Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E73: Why Boys Are Struggling and How to Help Them with Dr. Leonard Sax

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E73: Why Boys Are Struggling and How to Help Them with Dr. Leonard Sax · The Lila Rose Show

0:00
Boys need to see a man in order to become a man.
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And our culture no longer offers good role models. 50 years ago,
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if you were to say to boy be a man, he knew exactly what that
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meant because he was immersed in a culture with movies starring
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men like Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier and meant to be
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courageous, to be willing to sacrifice yourself for the good
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of others, to be a hero. And sometimes you'll discover
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the problems not with the boy. Your kids are immersed in a
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toxic culture. American popular culture right
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now is a toxic culture. Hey guys, welcome back to the
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Lila Rose podcast. Today we've got a fascinating
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episode in store for you guys. I think you're going to really
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enjoy it, and it's with Doctor Leonard Sachs.
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Doctor Leonard Sachs is a family physician, a psychiatrist, and
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he is an author who's written extensively on issues addressing
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boys, girls, families, and parenting.
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So he wrote the book Boys Adrift.
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I'm talking about the five factors that are causing boys to
0:59
really struggle today. He wrote the book Girls on the
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Edge, the Collapse of Parenting, and Why Gender Matters.
1:06
There's a ton to get into with Doctor Sachs.
1:08
We're planning to have him in studio in a few months.
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Today we're going to mostly focus on his book Boys Adrift.
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So he does a very deep dive analysis into the status of boys
1:17
today, how they're struggling compared to say, 30-40, fifty
1:20
years ago. And then he has some very
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practical applications and tips, especially for parents, for how
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you can help raise your boys and do it in a way that helps them
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have a healthy sense of self, a healthy masculinity, a healthy
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future, healthy relationships. So I think you're going to
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really like this, especially if you're a parent.
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Check out Doctor Sacks's work on his website, which is
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www.leonardsacks.com. And with no further ado, Doctor
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Sacks, thanks so much for joining the podcast.
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Thanks for writing me. I'm a big fan of your work and
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you've written extensively on a lot of issues that are near and
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dear to parents, to those that care about the development of
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both boys and girls. You've written books on gender.
2:00
The one that I want to focus today on that we talk about a
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lot on the podcast is the growing crisis of masculinity
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today and what young boys especially are facing.
2:10
And so your book, which I think was very prophetic, Dr. Sachs,
2:13
you wrote it in 2009. Boys Adrift, the five, the five
2:16
factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and
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underachieving young men. Well, in many ways, the chickens
2:23
have come home to roost here in 2023.
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And what men are facing today is is very challenging.
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You know, we talk about again on the podcast, the Red pill
2:30
community has grown because of that, a lot of disaffected young
2:33
men, a lot of frustration, economic difficulties,
2:36
relationship difficulties. So just wanted to start with
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what got you into writing this book first of all, and then to
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help us understand what these five factors are.
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Well, sure. I also want to mention before I
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forget that there is a newer edition of the book.
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The 1st edition is now pretty out of date.
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But as you kindly suggested, the 1st edition was kind of a
2:58
prophecy and the second edition show of the prophecy has been
3:01
fulfilled. And of course, the motivation to
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write the book came out of my family medical practice.
3:11
You know, I attended public schools in Ohio, K through 12,
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and I vividly remember the high school honors ceremony in 1976
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when I was a junior. All the students receiving
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honors were up on stage, and it was all boys.
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The editor of the school newspaper, Andy Borowitz, was a
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boy. He's gone on to have an amazing
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career. He writes the Borowitz report
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for The New Yorker magazine. The editor of the poetry journal
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was a boy. The editor of the yearbook was a
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boy. The president of student council
3:41
government was I don't recall any girls being up on stage was
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all boys and scholars in that era.
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We were talking 50 years ago, like my friend David Sadcker
3:51
were researching how terrible schools were for girls and they
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wrote their their last book called Failing at Fairness,
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published in 1994, based on their research on American
4:03
schools in the 70s and 80s where the boys were the
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valedictorians, the boys were running everything, the boys
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were winning all the academic honors, and the girls were
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sitting quietly and being ignored.
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That's within living memory, but it is profoundly different from
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what we see today. I have visited now over 500
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schools over the last 22 years. I started visiting schools
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because so you asked where I how I came to be interested in this.
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So I started my practice in Montgomery County, Maryland as a
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family doctor in 1990. And I began seeing families
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where the girl was the star academically and captain of the
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girls basketball team and straight A student and tons of
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friends and her brother was a goofball playing video games.
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And it began to be clear that in our Montgomery County, Maryland
4:59
community, this was widespread. And, and my first thought in the
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mid 90s was, jeez, what's wrong with Maryland?
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But it's so different from northeastern Ohio, where I grew
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up. So I began to reach out to
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colleagues across the United States and, and began
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researching this topic and discovered, well, the first
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place I reached out to was my hometown and found that, yeah,
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it's not the way it used to be. The the boys have retreated.
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And this growing gender gap in, in achievement is not to do
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primarily to girls doing better. It's due primarily to boys doing
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worse. And what that's one of the big
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points I make in my book Boys adrift.
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If, if the gender gap was growing because primarily
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because girls are doing better, I don't think it'd be a problem.
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I think it'd because for celebration, but that's not why
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it's growing. Let me just give very quickly
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one illustration of how we know that.
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Way back in 1980, the National Endowment for the Arts surveyed
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a large and demographically representative sample of
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teenagers across the United States and asked them, what do
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you like to do in your spare time?
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And they were especially interested in getting at who's
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reading for fun. Well, back in 1980, girls were a
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little bit more likely than boys were to read for fun, but only a
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little bit more likely. Well, recently they did it
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again, went back and asked the same questions to a new cohort
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of teens across United States. But they found that the gender
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gap in reading has widened dramatically.
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A Mark Barline, the lead investigator on that study, and
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his colleague Sandra Stotsky said the gender gap had become a
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chasm. Is the word they used.
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And quoting from their their paper, they said reading has
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become a marker of gender identity.
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Girls read, boys don't. The gender gap widened not
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because girls are reading more. They're not.
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Girls today are reading somewhat less than girls were reading 40
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years ago. But American boys have stopped
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reading for fun. It is now very unusual to find a
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white, black or Latino boy who's reading a book, not a sign for
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school on his own time, for fun, that That was common 30 years
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ago, it's rare. It's very rare today.
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And that, of course, jibes with my experience as a family doctor
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talking with with children and teens in my office.
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So why? Why did this happen?
