Summer book series: Justin Baldoni

our first state. But the actor, whose roles literally embodied a certain type of shirtless machismo masculinity, is on a new mission to help change the way men and society think about masculinity. This idea started out as a Ted talk back in two thousand and seventeen called why I'm

Done Being Man Enough? And I'm just a guy that woke up after thirty years and realized that I was living in a state of conflict, conflict with who I feel I am in my core and conflict with who the world tells me as a man I should be. Then it's spun out into a web series, so the show is called men Enough. What does that mean to you? Good question? Then be a Man? And now it's a book called man enough, undefining my masculinity. It's a very personal book that shares a lot of Justin Baldoni as

he explores what it means to be a man. Justin Baldoni one of my favorite people. I'm so happy to talk to you. I love talking to you about so many different things, and we're here talking about your book. You've got a book out. How does it feel? First and foremost, because I'm scared to death for when mine comes out, because you feel so vulnerable. It's pretty terrible, Katie. It's awesome and terrible at the same time. I always say, as a filmmaker, every scenes to two things at once.

There's like joy and pain, right and uh, And this is a lot of excitement, and it's also really terrifying because you're when you write, it's like there's nothing more vulnerable than that. You're writing your heart and your soul and you're putting it all out there for people to consume, and you hope that they haven't an experience, and you know that people would disagree. And it's not like making a movie or you know, making a show for you or you know, doing a broadcast. It's this is your life.

This is you. So I'm I know I'm not making you feel any better, uh, but I'm so happy that you did it. Your life, your book is going to be incredible. Well, tell me what their response has been so far to your honesty and your openness, your vulnerability, admitting your mistakes and really putting it out there. Tell me what people have said to you about it. Why I'm for Ptty sensitive. So I really I don't go searching. I don't. I try not to read the comments. Um

I look at UM. I have this belief that I don't want to believe the bad or the good. I don't want I don't want the court of public opinion to sway my own self worth. Well, that's pretty hard to do these days, isn't it. Justice, It's extremely hard to do. And so so what I think I think about it's it's kind of like a conservation. It's a protection of my energy whenever I can. It's like this bubble and I and I just try to avoid looking

for it. You know. There's the response has been really beautiful, to be quite frank, I mean, I am I have this text community. I think you're a part of it as well, and that's really kind of where I um, I engage them most and UH and you know, when I wrote the book, I wrote it as a service, and it's always tricky because in our business, UH, service

can be conflated with economic game. And so it's really been this balance of remembering my why, going back to what I actually write about in the book, the why ladder, remembering, remembering my purpose, what my intention was, and not thinking about how many books are sold and all the stuff that inevitably the publisher is going to just pound into your skull, how many all the Instagram lives, all the podcasts, all the posts that you have to do, all and

all to move books. But my purpose in writing it wasn't to move books. It was to move hearts. And I have to remind myself constantly by why. And the why honestly was if one man can completely change or be open to looking at the world a different way, looking at himself a different way, looking at socialization, in the way he behaves, the way he's adapted to our patriarchal society, the way he treats the women in his life,

the way he treats himself. If that one man can adjust his behavior, how many women does that man interact with on a daily basis, how many how many queer trans men is that man interact with on a daily basis? His children, maybe he has children, and that the amount of lives that that man can touch over the course of his lifetime is unquantifiable. You actually had a dry run for this book with your Ted Talk in two thousand and seventeen. And just talk a little bit about

what instigated that kind of aha moment. And you and I have talked about it before, but give me the abridge version about why you decided to do this Ted talk and why it was really on your mind. Then you need to just share it with a lot of other people. Well, I didn't want to do the Ted Talk. I was terrified. First of all, I have a fear of public speaking. Um, I'm okay, like one on one, I'm sure there will be people that listen to your lovely podcast, Katie, but we're not in front of all

of them, right. So I do have a bit of a fear of public speaking that I have to overcome. And uh, and so that was one thing, But the other was it was a Ted women talk. I was very early. This was this was four years ago. I was, in my opinion, very early in my journey of unpacking masculinity and unpacking my social socialization and how I even thought about it or looked at it or viewed it. I was early in my own discovery of my own

unconscious biases. I was just early. And it was one of those things where I just felt like I was you know, when you start to build a little bit of a platform and you get a little bit of in our town, in our industry, things kind of happened, and I just kind of felt like it was early. I wasn't ready for it. Kind of felt like, you know, it was the horse before the cart, or the cart before the horse, however we want to look at it.

