Netflix's "Adolescence" and the masculinity crisis

On March 13, 2025, Netflix released Adolescence, and ever since, parents have been learning that Andrew Tate is bad. What are we to do? Ryan talks to Grant about how the problems we have on the internet now are not dramatically new, it’s just that everyone has the internet in their pocket all the time — and, to borrow a 2010s phrase, the solution to that might surprise you. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Engineer: Rebecca Seidel - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change, your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5, only at McDonald's for a limited time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Hey, this is Graham, producer of the podcast. Two quick things before we start today's show. This was gonna be a bonus, but then the last act went into places we didn't quite expect, and it felt surprising and honestly important. And it kind of felt mean to put that behind a paywall. With that said, we do have a Patreon. It's patreon.com/panicworld. And for $5, you get episodes that are ad-free. And we put as much additional content up there as we can. And yeah, it really helps us. And we'd appreciate it if you did that. We think we do something worth $5.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  And then, second thing, we've gotten a pretty strong response to the episode about my friend's dad being a Holocaust denier. I'm sad to say, a lot of people seem to relate. And that gave us an idea. If you or somebody you know is suffering from internet brain warping, and you would like to vent and discuss it and possibly have clips of it played for Ryan at a later date, you know, having the trauma we're all living through turned into content for the show, we would love to hear from you. And you can do that by emailing us at [email protected]. That's [email protected].

• 1:37Speaker 01

  And yeah, that's it. Enjoy today's episode, and we really appreciate you being here, and we, we love you all. Okay, now today's episode.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Ryan Broderick, what was the biggest fear your parents had about the internet when you were a kid?

• 1:52Ryan Broderick?

  Probably putting...

• 1:55Ryan Broderick?

  Like credit card information in. That was probably the big one.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58Ryan Broderick?

  They didn't know that I had

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:00Ryan Broderick?

  A secret AIM girlfriend that I met at a Green Day concert when I was 15 and I was talking to all the time. But they were very afraid of me purchasing anything off the internet.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  I think you just touched on something that is coming up for all the millennial parents now with internet concerns, where we have a nostalgia and a sweet spot for it that I think plays a part in today's episode. But we'll get there. Yeah, porn viruses, stranger danger. The fear was not, at least for me, bullying leading to indoctrination.

• 2:39Ryan Broderick?

  I see where we're headed. Yep. Yes. That is the big one now, probably.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Should that have been the fear when we were youths? Or has the internet really changed?

• 2:50Ryan Broderick?

  So I have told this story in many, many venues over the years, but

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Wait, you're gonna, wait, wait, wait, you're gonna start a story, then I'm gonna put in the theme music and you can do it after.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Today, because of online bullying, we are talking about Adolescence, the Netflix four-part series that is teaching parents everywhere that Andrew Tate is bad. I am Grant Irving. This is Panic Road, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. Joining me today, a guy who always wets himself when the police storm his bedroom, Ryan Broderick.

• 3:37Ryan Broderick?

  That's, that's because I pay them. Come on in. That's because it's a whole thing I'm doing. They're like, oh, this guy again. Yeah, I'm dyed, I'm dyed up and ready for you, officer.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  You, what, you, what is it where you?

• 3:52Ryan Broderick?

  Were horrible 4chan people send the cops to people's houses to Swat. Yeah, you swat yourself. Yeah, I swat myself and then I just pee my pants. I was like, God damn it, this guy again. I have never been swatted. I knock on wood, but. You heard it, listeners. Ryan is asking you, please swat him. All right, all right, tell your story. I don't live that life anymore. I had a friend who was radicalized online in the 2000s and like looking back, that's exactly what was happening. And when the rest of the planet started to radicalize itself in the mid 2010s, I was very familiar with the sort of general pattern of it. So it was to answer your question at the top, what you didn't even wait for me to answer. You just like jumped into

• 4:35Ryan Broderick?

  the episode. That was a thing that was happening in the 2000s. It just wasn't happening on a scale that made people care about it or even realize it. You think that what's changed is the scale that it's happening on? I think everything now is about scale and speed. So like, and you know, we've shown this in all of the episodes that we've done so far. The problems that we have on the internet are not particularly new, but the fact that they're happening on a device that lives in your pocket immediately, whether you're inside your home or not, is the difference. Whereas my friend who was radicalized, his radicalization engine was a giant box that like lived in his living room and he could only

• 5:15Ryan Broderick?

  access it a couple hours a day via very slow modem using very archaic websites. But now like, you can just be, you know, at school, watching hours of Andrew Tate clips, you know, with a headphone in your hoodie and nobody knows. And that is the difference. It's much harder to separate out, I think. It sounds much harder. How did your friend fall into? Like, what are the first steps of him being indoctrinated? The, he was always really into punk music. Oh. And he was always really into like DIY stuff, like punk music and stuff, but like, bad religion, no effects, like the fairly, you know, edgy edgelord, but liberal-ish leftist bands. And then

• 5:59Ryan Broderick?

  he got, towards the end of high school, he got really invested in the Ron Paul presidential campaign. And he was using Reddit and something awful and 4chan, because we all were. I remember seeing like Nazi stuff on those sites and just thinking like, that's really goofy and silly and dumb. Sure. But he got really invested in Ron Paul. And then through that, he started getting interested in Bitcoin. And then I remember there was a day, it was one of the last days I ever really considered like him a friend. I, you know, I would see him on and off after, but we were never close. We were sitting in a Target parking lot, smoking weed, as you do. And he turns on some music and it's like completely indecipherable, like punk music. And I was like, uh, you know, whatever. I was never really into that sort of the spectrum of stuff.

• 6:43Ryan Broderick?

  I was more into the boys with tight jeans crying and stuff, but um.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Totally unproblematic boys crying.

• 6:50Ryan Broderick?

  Totally not a single groomer in that group, that's for sure. Um, so he was then like, you know, do you like this? And, you know, back then as a teen boy in the 2000s, you just, there's, you have to just lie and be like, yeah, I hate Fall Out Boy. And then you go home and you just listen to nothing but Fall Out Boy. So like at the time, I'm like, yeah, man, it sounds really good. And he's like, yeah, it's Nazi oi punk. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, I've, I've been on these message boards, uh, downloading like old Nazi oi. Uh, oi is a genre of punk music for people who don't know that. Um.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  If you don't know that, don't listen to us. We don't want you as a listener.

• 7:26Ryan Broderick?

  We don't, please don't.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  We only want people who.

• 7:29Ryan Broderick?

