May 18, 2026 48:26 E37

The Gap Between Ideal and Reality with Jordan Ritter Conn

you kind of get access to hidden knowledge

or experiences that you don't remember you had

as your boy experiences those things

you kind of get to experience them through him

yeah I

I think you know

to your point there there's just something

I mean being able to empathize with another person

is just enormously helpful

and it is just a fact that uh

certain experiences are kind of uh

unique to your sex or your gender and

and certain experiences like

when you can have some guidance from someone

who knows what that is like

there's going to be something about that

that that is enormously helpful to you

welcome back to Raising Men

I'm your host Shawn Dawson

now we often talk on this show

about the missing roadmap from modern manhood

the fact that our sons are growing up in a world

that sends them loud often contradictory

messages about what it means to be a man

but today's guest has maybe

a slightly different point of view

which I'm really eager to get into

Jordan Ritter Con

is a senior staff writer at the Ringer

and he's an acclaimed author

known for his deep immersion journalism

for his latest book American men

Jordan spent five years

almost living alongside four different

very different men

capturing the searing intimacy of their lives

their failures and their triumphs

now he kind of

argues that these men have gotten the message

of what it means to be a man

loud and clear but the difficulty arises

when they're confronted with the ways that

they don't feel like they're living up to the ideal

that they're holding in their own heads

and the result

this book is I think

a result a

a result of genuine intimate storytelling

and like most stories it gets to the truth

in a way that data and statistics can't

Jordan thank you so much for joining us

and welcome to Raising Men

thank you so much for having me

I'm I'm so thrilled to be here Sean

so now

how did you decide to embark on this journey

this was five years ago and I

I mean I think five years ago

the vision of you know

doing something on masculinity was

most people if you told that to

they would think that

you're on a different journey than

you actually ended up on

so how did you decide to do this and

and how do you feel about it

yeah um

so you know I

I have always had going back to

you know when I was a kid

always had very close relationships with other boys and

and with men in in my adulthood um

the kind of friendships that we're often told that

boys and men don't have um

or or can't

can't develop friendships that are based on

you know real trust and intimacy

really sharing things vulnerably

um and uh

and you know

that that kind of carried over into my journalism

once I became a journalist

I kind of focused on um

like you said kind of like immersive storytelling

like really digging deep into

into people's lives and

you know a lot of my background is in sports

and so if you're in sports journalism

you spend a lot of time talking to men

and and in the kind of journalism that I've done

it's a lot of time talking to men

about things that we're so often told

that men don't really want to share

talking with them about their insecurities

talking with them about their failures

talking with them about you know

traumas

and and so

you know a few years ago

and at this point um

it's been

it's now been six years since I really kind of

embarked on on beginning this book uh

just cause some some

time has passed since I finished it now um

I was I was just thinking like

there's starting to be these conversations around

around men about you'd see these headlines about

the first rumblings of headlines about male loneliness

and in kind of the the late 20

like 2018 1920 um

you'd see the first rumblings of headlines about men

kind of sometimes not carrying their emotional weight

I I guess in

in relationships you start hearing like

terms like emotional labor start

start kind of being introduced into the

the way that we talk culturally

you start to hear things about men's unwillingness to

um you know

seek professional help when

when they're going through things um and

and to uh

you know to open

open up let people into their lives

and I just had the thought of like

you know I've spent a lot of my personal life

and now a lot of my professional life

talking to men about these very things

um I

I feel like I've had experiences

that have LED me to think that men are willing to

open up are willing to kind of let people in

do want to um

kind of do some of this work that we're so often told

that they don't and so I

I thought like

if I could cast a wide net

find a few guys

whose stories are so different from one another

but who could add up to something kind of

a larger picture um

outside of just their individual stories that I could

I could have something I I

I could have a book that people might be really

interested in and

and drawn to um

certainly when when I started this process

the conversation around this stuff was very different

than than it is now

the conversation has gotten louder and louder

and louder over the course of those 5

6 years

but

I felt even back then