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That's the motivation for my book Boys address the five
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factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and
7:29
underachieving young men. You guys, Advent is coming up
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Let's enter the Christmas season in a spirit of prayer and
8:34
deepening our walk with God. So I mean, I think everyone
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listening is thinking, OK, last 30 years, what happened in the
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last 30 years dramatically to boys and girls that would result
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in them reading less. And I think the universal answer
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would be screen time. So I know that you address that
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extensively in your book and you have other factors in addition.
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So can you run us through the factors that, as you see it,
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boys are making boys adrift? And then I really want to spend
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time on solutions because I know everyone listening is keenly
9:02
interested in that. A lot of folks point out, yes,
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it's not looking good today for boys and men, society in general
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struggling. But let's start with that
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baseline of what are those five factors?
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And I know screens are are one of them.
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So in no particular order and not necessarily an order of
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importance, the first factor is changes in education.
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School has become unfriendly to boys.
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And when I speak to parents, I often illustrate this.
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I visited a high school in the United States where the teacher
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had assigned free writing assignments.
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You could write about anything you wanted to.
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And a boy who chose to write a story, Battle of Stalingrad,
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winter 1942. And it's very violent.
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And the boy was suspended from school and the parents were told
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he would not be allowed to return to school until the
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parents had obtained an evaluation by licensed
9:54
professional. I wrote a similar story back
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when I was at Shaker Heights High School in 1977, and I got
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an award from the National Council of Teachers of English
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for that. They gave me their their highest
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honor for creative writing in a national competition for writing
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a story where people get blown up.
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That's part of what I mean when I say that school has become
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unfriendly to boys. There's a lot more to say about
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that. Second factor is video games
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really. Quick doctor sex before you go
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to the second factor that sounds like a teacher driven problem.
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Is that a teacher driven problem in your view teachers that are
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they don't comprehend, you know, young boys, they want to put
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them in a in sort of more treat them like girls or is that a
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curriculum problem? What do you think is underlying
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that? OK, so my book was not even the
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1st edition of my book was not the first book to call attention
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to this growing gender gap. The first book to call attention
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to this was by Christina Hoff Sommers called The War Against
10:57
Boys more than 20 years ago, and she asserts that the decline of
11:02
boys is a left wing liberal conspiracy led by Hillary
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Clinton. Now I I really like Christina
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Hoff Sommers. I've shared a podium with her.
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She's a lot of fun to talk with and to listen to, but Hillary
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Clinton is not that well organized.
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The the decline of boys is not the result of a left wing
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liberal conspiracy. It's it's and the the school's
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becoming unfriendly to boys is not the result of a left wing
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liberal conspiracy. It's the result of good people
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with reasonable intentions making rational decisions, which
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had the unintended result of disengaging boys.
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Let me just very quickly illustrate one example.
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So as I mentioned, I grew up in northern Ohio.
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We get a lot of snow right off Lake Erie, lake effect snow
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during the winter months. When I was at Lomond Elementary
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School in Shaker Heights, OH, as a child, we would put on our
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jackets and go out on the playground during recess and
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lunch, and we'd throw snowballs at each other and the teachers
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would come out and join US. Students against teachers.
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I remember Mr. Albers was a great shot.
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Get you right between the eyes every time.
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Today, 2 boys start throwing snowballs at each other on
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school property during the school hours.
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The teacher's going to run out and say, what are you guys
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doing? You can't be doing that.
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You got to wait till after school and go somewhere else.
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No throwing of snowballs allowed on school property.
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And the unintended message that boys are getting is that your
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kind is not welcome here. Boys doing things that boys have
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always done. Pointing fingers at each other,
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saying bang, bang, you're dead. Drawing pictures of weapons,
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writing stories in which people get killed and throwing
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snowballs at each other. Boys doing things that boys have
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always done now gets you in trouble.
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That's part of what I mean when I say that schools have become
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unfriendly to boys. And there's a better way, which
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I first learned 20 years ago when I visited St.
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Andrews, a boys school north of Toronto, ON, where they have a
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very simple role. If you want to throw snowballs,
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go to the football field. The throwing of snowballs is
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prohibited everywhere on campus except on the football field
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where it is allowed. And if the entrance to a
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football field, there's a basket of goggles, you want to throw
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snowballs. You put on a pair of goggles and
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you can go and throw snowballs at one another to your heart's
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delight in bounds on the football field, out of bounds
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everywhere else. And that's a principle we found
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very useful, and we've deployed that at many American schools
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over the last 20 years with good effect.
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And some American schools have found it necessary to create a
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waiver indemnity holding the school harmless in the event
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that a kid is injured by a thrown snowball.
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That's fine. You have to do whatever you have
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to do to protect the school from liability.
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But don't prohibit the throwing of snowballs on school property.
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Why not a snowball throwing tournament when you get a
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Blizzard? Got a lot of snow on the ground?
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Have your P instructor set up a snowball throwing tournament a
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week from Monday after school. We're going to totally
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voluntary. We're going to put you in pairs,
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and in each pair you get three chances to hit the target.
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Whoever hits it more advances. Whoever doesn't sits down.
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And at the end of the day, we have one grand champion.
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When you sponsor such a tournament, a snowball throwing
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tournament, we found about 70% of the kids who turn up are
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boys, but about 30% of girls. Some girls love to throw
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snowballs, many boys don't. Gender is complicated, but
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gender matters. It's easy to make the school
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friendly to boys without making it unfriendly to girls.
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And again, when I lead workshops for teachers, I share strategies
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I've learned now from visiting more than 500 schools, some of
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which are doing this very well. Wow.
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All right, so next factor, factor #2 and we'll come back to
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the the masculinity question in schools in a moment too.
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Is video games and video games have really changed and I still
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find old people, which I mean people over 35, when they're
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think of video games, they're thinking of Pong or Pac-Man.
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And they they really haven't seen a game like RDR 2 or grand
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GTA5. They don't understand how real
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and vivid these worlds are. And I tell parents, imagine the
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best action movie, The best James Bond movie ever saw.
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Except you're not watching 1 actor pretend to kill another
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actor, you are James Bond. And if you have a 200 Watt
15:19
subwoofer with 5.1 surround sound, when the mortar round
15:22
lands near you, books were books will fall off your bookshelf in
15:27
the room. It's that immersive.
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James Bond is immortal. He can never die.
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So that kind of undermines some of the tension because you know
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he will never die, but you will die.
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You'll probably die 20 times before you accomplish your
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mission in some of these video games.
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It's incredibly real. RDR 2, one of the greatest video
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games of all time and and extremely popular with American
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boys right now that stands for Red Dead Redemption two took
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over 700 took in over $700 million in its opening weekend.
