How Fatherhood Changes the Male Brain

26:33So it's like you miss the first hour, you have lots of other opportunities to kind of forge that bond, to have that hormonal connection, that closeness. You know, in addition to looking at adoptive dads, I also talked to a father who was in jail for the first two days of his kid's life, right? Like you can miss those windows and still create this really meaningful relationship. And in part, that's because we have these sophisticated human brains that let us do higher order social cognition. So we don't just have to smell our baby to care for them. You know, we're able to kind of think and be intentional and, create that bond kind of from the outside in.

27:17So, you know, what's going on with the brain is still in some ways a question mark. There have only been a handful of studies, and this is, there's so many gaps in the literature, but only a handful of studies looking at adoptive and foster parents. But the one, I think, really high quality study that we have from Israel looked at adoptive gay fathers and found that they showed really similar brain responses as heterosexual biological parents. And in fact, they found that the primary caregiver adoptive male father in the gay male couples showed really similar responses to the baby as the mom in the heterosexual biological parent couples.

27:58And the secondary caregiver, like they asked the gay dads who's primary, who's secondary caregiver, the secondary caregiver looked a lot like the dads in the heterosexual couple. So it's like, it's our parental role that kind of changes the brain versus like we're built with a brain that, you know, if you're a mom is going to look this way and if you're a dad is going to look this way. I think the bottom line is humans are flexible and adaptable. And that is what makes us resilient. Yeah, I love that. Now you remind me of the smell of a newborn's baby. head. What was the Bono lyric? Freedom has a smell like the top of a newborn baby's head or something.

28:34Is that, you guys know that lyric? Isn't it something like, God, it's so like, every time I hear the newborn, I'm like, yes, you get that. If you've been a, you know, a parent and you, there's something about that head that I don't, you know, my brain is lighting up now, just remembering, you know, my two boys 21 and 27 years ago. That's so great. Yeah. Well, talk Talk about brains and dad brains. And, you know, you made a comment about the, there's something about dad brains losing about 1 % of their prenatal, I guess is the right word, volume. Is that per kid? I mean, do I have to worry about Elon Musk or somebody that, you know, that has 35 kids as he lost 35?

29:13Walk me through the math on that one or Eddie Murphy or Philip Rivers, you know? I mean, I worry about these multi-dads out there and their gray matter loss. It's funny when the gray matter law study came out, we got some headlines and it got posted on X and Elon Musk reposted it like, my brain must be tiny. He agrees with you. Although, you know, he's probably a good example of a father who's not doing a ton of day to day hands on care with each of his kids. And so, again, it's really it's that care, I think, that's remodeling the brain and not just that biological connection or that paternity.

29:50So we don't totally know what is happening with multiple kids. There's actually one study that just came out out of the Netherlands that's looking at this in moms. They looked at brain changes in second-time moms. And they found some kind of additive changes, like the brain is continuing to shrink, but then some rebound. So it's a little bit of a mix with the second-time parents. But with the first-time dads, what we found is there is about 1 % of gray matter volume seems to be lost. And as I try very carefully to explain in the book, that sounds bad. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It could reflect this kind of adaptive streamlining or remodeling that is making the brain ultimately more efficient, like the social brain.

30:36It's getting rid of the tennis ball on fire and binaca mouth torch parts of the brain. We didn't need that gray matter in the first place. So all the dumb parts. Yeah. All the dumb parts. Yes. I just realized, you know, 10 minutes into this or so that you have a live cat behind you on your blanket. That is what a prop. I mean, you've, you've got a, a strat over there and on one side and a cat on the other shoulder. I know. It's beautiful. I promise. I did not curate this space very much, but he, he loves it. He's like, somehow whenever I'm on a call, it's like a magnet for him. I love it. to kind of effortless.

31:11He's like, how can I get in frame? Yeah. Yeah. All right. So we're going to hit balls and testosterone pretty hard. Cause you know, that's, that's my job as a urologist. This is what I do. And, uh, we have a lot of discussion about testosterone on, on this, uh, on this podcast. So super excited to unpack what you think about that. And I have to, I mean, I don't, I don't mean to sound like as a, as a surgeon or anything that I should commend you on your knowledge, but you did such a great explanation of testis volume. And as I was reading it, I was looking for something to critique and say, no, she's wrong.

