher who passed on my book.

[1336] And I was on an appearance on Morning Joe.

[1337] And afterwards, she texted my agent and she said, we were getting ready to leave.

[1338] And my boyfriend said, he wanted to stop by Barnes & Noble.

[1339] And the woman said, why?

[1340] And he said, I want to get this book.

[1341] I can't remember what it's called.

[1342] Something about men.

[1343] And she goes, is it for the love of me?

[1344] men.

[1345] He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to get that book.

[1346] And the publisher said, I couldn't imagine the kind of man who would buy this book.

[1347] And now I'm dating him.

[1348] Oh, wow.

[1349] So that felt good.

[1350] That's great.

[1351] Again, you know, I was told women are going to buy this book and then they're going to give it to the men in their lives.

[1352] But I can tell you based on my DMs and based on messages that I'm getting.

[1353] And even the audiences, it's super diverse.

[1354] And men are craving this conversation.

[1355] Men are craving a conversation that is productive, that is positively framed, towards a solution where they are the solution where they're not just the problem.

[1356] I just'll end on this because I think it's so important that one of, so there's these APA guidelines around therapists dealing with male patients and how to make sure that they're not reinforcing all of these, you know, masculinity tropes that are unhealthy.

[1357] And one of the men who came up with these guidelines told me, gender is like a Swiss Army knife.

[1358] So there's a knife, there's a magnifying lives, there's all these little tools.

[1359] And this conversation around masculinity is not about taking away tools.

[1360] It's not about saying you can't go on your motorcycle anymore because you like it.

[1361] You can't have a gun anymore.

[1362] I'm not taking away guns.

[1363] I'm not telling men they can't fight.

[1364] They can't go.

[1365] They can't be aggressive, right?

[1366] There are certain moments where it's important to be aggressive, right?

[1367] And there are moments where that's great.

[1368] It's about expanding the Swiss Army knife.

[1369] It's about giving more tools.

[1370] Yeah, adding a compact.

[1371] Exactly.

[1372] Yes, if you want, you know, a little nail file if you're in the mood.

[1373] A little axe body spray.

[1374] Yeah.

[1375] Oh, that would be really good.

[1376] Some men would need it on the go.

[1377] The men who like it seem to really like it.

[1378] They do.

[1379] They put it on in a healthy.

[1380] They put it down there.

[1381] I've heard in gym rooms.

[1382] I know if I put my mouth on a body part that tasted like perfume, I'd be a little.

[1383] Yeah, not crazy about that.

[1384] It's not good.

[1385] Okay, well, again, Liz, thank you so much for coming and good luck with the rest of your day.

[1386] Thank you so much.

[1387] I'm such a big fan.

[1388] Thank you.

[1389] Thank you.

[1390] And now my favorite part of the show, Oh, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Padman.

[1391] It's fair to say you want to see everyone's penis, right?

[1392] No. No?

[1393] No. Like, not with them knowing you're seeing it, but everyone you see, wouldn't you, like, be like, if you could take a quick peek and no one knew, wouldn't you take a peek?

[1394] Nope.

[1395] Depends on the person.

[1396] Oh, it does?

[1397] Yeah.

[1398] And I'm not even asking, like, for sexual reasons, just curiosity reason, because the shapes are so different.

[1399] Isn't it intriguing?

[1400] Yeah.

[1401] I guess.

[1402] This might be a boy, girl thing, or just a Dax Monica thing.

[1403] I would want to see every single person we know, that we know, you and I know in common.

[1404] If I could see a photograph of them naked, I would definitely look.

[1405] Yeah.

[1406] Would you?

[1407] No. You wouldn't.

[1408] Well, I guess I would just out of curiosity, but not even, like, remotely sexually for some of the people.

[1409] Right, of course.

[1410] But you would.

[1411] No. Yours, yes.

[1412] No, I'd be open to it turning sexual.

[1413] You'd expect that it probably would.

[1414] It's going to be sexual if you're looking at a picture of someone's vagina.

[1415] Well, it's not going to be sexual if I'm seeing Charlie and Ryan bear naked.

[1416] But I want to take a peek at their testicles and penis and their butt cheeks and stuff.

[1417] But the girls.

[1418] Yeah.

[1419] So the girls, I want to see all them too.

