The Art of Manliness - #326： Why Boys Are Struggling & What We Can Do To Help Them

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another episode of the Art of Manliness podcast. While there's

00:00:18.760 been a big push in recent decades to help girls thrive in school and in the workplace, 0.93

00:00:23.360 boys in America have been quietly struggling. For example, boys are more likely to have learning

00:00:28.340 discipline issues in school and are less likely to graduate high school than girls. More women are 0.99

00:00:32.720 now attending college than men and are earning more bachelor's and master's degrees than men.

00:00:36.620 The incarceration rate for boys has increased in the past few decades and the suicide rates have

00:00:41.140 also increased among teenage boys. What's more, teachers and therapists have reported that boys

00:00:45.880 seem increasingly disengaged from school and alive. They have some sort of malaise going on.

00:00:50.580 Anyways, if boys are having so much trouble, why don't we hear more about it? And more importantly,

00:00:54.300 what can we do as parents, teachers and mentors to help them? Well, my guest today has spent his

00:00:58.540 career researching childhood development and helping boys become fulfilled men. His name

00:01:02.200 is Michael Gurian. We've had him on the podcast before. It's episode number 87. You can check

00:01:05.920 that out. And in his latest book, Saving Our Sons, A New Path for Raising Healthy and Resilient Boys,

00:01:10.840 he provides insights on why America's boy problem is ignored, as well as concrete steps that parents

00:01:15.620 and mentors can take to help these young men grow up well. Today on the show, Michael explains what the

00:01:20.060 dominant gender paradigm is and why it causes institutions to ignore the problems of boys 1.00

00:01:24.220 and young men, what people get wrong about male violence, and what male anhedonia is. It's kind

00:01:29.280 of a low-grade depression. He then argues that if you want to help boys and girls, we need to

00:01:33.260 approach things from what he calls a nature-based theory that recognizes that while boys and girls

00:01:37.060 have a lot in common, there are biological differences that influence the way boys learn,

00:01:41.040 socialize, and behave. Michael then provides concrete things parents and schools can do to cater

00:01:45.580 to those differences in boys, help them thrive and become resilient men. If you're the parent of a boy,

00:01:50.060 or if you teach or mentor young boys, you don't want to miss this episode. After the show's over,

00:01:53.760 check out the show notes at aom.is slash savingoursons.

00:02:01.080 Michael Gurian, welcome back to the show.

00:02:03.280 Oh, thank you. Thanks, Brett. Thanks for having me.

00:02:05.400 So we had you on the show, I think almost two years ago, to talk about your book,

00:02:08.920 The Wonder of Boys. For those who aren't familiar with your work, you've specialized in sort of the

00:02:15.000 development of boys. That's what your career has been focused on, counseling boys, troubled boys,

00:02:19.600 but also boys who aren't troubled, just helping them thrive. In your latest book, Saving Our Sons,

00:02:25.700 A New Path for Raising Healthy and Resilient Boys, a really good book. Can you tell us, like,

00:02:31.080 how does this book pick up from your other books about boys? Is this sort of like the capstone of

00:02:36.060 all your work with boys?

00:02:37.000 Well, yeah, you know, it might be. I mean, I'm, my area is, is really gender, you know,

00:02:42.860 sex and gender on the brain, male, female. So I've written books on both boys and girls,

00:02:48.060 men and women. I think because of The Wonder of Boys, when it came out, there wasn't another book

00:02:52.300 like it, you know, in 1996. And so, so then there were a lot more that I did with boys. And I think

00:02:58.220 you're potentially correct that, that if I'm remembered later, it's going to be around this

00:03:03.160 male development. So I've written 12 books on boys, all from different angles, but none of them,

00:03:09.120 well, two things. The last one was about eight years ago. So a lot of new research has happened

00:03:13.760 in the last eight years. So I really wanted to write something that caught everyone up on the

00:03:18.600 new research that helped parents help teachers based on the best new brain research, etc. Then the

00:03:24.480 second thing was that it, the politics. I've been doing this now for 30 years and Gurian Institute has

00:03:30.520 existed for 20. So both me personally and us institutionally, we've been advocating for both

00:03:35.940 boys and girls, you know, nationally with Congress, etc. And sometimes nothing happens. And so I decided

00:03:44.000 I needed to write a book that, including a couple chapters on the politics, on, on what we have to do

00:03:49.560 if we're really going to save our sons. Well, let's talk about that. Why, why do American boys need 0.96

00:03:54.380 saving? I mean, what's the problem with boys today? Well, it's many fold, you know, there's a chapter

00:04:00.400 in the book on neurotoxins. I mean, one of the problems is just what's coming in to their brains

00:04:05.500 and bodies. And then technology, you know, that's really having an effect on their brains and bodies.

00:04:11.280 So there's those sorts of environmental things we have to look at. Impression, under motivation,

00:04:16.700 the WHO put out a study last year, that said, you know, this isn't, this isn't just an American

00:04:22.280 problem, or even a European problem. All over the world, males are behind females, you know, 0.52

00:04:26.680 in health outcomes. So that's both physical and mental health outcomes. So I think what we what

00:04:31.540 we have thought was that, you know, boys are fine, girls are troubled, we got to help girls, boys are

00:04:36.800 fine. But they're just not in, you know, in suicide, in the grades, they're getting, they get two thirds

00:04:42.200 of the D's and F's, they only get 40% of the A's. So it's not as if they're succeeding very well in

00:04:47.220 school. There's really isn't an environment right now, where boys are doing well, except those men,

00:04:54.000 who are, you know, really strong, high testosterone, really smart guys. You know,

00:04:59.060 there's probably 100,000 of them who are running corporations who are at the top, who are running

00:05:03.380 the White House. But as we go below them, then we're starting to see 10s of millions of boys in

00:05:09.160 trouble. So why do these problems that boys are facing? Why do they often get ignored, overlooked?

