Episode 16: Does America Have a Man Problem?, with Anand Giridharadas and Liz Plank
Please note: This transcript has been automatically generated.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Hey, y’all. So I’ve been asking myself a question lately. It’s a question I advise people to ask at multiple points in their lives, especially when people ask me for career advice or how did you find your purpose? I say that you need to ask yourself, what do you want to be true in the world? Because you are here. One, to me, that question recognizes that all of us should be functioning with the understanding that it’s not all about us. That there are things that are bigger than us that we should constantly be making a contribution toward. But I also just think it’s important to revisit that question throughout your life because the answer is gonna change what you want to be true in the world because you are here is gonna look different in high school or college than it will when you’re 35. And part because your world will look different.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
It will get bigger and more expansive, and certainly get more complex. So I’ve been asking myself that question what do I want to be true in the world? Because I am here. And you know, for years, my answer to that question was that I wanted people, however they interacted with me, I wanted people to be activated. I wanted people to feel like they were being told the truth and that they could do something to make the world better with that truth. But as I’ve been asking myself that question lately, I feel like the answer is evolving. I still believe that truth telling will always be central to my purpose. But truth telling to what end? I think about sometimes, whether or not I’m supposed to be a persuader, who gets other people who might not quite get it yet to get on board the train of freedom. Or if I’m supposed to be a preacher who doesn’t mind turning her back to the congregation and talking directly to the choir to make sure that they are fed and kept and seen and covered and encouraged to keep on going. And some days the answer is one, some days the answer is another. And most certainly, we get into that conversation in today’s episode. Especially as I become, very soon, a mom of two, thinking about the choir as my own family. About these two young men that I have the distinct privilege of helping to raise and rear, helping to find themselves and know themselves in a world that will tell them everything that they are not and every bad thing that they should be. That’s my choir, so many days. Wanting to make sure that they can experience joy too, that when they clap their hands and sway in those robes that they are feeling like they are singing tunes that are aligned with their spirit. And then other days, I feel like I still got some persuading to do. Maybe it’s pregnancy brain that doesn’t have me wrapping this intro up perfectly for you. But the truth of the matter is, I’m asking myself that question again. What do I want to be true in the world because I am here? And I’ll be honest, I’m in the middle of finding the answer.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
On today’s show. Across the internet, toxic subcultures are growing and radicalizing men with violent consequences. How did we get here and how do we get out? I asked journalists, Anand Giridharadas and Liz Plank who’ve written about this to spell it out.
LIZ PLANK:
I think that it’s not just that there are tens of, uh, of thousands of men who are adrift and who are lost. There are tens and thousands of men who are being preyed upon.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
We need our version of Joe Rogan. People who meets men in that position of lostness and having questions and and confusion, but pulls them in a feminist direction. We need more men to be feminists.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
But first, the news. We are hearing a lot about President Biden’s legacy right now. And y’all, I was definitely down with these pardons, and I’m absolutely down with the work the VP Kamala Harris has done to make sure that medical debt is no longer on people’s credit reports. And, not but, this week, one community raised a really important alarm. At the start of his presidency, Joe Biden made a promise to protect transgender Americans against a barrage of Republican policies threatening their healthcare access and safety among other rights
Joe Biden:
All transgender Americans watching at home, especially young people. You’re so brave. I want you to know your president has your back.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Well now, during his last full month in office, he has made policy decisions that don’t fulfill that promise. He scrapped plans to provide protections for transgender student athletes and signed a defense bill that includes language that keeps military service members from using their insurance to cover transgender and gender affirming medical treatments for their kids. Now listen, Biden definitely made some important strides during his term. He appointed transgender individuals to key roles within his administration, and he reversed a Trump era ban on transgender military service. But with an incoming administration that is quite literally a known threat to the rights, livelihood, and wellbeing of the trans community – now is not the time for play play. It is not the time for broken presidential promises. This is yet another reminder that at the end of the day, no matter who is in office, friend, foe or somebody in between, no matter what they say they’ll do to defend our communities, we have to be ready to defend them too.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Now, shifting to pop culture for a moment, I wanna turn to some standouts from the Golden Globe Awards, which took place last weekend. And by the way, this was a hell of a year to stop airing the Cecil B. DeMille Award because I needed Viola Davis’ speech for my spirit. Y’all was wrong for that. But also, did we see the rock on Zendaya’s finger? Like did we clock how her gown paid homage to black Hollywood icons like Dorothy Dandridge, the costume design, legend Zelda Wynn Valdes, and singer and activist Joyce Bryant. Like, did I like pretty much everyone else spend the entire next day speculating on her now confirmed engagement to Spider-Man?! Yeah, her and Tom are getting married. That’s absolutely what I did. And I can’t wait to see the wedding photos because this is going to be Law Roach’s crowning styling achievement. Woo. Aside from that, one of the wins that I’m most excited about is Fernanda Torres. For best actress in a motion picture drama for her role in the movie, I’m Still Here. She is the first Brazilian actress to win the award. But the honor is even more significant because her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, was the first Brazilian actress to be nominated in the exact same category in the 1998 film Central Station.
