Welcome back. To the to be a.
Boy podcast with me, Elliot Raine.
And me, Julie Brilly. And today we're in the.
Studio. We've got, I mean, I wish I had
one of these in my house. Yeah, this, this, this.
Chair is so comfortable I don't. Ever want to leave?
I know I'm moving in. Where's your Christmas jumper?
Oh, it's at home, to be fair. I've got one.
I've had it from Next for three years.
It's lovely. It's got a big.
Santa Claus at the front. Some lights.
It's fantastic. Best for?
Christmas Day and. I tell you I have Christmas
jumper, I have Christmas knickers.
We'll get you one. We're going to buy a Christmas
jumper. OK.
There we go, Christmas pres. I'm the worst at Christmas
presents. As you know.
Thank you for my angels though. Oh, you are very welcome.
But yeah, little little black. Angels, they were lovely and my
2. Year old had a meltdown.
Because she wanted 3 so. You very kindly brought us.
Two, but for some. Reason she was like.
I want 3. Complete irrational braid.
Yeah. And it's never enough.
Is it Never enough? It's like this is enough.
OK. But we're coming to the air
year. End.
It's been a. Year to be a boy.
Nearly a year, but. 2025 our first year, how you feeling?
About this milestone. It's been a joy.
I have enjoyed every second doing this podcast.
Every second. I think we, well, not every
second, I'll be honest. There've been the moments we, I
think when we started it, we just thought, Oh well, this is a
topic we're both really interested in, let's give it a
go, see what happens. I don't think for either of us,
it was about getting lots of people to listen.
I was just cute, really curious about what guests would say and
actually people are loving it. People.
Yeah, I go out all the. Time and people they.
Talk about the podcast and. In a very moving way as well,
you know, in a way. That it's, it's personal to them
and it helps them and it's yes. It's amazing that people
actually listen. And we've learned so much,
right? I feel like I've learned.
I feel like I've been had an epiphany almost once a week
during this podcast. There's something that's
somebody said where a light bulb has gone off.
And I've thought, wow, yeah, I'd never thought of it like that.
So what privilege to be able to hang out with a lovely podcast
team and learn something new. Brains of clever people.
So, So what? Some of your highlights give.
Me give me one of your to be a boy. 2025 Highlights.
Well, we start off with Ruth the Whitman.
The Whitman, That's what I'm going to call her from that.
I loved Ruth Whitman and she had written a book all about raising
boys because she's got three boys herself.
And I read that book before interviewing her and was
absolutely blown away by it. I mean, what a book.
And the podcast, she just really opened my eyes to many of the
challenges that boys are experiencing to that, to the
fact that as a feminist raising two boys, there's this tug of
war internally sometimes between previously held beliefs and
seeing what your boys go through and wanting to protect them as
much as possible while also feeling very strongly that you
want to raise a good man because we as women have experienced not
good men in our lives. Yeah, I I love that episode.
Yeah, Ruth. Ruth was.
Really, really good. I think it was a really good way
of starting because I think it's just the framing she gave the
issues was perfect. It was a perfect entry point
and. You know, there's been so.
Much. There's been so much negativity
around boys. The conversation has been
difficult over the years. I think a lot of people have
been scared to have conversations about boys.
And so I think getting. Roof on at the beginning to say
look, this is a podcast that recognizes that some.
People do harm. Right.
And some boys do harm, girls do harm.
That that is, that is. True, but we're not looking at
from a. Perspective of boys or bad
people. We're looking at this as they
are young people who need to be loved and nurtured and guided.
And in all of our hearts there is, there is goodness and the
world's a complex place. And as parents, as teachers, as
mentors, as people who just care, how can we raise the next
generation of boys to do good things and be good partners and
get the good dads and good colleagues and good friends?
You know, so it was, it was great, great, great framing.
So all this nature nurture stuff is really interesting.
And it's also, it's kind of quite fraught because you know,
sometimes when you sort of talk about how much is innate and how
much is socialized, it can feel like you're making some kind of
political statement. And so I went into that research
with a lot of trepidation. And, you know, there's this
whole story about boys will be boys.
