Is There A War on Men?

Summary

Smart Girl Dumb Questions: "Is There a War on Men?"

Host: Nayeema Raza
Guest: Richard Reeves (Director, American Institute for Men and Boys; Author, "Of Boys and Men")
Date: May 5, 2026

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Overview

This episode investigates the so-called "war on men," exploring the challenges, shifts, and anxieties surrounding masculinity in contemporary society. Host Nayeema Raza and guest Richard Reeves, an expert on the subject, discuss identity, data-driven gender gaps, culture, and policy around boys and men—from college, careers, and mental health to the complexities of male socialization in the post-MeToo world. The conversation is honest, nuanced, and leans on both research and personal reflection. Listeners receive both timely context (Epstein case, "tradwife" and dating trends, political shifts) and deeper historical perspective.

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Main Discussion Themes

The State of Masculinity

• Rapid Identity Flux: Young men face contradictory messages: be more masculine—tough, assertive, fit—or less masculine—vulnerable, sensitive, therapy-oriented.

  • Richard Reeves (01:48):
    "They're being told that their problem is that they're not masculine enough … be more of a bro. And then they're also being told their problem is that they're too masculine … They should cry more, they should eat more salad, they should go to therapy. And so they're sort of constantly toggling between these very, very loud voices."

• Not Zero-Sum: Raza and Reeves stress that examining issues for boys/men doesn’t detract from women's progress. Both face societal pressures, but for men, this kind of confusion feels relatively new.

  • Reeves (03:30):
    "The women's movement really did go through quite a difficult identity conversation and has come out of it … in a pretty good place. …We’re not going to say there’s anything wrong with femininity along the way. One of my other sound bites is that you don’t have to have androgyny to have equality."

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Online Culture, Incel Trends, "Tradwives"

• Looksmaxxing & Mewing: Trends like "mewing" engage young men, reflecting anxieties about appearance and belonging—topics previously seldom discussed so openly or scientifically.

  • Reeves (01:29):
    "If you’re trying to talk to a young woman … better to go and talk to her rather than go up to her and go [demonstrates mewing]."

• Tradwife/Soft Life: Social media amplifies the "traditional wife" trend among some young women. Raza notes a generational tension—much of the data affirms ongoing advances for women, but "vibes" circulate online promising a "softer life."

  • Raza (05:07):
    "It is like vibes versus data. ...there is a sentiment in the culture brewing of like … women in their 30s and 40s were sold a bill of goods that didn’t really come true. And I'm looking for something different in my life, a softer life as they would say."
  • Reeves (05:35):
    "We shouldn't ignore vibes, but we also shouldn't over amplify them such that we treat the exceptions like the rule and therefore end up sending the wrong impression."

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Data, Structural Challenges & Gender Gaps

• Education:

  • Women now achieve about 60% of college degrees; boys lag behind in literacy and GPA. This reverses the gender gap that prompted Title IX in the 1970s.
  • Reeves (15:11):
    "You do see that there's … The gender gap in college degrees is about 60, almost 60/40 now in favor of women, which is actually a little bit of a bigger gap than we had in the early 70s … but the other way around."

• Work & Marriage:

  • "Class" (education, wealth) creates a growing divide in marriage rates. College-educated women continue to marry at steady rates, regularly marrying men without the same credentials.
  • Reeves (07:35):
    "College educated women are still getting married because they actually will marry men without college degrees. Always have, actually."

• Mental Health & Loneliness:

  • Male suicide rates are 3.8–4x higher than female rates—a constant over time and across cultures. For young men (under 30), rates have increased by almost a third since 2010.
  • Isolation is high, but gender differences in loneliness are nuanced and less pronounced than assumed.
  • Reeves (17:31):
    "Male suicide rate is four times higher than the female suicide rate. ...this is true everywhere, at every point in human history."

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Media, Narrative, and "Crisis"

• Overpathologizing Men:

  • The danger lies in swinging from ignoring boys' challenges to painting all men as broken, dangerous, or lost.
  • Reeves (09:37):
    "The danger then is you get stuck there … it becomes like the Book of Lamentations. ...Most men are figuring this stuff out. Men are generally great."
  • Reeves (24:03):
    "I don't like the word crisis... I would say that the rise in suicide among young men is worthy of the label of a crisis. ...But it can also be true that there are real problems facing many men."

• Gendered Problems vs. Universal Problems:

  • The hosts challenge the over-gendering of issues like loneliness or societal change, noting that race, class, and age often offer more insight.
  • Reeves (26:40):
    "Loneliness...the evidence for a gender gap in loneliness isn't very strong at all. There's a big class gap in loneliness...there are a whole bunch of other issues like the cost of housing, ...that are just everybody problems."

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Sociobiology, Psychology, and Masculinity

• Developmental Differences:
  • Boys' brains and executive functioning lag behind girls of the same age by about a year, impacting school achievement.
  • Reeves (32:22):
    "The main difference is that boys' brains develop later than girls do...there is just a maturation timing gap."
• Risk & Aggression:
  • Men, on average, are more risk-taking—a trait that can be positive or negative, depending on context.
  • Reeves (33:14):
    "Pretty strong evidence that some...maybe aggression would be the other one, but risk taking...boys and men are slightly more risk taking."

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Rites of Passage, Male Bonding, and Elite Male Behavior

• Socialization, Ritual, Initiation:

  • Historically, societies created rituals for boys to "become" men—essential for collective identity and cohesion.
  • Reeves (35:45):
    "Every human society has to figure out how to turn its boys into men and how to turn them into surplus providers...I much prefer mature and immature masculinity to toxic and non-toxic."

• Elite Male Spaces (Epstein, Old Boys Clubs):

  • The Epstein scandal highlights how closed, elite, often male-dominated groups can breed antisocial and abusive behavior.
  • Reeves (44:16):
    "Powerful men in a genuinely patriarchal structure abuse that power in various ways that will track with antisocial forms of male behavior..."

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MeToo, Accountability & Backlash

• Post-MeToo Equilibrium:
  • Healthy accountability—serious investigation of accusations, real consequences for proven abuse—is crucial, without overreaching into paranoia or witch hunting.
  • Reeves (53:16):
    "I would like to think that we're always in a MeToo movement and moment. ...We take accusations seriously, we investigate them, people held to account."

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Dating and Relationships in 2026

• The "Dating Recession":

  • 6 in 10 men under 30 are single; women are less interested in dating than men.
  • Raza: "If you're a woman of childbearing age right now, you're just fucked a little bit" (54:23).

• Job Stereotypes & Gender Roles:

  • Host and guest challenge stereotypes—e.g., that men in "HEAL" (health, education, administration, literacy) jobs are unattractive, urging cultural recalibration.
  • Reeves (56:36):
    "It's not true...my son is a 5th grade teacher in Baltimore City...I don’t think it’s true. And I think it’s one of those things that will actually become self-perpetuating if men don’t go into those fields, then they will code increasingly female..."

• Changing Marriage Dynamics:

  • Increasingly, women out-earn their husbands; this shift challenges cultural expectations, but Reeves argues it's the unavoidable future and calls for a more positive framing of evolving male roles.
  • Reeves (60:27):
    "We have to go forward...the share of women earning more than their partner is going to go up year after year...We’ve got to rebrand fatherhood such that being at home is an awesome and very masculine thing to do..."

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Policy, Politics, and Solutions

What Can Parents/Communities Do?

• Be curious, not contemptuous, about boys’ interests—even when they rebel or become enamored with controversial content.
• Set screen time boundaries, encourage real-life engagement, support boys in education settings not always designed for them.
  • Reeves (61:59):
    "Don’t panic...he is quite likely to go through a period of searching, a period of discovery, a period of rebellion...try and adopt towards his interests, whatever they are, a posture of curiosity, not contempt."

On Policy Trends (Paddle Round – 66:42):

• Affirmative Action for Men – Bad idea; don't "thumb the scale" for admissions.
• Military Draft – Contextual, but if there’s a war, national service is justified.
• Mandatory Paternity Leave – Support for state-backed, equally available paternity leave, less so for forcibly requiring time off.
• Ministry for Men or Women – Prefers an Office/Ministry of Gender Equality serving all.
• Ban on Pornography – Bad idea; better to educate and inform rather than prohibit.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Raza (02:41): "The left tells you to be more like your sister, the right tells you to be more like your father."
• Reeves (03:30): "You don’t have to have androgyny to have equality."
• Reeves (09:37): "[The book] becomes like the Book of Lamentations. ...Most men are figuring this stuff out. Men are generally great."
• Reeves (54:52): "If it’s true that women are now getting to the point that...marriage becomes a choice rather than a necessity for women…hallelujah. That was the point."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:48–03:30: Contradictory messages about masculinity, online influences
• 05:07–06:02: "Tradwife" discussion, generational/vibe vs. data
• 15:11–17:31: Gender gaps in education, labor market, and structural issues
• 17:31–19:45: Suicide statistics, rising risk among young men
• 24:03–26:40: Why “crisis” label is dangerous, gendering universal issues
• 32:22–34:40: Boys’ brain development, sex differences, risk-taking
• 35:45–37:02: Rites of passage, forming men, importance of pro-social male bonding
• 44:16–46:40: Elite male spaces, Epstein, patriarchy and abuse
• 53:16–54:23: MeToo: finding balance between accountability and overreach
• 54:23–57:29: The "dating recession" and stereotypes of "HEAL" men
• 61:59–63:24: Guidance for families raising boys
• 66:42–70:52: Quickfire policy takes and underlying philosophies

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Tone and Approach

• Honest and Unflinching: Both host and guest refuse easy answers, leaning into the discomfort and nuance rather than culture-war soundbites.
• Clever, Playful, and Candid: The episode is peppered with playful asides, genuine disagreements, and blunt humor (e.g., the "step stool" and "British accent" moments), making complex topics accessible.

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Summary Takeaways

• Masculinity is at a cultural crossroads: Young men wrestle with legacy expectations and new possibilities, often with insufficient models or support.
• Data matters, but vibes shape culture: Sensational trends (from incel self-improvement to "tradwives") may not be statistically dominant but shouldn't be ignored.
• Empathy and curiosity trump panic and pathologizing: Engage with boys’ development with openness; avoid reductive crises or stereotypes.
• Structural and individual change: Solutions must be both systemic (education, work culture, mental health policy) and personal (mentorship, parenting, socialization).
• Gender progress is not zero-sum: Advocating for men and boys does not mean abandoning women's issues; equity can—and must—serve everyone.