Fernanda Torres at the Golden Globes:
And of course, I want to dedicate it to my mother. You have no idea. She was here 25 years ago. And this is, like, a proof that art can endure through life even in difficult moments.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Finally, to round out this week’s un trending, we gotta talk about Bad Bunny. This week on the eve of Three Kings Day, he released his new album called “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” (apologies for my terrible accent) translated to English, that’s “I Should Have Taken More Photos.” He’s released it along with a companion short film. And the album is a celebration of Puerto Rico, his homeland that fuses traditional and contemporary rhythms and showcases the lineup of all Puerto Rican artists as its features. Plus it was recorded entirely on the island. In what he called his most Puerto Rican album yet, the project muses on cultural identity and mentions gentrification and statehood and the fate of Puerto Rico’s political future. I see you Bad Bunny. As Spotify’s most streamed Latin artist and one of the most streamed artists for the last few years, period, Bad Bunny is shaping the landscape of Spanish language, music, and revolutions with each project he puts out. But honestly, when he talks about his influence and status, he’s real nonchalant with it. Here’s what he had to say on the New York Times Podcast Popcast.
Bad Bunny:
Also, every time that I talk or or express about something, I do it because I feel it. It’s not ’cause I’m Bad Bunny. I have 40 millions follower and I wanna… No. It’s more like a feeling that I wanna give back to the others.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Now, while Bad Bunny is making sure we have the conversations we need to have many Puerto Ricans rung in the new year. Under yet another blackout. The new governor, Jennifer Gonzalez Colon, a pro-Trump Republican, was sworn in giving strength to Puerto Rico’s pro statehood new progressive party, despite centuries of political turmoil and colonization, ongoing uncertainty from climate havoc, and an incoming US president who likes to get down there and toss paper towels and name call, the fight for Puerto Rico is absolutely alive.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
I also want to bring attention to the Pacific Palisades wildfires that have intensified and spread across the LA County area, forcing thousands of residents to evacuate their homes. This situation is rapidly developing and we’re waiting on more information and resources to come. But for now, we’d like to point you toward a donation page for the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation, which supports the first responders working to quell these fires. And we are praying for thinking of and wishing everyone and their loved ones impacted by these fires, safety and shelter, especially our unhoused loved ones, our disabled loved ones, and our incarcerated loved ones. Y’all be blessed.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
The first 24 hours of 2025 were violent, real violent First. Early on January 1st, an Army veteran turned Isis sympathizer named Shamsud-Din Jabbar, drove a pickup truck into a crowd of people in New Orleans, killing 14 and injuring dozens more. Hours later in Las Vegas, an active duty army soldier, Matthew Livelsberger, killed himself inside a Tesla cyber truck that then exploded in front of a Trump hotel. He left behind letters bemoaning the State of America and DEI initiatives while praising President Trump and his followers. While there was no coordination between the two attacks that we know of, both men did serve in Afghanistan and following their return home appear to have become increasingly radicalized in their views. Which is why this week, we needed to talk about men. Men who commit these acts of violence and terror, but also the male culture that surrounds them, because those two guys do not exist in a vacuum.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
We are only days away from a second – I cannot believe I’m saying this – second Trump administration, and that was a campaign that ran on extreme visions of masculinity. Y’all remember Hulk Hogan and his bad weave at the RNC. Social media platforms are now openly pushing far right ideals and dismissing their fact checkers. Thank you, Mark Zuckerberg. Macho podcasts are at the top of the charts and almost every corner of the internet has its own bro, ready to tell you how to be a real man. Like what’s really going on and what can we do about it both in our politics, but also in culture and in our own lives. To break all of this down, I brought in two people who have thought and written a lot about this subject, Anand Giridharadas, journalist, author, and publisher of the newsletter, The.Ink. And Liz Plank journalist and author of For The Love of Men. Let’s get into the conversation.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Liz, Anand, I am so, so grateful to have you both on Undistracted. This is a meeting of the minds that when we dreamt it up in the production meeting, I was like, can, can we actually get them both at the same time? Especially because, because today we’re gonna talk about men. And when it comes to that topic, both of you are in high demand for good reason. Um, obviously we’re, we’re sitting here at the top of 2025 and we, we began the year not only reflecting on January the sixth about, um, an intense act of violence in the, in insurrection in 2021. But we began this year with two acts of violence in New Orleans and Las Vegas. Anand I wanna start with you ’cause you’re a substack. The.Ink published a column about how this violence showed quote unquote quickie radicalization and how that’s become, as you say, as American as apple pie. Explain to our listeners exactly what you mean. What is quickie radicalization and what are the markers of it?