  Nobody needs to know that. Nobody needs to know any of this stuff. So I was like, oh, okay. And he was, he said, yeah, uh, basically something to the, the effect of, yeah, I just think that like they make better punk music, which like doesn't mean anything. Like the idea of better punk music doesn't make sense as a concept even. Uh, and I just remember sitting there kind of like in the car, just being like, what the fuck is going on? And he, and his pipeline was, was, was at first irony too, cause he kind of like, he had that kind of, you know, like the voice that like, like stinky men use when they talk about wrestling. They're like, yeah, this is like so good. And you're like, it's not good. And you know, it's not good. Uh, I don't want to get in a fight with wrestling guys, but like, there's always like a stinky guy on your couch in college that like,

• 8:12Ryan Broderick?

  is talking to you about wrestling stuff and the exact voice that my friend was using to talk about how like Nazi punk was more authentic punk music.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:21Ryan Broderick?

  And that's when I was just like, I can't fucking do this anymore.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Hearing about that sort of like Nazi agglor thing, like I was never directly on 4chan. I would just talk to my friends who were on those things, but I was like, I looked like, I was like, I'm not going into the cesspool. Uh, but I was torrenting UFC fights, uh, as a, as a teen. And the chat would just be somebody be like, that guy's crushing like Hitler. Like, like there'd be just one person just spamming. And like in the fucking sites, you couldn't ever like, close the chat too. So I was like, I'm just trying to watch John Jones, you know? Like, like, get, get the, get the Nazis out of my UFC, a thing that totally is not going to become a major part of the rest of the world.

• 9:02Ryan Broderick?

  But I do think, I do think that experience is very important, you know, if we're, I assume we're, we're going to be talking about the Netflix show Adolescence at some point here. Not to do what our guests do on this show, but yeah, before we get to sort of the, the, the modern idea of radicalization, I do think it's really important for people to understand that like, it is not like a magic piece of code that turns people into neo Nazis. It can, it can definitely expose you to far right or incel ideology by recommending you content. But that content is being made by the exact kind of guy that is going into the UFC pirated stream chat room and saying Nazi stuff, hoping that somebody takes the bait. It is a guy doing it.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  And, and, and as we see in Adolescence, it like, almost doesn't matter if you take it seriously, like the guy on the other end of that chat, could have just been a 15 year old who was seeing who he could upset and like, who would fight with him and like, could have like, had no ideology. Eventually it doesn't matter.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  But uh, because we were bullied, it's actually very funny. I like, received multiple messages of people just assuming we were talking about Adolescence and they were like, suggesting guests or angles. And I was like, I was not gonna, okay, fine, fine. Fuck you. Thank you. I love you. Give us $5.

• 10:24Ryan Broderick?

  You're being very, thank, you're being weirdly aggressive about this. I think it's a fine, I think it's a fine topic. It's a great show. I'm excited, I'm excited to talk about it.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  I, I agree. I just, I just, I thought that the, um, I felt, feel like being known in that way felt uncomfortable to me, but that's, that's for me in group therapy.

• 10:41Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that sounds like something you should. Work through.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  But now, because apparently we're a TV podcast, I have to say spoiler warning. We're not going to be reviewing the show in like a TV movie way, but we are going to be like talking about what happens in it.

• 10:55Ryan Broderick?

  We could. You're really torn up about this whole thing, huh? Like, I think we should just have a conversation about this show. It's an interesting show.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  I like the show. I just meant like, you know.

• 11:05Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, you just seem very caught off by this whole thing. Yeah, no, we should talk about it. It's a fantastic show.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  But spoiler, if you plan to watch and you, yeah, you know how TV spoilers work. Uh, all right. So Ryan, you enjoyed the show? Do you have any overall big thoughts?

• 11:21Ryan Broderick?

  Jesus fucking Christ, dude. Okay. Yeah, no, it was good. I was, you know, whenever I watch stuff like that. Um, so I guess I should start with like, I, like, half of my internet footprint is still very British from like when I lived there. So I saw people like in the British media talking about this show a bunch and I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, it seems to be like causing a real, real row, as they, as they would call it over there. And so, you know, a couple of weeks ago, I had a free afternoon, so I watched it. And I kind of knew it was about something to do with Andrew Tate and incel culture and something. So I went in like a little skeptical, as I do with anything about the, I try.

• 12:02Ryan Broderick?

  People like to do this to me all the time, like when I go to all the various parties that I go to all the time, because I'm a very social person. Uh, they're like, oh, did you see like this documentary about this thing that you write about? And I'm like, no, I did not, because I, I try very hard not to like, do that. Like, I don't really watch TV shows about the internet. I, uh, I mean, although if you are wondering like what I think the best thing about the internet ever made is, in terms of fiction, I think it's We're All Going to the World's Fair. Uh, the movie made, uh, before I saw the TV globe by Jane Schonerbrun. Uh, but like, yeah, I don't typically seek that stuff out because like I live in those spaces, but.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  But if you think that Ryan just said all that as a desperate plea for Jane to come on the show, you are correct. We would love for you to come on the show. Please come on the show.

• 12:47Ryan Broderick?

  That is true. Um, but I, uh, I was very impressed with that a lot since I, I thought it, it, it. There was like maybe one or two moments where I kind of went like, ugh. But other than that, like I thought it was a pretty accurate portrayal of what I've seen.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, I want to talk about this moment. Let me, uh, give full context in case, you know, I think that there are people who probably. Don't want to watch that, but want to know like the big takeaways. So the first episode takes place largely at a police station where you see the bureaucracy at work. You learn at the end of that episode that this 13 year old English boy, Jamie Miller, stabbed to death a classmate, Katie Leonard. The second episode largely takes place at a school where eventually the police find out that Jamie was being bullied online specifically about topics related to inceldom. The third, my favorite, and I think most people's favorite episode is Jamie talking to a psychologist

• 13:44Speaker 01

  and you see him vacillate between being a relatable 13 year old and then a hostile resentment towards being out of control that seems steeped in misogyny that I think the show is arguing is from like a cultural indoctrination at large. Lastly, we spend a day with Jamie's family as they are harassed and even worse subjected to fans of Jamie who believe he's been set up and they're dealing with their guilt. The thesis of the show I think is really nicely summed up by its co-writer, Jack Thorne, who said in an interview, "There's the old saying that it takes a village to raise a child," but Thorne said, "It also takes a village to destroy a child."

• 14:27Speaker 01

  He added, "He just wants adolescents to persuade the village to help these kids." I think that mission comes through in like it being a oner, you know, that's all one shot, no cut. So it creates this like- Yeah, every episode is just one take. Yeah. Which makes it feel extremely real, like you're moving at life pace through these things, which can almost have like a documentary vibe to it. So this is a, an attempt at making hyper-normalization at reality speed. And I thought it was really effective and kind of nauseating. I think the oners are impressive, but I do think-

• 15:10Ryan Broderick?