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End Message:
For listeners, this episode both challenges stereotypes and invites good-faith engagement with questions around men, masculinity, and modern gender politics, backed by data, fresh policy thinking, and open conversation.

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(Quotes and timestamps are preserved for accuracy; discussed content only—ads, intros, outros omitted)

Transcript

[Naeema Raza]

What do you see about male bonding in this Epstein story? I don't think you've been asked about this.

[Richard Reeves]

I have definitely not been asked about this. One of my friends has described me as someone that goes into this minefield and defuses the mines around these issues. And I feel like you've invited me into a whole nother minefield where I don't know how to diffuse the mind.

[Naeema Raza]

You're invited. I think you guys gotta go for the jugular. You Jack Bauer the shit and go in for the bomb.

[Richard Reeves]

Is that what you think?

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, I think you should do it

[Richard Reeves]

because I think terrible advice.

[Naeema Raza]

You must talk about this at dinner parties with your friends. Like, address the Epstein thing directly. Like, what does it reveal? What's your takeaway?

[Richard Reeves]

My takeaway is that Smart girl dumb questions.

[Naeema Raza]

This is smart girl dumb questions. I'm Naema Raza and you've heard about men and boys falling behind in schools, at the workplace. Richard Reeves is the director of the American Institute for Men and Boys and the author of the Book of Boys and Men. It was also on Obama's book list. Do you believe that former President Obama read the book? Do you think he read every book on the list?

[Richard Reeves]

I do. He's got plenty of time. What else has he got to do?

[Naeema Raza]

Do you know what looks maxing is, by the way?

[Richard Reeves]

I do. I've learned what it is. I even learned what mewing is. Do you know what mewing is?

[Naeema Raza]

I do know what mewing is. Do you want to demonstrate mewing for our audience?

[Richard Reeves]

You have to stick your tongue.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes. At the top of the roof of your mouth so that your jawline becomes perfected. And this is what men in the incel community are doing right now. We should say that's not backed by science that people think is dangerous.

[Richard Reeves]

It's not health advice.

[Naeema Raza]

So don't do this at home, but try it for a second. Because it is bizarre to imagine that 14 year olds are doing this all day, every day.

[Richard Reeves]

I wouldn't be advising my. So who are in their 20s. Like, if you're trying to kind of talk to a, you know, a young woman in a coffee shop or a bar, it'd be better to go and talk to her rather than go up to her and go,

[Naeema Raza]

I see you got your lips done too. What does that actually reveal to you about men today? Looks, maxing, mewing, et cetera.

[Richard Reeves]

Well, there's a couple of things. One is that I think there are actual problems facing many men, as in education, in work, and so on. Behind that there's also just an identity question, which is, what does it mean to be a man today? What does it mean to be a good man today? And it's just a question that I think young men in particular are asking now in a way that wasn't previously being asked. And of course that's a good thing in some ways. Right. That opens up all kinds of possibilities. But it's also quite an anxiety provoking thing. I think of it almost like pinball. The competing messages, particularly being received by young men online, are very, very confusing. On the one hand, they're being told that their problem is that they're not masculine enough. They should look smacks, they should be taller, they should eat more protein, they should be more assertive, be more guy. Right. Be more of a bro. And then they're also being told their problem is that they're too masculine. They might be toxically masculine, they should cry more, they should eat more salad, they should go to therapy. And so they're sort of constantly toggling between these very, very loud voices.

[Naeema Raza]

I had a favorite line in your book. Do you want to guess what the favorite line is?

[Richard Reeves]

The left tells you to be more like your sister, the right tells you to be more like your father.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes. And neither invocation is helpful. Is that everyone's favorite line?

[Richard Reeves]

No, but it gets at this identity question, which I do think that there's this toggling almost between too masculine, not masculine enough, what does it mean? What is masculinity anyway, et cetera.

[Naeema Raza]

Women also experience that. So I don't wanna do a whataboutism. You speak about this in all of your work. Talking about boys and men is not a zero sum game. Doesn't detract from women. But I'm like competing messages online of what you should be like. Women were told, you know, you gotta be a killer, you gotta make it, you gotta be independent, you gotta do this. And then, you know, at home you've gotta be traditional. You've gotta make your man feel loved and feel really respected and look up to him and let him lead. Women have been with this kind of constant messaging for a long time. Is it new for men, this much noise?

[Richard Reeves]

I think it is new. Yeah. I think there's probably just a timing issue here. My sense of this is that the women's movement really did go through quite a difficult identity conversation and has come out of it, in my view, in a pretty good place. Which is to say there are lots of ways to be a woman. We're going to expand the set of ways in which you can be a woman. We're not going to say there's anything wrong with femininity along the way. One of my other sound bites is that you don't have to have androgyny to have equality. I'm old enough to to have been around, I'm in my mid-50s to have been around. A lot of women who are told wear shoulder pads stand a certain way. Margaret Thatcher was actually given voice coaching to deepen her voice.

[Naeema Raza]

Oh really?

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah. And I think there was enough resistance to this and enough women saying, oh, we actually don't wanna stop being women. We just think we should be able to be women and chief executive and prime minister and president.

[Naeema Raza]

I think it's still working itself out. Like I think the tradwife trend, which really feels like a trend. It's still working itself out. But I agree with you. Women have had a reckoning and a movement over the course of gener and we haven't had that male equivalent. Although the feminist movement has kind of birthed modern fatherhood, it's happening now to

[Richard Reeves]

men maybe on a bit of a lag. But you just said a moment ago that you think the trad wife movement is real.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, I do think so.

[Richard Reeves]

Okay, so what I see is female labor force participation at the highest rate probably ever. Actually more women in payroll jobs now than men. Significant increase in the share of women in senior jobs and a narrowing gap in the amount of unpaid work being done. More hands on fathering being done. So where are the tradwives in the data as opposed to in social media?

[Naeema Raza]

I think it might be a generational thing and I think where you're really seeing it increasingly is in the Gen Z and they're not in the workforce at the same level, looking for a guy on finance, et cetera. All of it has. It is like vibes versus data. It is. And I really appreciate how empirical you are, but I do think that there is a sentiment in the culture brewing of like if I'm a woman in my 20s, women who are in their 30s and 40s were sold a bill of goods that didn't really come true. And I'm looking for something different in my life, a softer life as they would say.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah. So I think it's first of all we shouldn't ignore vibes, but we also shouldn't over amplify them such that we treat the exceptions like the rule and therefore end up sending the wrong impression. So one of the things I say to young men, for example, when we're talking about dating or we're talking about chances of finding a partner is don't wait for a trad wife. If you're waiting for a trad wife, you will have a very long wait. However, I do think it's true that young women as well as young men are questioning, questioning that deal.

[Naeema Raza]

Right.

[Richard Reeves]

They're starting to say, hang on, the labor market is not providing me with the choices I wanted. I am facing sharper trade offs around the kind of life I want to lead and maybe the kind of family I want to have than my mom promised that I would.

[Naeema Raza]

I agree with you on that. And I think that a lot of it is not just about gender roles shifting. I think a lot of it is the kind of universal question of affordability that's challenging our life and our way of life and what we think we expect. The thing I was bringing up is, like, it's generational also, and the data often lags. I'm trying to think of what is a good example of this gender fluid. The conversation was like a niche conversation that then got picked up and was spoken about so much in the culture that all of a sudden you're like teens in Iowa discussing this. It seemed like a very city conversation that got picked up and moved up by the culture. And I feel like TradWife has been a little bit of that because I will see it in my friends who say, like, I wish that conversation had been happening in, you know, when we were in our, like, 20s or teens, so that we could have made different decisions in our 30s. And I. I'm, like, kind of surprised to hear that sometimes New York has its own bubble. I have a friend now who's having a child by herself at 37 or another one who's just done it at 38. And I think that there is, like, questions of whether or not that's the thing that they wanted to do.

[Richard Reeves]

They wanted to do it, but they wanted to do it because their choices

[Naeema Raza]

were constrained and they don't feel hopeful about the supply or of the kind of men that they want to date at the timing in which they need that to happen biologically.

[Richard Reeves]

So that's such an interesting thing. But also, I think, like, people also get this stuff wrong. I have this ongoing disagreement with Scott Galloway about this. He's doing great work.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[Richard Reeves]

But we have some disagreements.

[Naeema Raza]

What's the disagreement?

[Richard Reeves]

Scott likes to say that the gender gap in college degrees, which is now about 60, 40, female, male, is going to be a problem for marriage because women with college Degrees won't want to marry men without college degrees. And it's just not true. First of all, women overtook men 20, 30 years ago. So we would have seen that. And in fact, college educated women are marrying at the same rates that college educated women were 30 years ago. It's been non college educated women where the drop in marriage has been acute. So there's a huge class gap. If you go back 30, 40 years, there wasn't much of a marriage gap. Now there's a huge marriage gap, but it's. The gap is that college educated women are still getting married because they actually will marry men without college degrees. Always have, actually.

[Naeema Raza]

Is the same true of graduate degree women?

[Richard Reeves]

I don't know. But then we know that we've moved into a very different part of the conversation. You said New York's a bubble, but so much of this conversation is so elitist. Right. It's like the 2% of people going to like the Ivies or the top 50 or whatever. But actually, like just in my own family, there's one couple where she's a nurse, he's a plumber. There is no world in which she would have said, well, as a nurse with a four year degree, I'm not gonna marry a plumber. Cause he's only got like an associate's degree or whatever. Like there's just, there's lots of couples like that.

[Naeema Raza]

We hear so much about male loneliness, incel culture, reversion to video games, violence, et cetera. You hear a lot about the men's crisis. And sometimes I fear that we're talking about men these days the way we talk about bears, with like a lot of fear, you know.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

And I just, I wonder how you think of that.

[Richard Reeves]

Well, there was the man versus bear meme.

[Naeema Raza]

Oh, for a while.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah. One of the many things that I did not comment on. But there was like, there's a many, many. But there was, it was a meme. And the survey question was asking women, if you're out hiking alone in the

[Naeema Raza]

woods, oh, I think I did see this.