00:05:13.920 Or why is it often seen that girls are the ones that need more help than boys, even though the

00:05:18.280 statistics show that's might not be the case? Well, yeah, I think we're we're in a kind of

00:05:23.420 political, sociological bind. And I call it the big three, that sort of runs this bind that we're

00:05:30.400 in. So the big three is is academics. So the academy, universities, colleges, government,

00:05:36.040 and the media, and all three of them. And I'm, you know, I've been a part of all three. So I'm really

00:05:41.880 not saying anything negative about all three, they all are doing their best. But when it comes to boys,

00:05:47.700 they're not doing their best. So the academic world doesn't really want to look at males,

00:05:53.900 you know, it mainly looks at females, obviously. So it doesn't want to look at it. So it doesn't 0.93

00:05:59.060 really, in comparison to females, it doesn't really generate research, it doesn't create programming 1.00

00:06:03.460 that really helps young guys. So obviously, some are doing it, but very, very few in comparison to

00:06:09.360 what's happening to help girls. And then government takes what academics do. So government just says,

00:06:15.340 the people at Harvard say this, this is what we're going to do. So government isn't really helping

00:06:20.000 boys very much. And in fact, I have a quote in the book from a Department of Justice official who said,

00:06:24.200 look, when we spend money on guys, it's prison, right? We're spending correction dollars on them,

00:06:29.800 billions of correction dollars, but nothing really preventative. And it's very hard for guys to get

00:06:34.840 any kind of government programming that mainly goes to women and children. So, you know, so that's 0.52

00:06:39.060 good, it goes to women and children, but it's not going to guys. So we're not really seeing what's

00:06:43.640 going on with guys. And then the media sort of takes what government and academics do.

00:06:48.160 And while some of us in the media, like yourself, are working to try to understand boys, you know,

00:06:52.740 most come from what I call the dominant gender paradigm, which is that masculinity is toxic, 1.00

00:06:57.780 guys have everything, females are oppressed. And that's just, you know, no longer true in the U.S. 0.50

00:07:03.980 and in the West. We've got to be more subtle than that. But that's kind of the paradigm. So we don't

00:07:09.940 really get the help for these guys because academics, government, and the media are not

00:07:13.340 really understanding how dire the situation is getting for young men.

00:07:17.640 Well, let's delve deeper into this dominant gender paradigm, because it's an important idea 1.00

00:07:20.780 that it's woven throughout your book. When and why did this paradigm arise that, you know,

00:07:24.820 masculinity is toxic and girls need more help than boys? 1.00

00:07:29.480 Yeah. You know, 50 to 100 years ago, it was a really smart paradigm. So I'm 60, I'll turn 60 next year.

00:07:36.240 So I'm raised as a first wave feminist by first wave feminist parents. And, you know, I completely

00:07:42.000 bought into it. And to some extent, obviously, I still think there are parts of the world where

00:07:46.000 this dominant gender paradigm is important. And the paradigm is females are oppressed, 1.00

00:07:50.600 males are the oppressors. When it's not males, it's the patriarchy. So the patriarchy is oppressive.

00:07:54.920 Even if guys are good, it's the patriarchy. And the patriarchy is systemic. So the patriarchy

00:07:59.520 hits everything. So there's no nothing going on that isn't oppressive of females. And if someone says, 0.68

00:08:05.540 well, but wait, you know, then the response is, well, you're just part of the patriarchy. So you

00:08:10.800 can't see the systemic problem. You know, as you deconstruct that, we find things like white male 0.50

00:08:15.420 privilege is the problem. And masculinity is the problem, right? And we got to get rid of white 1.00

00:08:20.880 male privilege. And we got to get rid of masculinity. And that's going to solve the problem. So this was

00:08:25.620 all really logical 50 years ago, we needed to turn things around, we just couldn't have a situation

00:08:30.860 where females were so under nurtured in our culture. So I think it was useful then. But I think the

00:08:37.160 problem with the paradigm now is, it was not based in science. And we now have a lot of science. But

00:08:44.860 now it's very superficial. And I prefer brain science, I prefer real scientific data to look at

00:08:51.700 what's happening. And so I think this DGP, this dominant gender paradigm, we just simply have to battle 0.91

00:08:57.680 it in the big three. Or we're not going to get the science through, we're not going to get the real

00:09:01.360 data through. And we're not going to solve these problems. You know, we can't solve things anymore

00:09:05.880 by just saying, oh, it's masculinity, that's really bad. And oh, the patriarchy is systemic. And oh,

00:09:11.120 these white males are bad. Like it's, this is just not going to solve the deep rooted problems in all 0.99

00:09:16.560 races, in all groups, and in all socioeconomic levels in the US.

00:09:20.900 So I mean, some, I guess that one of the gists that I got, your idea of the dominant gender paradigm

00:09:25.860 is that they often think that gender or masculinity or femininity is a social construct that can just

00:09:30.820 be changed and manipulated. You know, that's why they say you can get rid of it, right? But you argue

00:09:35.480 that there's more of a you, I guess you argue for a nature based theory of gender. So what is that

00:09:41.140 nature based theory?

00:09:42.540 Yeah, yeah. Well, for instance, you know, male violence, I have a whole chapter in there where I

00:09:46.680 completely deconstruct the supposed causes of male violence in the US, right? I mean,

00:09:52.720 the supposed cause is masculinity, toxic masculinity, patriarchy, etc. And I kind of get rid of that

00:09:59.120 and say, look, hold on, that is a correlation. That is not a cause. The causes are, you know,

00:10:04.560 neurotoxins, lack of attachment, abuse, trauma, all these other things are the causes. So nature based

00:10:10.820 theory says we got to look at the causes. So for instance, if you say, look, there are guys,

00:10:16.300 we're natural creatures, right? We're creatures of nature. And nature is not teaching boys to go

00:10:22.100 become violent. That's not what nature is teaching boys. It's much more, much more complex than that.

00:10:27.200 So why would they become violent? Well, it's not, not because of this culture construct that makes

00:10:34.520 them become violent. It's because there's stuff going on in their cells in their brains that are that

00:10:39.740 are making them become suicidal or making them go hit and hurt other people. That's what we need

00:10:45.340 to look at. So that's sort of where I introduced this concept that the way we approach social

00:10:50.960 problems is not natural. And so we're not solving social problems. We're not solving male violence.

00:10:55.620 Male violence is bad, right? All violence is bad in the US and we're not solving it through these 1.00

00:11:00.460 paradigms. So nature based theory starts with that. And so then, of course, I'm starting with the

00:11:05.220 human brain and the male and the female brain are part of the human brain. The male and the female 0.91

00:11:09.040 brain are different. And we have thousands of studies. I have thousand on my website that show

00:11:14.940 how different the male and the female brain are. Now, obviously, there are some people out in the

00:11:19.060 kind of the big three, especially the media, you know, who are saying, oh, no, no, no, no,

00:11:22.580 male and female brain aren't different. That's just not the case. There's no way to say that 0.97

00:11:26.860 and really look at science. So you have to just say, okay, forget the science. We're going to just use

00:11:32.080 our culture concept. So the important thing for people to remember, which I do in the book,

00:11:36.060 is I distinguish between sex and gender. Gender is something that's amorphous and that we can talk 1.00

00:11:41.540 about and say, hey, on this day, I feel more female than male. And that's, I actually think

00:11:46.920 that's great. I'm very glad that I have a well-developed feminine side. You know, that's 1.00

00:11:53.160 gender. But sex on the brain is sex. That's sex on the brain. And that happens in utero. And so the 1.00

00:11:59.340 male brain is doing words on the left. The female brain is doing words on both sides. That's true 1.00

00:12:04.000 whether you're, you come from Africa, whether you come from Europe, Asia, you know, anywhere,

00:12:09.060 because this comes in on the X and the Y chromosome. So that stuff, that stuff is binary.