[1420] Yeah.

[1421] And then some of them will probably give me a PQ.

[1422] Yeah.

[1423] And then some won't.

[1424] But I still want to see the ones that aren't.

[1425] I'm not in it for the PQs, is my point.

[1426] I get it.

[1427] I'm in it for the cure.

[1428] curiosity.

[1429] That just gave me an idea for like a fundraising calendar.

[1430] What if you got like 20 celebrity?

[1431] It doesn't make sense for a calendar because it would be 12.

[1432] But let's say there's two per page.

[1433] So 24 celebrities, 12 men, 12 females.

[1434] Okay.

[1435] Their faces on the cover of the, the calendar.

[1436] And then just very specific body parts.

[1437] Penis, menorah, majora, breasts, butt cheeks.

[1438] But just that.

[1439] So you don't know whose is who.

[1440] You'd be able to.

[1441] And it raises money for like kids.

[1442] No. Why?

[1443] What in the fuck?

[1444] Why would that ever raise money for kids?

[1445] Because all these people would buy it so they could try to, in their mind, they'd be figuring out whose it was.

[1446] But no one would know whose is who.

[1447] So everyone would be protected and it would raise all this money for kids.

[1448] You don't think this would sell?

[1449] Everyone's going to be masturbating to your parts.

[1450] I don't think that should be for the kids.

[1451] Well, it does it do, yeah.

[1452] That's not good for the kids.

[1453] All right.

[1454] Then it's for adults with C -P -O -D.

[1455] What's that I mean?

[1456] C -O -P -D.

[1457] I just did it.

[1458] My dyslexia thing you don't believe in.

[1459] C -O -P -D.

[1460] It's so easy to mix up letters.

[1461] It probably wasn't your dyslexia.

[1462] C -O -P -D is some kind of respiratory disease that people have.

[1463] And they run a lot of commercials for it on 60 Minutes.

[1464] You know, I watch 60 Minutes every week.

[1465] Yeah.

[1466] And it's for old people.

[1467] Yeah.

[1468] What did I just see?

[1469] Oh, there was a commercial for an old people movie.

[1470] And I was like, that looks fantastic.

[1471] Where's about the Helen Mirri of McKeown.

[1472] And I want to see the shit out of it.

[1473] It looks fantastic.

[1474] Have you seen the trailer?

[1475] I haven't.

[1476] Oh, it looks great.

[1477] It looks good.

[1478] Maybe Hallamirin would be one of the people on this calendar and McCallon.

[1479] They would probably be easier to identify.

[1480] Yeah, they'd be a little on the nose, I think.

[1481] Do you think maybe the calendar could raise money for scabies?

[1482] I think that'd be good to show.

[1483] And it also is cohesive.

[1484] It's like body parts that lead to scabies.

[1485] Well, then I think go all the way in the calendars for herpes.

[1486] Well, but herpes But maybe the actors would be afraid to be associated with herpes.

[1487] Herpes is so regular.

[1488] Skaibis is under the radar.

[1489] It's more elusive.

[1490] We need to bring awareness to scabies.

[1491] We do.

[1492] And Ickies.

[1493] Icky's.

[1494] Yeah.

[1495] Okay, Liz.

[1496] Liz, bling.

[1497] Liz.

[1498] Boy, did I like her.

[1499] The bear of your tooth.

[1500] Yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep.

[1501] We should probably get some feedback from her on, like, because there was the in the moment reaction, which she was just being.

[1502] very kind.

[1503] Yes, generous.

[1504] Generous and thoughtful and maybe even codependent.

[1505] Sure.

[1506] And then there's what she told her friends.

[1507] And I would love to hear kind of what she told her friends.

[1508] I really hope she told her friends that it smelled bad.

[1509] Which it did not.

[1510] It objectively didn't.

[1511] Right, Wob?

[1512] Yeah, I didn't smell it.

[1513] Yeah, odorless.

[1514] Well, just because Rob didn't smell it doesn't mean it didn't smell.

[1515] She was right next to you.

[1516] Well, I was the closest to me and I didn't smell anything.

[1517] And I, I know when they smell.

[1518] Yeah, you've smelled your smells.

[1519] Yes.

[1520] But I do want.

[1521] what her version with me not around is.