And so I tried to back out of it, honestly because I was like, well, there's there's a that should be given to another woman, this is ted women. That should be given to a man who's been dedicating his life to do this, that should be given to a person of color who maybe hasn't had a platform. Why

is why am I doing this? And and I wrestled with it, and what I what I came around to, was this this idea that I'm being put in this position for a reason, and there's not enough men who have been given all of the intersections of privilege that I've been given, who have chosen to then speak out and challenge said privilege and m and my message was never for women. It was always for men. But I

was speaking to women. And that dry run was quite a painful run because while the it was received very well by many women, it was also not received very well by many men. And Facebook put it out. They took like that two minute section of the talk where I'm like getting super passionate, I mentioned me too, and they put it out and they got like fifty million

views in a couple of days. And I noticed this pattern of men reposting it and attacking me and calling me names and saying questioning my intentions and talking about my looks and saying I'm all of these you know insults that um, you know, just they would. I don't even know half of the words that they used, but there's all these new insults. I guess. Um. Women were praising it. And then what I thought was interesting was

men were privately writing me and thanking me. So there was this very strange distinction between the public perception of what it meant to be a man, and how men were demonizing me and saying I was a traitor to my own gender, how women were publicly applauding me, but the men who needed it were privately writing me. And I went, Okay, this is this is a symptom of a bigger problem. And then that's when I went deeper, and I realized that I needed a different platform. It

wasn't a speech. I needed to find a way to get to a man and get two men where they could they could listen, they could absorb privately and not have to feel pressure, not have to feel like they're being persuaded. And I and and and it's very hard in an eighteen minute ted talk to reach men the way that I wanted to. And I if I could go back, I would change I think a lot of the way that I did that talk. But I was I was yeah, I was young, I was nervous. I

didn't know what I really wanted to say. I was getting so many thoughts from so many different directions, and I really wasn't I don't know if I was as grounded in in um my, who I am as I am? Now, what do you think is behind toxic masculinity because certainly you see plenty of it out in the world. Uh. It seems to undergird a lot of these white supremacy movements. It seems to be permeating the culture. And what do

you think it is? Is it fear? Is it kind of the backlash of being more inclusive when you talk to people who are not buying what you're selling. Why is it? Do you think? Well, first of all, I don't say toxic masculinity, and I write that early on in the book. Um, I think toxic masculinity has been misused, and it's been weaponized, and it's been politicized, which is one of the reasons why we have this big gap that needs to be filled. And I think the key

to filling that gap is compassionate empathy and seeing each other. Um. And So when I when I talk about masculinity, what I've learned over the last five years, where I made mistakes maybe, and the way that I was presenting what I was quote quote selling, as you say, um, is I wasn't thinking about how men feel, not how they like feel deep down, but how they think they feel. Because we haven't been taught to feel we haven't been taught to ask ourselves questions about how we feel about anything,

which is one of the the myths of masculinity. Right, we have to go out it alone. We can't ask questions, so we don't we're not even aware of how we're feeling. I think, and because we've had two, as Bell hook says, engage in soul murder or that psychic act of self mutilation from a very early age, um, we are only

allowed to feel anger and rage. Which, really, if you're going back to your question, if you think about what what one would say a toxic version of masculinity is, it is a lot of unexpressed sadness and loneliness, UM, fear, depression, isolation, UM, feeling like they don't belong, feeling not enough, and it's turned into rage, and it's turned into anger. Um, it's

turned into violence. Uh So I don't say that because that's one of the things that is a that's one of the barriers to piece as an example, it's one of the barriers to unity, it's one of the barriers to empathy and compassion. So if I'm out here quoting toxic masculinity, and you know, Joe from wherever he's from, feels like the feminist movement is attacking him because he's not good and he should apologize for being a man.