  Sometimes they they were kind of distracting, actually. I think the first episode, I remember being like, "Oh, the whole thing is this." Then I started the second episode, I was like, "Oh, the whole thing is this."

• 15:23Ryan Broderick?

  Which is like, fine. I mean, there's like, there's, there's certain things you can't really do without the oner, and they're really well done, like the, the scene with the therapist. I, I feel like the bulk of the show is essentially all the adults in this small town, sort of like coming to grips with what has happened and why it happened and how it happened.

• 15:44Ryan Broderick?

  And so the pacing of it, I think, is well done, where they're choosing specific hour-long moments in this story over like a period of weeks and months, to sort of like show in real time how these adults start to kind of understand what this kid has been up to. And the, the show, I think, is doing a very tricky thing where it is trying to not, basically, anything you do about the internet is immediately dated by whatever, whatever version of the internet you're doing it about. So it's clearly trying to make something that can like last the test of time. And the show, I would say, succeeds 90% of the way.

• 16:26Ryan Broderick?

  There is a scene where the police officer who's doing the investigation meets his son in school, and his son gives like this extremely hand-fisted, like, like, quick little like Wikipedia articles, uh, dialogue about incel theory, where I was just like, "Yeah, I guess there's like no good way to, to do that." Like, there's no artful way to have that done.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, can I, have you, uh, this is a weird question, but like, do you spend time around teenagers, ever?

• 16:58Ryan Broderick?

  I can't legally answer that question. Oh, I, I, I, yeah, I do, I do. I, I've also like interviewed, like, I've interviewed these people, like, I, I, you know, I've, I, I, but they don't, they don't talk that earnestly about this stuff. That's the problem.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  I used to work at a, a teen center and like, I, I don't know, it struck me as true because I had very sweet children who thought it was very cute that I had no idea what they were talking about. And that had earnest interest. They were like, "Yeah, let me, let me break down for you." All of the things in this video you're missing.

• 17:37Ryan Broderick?

  And I don't disagree with that. I just think that like, it's the one moment where I was like, this is a little too expositional, which is fine. It kind of has to be. And the fact that the show, now that the show is like being offered to screen for free in UK, uh, schools. I think is it's important that like, there's some like very clear like, okay, like we're going to talk about the 80 20 theory, which is like this big, like incel sexual marketplace concept. Like that stuff is useful. And I thought the depiction, it ultimately doesn't matter because the depiction of the, the little boy,

• 18:17Ryan Broderick?

  the killer in the third episode is like, is the heart of the thing. Like being able to capture the shape shifting of a like little boy who's been brainwashed by the internet in literally real time is I think the hardest thing to pull off. And they do pull it off. So like that to me is all that kind of matters in the end.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:42Ryan Broderick?

  That and the depiction of the parents having no idea. Like those two things are the core of, of not even just the show. I think that the core of the coin, to use Fox News's concept, the crisis in masculinity right now. Like those are the two issues. It's how can like this little boy still be a little boy and also want to murder girls in his class? And how can the parents not know? And like, that is the heart of it.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. The thing I want to talk about those in a bit, but the thing that I thought was I was like, oh, you fucking like nailed it was the scene in the hardware store where the dad's buying paint.

• 19:17Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  And there's the creepy little hardware employee who like then spins him a conspiracy theory about how his son is innocent. And is like saying, I'm on your side. And I was like, I was like, that is the, it wouldn't be, yeah, that bitch deserved it. Which I think is what most shows would have gone with, but instead like, I've entaken all this cultural misogyny and clearly like this is a setup. I was like, that is exactly like, and I, I haven't seen the insidiousness of that feeling of like. Oh, like, we are so out of our depth. Like, we have no, like, there's no way to talk to this person, reach them.

• 19:59Ryan Broderick?

  That's where you get the, like, the Project Mayhem Fight Club vibes.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:03Ryan Broderick?

  And that is such a hard thing to communicate because, actually, a couple of minutes ago, when I was saying, like, they talk in code, they sort of talk in circles, they're not very earnest. Like, that is what I mean, is like, you know, you can have an hour-long conversation with the most violent incel imaginable, and they're probably not gonna tell you

• 20:25Ryan Broderick?

  anything straight. Like, it's all gonna be in these weird, coded, kind of like circular logic kind of things, and you might, and actually, I mean, they kind of, they kind of pulled off with Jamie in the third episode, where he's like, trying very hard not to, like, he's, like, he's, you can watch the little boy, like, clearly know that if he says what he really thinks, they'll catch him. And so, yeah, the hardware store kind of reinforces that, where that episode is, I think, the weakest of the four, but it, it does something very important, which is, it's like, a normal day out with the family, they're still trying to, like, ignore what has happened, which I think is, like, even more fascinating, and then, like, life just doesn't

• 21:10Ryan Broderick?

  let them. And, and that is sort of, I think, the point, you know, I've seen a lot of arguments about, like, the depiction of the family in the show, and I think that, like, the fourth episode makes it pretty clear, which is that, like, they're trying very hard to ignore this stuff, and it's impossible. And, you know, that's true for every family right now, who, who, every family, I was gonna say, every family of a boy, but that's not even true, it's every family, because, like, the women are, the girls are the victims. So, it's, it's every family right now is trying to ignore this, and they, they can't.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. What I think the show did was give us a window into a different culture that's trying to not ignore it, and that has led to a wide array of think pieces, some better than others, and a whole lot of freaking out. So, why don't we take a break, and then we can dive into, see if there's any good solutions to come out of this Netflix show.

• 22:11Speaker 00

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• 22:23Speaker 03

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• 22:27Speaker 04

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• 22:54Speaker 01

  I guess the show kind of established this by like the like lead police officer investigating the case. It's his son at school that he's talking to. It's made clear that his son is bullied too and like doesn't have a lot of friends, but like the show's not trying to be like every bullied boy is going to be radicalized. And what that fourth episode also did was show that like, yeah, look, their daughter like turned out great and is like this sensitive person. What makes it almost harder to track down is that it's it's violent and it's more rampant, but it is like it's such a random draw. You know, like, and like that boy.

• 23:35Ryan Broderick?

  The bullying aspect is is interesting. And I think we do need to talk about this because in the third episode, Jamie is talking about how ugly he is, which is like meant to be absurd. Like he is, I mean, he's central casting.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:49Ryan Broderick?