When you hear that, you kind of imagine that boys are like sort
of innately aggressive or destructive or really sturdy and
tough and, you know, not very vulnerable.
But what I found when I looked at the research was actually
almost the complete opposite, that a baby boy is actually more
emotionally sensitive and fragile and vulnerable than a
baby girl at birth. And the reason for that is that
the right hemisphere of the brain, which is the part, you
know, it's very easy to oversimplify, but broadly
speaking, the right part of the brain is the part that deals
with emotions, emotional self regulation.
So like calming down if you're upset and forming attachments
and relationships. So it's like your emotional
center in a baby boy that's about a month to six weeks
behind a baby girl in development at birth.
And if you know newborns, you know that a month to six weeks
is really quite a lot like if you think about premature babies
or whatever. And so when a boy is born, he's
like a little bit more, you know, the boys tend to cry more
often. They find it harder to calm
down. They're more kind of upset by
traumatic or difficult events. So if they're separated from
their caregiver or if something goes wrong, you can see that a
baby boy takes slightly longer to calm down.
Obviously, we're talking about averages here, group averages.
Every individual is different, but the baby girl is slightly
generally slightly more independent, slightly more
resilient. So you can see that in the data
that pretty much every bad thing that can happen to a baby.
So whether that's like abuse or neglect or poverty or post nasal
depression from the mom, all of these things have a bigger
impact on boys than they do on girls.
And you can see data on that that carries all the way through
life. You know that boys are more
vulnerable to disruption and that kind of brain
vulnerability, you know, it's brain immaturity and brain
vulnerability carries on throughout childhood.
Boys brains just develop more slowly.
I just wanted to clarify on one of the points that you said,
because I can imagine some boys or men that might be listening
will be thinking, hold on, our brains are not behind girls.
But it's not about intelligence, is it?
It's about. Order.
It's not about intelligence at all.
So like cognitive skills. And this is I think why this
issue becomes really controversial because people get
hung up on these like who can read maps and who can do maths
and who can do, you know, breathing and everything.
Actually cognitively in terms of like intelligence, boys and
girls bones are really similar. They have very similar Iqs and
it's the emotional development, the sort of emotional and
attachment development that's the bit that is a little bit
behind and the parts that deal with that self regulation.
So calm me down. Impulse control, that sort of
thing. It's those things which are
different. For me, one of the episodes that
stood out was. Lenore skin Lazy.
I mean, she was also an absolute badass, wasn't she?
You won't mess with her. But she really did change the
way both of his parents because she made us realize that being
afraid of what would happen to our kids in the outside world
was causing more damage to them than just letting them roam.
Let them roam, baby. Let those kids roam.
Seriously. Lenore has saved me time.
On the school run, because now I park at the top of the hill, the
daughter gets out. And I drive off before I was.
Staying to watch her walk. Into the school gates now I
don't. Now I go and drop the youngest
to nursery and I. Trust that she can make her way
into the school. Gates and that saves me.
Time because I can get. To the nursery quicker.
And get home. And so thank you.
Don't know you have. Saved me 510.
Minutes on the school run. And given me more time to have
my eggs and toast for breakfast. Yeah, and there's something
about giving kids independence, isn't that that's so good for
them and so good for you. That, that my, my eldest, now
he's at secondary school, I, I barely do anything for him.
I, he has to make sure his PE kit is sorted and ready in the
morning. He has to make sure he's forms
out ready to go and if he doesn't have it ready then he's
just late for school and I just let him be late for school.
I don't step in. I'm just like well if you
haven't sorted it. You're raising a fully grown
adult. I'm right.
Well, no, I won't go that far, but but I have learned to really
step back and that that is good for him and it's good for me and
that kids learn from their mistakes.
That that episode was literally. Life changing for me, you know,
in terms of the freedom we give our eldest thou.
How we think about her. Handling difficult situations in
our life with our. Friends, you know when we go to
a shop or if we're in a restaurant.
I'm not. Ordering for you.
You know if we go to a. Shop you can pay, you've got a
little rooster card you can pay by yourself.
It's my money on the card, right?