like there would be a hunger for something like this

yeah I think you're 100% right

and I think you I think you've proven um

your point there I

one of the things that really struck me in

in hearing

um you talk about this

is that there is this conception that men

are not willing to talk about their feelings

and you started this endeavor with just

totally rejecting that

and when I heard you talking about that it

it occurred to me I really I

I realized yeah

the deal isn't that men

don't want to open up and talk about that stuff they're

and and

nor is it the case

that they're not capable of talking about it

it's that they do not have safe spaces

in which it's possible to talk about it

without being judged

without having maybe serious social repercussions

or that sort of thing what do you think about yeah

give me a response to that

yeah um

you know I

I do think I think that the real key is

you a couple things

we um

need to feel like the

the other person is genuinely curious um

need to feel like the other person really wants to know

um and

and so that often means

we need to be asked things pretty directly

I mean we

we need to be given like

kind of a permission structure for

for opening up because we are

we do kind of inherit these messages um

that that's showing um

any any kind of vulnerability or openness is

is showing weakness um

and and

you know to

to be honest with you we

our culture

often associates any sense of weakness with femininity

and our culture as men we

we are

we learn these really lessons that kind of harm us all

that that teach us to kind of

reject femininity from the time we're very

very young

you know but I

I think that we need to to really be invited in to

to to these kind of conversations and

and be given

given that kind of direct permission to open up

but then also I do think we need a sense that and

and this is what I could offer to these guys um

like you said that there's a fear of being judged um

and and what I could offer to

to these guys who I write about in this book is like

I'm I really wanna know

I'm gonna ask you these very direct questions

I wanna know the answers

and they would show me a little bit

and I don't judge them

then they show me a little bit more

and I don't judge them

and then they show me a lot more and um

and I I do think that there is often this fear that

if anyone really sees me uh

they will think less of me

if anyone really sees me that they

they will judge me if it is another

another man they might

you know find me to be weak or lacking in some way um

if it is if it is a woman they

there might be parts of my experience

that they can't fully relate to

or understand that they find to be um

you know either weak or lacking similarly or

or just bad um

you know like that

like some some part of me is

is is not good um and

and I I think that's a fear that

that we all have none of us want to be seen by

especially by people that we care about um

as any of those things

and so we need to be able to feel like um

you know the person just really

really wants to know and

and is going to take what we say

and kind of

integrate it into the way that they view us that

that is already kind of

wanting the best for us and caring for us and

not

kind of change the way they view us in a way that is um

you know that feels harmful and hurtful yeah

you you

you begin the story of of Jordan

with this detailed

breakdown of this obsession that he has

while they're

while he's driving across the country with his wife

of the temperature of the car

as they're driving through Yellow Joseph

and so they're driving across country

so that he can go to law school and

and he's sitting there obsessing over

the fact that the temperature of his car is

like 30 degrees

higher than it has been for the rest of the drive

and he's worried that the car's gonna break down

and then oh my gosh

we don't have enough money to afford a new engine

if that happens

and what do I do when I can't let her drive

because if she drives

then she's gonna notice this stuff

and then she's gonna realize

that I'm not suited to be a protector or a provider and

and all of this stuff

and I think that that that experience meanwhile

his wife is enjoying um

you know the sights and

and wanting to stop at every single possible thing

this is the first time they're gonna

it's the only time

maybe they're gonna drive all the way across country

and she's really enjoying the trip

but he can't be present

because he doesn't feel like he's

a successful protector or provider

and that little story that vignette

which is the the

how we get introduced to Jordan

really resonated with me and I mean

this is my experience in life too

and I think it will resonate

I think it resonates with most men as well

and I think that that really illustrates what

what I think that you're trying to say about

the central theme of the book that

that there's this gap between

this ideal we hold in our heads about what

what true masculinity is whatever

what

whatever we've absorbed from the culture about that and

and and then there's a gap between what I am

and that gap can be

can really grow into something unhealthy