[1522] Yeah.

[1523] Like this big gross son of a bitch.

[1524] She did not say that.

[1525] Well, a thousand apologies.

[1526] She probably thinks of it exactly as she told you.

[1527] Well, I would, again, but I'm a unique person and you are too.

[1528] I would love it if I was around someone I liked.

[1529] Yes.

[1530] You know, from the outside and then they toot it in front of me. It would be great.

[1531] Yeah, you'd love it.

[1532] Like Bill Murray or.

[1533] You know, Samuel Jackson.

[1534] Or Selma Hayek and Desperado.

[1535] Would you like that?

[1536] Yes.

[1537] Yep.

[1538] Sure.

[1539] Even if you were in bed with her?

[1540] Mid -coital.

[1541] Yeah.

[1542] No, you would.

[1543] I would.

[1544] No, be honest.

[1545] I would think it was cute.

[1546] But you'd prefer it not to happen.

[1547] I don't know.

[1548] Selma Hayek Desperado, I might prefer it happen.

[1549] It would just make us closer.

[1550] You're just saying that to make me laugh.

[1551] No. I think I'm serious.

[1552] You'd prefer it.

[1553] I'll tell you why.

[1554] Because I'd have to imagine it wasn't a regular occurrence.

[1555] I'd go, oh, she's going to remember this for the rest of her life.

[1556] It kind of, it makes you closer than you otherwise.

[1557] I mean, it is a real threshold.

[1558] It's something that doesn't happen to, you know, for some folks, well, I know married folks that have never farted in front of each other.

[1559] That's so rare, though.

[1560] It's so crazy.

[1561] On that topic, I think I've aired this out before, but, you know, here's my thing.

[1562] more than I would ever dislike the sound or the smell of a toot, I hate the idea that someone around me is uncomfortable.

[1563] Yeah.

[1564] And doesn't feel free to be them.

[1565] Yeah.

[1566] So the reward of it is so much higher than whatever the immediate downside is.

[1567] So I'm like, this person, trust me, they feel free to be comfy around me. This is a real good sign.

[1568] Yeah.

[1569] I get that.

[1570] But also, you know, the fear of doing it is that they'll seem less attractive.

[1571] Right, but that would not happen for me. I know, but you know what, I know you're saying that, but I think it does happen.

[1572] This happened.

[1573] I told you it happened to me in high school.

[1574] It did?

[1575] A gal was on top of me. Wait, what?

[1576] Oh, no. I was in high school.

[1577] Yeah.

[1578] I met a girl while cruising in Plymouth, Michigan.

[1579] Okay.

[1580] And I was, I think, driving Kenny's car.

[1581] Kenny used to let me drive his car when I was 15.

[1582] I didn't have my license.

[1583] And so I met this girl cruising and I think she was 18.

[1584] Tell people what cruising is.

[1585] Cruising is like you just go to downtown Plymouth and you go in circles in a cool car and everyone else has got cool cars.

[1586] And then you kind of meet girls.

[1587] You're just driving around.

[1588] You're just driving around showing off your car.

[1589] Well, in this case, Kenny's car.

[1590] It was a McLaren, a very rare Mustang.

[1591] So gorgeous.

[1592] Really a good looking car.

[1593] What color?

[1594] I'm going to send a picture.

[1595] It was burgundy.

[1596] Oh, okay.

[1597] So we're cruising in this car.

[1598] I meet this gal.

[1599] I end up going to her house, not that night, but another night.

[1600] Got her number.

[1601] And somehow she picked me up and I just, you know, what I was doing, I knew she thought.

[1602] thought I had to be over 16 because I met her driving.

[1603] Right.

[1604] And she was 18.

[1605] Oh, boy.

[1606] And I just kind of kept that under my lid.

[1607] And then we were full and around.

[1608] She was on top of me. And she was nude.

[1609] Okay?

[1610] And I was laying on my back and she's, we're kissing.

[1611] And then all of a sudden she sits up and then tries to put her butt on the blanket really quick.

[1612] Oh, my God.

[1613] A good, good volume trumpet came out.

[1614] And I immediately, I didn't care.

[1615] I felt terrible for her.

[1616] I'm sure.

[1617] 18.

[1618] Yeah.

[1619] She's so embarrassed.