But you. Can go and pay for yourself like
you can. Navigate the world without me
having to be there. And I think in a world now where
we have so much convenience. We've got so many things you can
do online. You can live a.
Full whole life without ever leaving your house or
interacting with a human being. Let our kids be out.
In the wild, I think it's a really important thing to do.
I think the big lie of our era is that we must know everything
our kids are doing. We must supervise them all the
time. Otherwise they are in grave
danger. And really the only people who
can help them any step along the way is their parent, who they
can then reach by a phone or smoke signal or whatever.
And it's so belied by all of history, by all of our own
history. At 15, you were not tethered to
your mom. You didn't have a phone when you
were 15, your mom didn't know where you were every single
second. You wanted to have adventures.
Sometimes you had did stupid things.
Sometimes you found yourself taking a little risk that you
thought was dumb in retrospect. Sometimes you had to even
obfuscate when your parents asked what you were doing or
where you were. And maybe that felt a little
bad, or maybe it felt a little good that you could handle
yourself, right. The idea that the only person
who can keep you safe and make you capable isn't you is very
debilitating. Yeah, why do you think so many
parents are terrified of letting go?
First of all, when when I was growing up, it was so long ago,
there wasn't as much media. There certainly wasn't an
Internet. There was barely cable
television when all of these things came along with more
space to fill and a more desperate grab for eyeballs.
Because it wasn't three stations or five stations or 100
stations. It's everyone in the world now
is trying to get your attention. The easiest way to get the
attention of anybody say child in danger.
And and even better than that is mom puts child in danger.
There's nothing more delicious to chew on than that.
We're chewing on it now. So the media is partly to blame,
but I think the overarching big kahuna is the big lie that we
were just discussing before, which is the idea that if you do
everything right and if you never take your eye off your kid
either physically or electronically, then you can
control everything they do. See, eat, hear, try, watch,
lick, whatever. And then they will be safe.
And, and that leaves the parents extremely anxious because it's
all in them and extremely bored because now I have to play all
the games with them and I have to make sure they understand the
vocabulary, their words, and I have to let them win, but not so
much that they don't understand what losing is.
Boring, boring, boring. And then the kid is bored
because instead of exploring something or climbing a tree or,
you know, falling or meeting a frog or doing anything, it's
like, oh, honey, I'll pick up the frog for you.
Let's see. What should we call it?
Should we call it Christopher? Christopher sounds like it could
start with AK, but actually it starts with chapter.
That's a blend. You know, it's so it's so over
the top for what we expect of parents and so underdeveloped
for what we expect of kids. We think they wouldn't possibly
be interested in anything unless we point things outlook at the
chlorophyll is why the leaves are changing color.
It's like, give me a break. Kids are created to be curious
and competent and to explore. And it's like the kids are in
the passenger seat and the parents are the drivers.
And you know that when you're the passenger, you don't learn
anything. You don't know where you are,
you don't know what your route is.
So we keep putting kids in the passenger seat of their lives
because it's safer. And then wondering why are they
so depressed? Why are they so anxious?
And I would say, why are they so passive?
And I think you're passive when you're passenger.
And can we just talk about John Amici?
Because I knew I have read a lot of John's work, listened to him
speak on multiple occasions, but still, that episode, I had to
sit in the dark room for about an hour afterwards just to
digest everything he said because it was so powerful.
Him talking in particular about the fact that people see him as
a monster because he's a tall, big black man and he knows he
sees it in people's faces when he's out, that they perceive him
as a monster and the impact that that has on him.
That was personal for me, very personal because.
I remember this story, so I. Was lucky enough to get awarded
by UN Women UK and me and Snenny.
We went to the the award show in Mayfair and got called up, gave
a speech, got this certificate and it was, it was, it was
amazing. And then on the train.
On the way home, I was sitting down on the train.
I think Snenny was opposite me. The train was.
Packed like people are. Standing up on the train.
And it's summertime. It's hot.
There was 1. Seat available on that train
next to me and no one wanted to sit down.
And I thought about it and thought.
This has been happening. For black men, forever.