if we're not honest about it

and if we're not willing to let people inspect it

or we're not able to let people see it in a safe way

it can really grow into something unhealthy and

and that's kind of the nature of a lot what

what what I've been calling a masculinity crisis

but I think that's I

I think you're getting to really the root of it there

yeah so

you know that

that opening um

with uh Joseph

um it's Joseph

I'm so sorry yes

no no

no quite alright

quite alright um

but I'm so glad you brought it up cause um

you know that that's

that's a scene that I actually haven't really

had the chance to talk much about yet

um and uh

and it's a

scene that it's one of my favorite scenes in the book

um and like you said

he's should be having the time of his life

he and his wife are on this incredible

cross country road trip they're

they're driving through Yellowstone

they're seeing just

all the amazing beauty that this country has to offer

his wife is having a wonderful time

she's looking out the window

she's she's like

telling him to look at all the beautiful

things that they're seeing

she's um

you know excited to see all the animals

they're gonna see at Yellowstone National Park

and he is spiraling inside

because there's just a light

rattle in the engine of his car

and um

as you know I think

a lot of people have had experiences similar to this

where like

you know there's something going on with your car

or maybe it's some like sound in your house that

you know like it's not supposed to sound like that

and you quickly go to

what is the worst case scenario here

and so he goes from you know

the engine's running a little hot

there's a little bit of a rattle um

to this sense of like

we're going to be stranded and alone

and what's underneath all of this is um

she cannot know what is happening because if she knows

then she will know the truth

and the truth is I am insufficient

I cannot keep her safe she needs someone who can

keep her safe

and I am not the man who is up to that job

and so that fear I think

is something that

so many of us experience at some point in time

um the

this fear that if we are really seen

if we are really understood

then people will know the truth

and the truth is that we are deficient in some way

and so he's he's going through that all the while

um you know

again she's having an amazing time he

and

he is missing out on having an amazing time with her

because he is so fixated on his

like image of his own you know

uh this evidence of his own kind of inadequacy

and um

and then yeah like

like you said to

to the point of kind of this

you know the

the the book does not try to convince you of many ideas

it does not try to kind of um

hit you over the head with kind of a

a grand argument about kind of

the state of masculinity in this country

I'm much more interested in just like

really intimately telling these four stories

and letting the reader come away with

whatever it is that they come away with

but the one kind of

idea that does really link these four

and that I do think we all experience is

is the sense of from the time we are so young

we are inheriting an idea of what

it means to be a man and what kind of

an ideal version of a man is supposed to look like

and at some point along the way

we inevitably fail to live up to that

um you can be the five year old on the playground

who's getting picked on and who immediately knows

I'm not like the other boys

um and

and it has that lesson ingrained in you for

for such a long young age

or you can be someone who typifies every single ideal

who um

you know is the star athlete who is rich

who is successful who um is

is attractive who

who has everything

but inevitably at some point in your life

your circumstances are going to shift

in a way where you are no longer

kind of living up to that

you just realize that you've been chasing the standard

and the standard only gets higher and higher

and higher the higher you go

and you can never quite reach it

and so ultimately I think

what kind of defines our relationship to masculinity

is how we kind of navigate that failure

I I think that there's a lot of messaging right now

that tells young men um

just if you just work harder

if you just keep pressing forward

if you just work on your body

if you just work on your career

if you just work on your charisma

then you will bridge that gap

and your deficiencies will

will be gone and you know

I I think working on yourself in those ways is

is wonderful you know

I I try to do that all the time but I

I do think that seeing that as kind of a path to

you know it's a path to like

trying to bridge something that cannot

really ever be bridged

because that standard is always gonna be out of reach

like anorexia exactly yes

100% I haven't heard that comparison but um

that makes so much sense and

and the

both kind of

the ideas that fuel anorexia

and the ideals that fuel

a lot of what we're talking about um

are just so prevalent online and and

and so easy for young people to access

and it can really distort

kind of your sense of yourself um

basically with with this book

what I wanted to do was

kind of explore the ways that these guys

