The Masculinity Crisis No One is Talking About

0:00So there's a lot of young lads who are wrestling with this question, late teens, early 20s, and the avenue it's taking them down is Andrew Tate. He's not the problem, he's a symptom of the problem. They can't cancel me. They've tried. My name's George, and really my work and what I'm focused on is trying to redefine what it means to be a man and redefine masculinity. It's a version of masculinity that values emotional suppression over expression. And it has a sort of deep fear of strong interpersonal connections and relationships. I was at a point of really, really deep suicidal ideation. I was in a really, really difficult, dark place with my mental health.

0:43Basically the point where I didn't think I was going to be here anymore. And really what got me to that place was my sense of being a man. people like Andrew Tate, he is filling a void that society almost has created. The questions I would ask of myself, what am I using and what is it doing to me?

1:07Before we get started with the episode, our books are now open. If you need help getting in front of the right people, finding your dream customers or winning new business, we might be able to help. Why not outsource your sales to We Have A Meeting? Just go to wehaveameeting.com. George, welcome to the podcast. Hello, good to be back. It's good to be back. Second time round. In person though. In person. That means it counts. George, thank you for joining us today. So we're going to kick off with a big open question. We love our questions. Who are you and what problem do you solve? So my name's George.

1:44And yeah, I'm definitely after a big problem. We're on the topic of masculinity. and really my work and what I'm focused on is trying to redefine what it means to be a man and redefine masculinity so yeah definitely a big subject and definitely brings up a lot of emotions but I think for me why this is a problem that needs solving or needs attention in some way is that hundreds of thousands of men are dying prematurely around the globe every single year probably more than 100 ,000 from all kinds of things, cancer, suicide, homelessness, cardiovascular disease, addiction, crime, the list just can go on and on and on.

2:25And I think, you know, with any of these things, it's always complex, and there'll be a lot of reasons for it. But part of that reason that I feel very, very strongly about, and there is evidence to back this up, is that we have a quite a rigid version of masculinity, quite a rigid interpretation of it which we have passed down really from generation to generation and it's a version of masculinity that among other things has kind of values two quite core traits or beliefs and that's one that values emotional suppression over expression and it has a sort of deep fear of strong interpersonal personal connections and relationships particularly between other men i think that those two things really are contributing to some of the issues we're seeing with men particularly around you know early mortality and suicide so that's that's the problem for me that i'm trying to solve and i think just from the outset it feels important to say that you know i don't think men are a problem and i don't think masculinity is is a problem and this isn't for me about necessarily attacking a version or a brand of masculinity but i do think we have in some ways shrunk it down to be to be quite small and force that onto men i do think that needs examining and it's about kind of expanding this out for men um so yeah let's get into the big one let's get into so it feels like there's so many different ways that we could take this and we're definitely going to deep dive into this george but i guess for anybody listening why do you think that you're probably one of the best people to to tackle this or to approach this subject yeah do you know what it's a good question and I think that anyone anyone that's in a kind of position like I'm in where I'm telling other people a different way I think that they could live you know it it kind of immediately gets gets the fence up and and guard up and you know I think people will always question question credentials so I can't say I've been through university on you know studying masculinity or I don't have a masculinity degree if those things even exist but I think what I can say is that you know I'm a man and I've been around for 32 years so I've had a decent set of experiences of being a man and I think within that experience I've seen a lot of highs and I've seen a lot of real real lows I was at a point you know maybe we can get into this but I was at a point of really really deep suicidal ideation it was I was in a really really difficult dark place with my mental health and yeah I mean you know basically the point where I didn't think I was going to be here anymore my family were making plans we're talking about plans in my head I was telling myself I'm not going to be here to see them that was the narrative that I lived with for quite a long time and really what got me to that place was my sense of being a man i was struggling so deeply with these things but nobody knew i hadn't told anyone you know i hadn't told my family they're they're there the other side of the table making making these plans i'm telling myself i'm not going to be here but i didn't tell them that i never gave them a chance to to support me on that because of my sense of masculinity because for me you didn't didn't talk about these things if the second i talked about it in my head it would have made me less of a man and broken less of a human even so i think you know for me i've as i've said i've seen some of the best of being a man and being a human i've seen some of the worst parts of it for myself as well and i think like that has lit a fire in me that you know I know where I almost got to I know some men unfortunately don't make it out of that and I've kind of made it my mission to talk about that and I've been in the space for the last 10 years now I worked in the mental health space and you know more specifically focused on men so I feel like I've got you know decent enough experience some people will some people probably older than me will say you know get back in your box but yeah i think you know once once you've had a a life experience like that i think you're in a decent enough place to to um hopefully share some life lessons so i want to come back to your lived experience but i think it's really important on a conversation that we start from in the first principles so it's probably a hard question what is masculinity it is a difficult question i think i think it's it's the the very fact that it's hard to define it's it's a bit kind nebulous is almost why there is so much debate over it but i think broadly it's it's defined as the thing or a set of characteristics that that make you a man or that are generally kind of related to being a man that's where that's quite a loose definition and that's where we can run into trouble because how you define those set of characteristics is really quite a personal thing but I come back to that sort of rigid version of masculinity that I talked about at the start I think that is what most people kind of assume when we're talking about masculinity is it's it's this sort of um it's these traits of like strength independence um purpose being the provider the breadwinner this emotional suppression or people wouldn't use that word that they might call it strength but i think that is is most commonly the brand of masculinity that that people are talking about and i think those things have become synonymous and you have you have masculinity you have femininity people have created these two boxes and we kind of put all those traits into the masculinity box and the femininity box it's it's kind of compassion and you know caregiving nurturing that's kind of how we've separated things out and i i think that is most people's understanding and assumption of masculinity but i just think that we really fall into a trap with that there where we've created these two boxes whereas actually i think we are just on one spectrum like what we're really talking about here is is humanity on that you have averages and extremes you know for example if if we take strength you know on average more men are stronger than more women you can see why maybe strength has been assumed to be a masculine thing but you can find you will find some women on this planet who are stronger than some men so strength can't be an exclusively masculine trait yes you know like we have we have averages extreme averages like we've talked about and these extremes but there's a lot of overlap between these these two boxes so i think yeah there's a very sort of narrow definition of masculinity and i think it is one that we have to sort of broaden out.