But for that particular moment, why it was so, why it hit home
so much, is because I'd. Just been in an environment
where I was being celebrated while I was getting an award,
while I was talking in front of hundreds of people, where my
work was being recognized and it was amazing.
And there were people from all walks of life in the audience
and to get on the train and to. Everyone else.
He's just a black guy. Who?
They're kind of scared of who they're suspicious of who
they're not quite sure how to interact around.
And it just goes to show right Is that?
You know, John was saying. He's.
Revered. John is revered, celebrated when
people know who he is. But when people don't know who
he is, he's a monster. He literally used the words
monster. And that story about him leaving
his house? And then walking around the
corner and the. Couple.
Kind of throwing like coffee. Because they were.
Like oh and drop the. Coffee on the floor because I
was so, so astounded to see. Him and what it does to your
psychology. When you're walking around the
place and people are literally wary and scared of you and
suspicious of you, and what does that do to your psyche?
And what? Does that do to how you move?
Around the world. And I think there's been a.
Lot of research around how racism kind of manifests in in
your body, you know, and I think.
When he when he was talking about that.
It was, it was, it was deep. Can't lie, that was a deep one.
He said he didn't leave the house because very much at all
because on screen you can't see his stature, you can't see his
size. So he feels that he's the people
respond to him very differently than in real life, don't they?
And there was, he was talking about when he was, because he's
a university professor and he was, he was lecturing the
students and he was lecturing them in psychology and in body
language. And then he was demonstrating to
them. He'd get pulled students up and
he'd stand closely to them and watch them bristle.
And yeah, it was one of the deepest episodes I think we've
done. It was and it was.
So unexpected as well because. I don't think that was in the
questions that we had, right. So it wasn't, it wasn't a part
of the plan. To have that conversation, but
you know, we make people feel so comfortable.
They just pour their heart. Out.
We're just so, you know, so warm and friendly.
And friendly it is. I don't leave my house very much
unless I have to because the experience.
Goes to Grace. Apart from that, the experience
of being in public with other people is painful.
It's really painful because you, although it this will feel
fragile to lots of people, we are impacted by how we see other
people see us. And I know when I leave my house
that I'm a monster. And I know this because of how
other people react to me. And they react to me like I'm a
monster. When I walk into a lift and they
are going to walk into a lift with me, they might take the
next lift. And I can't explain that unless
I'm a monster. When I walk into a space with
people and they take their belongings, their valuables and
hold them closer to themselves, I can't explain that unless they
see a monster when I round the corner.
This happened to me when I lived in my old house last year.
I rounded a corner and a couple were walking towards me with
coffees and they, they dropped their coffees and the, the, the
man actually of the two shrieked as I rounded the corner like a
meter or two away from them. So it wasn't like I walked into
them. And the only way I can explain
this, and I've known this since I was 13, right?
I know that I'm a monster and so I avoid interactions if I can
because it's harmful to my emotional well-being and I
curate them otherwise. So everything you're looking at
right now is curated for the benefit of mostly white people,
but everybody to see me in a way that is useful for me and less
harmful the the blue around my head here.
This is 40 hours work here. It's light around my head and
dark around the edges. Makes me look lighter, which
makes me feel safer to people. I am massive, but you couldn't
tell until I said so because there's so much space around me
that helps you to see me in context books, old school
science fiction, which I'm really into, right?
I bought that lightsaber. I bought these things because
I'm really into them, but they make people feel safe because Oh
yeah, I remember Star Wars, the TARDIS, I, I remember Doctor
Who. And all of this is for the
audience to see me in a way that is least corrosive for me and
most helpful for our interactions.
You know, I think. One of my favorite episodes.
Was beyond the quality. Shout out to Ben and Dan Do.
You know, I love that episode because they are on the ground.
Talking with boys every day they are running workshops in
schools, they are. On the front line of.
This conversation and hearing their insights in regards to how
boys are feeling. I've sent that.
Episode to so many people. So many people are interested in
what's going on and how do I have conversation.
I sent them that episode because it was.
So relatable. So down to.
Earth, so practical but also quite hopeful.
And Ben said something when we asked him about what does
masculinity mean? What does it mean to be a good
man? Something like that.