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
The parallel that, that we were trying to draw is to say there is this phenomenon right now, not just of radicalization, whether it’s radicalization to, you know, committing violent acts or radicalization, ideologically, merely ideologically, but with big consequences. You know, radicalization is an old story, but there does seem to be something happening now that is more specifically of this moment that has to do with the rapidity, um, uh, with which it can happen that has to do with algorithms, um, as an explanation of that rapidity. Um, something I think, I mean, Liz has talked about this a bunch. Like there is something happening online that I think we all know is happening, but at the, at another level, I don’t think actually anybody truly grasps the scale of it. Partly because all these algorithmic journeys are sort of private to each person. So you, so there is social science on it, but actually, like, you don’t actually know what anybody’s path is unless you really have some very special data. But clearly something is happening where very large numbers of lost adrift men, which by the way, is exactly what you should expect in an era of precipitous social change. So there’s nothing, there’s nothing weird about living in an era in which a large number of men are sort of psychologically beached a little bit. That’s, that’s actually normal, right? It’s normal when you make this kind of progress that like some people will kind of make the jump and some people will like fall into the hole where the jump is. Totally normal.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
What happens with the people who can’t quite land, who can’t, who know they can’t be their dads, but can’t quite figure out how to be the way a lot of younger men have figured out how to be. Or can’t quite figure out what the next incarnation of themselves is, a reinvention of themselves is, do they try harder? Do they try to read more and learn? Do they try to listen to people around them to grow? Or do they find, uh, sources of consolation that basically tell them they’re fine as they are, things are better the way they used to be. Um, and basically find kind of this algorithmic rabbit hole validation, um, that promises them, I think both an explanation of their pain and disorientation. Um, culprits, um, maybe, you know, vast schemes that are being kind of marshaled against them. Even though we all realize there’s a problem, I think we’re probably losing an even larger number of men to this phenomenon right now than we realize and the wildest estimates assume. Yeah. I think this phenomenon tipped the election, if not played an enormous role in it. And, and I think if we don’t get our arms around the fact that whether it takes place in these very extreme forms like terrorist attacks or
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
mm-hmm
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
Political behavior or anything else, if we don’t wrap our arms around the fact that millions and millions, tens of millions of American men are lost, adrift and being met in that condition almost exclusively Yeah. By malevolent actors on the right and almost completely abandoned, by more progressive forces.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Liz, you’ve been writing about the cross section of masculinity and violence for years. How do you see these two events? Especially in this context of quickie radicalization, which I think is such a helpful container to think about this.
LIZ PLANK:
I think that it’s not just that there are tens of, uh, of thousands of, of men who are adrift and who are lost. There are tens and thousands of men who are being preyed upon. And it’s being done sort of very overtly. But it was certainly clear when Steve Bannon openly admitted to sort of seeing this group of young men who were mostly playing video games. And who he saw as a really, like a, like a potential demographic who could be easily manipulated. And that’s how radicalization works, right? We could, uh, do this episode and talk about the recent mass shooting, right, right. In quotation marks, because there is always one, and we could talk about the details. It is the same conversation, right. Whether it’s someone who is radicalized in the Middle East. Right. And when we talk about ISIS or when we talk about, talk about neo-Nazis in, uh, you know, Charlottesville, right? It’s, it’s actually far more similar, um, than, than, than it is different. But when we talk about deradicalization of men abroad, it’s far more, I think, appealing as a conversation for many Americans, um, than the deradicalization of white people here.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Right. ’cause then we don’t have to look at ourselves and examine anything about our domestic society.