9:18I think we'll never kind of get to a clear definition we all agree on, but I think it is something that's personal and everyone has their own definition of it really. But I do think it is something that we have to expand out because I think people are taking a definition of masculinity that's been given to them rather than one they've kind of arrived at for themselves and that means something to them really. so there's a lot of young lads who are wrestling with this question late teens early 20s and the avenue it's taking them down is andrew tate why is that yeah he's um he's kind of the poster boy for for masculinity now like all of masculinity sadly i think it it feels like whenever whenever like the media talk about masculinity it's just andrew tate and and we miss all this other this other the good stuff that men can do which which we can come on to but i think for for young boys and for all men really there's not much in the way of positive messaging around men out there at the moment like really if you're kind of reading newspapers or media articles or you're on social media or whatever generally the the sort of collective messaging and feeling about men is that men are bad and men are dangerous and violent and you know something to be avoided and you know i think there there are reasons for this and and it comes from a place of real frustration and anger and you know i think women for example pretty much probably every single woman will have a negative story about a man in in some ways so i think there there are very real reasons that that this is has kind of come about and you know we we live in a patriarchal society i think um some people don't like the word patriarchy it brings up strong emotions but i think if we just take the sort of definition of it it's a system that has primarily been created by men for men for the benefit of men so this is the place that we are coming from and we sort of felt a strong wave of pushback and feeling in recent years things like the me too movement and the rise of feminism which you know all very very important and and needed but I think it has we have almost in some ways gone too far and we've painted boys and men as as yeah bad and and dangerous and yeah something to be scared of really and I think two things have happened in in the course of of that one we are completely missing a huge portion of men who are good and or maybe struggling so I think you know men are feeling that maybe they can't voice their their struggles um you know men aren't talking about suicide or health issues or whatever because often that there's a pushback of what right do you have to talk in in the face of oppression that others have faced so i think there's definitely a course correction that that is needed there we sort of got to a place where because the majority of the oppressors are men that we sort of assume men have never been oppressed and that's just just not the case so i think that that's happening that there's sort of a void there where you know boys and men are maybe feeling a bit lost or lonely or disconnected and they're almost feeling they can't can't voice that i think i think on the other side people want to feel pride in in who they are and what they do and what they're about and you know we want to feel pride in who we are as human and as a man and again we're not seeing any of those messages online really as a young boy if you're going online now it it's messages about how you're dangerous and girls should be scared of you and things like Netflix's adolescence have kind of popularized that but you know again good program starts the conversation but if you watch it very very stereotypical image of a boy that's dangerous and the other boys at the school are loud and boisterous and you know kind of shovy a bit violent as well so I think that is the only image we have of boys and men and so people aren't feeling any any pride in in who they are and people like Andrew Tate and and other influencers they're you know master marketeers and they have a very seductive message and they know what they're doing and you know while I don't I don't agree or support with Andrew Tate what he's done and what he said I can see why people do because he on you know on the one hand he has what many boys and men aspire to have he's physically fit he has women around him he has money he has fame that's the kind of traditional masculine thing to go for and he makes people feel good about themselves whether that's right or wrong he makes young boys feel like they are going to be something so i can see why so many people are attracted over to that and i think where we then get to is i'll let you know we need to shut andrew take down or let's bash andrew take but he's not the problem he he's a symptom of the problem he is filling a void that society almost has has created and you know we could we can cancel andrew take we can shut all his social media accounts there'll be another one tomorrow it will be some sort of like whack-a-mole game so i think that it's very very easy to get to a place of andrew Tate is bad anyone that follows him is bad and an idiot but I think that is really really missing the point of we have to ask why are people going to him particularly if they're people that you know otherwise may seem like intelligent people that you know can display critical thinking I think we have to ask why people are being pulled over in that direction.

15:03So you said it's a problem that society has created so we if we got up a timeline of the last 100 years I guess from the research you've done where do you think it started it's a good question i think it's probably not something that is super easy to pinpoint but i think really within the last you know 10 20 years where you've got the advent of social media and you know stories can fly in an instant and then And because of that, you've had things come out that otherwise would have been hidden or repressed for a long, long time. So, for example, the Me Too movement, which, again, rightly kind of exploded and surfaced this years of abuse and scandal and sexism in Hollywood, which for a long, long time has stayed quiet.

15:58And the abusers of that, again, mostly men thought they would get away with that. and and that was the system that a lot of people were were living under that you know people were just doing brazen things almost in public because they just knew that they could get away with it and i think the the sort of fury of that pushback in in the last i can't remember what what year it was i think it was 2010s at some point i think the fury of that that pushback has just obviously caused an explosion around the world where all these stories are now coming out and you know by no means everything is fixed but i think we've we sort of rapidly shifted again with i think with social media it's the these stuff this stuff just flies and and what someone could have done you know 30 years ago and got away with it they could be a viral meme you know by that evening and you know people can find out where they live and work and everything about them and i think that has turned a spotlight onto some of the behaviors and and actions of of people and you know particularly men so i think we've you know really seen it seen it come out in in yeah the last sort of 10 20 years and then i think you know just generally there's been a move towards greater conversations around well-being and equality and diversity in in recent years which again i think has lit a fuel a lit the fire on the fuel of this conversation because again sadly i think when we talk about the quality of diversity there is often an oppressor in that who is often a white man in in some shape or form so i think in some ways men is men have almost been painted as like the enemy of of diversity or the the villain of of you know the lack of diversity i mean you know obviously we sort of men are men is diverse right men is a very broad term and there's a lot of diversity within men but i think that conversation is has also yeah sort of pulled a few on on this fire we are entering a new era of outbound four years in we have a meeting has leveled up our entire offer that's why multi-billion pound brands trust us and we put meetings with netflix spotify facebook even barcelona football club we've helped close deals up to 950 000 we're doing it all phone, LinkedIn, email, direct mail and there's a few weird and wonderful possibilities that we're keeping in our back pocket so if you're struggling to get in front of the right people at the right time, enquire today