And he said it's. Just like doing no harm.
Doing no harm. And that's, that's stuck with
me. You know, how do we raise boys
to just do no harm? Not just other people, but to
themselves as well. And that was really powerful.
And if you can have those as like guiding lights, as like
beacons for you of like where masculinity is positive and
where it's not positive, then I think maybe that leads to to
good outcomes. Because we know that the
outcomes for guys themselves are like pretty poor in terms of
like mental health, in terms of men's violence against men, like
all of that, like drug and alcohol abuse, all of those
kinds of things. So I think if you start with a
masculinity that just doesn't cause any harm to you as an
individual, you're off to a good start.
And then once you add in my community around me and how do I
make sure I'm not harming anybody around me, I think you
probably arrive at a version of masculinity that exists within
community that's maybe quite inherently positive because it's
just doing good stuff for people around it and for itself, you
know? Steve bit.
Off Uncle Steve. Well, I mean, because we
interviewed him late at night, didn't we?
And so we, it was about 10:00, it was like 10:00 at night for
us and it was early in the morning for him.
And so I was a bit sleepy and a bit, you know, I think I had my
pajamas on, on the certainly on the bottom half.
And I'd never really heard him speak before, but this lovely
man with this gentle voice had me captivated with every word
that came out of his mouth. He was so thoughtful and
insightful. Storytelling.
The guy was a master. A master, and we didn't expect
that. Because obviously he's got the.
Best selling books, raising girls and raising boys.
So we knew he was a great writer.
But I didn't expect him to be a completely captivating expert
storytelling communicator like anyone that's interested.
In how do I? Convey a message Listen to Steve
Binoff. I was blown away by by.
By what he was. Saying and.
One moment he, I can't remember the exact story, but he spoke
about. Sitting down with a group of
boys and talking to them and. About like asking them to put
their hand up if they'd had. A loving dad who cared for them.
Something like that and how? So few boys had.
In their mind, a dad that that loved them, you know, and I
started talking about my dad and I was like, this is emotional
Steve. Man, I just I wasn't ready to
cry. I was not ready to cry that
evening. Yeah, well, this is the bigger
question of why are men so messed up?
And and the the which was really the mission of my life was, you
know, I was I was only about 27 young family therapists when I
just like, why are the men so messed up?
You know, the women are doing pretty well, you know, and what
it is, is, is that this thing we uncovered in the 20th century
that that it's called the father wound.
And if I sometimes I will have 100 men and you and similar to
what the work you do, I think, Elliot, you get 100 men in the
room and they're there to to learn to about fatherhood.
And, and I put the question to the man when they've settled in
and they're kind of just starting to lower their their
defenses a little bit. I say you're here because you
want to be a good dad. How do you get along with your
own dad? And it's like, it's like I've
got a hand grenade out of my briefcase, lobbed it into the
room. The reaction, you know, how do I
get on with my own dad? The some of the men look like,
like Thunder and, and they kind of spit it out.
I, I don't, you know, I, I don't get along with my own dad.
I don't waste my time. And if you have a show of hands
and I'd be, you know, just get people listening to predict
what'll happen here, what the numbers will be.
Out of 100 men who's estranged from their father, how many men
never speak to him? 30% of the men, almost a third
of the men estranged from their own dads.
Shocking figure. Another 30 out of 100 will say,
oh, yeah, well, I, I see him at birthdays and Easter and things.
And you know, but it's always a bit prickly, you know, he's
always having a go at you or something.
And so that they've got a relationship.
But it's cactus. And what have we got left?
We've got another 30% who are dutiful.
So they, you know, they did, they show up, they discuss the
football, can't wait to get away, visit the nursing home
once a month. You know, that kind of, it's
better than nothing. If I was in a nursing home, that
would be better than nothing. But if you're doing your maths
now we've got, we're just, we've got 10% of men left and these
guys always wait till the last before they speak.
And then they say, well, you know, I understand what the
other guys are saying. But in fact, my, my old man is
amazing. He's a fantastic dad.