  Like he, he, he's, he's not, he's not a, if they had cast like a, like a, like the, the, the stereotype of like a hideous, misshapen incel, I don't think the show would work as well because the point is. That this little boy was insecure and he found people on the internet to be like, "You're hideous and you're never gonna be able to," uh, what's the term that he was like, "Participate in the sexual marketplace because you're hideous and your life is ruined." Uh, and it's all these women's fault. Like, and, and, you know, you see this joke on like, X and like Blue Sky a lot that like, the majority of men on the planet have like severe body dysmorphia and eating disorders and like, that is essentially what is destroying the world right now. And it's like totally true. They're like-

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Well, it's good that we're closing the gender gap, Ryan. Like, like, I'm fine, I'm glad to see equity, you know?

• 24:41Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  I'm a progressive.

• 24:42Ryan Broderick?

  I think it's good. I think it's really good. Um, no, but like, it is patently absurd. Like, the moment when he's like, "I'm hideous." It's like, I think even the psychiatrist looks up and she's like, "What are you talking about?" Cause like, that's, that is how this works. It's like, you become so brainwashed that like, you know, the reality doesn't make sense anymore to you.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  I think this is like, what the internet does to you where you like, you half believe things and it just gets into your brain. And like he says, you know, like, like he wasn't like, he doesn't have an ideology. Like, he wasn't like an Andrew Tate stan. It just like around him. And like, he's also saying that to manipulate her to compliment him.

• 25:18Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  On one level, he believes he's hideous. And on the other hand, he's trying to do the things he's been taught societally that then women will respond to, to make him feel good. And when, when you don't get what you want, that's when, that's when this like, infectious rage pops out.

• 25:42Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. He's like trying to flirt with her and he's trying to get her to declare him innocent. And he's also trying to fight like an insane rage that he has as it, he realizes it's not working. And then on another level, he's also just a little boy. So it's like, it's an insane performance and he, that kid's gonna absolutely sweep the BAFTAs this year, but like-

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Fuck it, crushed.

• 26:08Ryan Broderick?

  It, it is unbelievable. And it, I don't, you know what? I, I was about to say like, maybe the show like, won't age as poorly as like, all other forms of sort of like internet based drama and comedy that I've seen in like traditional entertainment. But like, it's possible because like-

• 26:24Ryan Broderick?

  They don't, they, they mentioned Andrew Tate once by name, I believe.

• 26:29Ryan Broderick?

  Which I think we need to talk about the UK's relationship to Andrew Tate because I think that might be slightly confusing for Americans, which is that the UK was sounding the alarm bell on Andrew Tate way earlier than us and taking him much more seriously. Shanti Das in the, the Observer for the Guardian, uh, wrote an article in 2022 titled Inside the Violent Misogynistic World of TikTok's New Star Andrew Tate. And they, what they had figured out, he, he runs like a, like a, like a, like a fan club that you like pay to be a part of and you like get stuff if you share his videos. So what people were doing were clipping his podcasts and then uploading them as YouTube,

• 27:11Ryan Broderick?

  uh, and then uploading them as TikTok clips, which if you do that on TikTok, uh, TikTok, its algorithm identifies it as a trend because those videos are related content. So what ended up happening was like TikTok, TikTok was just overrun with Andrew Tate videos like three years ago.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  It's an MLM.

• 27:28Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. I mean, all of masculinity is an MLM, but yes, um, I actually.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  But I mean, like, but like going store door to like the way that like you buy these products.

• 27:36Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Yeah. It was Mary Kay cosmetics for TikTok videos and it, they completely overwhelmed TikTok, especially in the UK. And so the Guardian like, you know, rang the alarm bell on it and they've, they've been taking it much more seriously than we have. He's made a bigger dent. He has more of a background with the UK than he does the US. I think he, his citizenship is all insane, but like he's more closely tied to the UK than he is here. Um, and so they've been just much more proactive about it. I've seen.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Well, they've been proactive about trying to not get children to kill one another in, you know, ways like, you know, like they, they, the killing is done with a knife instead of a gun. Like, like, you know, they have like a fundamental way that they, that they just care about children more.

• 28:23Ryan Broderick?

  They do, yeah. They, all of my British friends are married with children happily, and all of my America friends are not. So, and there's, there's societal reasons for that. But, yeah, no, there, there, in a lot of British TV I've seen, like, they're, they're talking about it more. And we talk about it in this way that feels very much like, I don't know, someone saying like Pokemon in a TV show from the 90s, whereas the UK is like taking it pretty seriously. It's good.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. The discourse around the show has brought up, um, one of the topics of our first episodes, Jonathan Haidt's anxious generation. And the co-creator, uh, Thorne, uh, said he does want, uh, the UK to ban social media for kids, uh, till they're 16, which is one of Haidt's rallying cries. Before we get further banning social media for, until 16, good idea, bad idea, Ryan? You, you, you get the deciding vote.

• 29:18Ryan Broderick?

  So, we're not talking about America. We're talking about the UK, which already, they're already surveilling each other and like, they're already living in like, they have a very different world that they live in over there, and their internet is very different. I actually don't think banning social media until you're 16 in the UK would be that difficult. Here, uh, I think would be, uh, probably very bad because there's no way to do it without, like enforcing, like, you know, your ID and stuff. And that's really the issue. Like, when you, whenever people talk about social media bans, like, what they're actually talking about is social media surveillance. It's like, because you have to be able to, you have to prove that someone's

• 30:01Ryan Broderick?

  under 16, right? So, you, you have to have some sort of apparatus there. The UK, like I said, is just different. I, I'm of the mindset that it's bad. I don't think there's a way to do it safely in any context. But I do understand why the UK is doing it, or talking about it. That's my nuanced answer there. It's just that, like, I think here would be a disaster. I think in the UK it would just be like another lost digital freedom that they've, have no problem giving up half the time anyways. So, I don't, I don't know.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. One thing we talked about in the Haidt episode was that in America, all of our internet conversations are just used to... Like shoehorn in your cultural war thing or to humiliate Mark Zuckerberg for your own political gain. None of it is is happening sincerely. So it was really interesting to have this this window into a country that is that seems to be earnestly talking about it in a way that is like actually cares about welfare and safety of children and not.

• 31:07Ryan Broderick?

  Well, let's, I mean, let's, let's, let's break it down then. Hold on. So you mentioned gun violence in the UK. The UK banned guns in 1996. They banned them after the Dunblane massacre in Scotland. 16 kids were killed and the country was just like enough. And they passed a bunch of amendments about firearms over the next couple of years. And now, yeah, they have knife crime, but like, and I had to use my ID to buy a kitchen knife in a Sainsbury's once. But like, other than that, like, they don't have gun violence. And so it's not totally surprising to me that like, they're taking incel behavior as seriously. Like, there is a, there is just a cultural thing that we don't have. Which is caring about your children.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  I think I just blatantly, uh, clear.