18:36So when we think of it from like a tribal standpoint George and I always try and go back to like cavemen and we think about them it feels like from what you're saying and I might be completely wrong so challenge me but it's not necessarily that men are changing but it's actually the modern world is changing and men are looking around and saying okay well where do I fit into this yeah yeah I think I think men are really struggling generally I think men are really struggling with with their place because actually the world has moved on pretty quickly and men haven't moved on with it and suddenly that they've almost feel like they're left behind in in some ways and and you know again i'm not saying that that's right or wrong i think you know for example men for a long long time have been used to having the role filling the role of the breadwinner and the provider and you know they earn more money than their partner that's you know in a heterosexual couple that that's kind of the role that men have played and that that is kind of going or gone in in many ways and i think a lot of men are struggling with that and again i'm not saying that that's right or wrong but but we still have to acknowledge the situation that men are in where suddenly this this thing they've been used to has changed they're not really being given a new place to fill or a new role to take where i think you know feminism has had a pretty sort of unifying rallying call in in recent years it's about empowerment and equality and the me too movement i think i'm not saying all women are in you know behind it but it's at least quite i think quite clear what what they've been sort of geared around men and masculinity just haven't had that there's no one message there's no kind of flagpole on the ground that everyone can can kind of get behind so i think the world's moving on there's no yeah flagpole in the ground they're not really been given the space to voice this stuff like i think if if they did put their hand up and say i think i'm struggling with this people will just pile on them and say this is how we've been feeling for years like get get on with it our stuff is more important in a way so i i do think it has left men in a really really weird difficult situation and you know again sort of acknowledge the the kind of anger and frustration that people feel on all sides this isn't me coming on here saying woe is men like please listen to us but I think we really do have to acknowledge that this is the situation that a lot of men are in and I talk about you know people at Andrew Tate being a symptom of a problem this that is the problem he's he's the symptom of it and people are going to places like Andrew Tate because he's giving them that message and that clarity and he's he's giving them a role to fill in in this new world I think you know most people agree it's it's not the right role but you can see why people are going for it or you know people are getting lost or the suicide rates aren't going down i think we are seeing where this issue is is coming out i think we we focus on on the stuff that happens downstream like we focus on the suicide stats or you know the addictions or whatever it might be that that's just that's the those are the lagging indicators that's the stuff happening downstream we're not often going upstream enough and asking why is this happening in the first why men falling into the river and really i think it's it's this sort of thing that is causing them to fall in that the world's moving on and they're not really sure what what their place is within that take us back to your story then so obviously you've got lived experience where you've realized this is something that needs addressing what can you tell us looking back about where that started and where it led you yeah so i i had a i really started struggling with my mental health about 12 years ago I think I think it was now it feels like another another sort of lifetime um but I'd I just it was actually in the final year of my university so you know the the message is it's the best years of your life and then you know you're gonna come out into the big wide world and those are gonna be the next best years of your life because you can try stuff and you know explore the world and whatever but I was really really struggling I was in a really difficult place at the at the time I didn't have the the words for it you know I've never had an education on on mental health or emotion or anything like that so I knew that I didn't feel right but that was that was all like it was that was kind of full stop off that I couldn't describe it any any more than than that you know I didn't even have really have concepts of what sadness and and like grief was like I knew I knew kind of but I think I'd never really knew I didn't think I could have described what an extreme feeling of sadness was like so i basically just got on with it i just i mean looking back i was i was living two completely separate lives there was the drawers that everyone saw when i was going out and i think you know i did the thing that men do which i think is just throw themselves into stuff and you keep themselves busy almost as a way of avoiding things so i started running a night at a nightclub because you know that that's the thing you should do if if you're feeling depressed but I thought I thought that would almost you know if I could appear cool quote unquote and busy then I'll kind of work my way out of this feeling obviously you know looking back now I realized that running a night a nightclub you know getting to bed at 4 5 6 a.m heavy drinking all the rest of it is not going to help my mental health issues but again I just had no education of it back then so yeah I was really really struggling it just came out of came out of uni and I just felt completely lost everyone was telling me that I was now on the the kind of first step of whatever life was that you know get the first step on the career ladder and I just I just felt like I didn't want to be here anymore and I did nothing about it still and it it just basically got worse and worse and worse and where that led me to was as we said a place of suicidal thoughts which was really really challenging i think when when when i was in it i almost don't think i preached appreciated the severity of it but it was completely all consuming when everyone's situation is is different everyone's experience is different but for me it really was it wasn't like an aside that i was just dealing with that kind of popped up now and again it really was the soundtrack to my entire day from when i first woke up that was the first thought i was i was dealing with right up until i went to bed in the evening and it was just it every day felt like 15 days long it was it was exhausting getting to the end of the day sleep was the only like solace that i got it was up again the next day to do it all over again so it was yeah i i you know no way i could sugarcoat it was really challenging and it was just getting worse and worse and worse but as i said i told nobody about that i told nobody and i'd almost just resigned myself to the fact that i was gonna kill myself it was like a it was like a sort of just a belief that i had and it was just the case of of when rather than if and i think looking back and and i think this brings comes back to the masculinity conversation looking back on that it just feels crazy like even say that that i got to a place where i just resigned myself to doing that before even giving anyone a chance to help me i was so sure that as a man i do not talk about these things that i wasn't even prepared to have the conversation i would rather essentially choose death than asking for support so so desperate was i to you know protect my masculine pride or ego whatever you want to call it and I think the difficult thing for me with it was I wasn't having that conversation rationally with myself I wasn't I didn't kind of wake up and think right do I go and tell people about this what are the pros and cons what might do to my masculinity it just I never even got to the the point of thinking about talking about it it was like shutters were down he was so deeply ingrained to me as a man that we don't talk about these things that I never even you know acknowledged that as an option it was just it for me it was either I get better on my own or I die on my own basically and basically long story short I someone called me out for my behavior it wasn't anything bad but but someone just said to me you're so cold you're so cold and distant and it was a bit of a wake-up call because I think up until that point I felt like I was fighting this battle internally on my own quite well and I'd go out and I'd put on the mask and you know I'd drink loads like everyone else and I'd laugh and joke around and I felt like I was keeping the two things separate I think when someone said that to me it was clear I wasn't said you know I'm not a cold person or I don't think I am anyway so I think when they said that it was a yeah a bit of kind of slap in the face that okay i'm not hiding this stuff as well as i want and they just let that hang there they just said it and they just let it hang there and were just kind of looking at me like what what have you got to say for yourself and then that's when i just said something's not right with me that was all that was all i had for it something's not right with me but that kick-started a whole thing then of family getting involved and going to doctors and therapy and medication and all kinds of stuff and you know it was a long long journey and not not to sort of downplay or condense it into into a minute but I think what's important there for me is that I was never going to open up on my own and it took someone else almost making me open up to do that which kick-started a whole thing which got me better and really that the next year of me focusing on my recovery was focused on on the mental health issues which and I got over and I got better and felt like I got my life back and all that kind of stuff then I wanted to go into the mental health space and do something about it and and I did and started working a lot of coaches and therapists and you know naturally I'd have sessions with them because you know it was free to access there for me and I think actually as we went deeper into some of this stuff it was clear that you know the mental health issues were in the tip of the iceberg for me then it was really my sense of myself as a man and my sense of masculinity that was the foundation to everything that gave it the space to get as bad as it did so I think that's when I got really so passionate about the masculinity side of things because I sort of asked myself the question if I had a better understanding of myself as a man a more kind of expanded sense of masculinity which could be different for different people and my emotions if I had a better sense of that from when I was younger would I have got to the place where I basically went to kill myself I can't obviously answer the question but it feels like no I really strongly believe that I never would have got to that place if I had a better grip on myself as a man and not a kind of grip on society's definition of a man that I was trying to fit into that I just never felt like I did so that's why this is like such such a big thing for me i think you know i was i was at the brink i felt kind of you know as close to take my own life as as i as i could have been without actually having having done it and yeah i just think like it lights a fire in you that you you can't you just can't put out i think once once you've seen that side of of the human experience it's it's scary it's really really scary like to know that i think you can get there yourself because i consider myself quite a strong minded person so to know i can get there it does terrify me but i think it also gives me the fuel to want to stop other people getting there so um yeah i've sort of condensed you know a long journey down there and into a into a short bit but hopefully you can see why uh why i'm passionate about yeah definitely so often when we hear i mean you've done a lot of work self-work we've I've spoke to a lot of people in therapy and psychotherapy and stuff like that.