31:45But everything you write is perfect that the testicle by volume is 80 plus percent sperm production, and then the rest is kind of Leydig cell function, which is testosterone production. And so you have this discussion or study in there about the bigger the ball, the smaller the brain. And so that seems counterintuitive because we're talking about fertility, then, you know, you want bigger testicles, you would think at least because it would predict, you know, higher chance of fertility. But then somehow there's a selective advantage for having smaller brains and bigger balls. So, so, you know, for all our guys that now are that are kind of crossing their legs and that, you know, thinking they're going to do a nut check here, talk to us about balls and brains.

32:27Yes. Yeah. So this is one of my favorite studies. And it wasn't done by me. It was done by Jim Rilling, who's a researcher at Emory who has studied dad brains. And this is one of his early studies. So they scanned the men's brains. And then they basically were like, okay, now just kind of scoot down a little bit in the machine. And then they scan their testicles. I just love the imaging of that. That is the best. It's like, okay, sure. You're already in the MRI, right? Just move a little. And so they got both. And so they were able to calculate testes volume. And then they related that to the brain responses to child and sort of partner stimuli.

33:11So they did a series of studies, not just the ball studies, but a bunch of studies where they showed men kind of sexually attractive women. They also showed them baby stimuli. and they looked at a kind of differential activation to baby over woman. So it's kind of, oh, it's a way of looking at like mating effort versus reproducing, or sorry, like mating effort versus like caretaking effort. So it's like, we evolved to want to have, um, offspring and keep them alive. And you can almost separate those two jobs into two different buckets. So we need to seek out mates, we need to compete for status, that's sort of a testosterone-driven process.

33:58And then once we successfully mate, we need to invest time in nurturing and caretaking. And so he found a correlation between the ball size and the responses, the kind of differential responses to those stimuli. Yeah, it's cool. And along those lines, I got to talk about Gettler's work in the, in the Philippines, because I remember when that came out years ago, I was over 10 years, I can't remember, but I was interviewed by kind of the usual men's health Esquire GQ about, you know, Hey Mills, what do you think about, you know, newborn dads and, and T levels going down? And is this a bad thing?

34:34And then there was some thought that it's because if our don't, our T levels don't go down, we're like alligator dads that eat half of our offspring. And cause alligator T levels are up or there's a whole thing. And I, this is the only place where I have to like, you know, get more out of you in terms of this, because, you know, when we talk about low testosterone pathologically, we talk about primary where it's testicular failure, the testicles is not making the testosterone or secondary, where there's a problem in the pituitary, the hypothalamus, where they're not getting the signal, the balls are not getting the signal to make T, right?

35:04And so as a dad of two, and I will say that there's about a seven year separation between our kids, not because of any shenanigans other than the fact that our first didn't really have a good night's sleep until he was about six years old. So we, so we took a little gap, like, how can we do this again? And I was a surgical resident. So I probably slept about a hundred hours in six years. Right. So I'm like, well, of course my T was low because I never slept. So my LH was probably undetectable. And, and so tell me about, you know, you do a good job of it, but you know, in the book, so again, you guys got to read it, but, but tell me how this isn't just like poor sleep in newborn dads and that there's some selective mechanism against, you know, wanting to throttle our kids for crying too hard or something, which of course, tragically does happen as well.

35:49But, but, but talk to me about that. Is there, do we know what the LH levels are and FSH and all the, because you do an awesome job about oxytocin, prolactin, all of those hormones. But yeah, anyway, let her rip. Yeah. I was excited to talk to you about the testosterone chapter because I know that's your, That's your home turf. So, yeah. So you mentioned Lee Gettler's work. So his work is really interesting because it kind of unpacks this chicken egg question about parenting and testosterone, which is, you know, we know that partnered fathers tend to have lower T than single men. And the question is, is it that lower T men are selecting into parenthood because, you know, they are just more motivated to be in families?

36:39Or is it that there's something about becoming a parent that's changing our testosterone? So he found that, you know, it was the opposite. So it was actually higher T men were more likely to become parents. Like he followed this sample of men in the Philippines over a very long period of time and looked at T, you know, multiple time standpoints. So higher testosterone men were more likely to become partnered fathers, but then their testosterone dropped after becoming fathers. And it was a fairly significant drop in the first few years. Is it just sleep deprivation? I think it's probably a little bit more than that, although sleep definitely plays a huge role in, you know, everything related to parenting and the brain and biology.