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By comparison, Avatar 2009, still the number one movie all
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time grossing took it in about less than 80 million in its
16:08
opening weekend. These movie, these video games
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are way bigger than Hollywood in terms of their earnings.
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They spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make these video
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games be immensely realistic and a boy, it takes 40 hours to
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complete all the to to complete RDR 2.
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And when you've done it, boys will tell you they really feel
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like they've accomplished something and they haven't.
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The video game ultimately is a lie.
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It's it's undermining their motivation to achieve in the
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real world. But hey, this has become a big
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part of the culture of American teenage boys.
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If you are the 1st in your group to finish all the missions in
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RDR 2 to complete the game, you absolutely want your friends to
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know that will greatly raise your status in the eyes of the
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other boys. If you get an A instead of AB on
17:06
the Spanish final, you probably don't even want the other boys
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to know that could lower your status in the eyes of your peers
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because academic achievement, working hard to get a good mark
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is now seen as unmasculine by many boys.
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So yeah, the screens are a major factor.
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It's not the whole story, but it is one of five factors. 1/3
17:29
factor are medications for attention deficit disorder.
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According to the latest data for the CDC, one in five teenage
17:37
boys in the United States now is now on medication for ADD.
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And I can tell you in some communities it's a lot higher
17:43
than that. And it turns out the medications
17:46
which are most popular, Adderall, Vyvanse, Concerta,
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meditate, Focalin, Datrona, these medications damage the
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motivational center of the brain, the nucleus
17:55
circumference. And you know, I was doing the
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Boys Adrift talk. The Boys Adrift Talk is a talk
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for parents where we go through each of the five factors and
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what parents can do to engage and motivate their son.
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And during question and answer, her father said, father said,
18:10
you know, Doctor Sachs, I'm sorry, I can't, I can't take you
18:13
seriously. You're claiming that Adderall
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and Vyvanse damaged the brain. He said if that were remotely
18:20
true. And I interrupted him.
18:24
I said, if that if that were remotely true, you would have
18:26
heard about that before, right? From someone with better
18:28
credentials than me, a family doctor, someone like Doctor
18:32
Joseph Peterman, chief of pediatric psychiatry research at
18:36
Harvard Medical School. And I then proceeded to show how
18:42
Doctor Biederman admitted to taking millions of dollars for
18:47
the drug company said he's never publicly disclosed in hearings
18:50
conducted by Senator Chuck Grassley.
18:54
And when Senator Grassley called in many leaders of child
18:58
psychiatry and they all acknowledged taking this money.
19:02
One, one of them, Charles Nemeroff, it might not have been
19:07
Charles Nemeroff, but one of his, one of his guests, a
19:10
leading psychiatrist was asked why you didn't disclose this.
19:13
And he said basically, well, everybody does it.
19:15
He didn't feel any need to disclose it because all he said
19:18
all the leaders of child psychiatry do this.
19:21
We take millions of dollars for the drug companies.
19:23
We don't publicly disclose it. And that was very troubling
19:26
because here you have that the leaders of American child
19:30
psychiatry telling us it is standard for them to take
19:33
millions of dollars to the drug companies to function as paid
19:36
spokespersons for the drug companies and not to tell us.
19:39
So that's a real problem. We've heard that before with
19:43
other, with other drugs. I mean, I, we've covered birth
19:46
control on the podcast before and the lies about that coming
19:48
from even the medical establishment.
19:50
So you it's not a surprising tale what you're describing
19:53
with. ADHD and Boys Adrift.
19:55
I provide 15 different scholarly references from Harvard Medical
20:00
School. Ironically, among others,
20:02
researchers at Harvard and other medical schools have found that
20:05
these medications damaged the the motivational center of the
20:08
brain, which is not surprising if you're no any neuroscience.
20:12
These medications Adderall, Vyvanse, Concerta Medidate work
20:15
by mimicking the action of dopamine.
20:18
And we find the highest concentration of dopamine
20:20
receptors in the nucleus accumbens.
20:23
So it's not at all surprising that the area of the brain where
20:26
we find all the dopamine receptors would be the area of
20:28
the brain most affected by these medications.
20:32
So that's a real problem because in this country and in Canada
20:38
and in no other countries, it is common for doctors to say, well,
20:41
let's try Vyvanse and see if it works.
20:44
You know, I was, I actually spoke at Harvard Medical School.
20:47
And I'm sorry, it was not Harvard Medical School, It was
20:50
Harvard University where I spoke at a conference title, Learning
20:53
and the Brain. And I would love to tell you
20:55
that my presentation was the buzz of the conference, but it
20:58
wasn't the presentation everyone was really excited about.
21:00
It was a presentation by Doctor Joseph Gabrielli from MIT, who
21:04
somehow got permission to give Adderall to normal kids and
21:08
withhold medication from kids with severe ADD and then study
21:13
the ability of kids in both groups to learn on and off
21:15
medication. And he found that this stimulant
21:18
medication helps normal kids more than it helps kids with
21:22
ADD. That's a tremendously important
21:24
finding because many times as a family doctor and PhD
21:27
psychologist, I've been in this situation of saying to parents,
21:31
look, your son doesn't meet criteria for ADD.
21:34
He doesn't actually even come close.
21:36
And the parents will say, yeah, but the other doctor gave him
21:38
vaviance and it made such a difference.
21:40
In other words, the parents are interpreting the response to
21:43
medication as though the response to medication had some
21:45
diagnostic significance. This medication was prescribed
21:48
for ADD. It was helpful.
21:51
Therefore he must have ADD, right?
21:53
No. These medications help normal
21:55
kids as much or more than they help kids with ADD.
21:59
So the response to medication has no diagnostic significance.
22:03
So what should you do if the school says your kid has ADD?
22:07
What should you do if your kid really had does have ADD?
22:10
An American kid is now 14 times more likely to be on medication
22:14
for ADD compared to a kid in the United Kingdom.
22:17
I I present all those data incidentally in my book The
22:20
Collapse of Parenting. American kids are now many times
22:23
more likely to be medicated than kids out nights outside North
22:26
America, which wasn't true 30-40 years ago.
22:29
It is true today. I wrote a book with a French
22:31
publisher with great help from colleagues in France called
22:35
Procuale Gossano Pede Pierre de FISA Metal Dolce.
22:38
And writing that book with French colleagues, I learned
22:42
that in all of France there are fewer than 6000 kids on
22:47
medication for ADD. There are more kids on
22:49
medication for ADD in Philadelphia than there are in
22:54
all of France, a nation of 67 million people.
22:57
In this country, medication is the first resort.
22:59
Outside of North America, medication is the last resort.