31:08Often there's early childhood experiences that inform, okay, now I've got this story and that story now becomes kind of gospel. And then I take that into adult life and then that kind of clashes against real world. And that's where a lot of these problems occur. What were those early stories that you picked up and when did you pick them up that informed that later in life? Yeah, and you're bang on, by the way. I think that when I went into therapy immediately, in the middle of my mental health issues, I went into CBT, which is cognitive behavioral therapy. It's very focused on your behavior and your thoughts present day.

31:42So that's just kind of what I worked on. And then once I went into the mental health space and went into other therapy and deeper, and we kind of went back a bit, I was like, oh, okay, that's kind of where everything starts. There's a whole lot more there. And I think it's a bit of a running joke almost for people now when they talk about therapy that I don't want to go and talk about my childhood. There's nothing there. Can we just leave it? But I think often this stuff always does start in childhood in some form. Not everything, but there's a lot of basis in our younger years. And it doesn't mean, I think for me, it doesn't mean that something big and dramatic and traumatic has to have happened.

32:24that that wasn't the case for me that which probably made it more challenging i wasn't able to just you know pinpoint a specific event where everything flowed from that and it all makes make sense and i think that often we can look for those because it makes it easier for us to tell the story i think particularly for for men many men think in a very linear fashion which is why i think talking about mental health is quite difficult because it's not it's not linear but I think if men had a very clear thing they could pinpoint, then they can go into DIY mode and fix it. But the truth is that these things don't always work like that, particularly when you're a kid.

33:00Your brain is developing well into your teens, into your 20s, really. So particularly when you're young and you're so susceptible and your brain is developing, you're picking up things and cues and language and body cues from your environment. in ways that you don't even realize at the time and it is having an impact on you you know things your parents might say might just be you know flippant to them but to you it can start sowing these seeds of rejection or self-doubt or insecurity so i think that's what can make these things really difficult and it was the case for me but i think what i what i do know and why you know what i came to quite quickly and in therapy for myself is that i've never quite fit into the traditional masculine mold quote unquote you know at school I was very shy I enjoyed studying I was quite geeky in in that regards I didn't like sport you know at school your your um you know your success or your status is based on how well you kick a football around around the school playground right and I was awful at it didn't like it never got picked but that you know that has that has a certain impact on you particularly being at an all-boys school you can imagine the the challenge I was I was having but I just I felt different I think because I was I was a bit quieter at the time I was I was more sensitive um I did feel quite emotional in some ways I cried quite easily as a kid which again as a man you're not supposed to do so I think I always just felt different and I was I was picked on and bullied for that at school and again you know not not in a sort of really dramatic way I wasn't sort of beaten up or dragged through the playground or whatever but again it was you know daily daily barbs I mean I'm sure the people on the side just saw it as jokes or banter or whatever but I think for me it was it wasn't I wasn't kind of conscious of this at the time but what it was telling me every single day is that I was I was wrong like I wasn't right as a man there was something off about me as as a man I was kind of broken in a way so I think I definitely tried to over course correct that when I went to uni I was I was conscious of trying to to fit in and I think you know is part of the reason I started running a night at a nightclub because of that 100 % because I was like it makes me look like more of a man I look cool and I can make my mates skip the whole queue you know hour long queue I just can usher them in get them free drinks like I felt like a man doing that so I think I definitely course corrected in in that way but yeah I think that that's really where a lot of it has has stemmed from for me is that I've never quite fit into that traditional mold I mean you know I'm like I'm a skinny guy like I'm not jacked I probably never will be and and I think I've come to terms with that now but as a kid where that was a big thing and you know walking home all the Calvin Klein images on the billboard is all men that don't look like me you know as a As a 10 year old, I do not have the critical thinking or self-awareness or emotional intelligence to say it's OK.