[Richard Reeves]

Would you rather run into a bear or a man? And more women said they'd like to run into a bear than into a man because men are so dangerous. And that blew up and I ignored it. And I don't think the methodology was very good, et cetera. But nonetheless, if you were to have

[Naeema Raza]

commented on it, you would say.

[Richard Reeves]

I would say that the danger with this is it's playing into a growing sense of men being bad, dangerous, lost, useless, et cetera. And I feel a bit responsible for. For this to some extent. My book has been described quite recently as a jeremiad, and I don't think it is. But by drawing attention to the problems, the danger then is you get stuck there, right? And it becomes like the Book of Lamentations. And it's either an eye roll or a what's wrong with them? Or, like, they're awful and it's just not true. You know, most men are figuring this stuff out. Men are generally great. And so there's this real danger that in our. In our. In our desire to say there is an issue here, we end up just pathologizing them and saying what's wrong with them, rather than, how can we help them.

[Naeema Raza]

It's funny. When I was at the times in 2019, when I started there, I had this idea that we should do, like, a column called Good White Guy Stories in Opinion. I was like, because there's so many

[Richard Reeves]

of them, how did that go down?

[Naeema Raza]

It was just a very funny conversation. It was kind of a joke when I said it. I think I was told like, maybe you should start a substack. It would have been good advice, actually career wise to have done it. But that's not a statement from the Times, et cetera. But I did feel like we were inundated with these kind of terrible stories. And I have to say, in my career, for example, I found the greatest mentors and. And, like, the most generous people I've worked with have been older white men. I think part of that is that they feel secure. And sometimes as a woman working with another woman, there's like that sense of, there can only be one. There isn't this RBG sense of like, well, why can't there be nine female justices on the court yet? And so I wanted to tell some of those stories. And it was an unpopular opinion. And when you were thinking about writing this book, you felt it was an uncomfortable, unpopular opinion at the time, Right?

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, it was slightly difficult to get the book published, to be honest. Brookings published it, but no one else would touch it at the time. So it was still seen as a very, very sensitive and difficult issue. Even then. 2021, 2022, at that point, you'd already

[Naeema Raza]

been talking about this issue for several years.

[Richard Reeves]

Two or three years, yes.

[Naeema Raza]

So since then, you know, politicians have policy plans. Netflix made a show. Scott Galloway has gained a million followers. Gavin Newsom has a podcast. You got $20 million. Not you personally, but your organizations from Melinda French Gates. Have Men's Lives actually gotten better? In the process, empirically speaking, or are we just having a kind of collective anxiety attack?

[Richard Reeves]

As a nation, we have to be patient because you have to raise awareness of an issue. Then you have to create the permission space for that issue to be treated properly. Then you have to do some stuff, and then you have to see if that stuff works. And so this is pretty new. There's some legislation moving through Congress now to create an Office of Men's Health and look at male suicide. But it's not going to have a material impact immediately. What it might do is change the conversation. But I'm not naive enough to think that I can go from book to think tank to solution in more than what will be a number of years. I mean, the women's movement didn't work in 1974.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[Richard Reeves]

I mean, Title IX was passed in 71, 72 to increase the share of women in college, et cetera. And this stuff doesn't happen fast.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. And there's been, like recalibrations over time, too. It's not a linear path. We're talking about it building awareness, starting to test some stuff and stuff sticking. Where are we in that kind of product life cycle?

[Richard Reeves]

We're at the point where people are actually wanting to engage in practical solutions. So, for example, in California, the executive order there issued by Governor Newsom has pushed some money towards increasing the share of male teachers in the classroom. That will take a while to happen and then have a while to have an impact. But that's happening already. Already some states have recalibrated all of their marketing around mental health care. I don't know if that's worked yet, but one state we've worked with, and this is a very small example, but I think you might like it, is in that state, 80% of their deaths to suicide are men. But then they looked at all of their literature, advertising online and offline for their suicide prevention work. And 80% of the people featured in that were women. It was the opposite. And so it didn't. It looked like a service for women because. And it wasn't intentional. No one intended. So they've changed that now. I don't know what effect that will have, if any. We'll wait for the evaluation.

[Naeema Raza]

But it's important to correct, to be corrective on these.

[Richard Reeves]

Let's be corrective. So we've raised awareness. I think we've created a bigger permission space. Stuff is starting to happen. Gavin Newsom's also called 10,000 more men into service in California.

[Naeema Raza]

Are we at risk of dei for men.

[Richard Reeves]

The whole question about DEI is just a really difficult one to answer. I mean, my sort of short version on this is if you're serious about diversity and equity inclusion, then you should be led by the data. And so in higher education, I was quite frustrated by the DEI administrators in colleges where they were 70, 30 fee female male who had nothing for men. All right, if you're about diversity, why aren't you caring about that huge gender gap? No, no, we do dei, so we do women. But I'm like, you have twice as many women as men. Isn't your diversity problem in gender? You don't have enough men. But it was sort of pre baked ideologically rather than being driven by the data. Some of these more progressive institutions made it too easy to shut them down because it was quite clear that their programming was based on predetermined identity groups.

[Naeema Raza]

One of the things I like about your argument is that it's not hyper individualistic. I think we live in a world where like everything's a self help book and everything's like, it's in your power, it's your agency. And some of these things are just like fucked up from a societal perspective. And it's like, it's not you, it's the state, it's not you, it's society. And I want to understand and unpack for the audience a little bit what are the structural issues here and what does the data reveal about the structural challenges men are facing and boys are facing?

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, and it's a good chance to do the two things can be true at once. Non0 something too. Because I was actually quite inspired by the way that the women's movement moved to tackle things like the gender pay gap or the lack of promotion of women in the labor market. Because there was this moment where it was very individualistic. It was very much like, well, if you want more money, you've got to go ask for it and be assertive. And then actually no, it shouldn't be like that. Right. We should, we should reform the way that pay works and we should think about flexible working and we should think about the structure of the firm. You can't create a labor market built for men with a wife at home and then say to women, well, you're just going to have to behave like that. What you've got to do is reform that labor market so that it works for women as well as for men. But then the same is true of education for boys. I think that the education system now is inadvertently less boyfriendly than it is girlfriendly for reasons we could get into. And so you do see that there's. The gender gap in college degrees is about 60, almost 60, 40 now in favor of women, which is actually a little bit of a bigger gap than we had in the early 70s when we passed Title IX, but the other way around. And one reason for that is girls come out of high school, on average, a year ahead of boys in literacy, and literacy predicts a lot of other things. So a full year gap now. And two thirds of the top performers at school, measured by gpa, are girls. Two thirds of the bottom performers are boys. And so there's this huge gender gap now in K12 education, which then feeds through into higher education. And that's one reason why we see so many men now struggling in the labor market, because the sorts of jobs that men used to be able to do, partly for sexist reasons and sometimes racist reasons too, that where you didn't need an education but could still make a very good living in manufacturing or heavy industry, they're not there anymore. And so these men are in real trouble because they're not getting good education. And the jobs that maybe their dads or granddads did are not there anymore.

[Naeema Raza]

And although, you know, Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI who I've had on the show, says the best job you can have, you know, to protect yourself in an AI world is to be a plumber. So maybe men are gonna have a comeback.

[Richard Reeves]

We'll see. I would defer to Jeff or you on this, but I would also say maybe nurse, maybe teacher.

[Naeema Raza]

You speak about, you know, how men are falling behind in education and workplace, but you also talk about societally. And you referenced, for example, the suicide rate is higher for men. Talk about male loneliness. I just wanna invite you to give some stats about that.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah. And they're troubling statistics, but it's incredibly important that. But everybody knows these stats. The first thing is that the male suicide rate is four times higher than the female suicide rate. And it's about 40,000 men a year that we're losing to suicide in the U.S. now, the U.S. is unusual in that the rate has gone up, though

[Naeema Raza]

the difference is still the same. Right. 3.8x over decades of time, between three

[Richard Reeves]

and a half and four times higher loss of life to suicide among men than women everywhere. That's ever been measured in every culture. Right. So it's just.

[Naeema Raza]

So is that just biology? I mean, I don't want to say that it's such an important topic. Is that biology that this has been over generations, true that men are committing suicide at higher rates. It's terrible. It's terrifying, yes. But is it underlying? And.

[Richard Reeves]

Well, when you see a trend, a gender gap that is so consistent across place and time, then it's impossible, I think, to ignore the evidence that that suggests there's something potentially innate going on there. It's a question of whether it's then expressed. You could say the same thing about crime, violent crime. Within a pretty close approximation, 95% of violent crimes are committed by men. That's true everywhere, at every point in human history. So the question is less is it going to be 95% of violent crimes being committed by men? Because that's true everywhere. The question is how do we get that number way down? Right, so.

[Naeema Raza]

Right. So make the pie smaller.

[Richard Reeves]

Make the pie smaller and the ratio will stick. Same with the suicide gap. So a lot of countries, like including the Scandinavian countries, have done a really good job of bringing down their suicide rate by focusing largely on men. But the gap hasn't changed because it's also come down for women. And then the other thing that is so important from a data perspective because this is since the book came out, is that up until about 2010, most of the rise in suicide among men was being driven by middle aged men and later middle aged men. It looked like it was associated what Case and Deaton have called deaths of despair, also including alcohol and drugs and so on. And of course that includes the Great Recession. So it was really men in their 40s, 50s where we saw this really big increase up till 2010. Since 2010, the rise has been among young men and among young men under 30, suicide rates have risen by almost a third just since 2010. And on some measures now it's higher among young men than among middle aged men. And we don't know why.

[Naeema Raza]

Do you have a hypothesis of why?

[Richard Reeves]

I do have a hypothesis, but it is a woefully under researched area.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay. With all of that disclaimer, which is

[Richard Reeves]

something, is something different is going on with these younger men. A loss of a sense of a secure place in the world and a feeling needed, of feeling valued. A feeling like my family, my community, my workplace, my tribe, if you like, they need me. Right. And instead this sense of a loss of identity has actually, I think led a lot of young men to be at greater risk of suicide. And then you increase the risk, the numbers just go up. So I don't know. But I will tell you that there is something very different about an unexplained massive rise, the loss of life among our 25 year old men, our 16 year old boys, than among our 45 year old men. That did seem to be more explained by the economic circumstances.