00:12:14.840 Male and female are different, but you can argue that gender is amorphous. And so what we have to

00:12:20.000 be able to do is do both. And of course, as you know, in my book, in my work, I do both. I say,

00:12:24.980 okay, gender's over here. We can talk about it. Let's do it. But maleness and femaleness, 1.00

00:12:29.860 that's rooted in nature. So we're going to have to look at that.

00:12:33.780 And besides, you mentioned one difference between the male and female brain, where 0.99

00:12:37.180 males use words on the left side and females doing both sides. What are some other differences 0.90

00:12:41.820 between the male and female brain? 0.99

00:12:43.600 Well, another profound difference is the way that we use our white matter and gray matter.

00:12:48.320 So we all have white matter and gray matter, all brains. But male brains are using up to seven times 0.66

00:12:53.800 more gray matter activity to do the things they do. And gray matter happens in splotches in the brain.

00:13:00.840 White matter is spread throughout the brain. Females are using up to 10 times more white 1.00

00:13:05.620 matter activity when they do what they're doing. And this is when males and females are doing the

00:13:10.080 same task. So for instance, let's say that we're talking about protecting the emotional lives of

00:13:15.600 girls and the emotional lives of boys. When I work with that in the book, I'm saying to people,

00:13:19.660 you know, the emotional lives of boys works differently than girls. So if we say to four-year-old

00:13:26.140 boys in preschools and four-year-old girls, if we say to them, use your words, you know,

00:13:31.220 if every time they do something that we don't particularly like, something impulsive or they

00:13:35.880 move around a lot or they fidget or they bop someone else on the head, you know, or whatever

00:13:39.900 it is in their sort of affectionate way. If we say, no, no, no, no, guys, that's bad. You got to use

00:13:44.340 your words. So if guys can't access the words as quickly as girls, you know, we're going 0.88

00:13:49.640 to punish the guys. And the reality is their brains don't access these words, especially

00:13:53.580 words connected to feelings and emotions and impulses as quickly as girls do. So from preschool 0.98

00:13:59.720 all the way through elementary school, of course, we just keep punishing these guys as if they're

00:14:04.120 inherently defective and they fail and they drop out and, you know, they hate school and

00:14:08.940 all of this. And we're not realizing, whoa, we never trained preschool teachers. We never trained

00:14:14.400 elementary, secondary school teachers, not even college teachers. We didn't show them these

00:14:18.040 brain scans. So in my lectures, of course, I'm showing all these brain scans and saying,

00:14:21.980 look how different these brains are. And, and, you know, that becomes life-changing. But if we

00:14:25.880 don't show that stuff to people and don't teach them this stuff, then they will be punishing boys

00:14:30.860 and they also won't be teaching girls in the best ways.

00:14:32.980 Right. And you make an interesting point too, not the difference between the male brain,

00:14:37.080 the female brain, also male physiology and female physiology, that in a lot of ways, boys are more 0.94

00:14:42.920 fragile than girls are when they're first starting out in life until they get to adulthood. 1.00

00:14:48.500 Yeah. Well, the Y chromosome itself, you know, which is the male chromosome, the Y chromosome itself

00:14:54.580 is a more fragile chromosome even than the X. I mean, so this starts at a cellular level

00:14:59.940 and certainly guys armor up. That's part of testosterone, especially through puberty,

00:15:05.140 we armor up and, and that that's normal. That happens everywhere. But part of why we're armoring up

00:15:10.400 is because our emotional construction and our cells are so fragile. And we know this unconsciously,

00:15:17.800 we know this. And this is one of the reasons also that, you know, pretty much every culture as it has

00:15:22.620 raised boys has said, Hmm, you know, we got to make sure to toughen these guys up. And of course that

00:15:29.780 became a negative construct in that some people used it to just shut down guys to just say, you know,

00:15:36.300 no emotional life for you. So they misinterpreted what nature is trying to do to help guys. They

00:15:42.560 misinterpreted that those folks did, and they did damage. And that's part of what led to the dominant

00:15:47.740 gender paradigm actually, was, you know, that, that no one wanted to see guys being told you can't feel

00:15:54.380 feeling is bad, right? No one wants that. So, but the reality is that that male emotional life is very

00:16:00.360 fragile, that you see it on the chromosome, and then you see it in the first few months and years of

00:16:04.760 life. And in fact, new studies have shown that when females and males suffer trauma, trauma is bad for

00:16:11.000 every everyone. But when females and males suffer trauma, females are more likely to develop good

00:16:17.700 social emotional skills later. And they are more functional later as adults than males are. So like

00:16:24.240 divorce trauma is one that's been studied. Divorce trauma is harder on males than females. On average,

00:16:30.180 some females obviously destroys them. But on average, it's harder on males than females. 0.78

00:16:34.760 Partly because males are fragile, and partly because the father gets removed generally. And

00:16:39.620 then that increases the male fragility and affects his development. So in many, many ways,

00:16:46.000 males are more fragile than females. And I have two daughters. So this isn't to say females are not 1.00

00:16:50.060 fragile, or that we shouldn't protect them. But one of the calls in saving our sons is to understand

00:16:55.140 just how fragile these guys are.

00:16:57.040 So that means, the argument you make throughout the rest of the book is that because boys are

00:17:02.280 different from girls, we need to approach raising them differently. We can't do this sort of one size 1.00

00:17:07.560 fits all approach that we've been doing maybe for the past 50 years.

00:17:12.240 Yeah, absolutely. This goes for schools, this goes for homes, preschools, you know, everywhere where males 0.93

00:17:18.340 are. We have to understand them better, understand their fragilities and their strengths,

00:17:24.040 their assets, right, etc., who they are. And then we need to use multiple strategies. So I'll give an

00:17:30.820 example of how this works. A number of new studies have come out, and I have them in the book on what

00:17:37.200 we call bi-strategic parenting, and then multi-strategic mentoring. So like when you say one size fits all,

00:17:44.960 the most common one size fits all that gets used is use your words, right? Use your words. Don't do that.