• 31:55Ryan Broderick?

  They have banned hate speech in, in, in, in most forums. Like you can get a knock on the door from the police for, for posting hate speech. They already have the Online Safety Act, which is a very controversial thing that got put in place that, uh, puts a legal duty on social media companies to like basically not let children access like, not just pornography, but also like eating disorder content, like self harm stuff like. When they say we want to ban social media for children of 16, that's not like a very hard.

• 32:33Ryan Broderick?

  I don't think Americans like totally understand the, uh,

• 32:38Ryan Broderick?

  The level of, I'm not gonna say authoritarianism, cuz it doesn't, I don't, I don't really see it that way, but it is, it's just a totally different landscape and a totally different set of values. And I would not want that system here cuz I actually don't trust the American government with it. Not to sound like an insane man in a bunker, but like I don't.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  No, no, no, cuz I mean, like, it's not, it's like evidence-based, like, look at the things we target online that are supposed, like, we don't go, we don't target how to stop the internet from teaching your child to be bulimic, or like, that they need

• 33:12Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  look-maxing things, we like, target like, anti, like, the word "trans."

• 33:17Ryan Broderick?

  Well, so both, both Michael Hobbes and Juniper in different episodes have mentioned this exact thing, which is that, like, we don't have, the UK, like, has a lot of problems, but like, you can, like, you can be gay there, like, you can, you can, you can be gay, you can even be trans there. I mean, they're, they're trying to, like, I think, the TERFs in the UK are trying to make it harder, but like, they're, like, look, there are problems, but like, I'm just saying, here, there's much more of a risk, even for women, like, period-tracking apps right now, like, are kind of terrifying, like, so, any sort of internet surveillance in the US is, I think, much more dangerous. So, like, if, if someone here, like, I mean, it is happening here, we're, we're seeing politicians say they wanna ban social media for people under 16.

• 34:03Ryan Broderick?

  The next question has to be, how do you prove they're 16? And then, the answer is, you have to prove they're over 18. And then, if they have to prove they're over 18, how do you do that? You have to do it with an ID. So you have to use an ID to use the internet, and, like, the whole, you know, that's dangerous.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Perfect transition, Ryan Broderick.

• 34:21Ryan Broderick?

  No problem. Happy to help.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  We, as a show, have been decidedly on the line that, uh, all of these proponents, uh, in the US seem extremely dystopian and, and untrustworthy when you put in a US perspective, but what I think Adolescence did as a show was, it showed us a culture that is taking this more seriously and with nuance, and it was, like, ready to have a deeper conversation, and that has led to a lot of parents and teachers in America Having an outlet to talk about how fucking out of their depth they feel. And there's been some really good pieces on this. And so after the break, Ryan and I are gonna help parents and teachers all across America, learn what to do with their freak toxic boys. And yeah, we're gonna solve all of it.

• 35:06Speaker 01

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• 35:56Speaker 01

  This isn't new. The internet we grew up with was not safe. It was things were operating at a different scale. But one thing I saw from the adolescence conversation, something that made like implicit sense to me that that I was like, oh, of course, that these feels like a thing we should be talking about. So The Guardian reported that 70% of women teachers said they had faced misogyny in schools, evidence that many red-pilled boys feel the need to reassert power dynamics of male supremacy even to adult women. This is from New York Times quoting The Guardian. Stephanie Westcott published her research in 2023, and she said that teachers pointed

• 36:37Speaker 01

  to the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2021, 2020, 21 as a period of radicalization for a vocal minority of male students. These boys were stuck at home melting their brains on the internet. Like all of us who were who experienced like this greater uptick of indoctrination that melted our brains. This happened to like the unlucky parents and teens who like were at home with their iPads at just the wrong time. Maybe that should give some optimism that as we like reintegrate into the world more, this will like level off more.

• 37:17Ryan Broderick?

  No.

• 37:20Ryan Broderick?

  Probably not, but okay, I do have kind of a, I do have kind of a measured take here that I've been, I've been cooking on. I read a study the other day that like, there are a subset of people who are becoming emotionally, quote unquote, addicted to ChatGPT. And I was reading through another study that came out, actually around the same time that like, the only precursor for self-reported instances of pornography addiction are religious ossity, which is interesting, like basically. That makes complete sense. Like porn, yeah, porn addiction is actually just like, you have really fucked up views about sex and like, this is how you're, you're dealing with it. And I remember studies that had come out like in the 2010s about like social media addiction, like people who were completely addicted to

• 38:03Ryan Broderick?

  posting on social media even against their own best interest or using it so much that like their, their real friends were distancing themselves from them. So I think actually it's probably more likely that being an incel, being a porn addict, having a relationship with ChatGPT,

• 38:26Ryan Broderick?

  being a Twitter power user are probably all heads of the same Hydra. I think for a subset of people, the internet provides an emotional replacement that is extremely seductive and engrossing. And the pandemic being the moment when teachers started noticing more incels in schools makes sense. Because based on everything that we can see, the, the pandemic was a moment when more people started to use the internet. So I don't actually think it's like a matter of this ideology spreading. I actually think it's just like, there's a subset of people that this will be true for

• 39:09Ryan Broderick?

  because of the way the internet sort of interacts with the human brain and the human emotional system and all of that. It's the same kind of like logic behind like the rise in gambling online during the pandemic and like, there's just a bunch of like weird internet that, the resurgence of eating disorder content on TikTok during the pandemic, like there are memetic social diseases and I think like toxic masculinity is one of them. That's really bleak.

• 39:37Ryan Broderick?

  I don't know if it's bleak. I actually think like, we talked about this on the Holocaust denial episode, which is, we gotta come up with a better like way to describe our episodes. My friend's dad. I do, yeah, yeah, but like, I do think. He's probably all better now that the Phillies are 7-2. Go Phils. Probably. I think that, I think that's honestly the way some of this works. But I do wonder if like, by addressing different sides of the same prism, like we're actually not dealing with the issue, which is that like, I, I, I need a word for this. And once I get a word for it, I can finally write this take down. But like, there is just a, but there's a lot of people out there who, when given the option

• 40:16Ryan Broderick?

  to like fill the void inside of them with internet content will, and it manifests in different ways. And if we can target that, we might be able to kill the whole thing. Like, that's the issue. The issue isn't- First, we have to kill all the Disney adults.

