Pinchbeck brings together Warren Farrell, author of The Boy Crisis and a long-time writer on men and masculinity, and Frank Schaeffer, the novelist and podcaster who grew up inside the evangelical movement his father Francis Schaeffer helped build and later broke with it. The three had not met before. Farrell opens by disputing the word patriarchy, arguing that the organizing force in earlier societies was survival, under which neither sex held rights, only obligations. Schaeffer, who read The Boy Crisis that morning, connects it to current reporting on why fewer women are marrying, and quotes Farrell on making marriages better rather than divorce harder and on the developmental value of a father's hands-on style. Pinchbeck describes growing up in a feminist household in New York and the guilt about maleness he carried from it, which Farrell's work helped him rethink.
Guest: Frank Schaeffer and Warren Farrell
In brief
- Farrell argues that patriarchy misdescribes the past, since the dominant force was the need to survive, under which neither men nor women had rights, only responsibilities and obligations.
- Farrell holds that a father's characteristic parenting style, including roughhousing and the expectation that children serve rather than be served, is developmentally important in ways research only recently documented.
- Farrell describes a purpose void left by the collapse of the provider, protector and warrior roles that once supplied masculinity with built-in purpose.
- Farrell's stated aim in The Boy Crisis is to integrate a half-century of national discussion about girls and women with an equally nuanced discussion of boys and men.
- Pinchbeck says his feminist upbringing left him with a guilty sense that men were morally inferior, and that Farrell's work rebalanced this by showing how men are also constrained by the same social arrangement.
- Schaeffer frames his own late-career writing, including a book about his dog Zip, as motivated by compassion for people who have not had the domestic life he and Farrell describe.
Full text
The word patriarchy, for example, has been used to suggest that, you know, that men were dominant and controlling and in charge. And no one understands that that's not a really accurate assessment of what's happening. The dominant force was was not patriarchy. It was the need to survive. In order to survive, neither men nor women had rights. They had responsibilities. They had obligations. Hey everybody. Uh, today I'm really excited to be here for um, I guess my podcast Liinal News, but I'm also doing this in collaboration with uh, Frank Schaefer who has his own podcast. We may just put it out on both channels. We're figuring that out at the moment.
Uh but um yeah, a few weeks ago I I talked with Frank and um I don't know I was I was very moved in a way by by by by by Frank's story uh around you know having grown up in this sort of nucleus of this like Christian evangelical world which has uh taken such a dominant position and everything that's happening in America right now and just sort of leaving that behind courageously and and forging his own path and and um and um yeah and I I guess you know what I what I've been wanting to to find a way to do is to really kind of uh interrogate kind of this this moment in America um which has so many factors and Warren is somebody Warren Farrell is somebody who who I've been following for many years. He really gave me an incredible new insight into um you know kind of the the issues around masculinity and being a man in this society because I'd grown up in a feminist household in a way. My mother had been a book editor in New York and part of the early feminist movement. And I think I'd always had this like weird guilty sense that, you know, men were like bad in some ways and and um women were more morally superior in some ways and so on, you know, which which at times they are, I think. But um you know his his his work was a I found it very balancing to to sort of rethink um you know kind of how how men are also kind of contorted and distorted by you know kind of this patriarchal society that kind of both sexes are kind of oppressed in a way in different ways but the the ways that men get oppressed are much kind of harder to articulate um and and and so so I I was very excited to bring these two fellows together and have and have this dialogue.
is the first time I've met Warren. It's the first time Frank and Warren have met. And um yeah, so I thought we could maybe start with you guys giving maybe a um you know, a bit of um overview um you know, I know you've gone over this so many times, Frank, you know, but kind of like where you came from and and and how your dad and then also Yeah, you mentioned that Warren's work has also had an influence on you. That would be great to hear. Did you want me to weigh in first? Yeah. Yeah, go for it. Go for it. Okay. Yeah. Well, um, this is fun because I host my own podcast and usually I'm interviewing people and I'm sure that in the near future, my producer Ernie Greg will book Warren and we will interview him on his work and book.
So, if I act more like an interviewer than an interviewee, you can make me answer questions. But let me just start by saying this morning um I bought Warren's book on Kindle and prepared in the same way I would for my own podcast if I was doing um an interview with him. And what struck me about Boy Crisis, other than the fact that I think it's a tremendously important book, and interestingly enough, I hadn't read it, Warren, but I've seen it quoted in a lot of books I have read that have been influential. Um, and you really kind of broke this open. Um, and I we can talk about what the reaction was, but I felt that, you know, this morning, for instance, I opened the Washington Post and there was an essay in the Washington Post um, from an author who was tracking the reasons why more men want to marry than women and why women aren't marrying.
And then I read your book uh a after I get up at about three in the morning and I read you know a couple newspapers that I read and then I got to your book and it was as if after I read your book that it was one of your appendix. In other words, what you wrote about is going on right now. Um and I wrote a book that I've spent four or five years on called The Gospel of Zip, which is basically uh this book here. And I've got a poster behind me and the subtitle is a K9 human love story exploring why most dogs and a hu few humans live joyful lives. And I read the whole thing out loud and put it on You Tube where a lot of my people watch and listen to things as well as publishing it and it's available on Amazon.
But when I was reading your book um this morning, the boy crisis, there were a number of lines that just leapt off the page that I felt um could have come from from my book. Um, you know, one in no particular order of sequences, is the solution to make divorces harder? No. The solution is to make marriages better, which is why I tell the story of Genie and my adventure over the last 56 years of staying together with three grown children and five grandchildren. And then, you know, if I was interviewing you, I chose a section that I would use as the open that I would read.
And I'm going to use it here to just introduce you a little bit and then talk about myself. Why no vision of the future can be perfect. While no vision of the future can be perfect, the goal of the boy crisis is to integrate the half ccentury of national discussion about the challenges faced by girls and women with an equally nuanced national discussion about those facing boys and men. And the only other thing I would add here is you describe my life and I won't cite the page here, but you have a passage that literally again is why I wrote the Gospel of Zip about my joy of being a child caregiver to my five grandchildren. Grandpa, take note.
When grandpa was a dad, no research documented why a dad's typical style of hands-on parenting such as roughousing or his expectation that his children serve rather than be served was so crucial to his children's development. The boy crisis makes that clear. So, grandpa can both understand his value to his grandson and share that with grandma. But there is one change that requires grandpa's attention. When grandpa grew up, masculinity came with a built-in sense of purpose of being the provider, protector, eg warrior, soul bread winner. Today, there is a purpose void. The boy crisis can help grandparents understand the purpose void as well as how to help inspire their grandson with new senses of purpose.
A grandpa I knew, for example, told me, and this was very personal, brought tears to my eyes because I've actually done this. Um, and I actually have this in my book about doing this. A grandpa I knew, for example, told me that he used to whisper in his grandson's ear how playing with him makes him happier than any work he'd done. His grandson, although successful at work, has refused promotions that would have required him to travel. So he says, "I can do what I love most with my precious kids and wife." And that is why I wrote the Gospel of Zep. And I didn't do what you did.
I didn't write it from as an academic who had studied it. I wrote it as a personal narrative. I described myself at the beginning of my book as someone who was an raised to be an by divine right. As in in the evangelical community I was in, men were supposed to dominate, be tough, discipline. And the love that you talk about with that grandpa of yours and not of yours, but in the story and the grandson is, you know, the arc of my journey where I wound up. Um, and so I just want to say you I I loved your book. I didn't I didn't know that that was going to be part of this package.
Um, when Daniel said he wanted to interview me, but when I read it, it was an amazing affirmation of the last seven years of my life. It's what I've spent my time doing is trying to address these issues. You and I are totally on the same page. One last thing and then I'll stop talking. And I know I was supposed to talk about myself, but I'm talking about you. Um, I I admire your courage in your book as one of the only writers I've known who doesn't equivocate about the harm that divorce does to children and in particular sons that lose fathers. And everybody beats around the bush because we don't want to offend the tens of millions of Americans who jumped into the more easy divorce patterns that came out of the 70s.
And I really love that about your book. And one of the things I do in the Gospel of Zip is talk about the fact of how close Jeanie and I came at times as my asshoeness wormed wore off and I became a different person to spitting up and how she consistently I would ask her why didn't you leave me then and she would say because of the children. You know I had taken a vow and as and Jeanie's put it this way. She said as far as I was concerned when I took my vow I was promising my unborn children to to remain their parent. And so, you know, your book, um, The Boy Crisis really hit home with me and I love the book and I want to interview you on my podcast about it even though it was published a few years ago because as I said by that thing I read in the post this morning, you're what you're saying is is more is relevant more relevant now than ever in terms of the the depopulation, people not having children, younger women not wanting to marry, more younger men wanting to marry but not having been trained in the way you talk about.