LIZ PLANK:
Yes. Yeah. That’s right. And, to Anand’s point about algorithms, I mean, we are all affected by algorithms. We think it is just an individual experience of, of our own, you know, sort of self-actualization, but is, you know, most times actually part of a manipulation of, yeah, outside actors. And we’ve been very aware of the fact that women’s, uh, self-perceptions are shaped by, corporations and politicians and, you know, elites and, and people who want us to spend our money and, and sort of use our weaknesses against us. And we don’t tend to see men as victims. So in a way, this sort of patriarchal, uh, traps that we have that trap men in the first place also become what’s hard, um, you know, or, or becomes an obstacle to coming up with solutions.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
I think that is such an important point. What Liz is pointing to is something that actually we can do that is a moral confusion among progressives, I would argue.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM
Hmm.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
I think in the progressive moral worldview, if someone or a group has historical status, power, privilege, right? And is maybe being managed down from it now in the modern era,
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Right.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
In the progressive worldview, that person does not need help.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
I’m glad you’re bringing this up because I, I wanted to talk about this right? When the recent mass shooting happens, whichever one it is, to your point, Liz, because there’s always one, we often hear the same refrain from people on the right. Usually they are men. And they say, the guns aren’t the problem. The mental health issues are the problem. Well, we know when we, when they say this, they’re being disingenuous. Right? This is never a good faith argument on their part because if it was, we would’ve been seeing them fund mental health resources at the community level across the board. And that never happens. Right? And so I think because they are the messengers, to your point, Anand, we on the opposite end say, no silly, the guns are the problem. And to be clear, the guns are absolutely part of the problem. But we dismiss the mental health and wellness conversation about men entirely because the messengers of that are so problematic. And I’m curious from both of you, honestly, how we can think about men’s sense of mental health and belonging without making it a scapegoat for violence?
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
Let’s take it away from shootings or kind of flash bang moments. To me, this is something happening for millions and millions of people, mostly in ordinary moments of ordinary life. We have changed, a ton, about how this country functions in the last half century. Okay? One of the elements of the progressive worldview is you don’t celebrate victories ’cause there’s always like the next thing to do. Right? But more has changed in the status of women in the last 50 years than in the previous, what 50,000? Think about anybody’s grandmother, great-grandmother compared to now, right? Yes, we’re in a bad moment. But if you take that longer view, there’s just like, the nature of the family has completely changed.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM
Rightt.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
Like we all talk about respecting our ancestors, like our ancestors were assholes to a very large swath of people who–
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Like, I like mine, but I, I hear where you’re going.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
It was not pleasant to be all kinds of people, right? To be different in all of the worlds of our ancestors. It was very, very difficult to be trans. It was very, very difficult to be gay. It was very, very difficult to have a sense of yourself that didn’t quite match what you’re supposed to be. We’ve made progress in all these things, and this kind of progress requires mental leaps for people. And in a country where education is under attack and starved. People like the three of us on this podcast who’ve gotten good educations and can talk well and can read and can think? We’re really well equipped for something like the definition of gender completely changing in our lifetime. The three of us, when that happens, whether it’s happening for us personally or not, we can read, we go on websites, we watch videos, and we’re good.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
But a lot of people simply do not have the resources in terms of the educations they’ve been given, the backgrounds they have, where they come from, the conversations that they grew up around to even contemplate what it means that gender is a completely new thing or what it means to reckon with whiteness. So all the stuff that is maybe very normal in, in this conversation. And we do not have a plan for educating people into those new understandings. We have a, a kind of standard that we expect people to meet. And when they don’t meet it, I think we often make people feel stupid and whatever. This is not excusing intolerance, but I think there are far more people who are confused about the future than who are at war against the future. And I’ll just say one last thing that helps me understand this. When I think about it in this country, and I think about white Christian men at war with the future, I feel one kind of way about it, right? Sometimes I take it out of that context. I take it to a country I know very well also, my family comes from India, right?