I and they have tears in their eyes when they, when they say
it. You know, I, I couldn't design A
better dad than my dad is. And, and if I have problems or
worries, I, I would always, you know, go and talk to my dad.
And it's not that we always agree, but it's that he's, he's
on my side. And, and, and so, but that big,
if we go back to the big picture that we've got, 90 out of 100
men have a father wound and they're not close to him.
And so their own fathering lacks that kind of sense of steady
confidence to to both to hold their child and as you asked
Elliot to let go of their child and trust, trust that he'll be
back. He he won't love you less.
We. Need to talk about Josh?
We definitely need to talk about Josh.
Josh messaged me on LinkedIn, DM Ed me on LinkedIn and said
hello. I'm a 14 year old boy and I'm
writing a book on the, I can't remember how he phrased it, but
basically on masculinity influences and the damage that
they're doing to teenage kids. So I immediately wrote back to
him, thinking, well this is clearly.
Not a real human. And then we arranged to have a
call, which we did. I mean, he was so insightful.
I think he's probably been one of the most talked about
episodes. And he's since gone on, hasn't
he, to do loads of TV programs. People are loving him, but we
got him first. Yeah, props to us.
Like an actual. Genius.
Like I was listening to the guy I think in I think.
You're like a literal genius like.
You're using. Words I don't understand.
Yeah. Just lock that up, Josh.
Just give us a minute. You're speaking in a way.
That most adults can't articulate.
Themselves in the way that you're unpacking these.
Massive issues. Like, yeah, he's.
Going to go. On to 100% run the world I have
no. Doubt about that.
Obviously that's misogyny and you know, there's attitudes
towards women, but I think the most immoral part about the
monosphere and the red pill culture is these intrinsic
values of young men and you know, their most valuable assets
being completely manipulated. But going back to the schools
thing, because of the appeal and the appeal of the influences to
these values, then trying to strip away the content with the
idea of this is wrong and trying to going in with that because
that that's what adolescence really is, right?
This is wrong because it led to the murder of the scum, right?
These influencers are bad. They're wrong.
See, you see, you're putting that in front of them and you're
thinking, OK, well, because I had those feelings only there,
you're taking that away now. So that means so it's not seen
as you're taking away the content that's harming me,
You're taking away the controller out of my life.
You're taking away the certainty, you're taking away my
ambition and. Not giving you anything else.
Exactly. It's about alternatives.
Logo that's gone. Yeah, it's about alternatives
and I think, you know, that's why there's a lot of positive
action going on around at the moment.
But there's definitely so much space for it to be propelled
forward and I think we need positive alternatives in
society. Well, we, I think we look
critically at the monosphere and think, OK, what are the good
parts of it? What are the good things this is
doing for young men? That is, you know, because at
the end of the day, putting all the bad things aside, the
monosphere is still getting young men to, you know, start
their own businesses and care about their fitness and, you
know, care about their appearance and things like that,
which are, you know, are good things where you just take those
good things and you put it into a healthy alternative without
all the harmful rhetoric. And then there you have a really
viable solution. But I think that's a role of,
you know, wider institutions such as governments to implement
that. I think unfortunately on a
personal, you know, community scale, I don't think you can
really achieve that without wide scale government intervention.
And these government funding doesn't, I won't want the
government to try and do something like that because Can
you imagine? I mean you can't like the
government try and do anything interesting or cultural and it
always. Falls back mistake but.
They should be funding stuff like that in order to have a
different area. Josh, thank you.
So, so insightful and honestly, you, I find you utterly
fascinating and you're so, so clever and so thoughtful and so
inspiring, you know, to 46 year old old back me and, you know,
to kids and I just, you know, I'm so excited about this book
coming out and I really. Hope you get lots of.
Platforms to be able to talk about your thoughts on this
because it's really important. Probably my favorite episode us.
Is that bad to say? Yeah.
This is, I mean, I love the sound of my voice.
This is not very British. It's not very British, is it?
Celebrate yourself. Can I Can I hop back to my
Caribbean? Roots here.
Can I just say the best thing that's happened on this podcast
is me? And you but now my favorite
episode, I think one of them was our breakdown of is it
embarrassing to have a boyfriend?