So, I know that's not what Daniel asked me, but that's where I went. That's fine. Well, well, we can come back to you. We'll get Warren into the into the conversation here. Uh, yeah. I mean, Warren, I was I was curious. I mean, you know, the book of yours that really hit me very hard was The Myth of Male Power and this whole idea that there's these sort of like um, you know, role constraints and ma males, you know, emotional expression and development and so on. and uh sort of the unagnowledged male suffering, how you know men are kind of supposed to like suck it up and take it and often die younger and all this stuff.
Uh and you know what that it seems like a lot of the you know success of Trump and the MAGA movement has been fueled by the sort of masculine frustration and also kind of an anger at women because they have seemed to be making a lot of gains socially. you know, I think it's like 70% of college graduates are female now in the US and they've been doing very, you know, they I mean, they've been doing very well in um all sorts of entrepreneurial fields and you know, maybe not the maybe not the CEOs, but other parts of the corporate ladder, they're doing very well and um yeah, to me it sort of makes sense, you know, I mean, men are, as you as you write about, are bred to be kind of like risktakers. Maybe it's evolutionarily, you know, part of part of what we're supposed to do because that's how you you know, you're like a peacock. you have to gain the maid or whatever. Um, and um, and in a in a civilization that's peaceful that has a lot of communications technologies that allow everybody to speak with each other in all these back channels, it kind of makes sense that women's capacities for connection and for communion and communication would begin to advance them.
And and now it feels like this regression back to a previous like, you know, war, you know, the Department of War. It's like, you know, it's all it's all about aggressivity and so on. and they're trying to make that the value again. Anyway, so that those are some of the things that fascinated me and I thought you would be the best person I know to talk about them. Thank you. Thank you. No, the ball's in your court, buddy. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Sort of making an overall intro there. Yeah. So, let's see. Um, a lot there. Um, first of all, thank you both for your acknowledgement of the boy crisis and the myth of male power.
I really appreciate that and the and you're sharing the impact that it had on you. Um, yeah, I think that what's happened is that for example, um, we we call things the patriarchy and that's sort of and part of what boys grow up in. high school kids are learning that they're part of the patriarchy or junior high school kids are learning that they're part of the patriarchy and they have male toxicity and that they're um that there's that the future is female. Um and that and they're learning all these negative things about themselves and and even the word and the and the word patriarchy, for example, has been used to suggest that, you know, that men were dominant and controlling and in charge. And no one understands that that basically uh there's that's that's not a really accurate assessment of what's happening.
What the dominant force was was not patriarchy. It was the need to survive. And in order to survive, we men and neither men nor women had rights. They had responsibilities. They had obligations. Um if you know when I talked to my father about writing um my first book, he said, "Yes, Warren, you're a good writer, but only about one in a hundred authors um find a publisher, and if you can't find a publisher, you'll never find a wife." Um and it was just like really clear to him that, you know, that he was um you that that doing something that you want to do, you don't have a right to do what you want to do.
you have a right to do what you need to do uh in order to be able to um earn enough money to support your wife and your children. And that your wife should have the option of either being involved with her work, involved with the children, or some combination of both. And in order for you to do that, you have to earn money. And authors as a rule don't earn money. Neither do musicians, neither do artists, neither do actors, you know, on a 99 to1 level. Um, and so if you enter into those fields, you jeopardize your family. And so you don't really have the right to do that.
And so historically speaking, our grandparents did not talk about rights. They talked about obligations and responsibilities. And so and they did that because that was was what was needed to survive. Now something happened in developed nations in the middle and upper middle class. The need to survive was not so dominant. And so therefore um women women in particular um could at the outset say you know I want to do something that u that I have the desire to be a CEO. I have the desire to be an inventor. I have the desire to be something uh that is outside of the normal female modality and so I want to be you know and the the feminist movement started out as you know I am woman I am strong.
Unfortunately, it ended up as I am woman, I've been wronged. And one of those transitions I think that we all can recognize is the hashtagme too mo uh movement. And hashtagme too gave a lot of women an opportunity to sort of share ways that they felt abused and hurt and misused as um as they were growing up, including my wife um had had an experience and my sister had an experience. And so I'm very glad for hashtagme too, but I'm not glad for it as a monologue. It should have been a dialogue. Um, hashtagme too talks about the female experience of powerlessness and the female experience of male power.
But what was missed was the male experience of powerlessness and the male experience of female power. what it felt like to a 19 15 16 year old boy who's feeling his testosterone and every about 60% of the women in his class are women that he really feels a desire to be sexual with order to be sexual with them he has to take the risk of rejection and he fears that and that risk of rejection is is powerful for young boys with a high amount of testosterone when you know when the girls in his class are only interested in maybe the um being sexual with the uh the a football player that's a star or maybe a student body president or something somebody else that's really a good performer and outstanding or a very tall and good-looking. And this boy is not any of those things. And so he's fearing inside of himself like I have to prove myself in order to be able to um be adequate to minimize my risk of rejection. And so these are just that's just the tip of the iceberg of what almost every young male goes through.
Um and so growing up and hearing that the future is female and that your masculinity is toxic. Um and male privilege and male power is is masculinity toxic? Absolutely. There's a lot of toxic masculinity. But it doesn't emanate from privilege and power. It emanates from the need to have to do things um that led to the repression of his feelings. a you know a boy in boot camp, young man in boot camp to to prepare for war might be let's say he was um he heard from the um the sergeant that you know oh you know some type of comment that was anti-semitic and he and he raises his hand and says excuse me sir I'm Jewish but and that comment was anti-semitic could you not do that type of thing now what would be the response of that um of that sergeant he would say oh isn't that sweet a little anti-semitic boy, why did you do 20 push-ups?
Now, why is he doing that so cruy? He's doing it because the the boy's job is to be disposable, to be willing to die and and and to be part of the war machine and complaints about, oh, I'm s being sensitive is squeaky wheel in the war machine and it doesn't work the it doesn't work as well. And so he has the fear uh that he cannot speak up about his real feelings, his real v vulnerabilities. And that creates toxicity. But it's not from male privilege and male power. It is from um the the male obligation to be disposable, the expectation to be disposable, whether it's at war or 93% of the occupational deaths in hazardous jobs um are male.
And so it's in in whether it's in war or work um or or going to the top of a corporate ladder. Uh when you go to the top of a corporate ladder, you're not a human being. You're a human doing. Um and you're far more likely to be stressed out by working 708 hour 80 hours a week. Some people want to do that. But if you if if the expectation is on you to do that in order to be worthy of of being loved by women, uh then exactly what creates toxicities is also what creates your ability to attract women. Yeah, that's really interesting. One one of the passages you have in your book that you talk about workplaces that valued the difference many women brought to work rather than expecting women to just join to the traditional male work style were rewarded with women who felt valued for contributing in the way they could contribute best.
Similarly, dads are far more inspired to be involved when they're valued for fathering in the way that fathers tend a father tends to father by doing, exploring, playful, playfully teasing, encouraging physical risktaking while being trusted as a safety net. Bonding through play, coaching, roughousing, and using the leverage of the father child bond to enforce boundaries. When mom gatekeeps dad into fathering in the way she feels a father should father, dad feels like a devalued babysitter. Feeling unwanted, he tends to withdraw, neglect his children, increase his time at work, or even another woman he feels will value him. And I I thought that was so interesting because it kind of bookends what you were just saying moments ago in terms of the male toxicity in the youthful cohort, brings it forward into the fathering role where you have women demanding men participate more.
But I always ask and something I talk about in my book, The Gospel of Ze is, you know, is that participation to be just designed by a woman, the wife? In my case, I was very lucky because Jeanie valued the kind of participation you're talking about. And so that was the thing that made our marriage really work amongst many other things she did. But I do know couples and and books um that sort of outline what men should be doing. And basically most of the time it just mirrors what we're traditional women's roles rather than carving out any space for the man. Yeah. So it's always about doing more dishes.