[1620] Oh, my God.

[1621] I'm like, I immediately grab her and kiss her.

[1622] I go, oh, my God.

[1623] This is, I don't give a fuck.

[1624] I don't give a fuck.

[1625] And she's like, oh, me, she was really embarrassed.

[1626] But it did not, it did not make me less attracted to her.

[1627] Other than I was.

[1628] Nope.

[1629] So that, okay, okay.

[1630] Yeah.

[1631] So.

[1632] Yeah, if we had to sit in the odor and deal with it.

[1633] It would have.

[1634] It would have been less attractive.

[1635] You have to be honest about that.

[1636] I don't know that it would have been less attractive.

[1637] Now, what do you think position is the worst for it to happen?

[1638] And I mean, because I immediately go to Juan in particular.

[1639] What do you think?

[1640] Because missionary, whatever, did I just hear that?

[1641] Doggy, probably.

[1642] Yeah, that seems to be.

[1643] Ass up is not good.

[1644] 60 -9.

[1645] No. Oh, Rob just came over the top.

[1646] Okay.

[1647] Well.

[1648] That's probably definitely the worst.

[1649] But yeah.

[1650] But as far as specifically.

[1651] physicians, we think missionary is the preferred of all these, right?

[1652] Probably.

[1653] For the girl.

[1654] If the girl is one that farted.

[1655] Yeah.

[1656] If the guy farts, maybe he's on his back.

[1657] She's on top.

[1658] That's the preferred.

[1659] Because, again, it's going to go into some fabric.

[1660] Yeah, sure.

[1661] You get trapped.

[1662] So I still think that if people fart and it smells, okay?

[1663] Uh -huh.

[1664] Because you're saying you like it because it makes you feel closer to people, which I get.

[1665] And I feel that way, but I think men don't feel that way.

[1666] I really don't.

[1667] I feel that way.

[1668] Think about my best friend, Aaron Weekly.

[1669] He farts more than anyone I know.

[1670] I know.

[1671] His farts are repugnant, and I come to love them like their mind.

[1672] They don't, or my children.

[1673] Or my wife.

[1674] I don't care.

[1675] Yeah.

[1676] It just, it smells familiar, you know?

[1677] Yeah.

[1678] It feels, it, it smells like a bond, like a close bond.

[1679] Oh.

[1680] You know?

[1681] That's nice Yeah Well, anyway Okay, well, you love farts We've dealt with that We've dealt with that So she said That Ben she was talking about What Ben Shapiro said about trans Oh, what did he say?

[1682] I think he said a bunch of things But one of the things he said is No, it's not in the mind You are not a man if you think you're a man The idea that sex or gender Is Malleable is not true So he said that And then he said some other things too What a useful thing to say.

[1683] Yeah, exactly.

[1684] You wouldn't have you thought that.

[1685] Yeah, I know.

[1686] Why on earth would you bother saying that?

[1687] He just loves stirring up the pot.

[1688] He's a provocateur.

[1689] That's his profession.

[1690] Yeah.

[1691] In fact, I always get mad at people when they're like outraged by certain people whose literal job is to outrage you.

[1692] That's how they're making money.

[1693] Yeah.

[1694] And then you repost their shit.

[1695] Then you yell at it.

[1696] You're just fueling.

[1697] It's like, I think that one guy, Pierce Morgan.

[1698] Mm -hmm.

[1699] Because he used to be sensible.

[1700] There was a moment when he was on CNN or he was like, I would listen to him like, oh, that's a great point.

[1701] And now he just says these things, these like sound bites just to piss off a big sector of the population and then just fuel the coverage of it.

[1702] Yeah.

[1703] I think people are stupid when they do that.

[1704] Yeah.

[1705] When they perpetuate something that's clearly just a provocateur who's trying to get you to do that.

[1706] Yeah.

[1707] No, you're right.

[1708] But so there are six biological karyotype sexes.

[1709] that do not result in the death of the fetus.

[1710] Okay.

[1711] This is them.

[1712] Oh, Kleinfelters is one of these.

[1713] Uh -huh.

[1714] It is.

[1715] X, just X. No Y. No X. It says roughly one in 2 ,000 to one in 5 ,000 people.

[1716] And this is called Turner's.

