Why Boys are Falling Behind in America Today, and the Truth About ADHD and Plastics, with Dr. Leonard Sax | Ep. 1387

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Dr. Leonard Sax** (0:33)
Hold my hand. You hold my hand.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:36)
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**Dr. Leonard Sax** (0:40)
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**Megyn Kelly** (0:46)
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at noon East.
Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today, we dive into the growing crisis among American boys and young men. From classrooms to the workplace, to dating and marriage and beyond, they are falling behind, becoming less ambitious, less resilient, and many lacking an overall sense of purpose. There are many reasons why. Changes in education, what they eat, the fear of AI, the addiction to it, and porn, to name just a few.
On the show today, a man who's got some real answers on what's happening with our young men, Dr. Leonard Sax. He has been researching this issue for decades. He is a practicing physician, psychologist, and bestselling author. And he is the author of books like Why Gender Matters. Oh, subversive. It does. The Collapse of Parenting. And every time he's on the show, we get great feedback from our audience wanting more. Today, he is with me in person here in the Red Studio to talk about his new book, an update on his bestseller from nearly 20 years ago. It's called Boys Adrift, the six factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men.
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Dr. Sax, welcome back.

**Dr. Leonard Sax** (3:19)
Thanks for inviting me.

**Megyn Kelly** (3:20)
Oh, it's great to have you here in person.

**Dr. Leonard Sax** (3:22)
Yes, indeed.

**Megyn Kelly** (3:24)
When I read up on you and the studies in this book, I felt sad. I felt forlorn as the mother of two boys and a daughter, but this is about the boys. And just about the state of American men today, like from the fact that they're being treated as problems from the time they're in kindergarten, to the fact that they're no longer having sex with real women wanting to get married, wanting to find jobs, wanting to date, to the sad cases, some of which we featured on this show, of kids committing suicide because they become too enraptured with an AI chat bot, whether it's a quote regular one or a sexy girl type one, that's not real.
I don't even know where to begin. Like is it, where do we begin? I go, to begin to solve all of this. So let's start, I guess, at the beginning. First of all, you've updated this book. Why?

**Dr. Leonard Sax** (4:31)
Okay, so as you mentioned, the first edition came out 2007 And why did I write it? Well, I'm a family doctor. I've been a family doctor more than 30 years now. And in so many families, I think in one family where the parents are very concerned about their son, he was 16 years old at the time that we had this conversation. And he's not doing well in school. He's basically failing Spanish, couldn't care less, spends his free time playing video games, looking at porn. Father said he's a total goofball. They're very proud of their daughter, who's basically a straight A student, captain of the varsity soccer team. The girl is shining and the boy is adrift. And I saw this pattern over and over and over again, the reverse pattern where the boy is a star and the girl is adrift, very, very rare. So, why is this? Same parents, same household, but very different outcomes. And that was the motivation for the first edition of Boys Adrift, which I wrote 20 years ago. Now, 20 years ago, we didn't have all the evidence we have now and things have changed a lot in 20 years, which is one of many reasons we needed a new edition. You know, the Journal of the American Medical Association, was kind enough to review my book 20 years ago. And they gave it a great review, which we put the blurb on the cover.