00:17:51.580 Use your words, okay? That's an example of a mono-strategic approach. So school systems and

00:17:59.280 parenting systems, when fathers are gone, they rely heavily on that single strategy. And it's not

00:18:05.980 enough for, I believe, either boys or girls and a trans. Anyone on the gender spectrum, I don't think 1.00

00:18:11.740 it's enough. But for boys especially, it's problematic because they're not able to access the words and the

00:18:18.700 feelings that people want them to access. And it's not the only way to help them develop impulse

00:18:23.600 control. So bi-strategic means, okay, we need another strategy. And so it's not going to be

00:18:29.120 word-oriented. It's going to, for instance, be more physical, more kinesthetic. And an example is

00:18:34.440 intervention and non-intervention. The use your words is, I'm going to intervene. So if you go knock

00:18:39.660 another guy down, I'm going to intervene and stop that. Stop that. Don't touch that person. Use your

00:18:44.640 words. Touch is bad. But the other strategy in the bi-strategic would be, oh, guess what? That's

00:18:51.000 actually okay. Neither of you is in danger. You guys are going to work this out. And by working it

00:18:56.440 out, you're actually going to control your impulses, develop self-regulation, mature, grow up,

00:19:02.040 right? Et cetera, et cetera. That's a different strategy. And what we need is a bi-strategic and

00:19:06.440 multi-strategic approach to these boys. When schools do that, so the Green Institute trains schools in

00:19:12.080 this, so that's the educators and the parents, when they switch over toward this bi-strategic

00:19:16.860 approach, they get rid of things like zero-tolerance policies, which basically punish boys

00:19:21.060 and massively punish boys of color. They get rid of that stuff. And they use this more complex 0.98

00:19:27.040 approach on the playground, in the classroom, at home. And boys' grades go up. There's less

00:19:31.740 discipline referrals to the principal, right? So they're better behaved, et cetera. So that's kind

00:19:36.500 of what I'm getting at is I'm agreeing with you. This one-size-fits-all, zero-tolerance,

00:19:41.280 that stuff has got to be part of the past. It does not work to help us really raise the wonderful

00:19:48.100 kids we want to raise. Yeah, I think this raises an interesting point. One of my favorite chapters

00:19:52.340 was about male nurturance. There's this idea, I think, because of the dominant gender paradigm that

00:19:57.660 boys, males, they're not naturally nurturing, right? Girls, females, they're the more nurturing

00:20:03.160 sex. But I've always thought, no, in my own experience, I never saw that. In my own experience,

00:20:09.100 males are nurturing. We just do it in a different way. How do males nurture in a way that's different 0.52

00:20:15.320 from, say, females? Well, yeah, at the baseline, because of the testosterone, oxytocin differences,

00:20:21.860 and these other sort of hormonal, biochemical differences, and then the cellular differences,

00:20:27.100 and then, of course, which affects brain differences, this is all sort of creating a baseline at which more

00:20:33.120 females will use what I call direct empathy nurturance, and more males will use what I call

00:20:38.840 aggression nurturance or challenge nurturance. You know, both females and males can use what each 0.89

00:20:43.120 other does, right? We're very complex. And males can nurture in the same way females do, females, 0.98

00:20:48.120 males, absolutely. But in general, we find this baseline difference. So to give an example,

00:20:53.200 there's a street hockey game, and it's 10 to 12-year-olds, and they're playing street hockey

00:20:58.160 on their rollerblades, and this, like, 11-year-old boy falls down. And the girl who's on her skates

00:21:05.080 comes right over, you know, and kind of gets to his level and says, are you okay? What can I do for

00:21:09.520 you? Okay, that's direct empathy nurturance. And the cells in her brain, especially in this part of

00:21:14.760 the brain called the insula, fill up with these mirror neurons. And so her brain and her body move

00:21:19.600 toward what we call empathy, right, which is this getting at his level, trying to make him feel better

00:21:24.920 right now. Well, another boy, kind of a 12-year-old boy over here from the other side,

00:21:30.360 comes rolling by, and he ascertains that this 11-year-old is not hurt. You know, he's skinned 1.00

00:21:35.420 his knee, but oh, well, he's not dead. So he says, come on, get up, get up, we need you.

00:21:40.420 Well, that's called challenge nurturance or aggression nurturance. And both of these kinds

00:21:45.180 of nurturance are crucial. We need to have people, you know, saying to the boy, are you okay? What can I

00:21:49.900 do for you? And guys can do that too, of course. And we need to have people saying, you know what?

00:21:54.920 You're needed as part of this team. You're needed as a human being. You're needed as an asset.

00:22:00.360 I'm going to nurture you by helping you feel needed, as opposed to by saying, oh, it's okay. You know,

00:22:07.080 you're okay. What can I do? So both are equally good. Both are essential. Males tend more toward

00:22:13.560 challenge nurturance, even though males can be quite empathic. Females tend more toward empathic

00:22:18.360 nurturance, even though they can be challenging. And this is actually a very, very good thing.

00:22:23.160 So that chapter is kind of laying out all the ways from empathy to aggression nurturance that

00:22:28.420 males are nurturing and trying to get guys to tap into that and get the communities and the

00:22:34.260 families to understand that it's, that these are equally good ways of nurturing, that we have to

00:22:39.020 stop thinking of nurturing as only being, how are you? Are you okay? What do you need? What can I do

00:22:44.660 for you? Yeah. I think that's a good, I think it's a good point. Cause I think a lot of new moms, 1.00

00:22:48.960 particularly like they'll have boys and they don't understand that. And they'll see boys

00:22:52.440 like the aggressive aggression nurturance. I've also seen manifest in like teasing or you give like

00:22:58.920 your buddies a nickname. That's not that nice. Right. But it's all done in like, like goodness,

00:23:04.420 like you give them that, that weird nickname because you actually care for them. And I think a lot of

00:23:08.460 moms or women don't understand that. Uh, yeah, you're right. Moms and female teachers and, 1.00

00:23:13.480 and they're coming from their brain base and which, you know, obviously we completely,

00:23:17.440 we're so glad they have their brain base because without the female brain base, humanity would not 1.00

00:23:22.340 exist right now. So we think it's a great thing of course. Um, but because they come from that point

00:23:27.180 of view, they see danger when danger may not exist. They see bullying when bullying may not exist.

