Richard Reeves is a British-American writer, speaker and social scientist. He is also President of the American Institute for Boys and Men Richard Reeves joins Theo to talk about why he thinks many men are struggling to find purpose in today’s world, how becoming a role model or mentor can change your life forever, and the key difference in how men and women communicate. Richard Reeves: https://x.com/RichardvReeves ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Valor Recovery: To learn more about Valor Recovery please visit them at https://valorrecoverycoaching.com or email them at [email protected] Blue Cube: Head over to BlueCubeBaths.com and get $1,000 off when you mention Theo’s name. Symmetry Sauna: https://www.symmetrysauna.com/theo ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Cam https://www.instagram.com/cam__george/ Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Richard Reeves and what is his background?
Today's guest is a writer and a social scientist. He's also a dual citizen. He's the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. I'm grateful that he's here today. Today's guest is Richard Rees. Richard Reeves, thanks for joining us today, brother.
Yeah, I'm really thrilled to be here.
Yeah, we appreciate it, man. You want to move that in a little bit for me, if you don't mind? Yeah, sure. And you are British.
By birth, I'm American now. Okay, you're American now. Yeah, I became a U.S. citizen in 2016, so I'm very, very proud of this country.
Oh, welcome. Nice. Thank you. And you're the president for the American Institute for Boys and Men. Yep.
New think tank. God knows we need more think tanks, right? That's what America's really clamoring for, is more scholars sitting in think tanks, producing charts. Honestly, I was in another think tank for 10 years before that, the Brookings Institution. Huge think tank in Washington, D.C. Great job. And I got to tell you, it was not in my life plan. To be in a think tank? To create another one.
No, actually, being in a think tank is great. What that means is you basically just get paid good money to write stuff and say stuff that you're interested in.
And what happens to a lot of that information from think tanks?
Well, that depends who you ask. If you ask the critics, they say it just gathers dust on people's shelves. Maybe like two people in Congress read it. One New York Times journalist reads it. So there is this whole thing now that think tanks used to produce policy papers and then grateful – legislators, members of Congress, would say, thank you, we'll go and turn that into a law. And ta-da!
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Chapter 2: Why do we need an American Institute for Boys and Men?
But the trouble is, the way that our politics works right now is that you've basically either got to be like anti-immigration and anti-immigrants, or you've got to be open border. I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's how it feels.
Yeah, I agree. That's how it feels. Well, that's another issue that we just have. We don't have enough parties. We don't have enough parties, and there's not enough – and I think that it's also kept that way as capitalism is just – there's only so much you can do. It's like you can only do so much.
And then there's a lot of darker forces at play, I think, that just care about finances no matter what side of things you're on. And then I don't even know if America still owns itself anymore, to be honest with you. I feel like we're just – LLC of the middle East sometimes, but you know, different people think different things.
I really, the thing that I worry most about is that we lose our sense of optimism.
I agree. That's the next thing to go.
And when that goes, it gets, it gets really bad for any country, but I think it's virtually existential for America because one of the things that people always say about Americans, they're like, Oh, they don't think about, they don't have no sense of history. You know, whereas like in Europe, like all we think about is history, right?
In the UK, one thing I ran away from is just like it's always Winston Churchill and World War II and World War I and the War of the Roads. I have relatives who fought in those wars. They're important, but we're always looking. Basically, Europe feels like it kind of has been looking in the rearview mirror for centuries, whereas Americans are like, yeah, that happened.
That was interesting, but we're going there. We're going to the moon. We're going to wherever. We're going to build a better economy. There is this thing about looking forward, which I've always loved about America. It's one of the reasons I wanted to come here. It's one of the reasons I finished raising my kids here. It's like that future
orientation and I really I worry about that on both sides now right I don't like you have American carnage you know from the right and you have climate catastrophe from the left take your pick but that catastrophizing that sense for the first time ever we're seeing people now say that they are not confident their kids will be better off than them
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Chapter 3: What impact did the pandemic have on men's education and health?
But then they realized that half the dads were not there. Half the boys didn't have dads, didn't have fathers. Or their fathers were in prison, or they'd gone away, or whatever. And so they then really realized this was going to be a huge problem because some of the boys were going to have their dad come in and do it and the others were going to feel left out.
So they just did a call out to the community. I don't even know what it was, like a Facebook call. Like, could we get some volunteers? We just need some men to kind of come in and help these boys. They had something like five times as many men as they needed to. These guys just all came. It's amazing. Really beautiful. So men are looking for it. Yes, just need to be somehow asked and called.
And the other thing I'll say, because we haven't had a chance to talk about this yet, is that the fact that male teachers have become so much less common I think is a real problem. Yeah. It's gone from 33% male in the 80s to 23% male now, and it continues to fall. And I think that's a problem for all kinds of reasons.
I think that for boys to sort of see men in the classroom, to actually have them as role models, also to see that education is a thing that men care about as well.
Oh, that's a great point. Yeah, one of my greatest influences was this guy Charles Aldrich. He was my teacher. He was missing a finger. How did he lose his finger? You know what happened to him? He was at a baseball game cheering on his son. He stood up. His wedding ring got caught on a piece of metal on the bleachers and pulled his finger right off.
I do know I wish I hadn't asked now, but God bless him. Pretty crazy. And my dad was missing a finger. And so I just related. I was like, oh, God wants these men without fingers to love me or whatever. You know, that's how I was thinking as a kid. It was just crazy. But that's how you think as a kid.
Yeah. Okay. So he was a huge influence on you.
Yeah.
Right.
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