[Naeema Raza]

I'm surprised by that answer in some way because I thought maybe your hypothesis was going to be about social media because that 2010 number coincides with the curve that you see in a lot of Jonathan Haidt work, et cetera, where you see this elbow effect.

[Richard Reeves]

I agree with John, and he has a whole chapter on this in his own book, that the way that the social media and technology has played out for men and women has a. It's been going on longer for boys and men than it has for women and it's less relational and more about retreat. What I think has happened is that video games, pornography, et cetera, have given boys and young men somewhere to hide, somewhere to retreat to, away from the vicissitudes and difficulties and uncertainties and anxieties of the real world.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, a virtual reality, that's better for them.

[Richard Reeves]

Exactly. So anything that's causing it, but, but then it will play into isolation, lack of relational skills and so it then becomes a self perpetuating cycle. There's nothing wrong with video games, but if you're only playing video games without your friends on your own, then it's gonna be harder for you to make real friends in the real, maybe real romantic relationships too.

[Naeema Raza]

Right? It's funny, I just asked my social media followers and I got, I think by the time I came in here, I had a few hundred responses to a poll about are you worried about the crisis of men and boys? And about 50% of them, 50 to 60% said yes. And then there were two other options. One was no, I don't believe it's happening. And the other one was no, I think it's happening, but I'm not worried about it. Look at it. So I don't have anything.

[Richard Reeves]

How many people said it's happening, but I don't care.

[Naeema Raza]

17% say no, I think it's happening, but it doesn't worry me. 24% say no, I don't buy that there's a men's crisis. When I went and looked at the people and I wrote to some of the people who I knew who had responded, especially on that last one of no, I don't believe it's happening. This like yes, not conspiracization of it, but like a sense of it's overblown or out of proportion, et cetera. And a lot of them were women. One of the frustrations I heard and that I don't believe it's happening, is that the data can be cut so many different ways. And you know this. And it probably infuriates you more Than infuriates me as a journalist, it's very fucking infuriating to know what's true anymore. Because an infographic spreads like wildfire.

[Richard Reeves]

You can decide what you think and then go get the data to prove it.

[Naeema Raza]

Exactly. So, like loneliness. I think 25% of men aged 15 to 34 are lonely. 18% of women. This is per the most recent, I think, Gallup, Yallup research on it. And then the teen girls are actually lonelier. 44% versus 25%. And that was one of the most persuasive things I heard from the people who don't believe that this men's crisis is happening. They feel that there is a. It's an everybody problem and talking about it about men is dangerous. I wanna let you respond to it, but first I wanna say why that kind of resonated with me a little bit was seeing that going and checking the data myself and seeing that teen data. But also because you remember there was like a subway push incident in New York City where an Asian woman had been pushed at the mta and all the media around the time reported that it was a Asian hate crime. And I actually wrote a letter to our internal standards editor, et cetera, saying, hey, I'm kind of worried about this because we're seeing the reporting that they, the police said 10 minutes before that person had tried to push someone that wasn't an Asian woman. And so the harm effect of that is that you only are worried about your safety if you're an Asian woman or an Asian person. And so that's how I worry about it. Are you concerned that we're splicing it in a way that we're not addressing the root problem and we're hyper focused on these kind of male initiatives.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah. Well, one response is to say that I don't like the word crisis.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay.

[Richard Reeves]

Very much. And you won't hear me using it very often at all.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, wait one second. Sorry. Sounds like construction. This is a real look inside podcasting because at this moment, we are hearing somebody install something in a neighboring building in New York City. What do you think they're building?

[Richard Reeves]

We're all thinking like, is it a shelf or a whole room?

[Naeema Raza]

You have to hope it's a professional and not like a dude who's like, trying to do it. Like, I had a former boyfriend. We lived together for years, and every time something would break, he like, bless his heart. He was like, I'm gonna go to the store. And I'm like, I'm gonna text the guy to come.

[Richard Reeves]

That's so emasculating.

[Naeema Raza]

So, no, no, I like, he's an ex boyfriend. I assume he went to the hardware store. He'd come back with the wrong stuff that you have to go back to the hardware store. This guy, you know? You know the guy.

[Richard Reeves]

No, I love him. And I think you were mean to him.

[Naeema Raza]

I was mean to him. I actually.

[Richard Reeves]

He probably heard a podcast about how women love it when you fix stuff.

[Naeema Raza]

I actually do love it when you fix stuff. But I sometimes would just check the availability of for the next day so we could have like a day of play that we say, I know Tina Brown says, this is what women do so wrong.

[Richard Reeves]

It's just right. I mean, it's not for me to say, but that destroyed your relationship.

[Naeema Raza]

So I did say, yes, you did say. Okay.

[Richard Reeves]

Okay.

[Naeema Raza]

Crisis.

[Richard Reeves]

I don't like the word crisis. That's one thing. Cause I think there's too many crises. And the trouble is the word loses its meaning. I would say that the rise in suicide among young men is worthy of the label of a crisis. There's a general proposition like, oh, men are in crisis. The of men. I get why a lot of women would react to that. Because a, there are still so many gaps disfavoring women, especially in the workplace, especially at the top of society. Only 25% of our members of Congress are women. Still, only 10% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Only 2% of venture capital money goes to female founders. So it's not like there aren't huge challenges still facing women. So I get it. But it can also be true that there are real problems facing kind of many men. And I think part this is back to the zero sum thing. I think that too many people have been invited to think that if they admit that there are problems facing men, that somehow means they have to deny that there are still problems facing women. Whereas, of course, both things are true.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes. Although I'm leveling a different kind of argument. It's less about the zero sumness of it and it's more, and I completely agree with you, suicide, like high cost. We should scream that from the rooftops. And that is worthy of that label. It's more about, like, do we allide the real structural, universal issues by talking about it as Men or women? Are we unnecessarily.

[Richard Reeves]

Because they're everybody issues? Because they're everybody issues. Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

Are we unnecessarily gendering the impact of modern capitalism?

[Richard Reeves]

That's a great question and it's a good challenge to my work. It's also a great challenge to the work of many women's organizations. Of course, take loneliness as an example. Actually we've published on this now. The evidence for a gender gap in loneliness isn't very strong at all. There's a big class gap in loneliness. But actually the difference between men and women on that. If you look at all of the surveys and you look hard at them, it just doesn't look like there's a very big gender gap in loneliness. There's a slight. There is one in social isolation. Isolation which is a different measure. Loneliness is more of a subjective thing. So you can be alone without being lonely.

[Naeema Raza]

You can also be lonely without being alone.

[Richard Reeves]

Exactly, exactly.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[Richard Reeves]

So I've changed my own view on that because the evidence has changed and I'm. I'm a former journalist as well. I was at the Guardian for many years and C.P. scott, who was the founder of the Manchester Guardian, he said comment is free, facts are sacred. And so even if we're going to disagree about the interpretation of the facts or the causes of them, I think just calling the facts in good faith rather than cherry picking them to suit your agenda. Important the result of that will be to find some problems that are genuinely gendered. If you look at the impact of parenting on earnings, that's a highly gendered issue. It's really affecting moms.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. Because even women who out earn their husbands are working hours more at like at home after they come back.

[Richard Reeves]

Come back to that. Because I don't think that's actually really true.

[Naeema Raza]

But we can have a stat on that.

[Richard Reeves]

But we'll go.

[Naeema Raza]

We can nerd out.

[Richard Reeves]

Let's nerd out on that later. But because it depends how you find full time work. But. So you can see that there are some issues where a gender lens makes sense because either just the data shows but there are a whole bunch of other issues like the cost of housing, like loneliness, like maybe the impact of some aspects of social media that are just everybody problems. And we shouldn't make everything into a gender problem when it's an everybody problem. But that's true of the women's groups as well.

[Naeema Raza]

I totally agree. And by the way, one of my stuff, I moderated a debate once on the women women's gender gap. The Wage gap, The pay gap.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

And there was a couple of arguments I found super interesting that were made in that one was one of the debaters said, look, it's been about 82% 20 years ago, and it's 82% now. And some part of this is just biology. Like, what I'm Saying on the 3.8 acts like some part of this is like innate. It's cultural, it's there to stay. And by focusing it as a women's gender gap issue, we're actually not focusing on the issues that need to be corrected. So I thought that was a really interesting argument. And the second argument that I thought was. Was compelling was I think it's data from the center for American Progress shows that Asian women out earn white men the dollar.

[Richard Reeves]

They do.

[Naeema Raza]

And again, if you splice it, like, obviously that's not true for Taiwanese. American women are like $1.07 to the man's dollar, and Nepalese women are a fraction of the white man's dollar.

[Richard Reeves]

So you love to disaggregate data.

[Naeema Raza]

I love to disaggregate data.

[Richard Reeves]

It's so great. Me too.

[Naeema Raza]

It's so exciting.

[Richard Reeves]

This is so fun. No one else is listening at this point, but you're on a data disaggregation test. I'm here for it.

[Naeema Raza]

I'm here for it. But I do think that because we're talking about women's issues, all of a sudden, white women, Asian women are the disproportionate beneficiaries of that discussion. And we're not talking about Hispanic issues in the workplace. We're not talking about black issues in the workplace. We're not talking about class issues in the fucking workplace. And I actually don't think people are disappearing because I think people are really frustrated with this whole conversation about diversity and identity, and they don't, like, they want to have answers for why it's frustrating. My own experience is that if someone mentioned diversity, they'll often look at me in a room and at the times, like, they'll look at me and I'll be like, okay, I went to Georgetown, Harvard, and Stanford. Like, I'm not a diversity candidate. And I'm not, like, you shouldn't feel better that I'm here. Next to me was a white guy who hadn't finished college, had gone to the military, had gotten injured, didn't get his benefits, so couldn't go to college. Was one of the most fantastic video editors I worked with at the time and had a very different point of view. On the world, he had more diversity than me, but we couldn't say that.

[Richard Reeves]

Well, there's a whole. Have you heard this distinction between, like, optical diversity and other kinds of diversity? So optical diversity is diversity, you can see. I think there's an office skit about this too, right. Where he kind of looks to the Asian woman. Right. It's very uncomfortable, but it's exactly this, where he looks to the Asian woman when they talk about diversity. But it's like, you can put it on your, you know, your photograph or your, like, whatever, and you say, oh, look how diverse we are. But actually, you don't know what you've just said, which is that that white guy actually comes from, you know, Appalachia and has struggled his way up and on. That measure of diversity is more diverse than others.