who are who are so different from one another

um try to navigate that because I

I think it is something that we will all

at one point or another have to

have to navigate ourselves all

most of us have

at some point already had to navigate it ourselves even

even if we haven't really been conscious of it

it's just been something that we're

something that we're inevitably doing

you know you

you have a young son yourself

who was born while you were doing this um

how has this experience shaped

how you think about him

and his relationship to masculinity

has it changed the way you think about this stuff

or enhanced it in any way

yeah you know um

so he's almost 3 years old um

and so it's he's still

he's still so young um

and he's still in the very early stages of kind of

learning some of these some of these lessons

learning some of the ways in which he will experience

certain pressures um

as he as he grows older

I will say that you know

when he was born and again

he was born I was about halfway through this book um

we did not know um

the sex until until the moment he was born and um

you know the moment that the

the doctor said uh

like he's here

I think the doctor's first words were

he's so long uh

cause he was very tall um

and uh

but hearing that word he um

I you know

felt this incredible like excitement

pride but also a sense of weight

like an immediate sense of weight um

a weight that I can't really fully even like

wrap my mind around or

or put much in the way of words to just yet

but like

the sense of a particular kind of responsibility that

that I would have um

and maybe I would it would have felt the exact same if

if if he um

you know if she had said she's so long um at

at that moment but um

but I I did kind of feel that and

and you know

along the way it

it has been um

you know I

I think what what I found myself thinking is like

I cannot fully

shield him from

all of these pressures that we are talking about

like the these

these pressures are going to be a part of his life

um what I can do is make

do everything I can to make kind of

our relationship and

and our home a place where he feels safe to be

whoever he is um

and where he feels kind of invited into um

kind of the fullest version of himself

um but uh

you know he will inevitably be shaped by

by all of these kind of

cultural expectations that we have

he will inevitably be shaped in some ways by like

the subconscious ways

in which I've been impacted by all of this

you know I'm

I'm my own person who has tried to kind of

navigate that gap that that we are talking about and

and you know

as much as I try to do it in the healthiest way I can

I know sometimes it's not always healthy and um

you know the

the ways in which I wrestle with my own kind of

insecurities my

my own kind of um

you know failures um

will will inevitably impact him in some way or another

um and so

uh yeah

all of that to say like

these ideas are just kind of

swimming in my mind all the time

um and the only thing I know to do at this point

and again like parenting a

a two and a/2 year old is

is very very different I

I know from parenting a

a 7 year old or a 10 year old or a 15 year old um

but at this point it's just been about like

wanting to make sure that he feels like

he can be fully himself um

with with

with me and with us in in

in our home

yeah for me I

I had that I had a similar experience to you now

we did know the sex of our boy before he came out

and our girl too but it

that that weight that you're talking about

is totally different and it's not

it's different it's not like

it's there for the boy and not for the girl

it is different and for the girl it's

it's it's more about keeping her safe and and and

and those sorts of things for the boy

for me it was this experience that

and actually I mean I

I was able to form it a little bit better

once he got older but it's that

masculinity is so much different now

than it was when I was young

my paradigm my operating system

so to speak is not gonna work for him

and it's my job to make sure that he has the skills

and capabilities to make his way in the world

and be an excellent man and

if even if that's what I am

what got me to where I am

isn't gonna get him where he needs to be

and I need to be more intentional about it

I need to figure it out

and I don't know the answer right now

and the culture isn't gonna help me all

all it it used to be the case that

that we had rights of passage and we had institutions

we would be going to church and

you know that would help in some way

it would also hurt in a lot of ways and

and that means there's a there's an opportunity there

and there's a problem there

the problem is that that those things are gone

the opportunity is we get to remake them

in the form that we want them to be

and that's great

but it means you have to do it

or else you're just getting nothing and

and that was

that is how I vocalized the weight that you described

that I felt when my son was born

that's what I felt and I

I wasn't able to put words to it for years

and years and years

but that's how I put words to it now

yeah that

that's such a great um yeah

I I

I I really appreciate you

