Order of Man - 165： Boys Adrift ｜ Dr. Leonard Sax

00:00:00.000 Continuing on the theme from last week, because I believe that this is such a critical topic

00:00:04.620 right now. Today, we talk about the fact that young boys seem to be going astray. The school

00:00:09.440 system is stacked against them. Society seems to be dismissing masculinity altogether. And being a

00:00:16.020 man is something that actually has to be defended. My guest today, Dr. Leonard Sachs, joins me to

00:00:21.720 talk about five factors driving an epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men,

00:00:27.900 how the school system needs to be overhauled if we are going to re-engage our boys,

00:00:32.580 the dangers of endocrine disruptors in men's lives, and how boys are going adrift, and more importantly,

00:00:38.440 how to get them back on track. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace

00:00:43.420 your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time,

00:00:49.400 every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life.

00:00:56.360 This is who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and

00:01:02.140 done, you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler,

00:01:08.200 and I am the host and founder of this podcast, the one you're listening to right now, Order of Man. I

00:01:12.400 am so glad that you're here, that you're joining with us, that you're not only listening to the

00:01:16.180 podcast, but you're out there in your families, your businesses, your neighborhoods, your communities,

00:01:21.000 and you're doing the work of men. Lord knows we need this now more than ever. It's been a crazy

00:01:26.260 week. I'm just getting back into the swing of things after a very, very successful uprising

00:01:31.520 event. That's a three and a half day experience that we do with 24 men who fly in from all over

00:01:36.580 the country. In fact, we actually had somebody fly in from France in this last event. So we're

00:01:41.780 going international with this thing as well. So getting back into the swing of things with that,

00:01:45.880 getting on top of everything, planning our new event, which is a father and son event coming up in

00:01:50.820 September. I'll talk with you more about that later in the show, but man, I'm busy. I know you're

00:01:55.240 busy. You can listen to a thousand other podcasts, but you are here joining in this mission of

00:02:00.740 reclaiming what it means to be a man in a society that seems to be more and more losing sight of

00:02:06.220 what it means to be a man. And I said in the opening remarks that it's fascinating to me that

00:02:10.660 masculinity actually has to be defended. It seems like it's the case more and more and you and me and

00:02:16.840 millions of other men across the planet are again, banded together to make sure that

00:02:20.400 the world knows what it is that we should be doing as men and then sees us stepping up as men.

00:02:26.460 So I'm glad that you're here. I'm glad you're tuning in. We've got an incredible, incredible

00:02:31.220 show lined up with somebody I've been following for a while. In fact, I was introduced to him

00:02:34.920 through my wife. I'm going to talk more about that in a minute, but before I do get into that,

00:02:39.240 I do want to just make a quick mention of my friends and our show sponsors origin main. Now I know I

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00:03:15.720 the stories that these guys share and the values they adhere to and the conversations that they're

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00:03:35.920 Now, if you do want to pick up some of their training gear, a rash guards, compression pants,

00:03:40.500 geese, uh, if you're interested in their nutritional supplemental line that I use,

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00:03:50.180 called discipline head to origin, main.com slash order of man. Again, origin, main.com slash order

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00:04:02.660 at checkout. So again, origin, main.com slash order of man, and then use O R D E R at checkout for that

00:04:08.860 discount. So guys, with that said, I want to introduce you to my guest today. A lot of you

00:04:14.280 are probably familiar with his work and his books. His name is Dr. Leonard Sachs. Again,

00:04:19.420 I was introduced to him through my wife. Uh, she picked up a couple of books several years ago.

00:04:24.480 I want to say on her pursuit to more effectively raise our boys. I've got three boys and a little

00:04:30.140 girl. And of course, we're always interested in learning new information that we can help

00:04:33.580 raise our children. Right. Uh, she came across the books, boys adrift and why gender 1.00

00:04:38.860 matters. And after she got done reading those, she asked if I would. And from the opening remarks,

00:04:43.960 I knew that this guy had some of the answers to the challenges that I, as a father seem to be

00:04:49.680 facing in raising my young boys. And I'm sure because I've gotten messages from you that you have

00:04:55.620 as well in raising boys and being involved in the community and in our young men's lives.

00:05:00.420 Dr. Sachs is a MIT graduate. He's a physician. He's a psychologist. Uh, he's been practicing for

00:05:06.340 nearly 30 years and he is well-versed as you're going to hear today in very, very important gender

00:05:12.200 issues and the crisis our young men and women seem to be facing today. Dr. Sachs, thanks for joining

00:05:19.840 me on the show today. Excited to have you on. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah. I've been following

00:05:23.200 your work. I was actually introduced to your work through my wife who's read all of your books and

00:05:28.240 she got me turned onto those books as well. And I'm really excited to have this conversation

00:05:31.860 specifically about boys adrift, because I think there really is a struggle with men in general.

00:05:38.220 And I think we've begun, or maybe it's been going for a while to lose our way. So I'm anxious to have

00:05:43.760 this conversation because it is a critical time for boys. And you seem to be the, uh, the subject

00:05:48.860 matter expert on this stuff. Thank you. So talk to me a little bit. I mean, as we, as we create the

00:05:54.560 framework for the discussion today, talk to me about generally the struggles and the challenges

00:06:02.500 that boys are facing, and then we can get a little bit into the specifics about why that is and how we

00:06:07.840 begin to address these problems. Well, you know, this topic can be controversial and I've done this

00:06:13.280 in a debate format with professors of women's studies at various universities. And they'll often say,

00:06:19.820 what are you talking about? You know, look at the fortune 500 CEOs are still overwhelmingly men.