36:06You know, he's his own person. I'm my own person. I'm going to look at that and think I don't look like that. So I'm not I'm not a man. So I think, you know, that just created the. The kind of fertile ground for all this stuff to see later on, anxiety and depression and sensitivity and all this kind of stuff. I think the ground was was created for me from from a young age. so I've had to go back into that stuff to understand who I am now and to work through that I think you have to go back into this stuff I can't say if it's always the case for every single person if there's stuff from when they were younger but yeah there'll be stuff forming from pretty much the moment we're born that we're not aware of that could come out 40 years later in addiction or in a mental health issue or in a bit of rage or something so yeah our book is out now sales is therapy is available everywhere for people who are looking to get better at communicating asking better questions closing more deals and bringing in more clients beware it is not for the faint of heart or for closed-minded people you can buy it in all good shops links below there was when you were talking about the death toll earlier and we're losing hundreds of thousands of men a year maybe more there were certain ones where you're like suicide addiction homelessness like that all kind of computed in my head is like one bracket to say of like yeah I can I can get that it was quite interesting when you were saying like um heart disease and cancer was that more I don't want to put words in your mouth but more that there are health issues and health anxieties happening within men and men are still refusing to talk about that and they're pushing that down what what can you tell us about that yeah so yeah i think like obviously you know the caveat with this stuff is is any of these things are complex right any of the things we've listed there there's there's you know not going to be just one clear definition why someone has started suffering with something and why they may have passed away from it so i think that's obviously the kind of caveat to put with that there'll be all sorts you know demographics and class and all sorts of stuff come into it but definitely a contributing factor and it was research from november which i think came out this year they found that just in the uk 15 men are dying every hour prematurely from stuff like cancer and suicide and the rest of it and i think the emphasis there is on the word premature that they didn't have to have passed away yet from that thing i'm not saying that you know we solve masculinity and suddenly no man dies from from cancer that's you know it's obviously not realistic but i think what what is clear is that there are a number of men that are facing these these challenges that aren't doing anything about it you know men for example who are finding lumps on their balls and they're not going to doctor about it because you know a whole bunch of stuff embarrassment shame masculine pride it will get better on its own that kind of stuff that i can't remember the exact stats but testicular cancer is is very very treatable if if caught early you know as as most cancers are but a lot lot of men aren't dealing with this stuff when they have to and or until they have to i interviewed a few a few doctors from my book and and they all had the same message that men aren't going to get checked up on this stuff quick enough for a bunch of reasons but this masculine pride is is one of them and one of these doctors said that so you know he works at a gp surgery he said that when a woman comes into his surgery it's just kind of you know business as usual you just wait to see her we see her the waiting room which she comes in when a man comes into his surgery is an immediate red flag to him immediate alarm bell because he knows if a man has been generally a man has been so compelled to come into to come to see him it's got to be something bad there's got to be something going on and that's obviously you know it's not the case for for all men but if that's the perception of our doctors then it tells us that there is something going on for men so i think yeah when you know when it come come back to cancer and cardiovascular disease there's a lot of men that are dying who don't have to die from these things but they're not doing anything about it and i think that for me is is tragic that if someone's passed away when they they don't have to and yeah i think you know the reality is that a lot of people are burying people too early fathers brothers uncles colleagues friends whatever it might be and they and they don't they don't have to um so that's that's that that piece there and you know again it's it's a complex picture but this sense of masculinity this kind of emotional suppression this this inability or unwillingness to ask for help to put a hand up and say there might be something wrong with me or I've got a health thing it is a factor that is playing into it how large it is I don't think we can define but it is it is a factor so I might sound like a bit of a twat for asking this next question but I guess just to play devil's advocate and put everything on the table and see where you take it obviously generationally there was a generation of men I don't want to label a decade but let's say from the 50s to the 70s where it was very stoic in the sense of tough upper lip i'm gonna suppress everything i'm probably not going to talk about anything but if we looked at that as that's like generational behavior and you compared it with the stats i'm assuming the suicide rate the is the death rate is is lower from a generational standpoint is that is that correct i i don't know the exact stats from different different points in history but it it's it's gone down and gone back up at points so interesting it's i think right now it's it's at its highest point in don't don't anyone listening don't completely quote me on these stats but it's it's something like i said its highest point in 10 years or something like that it has it has increased in in recent years but before that in a period there was a drop so this this stuff does fluctuate but i i guess you know it doesn't necessarily negate your point which which you go on well i'm just trying to think of like because i'm always i'm always thinking about like tribal so what could we borrow generationally from the 40s the 50s the 60s that may have been like maybe borrow it and twist it or remix it that might have been a positive to help with masculinity because obviously we we are in a a masculinity crisis where suicide's at its highest so something's not right which makes me think that if it's at the highest it is now then surely we were doing some things right decades ago yeah i think what you'll get infuriated for me if i keep saying this but i think that there's always caveats to this stuff and i think um in suicide in particular the way that it's reported changed that point in history i don't I don't have the date.