you sharing all of that cause like I

I think that um

like you said I

I think you know what

one of the things that comes up a lot in

in this book is how men respond to certain structures

how we respond to like

clear sets of expectations and

and being invited into something that um

you know where

where there's kind of a clear purpose and we

we understand what it is

we understand why we're doing it and um

you know

what you mentioned about kind of rites of passage or

like structures that kind of give uh

you know serve as like

kind of entry points into

into a next phase of life that

that serve as like kind of um

helping you make that transition in

in adolescence from being someone who

who is um

you've seen largely as a boy into

to being someone who who is

who's growing into a man um I

I think that like uh you're

you're right

that our culture is kind of lacking a lot of those

um I

I'm not entirely sure how to

how to kind of reconstitute some

some of them but I

I do think that they I do think that they matter

cause I I think especially that phase of life

I mean um

at adolescence I I try to

you know I think it can be hard

sometimes for grown men

to remember what it is like to be a teenage boy

um and I

I have hard

a hard time kind of remembering what it was like

um and I

I found myself thinking um

trying to really sink back into

into that experience and

and I think like you know

when I was a teenager um

you know I'm

I'm very I'm really tall

I'm I'm 6 5 um

so I'm me too like always OK OK

yeah so like

it's a particular kind of experience when you're

when you are in a body like that

that's kind of looming over everyone else

and I was clumsy as a result yeah

having grown so fast and yeah

yeah my

my boy experiences the same thing

and it's and it's difficult because

and you're gonna experience the same thing

they always think he's older than he is

and so they expect him to act differently

they're like

why is your 9 year old acting like a 6 year old

yeah

6:06 yeah

it's yeah my

my son physically he's so much like me um

he's very very tall uh

but just kind of clumsy like

you know it took him like

I think

babies are supposed to start rolling over when they're

like three months

he was he was like nine months before he rolled over uh

like he never crawled

there's so much body to learn to maneuver like

like you know

it's like driving a semi truck versus a Miata exactly

exactly um

but you know

back back to kind of the

the point of like in adolescence

like what what I remember is like

you are growing into a feeling of like you

you all of a sudden there's like

there's just a power there is a

a power that comes with being in uh

a male body particularly a certain kind of male body

what one that's kind of larger than other people yeah

there's just an intrinsic power that comes with that

and like you are growing into that power very

very quickly when you are uh 13

14 15

16 17 years old

um and it can feel intoxicating

um it can feel really

really thrilling um

to all of a sudden

be bigger than most of the people who are around you

and and everything that kind of comes with that

the expectations that come with that

um but it can also feel terrifying

like terrifying um

you know and I remember like being around

you know just around a lot of I

I knew a lot of boys who did bad stuff

who inflicted real harm on

on other people um

and sometimes they were boys who I was really close to

and who um

you know I

I saw a lot of like goodness and in a lot of other ways

but like um

there's something about that that

that I think really kind of uh

you there

there's just so much swimming in my head

at that period of time where like

you're seeing the destructive

power that kind of um

you know that the people who

who have bodies like yours can

can uh

can have you're

and you're also kind of

intoxicated by the ways in which you suddenly have

like access to so much that um

that

that you didn't have access to when you were younger

and so I I do think that like

whatever we can do to find ways to help teenage boys to

kind of uh

navigate that that time of life

understand all that they're going to be going through

I mean there

you know that parallels to um

adolescent girls that there's obviously

like a very clear right of passage that

that happens for them that

that's kind of a distinction between kind of

a girlhood yeah

it's a physical thing yeah yes

yes and I

I I spoke

when working on this book I

I talked to a a woman journalist friend who um

you know talked about that specifically and was like I

I I feel like um

you know girls still kind of like just

that

there's just this physical change of having a period

that is um

gives them kind of a a passageway into

into womanhood that's that boys are

are kind of lacking um

and so I but I

I think that that stuff is important

finding ways to kind of help boys to um

navigate a time in your life that can feel so chaotic

um and

and where you can feel so unmoored I

it's helpful I don't know what the answer is

but I I

I love that

it's something that you're thinking a lot about

I'll tell you something that helps and

and one of the things that

that I've noticed about my boy's experience is