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Mm-hmm.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
If you go to a rural village in North India, where women can’t really leave the house that easily have to cover their head, you can understand the views in that village as like the future hasn’t come to that village yet. And that village doesn’t have an ideological difference with, let’s say, Mumbai. That village is in a different century than Mumbai. I sometimes think in the United States, it may not be comfortable to say this.We are not all living in the same year. And I think we need to be able to hold intolerant people accountable, and at the same time have a plan of development for people to bring more people into ideas about the future.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Who has to have the plan. So I’m, as you were talking, I was thinking about back when I was running a nonprofit, which feels like a lifetime ago, I’m at a development meeting with somebody who I think we’re asking for at least $50,000 per year over three years, right? So this is a large donor. He’s an older white man, and I’m trying to mold and appeal to him that still reflects my values, right? And we’re in the middle of this conversation and he says “You know, it’s really a shame that some of these older industries are gone.” And I say, well, you know, “What do you mean?” And he’s talking about the futures that these young people can aspire to. And he says, you know, well the, he, he refers to the person that we have in common. He says “Well, you know, he picked cotton when he was young, and that’s not an option anymore.”
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
And I was like, I’m sitting in the middle of like a Panera Bread. Like, what, what, what century am I in? Where did I just get thrown back to? At the time the development staff member that I’m with is a white woman. We walk out of the meeting and I’m looking for comradery. I’m looking for support. I’m looking for like, did you have the same whiplash that I just had? Right? Um, and her response is “Well, he grew up in a different time.” Which is factually true. But I also sat there having to have a conversation with her about what our responses needed to be in that moment and how we steward that donor in the future, ’cause we still needed his check, but I needed to make sure that I wasn’t sacrificing my own personal values and, and safety and wellbeing, and that our team wasn’t doing the same and trying to pursue that.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
So that’s why I come to this question of like, who’s doing the teaching? Who’s writing the curriculum? Do we have a responsibility to incentivize that? Liz, I don’t know if you have thoughts on that, and I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m just trying to advance the conversation, because you’re right, there has to be a space for them to learn and grow if they’re going to be in this century, in this year, in this decade. But I’m like, who, who does that? Because my Black hands don’t wanna carry it.
LIZ PLANK:
And this conversation is complicated by the fact that, again, if we look at the results of the 2024 election, um, that this isn’t a generational divide. Right? Um, Trump’s win was, was largely powered by, young people, particularly young men, right? And in many cases, what we’re seeing in, in, I think some of the most staggering data I’ve ever seen is, is young men being less progressive and less feminist than their grandfathers were. Also this whole conversation around education, right? There’s a very unequal access to education. There’s also an increasingly unequal access to information, to true information. You know, we have the news of Mark Zuckerberg–
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
As we’re recording it, and Mark Zuckerberg announced today that Metta would be dismissing its fact checkers, moving its content moderation team in the US from California to Texas, because there’s quote less bias there. Um, and, and some more announcements. But yes, please continue.
LIZ PLANK:
So what we’re seeing is, yeah, a a sort of inequality when it comes to truth and like access to truth, and then actors, right? Powerful actors who have a vested interest in making sure that, that, that people don’t have access to truth, right. In order to stay in power.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
I think sometimes, you know, when they do those surveys, sometimes comedians do it, sometimes it’s done for real. Like, can you name a Supreme Court justice? Like you go to people on the street, or, you know, like when you actually look at that stuff,
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
It’s terrifying.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
We all laugh at that, but then we think people know what we mean when we’re talking about dismantling white supremacy.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Mm-hmm.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
Or we think people know what we mean. We’re talking about feminism. This is a real thing that happened to me. I was on Morning Joe, and I was having a conversation that was not unlike this one about what had happened to young men and, and what do we need to do. And I, I said something to the effect of, we need our version of Joe Rogan. Which is to say, and I said, you know, people who meets men in that position of lostness and, and, and having questions and, and confusion. But pulls them in a feminist direction. We need more men to be feminists. That was my, those are my exact words. So I started to get all these emails from regular people. And this really interesting confusion was in a lot of these emails. A lot of these emails said: You want men to be feminized. You want men to be turned into women. We will never be feminized. We’ll never be feminized.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
But it was so many of them that I realized that I had been misunderstood! It seemed very clear to me reading the emails that the regular guys who were writing to me actually maybe had a working definition of “feminist” that was the same as the word “feminized.” That I wanted to cut their balls off. I would just say, I don’t think we quite realize the number of people who are in that boat. Who literally do not know the meaning of the words that are central to progressive discourse about the future.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah. And I think that what, what you offered on Morning Joe, and what you’re bringing back up now, it’s such a powerful answer to my question, right. Of who, whose job is it? Because inherent in your, the solution you offered is both accountability and responsibility. It is to say it is the job of other men who have done the work, who have, you know, who are of course, still on the journey, because we’re always on the journey, to pull other men in and to recognize that they can be more effective than perhaps I can.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
I find that interesting, especially thinking about how much podcasting as a, as as an industry in particular has been weaponized through all of this. Right? I think we saw the rise of the podcast, bro, right? During this era. People like Andrew Tate, people like Kevin Samuels, who absolutely preyed upon that lostness in order to miseducate. Is it just the way it looks or is it reality that men are more susceptible to this radicalization than like five years ago? Or is it simply that the tools that we have at our disposal, YouTube, the podcast gamers, et cetera, are pushing it faster?