00:06:25.400 Look at the world's wealth. It's still overwhelmingly controlled by men. So where do you get off saying

00:06:31.520 that boys are having problems? So I think it's important to start by looking at the data, look at

00:06:38.020 how kids are doing in school. There's a growing gender gap in academic achievement across the United

00:06:44.300 States with boys falling farther and farther behind girls. And this is true across just a very wide 0.86

00:06:52.240 range of parameters in the school. Who's earning the best marks? Who's the valedictorian? Who's editing

00:06:57.560 the school yearbook? Who's graduating with honors? And in most cases, the gap is widening, not because

00:07:04.400 girls are doing better, but because boys are doing worse compared to how boys used to do. So I'll give you

00:07:10.100 one example. Way back in 1980, National Endowment for the Arts surveyed a large sample of American

00:07:16.640 teenagers coast to coast and asked them, what do you like to do in your free time? They like to play

00:07:21.980 outdoors, play sports, read books. They were especially interested in who's reading books for

00:07:26.260 fun. And they found in 1980 that there was a slight gender gap, that girls in 1980 were a little bit more

00:07:32.740 likely to read books for fun in their spare time than boys were. But then more recently, two researchers,

00:07:38.640 Mark Barline and Sandra Stotsky went back and did the same thing. Once again, surveyed a large

00:07:43.900 and demographically representative sample of kids across the United States and asked them, what do

00:07:48.660 you like to do for fun? And they found, and I'm quoting now from their report, that the gender gap has 0.85

00:07:53.340 become a chasm, that reading for fun has become a marker of gender identity, that girls read and boys 0.81

00:08:00.840 don't, end quote. And that's not true because girls are reading more today. Girls are not reading more 0.93

00:08:07.140 today. Girls today are reading a little bit less than girls were reading in 1980. But American boys 0.83

00:08:12.080 have stopped reading altogether. It's unusual today to find an American boy who reads for fun 0.91

00:08:18.780 in his spare time. And as I said, this is true across a wide range of parameters. Look at who's

00:08:23.640 graduating from university in the United States. 40 years ago, men outnumbered women. Today, women

00:08:30.220 outnumbered men 57-43 last year among those who graduated from four-year universities. You look

00:08:37.080 at who's graduating with highest honors. You find that women now outnumber men 3 to 1. That's a huge

00:08:44.300 change compared with 40 years ago. 40 years ago, men were overrepresented among those graduating with

00:08:49.520 highest honors. 40 years ago, women were more likely than men to drop out of college, often because

00:08:54.820 they were getting married and starting a family. Today, young men in the United States are much

00:08:59.880 more likely to drop out of college than their sisters are. And it's rarely because they're

00:09:04.160 staying home to raise baby. More often, it's because they're going back to their parents' home to play

00:09:08.020 video games in their parents' basement. So you look at who's taking advanced placement exams, who's

00:09:14.340 earning the best marks, who's editing the school newspaper. You know, I graduated, I attended public

00:09:20.400 schools in Northern Ohio, K-12. I was editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper. The editor before me

00:09:27.220 was a boy. The editor before him was a boy. I can't remember a girl being editor of a high school

00:09:31.740 newspaper. It was always a boy. My high school newspaper has three editors this year, all girls.

00:09:37.020 I was on the debate team. Most of the kids on the debate team were boys. My high school has a debate

00:09:41.440 team now. It turns out they're all girls. You know, when did boys decide that arguing is not something

00:09:46.620 boys do? There's been this massive exodus of boys from academic achievement, working hard to get a

00:09:55.080 better mark. You know, 50 years ago, Sam Cooke had a number one hit song in the United States. Don't know

00:10:01.220 much about history. He's saying, now, I don't claim to be an A student, but I'm trying to be, because maybe

00:10:08.020 by being an A student baby, I could win your love for me. He goes on to mention French geometry and

00:10:13.360 trigonometry as subjects in which he's going to try harder to earn an A instead of a B.

00:10:19.060 That wouldn't happen today. It's impossible to imagine Akon, Eminem, 50 Cent, Bruno Mars,

00:10:24.480 Justin Timberlake singing about how they want to try harder to earn an A instead of a B.

00:10:30.200 The culture has shifted, and working hard to get a good mark is now seen by many boys as uncool,

00:10:37.980 as unmasculine. Why has that changed? Is that changes in the educational system and the

00:10:43.220 way that we are being taught as boys? Why did that happen? So that's a major focus of my book,

00:10:51.000 Boys Adrift. The subtitle is The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys

00:10:57.780 and Underachieving Young Men. And those five factors are education, video games, stimulant medications for

00:11:06.720 attention deficit disorder, endocrine disruptors, which are lowering testosterone levels dramatically,

00:11:12.320 and the revenge of the forsaken gods. So those are the five factors. When I speak to parents,

00:11:19.660 I usually talk about factors two, three, four, and five. I just did this talk, let's see, two days ago

00:11:25.540 in Silicon Valley, Mountain View Los Altos. Incidentally, that was a repeat. They had me do the same talk

00:11:32.480 there 10 years ago and invited me to come back and do it again because the superintendent, Dr. Harding,

00:11:38.080 told me that he's just seeing this problem getting worse, that boys have no interest in earning top

00:11:45.520 marks or earning academic honors. And he's a father of four boys and he wants to know more about why this

00:11:53.300 is happening. But very quickly, that first factor for your listeners, again, I do one and two day

00:11:59.740 workshops for schools sharing what I've learned. I've visited now more than 400 schools over the last 17

00:12:04.800 years. And I've learned a lot about how you make school friendly to boys without making it unfriendly

00:12:10.480 to girls. But let me just give you an example of that first factor, changes in education. American 0.95

00:12:17.160 education changed in some big ways over the last 30 years that have the unintended consequence of

00:12:23.600 disengaging boys. And one of those changes, one of those four components of that one factor

00:12:28.820 is that school has become unfriendly to boys. And I'll give you a very concrete example of what I

00:12:34.640 mean by that. If your listeners are in the Northern United States, my question is, does your school allow

00:12:42.980 kids to throw snowballs at one another on school property during school hours? The answer is no. And

00:12:51.560 I've found this to be almost universally the case in the United States. And that's a big change. As I said,

00:12:57.960 I grew up in Northern Ohio, we got a lot of snow off Lake Erie, Lake effect snow. And during the winter

00:13:04.240 months, for recess and lunch, we'd put on our coats and go outside on the playground and throw snowballs

00:13:10.100 at each other. And the teachers would come out and join us, students against teachers. I remember Mr.