• 40:35Ryan Broderick?

  Honestly, they, they're fine. They're having, they're having a blast. But like, I haven't seen anything good about incel recovery. We also talked about this, like, it's like being an alcoholic, where like, they kind of have to realize that like, this is a problem for them. And if they don't, you can't really fix it. But if we're, if we're talking about children and we're talking about like, how do you basically teach media literacy to children to stop memetic social diseases from forming? Maybe the answer is to like, teach them about like, how their emotions and the internet intertwine. Maybe that's the moment to catch it. Because once they radicalize, I mean, we actually, you know, you know what is a really good example? ISIS brides. So like, Ellie Hall, former guest of the show, close friend of mine, she spent years

• 41:18Ryan Broderick?

  interviewing the women who would travel from like the Netherlands and even America to Syria. And she was like very deep in like ISIS bride Tumblr, where like they were posting propaganda and you know, she, she's very familiar with that world. And it is a similar process to becoming an incel, where like, most of these girls like, were like emotionally vulnerable and groomed online and then, then, then traveled to Syria to become like a bride as part of like the Islamic revolution that was promised to them. That to me is the exact- Same pathway for like everything else that we talk about the internet doing to people, whether it's a eating disorder, whether it's, you know, a porn addiction or being an incel

• 41:57Ryan Broderick?

  or being a neo-Nazi, like it's all the same roadmap. So it's gotta be something at the beginning of the road.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:05Ryan Broderick?

  Like before they get on the highway.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  It's at that most emotional, vulnerable place of looking for belonging. Well, that's fascinating. We should have her on to talk about that. We could, that's a great episode.

• 42:17Ryan Broderick?

  I told her she's not allowed back on the show because of her dog eating a bone the whole time.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  I will undo that. All of that vulnerability that seems to be bombarding places is terrifying. I think mostly millennial parents of their becoming teens, who I think are really, who I think have, as I mentioned at the top, a nostalgia, like they had AIM boyfriends and girlfriends too, that they, we all feel nostalgic about. And we like, we're kind of fucked up by seeing like guys get fucked to death by horses, but also like had this like soft spot towards the internet. And like, also, I think a lot of the fear mongering of our parents of like, you're gonna get kidnapped by a stranger, or like, you're gonna get arrested because

• 43:05Speaker 01

  you've pirated so much music and they're gonna break down your door and take you to jail. I think that the discourse from adolescents of millennial parents is like, I don't want to be causing a moral panic. I don't want to be overreacting that what is happening with the youth now is the worst thing that's ever happened to them and be repeating that cycle. But they also like, kind of rightly feel really fucked up. So I want to quote this really good piece from The Cut by Catherine Jezzer Morton, who wrote, "In one corner, we've got the idea pushed by Jonathan Haidt, that kids need more independence among their own peers, that quality time with adults is not what they're missing. In the other

• 43:50Speaker 01

  corner, whenever we leave kids alone, it's far too easy for them to get sucked into toxic online vortexes. Adolescence seems to argue that the examples set by the parents is the last line of defense against a manosphere. No pressure."

• 44:06Ryan Broderick?

  Maybe. I'm trying to envision like what a parent could say if you notice your

• 44:15Ryan Broderick?

  Son is becoming radicalized and saying red pill stuff at the dinner table.

• 44:23Ryan Broderick?

  I'm trying to imagine what could possibly be said to that boy to make him not do that. By their parent. And I, I struggle.

• 44:33Ryan Broderick?

  Because

• 44:37Ryan Broderick?

  they're always gonna view it as like the parent, my, you know, it suddenly you, you've, you've kind of maybe made it cooler. By accident for them, more dangerous at least. The point I was making earlier about sort of like all of these being tied together. May come in here too, because like.

• 44:56Ryan Broderick?

  There's a band that's reuniting that has, you know, allegations, uh, an emo band that has allegations surrounding them. And it's led to a lot of conversations with women in my life right now about how almost all of them. Have some kind of grooming story. Whether it's a serious one or one that, you know, they kind of look back on and be like, huh, that was weird. But almost all the 30 something women that I, I know, not to humble brag, um, they have some kind of grooming story and I would say nine out of 10 times it involves the internet.

• 45:32Ryan Broderick?

  And I do wonder. If like millennials are being a little rose colored glasses about our own internet experience. When once again, like.

• 45:46Ryan Broderick?

  This kind of stuff was happening, but it was just manifesting differently. Look, I don't want to say men's rights guys have a point. But the fact that now that is, that is boy, it is like, let's, let's call it what is it is, it is largely adult men. Grooming young boys and turning them into gender extremists. And we are treating it.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  That's a great way to put it.

• 46:07Ryan Broderick?

  That is what it is. Like Andrew Tate is grooming young boys.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Andrew Tate has acknowledges that the only person who cares about is Bugatti are 13 year old boys.

• 46:16Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, they all do. They know this.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  No woman is impressed by your gross looking suit. And you're.

• 46:23Ryan Broderick?

  No, no, no, he's not. He's an action figure. Like he's not for female consumption. So the idea that we're sort of treating this differently to me. Then we would like a group like the groom like we didn't deal with this inherent problem of how the internet functions, which allows young people to be in spaces with adults who have bad intentions and and and and are bad actors. And that is all I mean, I remember, I think I think I've talked about this on the show before, but I don't know if I have. I had a conversation with like, you know, a YouTube moderator years ago, asking them like why they can shut down ISIS content and why they can't shut down men's rights content. But it's the exact same kinds of vectors. And the answer for people who don't remember is just that ISIS was good at branding.

• 47:07Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it was just, but the men's rights guys are pretty fucking good at branding now, actually. They're all using the same words and they're all using the same thumbnails. But we're treating this differently.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, the thumbnail is how I how I overcame my sissy porn addiction.

• 47:21Ryan Broderick?

  No, it's sissy hypnosis and you have to get out of it by relearning to be a sigma male. But like, we're not treating this the same way that we're treating like, like a sex pest lead singer of a band. We're not treating this the same way we're treating like eating disorder content. We're not, we're, we've made this separate in this way that means that there's not much we can actually do. And to your point about the infrastructure, that's probably like, that's a way to put it. But like, because this is boys and because this is like masculinity, because this is men, we've made it so separate from every other way we deal with social diseases online that like, there's nothing we can actually do now. Like, not to be blackpilled, as they would say, but until we acknowledge that this is

• 48:04Ryan Broderick?

  the exact same thing as like a teen girl cutting herself because she saw stuff on MySpace about it 15 years ago, or getting an eating disorder from TikTok or Instagram, like, we can't do anything about it.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Did we actually do things about those or did we just?

