Do Men Need Better Friends? with Richard Reeves

Kim Holderness (0:00)

Let's start with Penn's audition tape to go on The Bachelorette.

Penn Holderness (0:03)

The Golden Bachelorette.

Kim Holderness (0:04)

The Golden Bachelorette.

Richard Reeves (0:06)

And there's a tendency sometimes to see men and boys as being the problem, rather than as having problems. Do you know there's this famous phrase, like, it takes a village to raise a child? That's true, but some of the villages have to be men.

SPEAKER_4 (0:19)

And actually having men.

Kim Holderness (0:37)

Hi everybody, I'm Kim Holderness.

Penn Holderness (0:39)

And I'm Penn Holderness. Welcome to Laughlines.

Kim Holderness (0:41)

If you've ever considered an airport divorce, you're welcome here.

Penn Holderness (0:46)

Should we explain that to them?

Kim Holderness (0:47)

Well, I don't officially know. I think airport divorce is for folks, once they're in the airport, they separate. You and I get to the airport at different times.

Penn Holderness (0:57)

We get a pre-airport divorce.

Kim Holderness (0:58)

We get a pre-divorce. And then once we're there, I'm like, I want you to watch my stuff while I get a bottle of water.

Penn Holderness (1:04)

You want to get there really early.

Kim Holderness (1:06)

I want to get, I just, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want to be rushed.

Penn Holderness (1:10)

Which is?

Kim Holderness (1:13)

I want to get there at the appropriate time.

Penn Holderness (1:15)

So we've solved this in some situations by just showing up on a trip. We're going on together at different times. Not every time, but if we feel like, okay, our relationship is going to be strained by this argument we're having about what time we should go to the airport, we just go in different times.

Kim Holderness (1:31)

We go in different times.

Penn Holderness (1:31)

Yeah.

Kim Holderness (1:32)

We are recording this podcast before we are out on a book tour for a new children's book. Get it done and have fun. It means the world to us, your support on this. We're so excited about it. And we're excited that it's out into the world.

Penn Holderness (1:47)

So check out the tour spots. Know that we are like, if you're looking forward to seeing us, we're looking forward almost as much to seeing you. We see these four walls quite a bit. And we absolutely love getting out and adventuring and meeting new people.

Kim Holderness (2:00)

Absolutely. Today's podcast, we just wrapped the interview and I'm still buzzing a little bit. It is a very good one. And listen, 85% of our audience is female.

What I'm going to ask, ladies, is that you forward this to the men in your life. Because we are talking about male friendships, male vulnerability, and the male loneliness epidemic and sort of the risks it is put our young men in specifically.

Penn Holderness (2:32)

Yes, the more young men than adults, but also like we're sometimes feeling lonely as well.

Kim Holderness (2:39)

I know.

Penn Holderness (2:40)

It is a challenge among a lot of my friends being vulnerable and finding community.

And this is people who are my friends, who have friends. So we know statistically that there's a lot of issues. Like I kind of want to, can I start with this text that I got?

Kim Holderness (2:57)

Yes.

Penn Holderness (2:58)

Okay, it's changed the way that I conduct relationships with my friends already in the last month. So it says, hey, what follows will undoubtedly be a long, somewhat rambling text because it's difficult for me to put this into succinct word. Men always apologize for long text before they start writing them.

Do you think there is a need for, and could we help our friends out a little bit by putting something together, perhaps on a monthly basis that is designed for men to open up a bit in person, face to face, not at a bar? That's like he put that in capital letters.

It might be a combination of Bible study without the religion or Christianity, a safe place to talk, as well as maybe a way for men to talk about things that they can't or won't express typically. I lost someone this past week. We all thought he was happy, healthy, thriving. He seemed like he had the world by the balls, great family, job, etc. I may just be way off on this, but I feel like men today have a unique confluence of addictions, vices, questions, uncertainties to the point from A to B to feeling alone, dark or depressed. That point is shorter than perhaps any of us know.

Real quick, I'm super sad about this person, about his family's loss. I'm writing this as a way to think about how we can potentially help one person in the next 10 years. I'm not throwing this all out there because I'm about to do something. Just wanted you to know that. There, perhaps this is the longest text you've ever received. He's apologizing again. Would you be interested in getting together to think about whether our guy friends need something like this?