It's always about doing more domestic work, you know, whereas in my experience that I talk about in the Gospel of Zip because of who Genie was, you know, in older age, I'm able to do a lot of that work simply because she's my best friend and I want to spell her. But when we were working out our child care together, you know, I was able to approach what I did in child care in my own kind of hands-on way. So, for instance, I'd have my granddaughter or my grandson out doing building projects with me using a table saw, learning to build, to hammer, to do, and you know, Jeannie wasn't standing there saying, "Well, why don't you come in and do the dishes instead?" She was letting me do that man stuff, not just with grandsons, but with granddaughters. So, I was so taken by the way you balance your argument in the book by sort of both ends. You bookend it.
talk about young men and problems of of missing fathers and so forth that you also bring it up to speed in terms of you know more mature relationships and I think you know um you know I just hope your book is read by women who want to understand the problem who haven't altogether given up on on a marriage or whatever because I think you'll have a better understanding of men there's so many so so many so many insights in the book that I feel like society has not assimilated I mean, um, you know, at one point I I, you know, I noticed you even expressing some sympathy or at least giving sort of an empathic context for somebody like Harvey Weinstein who had like, you know, driven himself to the edge in terms of work and had ruined his body and, you know, then kind of like, you know, this feminine sustenance that he was getting was kind of what he saw as his like compensation or something. Um, and also a point you make because I I have a friend like a friend who has a film and video company and you know he's had to tell his people that he works with no flirting. You know, anything that can be seen as a flirt, anything that could be, you know, you can't like ask somebody to give you like a neck massage or, you know, any anything is because that could easil easily lead to the whole thing being ruptured. And um you know where you were talking about how this has actually become like a new part of like a mating strategy in a strange way where like um um you know cuz in a way women to choose their mates they sort of put the men through like a sort of perilous or precarious passage and now it's like they have to negotiate the dangers of the human resources you know and if they if the me too cancellation can can you explain that a little bit that was so fascinating. Yes.
Um may I will definitely get to that and let me just pick up if I may on something that Frank was talking about because I think it's so core for um for every mom or woman listening to this. Um so and and I want to make it clear that um that men don't talk about the things that I that I'm going to be saying in a few minutes and women can't hear what men don't say. So this is not a women at fault or men at fault. um the men don't know the reason I wrote the boy crisis is because nobody knows about this research and it's so important to know about it. So, for example, um let's say you have three children and um you're a dad and your inclination is to say take your, you know, throw the three kids on the on the couch and saying, "Okay, you jump on my back and um and the game here is the three of you pin me down or I pin the three of you down together and whoever and let's see who wins." And mom's looking at this and she's thinking, "Oh my god, somebody's going to get hurt here.
I feel like with my with dad, I have only one more child to monitor. U you know what what is this?" But dad doesn't say to mom, you know, that that roughousing actually leads to children being able to be more empathetic. Now, who would ever have connected roughousing with empathy? Um, and so and so and and no and dads can't be expected to know that because the research was not read by, you know, it was not not in any women's magazines or parenting magazines and so on. And yet, so what is the what's the common sense of this when you know when dads um are doing that roughousing?
Uh usually somebody mom is ex mom's feeling and fear is that somebody's going to get hurt and mom often says to herself you know I don't want to the kids don't though do seem to be having a lot of fun so I don't want to interfere with their fun and you know be controlling etc. So I'll I'll lay off but I'm just so fearful that um somebody's going to get hurt. the mom's only about 99% likely to be right sooner or later. And so the u and then she feels guilty that she didn't interfere because the kids are now hurt, but here's what's going on. Um yes, somebody's hurt.
And dad says um eventually. And dad says, "Okay, Jimmy, if you put your um your elbow in your sister's eye like that again, u there'll be no more roughousing." And the kids and the kids go, "Okay, okay, we won't do that again." But then they get into the excitement of roughousing and they do do that again. Um and so dad says, "All right, now um you did what I told you not to do, so there's no more roughousing until maybe at least a week." Um oh, Dad, no, no, we're sorry. We won't do it again. And so what dad is doing is not setting a boundary here, but this is really crucial.
Not setting a boundary, but enforcing a boundary. Moms set more boundaries than dads do, but dads enforce more boundaries than moms do. Children under mom care um um have they may have an earlier bedtime, but under dad's care with setting a later bedtime, the children get to bed earlier. And so and so what happens here is that dad has now made it clear to the the kids that they have to think of someone else's needs aside from theirs. Now mom would 100% agree with that and say that. But when something is violated, the mom is much more likely on average and sometimes these roles are reversed.
Um, on average, a mom is more likely to say, "Sweetie, I told you not to not to do that type of roughousing with your brother or your sister." Um, and so and she'll repeat that. But the kids learn that they can tend to ignore the person who sets boundaries and only repeats them. Yeah. And um, and so this is um, and so the the children learn they have no option but to think of their sisters and brothers needs. Hence the groundwork for empathy. But much much more important than that, they also are learning that they would like to push their sister and brother around to win, but they need to have postponed gratification in order to get um in order to continue that roughousing.
And postponed gratification is the single biggest predictor of success or failure in life. And so dads have to be able to explain these things in this loving type of way to mom and mom has to explain what she feels is going too far and then do what I call checks and balance parenting so they both can hear um hear each other. Yeah. And you do that deferred gratification line runs through your book uh which I really like amongst other things. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, Frank, I I was sort of interested. I my my goal, my my my my my theory or I, you know, dream of the interview was somehow to weave together some of the Christian nationalist evangelical themes, you know, with the sort of new patriarchal culture.
So, maybe you could take a minute or two and just explain kind of like your own experience and background in in all of that and and how what left you kind of understanding. Well, yesterday, two days ago on my podcast, I interviewed two women who are both Ph Ds who have written a book together on the whole phenomena from the 1970s up to the present of the success of quote unquote Christian parenting books. Um, they ought to drop all of them and just read Warren's books instead. Um, but they were making a very harsh critique of the kind of mandatory physical punishment, beatings and so forth, churches selling wooden spoons in their gift shops to spank your children with. There's a whole subculture, some of it tied into the homeschool movement, but the whole thing is kind of a an idea of biblical order.
And more secular critics misunderstand this as a kind of a patriarchical form, but it's more than that. It's that you have an ordered universe. You have God. You have the father and the family, the mother and the children. And the children are there basically to be raised not just to be good humans, but to be raised within an atmosphere of religious conditioning. So they're good humans are going to go to heaven because they have correct theology. So it's an incredible mix. And of course I told these women that were interviewing me or rather I was interviewing them that I took their book very personally because I came out of a background like that and my parents were missionaries and her all of us kids were draoned into the family.
So there was a kind of a built-in hypocrisy. We were almost like traveling salesmen in the sense that people came to my parents' mission of Libri Fellowship in Switzerland. Oddly in Switzerland, but being raised by American missionaries and we children were always told directly um that how we behave toward people would really result in them becoming quote Christians. In other words, accepting Jesus as their personal savior, following with our kind of theology or not. So literally my earliest memories as a child are learning to behave based on the fact that not good behavior was something good in itself but this was a form of propaganda. So you know we presented one image to our family of our family to people while in the meantime in private my father hit my mother.
My mother was totally wonderful in public and then very neglectful of us kids to the point when I was finally dumped in a British boy's boarding school at age 10. I couldn't read. And that wasn't because I'm stupid. It's because literally I was being quote homeschooled but completely inattentively. So maybe some student would be given a work study program and told to teach Frankie something. I was running free in the Swiss Alps, which I have wonderful memories of, but not learning any of the things children learn. Um and so you know when I look back on my own background and my journey from that and then my father became very famous and along with Sever Coupe uh who was surgeon general at the time made this film series that I wrote and directed for them called Whatever Happened to the Human Race that was really the beginning of the evangelical pro-life movement.
And you know I knew the Bush family and the and and Reagan and all these other people. We were sch smoozing with those groups. And as I talk about in my book um the gospel of zip you know in those days genie and I were making a lot of money out of a sort of a nepotistic connection and what what I used to call god cash um and there was a lot of god cash around and so that's the background I came out of and then of course fast forward to the present tense with Donald Trump in the white house 83% of evangelicals voted for him they voted for him so he would reestablish the kind of order they believe in. And so when you look at project 2025 and I knew those guys, you know, at the Heritage and all these other foundations, we were in on the beginning of all this stuff, the Federalist Society, the whole bit. We knew all the key players.
You know, they saw what they saw as the breakup of the family, not as a bad thing because of the boys Warren writes so feelingly about that get hurt when there's not a father at home, but that this would lead to societal chaos, which was not God's plan for the human race. So the order they wanted to impose was a kind of a a divine order through human agency which is why they wound up accepting Donald Trump because they talked themselves into believing that God had sent him to us to establish order. Never mind he's corrupt, thrice married, divorced, all the things they say they don't believe in, but God's chosen him to do the hard work to, you know, sock it to the liberals who have caused all this disorder. So you know that's my background and of course um journeying as a married man and a father out of that background trying to be a father and then a grandfather you know what I write about in the gospel of zip is two things it's a personal journey but it's also a narrative of really looking at the kind of philosophical evangelical background I had and presuppositions I accepted as a young person or had drum drumed into me how I departed from that and then ironically in terms of my case having departed from the quote family values crowd. I began to have actual family values and really put my family first because I'm no longer this hierarchical oppressor.