He's not gonna hear anything that I have to say, which is why the book is written from a very open place of Hey, I'm a dude, I'm a straight white guy, I have all I grew up an athlete. I'll go play sports with you, like I'll hit the weights with you in the gym, probably kick your ass on the field. But I'm also suffering from a problem that I helped perpetuating, and I didn't realize I was suffering. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about the ways

that I'm hurting myself and I'm hurting others. So I don't know if that's the answer to your question, but I think that it is a lot of things. It's the socialization. It's the feeling like, as you know, as we know, equality for those of us with privilege can feel very similar to oppression, and this idea that no, we're not actually taking from us, we're not taking and redistributing, We're we're sharing. There's plenty to go around. It's not

like there's there's there's plenty of pieces of pizza for everybody. Um, And that's just one of the things that I think we have to work on and that we're talking about here. You know, what, would you say the thesis of this book is because it has your message has evolved through

the years. Well, the reason I say we're undefining masculinity instead of redefining it was, which was what I was saying for years, was because I realized, in doing my own work and looking at my own socialization, the way that I have been brought up as a man and my feeling of not being enough despite having and the world telling me that I should be, is that by redefining what it means to be a man, I would be excluding I would be creating the same problem again,

I'd be creating a different looking box. And first of all, who the hell am I to redefine anything. I'm not a I'm not a scholar, I'm not a gender studies expert.

I haven't written treatises on this. I'm just I'm just a guy trying to figure out what works and what doesn't for me, and why I have kept hurting people over and over again and hurt myself and I realized, and this kind of goes back to your first question is and what led me on the journey is that I was tired of hurting people, and I was tired of hurting myself. I was tired of putting on masks and armor that I didn't know I was wearing. I was tired of acting different based on who I was around.

I was tired of puffing up my chest when I was around certain men that I felt insecure around or women. Um, and that happens over and over and over again, and I just didn't know why. I just couldn't be unapologetically me and uh, and that led me on this journey

over time. And the thesis is to undefine it, to make room for anybody who identifies as a man to be allowed to feel and be a man, and to and to get rid of all of these pressures, these ridiculous patriarchal pressures that tell us we have to be X enough to be this, X enough to be that, X enough to be this, and to just remember that that we have been created noble, that we are enough

just as we are. Well, take a short break, but when we come back, how to be man enough amid the Me Too movement that's right after this, you know, you and also society has been talking about this for a long time. You know this is not talking about this. Yeah, and maybe not men, but still I think, you know, just being in the media as long as I've been

justin and this is not necessarily a new phenomenon. And I'm curious why more progress hasn't been made and really investigating these sort of male archetypes and standards and pressures, and you know, you talk about not only toxic masculinity being a bad, misleading and toxic phraise, you talk that the guy code and grow up hair. I'm just curious

why we haven't made more progress. And I also have this is a two parter, and I wonder how has kind of me too and Time's Up and this reckoning about gender equality and also racial equality that we've seen almost simultaneously, if that is made, made it worse in some ways that men are gravitating towards kind of clinging to their masculinity in a way that maybe the grip was starting to be looser. Does that make any sense? It makes perfect sense. I'm trying. Let me, let me

try to Katie Kirk brilliant, Katie Kirk. No, I'm not let me try to Let me try, Let me try to um start with the first one. What's coming to me is if you take somebody who's in power and you say to that person, hey, I want to redistribute some of your power. It might be uncomfortable for a second, but don't worry. You'll still have power. It'll just look different.

Because we live in a culture where power is um is in such high demand, but there's so little supply, that person is going to tense up and they're not going to want to relinquish that power. We see it play out over and over again. We've seen a play out throughout history. We see it play out in elections, politics, and it's just that's just the dynamic of our system, and that that power is the patriarchy, and that power benefits meant more than it would benefit women. The The

issue is that we are we are. You know, women have been fighting for this. I mean just you used to go back in history. I mean just just the fact that women had to fight for the right to vote. It's not that long ago we're talking about our our grandparents could have touched this right and the same thing in the fight for racial justice. We're talking about our parents touched it. So we're just generations in to this idea of what equality looks like. And as we know,

we learn masculinity generationally and socially and culturally. So I go back to that quote like for those with privilege, equality can feel like oppression. So what you have is you have these marginalized groups of people fighting because they're not being heard, and all the oppressors, all the all the the in this case, men um are looking at this and it doesn't make any sense to them because in their mind we're making progress, and their mind it's like,

what are you talking about. There's equality? That woman just took my job, right, that's how that's how we're we think about these types of things, and that power redistribution feels like a power loss. The other issue is that we I don't think we know how to talk to each other. And you know, and look at I mean, look at the feminist movement. And again I'm not a scholar, and I'm clear in the way that I wrote the book.