00:23:35.960 They see teasing as a negative when, as, as you've expressed all of us who are guys, right? We know

00:23:41.780 that teasing is actually a way of respecting. It's a way of challenging. It compels the one who's teased

00:23:47.560 to tease back, which actually builds self, build self-concept, self-construal. It's actually really

00:23:53.400 a good thing. And neither person is hurt by it. And it's, it's all locked into the way that males do

00:23:59.900 pecking orders and hierarchies and how they earn their place. And all of it's incredibly emotional.

00:24:04.640 We are doing a lot of emotional work and emotional development in the pathways between the limbic

00:24:11.320 brain and the frontal cortex. A lot of this stuff is happening for males while they're engaging in

00:24:15.640 this behavior, but females especially don't think it's happening and very sensitive guys also, you know,

00:24:21.180 it's harmful to them and they don't think it's happening. They would rather it was this other way.

00:24:26.160 And so we want to respect the other way, but we want to say that, no, no, there's gobs of emotional

00:24:31.760 development going on when I name someone something and he has to respond. And then we bop each other

00:24:37.460 on the shoulder and then we wrestle and then we make fun of each other. And then a day later,

00:24:41.080 I'm making fun of him. All of this stuff is deep emotional work.

00:24:45.340 So besides all these, just these issues that are facing boys, you give out these extensive

00:24:49.580 statistics about the problems boys are facing. You mentioned this sort of underlying

00:24:53.920 condition you're seeing in boys more and more and it's male. I'm probably going to butcher this 0.99

00:25:00.200 anhedonia. Yeah. Anhedonia. You're right. Yep. Yeah. What is male anhedonia? Well, you know,

00:25:05.760 it's a number of us started looking at this 30, 40 years ago, right? We were starting to see guys who

00:25:11.420 seemed kind of mildly depressed, like we wouldn't call them clinically depressed. They didn't fit the

00:25:17.000 DSM for that. But, but we said, God, they just seem kind of depressed. And then over the last

00:25:22.740 20 years or so, you know, under motivation is a term that's used a lot now. Now we're seeing

00:25:27.200 millions of them, you know, basically living in basements, playing video games, under motivated,

00:25:31.700 they're dropping out or they're getting C's and D's in school, but they're really, you know,

00:25:34.980 they're smart guys, et cetera. So this under motivation is an example of this anhedonia.

00:25:39.460 So anhedonia is a term that comes actually from sexual anhedonia. It's when a guy isn't motivated

00:25:45.000 to have sex. He's not motivated to, to have that emotional intimacy as well as to procreate.

00:25:50.040 He's just that that's where it comes from. Well, I'm taking the term now as a way of, as

00:25:54.440 looking at this under motivation and these, these lethargic sort of almost paralyzed guys

00:25:59.220 who just stimulate their brains through video games, or then they use porn instead of actual 0.92

00:26:03.520 intimacy. This is anhedonia. This is an under motivated, I would, I would say mildly depressed 0.99

00:26:09.580 male. And now I believe we have between 10 and 20 million of them in the U S

00:26:14.660 and that is really worrisome because they're not going to be able to find jobs and work.

00:26:19.700 It's going to grow. We're going to grow more of these guys. They're not, you know,

00:26:23.440 going to be able to partner or if they partner, they'll have sex and have a baby,

00:26:26.540 but they're not going to be able to be fathers. Um, you know, this is, this to me is a crucial

00:26:31.380 social issue that, that the big three has got to look at and, and the dominant gender paradigm, 0.80

00:26:36.840 which is, Oh, it's, you know, masculinity, they're holding onto male privilege. 0.72

00:26:39.440 That just doesn't work. You know, it's just a silly paradigm for this condition. 0.90

00:26:44.080 Gotcha. Well, let's go back, circle back to schools. Uh, academics is one of the big three 0.51

00:26:48.780 you talk about that are kind of encouraging this dominant gender paradigm. When parents are looking

00:26:54.680 at schools and they're looking for a school that takes into account the differences that boys have

00:26:59.040 and how they learn, how they mature, what should parents look for in a school? Like how do they know

00:27:04.080 if a school is boy friendly? Yeah. The first thing they should ask is have your teachers and

00:27:09.860 your staff been trained in how boys learn. So that's a keyword in how boys learn. And then another

00:27:17.220 keyword is in how boys and girls learn differently. You could also say in the minds of boys, these are

00:27:22.560 key terms to ask. And, and, you know, it's, are your teachers trained in these things? And if the

00:27:28.780 principal, or if it's a preschool, if the teachers, et cetera, if they come back and say,

00:27:33.100 yeah, we did a book study or yeah, we know about that. Right. But they haven't gotten training in

00:27:39.540 it. So they haven't really altered their system to take it into account. Then, you know, parents

00:27:45.340 are probably walking into a situation where at some point one or more of their sons may have trouble

00:27:51.760 in that school. It may not happen in the first six months. It may happen in the next grade, but we're

00:27:56.060 going to, what we're going to have is a number of teachers who don't understand how guys learn.

00:28:00.300 So they're not creating classrooms and they're not creating behavioral policies that are going

00:28:07.540 to work for boys. So that's the easiest thing to do is your staff or your teachers, is everyone

00:28:12.540 trained in how boys and girls learn differently? And let's say you're out of school and you say,

00:28:17.300 you know, how much choice in a school, you're going to public schools and like the school you

00:28:19.880 have, the school you have, how can you raise or push for the teachers to make the school more

00:28:26.440 boy friendly in a constructive manner? Because I imagine a lot of you, a lot of people might get

00:28:30.040 some pushback against that. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's definitely pushback happens. One of the reasons

00:28:34.220 I wrote Saving Our Sons, I wrote it as a resource so that parents can take it into the schools.

00:28:39.760 And I did it even better than I did Minds of Boys, which came out 12 years ago. I wrote that one also

00:28:46.000 as a resource saying to parents, okay, take this into the principal. I've set it up for you to do that.

00:28:50.660 And I know that parents did that because a number of those schools, you know, are different now than

00:28:56.080 they were before. And there are books by others that parents can take in as well. I've just set

00:29:01.000 these books up for parents to do it. And so what I argue for parents to do is to form what I call a

00:29:06.400 parent-led team. So this is going to be three to five parents and or parent couples. So it's going

00:29:13.000 to be five to 10 people, right? Five moms, five dads, or, you know, depending on the family structure,

00:29:17.920 could be some single mom, some mom's dads, but it's going to be somewhere between five and 10

00:29:22.480 parents and their sons. They're going to get together and form this team because their sons

00:29:27.920 are having trouble. And our research, we show in classrooms of 30. So we've trained 60,000 teachers.