[Naeema Raza]

So is your work not at risk of that? Because I feel like you were constantly kind of like, explaining that you're talking about. You have a whole dedicated chapter on black men. You explicitly say you're talking about heterosexual CIS men, mostly. Yeah, yeah. That's because, you know that gay men have just exceeded us all.

[Richard Reeves]

If gay men were a nation, they would be the best educated country in the world.

[Naeema Raza]

They'd definitely be the best dressed. Is that true? They would be the best educated country in the world. Really?

[Richard Reeves]

American gay men.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. I often joke, like, gay men are an example of what men could be if they just tried harder. I mean that more like, stylistically, you know, like, they're just always, like, so put together. But you. Do you worry about that, like, by talking about men as a kind of bulk group that we are?

[Richard Reeves]

I do, yes. And so I think the burden of proof should be on me or on us to say, okay, this. Looking at this issue through the lens, gender lens of looking at boys and men is bringing rewards in policy in understanding, et cetera. And sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. But I gotta tell you, the number of times that simply looking at the data through that lens, through the disaggregated lens throws up findings that nobody else is finding.

[Naeema Raza]

So there are some gender differences. You talk about them in your book, and particularly physiological ones. How do boys brains evolve differently to girls brains?

[Richard Reeves]

Mansplain women's brains to me.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. Can you mansplain?

[Richard Reeves]

No problem. The main difference is that boys brains develop later than girls do. So partly because girls hit puberty about a year earlier, and that triggers all kinds of brain changes, including the frontal cortex, which is basically the executive functioning bit of the brain. It's the bit of your brain that kind of turns in your homework for you, if you like, and that just is triggered by puberty. And so just on average, 16 year old girls are a little bit older, developmentally speaking, than 16 year old boys.

[Naeema Raza]

How much older?

[Richard Reeves]

Like, like about a year.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay.

[Richard Reeves]

On some of those measures, I mean, they're older all the way through. Even like a six year old girl is a little bit older than a six year old boy. So there is just a maturation timing gap. That's the main difference. But there are also other, some other differences which are always at risk of being over emphasized, particularly by people who want to weaponize them against women, for example. But higher risk taking.

[Naeema Raza]

Oh yeah, right.

[Richard Reeves]

So there is just, just pretty strong evidence that some, and maybe aggression would be the other one, but risk taking on pretty much every measure, like boys and men are slightly more risk taking. And of course that's both a good thing and a bad thing, depending on how it's expressed. Right, right. So risk taking can be good.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes.

[Richard Reeves]

On entrepreneurship, et cetera, you'd be like,

[Naeema Raza]

I don't want to have a female CEO because she won't take the right risks. That's how they would weaponize it.

[Richard Reeves]

That's how they weaponize it. And you don't want like a female president because sometimes you've got to take risks. It could be weaponized for sure. But also ignoring it is not a great answer because it's true and it's true at the average. And we're worried about stereotyping people based on average differences. This guy, Hans Rosling, epidemiologist, who says we could solve half of the world's problems if people could understand an overlapping distribution. Right. So whenever I talk about sex differences, I use the example of height. If I say men are taller than women, very few people will come along and say, but I just met a really tall woman woman and there's a short guy over there. That can't be true. Right. They get what I mean by that, which is that on average. But when it comes to psychological differences, there is an understandable reluctance to have this conversation. And so on the one hand, you get some people who really overstate these differences really to justify sexism. But then you also get some other people who are saying there are no differences, we're blank slates, it's all socialized. It's about the dolls and the trucks, et cetera. And that's just not true. And because it's not true, it doesn't feel true to people. And so then you Lose credibility.

[Naeema Raza]

So beyond the physiology, there's also this question of the anthropology here. So like Simone de Beauvoir. I didn't ever say that. Right, Simone de Beauvoir.

[Richard Reeves]

Good enough.

[Naeema Raza]

I'm not a Francophile, but, you know, had talked about how men become men, how women become women, kind of the history of gender. And you write in your book, quote, anthropologists all agree masculinity is fragile. Not men are fragile, masculinity is fragile. And women are defined by biology, men by social construction. Men become men by rights of initiation. I'm paraphrasing your book now, but like, that is the theory that strikes me like men become men by rights of initiation. That sounds right. That sounds like how historically that happened.

[Richard Reeves]

Historically that's true.

[Naeema Raza]

But now it feels like those rights of initiation would be seen as bad things to go do right now, like taking a nephew to Asia so he could have his first sexual experience. Which, like, maybe, like, by the way, I know, like guys whose dads did that.

[Richard Reeves]

Do you?

[Naeema Raza]

Yes.

[Richard Reeves]

Wow.

[Naeema Raza]

Which is like, I mean, they're older or whatever. Just talk about that. Like, what are the rights through which men became men historically and where are those rights today?

[Richard Reeves]

So again, it's really important to emphasize here that we're talking about a difference of emphasis. Men are more socially constructed than women in the sense of mature masculinity. What it means to be a man in a society is very variant over time. And it does have to be more constructed, has to be more institutionalized, partly because fatherhood has been somewhat more voluntary, anthropologically speaking. And so. So every human society has to figure out how to turn its boys into men and how to turn them into surplus providers. People who will kind of provide meat or defense or energy or love or time. It can vary. And I much prefer mature and immature masculinity to toxic and non toxic. What does it mean to be like a mature, to be a real guy, A mature man in New York City in 2026 is obviously very different to what it was a thousand years ago. So it's going to change, but it is a bit more socially constructed. And so I think it's a mistake to think we just don't need to do that work through institutions, rites of passage, but positive ones, ones that bring out the best in our young men.

[Naeema Raza]

Because where's that happening now? Like Call of Duty?

[Richard Reeves]

Well, that's the danger. Is it happening online? Let's be honest. One of the reasons why rites of passage were historically quite violent for boys and young men was because violence was very often what we were going to ask of them.

[Naeema Raza]

Right. They had to protect society.

[Richard Reeves]

Yes. They had to protect the tribe. And so we needed them, but we don't need that now. I think every human society is engaged in a contest for the allegiance of its young men. And if we don't get their allegiance, somebody else will. I think it is just true that young men need to feel an allegiance to something, called to something, be part of something, have a social institution that says, okay, you're one of us now. We need you to join us and do this. And that can change what the content of that can change and should change, but the fact of it doesn't. And we shouldn't be naive enough to think that we can be the first human society to neglect the task of turning boys into men.

[Naeema Raza]

So, rites of passage. I'm so curious how you studying men and boys look at the Epstein of it all? Because we're seeing this like very some deeply disturbing emails on one side and behavior on one side and then some absolutely embarrassing kind of cringeworthy like man to man communications on another side.

[Richard Reeves]

Yes.

[Naeema Raza]

And I'm just curious, as someone who studies men and kind of the rituals that make them, what do you see about male bonding in this Epstein story?

[Richard Reeves]

Hmm.

[Naeema Raza]

I don't think you've been asked about this.

[Richard Reeves]

I have definitely not been asked about this. One of my friends has described me as someone that goes into this minefield and defuses the mines around these issues. And I feel like you've invited me into a whole nother minefield where I don't know how to diffuse the mind.

[Naeema Raza]

You're invited. A little cliffhanger. We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by Prime Obsession is in session. And this summer Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off campus. L every year after the Love Hunter hypothesis. Sterling point and more Slow burns second chances chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting.

[Richard Reeves]

Watch only on Prime Focus features in Blumhouse present Obsession.

[Naeema Raza]

When I have a crush on a guy no one knows. Be careful.

[Richard Reeves]

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[Naeema Raza]

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[Richard Reeves]

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[Richard Reeves]

Obsession. Rated R under 17. Anime without parent. Only in theaters May 15 with special engagements in Dolby.

[Naeema Raza]

People are full of surprises, especially when you travel together. Thankfully, VRBO is not. When you book a VRBO, you get VRBOcare and 24. 7 life support. So your house doesn't surprise you like your friends might. If something's not as described or doesn't work, vrbo's there. Real people, real support. Anytime. Book Today on the VRBO app if you know you VRBO terms apply. See vrbo.com trust for details. So work it out with us in real time. How you would think about it. You know, I'm not looking to have an answer, but there is a light being shined on how these men and powerful elite men are communicating and bonding with each other. Yeah, not all powerful elite men, but this particular group.

[Richard Reeves]

No, I would say that male solidarity, male socialization, male bonding is essential and is going to happen. And the question is, what does it happen around and to what end and to what purpose? And like even a less obvious terrible example would be something like the old boys club. Right. The golf club. Or, or going to. My wife actually worked for a company for a Japanese engineering company. Right. And so there was this whole thing about they'd go for like cigars and gambling and sometimes to strip clubs. This is a while ago. Right. And so it was part, it was part of the culture. Right. And she obviously didn't want to do that. There's a gradation here of scale. And I think the challenge we face is to find ways for men to bond with each other and spend time with each other in a way that's pro social. It's kind of positive, that's maybe around service and it's about looking after each other in the kind of positive way rather than closing ranks around the antisocial behaviors that men are also very capable of. The danger is Pew actually did a survey where they found that among Democrat leaning or Democrat identified women, 76% of them said that all male social groups are bad for society. Now most of them said that all female social groups were good for society.

[Naeema Raza]

But Epstein is an extreme. But it's not totally aberrant. Is that fair to say?

[Richard Reeves]

Say more in that way.

[Naeema Raza]

I feel like it's extreme form of like, oh dude, like locker room. It's an extreme form of like, oh dude, I got that girl, don't worry, I hook you up. Like, you know, it's like an extreme and terrible and dangerous form of that, particularly given the ages of some of these women.

[Richard Reeves]

Sure.

[Naeema Raza]

But it is not like, oh my God, I never thought men would behave like this. That's what I mean.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah. Well, there was this example of I'm gonna forget his name, but you'll remember it was during the pandemic, the New Yorker writer who was.

[Naeema Raza]

Oh, Toobin.

[Richard Reeves]

Toobin, yes.

[Naeema Raza]

The masturbation on Zoom.

[Richard Reeves]

Masturbation on zoom.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes. Quickly, how you can forget Jeffrey Toobin's name, because now you just think of him as a zoom masturbating guy.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah. It's not great branding, is it? Even this amazing legal scholar done terrific work, and now he is as you, Smith.