You know, I'm in love with my wife. And people say, "Well, why did you change? You know what? Let expecting a theological kind of insight." And I'm saying, you know, and I'm not being I'm not trying to be a smartass here, but literally I was in love with Jeanie and really got sick of being this this this doineering person. And the same with my children. I really loved my children. was looking for better ways to be a parent, ways that actually are reflected very much in your book, Warren. Um, so I had to kind of unlearn a patriarchal construct and then reform myself based on what works.
And what doesn't work is this kind of harsh top-own discipline. What does work is the thing you talk about with this grandfather who says to his grandson, you know, the best part of my life is being with you. And I feel that way with, you know, I have I'm looking out at my yard here and all the building projects I have out here I've done with my children and grandchildren. Not because I want to teach them carpentry, but because um it's a way to it's a way to love a child to be with them and to tell them I'd rather be doing this than anything else. My granddaughter Lucy, and then I'll quit rattling on, but she's 17 now and she's one of my five younger grandchildren.
She's at a high school about 45 minutes away and gets migraine headaches. and the other day and just did it again this week, by the way, the same thing. And I have this in my book. Um, but she did it again last week, so it's not an exception. She says, "Well, mom called dad, said, I'm coming down with a migraine. Would he come get me?" And I said, "You know, don't call dad. Call Ba." She calls me Ba, grandfather. Um, he'll come. And and Becky, my daughter-in-law, called John first. And indeed, he couldn't come down because he was stuck in a in a meeting. But and Lucy said, "Well, I told you to call BA first." Um, and then and then she says, "I knew what your reply would be." And it was, "I'm on the way." And she says, "You know, I told her, of course, B will come." And that is literally like having won the Nobel Peace Prize to me.
There's a 17-year-old girl growing up and the same, my grandson would say the same. Call Ba because of course he will come. he'll drop everything and come because you know as and I told her again two days ago I said you're the most important thing in my life you know I'm I you know as long as I'm alive you'll have someone who's in your corner and you're not fit in with other things you are my priority yes it took me you know I've been married 56 years it's taken me an arc of time whereas with my parents it was like no we're doing an important meeting this is the Lord's work um you know uh we're doing God's work here and by the greet people at the door in a friendly way because it's a good witness to them. But then as soon as that person's gone, my dad's shouting at my mother and sometimes hitting her. So there was a total level of hypocrisy.
Um and that's my background. So for me, the learning curve from that kind of patriarchy to to where I'm at today. Yes. Yes. Was literally based on trying to be better at loving. Yes. Yes. That's my story. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that, Frank. That's really powerful. You know, one thing I appreciate about about um your perspective, Warren, is I felt like um yeah, I mean, you know, you obviously would see the value in monogamous marriage, but you seem to also have a pretty kind of like even-handed acceptance of all the different ways that, you know, and reasons that men and women come together. Um um I I don't know if you want to expand on that but uh you know you talked about how um yeah you know men seeking sex is a very normal natural thing you know in a way you know um yeah um but let's um yeah I'm curious let's see um well you know what are you seeing now Warren in in the culture around these issues are you seeing like progress are you seeing regress I mean people talk a lot about like porn dating apps the impact of like social media, how that's like transforming male female relationships.
People are saying there's like less sex right now. Um, and then you have the sort of incel culture, but I think Nick Fuentes, who's one of the the leaders of the incelss, I think he just declared that he was actually a virgin even though in his late late 20s, uh, which is a badge of honor for men in that in that in that subculture. Yeah. What's what's going on? How how do we explain this? How do we get out of it? Yeah. So many things are going on. So I I'd say fir first and foremost is that men males have during the last 50 years I would say um since um the beginning of the feminist movement basically they've been learning that you know bas on some level women good men bad uh they've been experiencing you know all of the things that um as I said before that the you know the women's movement started out as I am woman I am strong but it's really focused increasingly and I am woman I've been wronged and the people who have wronged me are men and that um and so a lot of women have um and so that's one dimension of that u the another is that the um that the good news is that women have had many more opportunities um to earn money and and they're now doing very well in many cities 30 cities they're are earning more than men even though they choose jobs that are far more likely to not be hazardous and to to um to to not have the I wrote a book called um um the um why men earn more.
Um and in why men earn more, I outlined 25 things that men do in the workplace that lead to them earning more money and 25 things that women do in the workplace to to lead to them having more balanced lives. And so uh and so then and things like you know hazardous jobs as I mentioned before uh things like being commuting further to work, working more hours, working at jobs that are that are much more less less rewarding. Um all all things like working at the hazardous jobs. If you look at your home um you'll see, you know, it's built from lumber and lumberjacks are the most ha um hazardous job in in the in the world. And then, you know, then those those pieces of lumber are taken by truck drivers u who have one of the haz most hazardous jobs.
Two construction workers who one construction worker dies at every workday hour. And so all these things are things that women are less likely to do. You don't see women welding on the top of um of skyscraper buildings uh risking their lives. And so um but um so do I want women so what one of the things I say in the in in that book is um that if you you know if you want to live a better more balanced life do the things that women do. If you want to earn more money and lead a life where you're likely to be more likely to be damaged or hurt or die sooner um you know do what men do.
And so um and so but the where I was going with that is that as women have earned more money they have the option of not marrying men for money but they don't exercise that option. They usually are unwilling to marry men who are earning less than they are earning or unless they're becoming a lawyer or a doctor. Um, and so the women are still in the old school of being interested in marrying men who earn as much or more even when they are earning a lot. And then they usually complain or often complain about I'm I I I'm so resentful that men can be have it all men and they can have a wife, they can have children, they have a career and so but I can't be a have it all woman. And that is so depriving women of an understanding of how they can be a have it all woman.
You can be a have it all woman uh by um by marrying a man who does earn less who is more of a nurturer connector than a provider protector type of personality and he can raise be the primary raiser of children when men are the primary raiser of children. Um, of course, this is a self- selected static stat statistic here, but when men are the primary raise raiser of children, the children do ex better than in any other circumstance except for an intact family where both mother and father are raising children. And so um and so this mom and one of the reasons for that is a mom who's a CEO or a top um corporate executive, she'll still make sure she gets back to the children's birthday party and the recital and so on. men who are CEOs will be more likely to say, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm I'm going to California this week or New York this week.
I can't be with the birthday party, but you know, you call call up and do it on Zoom." But the um but the important thing here is that the women have an enormous opportunity now that that men exercise when they were earning more money, which is to marry women who earn less money um and be able to support them. But women are not exercising that form of power. There's still they're still marrying men who earn as much or more. And that's depriving everybody. It's depriving the nurturer connected type of men. It's depriving the children most importantly. And it's it's also depriving the the mother of having that feeling of being a have it all person.
Yes, if your dream is to is to be a CEO or to be an inventor or to be um somebody else along those lines, um then go for that dream. But don't look for a man who's earning more or nobody will be around to take care of the children. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's an incredible point. And one of the things that I uh talk about in my book is the fact that when you look when I one of the books, you know, there are a few books that stand out on my mind. And by the way, your book, The Boy Crisis, that would have been quoted all through mine if I had read it first.
So, you know, there's always a later edition. But, um, thank you. You know, somebody I quote at length is Elizabeth Marshall Thomas who in the 1950s her father founded Rathon and crazy guy decides one day in the mid 1950s, I'm leaving Rathon for a year and we're going to go to the Kalahari because I want to live with the Kung the Sand people, which is the oldest indigenous continuous hunter gatherer group in the world. He knew they were out there. They had never had any outside contact until Elizabeth Thomas Marshall went there with her mother um who was also studying them and they lived on and off in the Kalahari for a year when Elizabeth uh was I think 17 to 19 in that age thing and then later she wrote this book called the old way and what struck me is that she wrote it in a you know it's not a it's not in the within the time span they were living there in the 50s is preodern feminism in other words she's not making any points in this book except what she saw.
And the point I'm making is that when you read her book, The Old Way, what you discover, the balance between men and women and nurturing, um, and for that matter, the inclusion of elderly people in the in the in the fabric of the community sounds like, you know, a mixture of sort of, you know, Jesus and a feminist wrote it because it's all about nurturing and the men are doing it from from all ages. In other words, the teenage boys are playing with the children. The teenage girls are playing with the children. The men and the women are sitting around together taking care of the toddlers. The women are all have important careers because they are the gatherers in the hunter gathering.