• 48:18Ryan Broderick?

  We did, we absolutely did. There, a lot of that stuff, a lot of those like moderation decisions are being like turned back right now.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Oh, just like on the platforms, like, like they just, okay.

• 48:30Ryan Broderick?

  It used to be like you couldn't, I mean, fuck, there was an entire movement in the MySpace era called To Write Love On Her Arms, which was a bunch of like big emo bands getting together to do like an anti-cutting charity. They had T-shirts.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, no. Right, right. I, I, I remember that. And but I think actually at the time, I just thought that was like promotion like, like, like a pro cutting thing. Aren't scene girls who cut just so deep and interesting?

• 48:56Ryan Broderick?

  No, but like, we, we used to treat this stuff, like, we actually did use to take this stuff seriously. Like, if, and maybe like, the, the thing you, you read about, like, how it, we need, like, more outside time, like, yeah, because 15 years ago, there would be like a bus at Warped Tour called like the, like, Don't Be An Incel Bus. And you could like win like a free Monster Energy Drink by like saying a compliment to a girl that was like emotionally thoughtful. But like, we don't have those, we don't have those systems in place in the real world anymore.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  In the cut piece, uh, she talks to one mom who was like, a lot of my friends just think that if they're like a cool mom who like talks to her son and like, makes clear that like she's a feminist and like not like naggy, but like through osmosis, their teen boy will respect women because they like, respect and think their mom is cool. And she's like, I don't think that that's like, all he does is watch like YouTube of, of, of, of, of men. Like, I don't, I like, I'm questioning that, but I like, I don't know what else to do. If we were to get a town hall of like,

• 50:04Speaker 01

  that mom and the, the dad who's like, kids are talking about the Bugatti they're gonna have and, you know, the, the, the parents of, of, and the teachers of, of, of these potential threats. What conversation would you want to have with them? And then if we were the next day to take you to the health class, where all of these kids are secretly just watching YouTube in their, with their headphones and their hoodies, what would you try to like direct the conversation with them? I guess, because I, because what you just said about like,

• 50:41Speaker 01

  It needs more than this, but I think if like the health conversation, the health class conversation was like, these guys are creepy and weird and you are being groomed like by them, like that sets a to, like that is a conversation that like could be having in schools.

• 50:58Ryan Broderick?

  I do think that's part of it. Yeah. I do think like just being like, these guys are fucking predators and they're grooming you and they're turning you into like weird little fuckers that like will be miserable your whole lives. So stop it.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  I was in a really rarefied position when I worked at a teen center where I was like 25. So I wasn't that much older, but I was still like to them, I was like the perfect amount of older and they just had so many really earnest questions. And like this wasn't coming up then, or at least where I was working. It feels not hard to be like this guy, like they don't talk to women their age because women their age know they're bullshit. Like they are not able to maintain any sort of real relationship of being liked for, for who they are. That's gross and like teens are people too, who want to be liked for who they are.

• 51:43Ryan Broderick?

  Well, to, to sort of move the hypothetical, like I'm in a health class or a town hall thing off the table because just for a second, because I do think there's like one piece of this that we haven't hit that is like really important, which is like, if you watch all this stuff, if you watch all these videos and all these channels, all these guys, they are saying something that is true. And that is that men right now do not get the misogynistic paradise of like their fathers or their grandfather's lives, which is like you. And

• 52:25Ryan Broderick?

  now there's all kinds of social and systemic reasons why a man cannot support one, or possibly two, like a one family and a secret family on a single income and own a house in 2025. But that is the heart of what they're getting at. They're saying, This world that you're living in now is so much worse than the world that your father or your grandfather lived in. And if you take my advice, we can, we can either survive in this world and get what we want, or we can change this world back. So the thing that I always sort of think about when I hear that kind of stuff, would, you know, I, I,

• 53:05Ryan Broderick?

  I have, over the last year, one of the biggest sort of like, uh, changes in, in my own thinking, in my own writing about this stuff is that nostalgia is, is inherently a fascist trap. That like, there's very few ways to like, genuinely engage with nostalgia without sort of like, having to eventually promise people that things were better back then. And they weren't, they just weren't. And there's no way you could ever return to anything. So I think one of the core ways to deal with this stuff is to come up with a new story. A new story of what masculinity is. And, and, and that has to be unfortunately done mostly by men. Like, like that can't, like, we talked about this, I think in the Luigi episode, but like, there has to, and that's why I don't totally like-

• 53:50Ryan Broderick?

  That's a good guy for us to, you know, disseminate to the youth. I mean, honestly, he's not a bad one. Um, but like, I, I, we talked about this in the leftist Joe Rogan one. Like, we, we, we have talked about this before, but like, for, for the, the bit about the cool mom, like, I'm, I'm, I know that she probably wants to feel like she has some sort of like, agency here and can do something. But like, the things that I learned about what being a man looks like, I learned from like, very quiet moments in like, the car with my dad alone, growing up. And like, some of them were good, and some of them I'm in therapy to deal with. So- Some of them had a yellow horse semen.

• 54:33Ryan Broderick?

  No, I just, some of them are, are, are, my, my dad is 40 years older than I am. So some of them were from a time that like no longer existed.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 54:42Ryan Broderick?

  Um, and that's just how it works. You have to create a new story because the fascists are using nostalgia. So the only way you can like convince a kid like Jamie from adolescence to bring it back to, to, to the show. Like the only way they could have stopped that. And actually, there's a point in that, in that show where they, they kind of do this where like the dad is clearly a like emotionally, if not physically, like at least unstable presence in the house. And he is the, the paragon of like, like you're, you're, well, so listen, you know, like, like British masculinity. And he's like this, like hard headed builder kind of figure. And he is teaching his son a version of masculinity that is no longer compatible with the modern world.

• 55:27Ryan Broderick?

  And then the kid is like, wait, this doesn't work. Why doesn't this work? And he goes online and he finds a bunch of men telling him it won't work until we kill all the women. And like, that is the process. That is always the process.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. Um, okay. So that, that's, that sounds like what you would say at the town hall to the parents.

• 55:44Ryan Broderick?

  It's like, let's make a new story. Like what is this? What, what is, what is a man now?

• 55:49Speaker 01

  What, what would you say? A man is a podcaster.

• 55:52Ryan Broderick?

  Um, that's right.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  A man is a podcaster.

• 55:54Ryan Broderick?

  A bearded, a bearded podcaster.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  A podcaster who wears vintage workman's gear from, from.

• 56:02Ryan Broderick?