23:03
And incidentally, when you speak on this topic in Europe, as I
23:06
have done in Munich, in Lutzanne and other venues, they're
23:11
actually well aware of this, of the dangers of these
23:14
medications. It's in North America that
23:18
doctors and parents are unfamiliar with the dangers of
23:21
these medications. So.
23:24
So these medications damage the motivational center of the
23:26
brain. That's a big problem.
23:28
Fourth factors Endocrine disruptors 1.
23:30
Quick question, Doctor Sachs, I know I keep interrupting about
23:33
there's such so much food for thought in each of these factors
23:36
on that factor of these medications.
23:38
You know, America's we also have the the reputation of we love
23:42
our drugs, right? We're one of the most drugged up
23:44
societies in the world. And you mentioned for ADHD kids
23:47
that don't have ADHD, it can have the effect these
23:50
medications of improving their study skills, but they're all
23:54
but at the same time you're saying it's demotivating them.
23:57
So it's helping them complete like a robot homework,
24:00
exercises, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're
24:03
learning. Is that your critique?
24:05
No, that's not accurate. They're learning and again,
24:11
these medications boost kids ability to learn in the short
24:17
term. And again, many parents will be
24:22
like wow, you know, so a another family where I was consulted,
24:30
parents were absolutely convinced that of course their
24:34
son had ADD because doctor prescribed Vyvanse and mom got a
24:38
phone call from the school Monday afternoon.
24:40
He took his first dose Monday morning, and Monday afternoon,
24:44
teacher called and said, wow, I had no idea.
24:47
Justin is so bright, so clever. What a difference.
24:50
And he said he's on a new medication.
24:51
It's really helping. And then I do my evaluation.
24:55
I said, your son doesn't have ADD.
24:56
And mom's like, well, that's ridiculous.
24:58
This medication has been enormously helpful.
25:00
The teacher, all the teachers agree he's doing so much better.
25:03
Yeah. Well, why is he doing so much
25:05
better? So I spoke to this boy, and I
25:07
said, do you have a video game console in your bedroom?
25:10
Yeah, of course. We are playing last night.
25:12
Yeah, sure. What are you playing?
25:14
Call of Duty, when did you finish like 130 and when do you
25:19
wake up? Six.
25:20
He's trying to function on less than five hours sleep a night.
25:24
He and he's doing this night after night after night.
25:27
He is profoundly sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation perfectly
25:31
mimics ADHD of the inattentive variety.
25:34
There is no counter scale. There is no Vanderbilt interview
25:37
which can distinguish the kid who's not paying because he's
25:40
sleep deprived and the kid who's not paying attention because he
25:44
is truly has ADHD. And you'll have a stack of
25:48
Connors reports from the school. Every teacher says this kid is
25:51
off the chart inattentive, and he's he is because he's falling
25:55
asleep. He's barely staying awake in
25:57
class. What's Adderall?
25:59
What's Vyvanse? They're amphetamines.
26:02
They they're uppers, they're speed.
26:04
They compensate. Caffeine jolt in the morning.
26:06
It's it's much, much, much stronger than caffeine.
26:10
And yeah, it compensates for the sleep deprivation.
26:13
I'm not disputing the fact that this was medication was
26:16
enormously helpful. I'm sure it was.
26:18
But the appropriate remedy for sleep deprivation is sleep, not
26:23
schedule 2 amphetamines. And the parents finally agreed
26:27
to remove the video game console from the bedroom to ensure that
26:31
there were no screens, no video games in the bedroom.
26:35
He's getting a good night's sleep, he's off medication, and
26:37
he's doing much better. But again, many parents don't
26:41
even have a clue that their son is up at 2:00 in the morning
26:44
playing video games. And that gets into topic I
26:47
discuss in my book, the collapse of parenting.
26:50
It's it's a primary responsibility of parents to
26:53
ensure that their 14 year old is getting a good night's sleep.
26:56
It is not reasonable to put that burden on the 14 year old boy.
27:00
What's the boy supposed to say when his friends say, hey, where
27:03
were you last night at midnight? When we did, when we did the the
27:06
collaborative ambush on World of Warcraft?
27:08
Why weren't you part of that? Is was supposed to say?
27:11
Well, researchers have found the sleep deprivation in adolescence
27:13
is a major risk factor in the ideology of both anxiety and
27:16
depression. You know, you can't do that.
27:18
You have to say, hey, my evil parents took my video game
27:20
console out of my bedroom. They lock it down between 9:00
27:23
AM. After 9:00 PM, you have to allow
27:28
your son to say that. You have to have the courage to
27:31
be the evil parent. Recognizing that American
27:33
popular culture now makes it cool to be up at midnight
27:37
playing video games with your friends online.
27:40
So the parents have to step in and find the courage to turn off
27:44
the device. And that's actually more a focus
27:47
of my book, The Collapse of Parenting.
27:48
What happens when parents don't do their job?
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4:00 and 5:00. Factor 4, so factor 4 is
29:24
endocrine disruptors. Male hormone levels have dropped
29:27
by half over the last, more than half over the last 50 years.
29:30
Sperm counts have fallen by more than half over the last 50
29:33
years, and that's happened because of endocrine disruptors.
29:38
So you have a plastic, you have a, you have a bottled water in a
29:42
clear plastic container. That clear plastic is a
29:45
substance called polyethylene terephthalate.
29:47
And I showed in a paper published by the National
29:50
Institutes of Health, a review article that I wrote pulling
29:55
together many studies showing that that plastic is going to
30:00
leach diethyphthalate and antimony into the water.
30:05
It doesn't have a taste. You don't realize it, but you
30:08
are consuming substances that act in your body like female
30:11
hormone when you drink bottled water.
30:14
What happens when children are teenagers consume substances
30:17
that act like female hormones? Well, the answer is different
30:20
depending whether we're talking about girls or boys.
30:22
With girls, you get an earlier onset of puberty.
30:26
More than half of American girls now begin puberty prior to their
30:30
10th birthday, the process of puberty prior to their 10th
30:34
birthday. And that directly leads to
30:37
anxiety and depression among girls with early onset of
30:40
puberty. And that's a major focus of my
30:42
book Girls on the Edge. But it doesn't accelerate the
30:45
onset of puberty and boys on the country and lowers testosterone
30:49
levels. And it turns out that teenage
30:51
boys and young men rely on testosterone for drive.
30:54
And I cite 10 different studies in boys at draft showing that
30:58
when you look at motivated, hard working young men and compare
31:02
them to less motivated, lazy young men, that motivated, hard
31:05
working young men have higher testosterone levels.
31:08
Men rely on testosterone for drive.