00:13:15.080 Albers was a great shot, get you right between the eyes every time. And that's very common. You'll hear

00:13:20.120 stories like that all across the United States and Canada. But today, if two boys go out on school

00:13:25.180 property during school hours and start throwing snowballs at each other, it's very likely that

00:13:30.080 teacher or administrator is going to run and say, what are you guys doing? You're not allowed to do

00:13:33.240 that. You can't throw snowballs at each other on school property. You want to do that. You got to

00:13:36.640 go somewhere else. And the unintended message that boys are getting is that school's not the place for

00:13:42.920 you, that you don't belong here. We don't want your time. Boys are getting that message loud and

00:13:49.240 clear. There's a better way, which I learned when I visited St. Andrews, the boys' school north of

00:13:55.960 Toronto, inbounds versus out of bounds. At St. Andrews, if you want to throw snowballs, go to the

00:14:02.640 football field. You are allowed to throw snowballs at one another on the football field, but not

00:14:09.040 elsewhere. And that works. You create a space. Look, boys doing things that boys have always done,

00:14:16.480 pointing fingers at one another, saying, bang, bang, you're dead, throwing snowballs at each

00:14:21.320 other, drawing a picture of a knight decapitating another knight. Boys doing things that boys have

00:14:28.920 always done now gets you in trouble. I can give you examples. Many examples of American schools

00:14:34.580 were boys doing things I just described. Those boys were disciplined, suspended, threatened with

00:14:41.540 expulsion. Medicated, like you talked about. Well, medicated is a different issue that we can

00:14:47.380 get to. But one example I give in Boys Adrift, this fifth grade boy, one of his friends pretended to,

00:14:54.580 it went bang and pretended to shoot him with his finger. And the other boy pretended he had a bow and

00:14:59.680 arrow, drew back the imaginary arrow, and went twang and pretended to shoot the boy with an imaginary arrow.

00:15:07.780 The boys were holding nothing in their hands. This was make-believe. Both boys were disciplined

00:15:13.780 for violent behavior and threatened with suspension. Actually, I think the one boy was suspended and he

00:15:21.180 was threatened with expulsion if he did it again. This is psychotic. It's completely detached from

00:15:27.140 reality. And the school districts will say, well, we don't want to condone violence. You know, we are

00:15:33.120 concerned about school violence. Look, we've got good evidence on this point. Prohibiting boys from

00:15:38.180 pointing fingers at one another saying, bang, bang, you're dead, does nothing to prevent actual school

00:15:44.780 violence. This is not a guess. We have good studies in which researchers have compared districts with

00:15:50.280 so-called zero-tolerance policies, where kids are not allowed to point fingers at one another saying,

00:15:57.500 bang, bang, you're dead, with school districts demographically similar, which do not adopt such policies,

00:16:03.460 adopting a policy where kids are not allowed to point fingers at each other saying, bang, bang,

00:16:07.660 you're dead, accomplishes nothing in terms of preventing actual school violence. But it does

00:16:12.500 greatly increase the number of discipline referrals. More and more boys getting in trouble for this

00:16:17.900 imaginary pretend sort of behavior. But it has another bad consequence, which is that when a boy gets

00:16:25.360 in trouble for pointing his finger at another boy saying, bang, bang, you're dead, he's getting the

00:16:30.760 message. As I said before, that school is not for you. And a lot of those boys conclude, yeah, school

00:16:37.220 sucks. I'm going to go home and play Grand Theft Auto. That's the unintended consequence. And it's so 0.98

00:16:42.700 easy to fix this. In two days with teachers, you can turn this around. And the boy who hated school last

00:16:50.040 year, loves school this year, they create a snowball tournament where you pair kids off. It's voluntary,

00:16:56.260 kids sign up. You pair kids off and you throw snowballs. Each kid gets five chances to throw a

00:17:01.720 snowball at a target. In each pair, whoever hits the target more times advances and whoever doesn't

00:17:07.920 sits down. And at the end of the day, you've got a grand champion. And that boy who last week said

00:17:13.820 school sucks is now staying after school to participate in a school sponsored activity, namely the 0.97

00:17:19.580 snowball tournament. It costs nothing. It's easy to turn this around if there's any interest. Unfortunately, 0.98

00:17:26.760 most school districts, most administrators have no interest in this topic. Indeed, when you even

00:17:32.740 present this, I had a teacher who went to her professor of education, she's earning a master's in

00:17:38.020 education, and she showed the teacher my book, just showed it to her and said, I'd like to lend you my copy

00:17:43.920 of Dr. Sachs' book, Why Gender Matters. And the subtitle is What Parents and Teachers Need to Know

00:17:50.200 About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences. The professor looked at it, didn't touch it,

00:17:55.480 looked at it and said, I have no interest in such sexist rubbish. For many professors of education, 0.98

00:18:03.100 the notion that we should consider what boys need and how that might be different from what girls need

00:18:10.520 is regarded as, as another principal said to me, he said, Dr. Sachs, after you're looking up on Google, 1.00

00:18:17.860 I've concluded you're either an idiot, a Republican, or both. The notion that boys might need something 1.00

00:18:25.260 different from what girls need has become politicized in this country. And if you suggest such a thing, 1.00

00:18:31.660 people assume that you're a Republican. And before you know it, they're talking about Donald Trump.

00:18:36.680 And I say, wait, wait, stop. This has nothing to do with Donald Trump. We're talking about evidence,

00:18:46.400 scholarly papers. What boys need to be successful in school is different from what many girls need 0.97

00:18:56.500 to be successful in school.

00:18:58.420 Why are these administrators and these educators who are supposed to be there for our children,

00:19:02.740 having such a hard time recognizing this understanding, and at least considering that

00:19:08.140 this might actually be true?