[1717] Oh, turners, yep.

[1718] Okay, that's just X, X, X, X, X, most common form of female, X, X, X, Y, Kleinfelter.

[1719] Kleinfelters.

[1720] Roughly one in 500 to one in 1 ,000 people.

[1721] Pretty common.

[1722] common.

[1723] X, Y, most common form of male.

[1724] That's me. That's you.

[1725] X, Y, Y, roughly one out of 1 ,000 people.

[1726] X, X, X, Y. That's a ton of chromosomes for not getting rejected.

[1727] Roughly one in 18 ,000 to 1 in 50 ,000.

[1728] Now, of the 7 billion people in the world, this means that even if they only make up 1 % of the population, we're talking about millions of people that are neither they're male nor female genetically.

[1729] Genetically, yeah.

[1730] Yeah.

[1731] So that's not a small amount.

[1732] And then there's a whole other category of people who are genotypically male that are phenotypically something else.

[1733] Correct.

[1734] Yeah.

[1735] And hormones and all these things affect.

[1736] The bottom line is if someone says they feel like a woman, how on earth is that an argument you can actually engage in?

[1737] Yeah.

[1738] I don't know how the person feels.

[1739] I'm not in them.

[1740] Yeah, I know.

[1741] And the one that was interesting, I think you and I both listened to this podcast.

[1742] is the the it was a woman who was taking she was born genetically a woman and then she felt male inside so she started going on hormone therapy testosterone and stuff and she was saying I feel like you and I listen to us together that when she was on that she all of a sudden had an interest in sports she never had and she also liked math and science all of a sudden oh my god yeah that's how she felt I'm not we can't say she didn't feel I'm dying to find the source of that okay I can probably figure it out that I want to listen to a few podcasts did Ben Shapiro put that out no what is your issue with because that's so generic yes I mean that couldn't be more stereotypical look you it would be useless for you and I to argue what percentage is nature and what is nurtured let's not even try to that up.

[1743] But let's acknowledge that men like sports a lot more than women.

[1744] I mean, they're 90 % of the viewership of sports.

[1745] Well, depending on the sport, right?

[1746] Like women like gymnastics, but we only get gymnastics once every four years.

[1747] You do like gymnastics.

[1748] But the viewership for the NBA versus the WMBA is like 15fold.

[1749] There's no comparison.

[1750] Women, even though it's women, they don't watch WMBA.

[1751] Yeah.

[1752] Men watch NBA.

[1753] They watch hockey.

[1754] All these sports, the ESPN, Fox Sports, these huge they're all male driven.

[1755] Sure.

[1756] So that's obvious.

[1757] Now, again, I do believe that to be nurture, but yeah.

[1758] Okay.

[1759] So.

[1760] But it doesn't matter.

[1761] We would agree that at any, at any version, it's a combination.

[1762] There's no such thing as a nurture only or a nature only outcome.

[1763] Yeah, it's a combo.

[1764] But some things are majority nature and some things are majority nurture.

[1765] I mean, even like different regionally, that's all nurture.

[1766] Schools in the South, you.

[1767] You, everyone loves football.

[1768] If I went to UCLA, I would not have been into football.

[1769] You don't think?

[1770] No, not at all.

[1771] Not at all.

[1772] Well, they sell out that Rose Bowl.

[1773] It's a huge part of the environment there.

[1774] And I would not have had that at other schools.

[1775] Definitely not at any of the unophile schools.

[1776] Right.

[1777] And you've not watched a football game since other than when the dogs play.

[1778] Oh, correct.

[1779] Yeah.

[1780] I do not care about college football in general.

[1781] Unless, yeah, we're all watching a Georgia game or something.

[1782] That's fun.

[1783] But, yeah, a lot of things are, I think.

[1784] Here's the thing, though.

[1785] Yeah.

[1786] So undoubtedly nurtures such a huge part of all this.

[1787] But I have two little kids and I've watched them play with boys and girls since they were six months old.

[1788] The boys are fucking dumbasses.

[1789] Let's just start there.

[1790] Boys are so far behind little girls.

[1791] It's crazy.

[1792] Every time I...

[1793] They develop slower, yeah.

[1794] Yeah.

[1795] That doesn't mean they're dumbasses.