LIZ PLANK:
That’s a really interesting question. Um, there’s data showing that people who were more likely to get their news through podcasts were more likely again, to go for Donald Trump. This is a question of like, is it the right term to say, or is it effective and the right approach to tell men that we need a Joe Rogan that makes them feminist? Or is there a more effective kind of messaging, right, that will ultimately give, you know, bring to that outcome or, or, or bring us to, to that outcome, but without using a certain kind of language that yes, like all three of us love and, um, you know, can understand.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
It makes me think of Brittany’s question from earlier, which is like, who should have to do this work? Or whose hands wanna do this work? Right? And I think that’s probably the hardest question here. I took this on in my book, the Persuaders, I mean, it was several different women of color activists who shared their complex feelings about that very question. And, you know, one of them, Loretta Ross, said, no one has to do this work if they don’t want to, but we’re gonna need some people to want to do this work. That here’s the thing, right? You can show up at any evangelical church and be like “Fuck Jesus, I don’t believe in Jesus.” And they’ll be like, come on in, like, take a seat. Like, we’d love to talk to you. What is it? What would it look like for our movements to do that? Not out of some desire to like coddle anybody, but out of a ruthless desire to crush fascism.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
[Laughter] and recruit as many people as we possibly can. Yeah.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
Yes! And I think we have to get over our squeamishness about this, right? Yeah. And we’re all gonna have to do things we don’t wanna do. Or some people are gonna have to do things they shouldn’t have to do. But this, to me, feels fertile because it’s something within our power. And I think it is a confusion on our own end as opposed to hoping for someone else to do something. We are insufficiently evangelical, in my view. We are insufficiently, expansionary. We have a great confusion when, when people come around to our view, our reflex has often been like, well, why weren’t you there earlier?
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Mhmm.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
Instead of like, yay, amazing. Amazing. We got Liz Cheney.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
We’re so glad you’re here…
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
It’s not an endorsement of someone to be happy that you persuaded them.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
You know, this is interesting as I think that I have watched, this is gonna feel like a strange parallel, but I’m going somewhere with this. There’s been this entire conversation on TikTok about Black Americana, Black southern culture in relationship to the Cowboy Carter performance on Christmas Day, on Netflix. And like anybody who was listening to this podcast for a while knows I’m a Beyonce fan, so like, this is, they should know that. Like, I draw so many comparisons to what’s happening in the world with what’s happening around Beyonce. But it’s been fascinating because a lot of people were frustrated by the tone of the conversation. And whatever side you fell on, what has come out is progressives and people who self-identify as progressives and leftists saying to one another, hey maybe we’re not communicating our ideas very effectively. If we pissed this many people off trying to open up a conversation and the point is to recruit and evangelize to as many people to come and think the way we think, then, like, we’re not doing a good job.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
I find myself asking myself two questions. Often when I get stuck in this place that we’re discussing right now, I ask myself, do I wanna be right or do I wanna be effective? Like, do I wanna say the thing that’s gonna get all the claps and all the snaps? Or do I wanna actually move this person? The second question I ask myself is, am I the one to do it? Like, do I have the capacity? Do I have the wherewithal? Is there somebody else who could do it better? Um, and also like, do I deserve to have to do this right now? Because some days the answer is, well, you gonna have to buck up and and get it done, and you’re gonna have to be the one. And other days are, I’m overstimulated and I’m about to give birth to one boy, and I got a three-year-old boy trying to climb all over me, and today is not the day where I can offer you that. I understand when people land more on that second choice than they do on that first one. Um, to your point Anand, and if we constantly think it’s somebody else’s job, then is it gonna get done? ’cause certainly Mark Zuckerberg is not interested in that job. Like, and I I, and based on the way he’s behaving, I don’t wanna leave it to him.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