37:25But, you know, we also know from looking at a lot of different animal models that there are these kind of adaptive shifts in testosterone around the birth of a child. So a lot of the research was done in birds, looking at them around breeding season. Testosterone levels are high when birds are looking for a mate. They tend to drop as soon as, you know, eggs are being incubated. And in human males, we also see drops in testosterone even before the baby's born. So, you know, even during the partner's pregnancy. Right. You know, it seems like it is serving this function of, you know, first of all, just like your motivations are different.

38:04If you just think about your evolutionary history, you need to focus your energy on nurturing, investing in offspring rather than on how can I spread my seed as widely as possible. So the kind of competition, status seeking just isn't as essential in the early years of being a new dad. Right. And so, you know, I think of it as like, it's not that high T is bad or low T is good or anything like that. It's more just we want flexible hormones that are kind of shaped by context. And we want to be able to sort of adapt to our circumstances. And that's healthy.

38:57Are you tired of spending money on trial and error for mental health medications? According to a large study, on average, patients who received GeneSight testing saved over$1 ,000 on their total annual medication costs compared to traditional approaches. Discover how the GeneSight test may help you with medication costs. Visit genesight.com forward slash iHeart today. That's genesight.com forward slash iHeart. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? ZepBound Terzepatide may be able to help. ZepBound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity.

39:37Or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. ZepBound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. ZepBound contains terzepatide and should not be used with other terzepatide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if ZepBound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.

40:14Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop ZepBound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking ZepBound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor.

40:46Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbounce.lily.com. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Lily Chu, the author of the Audible original romantic comedy Just Kiss Already. It's a story about a forensic anthropologist who secretly writes mystery novels, an actress who adapts his book into a film, and what happens when a meme and a media tour collide with a slow burn romance. It's performed by Simu Liu and Philippa Su, and it is an absolute blast. When you actually hear the performance, you realize that other people are taking your words, and what you thought was kind of a straightforward sentence like, the cat in the corner is black.

41:40In my head, it's the cat in the corner is black, not the dog, not the gerbil. But someone else might say it, the cat in the corner is black. That's always fascinating to me, how they just bring in all these different nuances and really make it fun and interesting and distinctive. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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43:49So, you know, we're both scientists, we both research and do publications and, and your, your whole section on the mental health aspects of low testosterone is so critical because we, We talk a lot about mental health and guys in this podcast now, we're not always great at seeking help when we need it. And what do you think of this study? So there's a mental health thing that we really don't understand with T levels. And you just kind of alluded to it there with even before baby is born and ostensibly, maybe the guy's still sleeping, maybe he's a little stressed. you know does you know do you assemble the car seat right has he gone through the 30 second drill and being able to get the car seat in the car snapping it in lock lock but in general you know the t levels go down probably independent of sleep how could we design a study where we look at my guys in my fertility practice so they come to me i optimize their fertility they're pregnant yay it works and i would collect you know pituitary hormones t levels on them all three trimesters, first, second, and third, and then postnatal, and then correlate that to mental health questionnaires like the PHQ-9.

44:56I mean, how do we design that study so we can actually get some definitive serologic evidence about the effect of testosterone on parenting as well as on mental health? Yes. So are you inviting me to collaborate? I am. It's a total, it's on their invitation that I think there's so much to unpack on the neurobehavioral side of testosterone and we live in different silos, that yes, we're doing this. Yeah, we need bigger data sets and yeah, we need more longitudinal work. So my lab did do a study where we looked at men's testosterone related to their depression and we were looking specifically at postpartum depression.

45:36And we found that there was this, actually we looked at both moms and dads. And there was this interesting kind of double-edged sword effect where new dads, we got their T-levels at about nine months postpartum. Ones who had lower testosterone reported more symptoms of depression. But women who had partners with higher testosterone reported more postpartum depression. And when we tested a mediation model, it was fully mediated through their partner relationship quality. So women who were married to higher testosterone men in the postpartum period were less happy in their relationship and that made them report higher postpartum depression.

46:19So it's like what's good for the goose is not good for the gander. It's, you know, the finding was low testosterone was seemed to be a mental health risk factor for men, which I'm guessing you find in your practice as well. Yeah. But you also don't necessarily want to be too high because there could be downstream effects on the family context. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. No, no, please finish your thought. I was going to say, we also found the higher testosterone dads reported more parenting stress and their partners reported more intimate partner aggression. Yeah. So things weren't quite going well in the couple relationship.