00:19:10.920 Well, unfortunately, I think politics has infiltrated the school and the district to be

00:19:18.260 concerned about boys means for many people, they assume that you are right of center, that you are

00:19:23.940 Republican and people who are concerned about girls, likewise are often assumed to be Democrats left of

00:19:31.080 center. Well, I'm concerned about both. Girls are not the winners here. Girls today are much more

00:19:37.400 likely to be anxious and depressed than girls were 20 years ago. And there is no taper in that trend

00:19:43.960 line. About 400% more likely to be anxious or depressed compared to girls 20 years ago. I wrote a book about

00:19:50.980 that called Girls on the Edge. So both girls and boys are losers here. Many schools that are very 0.99

00:19:58.200 welcome to the issues of how we can help girls to be less anxious, how we can help girls to thrive in

00:20:06.320 computer coding and physics have very little interest in how do we get boys excited about

00:20:11.880 creative writing, expository writing, motivated to do their best in the school.

00:20:17.780 I'm completely shocked. And I certainly see that because I've got three boys and a girl,

00:20:21.120 and I can certainly see that for my two oldest who are in school right now. In a way, it seems like

00:20:25.840 they're completely set up to fail, but I do want to move on because I want to try to get through as

00:20:29.860 many of these as we can. I want to talk about this second factor, which is video games. Now I will say

00:20:34.740 we don't even have video games in our home. We watch very little TV, but I am really interested

00:20:40.520 because I think technology is important and understanding technology is important, but I

00:20:44.160 think it gets taken to the extreme. You know, when I talk to parents over 40 about video games,

00:20:49.720 some of them are thinking about Pac-Man. Sure. It's a little bit different now than it was then.

00:20:54.300 Yeah. They haven't played Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed. They don't

00:20:58.960 understand. This is completely different from what you grew up with. This is very realistic and the

00:21:09.040 engineering is very good. So when you're playing Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto has one of the

00:21:15.320 best helicopter flight simulators that exists. When you play that game, you feel like you're in a

00:21:21.860 helicopter. Some kids will just go and play the helicopter part. You don't have to go around

00:21:26.600 shooting people. You can just stay in the helicopter as long as you want to. It's realistic. It's

00:21:31.560 immersive. And for many boys, it's addictive. And a lot of parents are like, you know, my son's

00:21:38.300 playing World of Warcraft. He's got his headset on. He's collaborating with his guild members in

00:21:45.520 the Philippines and in Liverpool, England. And the parents are awed by the technology. It's like,

00:21:52.800 wow, you know, he's really getting tech savvy with his headset, giving commands to his guild members

00:21:58.740 in Johannesburg, South Africa, all in real time. And the parents don't realize that the boys are

00:22:05.100 coming to prioritize the video game over real world experience. That getting to the next mission

00:22:10.960 in Call of Duty for many of these boys is more important than getting an A instead of a B

00:22:17.080 on their Spanish exam. They also are, the parents also are often not aware of the research showing

00:22:24.820 that the more time a boy spends on video games, the more his social skills are undermined. Learning

00:22:31.040 how to talk face to face with a human being, how to listen, how to use tone of voice as a clue to

00:22:38.340 meaning. None of those skills are innate. They have to be learned and they're learned by practice

00:22:44.360 and they're maintained by practice. And the more time a boy is spending on video games,

00:22:49.800 the less well he develops these social skills. Yeah. It's amazing to me how infrequently that I see

00:22:57.300 boys in the neighborhood, for example, that they're even outside playing. You know, my boys,

00:23:01.340 I kick them outside. I remember when I was little, my mom would literally lock the screen door to our house

00:23:05.500 and I would go out first thing in the morning on Saturday. And I didn't come back in until my mom

00:23:11.700 yelled for us for dinner and everybody started going home because it was dinner time. But you

00:23:15.800 just don't see boys out in the neighborhood playing anymore because they're trapped inside on,

00:23:19.260 on devices and electronics, video games, TV. And I can definitely see that being a real problem.

00:23:25.280 Well, and this is why it has to be the parent's job to limit, govern and guide what video games your

00:23:31.140 kid is playing and for how long. And in the book, I provide very specific guidelines, no more than 40

00:23:36.720 minutes a night on school nights, no more than an hour a day on weekends. And your minutes do not

00:23:42.180 roll over. So if you go three weeks without playing a video game, that doesn't mean you're allowed to

00:23:46.440 spend seven hours on a Saturday playing a video game. This has to be the parent's call because when

00:23:52.060 he's online and the boys now very often are playing online with friends, it's very hard for a 12 year old

00:23:58.340 boy to say, well, I'm going to sign off now because research suggests that spending too much time on

00:24:03.320 video games may undermine social skills. Come on, that's ridiculous. No 12 year old is going to say 0.95

00:24:07.960 that. You have to be able to say, hey, my parents have installed this app on my console. It's going

00:24:13.020 to lock me out in two minutes and I won't be able to log back on for 24 hours. You have to be willing to

00:24:19.720 be the mean parent. You have to be willing to take the blame when your son says to his friends,

00:24:25.220 well, I'd like to play for the next four hours, but my parents won't let me. That's your job as a

00:24:31.000 parent. It's amazing how much power I think generally in society we give our children. I

00:24:35.000 think that's the premise of your book, The Collapse of Parenting is that we're more interested and

00:24:38.760 concerned with being friends and being liked than being the structure and the discipline that kids

00:24:45.780 need. I mean, they don't know what to do and it's our job to help foster healthy parameters and

00:24:51.580 guidelines for our kids. That's right. And the culture has changed in a way that undermines the

00:24:57.480 authority of parents. I mean, you look at the most popular TV shows for kids 50 years ago, shows like

00:25:03.640 Father Knows Best, My Three Sons, The Andrew Griffith Show. Those shows were teaching kids that your

00:25:09.680 parents know best, that your parents have the right and the duty to limit, govern and guide what you're

00:25:17.680 doing. But the most popular shows for kids today, whether it's American Idol or iCarly, The Voice or

00:25:25.800 Survivor, those shows, either parents are absent or parents are projected as clueless, out of touch.

00:25:33.540 Shows like Modern Family, even on the Disney Channel, Jesse, Dog with a Blog, Liv and Maddie,

00:25:40.160 those parents are out of touch and clueless about what kids...