31:10
Women do not. When the same researchers look
31:13
at women who are hard working, motivated and compare and draw
31:16
blood on them and compare what they find to women who are less
31:19
motivated, there's no difference in hormone levels.
31:22
Women do not rely on hormones for drive and motivation, but
31:25
men do. They rely on testosterone and
31:28
five valve with the hydrotestosterone and those
31:31
levels have dropped dramatically as a result of endocrine
31:33
disruptors. And the result that is a that is
31:38
a factor and it's a very easy factor to to fix.
31:43
Don't drink water out of a plastic bottle.
31:45
Pour water into a steel canteen as I do and drink it from the
31:50
from from your tap into a steel canteen.
31:52
It happens to be a lot cheaper and it's a lot safer.
31:59
Again, I'm old enough to remember when condiments like
32:01
ketchup and mayonnaise were sold in glass bottles.
32:05
Today they're sold in plastic bottles.
32:07
Same with pasta sauce. When you when the manufacturer
32:11
squirts pasta sauce into a container, it's squirted at
32:17
about 170°F. It's at a very high temperature
32:20
because it has to be sterile. Well, if you do that in a glass
32:24
bottle, it's not a problem. You do that in a plastic bottle
32:27
and you're greatly going to promote leaching of these
32:31
endocrine disruptors like dothyhalate into the contents of
32:34
the bottle. And American kids are drinking
32:37
bottled water. They're consuming ketchup,
32:41
mustard, pasta sauce, and many cosmetics are vectors of
32:48
endocrine disruptors. So again, it costs little or
32:50
nothing to eliminate endocrine disruptors from your life.
32:54
It's really not that much more expensive to buy ketchup in a
32:58
glass bottle. You can find it.
33:00
It's a few pennies more. Ketchup's not really that
33:02
expensive and it's worth it. And that's what that's what we
33:07
do in our family. We buy things in glass bottles.
33:10
And when you say things, you don't just mean food, but you
33:13
also mean, it sounds like soap or products that you apply
33:16
directly to the skin. Or is that?
33:18
And again, again, that's real easy.
33:20
The Environmental Working groupewg.org/skin Deep is a free
33:25
resource. You just type in what you're
33:27
looking for and it'll show you what products are safe and what
33:30
products are not. Again, it doesn't cost much or
33:34
anything to greatly reduce your kids exposure to endocrine
33:40
disruptors. Don't microwave in plastic.
33:43
I mean, you go through the frozen food aisle and they want
33:45
you to microwave your food in the plastic bag, which we know
33:50
is immensely toxic and all kinds of toxins are leaching into your
33:56
into your food. Cut open the plastic, put it in
33:58
a dish and microwave. It takes, you know, 30 seconds
34:02
and it's much, much, much safer. Again, it's easy to do this.
34:07
I also reference a book that presents the same material in in
34:13
a very fun way. The book is called Slow Death by
34:17
Rubber Duck and these two Canadians set out to see if they
34:22
could reverse it by for a month, being very careful not to
34:28
consume anything that was full of endocrine disruptors, and
34:32
within a month's time all their hormone levels came back to
34:34
normal. You can fix this.
34:36
It costs very little to do it. Slow Death by Rubber Duck.
34:41
Great fun. Well, Doctor Sachs, what about
34:43
plastic lining? And you know, to go coffee cups
34:46
as an example. Yeah, not a good idea.
34:51
Again, make your coffee in your Brewer and put it in a steel
34:55
container and you will be fine. It's not hard to do it right.
34:59
It's not hard to do it right. But stay away from plastic.
35:03
And then the 5th factor is the revenge of the forsaken gods.
35:09
And I always try to acknowledge my patient in my own medical
35:15
practice. Who suggested that title.
35:18
His name is Anders Eckloff and he is an amateur anthropologist.
35:23
He reads a lot of anthropology and we were talking about how so
35:28
many traditional societies in the in the South Pacific and
35:32
sub-Saharan Africa, the boy does not become a man automatically.
35:40
He has to earn it, and the parents have to make sacrifices
35:45
to the relevant gods to ensure that their son will make that
35:48
transition to manhood And and he might not.
35:52
He may fail at the task, in which case he remains a boy.
35:56
He may. In some of these communities,
35:58
you'll find males who are 40 years old, but they're not
36:02
allowed to marry. They can't own property they
36:04
had. They never pass the test to
36:07
become men and my patient Anders Eckloff suggested that we live
36:13
in a society which is experiencing the revenge of the
36:16
forsaken gods. We no longer take that process
36:20
of becoming a man seriously and the result is we have men who
36:25
want to be boys, adult men who are spending their free time
36:28
playing video games with their 12 year old nephews.
36:34
The more scholarly way to describe that fifth factor would
36:38
be the collapse in the social construction of masculinity 50
36:43
years ago. If you were to say to boy be a
36:45
man, he knew exactly what that meant because he was immersed in
36:48
a culture with, you know, movies starring men like Paul Newman
36:54
and Sidney Poitier and Gary Cooper.
36:57
And it was clear what it meant to be a man.
36:59
It meant to be courageous, to be willing to sacrifice yourself
37:03
for for the good of others, to be a hero.
37:08
I was speaking at Wabash College in Crawfordsville IN one of the
37:12
few remaining all male colleges in the United States.
37:15
And with after consulting with the college leadership, I met
37:20
with all the freshmen at Wabash College and and it was back and
37:25
forth conversation. I said to them, what does it
37:28
mean to be a gentleman? Raise your hand if you think you
37:31
know what the word gentleman means.
37:33
If you'd care to share your definition of what it means to
37:36
be a gentleman. And a boy shot up his hand and
37:39
he said being a gentleman means you go to gentlemen's clubs and
37:42
watch girls take their clothes off.
37:43
I said OK, that's that's really funny.
37:45
Can anyone else give a more serious?
37:48
Can anyone else give a more serious definition?
37:50
And another boy says, well, gentlemen, where's a three piece
37:52
suit? A gentleman opens doors for
37:54
women. It's all surface, it's all
37:57
appearance. And I don't blame these boys.
37:59
How should they know if they have received no instruction?
38:02
What does it mean to be a good man?
38:05
Again, when I do this talk for parents, I talk about TV shows
38:09
of of a generation ago, like The Andy Griffith Show, and compare
38:16
that to TV shows today like The Simpsons or Modern Family, The
38:22
presentation of the father in American television.
38:30
You look at all the most popular TV shows of 50 years ago or even
38:33
30 years ago. The father is consistently
38:35
knowledgeable, competent, reliable, responsible, not only
38:39
on The Andy Griffith Show or My Three Sons in the 1960s, but
38:43
even on The Cosby Show or Family Ties in the 1980s.