When the meat comes back into the camp, the men don't get to distribute it. The women do because it evens it out. So they, you know, they lived there successfully for, and I'm not making a number up, 100,000 years. Wow. Well, we haven't done anything for 100,000 years. So the the crazy thing is is what the sand people that Elizabeth Marshall Thomas lived with, and it's terrific book, by the way, The Old Way. It's it reads beautifully, and she also writes wonderful books about her dogs and getting older, and she's a terrific writer. But what what amazed me about reading the old way is that everything that I talk about in terms of what I advocate, which is exactly what you've just said, in other words, what you've talked about in terms of relationships and men who are nurturers, the kind of child care I've been giving my grandchildren, um, now three of whom live across the street for the last 17 years, um, is reflected in the sand people in the Kalahari and they've been doing that for 100,000 years and it's why they survived.
and you know interesting tells for instance they were asking young people how do you you know tell me how you do such a thing and the standard answer was I don't know the old people haven't told me yet so the aged were there in the community as the key educators when they couldn't hunt or gather anymore the women are getting twothirds of the food so their careers are more important than the men's the men get protein once in a while but that's a luxury what they're eating is the tubers and the things they're digging up. That's women's work. So the women literally have the career that keeps everybody alive. And while they're out gathering, the men are back at camp taking care of the children. Wow.
Wow. Interesting. And then of those men, two or three go out and hunt. Mhm. And then if they come back, the women distribute it and the teenage boys and girls are as a form of play are taking care of the kids. I was just blown away because essentially in my book I was able to get to Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's book and quote her and or paraphrase her to make my point so that what I was doing as a grandfather caring for three of my five grandchildren who live across the street is not some new post feminist phenomena. This is how it has always been until agriculture, modern cities and career as we understand it.
So, I just found terrific comfort in the fact that what I was what I was responding to on a human level wasn't because I'm kind of an unusual weird guy, which I may be, but it actually has much deeper roots than any modern phenomena. I've actually I've actually done a lot of work visiting different indigenous cultures and writing about them. I visited the ship um Sequoia and the Amazon and the Kogi Arak people in Colombia and the Mazitecs in Mexico and um the Hopi in Arizona and so on and the Bui and so on and um yeah I mean I I I think you do see um you know more nurturing systems you know also kind of like you know the whole nuclear I mean this is a whole another topic of discussion in a way like the the nuclear family structure um has is problematic for raising kids because you have a single mother or single parent who has to invest so much life energy into that whereas in in a tribal structure everybody kind of looks after the kids like I was in Africa I saw you know different women breastfeeding the same baby and so on that was just like like normal for them um and and another element in indigenous societies which I wrote about there's an anthropologist Pierre Klaus who wrote a book called um society against the state and he argued that um a lot of indigenous cultures don't have hierarchical ical power. Like even though there's a chief, the chief is actually kind of given their throne or whatever by the women of the the council of grandmothers. And if they try to order people into battle, the the people just laugh at them and run away.
But you know, they they they were the mediators, the storytellers, they held the knowledge of the community. And um um you know, in that in that way, they had they had power. Um, so to me it's interesting that we're seeing um, you know, like we're seeing the opposite of what you guys are talking about right now in terms of the, you know, the menosphere, you know, the the the image and and sort of archetypes of masculinity that, you know, the sort of culture is focusing on right now, whether it's like Trump or Hegath or Andrew Tate, uh, um, you know, and so all these people are like, um, kind of um, yeah, there there's um, um, Um, it's it's like, you know, the man is not supposed to be the nurture. The man is supposed to be the aggressor. I mean, I I guess the ultimate model is is is like the extreme risktaker who wins it all.
So, Elon Musk, you know, took all these risks and therefore he gets to send his sperm to women he doesn't even know and make babies with them because he can afford that. Um, and um, you know, run these companies in this very like risk-taking way where he's like risking now the whole planet, you know, with these destruction of the environment and so on. I mean, you know, it feels like we need, you know, this where I think it comes back to religion and spirituality. Like, um, you know, I think people are lost right now and, you know, Christianity is is a rigid and and regressive structure from the past that people are gravitating to because they don't know what else to do. Uh and I'm wondering if either of you guys I certainly have my own ideas think about what would be I mean do do we need sort of a new culture of like initiation or some new way for I mean I guess in a way nurturing could be a form of initiation but you know in every indigenous culture around the world there there's a there's a there's a you tends to be a structured mechanism for young people to go through a journey of of consciousness and come back more mature whether it's like a walkabout or IA or or whatever.
or um I don't know um you know Warren what what what are your thoughts on this? I mean I mean yeah I I'll pick I'll pick up on the menosphere part of it as that's often mentioned and and that's um so I think the the two biggest clues as to what the menosphere is about is the word incel which means involuntarily celibate and then um uh and then also let's let's work with that for a moment. Um, involuntarily celibate suggests that the man doesn't want to be celibate, but feels that when he's involved with a woman, uh, that that there could be, for example, a a child created and that he would not have um that he would have to pay the bill and she would she has the option of raising the child and so he has no connection to it. Um, and there isn't a man's birth control pill. And every time that he's reached out to to women, he's been rejected.
Usually, he's not at the top of the, you know, of of the earning scale and the and the success scale. And so, he feel so he feels like even though he'd love to be with women, uh, that he's experiencing what what is called the jinny coefficient. And the Jenny coefficient is that u that a very small that women are attracted to a very small percentage of men like maybe 10 or 20% of men. And those 10 or 20% of men yes they can have sex with women but if he's in the lower 10 or 20 or 30% of of men there's he he no woman is really interested in him. And to some extent there's a genie coefficient in the reverse.
if she's very if she's not attractive at all, he's not interested in her. But at any rate, his his his hurt and his pain about being in um rejected has led him to be celibate. And so that creates a setup with that that interacts with AI and pornography and so on. Video games. Yes, exactly. And there and so he is um able now to um he as a celibate person, what does he turn to? He turns to pornography. And pornography is set up with a series of algorithms where he can um where he can be turn um you find out what turns you on and then you give give AI feedback and it and it modifies to do more of what turns you on and you can and you keep modifying and modifying that until you're getting exactly um what you want from the pornographic um messages.
And so but the result of that of getting exactly what you want is that that when you are with a woman, if you are with a woman, uh you are so addicted to her the the response being exactly what turns you on that in any normal human relationship, you get a much more complex and nuanced and different considerations. You have to consider what turns her on also. and you have to have normal conversations and you have to have interactions and you have to have deal with criticism and you criticizing her, she criticizing you and so on and so and so it doesn't prepare these men uh for um a a human relationship. Um and so we have and this is of course has never existed before in the old days. You know, when I was first interested in seeing a woman naked, you know, I' I'd have to sneak to the back of the library and find some art book uh that showed me that a woman almost naked and um and that would be my, you know, my my turnon.
Um and so, but nowadays it's made for you. And so that so what I'd like us to see about the manosphere or um you know whether it is incelss or mg men going their own way um and is that the the way AI is set up is that the more outrageous your comment is your contribution is the more feedback you'll get the more um the more response you'll get um and therefore the more the um AI I will be able to get advertisements and so on. The result of that is that that there's a bribe to make these men make negative comments about women because those will get more responses than than otherwise. But men doing negative comments about women are coming from hurt and pain combined with AI magnifying them. And I think the best way of looking at the manosphere is is is the statement saying um that um men's an that anger is vulnerability's mask.
That anger is vulnerability's mask. And whenever you see somebody as angry, always ask yourself, how are they vulnerable? The moment you do that, you respond when you when you respond to anger it and a feeling of anger, you respond to anger with anger. But when you hear vulnerability or you see the vulnerability behind the anger, you respond to vulnerability with empathy. And when you see the anger in the manosphere um and especially when it's magnified by the u by all the algorithms um just feel that as as as hurt as as um and and and vulnerability. And if we if we respond to it that way and these men hear that somebody really understands how it must have been to have a child um and that love that child and then have a divorce and not be able to have access to that child.
But to pay child support uh for somebody who prevents you from having access to the child and the more you you're prevented from having access to that child, the more child support she gets. Um, and so that creates such anger and loss because he's lost his wife, he's lost his child, and he's lost the ability to attract another woman because he's having to pay child support. That's the vulnerability. And when and when when men like this feel empathized with as opposed to attacked, um, their anger can come can be reduced. Where do you see kind of like, uh, Warren in terms of your work, spirituality or like a yearning for transcendence?
uh playing a role. I I'll I'll give an example of this. Um the uh I was speaking years ago to in Bedford Sty, which is one of the poorest communities in the country. Um and the um and it was to a group of about 700, a congregation of about 700 in a church, a congregation about 700 African-Americans. Um and the a after I was finished doing my presentation the minister of the church um had formed um automatically when males joined um he formed men's groups and because I formed about 300 men's groups around the country and he knew that um he said I'd like you to meet with these young men's groups that that I formed and there were 32 men um each uh in four different groups that had gone through this and of those 32 men Um 28 of them had said that they had been in prison.