47:00when Ben's T was maybe a little too high. Yeah, so I have work to do because, you know, we do, we use a lot of a medication called Clomiphene or Clomiphene citrate, which is, it's great for boosting, it's not great, but it's, you know, it's empiric off-label for boosting sperm production. But because it works at the level of the pituitary gland, it essentially gasolates the pituitary to make more sperm and as a side effect, make more testosterone. So if a guy comes in, even if his testosterone is kind of low normal, But is oligosperm or sperm cancer low? I'll put them on clomithin because obviously, you know, I want them to initiate a pregnancy.

47:35But thereby, I'm also putting them on higher levels. I'm giving them high levels of T. So I would love to, I got to see about this. And yeah, so definitely we'll offline. I think we should do this because I think there's a lot of data. And then, you know, I'll get great serological data for you. You design, you tell me what, you know, questionnaires we need to answer. And then, yeah, we're going to do something cool. Fantastic. I love it. USC working together. Look at that. That's right. Said it can never be done. Bruins and Trojans. There you go. Bruins and Trojans. Well, that's, yeah. My son's starting medical school down there in the fall, so I have to be across town quite a bit.

48:11I don't have to be, but if he invites me, I'll come. So, yes, that's right. We also do this section with all of our experts. We sort of informally call, you're probably going to be okay. And so, I think it's time in our conversation for me to give you a scenario. and you tell me about this guy and if he's going to be okay. And it goes into what we don't, what I actually had never even heard of until I read your book, which is about the male side of postpartum mood disorders. And, you know, my own personal journey with both kids is that, you know, really young dads, especially with moms that are able to breastfeed is that, you know, I feel kind of useless other than changing diapers and getting up in the night and kind of rocking a colicky baby.

48:55you know, I don't think I ever had any postpartum mood disorder other than like, you know, I mean, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and this kid is going to be okay. But no, that's not common. I mean, there are a lot of guys that do suffer through some postpartum mood disorder. So I'll give you a patient. I probably just saw somebody like this last week in my practice. He's 34 years old. He's a new dad. He's first kid and he's overjoyed. Like first couple of days are like, oh my God, I'm smelling this baby's head. It smells like freedom. him. This is the most amazing thing. And then like, he just starts breaking down and uncontrollably crying and slapping his face to like, you know, guy, I'm a guy.

49:32I can get through this. I'm, I don't need any help. I'm a stoic. But then he feels guilty, you know, that I don't really care. I mean, this diaper stinks, you know, and I just changed it an hour ago and now I got to change it again. But yet at the same time, he's conflicted. Cause like, if there was a grenade that rolled into the room, he would jump on it to save the kids. So walk me through this guy. is he going to be okay? How normal is this? What are the red flags? What are the warning signs when somebody, a man is suffering from essentially a postpartum depression? Yeah. So he's going to be okay, but sounds like something to keep an eye on.

50:04And, you know, it's normal to feel just depressed and conflicted after a baby's born. I mean, you said for a lot of dads, they may feel like they just aren't that important. And that's, that's a weird feeling, right? It can kind of strain the couple relationship, like the dynamics of the relationship are really changing. Everybody's got different priorities. And you're also totally sleep deprived. And, you know, you're maybe panicked because you are suddenly in charge of this tiny little thing that you are still learning how to take care of. And the rewards of parenthood haven't necessarily shown up yet.

50:40You know, babies aren't smiling in the first few months. So it's like that social feedback that you get from a cute, chubby, smiley baby, that takes a little while to really kick in, the sort of fun part. And so a lot of new parents struggle. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's a clinical problem. It could just be normal kind of baby blues. But we know hormones are changing too. And that's true for women. That's true for men as well. The brain is changing. So there may be heightened risk because there's all this plasticity and transformation kind of happening. And for dads, I think it's less visible.

51:18You know, you see that a woman is pregnant. It's very obvious that her life is changing. We have a lot of social rituals around the transition into motherhood. A lot of men don't even get asked by their primary care physician whether they're a new dad. So it's just like health doesn't really consider fatherhood in the same way. It's sort of like this missing piece of the puzzle. and and a lot of men are either reluctant to admit that they might be struggling or to ask for help and then another tricky thing is that depression can show up differently in men than it can in women postpartum depression can look different so it might not be sadness and and uncontrollable weeping it might be irritability withdrawing not wanting to hold the baby feeling checked out feeling numb.