I wrote the book from a personal perspective because there were not there are not many books written like this there's a lot of books about data and facts and history, but not from a personal perspective where men can be invited into their own story. And just even you know, even even the evolution of feminism, I believe that feminism right, the radical notion that women are people, that women are

human beings, um. The dismantling of a patriarchy to create a more equitable and us framework and system for everybody, including men, benefits men. But we take the parts of every movement um that are the most threatening, the two percent of people, right, the two percent of of women who may be made up their stories, and the me too movement, and then we use those two percent as a way to discount the other. And we do that throughout history, and of course throughout the feminist movement you

had you had segments who were anti men. You had segments who were anti men, who hated and who justifiably were angry. And so what do we do as men? We take those two percent and we say, the feminist movement hates us, it's bad for us. They're out there angry, they're feminists, and all the things you hear a lot of these people say, when in reality, the majority of feminists, women that I know love men, MHM, want men to be happy, want men to be joyful, don't want men

to suffer. Want there to be equality, inequity. And what I believe men are not realizing is that the system is not working for men. We might be looking at the power dynamic of our system and and in some ways we think it's good. We should fight for things, we should want things. But the patriarchy is built on a domination and a power grab. And what that means is that we're actually left feeling like less than, far

more than we are feeling like we're enough. As men were suffering collectively and we're hurting, but we don't have the tools to know that we are hurting because nobody we're not able to talk to anybody about it. We don't even know that we're hurting. How many how much room is there at the top, there's room for a couple of people, but the rest of us. Men are not at the top. Men men are are working nine to five jobs that they hate. They're breaking their acts,

they're trying to provide and protect their family. They're doing all of these things they've been told that they must do in order to feel like a man at the cost of their at the cost of their soul, the cost of their spirituality, the cost of their joy and their happiness. And therefore and then are hurting other people in their lives. They're hurting the women in their lives.

And when we're trying and we're trying to gain power and we can't gain power over men, and we don't feel like we're enough in our jobs or wherever we are, where do we gain power, gain power in our interpersonal lives, gain power over the women in our lives because maybe we're physically stronger. We gain power over marginalized groups. And and again, so if you you kind of take that whole picture and you look at that, and then you understand, well,

men don't know how to take feedback. We don't. We haven't been taught how to take feedback. We've been taught that we have to defend ourselves. We have been taught we have to put on our armor, that we have to be right. We can't ask for directions. So so if if a movement is trying to change things and we're saying this isn't working, I mean, just look at the not all men thing, right, we can't even hear feedback that the majority of women don't feel safe. They don't.

It's not that they don't feel safe around other women. Women aren't doing the raping and the killing. Women aren't doing. Women aren't aren't sexually assaulting other women. Men are. But yet we have to defend ourselves and say, not all men. There's no space for growth, there's no space for any of it because men feel like they're being attacked when in reality they're not, Which is why the reason I don't think there's been progresses because we feel like powers

being taken away from us. We feel like we're bad, we're wrong, we're not good. Well, clearly we just you know, we're just terrible people, that's like, And we become so fragile, or male egos are so fragile because that's what the patriarchy has done. It makes us so that our masculinity can be taken from us, as if there's such thing as emasculation, as if this is a right that can be taken away. And that's not how it works. Femininity can't be taken away. Do you think men have found

me too? And time's up? And this reckoning about sexual harassment and gender equality. Uh, similarly threatening do they have they kind of dug in their heels as a result of it. What have you seen on the landscape at because of that? Yeah, this is the scary part is It's one of the reasons why I wrote the book is because look, you were getting our information now from places we want to get our information. We get our news, we get we were educated by people that we agree with.