Um and um and of those 28 almost every one of them said um that they uh well I think there were two exceptions uh that they had minimal or no father involvement. They were dad deprived. And what the the church that there were two things that saved them from doing the things that led them to getting into prison. One was that they that that they felt that that that the that the church introduced them to God the Father and that the and that was number one. And number two was that the minister um actually took interest in them and um and they took interest in them by telling them what they did well and also talking to them about what they were doing poorly.
And almost every one of those men said, "I would um if I did not have these two things in my life, I would be doing the things that led me to prison." Um again um and so uh while I I myself uh so one of the things I want to be aware of is that whether or not you believe in God um that there's that many people who do find it so important to feel that somebody is looking out for them, somebody is loving them, somebody is caring. It doesn't make any difference really what religion it is. Um you can um and and the the Catholicism probably creates um employment for more therapists than any other than anything else. Um but some people I think Judaism is a has its own share. and Judaism certainly.
Yes. The the old story of giving two ties to a a child per Hanukkah and um the child coming back and saying, "Mom, I love this tie." And then mom saying, "Um, you know, what's wrong with the other tie?" Those those types of things create lots of psychological problems for sure. Um and but um but also let's be aware of people who need that feeling of somebody cares about me whether that's the no matter what religion that's from and no matter how screwed up the religion is. Yeah. Um it has have its its functions. Uh so yeah I'm curious Frank what do you think about this?
I mean do you feel that what you saw in the evangelical movement in the church? It was kind of like there was like a a true you know kind of yearning for you know spirituality or transcendence or was it more like um a psychological situation where you know in in in in Warren sense people were were looking for somebody to care about them and um the structure kind of like meshed with their you know like patterns and stuff like that. Well I think a bit of both but I think the reality is that all of us are on a life journey of learning and that goes for the spiritual journey as well. So, you know, someone will quote something I wrote 20 years ago in a book and they'll say, you know, how could you say that? And I said, well, I don't know because I'm this is 20 years later and I've changed my opinion uh on this and and so everything that I write that's non-fiction and fiction too, you know, after 12 or 15 books or whatever, um is a snapshot of where you are then.
So, I can only talk about where I'm at now. And where I'm at now is someone who has a tremendous respect for and value uh for the part religion plays in people's lives, including my own, which is why I'm willing to appear a bit of a fool when I say I'm an atheist who prays, because I do. The first thing I do every morning is get up and and say, "Thank you for this day. I offer you my day." And then go through the list of my family and ask for their protection. And then when I'm walking and the sun's coming up and I'm going home to a loving wife and she's, you know, we're going to have a second cup of coffee, I literally spend the whole time just saying, "Thank you, Lord." Now, do I believe God exists in an intellectual framework that I can defend with the kind of apologetics my father made philosophical basis to life?
No, I don't. Um, I go back and forth with that. But do I sometimes feel that my spiritual journey is being answered and I'm heard? Yes, because I see a shape to my life which I take as a blessing. Is it a blessing or was it just I was lucky and have you know I mean my my email my my partner Ernie who is gay and married to his husband who's a pastor by the way in Phoenix, Arizona and who's produced my podcast for 10 years and is a wonderful person joked the other day and said, "Well, it's all very fine for you to write in in in the Gospel of Zip about how marriage is so wonderful in children.
I mean, you got lucky, you know, when you're 17 years old, the most beautiful woman in the world walks into the chalet in Switzerland, says, "I marry you." I mean, and he was joking because it wasn't like that. But I've been fortunate. But when I look back and I and and this is I'll be serious for a minute. Where I am most thankful to God and put the most emphasis on my journey being spiritual as well as secular is in my failures. Because had certain things worked the way I wanted them to, it would have been ruinous to my life, to my marriage, to my relationships.
And the best things in my life have come out of the times when I have failed the most miserably and had to figure out why I failed and put things together differently. And I'll give you a specific example that relates exactly to Warren and what he writes about. I was too harsh with my children because I passed on to them what I had had, especially with my daughter who was my first child. And it wound up many years later when she was about 20 and I was in my 40s and we were on a walk where she was living in Finland with her husband and I just stopped and I literally got down on my knees and apologized and I said, "I I've come to a place now where I recognize I'm not the person I was then. I am so sorry I slapped you.
Please forgive me." and she did and we are literally best friends because it was built on a recognition that I had failed. So the warmth of our relationship in a weird way comes out of the fact that she has a father who begged her forgiveness and the grace of that forgiveness literally changed the way I move forward. And I'm a totally different grandfather than I was as a father. And even by the time my youngest son John was coming along, having realized how I failed with Jessica in so many ways, and by the way, she's, you know, speaking of women, she's a very successful woman and is a consultant to the European Union on energy policy. She's wicked crazily and and earns more than her husband and all the rest of it and stays home and helps with children and they've raised a wonderful family.
So, the story is all good. But what I'm saying is is I have been in the position of recognizing myself as you know tragically failed at times and if I had met those failures with hubris and just said well I'll keep trying the same thing it would have been a disaster and where I see grace in my life is that from who knows where I had the insight to understand that this was an opportunity to change something and when I and the same in the movie business I directed four shitty Hollywood movies which I got as you know when I got myself an agent out there after I made all those documentaries with my dad. If those had succeeded and we had moved to LA and I'd raised my kids in the LA environment as a semi-successful director of ship movies, if they had done just a little better, we would have done that. Thank God they didn't because I've written some pretty decent books and earned a lot less money. But we live in a little place in the middle of New England and and my grandchildren live across the street and though, you know, I see paths converging, but they're based on the fact that my plans didn't work out.
Yeah. you know what I wanted most at that moment. You know, if you'd told me 30 years from now, you're going to thank God this movie, you know, tanked at the box office and, you know, you're going to have to move back to New England with your tail between your legs as a failed movie director, I would have said, you're crazy. You know, this I've been working for years to to this point. Now I look back and I say, I'm across the street from three grandchildren. Um I'm with the same woman I've loved all these years. If this had if you change something on this path Yeah.
Yeah. So, you know, sometimes I tell people who are facing a bad moment, you know, uh or have faced bad times, including women who have been abused, you know, and people like Tia Levings, whose book I've reviewed for her, you know, who's written a well-trained wife, all these bestsellers by women who are complaining about really bad things that do happen to them. But one of the things that we all sort of come to agree on when your life starts working out, that there was no other path to that moment but the one you're on. And if you start going back and changing the details, even the bad stuff that happens, you don't get to this moment. Yeah.
I think what you're saying is so important and it's so important for somebody who is su has suicidal tendencies to really understand um how so frequently Liz, my wife, um I we met 31 years ago and fell in love immediately, but you know, we sometimes look back and say, you know, these were the there had to be at least 10,000 things that happened. exactly as they happened, good and bad, in order for us to have met each other and been together. It's really it really is mystical and quite quite amazing. And it all and and and it really is a value for many people whether they believe in God or not to to know how to be grateful um to to speak to oneself or somebody that you imagine out there about the gratitude that you have for the way things are. Well, I don't think we're going to have time today for me to share my own personal story, but it's completely different and in some ways opposite where I'm started out as a, you know, bohemian in in New York, uh, you know, kind of avanguard culture.
My mother was part of the beach generation in the 50s. My dad was an abstract painter and um yeah ended up writing my first book breaking open the head on shamanism and visionary plants and ended up you know finding you know from from scientific materialism and atheism ending up with a different set of beliefs in like shamanism and the philosophy of analytic idealism which posits that there is is an underlying consciousness of which everything is kind of ultimately made and so on which is very similar to Tibetan Buddhism and so on. So I ended up with a kind of esoteric or mystical perspective. Um and I guess yeah I mean what what I wanted to kind of circle back to a little bit was um um yeah kind of like you know this sense of this precarious state of of the United States right now and um you know I kind of like um and how this boy crisis and men crisis that uh you know Warren focuses on seems to be at the crux of it. And um you know it it you know unfortunately even though we've had decades of you know feminist movements, men's movements, ecology movements, social movements, spirituality and so on feels like everything has gotten even more drastic.