52:09You know, all of those can be hallmarks of kind of more male-typed postpartum depression. And a guy might tell himself, I'm just a crappy father. Like, I'm just not cut out for this. And that might get reinforced by his partner. So I think that's where the risky cascade can start to kick in, where the dad is pulling away, the couple is struggling, and then, you know, the depression is creating all these other negative consequences too. Yeah. So we got to get a little a little airtime to probably what prompted you to title your book, dad brain. And that is dad bought, which we all know. You have an interesting take on it because, you know, as a male, you know, men's health optimizing specialist, you know, I'm like, dude, dad, you got to get rid of that spare tire.

52:57It's not good for your kids. I write about it in my book that, you know, when my kid was young and the minute he could get into a jog stroller, I'd put him in the stroller. I'd run five miles to a playground, let him play, turn around, run five miles back so that we all got to bond. I got a little bit of a 10 mile workout in and he, you know, he got to play on the, the, uh, the monkey bars. And so I, you know, I fought against both of my kids ever getting a dad, but it's kind of bad for my brand too, I guess, but, but you're saying it's not so bad, like that there is a selective advantage to have a little spare tire.

53:26So yeah. Unpack that for us. Yeah. So I think it's one of those things that also is really all about context, right? So like I talked to Lee Gettler about this, he studies hunter-gatherers. He's like, these guys look like CrossFit athletes foraging and they're out moving all day. So for them, that change in hormones and some of the things that are driving weight gain in the postpartum period, if anything, comes with an advantage. They can use a little extra reserve. But if you're in an obesogenic environment like contemporary society, then it gets a little more complicated in terms of health implications.

54:05But yeah, this is one of those things that I think everybody jokes about, but there is some real science there that, you know, even in biparental mammals, not just humans, you see an increase in size and, you know, weight gain in the perinatal period. And it may be an adaptation that just helps us be more imposing. You know, we have a larger physical presence. It may be that, you know, if you're a biparental, you have to pick up and participate in care. You may just, sorry, that's my dog. Love it. No, you're kidding. Someone is coming in and he's desperate to jump on them. He's a tension seeker.

54:45Exactly. Yeah. And I'm actually, I didn't even know he was here. He's been weirdly quiet this whole time. He was just waiting for his moment. Everybody's welcome them on the mailroom. Yeah. But, but just to start over with that. Yeah. Like biparental mammals also seem to gain weight and it may be that you need some reserves so that if, um, you know, if there's the threat of famine, you can survive longer to provision your offspring. Yeah. And give kid, give your, your, your kid eats first. Yeah. And then the opposite of that. I love just from a personal perspective, the idea of, of kids making you healthier.

55:19And that, uh, I remember my dad, who's as hard smoking, hard drinking journalist of the sixties and seventies that, um, that we, whenever we got in the car with him, our old, I was like a 68 or 69 AMC Hornet. And we would drive from Washington DC to Iowa, you know, like a 14 hour drive, he'd be smoking cigarettes in the car. And my brother and I at one point just had it. And we were pretending to have a coughing paroxysms in the back choking. And that was it. He put out his last cigarette and never looked back. And so I always feel that was my first doctoring when I was about three years old as my dad, the kind of willpower to go from probably started smoking when he was still a teenager and a cub reporter and all the way through all of his international assignments.

56:00And then one day his kids were like, you're killing his dad. And this was barely after the surge in general, right? This was 1972, 73. So I love that. And I think that for guys and dads listening out there, that the influence of your kids have on you to be better. So I guess I'm asking my dad to be grateful for my brother and me telling him to quit smoking at that age. But talk about that as well, I guess, in terms of the research that goes into that. Is it just sort of like I have to be here or I was so good at procreating once that I want to make sure I can procreate again? Or talk to me about the neuroscience of showing up for your kids.

56:39Yeah, exactly. You know, it's that chapter, the health men's health chapter has some bad news for dads, like the weight gain, sleep loss. So I really wanted to end on a happy note. It worked. You know, I don't want the book to disawade men from wanting to be parents. So, you know, we joked, my editor and I, that the original tagline was like, how fatherhood will make you fatter, sleepier, sadder. And, you know, but there is a lot of good news there, too. He wanted to sell a couple of books probably. Exactly. Like no one wants to buy a book about, you know, how fatherhood is going to slow you down.