38:48
But in writing my book, The Collapse of Parenting, I've
38:50
reviewed the 150 most popular shows to see how many of them
38:55
occasionally, at least occasionally, depict a father as
38:58
knowledgeable, competent, reliable, responsible.
39:00
Out of 150 shows, I found one, Blue Bloods, starring Tom
39:04
Selleck, which at least occasionally depicts a father.
39:07
One out of 150, Blue Bloods is now a unique outlier.
39:11
It is not characteristic. Again, Modern Family would be
39:14
much more typical. Dog with a blog Disney Channel
39:19
show the father, supposedly a school psychologist, knows
39:22
nothing about what kids want or what kids need the talking dog
39:25
is always wiser, more insightful than the idiot dad.
39:31
Boys need to see a man in order to become a man and our our
39:39
culture no longer offers good role models again. 1962 Sam
39:44
Cooke had a number one hit song in the United States.
39:46
He sang Don't know much about history.
39:48
He sang. Now I don't claim to be an A
39:50
student, but I'm trying to be because maybe by being an A
39:54
student baby, I could win your love for me.
39:57
He goes on to mention French, geometry and trigonometry as
40:00
subjects in which he's going to try harder to earn an A rather
40:03
than AB because he believes it. By being an A student, he will
40:06
raise his status in the eyes of the pretty girl.
40:08
And that was characteristic of American culture in that era.
40:13
A generation ago, American popular culture that keep
40:15
culture people who spoke English at home was the culture of John
40:18
Lennon, Paul McCartney, Simon and Garfunkel.
40:22
Not anymore. Now it's the culture of Drake
40:25
and Bruno Mars. Drake has had more top 10 songs
40:30
than anyone else in American history.
40:32
He had 79 top ten hit songs compared to 40 something for
40:37
Taylor Swift. And his songs are full of the F
40:40
word, the N word, the A word. He says I'm undoubtedly the
40:45
hottest. That's just me being modest.
40:47
My balls bigger than yours. And I can't quote any of the
40:50
rest of that number one hit song because it's full of the F word,
40:53
the N word and the A word. Incidentally, the New York
40:57
Times, in reviewing that song play, praised Drake for his
41:00
lyrical vividness. Drake, Bruno Mars, Eminem, Lil
41:08
Nas X Lil Nas X had a number one hit song in the United states.
41:12
He got two Grammys where he said can't nobody tell me nothing,
41:17
you can't tell me nothing. And that's the culture of
41:20
disrespect in the nutshell. The opening chapter of my book,
41:23
The Collapse of Parenting is titled the culture of disrespect
41:26
That American popular culture has become a culture of
41:28
disrespect where it's cool and funny to be disrespectful to
41:33
others, to be disrespectful to adults.
41:36
The culture of Lil Nas X, Drake and Bruno Mars.
41:41
It is impossible to imagine Drake or Bruno Mars singing a
41:44
song about how they're going to try harder to earn an A rather
41:47
than AB. It's just, it's, it's
41:48
inconceivable. And that's.
41:51
Probably part of that world adjacent like I think about the
41:54
red pill world. I'm sure you've heard of it, but
41:55
it's, you know, this whole idea of simping for a woman, like how
41:58
dare you try to be better for a woman.
42:01
Women are all messed up today and they're not really worth it
42:05
at large is the is the narrative, which, you know, I
42:07
can understand the the perspective because you know,
42:10
we're to focusing on men right now, but there's a degrading
42:12
process that's happened in the behavior and and also, I would
42:16
just say in the in the health of women today at large.
42:19
Well, boys want to be men, Men and girls want to be women, but
42:22
we no longer give them guidance. I read an article years ago for
42:27
Psychology Today titled Ladies and Gentlemen, Skanks and Pimps,
42:32
and I was commenting on a New York Times article where one of
42:36
their columnist said how offended she was when her young
42:39
son came home from school and said that the teacher had told
42:42
them about being ladies and gentlemen.
42:44
And the New York Times columnist was so offended.
42:47
Ladies and gentlemen, that's so sexist, she said.
42:50
We shouldn't be using terms like that.
42:52
We should just teach all students to be good citizens
42:55
because, ladies and gentlemen, is reinforcing the
42:57
heteronormative binary and, and only, only, only Republicans and
43:02
idiots believe in the heteronormative binary.
43:05
Enlightened people know better, was the point of this New York
43:08
Times columnist. And it was around that time that
43:13
2 high school boys in Steubenville, OH, were on trial
43:20
for rape. A girl had passed out at a party
43:24
and they had sexually assaulted her.
43:27
And everyone thought this was fine.
43:29
Other kids were videoing it because they thought it was
43:31
funny. And Mike Dewine, who was the at
43:37
that time attorney general of Ohio prosecuting the case, said
43:39
he encountered unbelievable casualness as he interviewed
43:44
these kids and the witnesses, no awareness that they'd done
43:47
anything wrong. Boys are not born knowing what
43:50
they mean to what it means to be a gentleman.
43:53
A gentleman would know that you never touch a girl when she's
43:56
drunk, that you protect her from any bad.
44:00
Men who don't know that when you fail to teach boys to be
44:05
gentlemen, you don't end up with virtuous citizens.
44:08
You end up with pimps. And when you fail to teach girls
44:13
to be ladies, you don't end up with virtual citizens, you end
44:17
up with skanks. Hence the title of my article.
44:20
Ladies and gentlemen, Skanks and Pimps.
44:23
If you ignore gender differences, again responding to
44:27
that New York Times column, you don't end up with virtuous
44:29
citizens. You end up with boys who think
44:32
there's nothing wrong with molesting a teenage girl who
44:34
just passed out on alcohol, and the girls who get drunk on
44:39
alcohol and don't know how to say no, so everybody loses.
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45:36
Everyone has is losing. I mean, that's the state today
45:39
and why this conversation and your work is so important.
45:42
You, you, you've referenced it a little bit or you've, you've
45:45
kind of tiptoed towards it, you know, on the sexual ethics
45:47
issues, but you know, pornography has just
45:50
proliferated in the last few decades.
45:52
What impact do you think that has had on men and their
45:56
masculinity and flourishing and then also their relationships?
46:01
Well, you're absolutely right. It's huge and it, and I devote a
46:04
lot more the second edition to Boys Adrift talking about it
46:07
because again, a lot of parents don't understand how profoundly
46:10
this has changed, how normal it has become.