I can watch him go through things

and that will uncover memories for me that I didn't

wouldn't have been able to produce

if I hadn't been prompted by seeing him

struggle with the same stuff

and when I see that I

I remember back when I struggled with the same stuff

and how I thought about it

and how I wished I thought about it

and all of that stuff and so

all of that's to say

that this is one of the reasons that

male role models are so important

in the in

in the life of young boys and

and especially adolescent boys

because that is such a difficult

unbelievably hard time of life it

it is it's

for all the reasons that you talked about

and he really needs someone there

who's been through that maybe

or even more than other people

and who can you know

say yeah

this is normal and it's okay

and just as just as a a

a girl having her first period

needs a woman to help her learn how to deal with that

just in a physical way I don't think anybody

like I I

don't think anybody

would expect a father to come and do that or

or or think that a father could do that adequately

and yet we don't really necessarily culturally put the

put that on us

on men to make sure that they're there for the

for the boys in the same in the same way and

but it really does help like

you kind of get access to hidden knowledge

or experiences that you don't remember

you had um

as your boy experiences those things

you kind of get to experience them through him

yeah trip yeah

I I think

you know to your point there

there's just something I mean

being able to empathize with another person is just

enormously helpful I mean

like having someone who can see and understand

your experience is enormously helpful

and it is just a fact that uh

certain experiences are are kind of uh

unique to your sex or your gender and

and certain experiences like

when you can have some guidance

from someone who knows what that is like

um there's going to be something about that

that that is enormously helpful to you

um and uh

you know that

that's not to say that um

men can't find ways to be

to be there for um

you know their daughters who

who are going through kind of

physical and other changes that um

that those men haven't experienced or

or that women can't do the same with

with their sons or uh

you know other

other children in in their lives um

but it it is just simply like there

there will be things that uh

you know I

I know that I experience things that like

I wanted to talk to my dad about because I

I knew that like

he was much more likely to have understood

that experience than

than my mom and and and

and I I think that

you know it

the onus has to be on

on us as fathers to make sure that we are there in

in that way

to make sure that we are looking for those moments

where there are

those points of connection

where we have been through that thing that's uh

you know that

that a a

a boy is going through and

and we can kind of

you know find ways to

to really uh

signal that we're we're

we're there and able to talk about it and understand

yeah yeah

what did you learn in in this

in the experience of writing this book

what did you learn about the role

of these men's own parents

in crafting who they became

it like

in making their struggles harder or easier

or successes greater or lesser

or how did how did their parents impact that yeah

um you know

their fathers are are so different from one another um

you know one Joseph

who we talked about earlier um

the the one who's having the bit

of a breakdown on the beautiful cross country road trip

his father is um

really abusive to Joseph's mother

um never

never abusive to Joseph himself

but he grows up in a home where he watches

he watches violence unfolding often and um

you know it

it fills him with a you know

pretty significant kind of loathing for

for his father over time and he

yeah um he

he learns a lot really

he he's a bit adrift at times

because he does not have a real

strong model for who he wants to be himself

um he

and he's kind of seeking that in

in other men in his life as he's in

in early adulthood because um

his father failed his mother in such

such critical ways um

you know another one

um Gideon

who is kind of a a uh

typifies every masculine ideal

like the baseball star West Point graduate tall

smart handsome everything

he um

has a loving relationship to his father

but also had the sense that he was like

kind of like a trophy in his family

that he was

because he was so good at all of these things

because he was so gifted um

he kind of internalized that

like this is how I have worth in the world is by being

excelling at all of these things

um and I think he still

to this day

would say that his parents loved him tremendously

and were great in many ways but um

it was hard for him to kind of trust

kind of his intrinsic I guess worth um

and in part for kind of

the ways that he was kind of reinforced as a kid um

you know another Ryan is

is someone who is

his father is kind of your stereotypical like tough

like fighter like someone who's

he'd been a boxer um

and Ryan gets picked on as a kid and his dad is um

you immediately tries to teach him how to fight