[Naeema Raza]

You don't wanna say the words.

[Richard Reeves]

I don't. It sounds better coming from you. But it was sort of interesting again, because it's like, look, everyone reacted in horror. But what I kind of noticed was that, like, a lot of the women reaction to that was just like, why would you. Like, how is that even a thing? Like, why would you be doing that? And more of the men were like, why didn't you make sure your camera was turned off, you idiot? Right. And so, again, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but in our correct desire to be moving us all in a better direction, which, generally speaking, we are, and we want to keep going that way, but we shouldn't. And this is the harder thing to say, we shouldn't think that somehow, in our desire to get rid of antisocial masculinity, we can actually obliterate masculinity itself. And some of that will come with some of these tendencies, good or ill, like around sex and risk and stuff. And that's just a really difficult conversation to have. But I think people want to have it, but in good faith.

[Naeema Raza]

I know I have invited you into a minefield and you are dancing around and trying not to say any of the buzzing Epstein and all that stuff, but I'm inviting you. I think you guys gotta go for the jugular. You, Jack Bauer the shit, and go in for the bomb.

[Richard Reeves]

Is that what you think?

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, I think you should do.

[Richard Reeves]

That's terrible advice.

[Naeema Raza]

No, but here's the thing, you know, it's my show. Come on.

[Richard Reeves]

People want to be honest. They're trying to be honest.

[Naeema Raza]

But I think that, like, grapple with the specific issue, really. Like, this is about, I think, the specific issue of these files, these men. You know, you write in your book like, there aren't that many elite men and many boys will not become them or something.

[Richard Reeves]

That's right.

[Naeema Raza]

But we are seeing something very specific. And I'm just curious. You must talk about this at dinner parties with your friends. Like, this must be something that you have thought about. So address the Epstein thing directly. Like, what is it? What does it reveal? What's your takeaway?

[Richard Reeves]

My takeaway is that powerful men in a genuinely patriarchal structure abuse that power in various ways that will track with the antisocial forms of male behavior, which will be around violence to each other sometimes, or to others, which will be around sex and sexual exploitation. And so, in that sense, patriarchy does bring out the worst in men, and then they will close ranks around it. And so you end up with these here. I'll quote Martha Nussbaum's brilliant book on this. Around Citadels, where in. Actually, you'll see it in sports sometimes, too. You'll see it in creative media, in Hollywood, where you have these institutions, or even just spaces where there's very little institutional accountability, very little transparency. And when that happens, it kind of brings out the worst in everybody. And what you see is it brings out the worst in these men. And so I'm very uncomfortable with some of these terms like patriarchy and so on, but I think it applies in this case, which is where you have a. An environment, an ethos, and a set of institutions where we're not holding men, powerful men, especially, to account for their behavior. Now, it's very unlikely that this kind of thing will happen in a Fortune 500 company because they've got lawyers and HR and rules and transparency and so on, too. It will happen to things like Epstein. It will happen in these situations where there just isn't enough transparency and accountability.

[Naeema Raza]

I really appreciate you going there, which I know is not where you necessarily want to go.

[Richard Reeves]

It's not my happy place, for sure, but whose is it? But I like the fact that you're kind of not looking away from it. And we shouldn't say, look, it's very hard to imagine a version of the Epstein cases where it's all women. Yeah, right. And we shouldn't just ignore that obvious fact.

[Naeema Raza]

There is some percentage of what's happening in Epstein that's about power. And there's some percentage of what's happening in Epstein that's about.

[Richard Reeves]

Yes.

[Naeema Raza]

And there's some percentage of what's happening about at Epstein, which is about those specific men. That's exactly. But how much of it is about, like, them wanting to impress each other? Like, what is that? What is the psychology of that? And how does it present itself in men versus women? Is there research about this?

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah. What's interesting, I mean, this is probably a slightly more comfortable conversation, but about the fact that, like, there is a status thing. Right. And on the average, it does look as if men are a little bit more status seeking than women. But there were plenty of women around this stuff too, who were doing it for the status too.

[Naeema Raza]

Totally.

[Richard Reeves]

I find that very interesting. Well, actually, what I think it was, it was like a status game that was the shell around this horrible exploitation ring. The number of people who went to his parties or kind of part of him because of who else was gonna be at the party, and they wanted to be in that room with those other people. Even when sometimes they must have had some sort of vibe or suspicion about him, they were willing to pay the price. And that included a lot of very high profile, progressive women, as you know.

[Naeema Raza]

And I think one of the frustrating things is, like, you'll see some of these photos and they'll name all the men and. And they don't ID the woman. The first lady came out and said basically her version of the I did not have relations with that man speech from Clinton reprised. But these women were in the room. And as a woman, I'm not pointing a finger on it, but I'm just like the woman to be in the room when that kind of shit happens. That, to me, did feel like, oh, I couldn't imagine that, but it was

[Richard Reeves]

very interesting to me. And I can think of other men that some of the women in my life are just say, yeah, just don't get a good vibe off him. Somewhat. Ick. And you saw that in some of the coverage here too, where sometimes the women, the wives were like, I don't. And they didn't have, like, concrete proof or anything.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[Richard Reeves]

Melinda French Gates, being prime, had incredibly good radar. I don't know what the equivalent would be for, like, gaydar here, but, like, what's good radar for pedophile Peter radar? I'm gonna let you do it. I don't know. This is definitely a clip that I want on your accounts, not mine.

[Naeema Raza]

But we're gonna collab with you.

[Richard Reeves]

Like, they. They could feel it. Yeah, they could feel it about this guy. And we're like, no. And saying to their husbands and actually, I think a lot of men, honestly, and I've certainly had this experience, my own life too, where there's been like, a bunch of women who've said about a particular pretty high profile guy have said, ugh. And all the guys have gone, really? He's so great. I really. What are you talking about? He's awesome. I saw him at the gym the other day. But all the women are like, no, no, no, no, no. There's something off about that guy.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, that's spidey sense.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, exactly.

[Naeema Raza]

Well, that's the question. Where's that? If you were like, if you. Would you rather your high school, would you rather see a bear, a man or Jeffrey Epstein? Right, Definitely. Bear or man over Jeffrey Epstein. I do not want to see Jeffrey Epstein in a forest.

[Richard Reeves]

Well, that's also the danger with these kinds of cases is that, of course, the overwhelming majority of men are not Jeffrey Epstein. Exactly.

[Naeema Raza]

That's why I separated them.

[Richard Reeves]

And so. But again, as soon as you say that, you say, like, it's not all men, hashtag, et cetera. Is that you then somehow seem to be excusing it. Right. Or excusing any bad male behavior. And when you're not doing that, what we're doing is being unflinching, I think, about the truth. There was a very good article in the Atlantic, the feminist case for Jordan Peterson. And the basic argument was that he takes the problem of male violence seriously and says, how do we reduce male violence, especially male violence against women? And we don't do that by pretending there are no differences between men and women in the propensity to violence. What we do is we say it's there, the potential's there. It can actually in some ways be released in a way that's positive for the tribe. Tribe. So, for example, in Ukraine right now, the men are not allowed to leave. It's illegal to leave Ukraine if you're male because you have to stay and fight. And so what Peterson's doing at his best, and I'm obviously not here to defend him generally, but.

[Naeema Raza]

No, I want you to defend Epstein and Peterson all in one go, one clip.

[Richard Reeves]

Okay. That's a great invitation. Thank you. Do you want to throw somebody else in?

[Naeema Raza]

I thought you canceled your next meeting to stick around for this.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, exactly. I realized I was canceling every meeting. Meeting for the rest of my life.

[Naeema Raza]

Yourself, in fact. Exactly.

[Richard Reeves]

Isn't it difficult, though, to. To have just an honest conversation about the things that everyone knows to be true but finds it difficult to talk about for fear that it will be misinterpreted? Right. So if you talk about the greater propensity of men naturally towards aggression or the differences between men and women when it comes to issues like sex, that you're somehow immediately going to be cast as a defender gender of the. Of the violence?

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. I don't know how you walk the tightrope. You have to walk all day, every day because you do it politically. You do it on this Stuff and you're, you're on a kryptonite topic, so it's what you do. But I will say that I think my audience at Smart Call Num Questions is actually very open to this kind of conversation. They want to hear this kind of conversation that's uncomfortable to have, that's direct and to the point because there's so much shit we just don't say out loud.

[Richard Reeves]

Right.

[Naeema Raza]

And people, the people are smart, harder than everyone thinks, and they know the shit that's not being said out loud.

[Richard Reeves]

They really do. And I think that your audience would show this and your success and of others. Is that actually the hunger for like a good faith conversation like this, where we might agree and disagree and learn facts from each other and so on? The hunger for that is enormous. And the majority of people want that kind of conversation. And as long as they feel like someone is calling it as they see it and is well motivated, people actually are much hungrier for that.

[Naeema Raza]

I think so too. Do you think it seems like, okay, when you wrote this book, we were like deep in MeToo era when you had the idea?

[Richard Reeves]

When I was pitching the book around New York publishers.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. So it seemed like 2016, Trump comes into office, there's this huge reckoning. MeToo movement takes off. Then there's a huge reckoning. It seemed like MeToo was out. Like there was a lot of anti woke culture in our culture and a lot of people kind of fighting a ghost that didn't exist. And now with Eric Slowell, Tony Gonzalez, Jeffrey Epstein, it feels like it's coming back. Does that sit with you? Is Trump the number one galvanizer for the Me Too movement?

[Richard Reeves]

Well, Trump was a big part of it, but it predates him. I think it's unfortunate that so much of the Me Too movement did get actually intertwined with some of the kind of anti Trump sentiment. Because the Me Too, I'm old enough to be in newsrooms in my 20s, which I look back on with a degree of shame. Shame about the behavior that was seen as acceptable there, especially towards women and the stuff that we just didn't call out from each other. And so I think that really positive movement to kind of create a better and more respectful environment and to treat women better, just amazing. And to call out the men who weren't doing it. Sure. Then you can have an argument about the edge cases. Right. Then there's always going to be gray areas. Sure. But I think overwhelmingly positive movement and I would like to think we get to an equilibrium which is Maybe where we are now, which is when there is evidence that someone's behaved that way, we know about it, they're called to account for it, and they pay the price. Great. Without that being like a hunt for every microaggression and everything you've ever said or kind of done wrong, maybe at its worst, there was this kind of moment. It's like, okay, let's try and catch everybody. Right? So it was more like a dragnet. And so I do think we've got to get to an equilibrium where we take this stuff seriously. People are held to account in a way that they were not before the MeToo movement, but without dragging everybody into the system.