43:06The way it was, as reporters changed, it was a crime at one point. It still is a crime in some country to take your own life. So I think it gets murky, I think, if you're comparing something like suicide or mental health issues now to 100 years ago, because the picture was so different. The way it was reported was different. People might not have voiced it because it would have been seen as a crime. So I think, yeah, I don't think we can sort of just take a direct comparison and use it in that way. However, you know, you definitely have a point in that I think I do think we are potentially in danger of almost going too far the other way now and almost watering down masculinity too much.

43:52and you know i think we we don't want to get into a place where also you know i think a lot of men don't don't relate to this sort of extreme sense of softness and vulnerability and and we don't want to lose this this sort of sense of strength and resilience and and toughness that that is is for a lot of men an important part of masculinity and is also just needed throughout life like you are going to need resilience to get through life because life is tough right we're all going to face things so i definitely think there are things that we can look at from from our history i think the common thing that we talked about is is wartime like you know people that got through world war ii world war one war ii i think that's a common pushback on this stuff is you know your great grandfather your grandfather survived the blitz and you know you can't survive a difficult day at work that's like kind of the thing that people come up with sometimes you know i kind of understand what they're saying and you know the argument has merit and is you know different period and and the absence of them talking about the way they felt doesn't mean they didn't feel things like you know my my granddad passed away a couple years ago sadly um it was only after he passed that my mom told me he deeply struggled with his mental health and he he only told her that towards the end of his life so you know for him there's a there's a i don't know 50 year period there where there was these things that were very real for him you know he experienced that i'm you know might be the same as my experience that he never talked about so So I think it is easy to look back at the older generation and see this toughness and this resilience and assume that we've now got almost softer as a society.

45:32But emotions have lasted a lot longer than any of us on this planet. They've been around since the beginning. So I think if we were able to feel this way now, people would have felt that way 50, 30, 100 years ago, whatever. So I think that's one thing to kind of say that these things would have been present. But yeah, I do think that we can't lose this sense of resilience and toughness. And I think you mentioned being stoic and stoicism is, again, I think often a pushback to this kind of vulnerability. People say just be more stoic or men should be more stoic. But I often feel like the definition of stoicism has been lost and misinterpreted.

46:11People kind of say it to mean strength, just strength above all. but but really it's a it's about kind of control of of your emotions it's not suppression of your emotions it's about control you can only control something if you understand it so you have to be able to understand your emotions and your life experiences and yourself in order to be able to then know what the best course of action is i think just just suppressing something and ignoring it and avoiding it and sweeping under the rug that's not stoicism that is that's just avoidance and And I think this stuff does not get resolved on its own.

46:46I think the science is pretty clear on that. Your emotions and trauma, it stores in the body if you don't work through it and resolve it. So I think where often men are just sort of, you know, just avoid it, just push it, just sweep the dirt under the rug. You are literally just putting the dirt under the rug. It's under the rug. It's still there. It's going to build and it will come out at some point. and i think you know we talked about those lagging leading indicators early earlier i think again suicide addiction you know avoidance of health shame the suppression that people feel that's that's the stuff that's happening downstream again from people avoiding stuff and sweeping the dirt under the rug so yeah i think there's lessons we have to take from both sides look at look at this sort of a brand of stoicism strength resilience that can't come at the neglect of of emotion and feeling and experience you know emotions are a natural thing we've we've unhelpfully labeled them good and good and bad we've unhelpfully labeled them an unmasculine thing but they are a natural biological thing that they every single one of us has them if men weren't meant to have emotions they probably would have been stamped out of us from an evolutionary point of view so they are there to serve a purpose avoiding them doesn't make sense but i i think you know i don't think we should um get to a point where it's we neglect kind of this this sort of uh resilience just in pursuit of being emotional all the time but you have to have a balance and a grip on on the whole spectrum i think that so the stoicism point stoicism and zen buddhism have the same thing in common right it's a toolbox to say you can't control everything that happens to you but you can control how you respond to it right that's the bit that's in your control and often you know we've known people who've sadly taken their own lives and often that's blokes well that's happening that's what we're talking about here and and often when you look back it's trying to grab on and control things that just are not in your control anyway you can't control them and you're thinking that you can whereas almost having the ability to take the step back and say i'm kind of in the river and we're a bit of a rocky bit at the minute and i I can control just kind of riding the tide and get on the other side.