I thought that was so funny. I like sometimes I just listen
back to my own jokes. But when I was talking about
Saneni not. Revealing me until a year.
After we got married. I just found that funny.
So that personally, I, I think that was one of our highlights.
But that article as well is completely exploded.
Everybody's talking about it. Yeah, I really enjoyed.
Shante Joseph, I think, is an amazing, amazing writer.
She has this knack of hitting on something very current and doing
it in a way that is so accessible and always fun.
She's a she, you know, she's just a fun human.
You can tell she's a fun human, but she makes everything really
accessible. And yet what she's talking
about? Has so many layers and is
really. Complicated and nuanced.
And that's one of the reasons why I think this has really
taken off is because it's made people really reflect on lots of
different aspects of male and female heterosexual
relationships. And you know, we've been talking
for a long time about the fact that heterosexual relationships
don't always work for women. In the vast majority of cases,
women end up, they're unhappy, they're more unhappy in the
heterosexual relationship. They don't live as long in the
heterosexual relationship, I heard Scott Galloway saying on
something this morning. That the research shows that.
When a widower's husband dies, she actually is happier after
he's died than she was when she was married to him.
And then. So, you know, we have known for
quite some time that relationships aren't necessarily
working for women the way that they are working for men.
And so the first thing I thought when reading this is.
I want. Women like you're kicking back
against the thing that lots of women of my generation have
pushed to one side and pretended isn't happening, and you're
saying enough now I'm not going to stand for this anymore.
I think there's more to it than that, but.
That that was the first. Thing I felt when reading it.
Yeah, so did did you feel, were you, were you celebrating the
article? Were you celebrating the idea or
did you also feel sad as well? I felt.
Both of those things at the same time, I felt somewhat part of me
felt proud of women for not standing for this anymore.
And then another part of me, you know, I'm raising boys as well,
so I have a personal investment in this.
Another part of me felt deeply sad about the fact that we are
being driven further and further apart, men and women, and that
we seem to. Have got to a position.
Where we are blaming each other for lots of our problems.
And I think that is also part of why this article exists, is
because it's not just about the fact that relationships aren't
working for women. It's about the fact that men and
women are getting really good at blaming each other and making
each other the enemy. And we're not each other's
enemy. We need to find better ways to
work together to find solutions to many of the problems that
we're experiencing. So I felt sad and but also part
of me, I have to say felt. Gone.
That, I mean, I've really enjoyed all of our episodes,
Elliot, I've enjoyed just doing this podcast.
Oh cheers matey. It's been so much fun and I'm
just so, I'm just so happy. I'm happy.
I mean, you're, you know how much?
Respect I have for you man, you're literally one of my role.
Models. You are a legend.
Before we were friends, I had a list of people who like, like
mentors without knowing their mentors.
And there's a few people. There's a guy called Leon Mann
who runs Football Blacklist. There's Ian Wright.
You know, Peter's Ian Wright. You need to get a podcast, Uncle
Ian, but you're on that. List, but now you're.
In real life, but you're on that list.
You know, in terms of how you did pigment and screwed what you
did, but how you did it as well. And so I really looked to you
for inspiration for like, this is how you conduct yourself in
public life and how you create a movement.
So you know when you asked me to do this?
Podcast I was like. I've made it.
Jodie's asked me to do a podcast.
Mom, you've done a good job. Your boys made it.
Oh. That's very kind.
I don't feel very inspiring. I just feel like a knackered old
mum at the moment. Bloody tired.
Thank you everybody for tuning in.
We've we've had a blast. We hope you have too.
And we've got loads of exciting stuff coming up next year.
We're not going to tell you now because that's spoiling.
Including our Jodie episode where?
Jodie's going to speak now why I like.
We're not going to tell you. We're just going to go straight
into the episodes. I could probably do Geordie
Skauss in Scottish. We.
We should. OK, we'll do all free tape.
Yeah, we're taking a little bit of a break.
Can't. We So we'll be back in a.
Couple of weeks back. Early jam.
But Merry Christmas everyone,
happy New Year. See you in the year.