And, you know, at the end of the day, I hate to say it, but like, we’re not entitled to live in any particular version of the future. This is a democracy. Like the version of the future we’re gonna live in is the one we’re gonna persuade more people to want. It’s not necessarily like the morally correct one. Right? At the end of the day, there’s no, the, the only arbiter of whether something is, is, is right in the long run in this country, is like whether you get more people on board, and then it becomes defined as right. You know? And so sometimes I think we behave as though this is self-evidently true. That a big diverse majority-minority plurals country where women and men do the same things and gender has changed, and it’s, it’s self-evidently true. It’s good. Like, I think that you think that, Liz thinks that. But there are actually no self-evident truths with apologies to Thomas Jefferson. Like, you gotta argue for everything. You gotta convince people if no one wants to live in that world, besides the three of us…
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
LAUGHS
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
Us banging our drum about it is gonna do nothing. The power of that idea, frankly, is how many other people are banging on that drum with us.
LIZ PLANK:
Like, we actually need to be strategic. we have the best policies. Literally not, I mean, Anand, and I know you said there is no, you know, objective truth about what future is better, but according to most Americans, it’s one filled with democratic policies. And yet we lose elections, right? And we, we certainly lost the last one. So we also need cheerleaders, right? We need people to get you excited about being progressive. And, um, I, I think both are important.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
Yeah. And I, and I’ll give you, I’ll just quickly shift once, one more time to, to India. ’cause I really do think it’s helpful to just like, look at places that you don’t have an emotional investment in. So India has gone in a very similar direction to the United States with right wing authoritarianism, except it’s much more effective. And there’s been a lot of reckoning on the left in India, like, what happened? Like, because it’s not like here. It’s not 50/50, like the country’s been lost to any kind of progressive vision. And at first there was a lot of blame on this leader. And then there’s been a lot of meaningful writing about, you know, this gorgeous vision of independence that came out of decolonization, Gandhi. But in retrospect, and I think this has so much applicability to us, like they didn’t actually do anything to make Indian people different.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
They just put it in the constitution. They put, but, but India has an incredibly tribal, hierarchical place, and none of that was altered, right? So you have like a third of seats in parliament set aside for women, which is remarkable. We don’t have that. But in large parts of North India, a woman can’t leave her house. And they didn’t, they didn’t disturb that. They just put the women in the parliament. They put it in the constitution. And the deep, deep reckoning, I think is happening, uh, happening among more progressive force in India, but I think it’s happening in many countries in the world, is like, we didn’t actually sell or implant this vision into large numbers of people. We just sort of articulated it. We tried to put it in laws and court cases, but we didn’t actually drop it deep, deep, deep into culture and values and psyche and remake people along these lines. And then one day we found out that a lot of people didn’t care about these values as much as we did. And it’s a shock, but it’s a shock that I think gives us an assignment.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
You know, I am very, very close to being a mom of two. I do take very seriously what I feel like my work is in that, right, in that I get the opportunity to not have to remake men. I get the opportunity to just make men. Right? With these fresh brains and fresh eyes. TTo try to help contribute to a generation of men who are much more womanist. Um, so I know that that’s like, that’s my assignment for, for now until the day I take my last breath. And it’s the assignment that is most in the forefront of my mind, um, for obvious reasons. What is one thing that everybody can add to their personal assignment list, whether they’re parents or not, whether they have read all the books or not, whether they understand all the terms or not, um, to help create the kind of culture that we’re talking about?
LIZ PLANK:
I think a great place to start is actually, um, Anand’s friend Ruth Whippman wrote a really good book called BoyMum. There’s all kinds of data in her book, um, that shows that, uh, it’s more likely to have post, uh, part of depression, um, if, if a woman has a boy.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah.