57:17But there are a lot of upsides. And one is that we see health behavior improvement. Yeah, like quitting smoking, drinking less, getting in fewer fights. You know, there's all this evidence in late life that, you know, being single is a real risk factor, especially for men. So social isolation is linked with all cause mortality in older men. And part of it is that social integration and sort of having someone that you're accountable for and feeling like, you know, there are these kids who are going to have bear the consequences of my health behavior choices. And I think a lot of smart public health people are starting to plug into that.

57:59Like, you know, there's an effort in Brazil to get young men into the health care system around the birth of their first child by getting them to come to prenatal visits. And then that becomes a time to get a checkup for them, too, because it's like this is a potential window of change where you can start to intervene and help men kind of get on a better course with substance abuse and health behaviors.

58:37Are you tired of spending money on trial and error for mental health medications? According to a large study, on average, patients who received gene site testing saved over$1 ,000 on their total annual medication costs compared to traditional approaches. Discover how the Genesight test may help you with medication costs. Visit genesight.com forward slash iHeart today. That's genesight.com forward slash iHeart. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? ZepBound Terzepatide may be able to help. ZepBound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity.

59:17or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. ZepBound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. ZepBound contains terzepatide and should not be used with other terzepatide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if ZepBound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.

59:55Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop ZepBound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking ZepBound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor.

1:00:26Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbounds.lily.com. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Lily Chu, the author of the Audible original romantic comedy Just Kiss Already. It's a story about a forensic anthropologist who secretly writes mystery novels, an actress who adapts his book into a film, and what happens when a meme and a media tour collide with a slow burn romance. It's performed by Simu Liu and Philippa Su, and it is an absolute blast. When you actually hear the performance, you realize that other people are taking your words and what you thought was kind of a straightforward sentence like the cat in the corner is black.

1:01:20In my head, it's the cat in the corner is black, not the dog, not the gerbil. But someone else might say it. The cat in the corner is black. That's always fascinating to me. How they just bring in all these different nuances and really make it fun and interesting and distinctive. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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1:03:26Yeah, it's brilliant, actually, because we've constantly looked at it. We do a lot of men's health advocacy and potentially even on the federal level where we're looking at codifying an office of men's health. And we're always talking, what is that carrot? What is that incentivizer? And it's interesting because I, in my practice, I use the vasectomy visit actually as a way for a guy to come in. They're done having kids. And, you know, when I train my residents, my fellows, they'll come out and I say, well, you know, what's his blood pressure? What's his colonoscopy status? What's in, you know, the beginning of the year when they're training, they don't ask anything related to their health.

1:04:01And then by the end, they realize this is a perfect screening opportunity when the guy's 35 or 40 to make sure, you know, that he knows what the metrics are to doing that. So, so right. Even intervening earlier where guys in that, in that, you know, maybe multilateral period. I love that. I, another cool thing from Brazil. Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of men, you probably know this better than I do, but don't always interface with the health system as much or they might be reluctant to get care. So it's like grabbing those opportunities. It's really smart. Yeah. Window that they're already there and they're invested.

1:04:36Yeah. Oh, so cool. I do want to leave time for the section where I always talk about, you know, what do you do to make you you? So we're really into when I have experts on for my listeners to discuss, you know, Darby, when you wake up in the morning before you take care of all you're taking care of and your research and your lab and your students and your kids, for goodness sake. What is it that makes you you that's like the non-negotiable that you have to do? Oh, wow. Yeah. So I actually go with my husband. we do a bootcamp class a few times a week, which is really fun because it's like the only time we get to chat.

1:05:15And all the trainers make fun of us. It's like a group class. And they're like, you guys are chit chatting the whole time, like do some exercise, socializing. Yeah. So that's been like, we started doing that a couple of years ago. That's been good for fitness, but also just to have some hangout time. And like we talked about love music, love playing guitar, love listening to music. I like going to shows and I also love to read and I love fiction. You know, I'll read anything. I always have a big pile of books going, but I like to read right before I fall asleep at night. That's like one of the things that calms me down.

1:05:48Yeah, me too. Yeah. I always do that when I was in med school, I always would read some scientific journal, but I'd always have a novel that was just, just for me, which is why you're such an amazing writer. Cause you're, you're constantly reading so that it makes perfect sense. Jordan, what did I miss? What do you have for Professor Saxby? You've written that the modern fatherhood is in flux. What social or economic changes do you think have influenced this shift the most in expectations for dads? Yeah, great question. Yeah, because we really have seen these dramatic changes in men's daily time with kids, like just much more involvement in hands-on child care time.