um and I

that scene is incredible and I remember I like

I'm reading this scene and thinking

that's exactly what I would do

hmm if as the dad

if I was that dad I would do that exact same alright

you know that

you know we're not

we're not gonna let that happen again

and then seeing that experience through Ryan's eyes

such a beautiful it's

it's it's really

really a great story well

thank you but what

what's so fascinating about it is like in the moment

so Ryan doesn't want that

Ryan wants his dad to comfort him to

to hold him to care for him

but then what happens is Ryan continues getting bullied

he he doesn't really ever learn to fight back

until he is in college and we meet him as a young man

and on the night when he snaps

and he beats somebody up and he finds oh

I actually really like doing this

and he likes it in a way that is not really

purely out of self defense

he likes it in a way that's uh

you know quite destructive

um but he uh

later like in

in early adulthood

like kind of is like bragging to his dad that his dad

who had kind of put these boxing gloves on

on his fist when he was a little boy

and tried to teach him how to fight and uh

he's trying to brag to his dad like hey

like I you know

I've been getting into some fights lately

like you should see what I'm doing to these guys

and his dad

who is now encountering his son as a grown man is like

what are you doing why are you so stupid

why would you be getting into these fights

and Ryan it like

does not compute in Ryan's brain

because all he remembers is being this little boy

who his dad was uh

was trying to um

to teach how to fight and so um

you know I think it's just a case where like

what one thing about fatherhood is that like

every father brings to the table their own stuff off

their own insecurities their own um

kind of uh

feelings that they're kind of projecting onto their kid

and I don't know exactly what was going through

through Ryan's father's mind at that moment

when he's trying to teach him how to fight

but like it was a moment where he felt like

I need to teach my boy how to fight back

and then later when

learning that his boy has grown into a man

who does fight back uh

he he goes to a place that a lot of parents go

which is like you shouldn't be hitting people

that's bad yeah

and what a mix and I

I thought another little aspect of that story that

I mean it's just this tiny little vignette and

and yet it it was so um

uh it

it it's really

it was really impactful to me

which is you kind of get into the

the mind of the father for a moment

where the father is kind of teaching the son to fight

not so that not just so that he'll be protected yeah

but also because the father feels a little bit of shame

that his son got beat up

yeah at least that's how Ryan kind of took it yeah

at least that's how he felt about it

Ryan doesn't know but that's yeah

yeah um

and I I do

I think that that's like

it's such a natural impulse um

for any parent to internalize like uh

any any struggle that your kid might have

is somehow a reflection on you in

in a negative way and like

the things that we value and the things that feel like

embarrassing to us are often

gonna be different from the things that our kids

value and that feel embarrassing to them um

and so we uh

yeah can have so much of our own identity um

wrapped up in uh

and and

and and those sorts of things and

you know again

the the flip side of that is

is Gideon the

the kind of star athlete whose parents are uh

just so over the moon thrilled with him all the time

because of the fact that he is uh

he's accomplishing so much

while at the same time he's not necessarily uh

learning what he needs to learn to be kind of a fully

um you know

a a man who can have like a full robust

fulfilling kind of life

because he's kind of chasing that

that sense of accomplishment all the time

yeah and the outward trappings of being so successful

are they they sort of belay the internal experience

and so you know

he doesn't

he doesn't necessarily feel that he's that successful

right and

and he doesn't exactly and so but

but everybody treats him like he is and so he's like

and and that

that can really make it hard to

address

that gap that we talked about in the very beginning

right you know

he's got he's got this internal experience of not being

but everybody thinks you're this thing over here

and I feel like this thing over here

and I feel like I like that

everybody thinks that I'm like this and

and if I tell people that no

this is really my experience

then this is a bubble that's gonna pop

and I can't let that happen

because this is my identity I

and what I mean

being able to read about that in such an honest way

and it's you know

these men that agreed to do this thing

are really courageous and

you know and in some cases

like you're even using their real names

uh huh

um not in all of them

and you know you

you've

and but I don't know man

I mean

I really admire them yeah

uh yeah

I I I

I really really do too

um you know I

I I just can't say enough about um

their willingness to to be open

um about their willingness to kind of reveal uh

some pretty difficult uh