00:29:33.460 So we have 20 years of research. We show in classrooms of 30 that five or more boys are going to be

00:29:39.560 struggling and that one girl is going to be struggling, right? So it's a big difference. And we're

00:29:44.720 bracketing out learning disabilities. These are not learning disabled. So that means there's going 0.97

00:29:49.580 to, there's a pool of parents. And if they get together, you know, and they say, wow, your guys

00:29:54.420 get C's and D's and oh, yours is too. And yours is always going to the principal. Okay. So then we know

00:29:59.280 that school hasn't received this training. And very often the principals actually will look at it

00:30:04.640 because it's all set up for them. You know, the, okay, I've got five parents to 10 parents. So it's not

00:30:09.220 one parent, it's five to 10 parents coming into my office. Oh, she, I better pay attention to this,

00:30:14.140 you know, and then they study it. You know, they read a chapter or two of it. That's all they have

00:30:18.220 time to do. And then they go, Hmm, maybe we ought to look at this. And then they pool the faculty,

00:30:23.020 they talk to the faculty and then they start finding, Oh, look at our data. So then they,

00:30:27.160 what they do is they disaggregate their data, which means they just look at their data for gender.

00:30:30.800 And they say, Hmm, look at this, you know, 70% of the D's and F's are going to boys. Oh yeah,

00:30:36.200 we have a problem, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's a process that takes three to six months

00:30:40.620 of parent led teams going in and, and getting the schools to pay attention. And luckily now

00:30:45.660 see the green Institute, we have 150 trainers. So, so we have the trainers available. And so

00:30:51.640 quite often what the principals do is they just call and then we set up the training and then

00:30:56.140 they gather their data a year later. They see their data and they see the grades of the boys have gone

00:31:00.840 up. The discipline referrals have gone down. So what's happened is the grassroots, the parents

00:31:05.120 have fomented change in the schools and they've done it in a collaborative way

00:31:09.100 so that they're not attacking the schools. They're collaborating with the schools.

00:31:12.700 I mean, how does a teacher's approach to teaching boys change once they go through this training?

00:31:17.640 Well, I'll give you some examples of sort of things that immediately happen. So for instance,

00:31:22.600 teachers after the training, they'll let boys use squeeze balls. For instance, they'll have them

00:31:26.900 have objects in their hands because they'll learn, we'll show them the scans and they'll learn that

00:31:31.360 the right side of the male brain is not doing words, but it is doing what we call spatial,

00:31:35.800 spatial mechanicals, which means objects moving through space.

00:31:38.100 So they'll start tapping into the right side of the male brain, right? They'll go, 1.00

00:31:42.700 oh, shoot, we've been teaching almost completely verbally with workshops, words, you know, words,

00:31:47.340 words, words, and not realizing that the female brain does that on both sides. So of course the 1.00

00:31:51.540 girls are going to do better at that. And some guys are very wordy, like I am, by the way. And so,

00:31:56.680 you know, we'll do fine with words. But we got five to seven guys in that classroom who need the right

00:32:01.700 side of the brain stimulated so that they can stimulate the left, right? They need the spatials.

00:32:05.260 So they'll give them these squeeze balls. They'll let them move around physically in the back of the 0.72

00:32:09.620 classroom, you know, in ways that are non-intrusive. This is all physical kinesthetic. They'll change

00:32:15.740 the lesson planning so that they'll always have project-based learning, which is where you do

00:32:20.320 something for a week. You don't do it on a worksheet for a half hour. You do the project for a week and

00:32:25.060 you learn everything while you're doing the project. That's kinesthetic that allows for guys to

00:32:30.620 move around, for everyone to do things. And none of these strategies are bad for girls, 0.99

00:32:33.460 by the way. It's just that girls tend to like to sit still more. They tend to like to do more words, 1.00

00:32:37.780 you know, et cetera. And then the visual. The other thing males are doing on the right is visual.

00:32:42.860 So what we call visual graphic. And the teachers will start tapping into that. And they'll say,

00:32:47.180 oh, okay. So now what we're going to do is we're going to have more drawing, more graphics,

00:32:51.280 more graphics projected. And we're going to say to guys, hey, if you want to draw a storyboard

00:32:56.440 before you write this paper or before you write this story I want you to write, go ahead and draw

00:33:01.260 the storyboard. So, you know, that's easy to do. You just take a big piece of paper, divide it into

00:33:06.240 six sections and have them draw what they're about to write. And in elementary school, this is just

00:33:12.920 great because fourth, fifth, sixth grade, you can already see boys' grades going down. But this

00:33:18.520 practice, they incorporate this practice and grades start going up, especially on writing tasks,

00:33:23.500 because now the guys have drawn out what they're going to write. So when they write,

00:33:27.480 it's better organized because they've got six quadrants, right, that they can refer to.

00:33:31.360 And they have more detail because they've drawn it out already. So now they're getting very detailed

00:33:36.660 essays and stories. And we find boys that were getting C's and D's in those classes go up to A's

00:33:42.240 and B's because now they're doing better at it. So these are just a few examples of what happens

00:33:46.760 when the teachers get trained in it. You know, they need training in it. They need a couple days of

00:33:51.380 really inculcating it so that they change things around. And so the system changes things around.

00:33:56.520 But by the end of the year, as they're incorporating all of this and getting the feedback on it,

00:34:00.760 things change.

00:34:02.340 Yeah. And I think another approach you advocate, and I know Leonard Sachs does, is don't be afraid

00:34:06.980 of competition in school. I feel a lot of it's just like, make sure no one feels bad, that they're

00:34:12.360 worse. But like, boys actually thrive on competitive learning in a way.

00:34:16.500 Yeah. And actually, competition now is a double asset. It's good for both boys and girls to

00:34:22.360 compete. So because the real world is competitive. So it's just, it's really good that they compete

00:34:26.700 at all levels. It's good to compete. And for boys in particular, competition will help them to learn

00:34:33.640 better because there's something at stake for them, especially in a lot of the stuff that's getting

00:34:37.640 taught, which really isn't relevant to them. And in fact, it's not relevant for life. That's an

00:34:42.060 unfortunate thing that's going on that we're trying to work on with educational reform,

00:34:45.060 is trying to get teachers, especially in public schools, to stop teaching things that are just

00:34:48.820 not relevant. So it's especially good for guys, if they're going to try to learn this stuff,

00:34:53.300 to get the grades to be competing, because that helps them to make it relevant to them.