[1796] They're, compared to the females, they're fucking dumb -dums.

[1797] Their brains aren't developed yet.

[1798] Yeah, yeah.

[1799] This is the whole thing in this exact episode that we were just saying, it's bad to label.

[1800] We do this all the time.

[1801] Men just don't get that.

[1802] Men are stupid.

[1803] Men do this.

[1804] Well, that's giving an excuse.

[1805] No, no, no, no. I'm not looking to excuse anything.

[1806] And I'm also recognizing that culture and society and nurture is a huge element of it.

[1807] Yes.

[1808] But I don't think you can start a position by ignoring something so obvious.

[1809] Because to me, you just lose all your credibility.

[1810] It doesn't hurt to acknowledge that they're different at six months old or at a year old.

[1811] It doesn't preclude us from societally changing boys in the direction we want them to be changed in.

[1812] I just think when you start by going, oh, they're the same.

[1813] You just lose a lot of people, I think.

[1814] Okay.

[1815] I think those people aren't thinking too hard about it, to be honest.

[1816] because, yes, there are differences, and some are biological, but a lot are not.

[1817] If you're a parent and you take your little kid to the playground, you don't need to hear any signs.

[1818] The boys are fucking smashing sticks over each other's heads and beating the shit out of everything and trying to break everything.

[1819] I can't imagine all these hippie -dippy, L .A. parents I'm surrounded by are socializing their children to be little warriors.

[1820] I don't think that's happening.

[1821] Yet you see this level of aggression and destroy.

[1822] that's you know it's pretty unanimous yes but the shows that they're watching and those things could all lead to part of that yes again though like my kids are picking whatever they wanted to watch like they were into pall patrol right and i was like oh that's i would think that's kind of a cool boy show it's kind of neutral yeah it's like well yeah but a they need more female characters that's just a side note there's only two chicks and there's like seven dudes but um you know they go rescue things.

[1823] They have all these machines they use.

[1824] And so I was watching Paul Patrol, I was like, oh, this is kind of cool.

[1825] This, this breaks the norm of what I would have thought.

[1826] They like this.

[1827] So they were open to watch whatever they wanted.

[1828] And they, boy, have they just, you know, steered themselves straight into like fucking Barbie and all this shit.

[1829] Yes.

[1830] That no boy's watching.

[1831] True.

[1832] But it's also, at this point, there's other girls in the mix.

[1833] There's other friends and stuff.

[1834] And you're going to pick what the.

[1835] everyone else is doing, which is dull so that you can play with those people.

[1836] Yeah.

[1837] Like, I think it's just deeper than that.

[1838] Yeah.

[1839] I mean, it's both.

[1840] It's both.

[1841] Yeah.

[1842] And all I'm saying is I think you lose people on either side when you ignore that both sides are at play.

[1843] Yeah.

[1844] I think there's room to acknowledge that and do everything we want to do.

[1845] Yeah.

[1846] And break all the things that, yeah, we're not, boys aren't empathetic.

[1847] I think that's horseshit.

[1848] And there's a bunch of stuff.

[1849] I think it's horseshit.

[1850] Or they're sensitive.

[1851] I'd argue they're more sensitive to we beat it out of them.

[1852] I don't know if they're more sensitive, but they maybe become more sensitive because they have no outlet.

[1853] So you said that in general, men are 20 % faster, stronger, bigger.

[1854] In the Olympics.

[1855] So I don't have a figure for that.

[1856] Oh, okay.

[1857] But I think you just made up 20%.

[1858] No, I read an article about that exact case we were talking about setting at a testosterone limit and that kind of stuff.

[1859] How to handle.

[1860] Okay.

[1861] And it said that men are 20 % faster?

[1862] Yeah, if you look at like the long jump, the time in the 100, the high jump, you know, just generally speaking, it's about 20%.

[1863] I'm afraid to even use the word better.

[1864] But yes, objectively faster or higher or longer.

[1865] I didn't find it, but I believe you.

[1866] Okay.

[1867] So I don't know the current study she's talking about, about the white girls and black girls picking the Barbie.

[1868] The white Barbie.

[1869] Oh, uh -huh.

[1870] But there is this old study before Brown v. Board of Education and they used this study.

[1871] And so their experiment, which involved white and brown skin dolls.