[Naeema Raza]

No, I agree. I think that's completely right. So do you think that we're back in a me too moment right now? Or you think it's specific? You were saying? It's specific. It's nuance.

[Richard Reeves]

I think it's specific. Like, I would like to think that we're always in a MeToo movement and moment. If what that means is we take accusations seriously, we investigate them. People held to account. Like, I just think that's like the world we all want to live in and you don't. It shouldn't be a moment or a movement. It should just be the way we live.

[Naeema Raza]

Speaking of the way we live, I wanna now talk about dating a little bit, but there's new data in this 2026. I know you love data.

[Richard Reeves]

Love it.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, some new data. I think in the 2026 dating recession report, they report 6 in 10 men under 30 are single. Women are now 23% less likely to want to date than men, which obviously creates a market imbalance.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

And a lot of women are saying, like, you know, I have my dog, I got my vibrator, I got a step ladder or step stool or whatever. Like, I got ivf. Why do I need a man?

[Richard Reeves]

I was wondering about the step stool for a moment, but yeah, I got it.

[Naeema Raza]

The hype thing. The hype thing.

[Richard Reeves]

Got it.

[Naeema Raza]

So how do we fix this? Is it something to be fixed, the dating problem?

[Richard Reeves]

It's not something to be fixed. There isn't like a policy solution to this. There isn't a fix. Cultures shift. They go through uncomfortable periods, they go through recalibrations. I think we're going through a recalibration right now.

[Naeema Raza]

So if you're a woman of childbearing age right now, you're just fucked a little bit.

[Richard Reeves]

Look, among. Especially among college educated women, as I said, they are getting married, most of them are still having kids. I think there's a kind of danger of, it's a danger of over interpreting short run trends. That's what I'll say. But I do think, however, that there is a challenge around mating and dating. I think that there's no question about that because I think the social technologies around mating, Courtship, my God, that's an old word.

[Naeema Raza]

We love it.

[Richard Reeves]

Them, they're, they've gone through a massive change, not least because of the online world and, and then online dating and then this kind of algorithmic separation of young men and young women from each other. So I think it's, we're going through a difficult time for sure, but I'm also reasonably confident we'll kind of figure our way through it. And what will happen is that if it's true that women are now getting to the point that Gloria Steinem said we get to wear. A marriage becomes a choice rather than a necessity for women, and women are exercising that choice. Hallelujah. That was the point. I am reasonably confident that the overwhelming majority of women and the overwhelming majority of men want to do it with each other. Want to have a relationship with each other.

[Naeema Raza]

Want to do it with each other.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah. I just, I knew I could feel a clip coming as I said it. They do want to do with each other.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[Richard Reeves]

And that, that will actually drive. Drive change. It just will. It'll take a while, but I'm pretty sure it'll be.

[Naeema Raza]

So I asked an evolutionary biologist this once, like, fast forward 200 years, will, like, really tall women be like, dating and paying for short men who, you know, stay at home and take care of kids? And he said no, but he can't

[Richard Reeves]

change height distributions that quickly.

[Naeema Raza]

But you've proposed, like, men go into these heel jobs.

[Richard Reeves]

Heel. So health, education, administration and then literacy.

[Naeema Raza]

And in that I hear, okay, let's say nurses. Nurses, teachers, secretaries, librarians, let's say writers. One of the commenters on your substack was like, well, nobody wants to date that. They didn't say those. They just took heel and they said nobody wants to date that. I'm making it even more visceral by saying nurses, teachers, et cetera. And I think the quote was, women will not be attracted to men doing these roles. What is your response to that?

[Richard Reeves]

It's not true.

[Naeema Raza]

Scott Galloway also makes this point.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, it's not true. Or at least I hope to God it's not true because my son is a 5th grade teacher in Baltimore City, so they're dating, but he is, is, and I, I just, I don't think it's true. And I think that it's one of those things that will actually become self perpetuating. If men don't go into those fields, then they will code increasingly female and then maybe that will happen. But actually, I think kind of right now, actually if you, if you look at the marriage rates for men in those fields, they're pretty good. And I think if you say to, to a woman, like how would you feel about a guy who is passionate about teaching, say, and who absolutely loves it. So my son does this. He coaches the girls soccer team as well. Summer school. And at the end of every day the kids are allowed to arm wrestle him and if they beat him, they don't get to do their homework. And he just, this kid, he just absolutely loves it.

[Naeema Raza]

Right.

[Richard Reeves]

And he's passionate about it and he's, you know, likes it.

[Naeema Raza]

And you're very proud of him.

[Richard Reeves]

I'm incredibly proud of him. And my sense of him is that he's not hurting that much in the dating market actually. It's like a lot of women actually quite like that. What they want is like men who are passionate.

[Naeema Raza]

Does he have the British accent, like a data throwing out thing?

[Richard Reeves]

He does.

[Naeema Raza]

We can't. We have to throw him out of the ground.

[Richard Reeves]

Correct for that.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[Richard Reeves]

But the same with male nurses and like therapists. I worry a little bit about that. I worry that that becomes a self perpetuating trend because I don't think it's true. I don't see the evidence for it. And I wish people would stop saying it.

[Naeema Raza]

I think that it's what the evolutionary biologist told me, Justin Garcia, and people can go back and listen to that. Is that there is a higher incidence of infidelity in relations that are imbalanced in the woman of the. In where women are earning more. Where women earn more or are more successful.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah.

[Naeema Raza]

And the women will cheat more. But the last Pew survey on this had 45% of women earn equal to or more of their male partner. And it was around 20% more than.

[Richard Reeves]

That's right. A lot of equal to.

[Naeema Raza]

A lot of equal to.

[Richard Reeves]

Within that range. Equal to. And then there's a few that earn more.

[Naeema Raza]

This is like, I think this is a challenge for marriage. So now like take it to like the individual marriage level. I think it used to be like if, you know, Doug lost his job at the gas station or Chad lost his job in finance, then other Dougs and Chads would help them. Like the community would be like, oh, we gotta help this guy. And now it's kind of like what you were mocking me when we were talking about the construction, calling the handyman when my former boyfriend was trying to fix things.

[Richard Reeves]

When you destroyed your earlier relationship, I think it's okay.

[Naeema Raza]

But now it's often the women picking up that challenge. So it's like, oh, now don't help Doug. You can help Betty get a job. And that is emasculating for the man at home.

[Richard Reeves]

It can be.

[Naeema Raza]

It can be.

[Richard Reeves]

It can be. It doesn't have to be.

[Naeema Raza]

How long till it's not as a mean or more?

[Richard Reeves]

I don't know. But I do know that we have to go forward through that. We're in a lag moment right now. Is it true that in situations where the woman is out earning the man or he loses his job and she becomes. I was a statistic at home dad for a while. Right. And so is it true that that is currently going against some of our cultural expectations of each other, that it's going to create dynamics in the marriage where even the kind of most feminist woman is going to have views about men and herself that she's struggling? Right. We're all going to struggle through that. Right. But the only way is forward because the share of women earning more than their partner is going to go up year after year after year after year. Right. So this is the future, so we better get ready for it. And if what we're saying is we have a choice between gender equality, quality in pay, and the workplace at the cost of emasculated men, we've got to decide which one we want more. That's a terrible choice. What we've actually got to do is rebrand fatherhood such that actually being at home is an awesome and very masculine thing to do. Not stereotype these professions that men might do. Call more men into service in their communities. So that when I was at home, I felt like a provider.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[Richard Reeves]

My wife was the economic provider, but I ran the scout group. I organized the kids to bike to school. I looked after my kids. I was doing some other stuff. I didn't feel emasculated. But I know know I'm being honest here, that I did a whole bunch of things and behaved in a certain way as a dad at home. That did code more masculine.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, right.

[Richard Reeves]

I know I did. And that's what I wanted to do because I'm a guy. Right. And so we've got to find a way through this. And it's going to be painful. What I see Again, when you look at the data, like men, just even through this last 10 years of all of this stuff we've been talking about, the share of housework being done by men has gone, gone up. The share of parenting being done by young fathers has shot up in the last few years. And not by the way, just among like educated men, but among working class men too. And I want them to know that that's awesome and we see them and that we can do it, but we don't do it by pathologizing each other and panicking and crisis or trad wife. We've got to go back or we're emasculating. My son's girlfriend is gonna leave him because he's just a teacher and so he's emasculated by that. That's all bullshit. And, and I'm tired of it and I think most people are tired of it. Like it's not easy, but it's happening, it's happening. And the upside is great if we get this right.

[Naeema Raza]

I love it. So now let's move to the last part of the conversation which is what can people do? One thing that people listening right now who have sons are sons or young men listening to this. What should they do to equip themselves for this change in this world that's happening?

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, well, number one is a what not to do, which is like, don't panic. If he's struggling at school or is drawn to something certain kind of online content that you're not happy with, don't panic. He is quite likely to go through a period of searching, a period of discovery, a period of rebellion, etc, and you've got to be curious about that. So try and adopt towards his interests, whatever they are, a posture of curiosity, not contempt.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes.

[Richard Reeves]

Okay, very careful because if you react the wrong way, you're going to drive him into the arms of the reactionaries, not out of them, number one. Number two, make sure that, that the amount of screen time is, is contained. It's not that actually what boys and men do online is actually that directly harmful. It's just it's replacing other things. So it's cool. There's nothing wrong with video games. In fact, I, you know, I had such a great time playing now with my sons, but it wasn't instead of the other stuff we did. And so they've got to have that in real life stuff too. So the civic engagement stuff, the extracurriculars, and then ask about the education system, like where are the male teachers? Is the school system working? For your boy and if it isn't, he's gonna need a little bit of extra help. And don't treat him like a malfunctioning girl. Right. Don't ask if you have a boy and a girl. Never, never ever say, why aren't you more like your sister? I don't have a sister. But if you've actually got a daughter, I think there's a real danger that you and teachers do this too is that they just accidentally treat boys like malfunctioning girls. And just as a parent, you've just gotta have a little bit more grace about that.