00:34:58.520 And then the second whammy on it, the second reason it's an asset is that with male testosterone

00:35:02.540 levels being lower anyway, which is not a thing we want, competition does compel the cells to

00:35:08.780 develop more testosterone, right? There's an access, brain to body access. And so it will actually

00:35:14.340 help them to develop more of the chemical we need them to develop so that they will be motivated.

00:35:19.220 And that's kind of the big takeaway when we teach this to teachers. They look at how unmotivated guys

00:35:24.360 are, and then they use these competition strategies we teach them. So then they use these games in these

00:35:30.080 competitions. And then they look back two months later and they say, ooh, yeah, those four boys who

00:35:35.180 are so unmotivated, they're more motivated now. And so that's like the outcome that they can measure.

00:35:40.860 All right. So we've been talking about elementary, middle, high school. Let's move on to college.

00:35:46.680 Campus gender politics in the past 20 years have just become a minefield. How are college campuses

00:35:52.780 male unfriendly?

00:35:55.400 Well, yeah, the colleges, you know, part of the big three. I mean, the academic world is

00:35:59.280 kind of the ground of this stuff, of the not teaching this stuff. And it's really showing in

00:36:05.940 our colleges. I'll give a few ways that I talk about in the book. One is the minefield itself.

00:36:11.280 So I tell that story of me and the college president talking, and I've hidden everyone's

00:36:14.660 names to protect everyone, you know, where this is a female college president who can see 1.00

00:36:19.040 that they're losing males, you know, males are not graduating as much as females. Obviously,

00:36:24.580 it's a 60-40 split now, only 40% males. And then they're not even coming in, right? And then when

00:36:30.640 they're in, they're not involved, they're not engaged. And then, of course, now with all the

00:36:36.940 sexual drama going on, this rape crisis kind of hysteria out there that guys are raping women in

00:36:42.400 colleges, that's really added to this problem. So what the academic world has to do, what I'm

00:36:48.740 suggesting in my book, as you know, is it needs to develop a manhood studies program in every college.

00:36:55.000 And obviously, in every college that has a women's studies program, it's got to do this. Because if 1.00

00:37:00.900 it does not do this, and if it does not reorient colleges toward a kind of balance between females 1.00

00:37:06.700 and males, what we will continue to have is an environment in which males are attacked,

00:37:11.900 masculinity is attacked, the dominant gender paradigm, the DGP is very, very active in colleges.

00:37:16.740 And it's driving males out. And we really don't want that. We got to have males trying to love 0.95

00:37:22.020 college, you know. And we got to have males in college. Not every male will go to college,

00:37:26.440 God knows. But the males who want it and who can go, we need it to be an environment where they're 0.99

00:37:31.620 going to succeed as well as the females. And right now, females are just totally outpacing them. 0.99

00:37:35.640 And that's bad for employment. That's bad for our economy. It's bad at an individual level. It's bad

00:37:40.300 for future families. So our colleges are going to have to really look within. And they're going to have

00:37:45.720 to fight against these sort of very vocal forces inside the college that are using this old

00:37:51.540 dominant gender paradigm that is just no longer the best paradigm for modern life. I actually

00:37:57.100 don't think it's a paradigm for females either, by the way, as a father of daughters. But it's 1.00

00:38:00.920 going to take a big fight. Because whenever someone raises their voice, and like I've gone to colleges

00:38:05.720 and spoken, and when I speak out about this, you know, of course, we get this vocal attack that you're 0.91

00:38:10.800 white male and the masculine privilege and you're terrible and you're patriarchal and you're oppressive 0.97

00:38:15.460 and all of this. And the colleges are going to have to battle against this. Because one individual 0.98

00:38:20.820 like me or Leonard Sachs or you, we need a grassroots effort. You know, it's one individual

00:38:26.500 is only going to peck a little, chisel a little hole in it. It needs a whole, who needs the whole 0.57

00:38:31.900 country to awaken to the fact that the colleges are so overrun by a paradigm that does not apply

00:38:39.760 to most people.

00:38:41.380 Right, right. So it's a long-term project. It's not going to happen overnight.

00:38:47.200 Well, it can't because this dominant gender paradigm is so entrenched. And an example is 0.94

00:38:52.000 what's happening with the rape culture. And I, as you know, in chapter four, I spend a long section

00:38:55.980 on that. I asked them, this whole rape crisis hysteria thing, one in five females are sexually 1.00

00:39:00.920 assaulted in college, right? That came out. It was all kind of bogus studies. They weren't correct,

00:39:06.000 but that's what came out. And so then we got the dear colleague letter in 2011. Well, my kids were

00:39:11.520 still in college, my daughters. So I went to them and I said, okay, look at this. I mean,

00:39:16.300 I'm, I'm writing about this. My colleagues are writing about this. We know the statistic is a

00:39:19.380 bogus statistic, but one rape is too many, right? So all of us want to help protect young women.

00:39:25.220 So is this the right way to do it? Is the right way to do it to just say, if a woman accuses a guy,

00:39:30.020 he needs to get kicked out. And even my own daughters said, uh, no, this is, this is not a correct way

00:39:36.360 to handle this. Um, and of course it's going to drive more and more guys out of college.

00:39:40.840 So that's an example of where, where this extreme view that's not accurate to real life takes over.

00:39:48.480 We can protect females without creating this massive backlash by males and by females, 1.00

00:39:55.700 my own daughters who didn't really think this was a good idea. We can protect females better 1.00

00:39:59.900 without accusing males of all of these, all this malice and all this crazy violence, uh,

00:40:05.780 really there are better ways to do it. And our colleges will have to deal with that. They'll

00:40:10.100 have to say, wait a minute, males and females in partnership. Um, let's do this a better way.

00:40:14.520 All right. So it's not a zero sum game is what you're saying.

00:40:16.720 It's not. No, it's, we, we've got to stop thinking. Um, okay. If we see this area where

00:40:23.160 females are not doing as well, that we therefore have to crush, you know, all these other things 1.00

00:40:29.660 going on with males, we got to stop thinking like this.

00:40:32.700 So, uh, another issue that you talk about that kind of contributes to this male

00:40:36.940 anhedonia is a technology or digital technology. Can you talk about what you see the role of

00:40:43.460 digital technology in the lives of young men and how it's contributing to the problems that

00:40:47.180 they're facing?

00:40:48.080 Yeah, I have all the updated. So for anyone who's raising a son or looking at this, I have all the

00:40:53.060 updated research in a couple of places, including one long chapter in saving our sons. And then I

00:41:00.000 have all the studies, et cetera, in the end notes. So people can check this themselves

00:41:03.620 because people, you know, especially if their guys are into video games and into technology

00:41:08.440 quite often, they don't want to say, Oh, wait, this could be harmful because they're saying to

00:41:15.360 themselves, well, look, my guys are engaged in something, you know? So isn't that great.