So we're living in these silos of of misinformation and you see it everywhere. And unfortunately, I think the Me Too movement um scared a lot of men because I don't know one man who hasn't treated a woman like an object. I don't know one man who, over the course of his life, uh, in this patriarchal system where he must prove his masculinity, I didn't do so at

the expensive women. And so when you have a movement like me Too, which thank god it exists, because that again that first that that pendulum swing is really uncomfortable, because it has to be when you have a movement like me to. What it brings to the surface is all the things we've all done as men that that we're embarrassed of or not proud of. And what's scary about the me too movement for men is that then suddenly that can become public. So I looked around and

I saw men everywhere like, okay, am I next? Am I next? Because we've all done something we're not proud of, for the sake of our masculinity, for the sake of wanting to be accepted, for the sake of wanting to gain power, because we're taught from such a young age, we have to. So unfortunately, what do you I heard what everybody else heard, which is I can't hire a female system. And I'm saying why, Well, you know, because I don't know. I mean if I say the wrong thing,

or what if I could hug her? But there's no so men didn't have the vocabulary. The answer is not to not hire a female assistant. The answer is to ask for permission. If you is, can I give you a hug? The answer is to to communicate. The answer is to to to like, look at your behavior, right, But we don't want to change things because changes on comfortable. So do you think it stopped progress when it comes to men of following and looking at at how do

you think it's it's actually encouraged. I think it helped. It's like the day after you go to the gym, you're working out. The day after you go to the gym, sometimes two days later you're really sore, you can't move. But the soreness is good. The soreness means your your muscle fibers, tour blood is filling up those injuries, and as they're forming and coming back together, they're they're coming back together stronger. And so I look at it as we're a couple of days out of the gym, and

the Me Too movement was necessary, it was progress. It was painful on both sides. I mean the fact that women had to relive their traumas over and over and over again. I had so many conversations with people that I love who were sharing their stories, but in sharing their stories, they were re traumatizing themselves for what happened. So there's healing that happens, and there's also re traumatization because it has to happen. And they and they did

it because it was a part. It was necessary. But we're in the we're two days out and we're sore, but it will benefit us because what's happened is that men are thinking. And even if there are there's a group of men who have put up their shields and are ready for battle, there's always going to be those groups that are resistant to change. When we come back porn addiction. How Justin was able to share even his

deepest insecurities for all to read. I want to talk to you two about your personal story, because so much of this is you know, it is a manifesto, but it's a deeply personal story. And you talk about body issues, relationship issues, pornography issues, which was something that affected you when you were just ten years old. Um, and so were these things all really difficult to be honest about?

I mean, did you have to kind of put aside any trepidation or any embarrassment or inhibition I guess to kind of like, hey, I mean and and and maybe talk about how you were able to expose that side of you and what that side of you was justin too. Well, yeah, Katie, it was. It's terrible because these are things that you talked about, Araby. But the problem is, and even with my clothes, my best guy friends, is that we struggle

being truly vulnerable with each other. And I would say I have a pretty progressive group of male friends, just the fact that we're willing to check in with each other, ask how our hearts are, have these conversations. But there's so many times we've left individually, and I've left my other friends feeling worse about myself because I felt alone.

Because even in my quote unquote progressive group of friends of male friends, people struggle with sharing their vulnerability, sharing the parts of them that aren't working, sharing the sharing their addictions or whatever it is, their fears. Because we have to. It's like a conscious unlearning unpacking in real time. It's like literally taking off your were and saying it's okay if I'm shot. Because we've been it's been reinforced

that we're not allowed to share. We're not allowed to tell another man something that could be used against us because we, no matter how we slice it, we think that that's going to make us less then him, maybe

we won't be as valuable to the group. So all of that was underneath everything that I wrote, and I just kept thinking about that guy me, who desperately needed to hear that he wasn't the only person suffering, who desperately needed to hear that he wasn't alone who desperately needed to hear that he's battled whatever X issue, porn, body image, he doesn't feel like he's enough in whatever area. And that was what gave me the strength to keep doing it. But but I did not plan on writing

the book this way. It was through the writing process. I would start writing and then suddenly these stories would come out. And I remember what happened to me when I was ten, and as I was writing, I was connecting the dot back to my struggle as a thirty year old and I and in the writing process, I recognized that there you can't separate the two things and