LIZ PLANK:
That kind of, you know, shocked me. one thing that I wish I had done a little bit more, and particularly when, when my book came out and, and I was asked this question a lot, you know, I sort of, um, thought I had the answers. Uh, you know, and, and I think I’m realizing that so many of the answers are within men and, and actually within boys because, um, boys haven’t become men and gone through the trauma, I think, of becoming men. Um, you don’t have to figure it out and do it for them, right? Or figure out what’s the best version of masculinity, you know, for them or, or, or, or the best behaviors for them. I think asking men questions about their masculinity, to me! Open-ended and the most simple thing you can think of, will usually lead to I think some of the most profound and I think meaningful connections. And, and I guess one little tidbit I wanna also say is like, there’s so many interesting conversations happening on the internet and on and, and on TikTok, right? There’s like these kind of new ideals of masculinity that I think give us a sense that they’re like liberating men, like the golden retriever, right? Boyfriend sort of ideal of like, oh, it’s this, the foil to the masculine or hyper masculine toxic guy, right? He’s a guy who’s kind and supportive and loving, but I still think even those new sort of ideals that feel like progress can often be still, um, archaic forms of, this ancient, you know, masculinity. Like, again, the way that women relate to men is still what they can provide for them. I guess a challenge to women, you know, to, um, realize the way that that, that we’re complicit and sort of enable, um, the way that, that, that men are, and that actually freedom can be a lot more messy and complicated, not just for them, but for us too.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Hmm. Fascinating. Anand?
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
We are trying to change something very, very fundamental, which is to allow everyone to play, to allow everyone to be in the game, to allow everybody’s dreams to have a shot. That’s a really big awesome undertaking. We’re doing the same on race, we’re doing the same with regard to immigration. We’re, we, we are really, we’re trying to do a really big, hard thing, particularly in this country, which is built from people from literally every other, other part of the world, and continues to bring in people from every other part of the world. Where we’re, where we’re a country made of the world, trying right now in this really hard and fraught time, to give everyone voice and make everyone free. So it helps me to just set the table. Like, that’s the thing we’re trying to do, okay? So now as we try to do that, just to decenter these fascists a little bit, as we’re trying to do that, something has come up, okay? That’s how I like to think about it. Instead of telling the story as like, they’re not setting the table, we’re setting the table. We’ve set the table and someone has thrown a plate. Okay? That’s what this is, this is not their table, and they didn’t set it. This is our table, right?
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
We need to be operating at all levels. Cconscious, subconscious, artistic, creative, educational. Um, and finally I’ll say like, I have, I have a son and also a daughter, and, you know, I think it’s really beautiful the moment you’re in, because this shit gets very abstract very quickly and very concrete very quickly
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
LAUGHS. Yeah.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
When you have just one of your own, or two in your case. And, and you realize, I have realized in a thousand small moments, like the making of boyhood and masculinity. The making, like the, the little, little moments when someone might say, boys don’t cry, meaning, well, and then I gotta rush in to be like “Well…” You know?
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
But you’re right. We’re only really gonna get there by making new people one at a time. That’s why these things take time.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
And I’m, I’m excited for you to get your, your, your shot .
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
I realize I’m not even making them, I’m trying to help them make themselves. And, um, woo. Boy, we got a lot of work to do. I appreciate the both of you so much for this absolutely fascinating conversation. I know that our, our community will get so much from it. Um, and thank you for the all that you all continue to contribute. We’ll be reading along.
LIZ PLANK:
Thank you. This Is so fun.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS:
Thank you so much.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
SIGH. So, whether you are, I are destined to be a persuader or preacher, or maybe a little of both. What’s true is that we’ve all got work to do and we’ve all gotta take care of ourselves while we do it.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
That’s it for today, but never, ever for tomorrow. Undistracted is a production of the media and our friends at Wonder Media Network. Our producers are Vanessa Handy, Brittany Martinez, and Alyia Yates. Our editors are Grace Lynch and Maddy Foley. Thanks also to Natalia Ramirez and Sarah Culley. Our executive producers at the Meteor are Cindie Leive and myself and our executive producer at Wonder Media Network is Jenny Kaplan. You can follow me at @MissPackyetti on all social media and our incredible team at the Meteor. Subscribe to Undistracted and don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any place you get your favorite podcast. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being, and thanks for doing. I’m Brittany Packnett Cunningham. Let’s go get free.