[1872] Oh, and also this is interesting.

[1873] They had to paint the white baby doll brown because they didn't have brown baby dolls.

[1874] Which is interesting.

[1875] Okay.

[1876] The children were asked to identify the diaper dolls in a number of ways.

[1877] The ones they wanted to play with, the ones that looked white, colored, or negro.

[1878] This is a long time ago.

[1879] Okay.

[1880] The one that was good or bad.

[1881] Finally, they were asked to identify the doll that looked most like them.

[1882] All of these children were black.

[1883] Okay.

[1884] And all but one group attended segregated schools.

[1885] Most of the children preferred the white doll to the African American one.

[1886] Some of the children would cry and run out of the room when asked to identify which doll looked like them.

[1887] Oh, that's so hard.

[1888] I know.

[1889] Anyway, that was that.

[1890] And that was used in Brown v. Board of Education to sort of.

[1891] illustrate how horrendous in deep.

[1892] Isn't it?

[1893] Well, and then that's so fascinating too, like colorism within black communities or brown communities.

[1894] Oh, yeah.

[1895] You want to be as light as possible.

[1896] Oh, yeah.

[1897] So much self -loveling.

[1898] I know.

[1899] And it's a heart.

[1900] It's all my fault.

[1901] You did it.

[1902] It's not.

[1903] See, here's the problem.

[1904] I mean, I know you were totally joking.

[1905] But some people do.

[1906] hear this conversation and then get defensive about it, which is so annoying to me. It really is annoying.

[1907] Well, I understand how it's annoying, but how about if we make it less personal?

[1908] If I were German and every time I travel, people wanted to talk to me about the fact that they were Nazis there, at a certain point, I'd be like, yeah, I get it.

[1909] It's a fucking terrible path.

[1910] I'm not a Nazi.

[1911] I have no relationship to that path.

[1912] I don't want to talk about being a Nazi all the time everywhere I go.

[1913] It's like you inherit, yes, it's terrible, but you can see what's like, wait, I don't want to inherit, nor do the black people want to inherit all the terrible horrendous baggage that comes with it.

[1914] The white people, well, a lot of them deserve it because they are racist, but a lot of people are like your average young German student who's carrying around this history that they had Nazis there.

[1915] But that's right.

[1916] It's only a history there.

[1917] It's currently an issue here.

[1918] Well, that's true.

[1919] We've not escaped it.

[1920] So we have to keep talking about it.

[1921] Yeah, that's very true.

[1922] And I think that's where the conversation evolves, which is like, yeah, no one's saying that slavery is existing today and that you're perpetuating that.

[1923] Yeah.

[1924] Okay.

[1925] So I kept forgetting the number of the how many close relationships you can hold.

[1926] Mm -hmm.

[1927] It's 150.

[1928] 150?

[1929] Yeah.

[1930] And it's called Dunbar's number.

[1931] Oh, the elephant?

[1932] No, that's Babar.

[1933] Oh, Babar.

[1934] Dunbar's number?

[1935] Dunbar's number.

[1936] Dunbar's number.

[1937] Yeah, and it's 150.

[1938] Yeah, Dunbar's number suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships, relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person.

[1939] This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain cells.

[1940] size and average social group size.

[1941] By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain 150 staple relationships.

[1942] Dunbar explained it informally as the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happen to bump into them at bar.

[1943] Oh, that's a great way to think of it.

[1944] Yeah.

[1945] 150.

[1946] 150.

[1947] So we got to diversify that 150.

[1948] Oh, yes.

[1949] That's my point.

[1950] Okay, you said there's a million people active on Twitter.

[1951] Twitter said that it has 126 million daily active users.

[1952] So that's a lot.

[1953] So it's off by 126 times.

[1954] That's not bad.

[1955] That's not bad.

[1956] No, no, no. That's less than 1 % right.

[1957] Facebook is 1 .2 billion daily users.

[1958] Wow.

[1959] Which I just am shocked by.

[1960] I think one and six humans on planet art. I've never, it's never been for me. Yeah.

[1961] I see how it, my mom uses it.

[1962] You know, she's moved away from me. Michigan.

[1963] And so many of her friends and colleagues are still in Michigan, she can keep track of their lives.