00:41:19.580 And I'm not anti-technology. And I make that very clear. Technology is a great asset.

00:41:23.420 And my whole nature-based theory is based on brain scans and on technology, right? Showing

00:41:28.320 this to people. So technology is a good thing, but it's developmental. So what we have to realize

00:41:33.300 is two major areas of potential distress for male development. One is screen time itself.

00:41:39.300 So I kind of divide things up so people can look at this developmentally. You know, like a two-year-old,

00:41:45.160 you don't really want that two-year-old's brain in front of a screen hardly at all. And I travel a lot

00:41:50.560 in airports, right? So I'm seeing people giving their one and two-year-old kids their cell phones

00:41:57.420 to keep those kids occupied. Well, those people don't realize that that will damage the brains 0.75

00:42:02.180 of these kids, male and female. And for males, the male brain is pretty fragile in its development.

00:42:08.360 And we're going to damage a lot of its impulse control ability, its social emotional development,

00:42:13.000 and even some of its cognitive ability by putting it in front of the screen so young.

00:42:17.660 So screen time itself is an issue all the way through from birth all the way through 25-ish,

00:42:24.040 you know, which is sort of as males are finalizing their development. And then the other thing is

00:42:29.400 social emotionals, to look at how... So in normal male development, over a period of, you know,

00:42:36.880 this birth to 25, these pathways are developing and the synapses are closing, et cetera, because

00:42:42.500 that brain is involved in its natural environment. It's learning through its family system, through

00:42:48.640 nature, through playing in the mud, through its chemistry set, you know, all of these things. It's

00:42:52.780 learning all this stuff in normal pathway development because normal pathway development is not set up

00:42:58.300 for screens. Screens are very passive. Normal pathway development is active as a boy is interacting

00:43:03.800 in its environment. Well, screens make everything passive. So, and then video games themselves as a screen,

00:43:10.700 not only, you know, are somewhat passive, even though they seem very active, in terms of brain

00:43:14.640 development, they're only developing certain parts of the brain, and they're fooling the brain into

00:43:18.580 thinking it's accomplished something. So as it gets better at the video game, the brain thinks it's

00:43:23.140 accomplishing something. So then it leads to some under-motivation in the other tasks, like school,

00:43:28.620 you know, chores, work, all these other things we really need the brain to do, family development,

00:43:33.800 and then social-emotional development, being able to interact, being able to be a mature adult and

00:43:38.480 interact with others. It's doing so much fooling of the brain that it's not developing these other

00:43:44.340 functions. And so video games especially can be problematic. By the time the kid's 15, you know,

00:43:51.240 to the 25 age group, they're probably going to be playing more video games. I'm begging people,

00:43:56.220 however, to, number one, don't give these kids cell phones until they're 13 or 14. Really protect those

00:44:01.900 brains because they can do everything on their cell phones now anyway. So that helps them get rid of

00:44:06.460 some screen time. But then number two, don't let them be playing video games on school nights. Just

00:44:11.640 say no to video games on school nights. Yes, video games on the weekend, no on school nights. Just so

00:44:17.300 that we can tamper back some of this negatives to brain development. Yeah. And I also like the point

00:44:22.880 you make is you can use video games in a constructive manner. Like you can talk to your kids or your sons

00:44:28.400 about some of the themes that they're playing in the video game. If you're playing some kind of war

00:44:32.840 game, like talk about heroism and warriorhood and things like that. And then you can have a

00:44:38.220 conversation about important topics through the video game. Yeah, well, absolutely. And I'm glad

00:44:43.060 you said that because of course, we don't want to be saying it's all negative. Of course, it's not.

00:44:46.220 You can use video games for this sort of hero development, character development. And I give a

00:44:51.380 number of strategies for that where like from Halo, you know, where you can take dialogue and take actions

00:44:56.680 right from the video game. And dads are often playing games with sons, right? So they're a

00:45:00.720 great asset for this. And they can say, okay, you know, what'd you think of that? What do you think

00:45:04.760 of that? You know, you'll do it after you play the game, of course, but then you're reflecting.

00:45:09.200 And this self-reflection, this ability to reflect is really great for the brain development of these

00:45:14.980 kids. And this is where you're using the video game as an asset. And we want to say that the makers

00:45:20.160 of video games, you know, they're very, very smart people. And I don't think they understand that there can be some

00:45:26.120 brain development issues. I think what they were tapping into was the hero development in the male.

00:45:31.520 And we really want that hero and character development in guys. We need that. We want them

00:45:36.080 to become men of character. And video games are developing that kind of warrior part of the

00:45:40.300 character. And that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. They're developing the hero part. That's a

00:45:44.980 good thing. So we can use the games as long as we tap into that positive development. Now, games like

00:45:51.480 Grand Theft Auto, it's very hard for me, truthfully, to find anything redeeming about that game. So I

00:45:57.900 would like to talk to my son even about that. If he's playing that, I better play it with him.

00:46:02.020 And then I better say, okay, look at the way women are objectified. Look at what this is doing 1.00

00:46:06.080 to you as a man. And look what it's doing to women. So even the games that I don't like, 0.99

00:46:10.760 I think we can use as an asset.

00:46:13.480 Well, Michael, there's a lot more we could talk about. Where can people go to learn more about your

00:46:17.600 book and your work? Well, yeah. If people go to michaelgurian.com,

00:46:21.760 G-U-R-I-A-N, michaelgurian.com, if they go there, that's going to tap them. The book's right there.

00:46:27.140 They're going to see that and tap them into other things. And then if they're in schools or if their

00:46:30.980 parents are concerned about boys in schools, go to gurianinstitute.com and you'll see all our

00:46:36.180 programs for schools and for communities. Awesome. Michael Gurian, thank you so much for your

00:46:40.340 time. It's been an absolute pleasure. Oh, thanks, Brett. Thanks for what you're doing.

00:46:43.680 My guest is Michael Gurian. He's the author of the book, Saving Our Sons,

00:46:46.680 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can also find out more

00:46:49.800 information about his work at michaelgurian.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is

00:46:55.040 slash savingoursons for links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:47:09.260 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:47:13.440 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy

00:47:16.860 this show, I've got something out of it. I'd really appreciate it if you take one minute or so to give

00:47:20.160 us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. That helps that a lot. As always, thank you for your continued

00:47:23.900 support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - August 02, 2017

#326： Why Boys Are Struggling & What We Can Do To Help Them

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