pieces of themselves some the

uh so many of these stories that that

that are in this book are not flattering to them um

you know that they're uh

they're full they're nuanced

they're complex um

but often they they don't look great but

but they're

they're these real kind of raw and authentic

um you know

peaks into into their experience

and you know Gideon

um in particular

since we were talking about him

like he and his name has been changed but um

he just let me I mean

he let it's so rare that we get a peek into what

the kind of insecurities that are roiling

beneath the person

who seems like he has everything going for him

um and like he

I mean it even like this the

his chapter part of the book

kind of opens with him

feeling insecure about the size of his penis right

I mean like he

and that was a conversation

we had that conversation

about four years in to this five year process

um he'd made an offhand comment about it once years ago

and I

we were like on a walk near his home and I just said

can we talk about the

can we talk about how you feel about your penis

and he was like yep

let's go what do you wanna know

and and so we did um

but you know the

the other other guys as well like um

it's just really

really astonishing how much they kind of let me

let me into their lives and you

some of them Ryan

um who we'd spent some time talking about

the one who whose father tried to teach him to fight

and who later starts fighting when he's older

he did use his real name uh

and he has been like this is my story

um I don't know how everyone's gonna feel about it

but uh

this is who I am and my hope is that sharing it might

have a positive impact on someone

and I I wanna kind of stand behind the fact that um

that this is me um

and so uh

yeah I

I I

I just can't say enough about how open and honest and

and vulnerable each of these guys are willing to be

yeah and

I mean his case is

that's really courageous his story in particular is

he's tough yeah

he does some rough stuff and

and you know

the fact that he's willing to do it

attach his own name to that I

I don't I don't know if

I don't think I'd do it I

I don't know we're

and we're all the richer for it and um

you know but

I mean even just sharing the story under pseudonym is

is really brave absolutely

and absolutely yeah

I mean we're

we're really fortunate yeah

we're really fortunate they decided to let you do it

and we're really fortunate you decided to do it too

well thank you one

one last thing about that that

that I'll share is um

you know one of the men

one thing I did was

I let them all see their stories in advance

um I

I just felt like

I wanted to write it with so much intimacy

that I felt like I couldn't publish it without them

like being able to sit with it and

and kind of give me a sense of like

whether I'd kind of captured it or not

um and the first time I did it

what I did is I read it out loud to each of

them I I went in person

I can't imagine what this session was like

it was I can't imagine I mean that takes balls

it takes balls to do that

to decide to do it and to listen to it on all sides

that is

there's some masculinity happening in that room

right there it was it was intense

but you know one of them

there was one scene that's particularly rough

and he was like

the first time I read it out loud to him

he was like I don't know if I can do this

uh like this is after we'd spent years doing work

doing all these interviews

all spending all this time together

me following him through so much of his life

and he just had this visceral reaction to it

he's like

it's all true like everything you just read happened

but like something about it was just really tough

and you know

then he came back to me a couple weeks later

we didn't talk for a couple weeks and he said like

I'm good

like don't change a thing like I'm I'm totally fine

and this was one of the men who is a parent

and what he said was

the thought of my child reading this

when they are 15 years old

and knowing that this is me uh

feels absolutely terrifying like terrifying um

but the thought of my child reading this

when they are forty and I am an old

man and they have now gone through a lot of stuff

in their own lives and they have this like

window into who their father was and is

and all of the things that shaped me um

that actually feels really nice like to

to be to be known by by them in that way and uh

and so he didn't ask me to change a thing and um yeah

I I feel you know just can

cannot say enough about like the

the level of vulnerability and

and courage that each of these guys had in in sharing

sharing this way

we should all have a journalist follow us around

for five years hahaha

I do kind of believe that our story like hahaha

so that our

our sons can read it when when we're eighty

maybe AI I I do think we might be better off where

you know there there's just something powerful

everyone's story is fascinating

like everyone's story if you dig deep enough

like there there's some interesting stuff there

and uh I

I think that it's a really powerful thing

to have your story told and

and to be able to like

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