Like even a lot of people I knew who were part of kind of like I thought they were part of like a sort of progressive new age healing culture ended up kind of getting confused by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and antivaccines and the self-s sovereignty movement and sucked into MA and so on. And uh I'm just curious like I'm curious for both you guys like do you see a way back? I mean do you see you know Warren do you I mean I know you've been doing these men's groups. I do you see like a you know and you know the this whole idea that you know men need to become nurturers or and that women can you know kind of like expand their parameters of love to love men who are not their economic equals or betters.
that that that's that's a powerful idea that's not very culturally present, but it feels to me there's there's a bunch of them uh like that. Uh but but it also feels to me that um you know men and women are distinct and talking about like indigenous cultures like there is a way that men are meant to be kind of like hunters you know and women are kind of like you know designed to be kind of like gatherers and and kind of like you know hold the hearth fire together in some way and you know in in a in the way modern industrial society developed we don't we don't really have those opportunities you know so so men maybe feel they never get this kind of like warrior initiation they need and that's also kind of leading them into these delusionary realms where they end up even becoming like school shooters or something, you know, or or Yeah. So, what would you see any way like what how would what would be your vision of how we could, you know, move out of this this chaos into some into some, you know, more positive benevolent kind of order again, you know. Yes. Yeah.
I think we are make I think just recently after about 50 years of focusing on women and girls needs uh there is the beginning of some recognition that boys are having problems and men are having problems and that these men's pro the man who commits suicide is not just hurting himself. He's hurting his wife. He's hurting his mom and dad. He's hurting his children. he's leaving his um family feeling like, you know, maybe his kids feeling like maybe I'm destined to commit suicide when I'm that age, too. And so that that when only one sex wins, both sexes lose. And and and that's been there's the beginning of realizing that when we have a man crisis, it's also a woman's crisis.
Um but the uh and so that's just the beginning of the opening of the uh of the vision of we're all in this together. Um and that you know reading a book um and and that supporting women being whoever they want to be um is um wonderful and it's also this has not been about a history of men having advantages over women. men. Um, and and if you if you feel that this the world has been about male privilege and male power, then please read the myth of male power and the boy crisis. And the what you'll come away with is a much softer, heartfelt, loving connection to your father, your brother, your the the man you're maybe married to or might consider bearing to.
and you'll open your your heart to many a much wider diversity of men who are more like nurturer connectors rather than provider protectors and it really will have a deep impact on um your ability to love more fully in your life. So, so you you're saying that even though what we're seeing in the kind of likeec expressed projected world of like the Twitter scape and you know the sort of menosphere is all toggling more towards this aggressivity and like you know men need to women need to be baby machines again at a young age and we have to go back to regressive Christianity. you're you're you're you're saying that underneath that there's the be or or maybe that's a sign of a sort of beginning of an acknowledgement that men were kind of like mistreated. But I yeah, I'm just curious to see, you know, how that could resolve itself in any positive way. in in the positive type of way.
You know, the result of Trump winning is that the Democrats who have only been looking at women's issues for the last half half century have have suddenly said, "Oh my god, you know, we cannot win an election um if we've lost this, you know, this 18% of of um more men are voting for Trump than for um Democrats." Now, I I know almost no Democrat who who really knows how to be introspective about these things. Um but there is uh but u and I'm you know I ran for governor of California as a Democrat and so you know I'm on um on the left in mo most issues. Um but the um the the I haven't left the left. The left has left me in the extreme left. And so I think that there's there are people like James Carville who who is you know obviously a Democrat and was objecting to and the people who were the the head of the DNC, the Democratic National Committee.
uh they were all um very strong feminists in their orientation and they all um said that you know the Democratic party is the party of women and you know Carville just sort of like went like that and said you you can't be the party of just one gender and so even though he lost and somebody who was the one of the strongest opponents of um their thinking of the Democratic party as anything but the party of women I think we're beginning to see that if the Democratic party does not become introspective about why they're losing so many men and not just blaming the men as it being part this voting for Trump being part of toxic masculinity, but they understand that Trump is the the um the snake oil salesman that people will come to for magic if they're not heard. And if you're condescended to and put down for a half a century, uh you're not going to be voting for the people who put you down for and continue to put you down. And so that you know so the Democrats and the left has a lot of introspection to do and it's very hard work because you know and if you go into a university um and you're in the social sciences about 90 95% of the teachers are um democratic orientation and a university should never be a disproportionate percentage of Democrats or Republicans. It should be it should be a community where you're everybody is debating and thinking and learning how to sort of um think about things. It should always be about it should be the core the source of our real education which is questioning and knowing how to handle ideas we don't believe in.
Um and that requires professors who are on on multiple sides of the aisle so to speak. Yeah. I I disagree with you in some areas, but yeah, Frank, I'm curious to hear what your your perspective. I just literally agree with everything that Warren just said and it reflects the thinking I've been doing. Warren, one thing I found interesting in doing some research and writing on my book and what's been very helpful to me is half the authors that I interview are people that I'm genuinely I get so interested in their work, just like I'm I'm going to read uh The Myth of Male Power now as a follow-up to to um the book I read this morning, The Boy Crisis.
But um what I have found is interesting. Some of the introspection you're talking about is now being done by some women who are feminists who a few years ago would have been exactly what you're talking about. And one of them is somebody I quote and I'm going to read you a little something here from little section of my book. Um, how are young males doing in general? As literary critic, feminist, author, and friend Jessa Crispen, who gave me notes on this book, that's the gospel of Zip, writes in, "What is wrong with men?" A title we've heard before too many times. And but here's the here's the fun part.
Patriarchy, the crisis of masculinity, and how of course Michael Douglas films explain everything. So that's the tongue-in-cheek part like Falling Down and all those other movies. And she here quote here's here's Jessa writing and she is a feminist literary critic writes for the times does the whole thing. Men are still being asked to fulfill roles within the lives of women maybe become husbands and fathers and lovers and sons but the rules for what those roles might look like or what behaviors were desirable versus problematic are in question. Their father's mode of masculinity is useless to them as a guide. But no new model is presenting itself.
leaving men alone to try to navigate an uncertain time. End quote. And then I continue. And when one looks at our relationship culture from what Crisen calls a condemning feminist point of view, that's quoting her. It seems as she says that quote the bad men are the men who have not quote done the work. The so-called good men, this is all her, are men who have done the so-called work. Crispen notes that what the work is that's needed to change the bad men quote into good men quote or how it might be undertaken is never explained is the work therapy more education learning to listen more to do more dishes an exact 50/50 split in childare what is it Chrisen notes that today's younger men who still see the value of romantic connection and becoming fathers at all are asked to submit to a long list of things that they must do to be worthy of female love.
Men are seen by many women today as not merely having problems, but being the problem. The men are judged by many women as needing to prove themselves worthy of and capable of receiving love. The ones that fail the worthiness tests are labeled incelss, misogynists, bigots, contributors to rape culture, whatever. And then here's the punch line. Crisen says that the language of quote toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and mansplaining used by the political left, of which she's a part, has not been appealing to most men. Duh. Duh. Right. I write, "Duh." Uh, and then I say, "No one wants to be part of a movement that denigrates them." Which is exactly what you just said.
So, dot dot dot. And here's where it ends. All is not well even in the so-called secular circles. When trying to escape from toxic masculinity in today's society, there's no choice a young man can make, no path to follow that doesn't immediately become fraught and judged. In Crisen's words for young men, quote, "Patriarchy is over. What we have now is worse." And that's a feminist literary critic writing who, by the way, is married and has two kids and told me on my podcast that she had really changed by marrying someone, having children, and trying to put into practice some of these things. Yes. So, you know, the funny thing is, but if you if you saw her bio, you'd say, "Well, she's not going to get what Warren's saying." But the funny thing is the passages I just read, unless I misunderstood everything you've said for the last, you know, hour would be like something you'd quote because on your side.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's not because we lost an election. It's because this isn't working. And she The funny thing is I found more sympathy in her book for young men, a book called What's Wrong with Men? And basically by the time you're done, you're saying, "Well, this isn't her point of view." She's writing a book, What's Wrong with Men? basically trying to analyze where we've gone wrong in seeing so much wrong with men. Yes. So it was a it was a nice surprise and I quote her at length in in my book um the gospel of Zip and she gave me great notes and they help me you know think through things and so forth and so on.
So I have run into some quote left-wing people who are doing the introspection you're talking about. I'm so glad to hear that. Very glad to hear that. And two of them one is her and another one is another friend of mine who's a woman who was one of the founders of move on. org board. Mhm. And it's furious with the left now. And she used the same phrase you did. She says, "I haven't left the left. They left me." Yes. Yes. Exactly. I think the way we use that term is probably Go ahead, Warren. I'm sorry. Sorry. Go ahead. Oh, no. Just I I think that's that's wonderful and I'm so glad to hear that's there are there are people like that doing that because that's what will lead to men being understood.