46:16
So I was at, I was invited to speak at a boys high school to
46:21
the boys on this topic. And I said again, when I when I
46:27
meet with the students, it's always question and answer, even
46:29
in a large assembly. So I said, all right, why don't
46:34
you raise your hand if you have at least 1000 porn photos or
46:38
videos on your devices and basically every hand in the room
46:41
goes up. 400 kids 400, yes, every hand.
46:46
Then I said, all right, raise your hand.
46:47
If you don't have any porn on any device in a room of 400
46:53
kids, three hands go up. I said, OK, you 3 who have your
46:57
hands raised, would any of you be willing to share with your
47:01
colleagues? For what reason you don't have
47:03
any porn on your device? And one boy raised his hand.
47:07
He said, well, I'm a born again Christian.
47:09
I don't Jesus Christ, my Lord and savior, I don't think you'd
47:12
want me to do that. And the other two boys sitting
47:14
together said, well, we're Mormon and we're not allowed.
47:18
OK, well, they have an excuse. They're Mormon.
47:21
They're evangelical. I don't actually believe the
47:24
other 400 boys. I don't believe that all of
47:26
those 400 boys have at least 1000 porn photos and videos.
47:29
But that's the new normal. That's you're going to raise
47:33
your hand and say you do even if you don't, because that's a new
47:36
normal. And the school administrators
47:37
had asked me to come and speak to the boys because in carline
47:40
waiting to be picked up, they're all looking at porn and showing
47:43
it to their friends. And then and there's no shame,
47:47
there's no awareness that a gentleman doesn't look at porn.
47:50
And again, I lead these conversations with students,
47:54
ideally in a smaller group than 400, where I say just a good
47:57
man, look at porn. And I just hear what that.
48:00
Well, of course, you know why? What's wrong?
48:01
No one's getting hurt. And but again, I've worked out
48:05
with the school leadership in advance, of course, how we're
48:07
going to structure this. And you need to get the
48:09
permission of the school leadership because you don't
48:11
want the boy coming home and saying, hey, mom, guess what we
48:13
talked about in school today without the parents being aware
48:16
and on board Why this is so important and where I'm leading
48:21
this conversation toward is, no, a good man does not look at
48:25
pornography because pornography degrades not only the woman
48:29
depicted, but also the man who consumes.
48:34
You're trying to inspire boys to want to be better men.
48:37
You know, for all of human history of which we have any
48:40
recorded record, the sex drive has been a powerful motivator
48:45
for men. And men have been motivated to
48:48
achieve in the real world in order to impress the young woman
48:52
and say, look, I can be a good provider.
48:54
Let's start a family together. And I'll be a good provider and
48:57
we'll have kids together. And it's going to be great,
49:00
'cause I 'cause I'm strong and accomplished and I can do stuff.
49:04
Pornography profoundly undermines that.
49:07
Let me just quickly give you one example.
49:11
So mom confronts her son one day.
49:13
Again, an example for my own medical practice.
49:15
Mom confronts her son. She says, what's the story?
49:19
You wake up late every morning. You work a few hours a week at
49:21
the coffee shop. You're 28 years old.
49:25
You don't have a career yet. You don't.
49:28
You don't have a life. You don't have a girlfriend.
49:31
And he said, well, I used to have a girlfriend.
49:33
Then she found out I only worked a few hours a week at Starbucks.
49:35
She dumped me. And mom was like, well, duh.
49:38
What young woman wants to be a with a man who's got no ambition
49:41
beyond earning money for his, his, his video games?
49:47
She insisted he come speak with me.
49:50
So he did. And I asked him to tell me about
49:53
his girlfriend and he said, yeah, she was fat.
49:57
She wanted me to take her places, do stuff. 1995 a month.
50:02
I said wait what? What?
50:03
What's 1995 a month? I don't follow.
50:05
And he mentioned a porn site and he said and the girls are way
50:08
prettier. I said wait those aren't girls,
50:11
those are pictures on a screen, pixels.
50:13
Wouldn't you rather be intimate with an actual woman?
50:16
He said no, that's becoming more and more common.
50:21
Any 12 year old has in his pocket unlimited pornography.
50:28
Any, any smartphone can access unlimited porn.
50:31
You don't need a credit card. I'm I'm told you don't need a
50:34
credit card. You don't need You just say
50:36
you're 18 and you're in. And it is changing the lived
50:45
experience of American boys in profound ways.
50:49
I'm hearing from Deans of students at universities who are
50:54
saying our dance, we're canceling it because the boys
50:57
aren't showing up. They're not asking girls out.
51:00
They'd rather stay in their dorm room and masturbate over
51:04
pornography rather than take the time and trouble to ask a girl
51:08
out. When you actually meet with the
51:09
boys. They'll also talk about me too,
51:11
and how scared they are that their lives are going to be
51:13
ruined if they touch a girl the wrong way.
51:15
So the boys have all kinds of excuses, but the point is the
51:20
pornography is profoundly undermining motivation, and
51:26
that's why parents have to lock it down.
51:29
Again, going back to my book, The Collapse of Parenting, if
51:35
you're a parent, you've got to install an app on your son's
51:38
device that limits, blocks porn. And so another school did
51:47
something very courageous and there's a school where I
51:49
visited. They asked all the parents, this
51:54
is another boy's high school. All boys asked the parents, how
51:59
often does your son look at porn?
52:01
This is a high school. How often does your son look at
52:03
porn? Never once a month, once a week,
52:07
more than once a week, every day.
52:10
More than 80% of the parents said never.
52:13
My son never looks at porn. They then asked the boys at the
52:16
same high school, how often do you look at porn?
52:19
Never once a month, once a week, more than once a week, every
52:24
day. More than 80% of the boys said
52:26
more than once a week or every day.
52:28
It was very courageous for the parent for the school to share
52:31
that with the parents because it's a, you know, private school
52:36
world is a competitive world. And the danger of telling
52:38
parents that more than 80% of the boys at the school are
52:40
looking at porn frequently is some parents might say, oh, the
52:44
all perverts at these school, I'm going to transfer my kid to
52:46
the other school where they're probably more virtuous.
52:49
In fact, you would find the same numbers everywhere is my
52:52
experience having discussed this with boys at many different
52:55
schools across the United States.
52:58
Where are the kids? They at part of that survey they
53:01
asked the boys, where are you looking at porn?
53:02
They're all looking at porn on their phone.
53:04
What proportion of the kids parents have installed any kind
53:08
of app to in any way limit porn on the device?
53:13
Only 4%. And a lot of parents are
53:15
skeptical. They'll be like, oh come on,
53:18
what's the point of installing the the app?
53:21
I'm sure my son will just get around it.
53:23
So 1 popular app is called Net nanny.