00:25:44.320 Completely oblivious. Yep.

00:25:47.660 What we're talking about today with Dr. Leonard Sachs is such an important issue,

00:25:51.960 so much so that I have decided to throw my hat in the ring with what I think has the potential to

00:25:57.780 become the next evolution or a next component of the Order of Man experience. It's called Legacy.

00:26:04.140 All right. This is a three and a half day father and son retreat in the mountains of Southern Utah.

00:26:08.760 I just released the dates last week and we've already sold out a third of our slots for this event.

00:26:13.280 The dates are September 20th through the 23rd, 2018, and we only have 14 spots remaining.

00:26:20.240 This is only the second time I've really announced it. Over the course of three days,

00:26:24.280 you and your son are going to develop more skills and forge new bonds between yourself,

00:26:30.440 create the framework for success and growth as men, and in a way, create your own rite of passage.

00:26:35.920 I've talked about this in previous episodes of the podcast, and I get so many questions about

00:26:40.240 creating a rite of passage. And we want to be able to help give you the tools and the assistance that

00:26:44.880 you need, not only to do it here, but then to go out and do it in your life. Now, guys, the age range

00:26:50.020 for the boys is between the ages of eight to 15. Again, it's for ages eight to 15 with your son.

00:26:56.020 So if you have a son, whether that's a biological son or an adopted son or a stepson, maybe it's a

00:27:01.860 nephew, maybe there's a neighborhood boy that you have a fatherly role in the life of that young

00:27:07.500 man, then please join us in this life-changing experience for you. And also for him that I think

00:27:13.860 will set the course for the rest of his life. If you are interested in learning more about the event

00:27:18.640 and the activities and how this will work, and you want to lock in one of your seats, head to

00:27:23.340 order of man.com slash legacy. Again, it's order of man.com slash legacy. Now, with that said,

00:27:30.140 let's get back to this conversation with Dr. Leonard Sachs. Well, let's, for the sake of time,

00:27:35.260 move on to this third factor, which is medications for ADHD and those types of things. What do you see

00:27:41.820 here? What's the research and the trend showing? Okay. So let's talk about the trends. In 1979,

00:27:47.420 about 1% of American kids were diagnosed and treated for attention deficit disorder. According to the

00:27:53.860 Centers for Disease Control, the most recent data, 20% of American boys, one in five, now been

00:27:59.720 diagnosed and treated for ADD. And I compare the numbers across countries. An American kid is now

00:28:07.380 14 times more likely to be on medication for ADD compared to a kid in the United Kingdom. I wrote a

00:28:14.860 book for a French publisher on girls and boys in France, working with French colleagues. And working

00:28:21.280 with French colleagues, I learned that in all of France, there's fewer than 6,000 kids on medications

00:28:26.700 for ADD. I just came from speaking near San Francisco. I can tell you there's more kids in

00:28:32.420 San Francisco alone on medication for ADD than there are in all of France, a nation of 65 million

00:28:38.880 people. Why did this happen? And why did it happen here and not elsewhere? Well, it happened because

00:28:45.540 medication became the first resort in this country and not elsewhere. It's very common for an American

00:28:51.160 physician to say, well, let's try Adderall. Let's try Vyvanse and see if it helps. I spoke at Harvard

00:28:58.120 on a conference on learning and the brain. And I would love to tell you my presentation was the buzz

00:29:02.740 of the conference, but it wasn't. The presentation everybody really got excited about was a presentation

00:29:07.600 by Dr. John Gabrielli. Dr. Gabrielli somehow got permission to give Adderall, a very popular medication

00:29:15.180 for ADD to give Adderall to normal kids and withhold medication from kids who truly had severe ADD.

00:29:23.100 And then he studied the ability of kids in both groups to learn on and off medication. And he found

00:29:28.840 that medication helps kids who don't have ADD, helps normal kids as much or more than it helps kids who

00:29:36.640 have ADD. That's a really important finding because so many times parents will say, well, you know,

00:29:42.920 the Vyvanse has been so helpful. Dr. Sachs, how can you say my son doesn't have ADD? The Vyvanse really helped.

00:29:51.100 The parents are using the response to medication as though it had some diagnostic significance.

00:29:57.700 Vyvanse was prescribed for my son for ADD. It's been immensely helpful. Therefore, my kid must have ADD, right?

00:30:05.300 Bzzzt. Wrong. Dr. Gabrielli's research and other studies like it show these medications are not specific.

00:30:11.280 They help normal kids as much or more than they help kids with ADD. These medications help everybody.

00:30:17.880 Why not, you know, why not just put everybody in medication? So I saw this. A parent's brought a boy

00:30:23.020 to me. A child psychiatrist had diagnosed him as having ADD. It was off the chart on the Conner scale,

00:30:28.580 inattentive in all classes. But they brought him to me because now he's on Vyvanse. He's getting

00:30:34.120 palpitations. He's got a tremor. He's anxious. And they feel correctly that this is due to the

00:30:40.480 medication. So they saw something I wrote for the New York Times about how these medications are

00:30:44.440 overprescribed. And so they brought him to me for a second opinion. So I did a careful sleep history.

00:30:49.720 I said, when do you go to bed? When do you wake up? And before the son could answer, mom said, well,

00:30:55.000 he's in his bedroom by nine o'clock. He, we wake him up at six in the morning. So that's nine hours.

00:30:59.440 I said, all right, you have a video game console in your bedroom. And the boy's very friendly and

00:31:06.500 forthcoming. Yeah, he's got a video game console. Yeah, he plays it. Yeah, he's up till 1 a.m.,

00:31:12.700 two in the morning, typically playing Assassin's Creed, Fortnite. And he's getting three, four hours

00:31:19.800 of sleep a night. He is sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation perfectly mimics ADHD of the inattentive

00:31:26.740 variety. There is no observation, no counter scale that can distinguish the kid who's not

00:31:32.340 paying attention because he's sleep deprived from the kid who's not paying attention because he has

00:31:36.340 ADHD. And the medication was tremendously helpful. Why? What's Vyvanse? What's Adderall? They're

00:31:42.980 amphetamines. They're very powerful stimulants. They compensate for the sleep deprivation. If you've

00:31:49.380 got four hours of sleep a night, but you take 30 milligrams of Adderall, you're good to go.