Yeah. And that's what will lead to men feeling and and you know there's no one that can go through life feeling misunderstood because we we do you know we do get dopamine from being appreciated. we are, you know, biologically dependent upon a certain amount of appreciation and um and that's really um and and we need to and almost everybody who does anything um if you look at um if if it's destructive like a Parkland shooter um you know there was a documentary just done on my life recently and um and it it one of the things it did is feature the Parkland shooter who says you know um I've been criticized by everybody but when I'm finished doing my shooting, people will know who I am. And so, you know, just, you know, um the hurt and the pain if you see the vulnerability behind that, you know, that we all need to sort of when we see behaviors we don't like. Um there was um that we need to sort of see the vulnerability there.
And in seeing that vulnerability, you reach out with that um empathy and almost always people turn around and feel, you know, loved and that's what we need to be doing for Ben at this point in history. I think in a way like I mean I've heard this in a few places that um you know the the the Democratic party is sort of coded as feminine. It's kind of like a scolding annoying mother in a way or an oversuffocating mother. And then the Republicans in counteraction have become kind of like an abusive neglecting father you know in a way. Um but I mean neither is good and and um you know so yeah what what you know I also don't necessarily I don't always agree with this conflation between the Democrats and the left.
I you know I I tend to be more of a of a leftist like I don't believe there should be billionaires. You know I think we need to go back to serious progressive taxation and so on. So um yeah, I mean um you know you know I think I think that the the sort of power of big money has pulled the discourse and you know a lot of strategizing has gone into pulling the discourse in the US way far to the right wing. Um, and if we had a sane society, you know, we would be looking at, you know, what countries like Norway and Scandinavia do in terms of like helping our people and stuff like that, you know. Anyway, that's a little bit of an aside.
Um, well, you know, we've been speaking for a while. I really appreciate this dialogue and I feel like in a way we're just getting warmed up, so maybe we should consider, you know, doing it again and then forming other questions, going deeper. Uh, but I'd love to, you know, give you guys some some last thoughts, last words. I'm kind of curious really like um um yeah like uh well I know you've built you built a men's movement or you've been part of building that type of movement. Um I'm kind of curious uh considering from my perspective we're in dire straits right now you know with this toxic masculinity um out of balance in a way.
Um, and um, yeah, I don't, you know, it and with all the money behind it, you know, like Putin and and and the tech oligarchs have all, you know, kind of like drank the Kool-Aid of authoritarian, you know, AI weaponry and so on. Like it seems like it's really getting down to the wire and Well, and they're very, to go to Warren's point, when they talk, they're very against nurturing. Yeah. They're into domination and control in a way that makes your oldfashioned dad figure look like a, you know, gentle gentle female. I mean, these guys, you know, Warren, you know, Elon Musk and Peter Teal and all these guys, their ideal is, you know, women have the babies, do all the thing, and I'm going to go off and do these great male things.
I mean, the last they're the last people on earth who are in into helping raise a grandchild or a child. Oh, completely. And Peter Teal has talked about the antichrist a lot recently and he's basically he's equated the antichrist with any effort to build like a social safety net. He said that somebody like Greta Thurberg, this young young woman who risks her life to you know protest against the genocide in Gaza or you know to protest against uh this ecological destruction that she's a representative of the antichrist. And so any attempt to create social safety nets and you know I would say a lot of people are kind of gravitating to this weird you know conflation of tech you know kind of like uh you know kind of tech utopianism and part of the tech utopianism is this new pro pronatalism and I'm pratalist because the greatest pleasure in my life comes from my children and grandchildren period but they're not proatalists that way they're pronatalists in that they want the right sort of people born to the point where Peter Thiel and some of these other guys are funding new companies that do genetic testing of embryos not just to make sure they don't have genetically inherited diseases but for IQ and they want the right sort they want the right sort of people and they are starting to look very very much like the same thing that the Germans wanted in the 1930s I mean they're talking about their kind of people you know a certain kind of IQ certain kind of ideas so even when you know I find myself as a defender of having children, but I have to sometimes separate, you know, where I'm coming from from this sort of high-tech pronatalism, which is all about social engineering and not about love.
It's not about nurturing. It's um boy, so many things. So, I would be very happy, Frank, to do an interview with you and and talk more deeply about these things. and I'd love to and and Daniel um to to do a followup if I but I'd like to can we do the myth of male power as a book where I can interview you about that book or would you like to do the boy crisis as well? Which what would you prefer? Actually, they're they're they're so interacting with each other and Well, I've done I've read one so I'm prepared to interview you on one and I'll read the other with pleasure.
So, I'm going to get it and then I'll ask Ernie to contact you. Um yeah, but let's let's let's stick with this this discussion right now. So, what were you going to say beyond that? I was going to say I think for me the most important thing I've ever written actually is the most my most recent book called rolemate to soulmate and the connection of that to the boy crisis is this that um the rolemate to soulmate book teaches people how to handle personal criticism without becoming defensive. That is the single biggest biological challenge we have historically speaking. If we heard criticism was a potential enemy, therefore it was functional for survival to become defensive.
Um but in in but what's functional for for survival is dysfunctional for love. And so no one knows how to really hear personal criticism from their partner without becoming defensive. that is the what I was able to solve that evolutionary problem um in the in the work I've been doing the last 30 years um called rolemate to soulmate but the when you when one knows how to do that and then some other things like creating conflict-free zones and also knowing how to structure and be specific about appreciations when you know those three things what you have is a good marriage you have a good marriage you have a much smaller likelihood of divorce. When you have a smaller likelihood of divorce, you have much more a greater likelihood of um fathers being involved with the children in in an intact family. And when you have that, you minimize or greatly minimize or mitigate the boy crisis.
Yeah, I think that's huge. So, we'll maybe get to that the next um time we Wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah, maybe we'll Frank, you have any closing uh closing thought for us today? Yeah, I mean, you know, when when when first of all, I just want to thank you for allowing me to do this because it's been a great pleasure. I mean, I've always enjoyed talking with you. Um, and I've enjoyed interviewing you or you interviewing me, Daniel, but this has been fantastic with Warren because it just, you know, it's another one of these gracefilled serendipities that I'm spending my time talking about the Gospel of Zip. And I wrote it because as a 73 year old man, I literally I mean I know this sounds smarmy and stupid but um the reason I read this whole book and put it on You Tube for free and have it in short bites for people who don't read is because I'm really trying to change people's minds and I I don't know, you know, re I know who my readers are, but I don't know how to reach the people who aren't read it.
So I read the whole thing out loud, put it on You Tube for free. my agent went crazy and said, "I can never sell a book that's going to be for free on You Tube." And I said, "Okay, fine. I'll just self-publish this one." And it's a sort of a first. But um because I've been a successful author, but um you know, I'm I'm in an age in my life where you don't do things for any reason unless like Warren is doing with, you know, he doesn't need to me write rolemate to soulmate, but it's I mean, let's just be honest, it's out of compassion for people who haven't had the joy we've experienced. Yeah.
Yeah. And that's really what I'm doing these days. So Warren, you and I are very well met. I totally applaud what you're doing. I look forward to this. And Daniel, thank you for bringing us together. I'd love to do another discussion with the three of us. And then, you know, Warren, if I can interview you on rolemate, soulmate. Um, I would love to do that. Absolutely. Be very happy to. I've just loved this connection among the three of us. It's been a really Yeah, me too. And Daniel, if there's anything we can I can do for you or you you know you want to take this in but this has been a really good discussion.
So when are you when are you going to put this out? The myth then my next book. You mean the man? He's asking about this about this video. Probably well Friday's probably too too tight. Probably like Monday Tuesday something. Okay. We'll send a link to Ernie. Yeah. I'm gonna make I'll make both of you co- co-authors or whatever it is. So I think that that'll get it out to everybody's networks. We'll figure it out. Yeah. And the thing is, if you send it to Ernie, he'll put it on all our sites, too. Let's not let's not cut up our time here with that, we can talk about it.
Yeah. Thank you so much, Warren. What a pleasure to meet you. Your work's had a big uh been a big inspiration, very helpful for me, honestly. And yeah, I'd also love to do a one-on-one with you at a separate time. And there certain sort of hone in on some points that um you know, kind of like matter to me in my own history and how I see things more deeply. So, Frank, thank you so much for your time. Same here. Yeah. Great. Look forward to more. Yeah. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.