1:06:27I mean, clearly women entering the workforce has just been a seismic shift for families. And, you know, women always worked throughout human history. You know, we forget that most of our heritage is as hunter gatherers or later as subsistence farmers. Like women have always been economically productive. But really like the sort of wage earning paid work outside the home, both men and women entering that has been somewhat new in our human history. And women going out to work has really changed how we approach parenting. and and so that's been the biggest thing and just shifting gender roles as well and I think a lot of men too have recognized that actually being more hands-on with kids getting to know kids is really rewarding so I think there's also been a cultural shift that isn't just driven by you know my wife is working so now I have to hang out with the kids but also you know a lot of men if you ask them what are the most meaningful things in your life we'll say fatherhood so I think there's also been a value shift around what fatherhood means to men.

1:07:33And I think that's actually a really positive thing for kids. It's funny. I actually was a, I was raised by a stay-at-home dad. My mother worked in the late 80s and early 90s. So it was interesting perspective for me reading this book, thinking about that as well. Yeah. So I have to bring up, since you brought up the gender roles. This BBC experiment, when they switch gender clothes on toddlers, you had to, first of all, what IRB does the BBC use to allow kids to say, okay, you're going to dress up in a pink dress, even though you're, you know, assigned birth to a boy, and then you're going to be, you know, in overalls and car hearts, and then mess with the, I mean, the adults in the room to basically see how they interact based on the perceived gender.

1:08:22So yeah, ungarbled that prompt if you were to talk about that section in your book because I thought that was fascinating that first of all, wow, that they authorized and that was like 2017 or something. So talk to me about that. Yeah, I don't think my university IRB would have been cool with that. But because it was for a TV show, probably they didn't have to pass muster with, You know, it wasn't like a, you know, structured research study. But yes, so they brought these toddlers into the lab and they dressed them up, gave them sort of names and clothes that match the opposite gender. And then they brought these adult kind of volunteers to come into a playroom and basically play with the kids on camera.

1:09:04And it was so interesting because they found that the adults just played in totally different ways, depending on whether they thought they were interacting with a girl or a boy. And of course, because they had switched the child's identities, you know, the person who thought they were interacting with a boy actually was interacting with a girl. The person that thought they were interacting with a girl was interacting with a boy. but they would say things like you know this boy is so energetic and he just loves the cars and I'm gonna give him the fire truck and then you know this little girl needs the teddy bear to cuddle and she's so sweet and snuggly so it was like our perceptions of what a child's gender is really drive how we interact and I was you know bringing that into that chapter just to illustrate that if we have a hard time seeing boys as babysitters or men as future caretakers and fathers, part of that just comes from how we're raised and we're not really raising our boys to be as affectionate or as nurturing.

1:10:07And part of that is coming from our own assumptions as adults. Yeah. So I'm going to have to, you're going to have to add dad brain me for a second here, Darby. So there's a famous family story in the Mills household of Yaya. And Yaya was a little baby girl doll that my hippie Berkeley-raised mother-in-law got for my older boy, who was about as toxically boy as you can imagine. He was, we called him Bam Bam growing up. So, and he went on to play college football and rugby. And I was in a high-pressure, high-stress Washington job now. and he had Yaya and he thought it was great. He played with Yaya, but he played with Yaya like Yaya was Steve Majors in The Six Million Dollar Man.

1:10:51And so Yaya would be launched off of the porch and Yaya would be put in a stroller and then he would let the stroller go down the staircase, thump, thump, thump, thump. And there was no Kevin Costner and the Untouchables at the bottom to save the little baby in the stroller Potomkin style. It just crashed. And then he was like, Yaya, yay. So I thought that was hilarious. Am I a terrible dad for laughing at my mother-in-law for trying to get my incredibly hyper-masculine two-year-old to try to assume a caretaking role and then just turning Yaya into one of his tackling buddies? Tell me about that.

1:11:26Unpack that for me. Am I in trouble? No. No, I mean, I think we all have our different styles of play and we're all drawn to playing in different ways. And, you know, but I would say like I had a, my son's like that too. He's 14 now. But, you know, he was super active, really physical as a kid, love to wrestle, love to fight. He always wanted to be sword fighting or, you know, just tons of aggression. But he also, like, loves animals, wanted to volunteer at the Humane Society last year, like has always enjoyed spending time with younger kids. So, you know, I think you can have both. Yeah. I think you can have that aggression and that sort of, you know, you can throw Yaya off the porch.