00:31:53.280 But the appropriate remedy, the appropriate remedy for sleep deprivation is sleep, not scheduled to

00:32:00.700 amphetamines. And I said to the parents, get the console out of the bedroom. No devices in the

00:32:08.580 bedroom. Incidentally, that's not just my opinion. That's the official guideline of the American Academy

00:32:13.300 of Pediatrics. No child under 18 should have a video game console in the bedroom or a smartphone in

00:32:20.020 the bedroom because they're going to be playing games on them at two in the morning. So no screens

00:32:26.280 in the bedroom. Now, as again, those are the official guidelines of the American Academy of

00:32:29.780 Pediatrics. And this boy did fine. He got his sleep. He doesn't need medication. He needs parents

00:32:36.940 who understand their job.

00:32:40.440 It's really interesting. You bring this up and it really comes back to this other book that you've

00:32:44.440 written, The Collapse of Parenting. And I think just for the sake of time, we'll have to have maybe a

00:32:48.040 secondary and a follow-up conversation because I think it is very easy and we'll use the word

00:32:53.680 convenient. I think that's probably the best word to prescribe medication or to try to put band-aids

00:32:59.340 on the symptoms when the real problem is, like you say, a collapse of parenting and a collapse of

00:33:05.580 involvement in the family. From my perspective, is that accurate?

00:33:09.740 Yes. But if we're focusing on boys and motivation, we need to tie this up. Why are stimulant

00:33:15.200 medications a problem as far as boys and medication and motivation? The problem is that

00:33:20.620 stimulant medications, Adderall, Vyvanse, Concerta, Medidate, Focalendit, Trana, Ritalin,

00:33:27.500 turns out they damage the motivational center of the brain, the nucleus accumbens. And I now cite 15

00:33:34.200 different scholarly studies in which this has been demonstrated in humans and laboratory animals.

00:33:39.840 the damage the motivational center of the brain. This nucleus accumbens has nothing to do with

00:33:46.320 learning or memory. These kids can learn fine. They can remember fine. It has nothing to do with

00:33:51.540 affect. These kids are smiling and happy, but they're not motivated. So I'll give you one quick

00:33:58.600 example from my own practice. A mom is getting very frustrated with her son and she confronts him

00:34:04.540 one day and says, you know, what's your problem? You roll out of bed late every morning. You work a few

00:34:08.520 hours a week at the coffee shop. You're 28 years old. You don't have a career. You don't even have a

00:34:15.840 girlfriend. And he laughed. He said, well, I used to have a girlfriend. Then she found out I only work

00:34:21.900 a few hours a week at Starbucks. She dumped me. Mom is pulling her hair out. Son's totally fine. He's

00:34:27.780 happy. She insisted he come see me. He was okay with that. And he made some very negative comments

00:34:33.360 about this young woman who had dumped him. He said, she was fat and she wanted me to take her 0.93

00:34:38.240 places and do stuff. He said, 1995 a month. I said, wait, what do you mean 1995 a month? I don't

00:34:44.540 understand. And he mentioned a porn site, a pornography site. He said, yeah. And the girls 0.72

00:34:51.100 are way prettier. I said, wait, those, those aren't girls. Those are pictures on a computer screen. 0.95

00:34:56.240 And they're pixels. Wouldn't you rather be intimate with an actual woman? And he said, no. Look for many 0.99

00:35:03.780 of these boys, the pornography is so good. The video games are so good. They would rather spend 0.89

00:35:11.460 their free time in their bedroom with the door closed than venturing out into the real world,

00:35:17.980 which costs more money and where the risks of rejection are much higher. That's the end result.

00:35:24.940 This boy was on Ritalin and other stimulant medications for ADD from age nine to age 17

00:35:31.580 prescribed by other doctors. That's the end result. He's funny. He's friendly. He's good looking,

00:35:36.800 but he is completely unmotivated. Interesting. Does this tie in then to that fourth factor of

00:35:43.340 endocrine disruptors where it's medication or these other chemicals, things that we're putting into our

00:35:49.440 bodies? The five factors are logically not connected, but they've come together in a perfect

00:35:56.860 storm because they all have the net result of disengaging boys from the real world. The fourth

00:36:03.080 factor is completely separate. The fourth factor is endocrine disruptors, water in a plastic bottle.

00:36:08.880 That plastic is made from polyethylene terephthalate, PET. That bottle was shipped in a truck. Even when it's

00:36:16.300 cold outside as it is today, that truck was sitting in the sun and the temperature inside the truck can

00:36:22.080 easily rise above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. When that happens, chemicals in the plastic, specifically

00:36:29.140 diethylhexyl phthalate and antimony will leak into the water and those chemicals act in the human body

00:36:36.300 like female hormones. Then it's not just bottled water. It's soda. It's condiments like ketchup, 0.99

00:36:43.520 vinegar, pasta sauce, foods and beverages that we consume are now filled with these endocrine

00:36:51.400 disruptors that mimic the action of female hormones. Now what happens when a child drinks bottled water 0.51

00:36:57.140 or consumes ketchup or pasta sauce from a container that is a plastic bottle? Well, the answer varies

00:37:05.760 depending whether you're talking about girls or boys. If you're talking about girls, the result is an

00:37:09.860 earlier age of onset of puberty and a higher risk of anxiety and depression. If you're talking about

00:37:17.960 boys, the result is a drop in testosterone levels. In the United States, there's been a continuous drop

00:37:23.920 in testosterone levels over the past 60 years. Testosterone levels in the United States for young

00:37:29.600 men have dropped by about half over the last 60 years. Of course, that affects fertility. Just five 0.69

00:37:35.620 months ago, a study was published showing that the average total sperm count of a young man has dropped