[Naeema Raza]

Right now we're seeing a lot of governors take action or start talking about this stuff. I think Spencer Cox is probably one of of the most kind of action oriented and has been there the longest. Gavin Newsom, certainly. Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore from Maryland. They have two things I think in common. One is that they've read your book. The second is that they likely are going to be running for president in the year 2028. How much of this is political kind of pandering to win an election versus real earnest belief and does it matter?

[Richard Reeves]

Until the 2024 election it was very hard to get Democrats in particular to pay attention to this issue. And so we have to be honest about this is that they can really read a poll. What happened was that the votes of young men came up for grabs in 2024 especially and the Republicans grabbed them. They didn't so much move towards the Republicans as away from the Democrats. I think a lot of Democrats. So Spencer Cox was doing this before, but a lot of Democrats in particular. Yeah, I think, and I'm glad you did because I think the politics are different for him. But a lot of Democrats, I think they're kind of realizing they can read a poll they need to win. I was candidly quite what worried when some of these Democrat governors started saying that they're going to act on this issue. Now that's a bit of a weird thing for me to say. Right.

[Naeema Raza]

Of course it's because you felt it was opportunistic. You didn't buy it.

[Richard Reeves]

It could be. I was delighted, of course, but I was worried that if they did it the wrong way at the wrong time with the wrong tone, it would sound like pandering. And they haven't. So these are very. We have a full time fellow working with Wes Moore in his office. We've worked with the governor of California, his executive order. And I can tell you this is serious. They are trying to change Policy. They are trying to think about data differently. This is real. This is not culture war stuff. I was a bit worried, and I'll risk saying this publicly, but I was a bit worried, particularly when Governor Newsom came out. Cause he's doing this whole culture war thing. I was a little bit worried that he might do something like challenge J.D. vance to A. I think he's done

[Naeema Raza]

a good job of wrestling it. Right.

[Richard Reeves]

He's deadly serious about this. And you know, partly why, because his wife's deadly serious about it too. And you know why? Because they've got kids and they've got a son. The seriousness of the efforts make me very, very happy. Partly because they should be serious, but also because I think young men right now will see straight through it if it doesn't feel real and if it feels like, oh, now all of a sudden, they will see straight through it and it will backfire.

[Naeema Raza]

I think it's very important also, like, to the conversation we were having earlier of like, the catch, all the data is changing for people like you, yourself, yourself, or in the kind of service of the data and knowing what's real, to constantly be signaling. Because politics has a way of just like reducing shit to its, like most bare bones, like demographic table versus really kind of reckoning with what has to be a targeted male loneliness thing versus a generational loneliness thing versus, you know. So I think it's really incumbent for the research and the policy to talk to each other in a way that hasn't.

[Richard Reeves]

So it could be very performative at worst. And it could also be short term. But this is too serious to just be a short term political fad. I'm worried about what we're doing about this in 2036.

[Naeema Raza]

So after having said that, after having said we need nuance, I am gonna reduce the policy section of this podcast to us using paddles. Not in the English public school boy sense, where they get, you know, not that not Roald Dahl stuff, but we have these paddles in our hand. They have red and green on one side. And I want you to tell me if it's a good policy proposal or a bad, bad policy proposal.

[Richard Reeves]

Okay, got it.

[Naeema Raza]

Affirmative action to help men get into college. Bad idea.

[Richard Reeves]

Bad idea.

[Naeema Raza]

But you said they should do something about it.

[Richard Reeves]

They should, but they shouldn't have a thumb on the scale. They shouldn't be letting in less qualified men to college in order to keep their gender balance artificially. Think that's just like, it's just wrong on principle. No, it's a terrible Idea.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay, great.

[Richard Reeves]

Just stop doing it.

[Naeema Raza]

That's one. Another one. The draft. It's in the conversation these days. You talked about Ukraine.

[Richard Reeves]

Just for men.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. Military draft. Oh, wow. You're thinking about it.

[Richard Reeves]

The gender specific thing about it is difficult. Well, we have the. I mean, we have to sign up for selective service now. Right. So, I mean. Well, my sons did. Right. So we have it already, so I don't know what we mean. Do you mean mandatory?

[Naeema Raza]

Like if you're 18. 18 plus. The country goes to war, men go the draft green. Good idea. Wow, that's gonna be so clippable.

[Richard Reeves]

Well, like, if there's a woman war. If there's a war, they might have

[Naeema Raza]

to go to war.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I. I do. You don't think the Ukrainian men in

[Naeema Raza]

the culture right now, there's a whole conversation, bring back the draft on TikTok, et cetera.

[Richard Reeves]

I know. And actually Governor Newsom's talked about national service a bit too. I think it's difficult, but if national

[Naeema Raza]

service, I'm like, green, green, green. A public service requirement for all people, like between high school and college, please.

[Richard Reeves]

You said if there's a war.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, I said if there's a war.

[Richard Reeves]

If there's a war, keep it in there then.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes. What about mandatory paternity leave for both genders?

[Richard Reeves]

Define mandatory.

[Naeema Raza]

The state requires that employers provide it. And if you're not employed, the state provides it.

[Richard Reeves]

Yes. For dads and moms.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. For everyone.

[Richard Reeves]

Independently. Yes, absolutely.

[Naeema Raza]

I agree. By the way, my greatest gripe with the women's movement, it's wild that, like this far in, we don't have fucking maternity cover or paternity.

[Richard Reeves]

To be fair. To be fair, they have been trying incredibly hard for a very long time,

[Naeema Raza]

but that is a huge pleasure.

[Richard Reeves]

They are winning at state level. So there's a lot of state level policy, but like getting the federal government to do paid leave in the US it is not for want of trying.

[Naeema Raza]

I agree. But it is like, that is a real. I think it's a failure of the state versus I think maybe it will

[Richard Reeves]

help if we say, look, this is about dads as well.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[Richard Reeves]

I think part of the problem was it was seen as only a women's issue. But I gotta tell you, as a dad, actually, dads should get equal rights to leave as well. And we should make that clear.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. What about making that mandatory? Like, if you're a dad or mom and you have a child, you must take off. You don't get a choice. You think bad Idea.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, Mandating it.

[Naeema Raza]

What about a Ministry of the man? The Brits have a shadow minister. I love a shadow minister. I think we should have a shadow ministry all the way around. You know, I'm like, bring back the colony. Don't actually bring back the colony. But should we have a Ministry of the Man?

[Richard Reeves]

Is there a ministry for women in this example?

[Naeema Raza]

Sure.

[Richard Reeves]

So you have both? Uh, yes, I have a no and no.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah.

[Richard Reeves]

Well, here's what I want. I want a ministry for gender equality. So they actually created an office of Gender equality in the. In the White House, but it would only work on women's and girls issues. And my plea to them is like, why don't you work on boys and men's issues as well? And so what I really want is a minister who looks at gender equality both ways. Yes, that's what I want.

[Naeema Raza]

Okay. Okay, I'm gonna go. No. For any gendered.

[Richard Reeves]

Any of them.

[Naeema Raza]

I'm kind of, like, so anti identity shit. But this is me.

[Richard Reeves]

We can get rid of the Office of Women's Health that currently exists.

[Naeema Raza]

No, but I think that we should also have. We should embed it, infuse it so it becomes, like a joint effort, maybe.

[Richard Reeves]

I think we're agreeing then. Like an Office of Gender and Health.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Green. We like it. Okay, last one. Banning pornography.

[Richard Reeves]

Banning it.

[Naeema Raza]

Bad idea.

[Richard Reeves]

Temperance movement.

[Naeema Raza]

The buzzing has started too. It's really banning pornography.

[Richard Reeves]

Pornograph is as old as humanity. You can't ban it. But what we can. But what we can do is take it seriously.

[Naeema Raza]

Yes.

[Richard Reeves]

The trouble with the whole of it's cool, it's great, it's positive, or we should ban it thing. And actually, I'm very proud of the work my team's doing on this, which is actually. Let's find out more about the, you know, what's good and bad about it. And actually, most importantly, let's equip our teenage boys with the skills to navigate it.

[Naeema Raza]

Yeah. To be clear, your team is doing work on analyzing pornography. They're not making pornography.

[Richard Reeves]

My team is making pornography. That is important distinction. That's an important distinction.

[Naeema Raza]

All right, Richard Reeves, thank you so much for being with us. This was fun.

[Richard Reeves]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Naeema Raza]

I really appreciate it. And good luck with the Emmy. I hope you fucking win.

[Richard Reeves]

Yeah, me too. Well, if I win, then it'll explode an Emmy,

[Naeema Raza]

so. I really appreciated that conversation. I'm sitting here wearing this pink pantsuit. Like, I feel like I'm a meme of a certain political type but I really wanted to have a conversation with someone who's so deep in the conversation around men and boys and have all these fault lines of our current politics and like the things we can't talk about, the difficulty of talking about things like Jeffrey Epstein and just have a real conversation about what's going on here. How healthy is this conversation, what needs to be done, what might be pushing too far? I appreciated how Richard was really willing to consider all of the questions I asked him. He obviously is extremely well researched, data driven and also I think willing to reconsider his opinion, which I always just really admire. I like anyone who has a kind of intellectual consistency and the willingness to be curious and change their mind on the basis of like that kind of consistency. I want to know what you think about it. So please, please get into our comments, leave us messages, talk to each other, do all the things you can Send us an email naeemaraza101mail.com you can slide into my DMs not that way. Although you could also slide into my DMs that way. I'm Naeema Raza and it's Smart Girl Dumb Questions. And this episode was produced with Desta Wonderad, Melissa Lee Gibson, Sanjana Nagam, Aisha Jordan. It was engineered by Colin Lee, mixed by the great Johnny Simon, edited by Darlena Chiem and Davey Chin. Our theme music is by David Khan and I'm your host, Naema Robert Raza. I'll see you next week for an all new Smart Girl Dumb Questions. She does a lot for your family. Mother's Day is your chance to show her you see it with a gift from a brand trusted for generations to help people get the moment right. 1-800-flowers with double blooms from 1-800-flowers. Buy one dozen roses and get another dozen for free. It's a bigger Gesture backed by 50 years of experience delivering fresh flowers flowers so you can feel confident sending something that lands. Show up for her with Double blooms at 1-800-FLowers.com Spotify. That's 1-800flowers, com Spotify.