1:12:07But I think you can also tap into that more affectionate side. And I think we want to encourage our boys just to, you know, again, not to be one way or another way, but just to be flexible, to be adaptable. Yeah, I know. I love that. Yeah, just so the world doesn't realize that my son grew up to be a very good and wonderful man who also, when he was playing football, would volunteer at boys and girls clubs and mentor kids and probably didn't teach them to throw their baby dolls around. But yeah, it's just, you know, I think some of it is innate and some of it is behavior because we were such hippie parents in terms of letting our kids express themselves how they wanted to as well.

1:12:42And yet somewhere in him, he's like, yeah, Yaya's just my tackling buddy. So I think the last thing I wanted to go over with you, just respectful of how busy you are, is the, because this is something personal for me too, in that you had a whole thing on sitcom dads and, you know, these archetypes. And I don't know when it dawned on me, but somewhere years ago when Fox came out with The Simpsons and Married with Children as their Sunday lineup, I thought this was the erosion of the American father figure. You know, we went somehow from John Walton and Ward Cleaver to Homer Simpson, who was an incompetent dad, and then Al Bundy, who, you know, never got off the couch and was most of the episode scratching his balls, right?

1:13:26So tell me, am I sensationalizing the death of the American father figure? Or walk me through what you went through in the book on that. Because, yeah, I would love to get back to where dads were cool. Yeah, it's interesting, right? Like, if you think about that archetypal kind of 50s sitcom dad who is all-knowing, like, literally the title, Father Knows Best. has authority, is respected, right? And then, you know, kind of where that arc has led us. And in the book, I cite this cultural researcher who watched a whole bunch of sitcoms and finds that the kind of most common theme in dads in contemporary sitcoms is that they're humorously foolish.

1:14:19So it's kind of like dad is frequently the butt of the joke, dad is hapless, dad is fumbling, dad is inept. And, you know, that doesn't really map on to, you know, most dads are very competent. And, you know, they're good parents. And, you know, to say that they're totally clueless, it's like, that's cheap laughs. So I'm kind of with you that I feel like this is a shift that doesn't reflect a really positive value on dads. And I think it's like, as a culture, we're just not comfortable with seeing men in kind of lead parenting roles. And so that we sort of play it off as this humorous thing. But, you know, we could all benefit from more positive dad models in our life.

1:15:02Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, we can make a joke and we can take a joke as we know the entire genre of dad jokes. Any dad jokes that came up in this book that, or is that discriminatory to even have a genre of dad jokes, such as terrible humor? No, I laugh at dad jokes. My own dad is really fond of puns and they're usually really bad. So I can't even come up with one because they make you groan so much that you instantly want to forget them. Yeah, no, that's good. That's the best kind of the ephemeral humor that also is very situational. So Dr. Saksby, you delivered on the mailroom. I am so glad that you gave up some of your time to be with us.

1:15:45and your book, Dad Brain, drops June 9th. And please guys, get out there, get it for your dads, get it for your sons, your brothers. Everybody should get a copy. It's a delightful read, great science, really fun to read. Her humor just shines through. I mean, I was laughing and there were half of the time I was thinking, I wish I would have written this because it's just so good and so on point with your data. So thank you so much for giving up your time. Thanks for inviting your cat on the mailroom and the cameo from your pup as well. It's been real. Jordan, thanks so much for putting this all together.

1:16:21Thank you, iHeart and Long Transit for that Stratocaster, which really brings this podcast home.

1:16:45Let's talk about it Let's talk about it in the mailroom Let's talk about it Let's talk about it in the mailroom The Mailroom with Dr. Jesse Mills was a production of iHeartRadio. It was executive produced by Jordan Runtog. It was edited, mixed, and mastered by Bahid Frazier. And the theme was provided by Long Transit. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave a review. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This program is intended for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

1:17:35Consult your health care provider for any medical or other related questions or concerns. The views and discussions aired on this podcast are those of Dr. Mills and do not represent the official positions of UCLA or UCLA Health.

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1:18:35Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it. Or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop ZepBound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plan-to-be, or taking birth control pills.

1:19:07Taking ZepBound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbounds.lily.com. Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with my podcast, Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode, I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book club for your ears. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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