53:25
I've done a lot of events across Silicon Valley, actually met
53:28
with employees and then nanny because a parent will say my kid
53:32
will just Google. How do I get to run parental
53:34
controls on that nanny? And, and they'll, they'll be
53:36
around it. And I, I spoke to employees in
53:39
their nanny and they told me they have colleagues whose full
53:42
time job is to Google the phrase how do I get around parental
53:45
controls on that nanny? And that if they found a kid has
53:48
found a hole, they patch it usually within hours.
53:51
I do encourage parents to install parental monitoring apps
53:55
on any device with Internet access and explain to your son,
53:59
explain to your daughter. Look, my parents insisted on
54:01
knowing where I was at all times.
54:02
I have to know where you are at all times.
54:04
It's part of my job as your parent.
54:06
I'm going to see everything you're doing online and, and,
54:09
and daughter, if I see that you've taken a picture that's
54:13
inappropriate, you're going to lose the device and, and the app
54:17
will detect the picture before anything's even done with it.
54:21
And, and you have to do this to because your kids are immersed
54:26
in a toxic culture. American popular culture right
54:28
now is a toxic culture where it's cool for girls to be
54:32
skanks, where it's cool for boys to be disrespectful and defiant.
54:37
That's a toxic culture. It's not the culture of 30 years
54:39
ago or 50 years ago. It's changed in some really bad
54:42
ways. And parents need to be on their
54:45
guard. You know, the original title of
54:46
my book, The Collapse of Parenting, which I'd like to
54:50
mention was a New York Times bestseller.
54:52
The original title of that book, the title of the manuscript I
54:54
sent to the publisher was The Collapse of American Parenting
54:58
and the subtitle was Why Most Kids would now Be Better Off
55:00
Raised Outside North America. Wow.
55:03
Well non celebrities don't get to choose your title but they
55:06
did leave in most of the material including the chapter
55:08
where I show that American kids are now 10/20/30 times more
55:12
likely to be diagnosed with anxiety, depression, ADD
55:16
compared to kids outside North America.
55:18
So, Doctor Sox, I hate to interrupt you because this is
55:21
all gold. I mean, everyone needs to get
55:23
your books. We're going to have to have you
55:24
back in the podcast because I know we just have a few minutes
55:27
left here in the time we have remaining.
55:29
I think you've done a phenomenal job of laying out it is a mess.
55:32
It's a toxic wasteland, as you called it.
55:35
You've shared some really powerful recommendations for
55:37
what parents and adults can do to help the young people in
55:40
their lives. You know, you talked about phone
55:42
controls. You talked about ditch the water
55:44
or the plastic packaging. Can you give a few more concrete
55:48
recommendations, especially when it comes to school?
55:50
Because I feel like that's one that's maybe out of a lot of
55:53
parents immediate hands. If their kids are in school,
55:55
they're not homeschooling. How do you make it maximized or
55:59
optimized for boys with the existing structures that most
56:03
people are dealing with? Well, if, if your boy is not
56:07
engaged, not motivated, you have to determine, is this school
56:11
unfriendly to boys? You know, again, as a family
56:13
doctor and PhD psychologist, often I have been asked to
56:17
evaluate this boy and, and we'll look at the reports from the
56:20
school and I'll spend one or two sessions with the boy.
56:25
And sometimes you'll discover the problems not with the boy,
56:28
but with the school. And the solution is not to
56:31
medicate the boy, but to change the school.
56:34
And you may have. To look for in a school.
56:36
Well, what's a boy friendly school?
56:40
Very, very quickly. Look to see the numbers.
56:44
Look at the honor roll at a Coed school.
56:46
The honor roll should be roughly 5050 boys and girls.
56:49
If you find as I did at 1 middle school, I visited 19 girls and
56:53
three boys, and those three boys are the sons of recent
56:57
immigrants from East Asia. You have no white, black, or
57:01
Latino boys on the honor roll at all at a school that's primarily
57:05
white, black, and Latino with a few Asian immigrants.
57:09
That's a problem. That's not a boyfriendly school,
57:12
and you may need to move. You know, my wife and I moved
57:14
from Maryland to Pennsylvania, sold my practice in Maryland and
57:17
moved to Pennsylvania because we were unhappy with the choice of
57:19
schools available. Your kids have to be your top
57:21
priority. And if you have to move, you
57:23
have to move. But some other quick tips, you
57:25
have to prioritize the family. The parent child relationship is
57:30
more important than the kids relationships with same age
57:34
peers. Cancel the play date, make a
57:36
family date instead. No earbuds, no headsets in the
57:39
car. When you're in the car, you
57:41
should be listening to your kid and he should be listening to
57:43
you, not to Bruno Mars or Lil Nas X Prioritize the family
57:49
fight for supper together. Again, there's there's lots more
57:53
in my books, Boys Adrift and The Collapse of Parenting
57:55
specifically on those topics. Thank you, Doctor Sachs.
57:59
Well, we definitely need to have you back on because there's so
58:01
much more to discuss here, but I think this has been excellent,
58:04
and I so appreciate the work you're doing.
58:06
It's very countercultural. You know, a lot of people, I
58:08
think, consider some of the things that you're saying very
58:11
unorthodox or heterodox views, but they're so necessary for
58:15
people to know. So thank you so much.
58:17
Thanks again for inviting me. Thanks so much for listening to
58:21
this episode of the Lila Rose Podcast.
58:23
I think I said the word wow many times because what he was saying
58:27
was all true. It's, you know, not really
58:29
something that's contested or can be contested, but it also
58:33
has serious implications for, OK, what do we do next?
58:35
And so we got into some of that. I think there's a lot more to
58:38
get into in his books he addresses that has a lot of
58:40
practical solutions. So be sure to check them out.
58:43
They're great books, especially Boys Adrift, which is what we
58:46
deep dive today. We will be hopefully having
58:49
Doctor Sachs back on the podcast in the future to discuss these
58:53
topics. More especially I'm interested
58:55
in the collapse of parenting and his concrete advice for parents.
58:59
I mean, I'm a parent of young kids as you guys know.
59:02
I've got a 2 year old and almost 4 year old one on the way.
59:04
Many of you listening are parents or you care about kids.
59:07
You have nieces or nephews. So this is the big question.
59:09
What do we do with the next generation?
59:11
How do we raise them to be strong men and women that will
59:14
be the future leaders of our society to make it healthy
59:17
again? This project is possible.
59:20
It is the most urgent and important one, I believe.
59:23
And it's one of the reasons that inspired this podcast, quite
59:25
frankly, is exploring these topics.
59:27
So thanks so much for listening. As always, don't forget to
59:30
subscribe to the Lila Rose podcast and leave us a review.
59:33
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59:57
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