00:37:43.720 by more than half since 1971. We're seeing a dramatic plummeting decline in testosterone levels and sperm

00:37:53.800 counts across the United States and indeed across the developed world. It is not at all true in

00:38:00.020 sub-Saharan Africa where people are not drinking water out of plastic bottles. This phenomenon is

00:38:05.360 confined to people in developed countries. Why is it a problem and why does it affect motivation

00:38:11.980 in boys but not in girls? Well, again, I cite many studies in which researchers have studied young men

00:38:19.060 who are driven and hardworking and compared them to men who are less motivated, lazier. And they find

00:38:25.960 consistently that the driven, hardworking man has higher testosterone level than the lazy, less

00:38:32.420 motivated man. But this is not at all true for girls and women. That driven, hardworking woman does

00:38:38.540 not have a higher testosterone level than the less motivated, lazier woman. Women do not rely on 1.00

00:38:45.400 testosterone for drive and motivation, but men do. And when testosterone levels drop, drive and

00:38:53.380 motivation drops. And you know, some of the factors we talked about are not easy to fix. You cannot

00:38:58.020 change your child's school. But this factor turns out to be real easy to fix. Don't buy anything that

00:39:06.760 was shipped in a plastic bottle. Don't carry bottled water with you or allow your son to. Pour tap water

00:39:14.560 into a steel canteen, as we do in our home. Don't microwave anything in a plastic bag. Use

00:39:23.200 metal or ceramic, excuse me, not metal. Use ceramic or- That could get interesting really

00:39:28.080 quick. Metal. Metal would be pretty interesting in a microwave, but you can carry it in metal,

00:39:34.160 but microwave in a glass of ceramic container. And when you do this within a few weeks, hormone

00:39:40.800 levels normalize. So the fourth factor, not well known among Americans, but actually a real easy one

00:39:47.620 to fix. Interesting. Yeah. Sounds like a quick fix. Let's move into this fifth factor. That

00:39:53.100 one's actually really interesting to me, which is the revenge of the forsaken gods. I'm really

00:39:57.560 curious. What do you have to say on this? Yeah. So that title came from a conversation I had with

00:40:02.900 one of my patients, Anders Ekloff, who's an amateur anthropologist. And he and I were talking,

00:40:08.060 we both, you know, read about sub-Saharan Africa and South Pacific Islanders. In those cultures,

00:40:15.260 boys do not become men as a matter of mere maturation. For that boy to be recognized as a

00:40:22.880 man and to earn the privileges and prerogatives of an adult man, he must earn that right. And that

00:40:32.620 transition is not automatic. And the parents will often make sacrifices to the relevant gods 0.59

00:40:38.880 to propitiate the gods, to improve the odds that their son will make that transition into manhood.

00:40:46.300 And as my patient was pointing out, we don't pay any attention to that. And the result that we're

00:40:52.160 observing is, he said, the revenge of the forsaken gods. And I like that phrase so much, I used it as

00:40:57.960 the title for that chapter. But what that title means in more accessible terms is the decline and

00:41:04.020 disintegration in our cultural construction of masculinity. So again, you look at the most

00:41:10.660 popular shows and movies from 50 years ago, movies starring men like Gary Cooper, Paul Newman, Sidney

00:41:17.860 Poitier. Those movies, those shows taught boys that being a real man means being courageous, being

00:41:27.360 knowledgeable, being honest, being thoughtful, being kind, being productive. Fast forward to today,

00:41:34.000 I've reviewed the 150 most popular television shows in writing my book, The Collapse of Parenting.

00:41:40.620 Not one of them consistently or even often portrays a father as knowledgeable, competent,

00:41:48.560 caring, productive. On the contrary, what's much more common in this country is Homer Simpson,

00:41:54.400 who's a bum and idiot. In one episode, we get to see his brain. His brain has three major drives, 1.00

00:42:00.360 sleep, donuts, and beer. Modern family, the straight dad is consistently an idiot. And his stupid antics 1.00

00:42:08.600 are the butt of the joke. His children, especially his oldest daughter, are consistently wiser and more 1.00

00:42:15.440 insightful than the father is. The idiot, out of touch, clueless dad has become a staple of American 1.00

00:42:23.140 comedy. And the knowledgeable, courageous, productive father is now unknown. And this has 1.00

00:42:31.240 consequences. I'm not just talking about the media incident. There's lots more evidence that

00:42:36.740 boys had no idea what it means to be a man. They have to be taught, and we no longer teach them.

00:42:44.740 And so they look to the marketplace. And the marketplace has changed. You know, 1964,

00:42:51.140 the Beatles had a number one hit song, I Want to Hold Your Hand. Oh, please say to me,

00:42:56.100 you'll let me be your man. And please say to me, you'll let me hold your hand. That was a number

00:43:00.860 one song in this country. More recently, Akon had a number one hit song, I Want to F You. Okay,

00:43:07.300 I'm not going to say the word on the air, but he says it. It was a number one song in this country.

00:43:12.200 He's addressing five strippers who, and he says, I see you winding and grinding around that pole. 0.98

00:43:19.420 I see you looking at me and you already know I want to F you. And he talks about, I'm going to 0.89

00:43:24.560 take you to the motel wholesale. He clearly is offering money for sex. Bruno Mars, January 28th, 0.99

00:43:31.960 2018, won six Grammys, more than any other artist, all of which were based on his album 24,

00:43:39.880 most of which were based on one song from that album. That's what I like. He's speaking to a

00:43:45.280 young woman he barely knows. And he says to her, you baby girl, you and your ass invited, 1.00

00:43:52.300 turn around and drop it for a player, pop it for a player. He's offering money for anal sex because 1.00

00:43:58.200 that's what I like. That's the title of the song. And this is the best song of the year, 1.00

00:44:04.460 in the opinion of the recording Academy. You know, imagine a young man at work going up to another

00:44:10.440 co-worker, a young woman and saying, Hey, a baby girl, you and your ass invited. I'll give you 1.00

00:44:17.740 diamonds and money for anal sex, which is exactly what happens in the song. Well, that, that young 1.00

00:44:22.800 man would be disciplined. He would, he would taught that addressing a girl as you and your ass 1.00

00:44:28.420 is objectification and that it's never acceptable to offer a coworker money for sex. And yet a song 1.00

00:44:36.380 in which that happens is celebrated as the best we have to offer. That's the culture in which young

00:44:43.160 men are growing up. And how are they supposed to know if they have received no instruction?