49:04So if you're looking at what's worked for you in terms of here's my kind of toolbox, and if I could pass that toolbox on to other people, if we were to open up what tools are in there that have really helped you. Yeah, it's a good point. I think men like the idea of a toolbox. It seems to play on the amazing things. I think it's a good phrase to use. And you're bang on because when I had my mental health issues, I was fighting against myself. I was fighting against my emotions. and my natural experiences when you create that conflict you you can't heal in that you you're not you're not going you use the sort of river or flowing you're not flowing the same way as as yourself really so you know i inadvertently elongated my mental health issues by fighting against myself i was doing the masculine thing by you know fighting going to war against myself but actually I was just making it worse and when I went through rounds of therapy and self-help books and stuff like that a lot of it was was about kind of getting in tune with your emotions and your experiences and and paying attention to what was going on and I pushed back on that for a long time because I remember I read a self-help book I think it was called um self-help for your nerves by by Claire Weeks really really good book and but her kind of premise was you should kind of float with your anxiety like when it when it comes up she kept using this word float just just sort of float with it and and experience it and i was just like what a load of bullshit like i am deeply struggling here and you want me to to just sort of float with it so i pushed back on it for a long long time and i did the masculine thing again you know i told myself i knew better i fought i kept fighting harder against myself like i kind of fight my way out of anxiety things clearly weren't getting better so i came back to the book with a bit more of an open mind and i i tried it and it took it took a long time i'm not saying suddenly the next day i was i was better but i can categorically say when i look back when i started to work with my emotions and with myself i started to get better and i think that is a really critical tool that anyone needs to be able to have that's almost the first tool in in the toolbox i think everyone's toolbox is and look different and there's a whole bunch of stuff we could talk about and you know you could get onto apps or you know fitness routines or whatever and the reality is that all that stuff is different for different people but i think everyone needs a fundamental understanding of themselves and an ability to to reflect on themselves and kind of question their their experience with curiosity we're all gonna gonna have things come up every single day a bunch of emotions every single day you know a lot of us will feel a whole range of emotions in in one day so i think that we have to be able to acknowledge that work with it understand it question it and not not push back on it you know it doesn't mean that it's always going to be easy i'm not saying that you know if i'm anxious now i i sort of like oh you know this is a bit of anxiety and i'm going going to work with this and it's going to be a really fun day doing it i still feel crap but i think now i'm able to sort of name it and i know that okay this is anxiety i'm feeling right now this is why it's come up i know if i do a certain set of things it's probably you know probably going to move through it so i think we need a understanding of ourselves understanding of our emotions sorry something's got got caught in my throat i'm worried about um understanding ourselves and our emotions and kind of free ourselves from judgment of them so rather than criticizing ourselves for the way we're feeling understand that our emotions are there as sources of information so they're not good or bad it doesn't mean they don't feel good or bad you know if we feel joy we're going to feel better if we feel sadness we're going to feel crap so it doesn't mean they don't feel good or bad but emotions themselves are not good or bad that they are simply sources of emotion information they're there to tell ourselves something about ourselves so it's it's just a case of being able to reflect pay attention to that then you can start to ask yourself what do i need like that that's when everyone's toolbox becomes a bit different and you know if i'm if i'm feeling anxious i need to kind of just take time out on my own and reflect my girlfriend on the other hand like she needs to tell me about it and we need to work through it together so you know our tool for dealing with that emotion is very very different and only you know you can answer that for yourself around what you need but i i think that people often jump at the the tools further down the line they often kind of go well if i download the meditation app and do that for 100 days then i'll feel better missing the stuff that comes before which is the ability to be able to reflect on what's actually going on for you and why are feeling that way then then you're able to say okay i know why i want to do the meditation and what it's solving for me so i think that that's the tool that everyone should should go for first and work on first and you know it's it's not easy like i i again i'm not i'm not saying i'm sitting here as some kind of like zen teacher that has it all figured out like you know there are emotions i deal with terribly and you know again when i you know when i get anxious like i said i i withdraw and that that is a great source of annoyance to my girlfriend so yeah there's stuff that I I'm obviously working through but but I think it's I at least know now that I can understand what comes up for me and I can at least start articulating it and talking about it and that that has come from the deep mental health issues that that I had the deep struggle of that you know we come back to that stoicism and needing to understand something and being able to be able to kind of control it that's where my understanding came from so i think you know some people may look at me some men may look at me and and label me weak because i suffered i think i i kind of see it differently i say i am able to be strong and resilient because i've suffered i understand the whole the whole pie and and that's given me the tools to be able to understand myself so that that is where i would start any toolkit i think that's if you've got your tool belt and you know whatever it is that needs to go at the hammer or the or the wrench or whatever that That's the one that I would go for first before anything else.