[1964] But I do think there's a certain danger in it.

[1965] And I've said it to her.

[1966] It's like it's like, well, just it's a virtual connection.

[1967] It's like you do feel like you're up to date on their lives.

[1968] But you haven't spoken to them to hear those updates.

[1969] And there's something different about it.

[1970] There is definitely something different about it.

[1971] But it is.

[1972] It's convenient.

[1973] It's convenient.

[1974] I know.

[1975] It's tricky.

[1976] I think there's a certain tier of relationship that you should never only be using social media to connect with.

[1977] But then there's a tier under that that's like you weren't going to call them anyway.

[1978] But it's kind of cool to see like them and their family and know that they're doing well and they're happy.

[1979] It's like that's good.

[1980] It's comforting.

[1981] Yeah.

[1982] But I've found in our own social circle, we'll go to like one of the big Hanson parties.

[1983] And I almost don't ask someone what they've been up to because I saw.

[1984] Sure.

[1985] It's almost like creates a lack.

[1986] of interest I would normally have.

[1987] But it's like, well, I know they went camping.

[1988] I saw the whole thing and blah, blah, blah.

[1989] So I don't need to ask.

[1990] Yeah.

[1991] That's a little weird.

[1992] That's true.

[1993] When you are far away from people.

[1994] Your flow is so.

[1995] My flow, my feed?

[1996] Yeah, your feed and your flow is just drops.

[1997] It's like a leaky sink.

[1998] You never get enough.

[1999] You're doing a great, like, what do you post once every month or something?

[2000] I very rarely post.

[2001] Yeah.

[2002] So it's like it's cherished when they come out.

[2003] good.

[2004] I'm like, I'm like Edward Norton.

[2005] Mine sucks.

[2006] Mine's just the show.

[2007] I have to really remind myself to post something not related to this show.

[2008] Oh, but no, but she said, you know, she had the idea that Twitter should shut down at 6 p .m. Which was cool.

[2009] Yeah.

[2010] But then I was also like, and, you know, you can turn off Twitter at 6 p .m. Like, you can decide I'm not doing this after this time.

[2011] Like, we have to have some responsibility.

[2012] The reason they're not shutting it down is because people can't stop themselves you also get into some time zone issues but no one could ever communicate real time because they're all shutting it off at six six somewhere that's true there must be so much good stuff from twitter but from my point of view i really don't see any good coming from it it's just all fighting when i look at my feet it's and i don't follow fucking carmudgeons i follow like normal people i'm friends with every fucking thing is a complaint about something someone had said or some news article they're pissed about I mean, it's just a real toxic.

[2013] Can I ask you?

[2014] Why are you on it?

[2015] Because I post our shit on it.

[2016] Yeah.

[2017] And I try to respond to arm cherries.

[2018] And I get bored at work.

[2019] And I shouldn't do it.

[2020] Yeah.

[2021] I get being bored, but it's like maybe just don't be on it.

[2022] Yeah.

[2023] I mean, you can be on it to post.

[2024] Yeah.

[2025] But then not ever look at it.

[2026] Like, I technically have a Twitter.

[2027] I've never.

[2028] It wasn't it hijacked?

[2029] I think it got high.

[2030] Someone else.

[2031] Somebody.

[2032] Bitcoin operator or something.

[2033] It's kind of exciting.

[2034] Yeah.

[2035] You were a part of a conspiracy.

[2036] But, you know, if it's not healthy and it's not healthy.

[2037] Yeah.

[2038] Then why do it?

[2039] Why do it?

[2040] There can be a very low level of engagement and also be on it.

[2041] Like, you put out your thing and not look at the comments or scroll or do any of that.

[2042] That's true.

[2043] If the goal is to, like, tell people what you're doing, which it is.

[2044] Well, I do love interacting with armed cherries, too.

[2045] Well, then, yeah.

[2046] If I could just get a filter on it or it was just arm cherries, I would love both platforms.

[2047] Yeah.

[2048] All right.

[2049] All right.

[2050] That's all.

[2051] I love you.

[2052] And we're so sorry, Liz Blank, and not really we.

[2053] I am so sorry.

[2054] I can't be sorry about your fart.

[2055] I know.

[2056] Wabiwob played a hand in it.

[2057] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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