  That's right.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  From yesteryear before men just got on microphones and said, I feel like this.

• 56:07Ryan Broderick?

  The new version of masculinity is a, is a, is a, is a Bushwick podcaster that pretends to be bisexual to meet women. That's what, that's what it is.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Well, it's a good thing I found.

• 56:17Ryan Broderick?

  Bed-Stuy, um, it's a bed-Stuy, it's a bed-Stuy barista that wears workwear and DJs. That's what, that's what, uh, um.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  What would you say to the health class?

• 56:31Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, you're so pleased with yourself for that one.

• 56:35Ryan Broderick?

  Hey, I'm making digs of my, I make, I'm making digs of myself with that.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  He, he chuckles quiet, like off mic, cause he's like, he's, he's going, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. They're not gonna know how badly I burned Grant. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

• 56:49Ryan Broderick?

  I, I wasn't describing you. I don't know anything about your love life. You keep trying to tell me about it, but I'm asking you questions.

• 56:56Ryan Broderick?

  No, I don't know, I don't know anything about your love life. No, uh, if I was gonna talk to the health class,

• 57:02Ryan Broderick?

  whenever I talk to like classrooms or like students or like groups of young people, I try to do, I mean, I've been doing the same thing since I was in my early twenties, like when I would go to colleges and talk about the internet or whatever, which is that I try to strike a balance between like, I know,

• 57:18Ryan Broderick?

  I think I know what you know, but I'm comfortable when I don't know what you know. And the stuff that I do know that you know, I wanna take seriously and talk about. I was on a podcast this week and we were talking about the Minecraft movie and they were like, what's a chicken jockey? And I was like, I think I can explain what a chicken jockey is. I think I can like wrap my head around what a chicken jockey is.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  I've been thinking about the, the meme of, um, the picture of Don Dreper at the movie theater smoking a cigarette and his, I was like, this is what my son looks like the entire time. As you're talking about Nisal, I just, I was thinking about that. That's how this generation's gonna feel about the Minecraft movie.

• 57:56Ryan Broderick?

  But, but also if we're talking about masculinity, like that is a really cool interaction. Like to take your son to the Minecraft movie and watch him just be like, this is cinema. It's like really cute and really fun. And like, that is, I would not say Minecraft is a masculine pursuit. It is like Legos on the internet. And so, you know, there are toxic corners of Minecraft and you do have to be careful with like who your, your son is talking to in discords about Minecraft. But like, if you're thinking about like, what can parents do? It actually is stuff like that. It is to not go like the Minecraft movie is derivative slop. It's to take your, it's to take your son to the Minecraft movie and watch him go absolutely fucking ballistic and be like, that's so cool and so weird.

• 58:40Ryan Broderick?

  And like, enjoy it for what it is. And I do think unfortunately, and this is like, this is sort of like, I think where we end on most of our episodes, but I do think the answer is love, Grant.

• 58:52Ryan Broderick?

  I think it's just, you know, it's just, that's all it is.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  I don't think that that is, I think legislate, I think many things are the answer.

• 58:59Ryan Broderick?

  I think it's, I think it's love and understanding.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  I, uh, I was reporting on Portland when they're like in like state civil war and the government, the mayor's office was like, what, what can we do? And they, they're like, we got it. We'll do a choose love campaign. I'm like, I don't think that is going to end your, your, your escalating street violence of idea of ideological origin, but like, cool. Cool suggestion.

• 59:26Ryan Broderick?

  I do think it can help your son though, like not murder a woman in his classroom.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  I think, I do think that's taking them to chips and that is true.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  I think what you just did about talking about like, this used to be a creepy grooming trend and, and like showing it would be really interesting. I like the youth, as far as they understand, loves learning about like, old internet. And show, and like letting them make those connections themselves, that they're part of a continuum is, is I think like a thing that kind of blows minds.

• 59:59Ryan Broderick?

  So you're saying health class, but like, if I think about my own political awakening over time, like I remember being in sixth grade social studies and learning about the Holocaust. And I remember my teacher was just like, hey, like, in Star Wars terms, like this is what World War II was. And I remember going like, oh, okay, I get it. Like that's, and, and, and, and I, and she, she was really good. She was just like, you know, the, these are the people that decided to help the people in the Holocaust. These are the people who didn't, you know, what would you do? And it was like this early kind of germ of just like basic social theory.

• 1:00:40Ryan Broderick?

  And when I went to, I went to an all boys Catholic school, which was kind of a more progressive Catholic school, but you know, still Catholic, but progressive. And they had a class there that you had to take two. One was called a social justice and one was called social action. And it was like a whole year. So social justice was you learned about Christian religion, uh, Christian liberation theory. So like the idea of like, like Catholics helping like Latin American socialist uprisings. It is cool. It was an interesting class. And then social actions, you have to go do charity work for essentially like a semester. And then in college, I entered college during the Great Recession and stuff was happening in my own life involving the Great Recession that I didn't really understand as like a

• 1:01:20Ryan Broderick?

  17-year-old, 18-year-old. And I ended up in a sociology course just because I needed to get a credit. And it completely, completely blew up in my mind in terms of like systemic issues, like systems, social systems. It's stuff that I still think about today, I still care about today. And I would even like stay after class with that professor and I would talk to her being like, hey, can I ask you this about this, you know? And it led me to being a journalist. And like you were talking about a health class, which maybe, but I sort of think that like, the answer is like, it has to like, it's almost better to not sometimes address the thing, but instead like focus on building the bedrock so that

• 1:02:05Ryan Broderick?

  when they encounter the thing, they understand the right side to take on the thing.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  I think you should be in charge of kids curriculum. I'm sure one of our Patreon subscribers can make that happen. Ryan Broderick, thank you for coming on your show.

• 1:02:20Ryan Broderick?

  Thank you for having me on my show. I'll see you all at the matinee showing of a Minecraft movie this Saturday. I'll be wearing my chicken jockey costume and I'll be telling all the kids, Andrew Tate is, he's a zombie. What are they called? Like a ghoul? What are the little?

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna fade out you out on this. You're just disappearing into the ether.

• 1:02:47Ryan Broderick?

  Panic World is a Garbage Day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at garbage day dot email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our deranged logo was created by Gabby Cash. Please give us $5 at patreon.com/panicworld. Please give us products to sell by contacting multitude at multitude dot production slash ads. For any other way you would like to give us money or work with us or promote us or become financially entangled with us, you can reach out to our fixer, our wonderful bad man, Josh Fielstad, and you can reach him at [email protected]. And one piece of advice from me to you, chill out, touch grass while you still can.

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