55:16Do you know the number one question that people stop me in the streets and ask me, Zach Thompson? Are you a fully grown bloke? That's only happened three times, and all three times it was you asking me. No, most people are asking me, where do you get your contact data from? And do you know what I tell them? No. I'm going to tell you right now. it's prospio p-r-o-s-p-e-o that's prospio to you that's prospio to me do you know why we use prospio no i don't know please tell me i'm gonna tell you because they are 98 better at finding mobile numbers and email addresses than any other data provider if you want to check it out there's a link in our bio and you can use it right now hold on a second that's p-r-o-s-p-e-o.io forward slash wham to try it for free forward slash wham to try it for free so it feels like a an interesting time you know we were talking before around the blitz and people saying yeah like that you got through the blitz and what have you but i don't think we've ever had such a massive source of comparison available to us and you can feed into that quite quickly can't even i've got a 12 year old son and a thing that he has to deal with that we didn't is there's a whatsapp group where if you did some embarrassing you're getting ridiculed on the whatsapp group all night long even the holidays and one of his friends has saved him as the forehead and you're just like oh my god like that's how he's known in those in it's it's tough we never have to deal with that and then there's okay now i'm outsourcing my critical thinking to ai so i'm coming up with conclusions that are ai driven i'm only watching shorts for dopamine i'm posting pictures where i'm coloring out parts of my body that i don't like onto social media it feels like a real kind of crossroads in we could end up with a generation of men that actually aren't any better even though we are problem aware if you were looking at this now and making those predictions what questions do you think government school parents need to start asking themselves now before it's too late yeah i think this is one of the big ones for me i think that we are potentially walking into a bit of a crisis or or we're already in one i think when it comes to to technology and social media and all the rest of it we're not we're just not going to have a world now where that stuff doesn't exist i think you know advocating for a complete removal of these platforms or or you know i i'm not a parent myself but i know parents have these challenges around what what what kind of tech use do they have or do they put on their kids and you know again kids will find a way of accessing this stuff in some way so you know the answer is not removing all this stuff right i do think that it is a really really challenging time that that we're in i i don't think we have yet fully grasped the impact the technology and social media is having on us as a as a species really i think the the science is still developing and and emerging but there's a there's a lot of scary stuff coming out and i think you really have to look at the the kind of execs that work at social media companies most of whom don't let their own kids use this stuff to understand that this is a problem like if it's that bad why are they not you know or if it's that good why are they not letting their own kids use it so there's clearly a problem here and i i focus on some of this in my book actually because i i do think that technology is playing a role in in the way that that men are confronting their problems or or as it may be not confronting them because technology is an easy easy kind of get out it it gives us a way of just avoiding any of our our struggle or our pain we could just could just go to a platform and scroll and as you said it's it's a it's kind of the the tool for for comparison now it's it's the ultimate tool for that i mean it you know the algorithm supposedly learns and adapts to things you like which you know i'm sure it does but it also learns and adapts to to your insecurities like you you you're you're draw the brain is drawn to to negativity and and and pain it's a survival mechanism so it makes sense but we we get more triggered by the this the negative stuff so we are going to be triggered by the stuff on social media that drives our insecurities and we're going to go down a deeper rabbit hole with that so you know if i'm let's say 10 years ago george insecure about my body there will be fitness influencers on my instagram i will be looking at more of them my feed will develop more it just becomes a self-perpetuating cycle and i think what is really difficult and dangerous with this stuff is that the brain stores this information and it doesn't go it the content we're consuming it is a diet it's like a food diet but you know with with food you you your body metabolizes it right or let's let's say alcohol right like you know it has a bunch of health impacts on people i'm not kind of shaming and it just does it doesn't do it but it has a bunch of health impacts on people but you know if you have a really really heavy night out your body will have metabolized that alcohol within within 24 hours or however long the period is i'm not saying it's had no impact on you but but you will flush the alcohol out of your system that doesn't happen with what we're consuming on online it it's it's being stored in in in the brain basically and we can't like metabolize it in in the same way so i think that there's a feeling that we are able to just sort of passively use technology and social media but there's no such thing as a passive scroll every single thing that we see is impacting us in in some way the brain has no way of distinguishing between what's real and what's not on your phone that the brain thinks that stuff is real particularly with you know phones these days where everything you know screens are so good so realistic so as you are scrolling past feeds which are getting increasingly radical and you know you're seeing violence and porn and and all kinds of stuff in your feed your brain does not know that's not real and what what it does it it's mounting a response to that if i if i see a video of a violent attack or you know some places on twitter these days or x it's it's murder like you can see videos of murder my brain will mount a response to that like an immune response and that is basically gearing me for a war that never comes and so that for some people is happening every single day so their body is every single day sometimes for hours a day constantly mounting this immune response to a war and a battle that that that never comes and that you know that shapes our beliefs about ourselves and masculinity but it also you know it's not good for the body what one of the docs i into for the book said that it's not a leap to say at a basic level that using technology is aging us quicker than it should because as your body amounts amounts this immune response your cells break down they have to repair that's part of the process of aging so he's like as your amount on this response you are physically getting older than you should so i think you know this isn't i'm not sort of saying this to scare longer because as we said at the start this is the reality for us now but i think to come back to your your question around what questions should we be asking ourselves i think that that is the place we have to come to is we we need better science and awareness on what this stuff is doing to us so i don't think we have that i think you know if i think you know some people will again let's say let's say we take alcohol i think generally speaking people are aware of of the the risks of alcohol and what alcohol does and maybe not completely but i think generally people are making a at least half conscious decision on if they still choose to drink they know why they're doing it and they know what the risks it might have i don't think we have that with technology and social media i think that we think it's harmless we think it's passive it's not it's impacting us in ways that we can't even see and i think it's causing a whole bunch of issues for for everyone on the planet or whatever whatever gender but you know i think for men we talked about influences that that are filling a void you've got the rise of like incel forums so it's it's giving people a place to kind of gather in quite a violent way is perpetuating insecurities and anxieties it's giving people a way to avoid their emotions and their pain it's easier to scroll rather than confront my own inner stuff so this stuff isn't harmless we need to have a better understanding and awareness and education on that and then i don't know how far people go with this stuff i you know i i don't know what the answer is and what what the kind of solution is but i i wish and i hope for a world where there are much better controls and safety mechanisms in in place with this you asked about government i would love for for a government to show some backbone with with this and and you know there's stricter laws around what what people do or don't post people are prosecuted for for stuff that is that just goes way into the extremes and but again you know we're immediately into murky territory here because because you're you're dealing with free speech and the right to free speech and all of that so it's it's very very murky but i think it is very clear that this stuff is having an impact it's clear that most of the companies involved in this know that because they're not letting their own kids use the stuff governments know this but then you know people are we're kind of getting also into the realms of money and how stuff's funded so it's it it's questions and answers that are almost too big to comprehend and tackle but then i think what i come back to with it is is just sort of personal personal agency and and um personal accountability like i can't i shouldn't only only sit here and talk about waiting for a government to change how i should should use my phone i think it's on me to have these conversations do this research understand what's happening and then make a decision for myself over how i want to do things and you know this isn't me shaming me how anyone else wants to do it it's how I want to do it and so for me to be honest since I've had these interviews with the book it's kind of scared me a little bit my phone usage has come down am I perfect no do I still scroll when I get bored yes but I'm I'm trying to be more more conscious of it so I think I think you know the questions we have to ask are questions of ourselves and and have we done all of our research do we know what impact the thing that we are using is is having are we aware of the risks if we're aware of all that and we still choose to use a thing fair enough that's that's personal choice but i think for most people they've not asked those questions of themselves or the things they're using and i think there's this sort of just silent risk brewing um so yeah but i think that that would be the questions i would ask of myself what what am i using and what is it doing to me george thank you so so much for being so open and honest i think there is we're a real turning point in history at the moment with with so many things and i think these conversations you have to be brave enough to to bring them to the table and talk about them so thank you so much if people want to find you they want to read your work they want to get in touch with you how would they be best to do that most active on linkedin and yeah i've got my book coming out in in january it's up for pre-order now finally yesterday so i'm sure we'll share share the links around so that that would be the the best place where yeah i guess i've i've really tried to to get into this stuff and i think you know this this is it is a difficult big meaty topic that brings up a lot of emotions for for people and there's so many strands to it and you know even in this hour-long conversation like we've we've sort of scratched the surface so i've put as much as i can in in the book or you know on linkedin if that's where people want to follow me and um yeah i just i just want people to whatever their their kind of belief they might think everything i've said a whole load of nonsense but i at least want people to be able to come away and and and kind of feel more comfortable with themselves whatever that looks like whatever their version of masculinity is might be completely different to myself my own but as long as i guess people can get to a place where they where they've at least asked those questions of themselves rather than kind of waiting for something else to push it onto them then for me that's that's a job job well done thanks for having me as well thank you so so much