00:44:50.040 They are adrift in a culture that is teaching them that this is what real men do. This is what's 0.98

00:44:57.840 cool. I don't think we can have this conversation without addressing some of the situations, for

00:45:04.440 example, in Florida and active school shootings. We actually had a situation here just in the last

00:45:09.120 couple of days with a young man who brought a bomb that he made in his, in his home to a school.

00:45:16.000 Fortunately, it didn't, it didn't detonate. Is this a symptom of the five factors that we're

00:45:22.140 addressing today? Yeah, I think that this all ties together in every culture. Boys want to know

00:45:30.040 what does it mean to be a man? And we no longer give them any consistent or meaningful instruction.

00:45:36.120 And as a result, many boys now construct masculinity negatively. In other words, being a real man means

00:45:42.760 not doing what girls do. If girls care about working hard and pleasing the teacher, then I don't. If 1.00

00:45:48.340 girls want to be kind, then I'm going to be mean. What does it mean to be a real man? Well, it means

00:45:54.480 racing my car 140 miles an hour on a city street, getting totally wasted, taking whatever girl I want 0.98

00:46:01.420 without asking. And for some boys, it may mean getting a weapon and firing that weapon, because then

00:46:08.720 they'll all see I'm a real man. Hmm. So on that note, then Dr. Sachs, what, what is your definition?

00:46:16.480 What does it mean to be a man? Well, you know, I meet with middle school and high school boys,

00:46:22.060 and we talk about this and the definition I guide them towards is a definition I've learned from a

00:46:28.500 number of boy schools that I've visited. And that is being a real man means using your strength in the

00:46:35.800 service of others. Being a real man means using your strength in the service of others. That works

00:46:42.000 pretty well as a definition. And it's certainly a great place to start the conversation with boys and

00:46:48.580 young men. I wholeheartedly agree. I really, really appreciate that response. And certainly

00:46:52.800 something I subscribe to as well and try to instill in my boys. This has been a really fascinating

00:46:57.180 discussion. Obviously, we could talk so much more about it. And sounds like we may need to have a

00:47:00.700 follow up conversation. But for now, I'd like for you to share with us how we connect with you,

00:47:05.260 learn more about your work, and then of course, pick up copies of your books.

00:47:08.800 Well, if you go to my website, Leonard Sachs, L-E-O-N-A-R-D-S-A-X, leonardsachs.com,

00:47:14.480 and just click on contact me. I try to answer every email I get. Give me a couple of days

00:47:18.940 sometimes, but I will try to get back to you. Right on. We'll make sure we link all that up

00:47:23.140 and connect the guys with what you're doing. And I can tell you, I've read your books. My wife and I

00:47:27.120 have both read those. They've helped us when it comes to parenting and understanding what's going on

00:47:31.700 specifically with our boys and our daughter as well. So I want to let you know, I appreciate

00:47:36.160 you. I appreciate your work. And really, I'm grateful that you spent some time with us today.

00:47:40.220 Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for inviting me.

00:47:43.700 Gentlemen, there it is, my conversation with Dr. Sachs. I know this was very, very powerful for me.

00:47:49.280 I've been trying to schedule a conversation with him for some time now. And I was so honored to be

00:47:53.340 able to get on the phone with him and have this conversation in a society that frankly just needs

00:47:57.540 to have it. There's big announcements with the Boy Scouts dropping the name boy from their title.

00:48:03.700 And of course, that's probably going to be changing some things. Again, masculinity needs to be defended. 1.00

00:48:09.480 It's being dismissed. And I think we're doing a huge, huge injustice to our boys, which there will

00:48:16.320 come a point in time where we ask them to lead us. And if we don't adequately prepare them for that

00:48:22.800 responsibility, we're going to be in a world of hurt. And I think we begin to experience

00:48:28.180 some, just some of the problems that we will continue to experience as we neglect our boys

00:48:35.880 and we forget to take care of them the way they need to be taken care of. One symptom I can see

00:48:40.440 from this is active shooter type situations. A lot of these kids, they don't have father figures

00:48:46.540 in their home and they've never learned what it means to be a man. And so it's automatically dubbed

00:48:50.880 toxic masculinity when it's not masculinity at all. It's something that hasn't been developed

00:48:56.980 and shown through other men. So we have this responsibility, this obligation to help these

00:49:00.580 young boys. And of course, Dr. Sachs is doing great work. And then we've got our legacy event,

00:49:05.460 which is our first experience, if you will, in dipping our toe into the water of helping fathers

00:49:12.780 be able to go out into their families and their communities and raise boys the way we know

00:49:17.740 they need to be raised. So guys, make sure you connect with me, make sure you connect with Dr.

00:49:22.560 Sachs. If you want to learn more about our legacy event, order of man.com slash legacy,

00:49:28.160 drop me a line, drop Dr. Sachs a line. Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, wherever you

00:49:32.860 are, what you thought about the show, what your biggest takeaway was. Love hearing from you guys.

00:49:37.080 And of course, please, please share this episode. All right. Write an email or a text or have a

00:49:43.360 conversation face-to-face with somebody, whatever you can do to spread the mission of masculinity.

00:49:48.240 And of course, helping us raise our boys, right? The world needs it more than ever. So guys,

00:49:53.600 I will sign out with that again, order of man.com slash legacy or for our event, share this episode.

00:49:58.880 Want to thank you for being here. Make sure you continue to subscribe, share the show. You're not

00:50:04.120 going to want to miss some of the shows that we have coming up until next week, guys, take action

00:50:07.900 and become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast.

00:50:13.980 You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.

00:50:18.000 We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - May 15, 2018

165： Boys Adrift ｜ Dr. Leonard Sax

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