they're all a part of the same thing. So it was necessary, but it was it was terrifying because the fact that the fact remains, like, yeah, all of this can be used against me, but I also hate pedestals and the performative wokeness thing doesn't serve anybody. I mean, I just had a conversation with a dear friend of mine who told me that one of the most abusive men that she's ever dated wore a this is what a feminist looks like t shirt And this is why

people are sick. This is why people don't like religion. This is why people don't like you know, wokeness or woke culture and all this stuff, because you have you have um actions that differ from words, and the behind faith were told let deeds, not words be your adorning. True faith is an abundance of deeds in a fewness of words. And that's where we gotta get to. Where it's about, Okay, take me off the platform. This platform. Sure, I'm sharing these things, but that doesn't that's how low

the bar is. Like the bar is that low that a man can talk about some of these things and suddenly be praised. Take me off. I don't need to be praised. What I need is for other men to see themselves in my story and start to have their actions impacted, start to treat the people in their lives differently, starting with themselves. What do we do though, you know,

justin we're all products of our cultural conditioning. And I did a whole podcast on violent porn, which is so scary because kids are being a exposed to this at a very early age, and it's about you know, sex and how this is translating into intimacy, and it is so scary how easily accessible it is and I know that you were exposed to it when you were just ten years old, and what what do we do about that?

Because I think also there's a huge vacuum, and it's that it's being filled with in many cases, violent porn. It's a what twelve billion dollar annual industry, UM, and I don't know what to do about it. I think it's a really large question. I think again we have to first remember that it's an industry. An industry wants

to sell you something. What's interesting about the porn industry is that very similar to um, the tech industry, it's about users, users, right, So they're acquiring the users you use porn. And I think the biggest problem we have is a lack of education and a lot of that UM, A lot of that comes from us not being willing to talk about one of the most basic human things in existence, because as we've made it taboo. Think about think about two of the things that the most taboo

in our culture to talk about death and sex. But yet we need sex to procreate, and we all were going to die, all of us are. That's why I spent the last ten years doing my last days, which is how we first met, right and telling the stories of people who were dying to help us learn how to live. Because we can't run away from it. It's going to happen. So why are we running away from sex?

I am writing this book was transported back being ten and learning about my body, not from my parents, kind of from other boys, but more than anything, from porn. If we're embarrassed to talk about it, we're embarrassed to talk to our kids about it. If we don't tell our boys that their bodies are gonna changing, they're gonna start getting erections that they can't control. That's gonna pop up everywhere. They're gonna start like lusting after like things,

they're gonna start wanting. You know, if we don't prepare

them for that, where are they going to go? And if we then associate those things with shame, then their sexuality becomes shameful and they only they look for it in the dark, They look for it alone, and what and then we can't control what they watch and as we know, Look, there was a study that was done I put it in the book where they they looked at the brains of people that were while they were watching porn, and what they found was that the part

of the brain that lit up while someone was watching porn was the part of the brain that associated the images with objects, not people. So if you think about like, yeah, you mix in violence, but you also make in the fact that you're watching objects, if you're a head or sexual manner watching women, the woman is an object. You compound that with how we're taught, how we are taught to talk about women, how we get a girl possession possessive objects, how women are less than in our vocabulary.

Being a girl means is synonymous with being weak. And then you put all that together. And of course, of course there's a correlation between rape culture and violence and sex and porn because that's the system that we have. So what the solution, I think is the first step is we have to be willing to talk to young people about up their bodies and not be embarrassed or ashamed. We have to be willing to explain that sex is necessary for human procreation in many ways, and that it's

not a bad thing, it's not a shameful thing. Let's put some guide, let's put some really rules around it. Let's teach our let's teach boys at an early age what consent looks like, because I can tell you I didn't learn consent. Nobody had the conversation with me. What did I think consent was growing up? Well, well, important no means yes, no, no, no no, no no, It just means you keep trying. And what do the boys tell us? Right, how many nose gets s? This is this is the culture.

So of course, of course women don't feel safe. Of course one in four one in five women are going to be raped in their lifetime because this is what we're teaching her boys how to do primarily through porn. Primarily through porn, and through the socialization of what it means to be a man through the boys, the getting of women, the conquering right, those types of things, the power dominance, the power struggle. If we can't get powers in one place, we've got to get power somewhere else.

And then, of course porn is a lot of porn is extremely violent, and we learned about that. We think women want that, but nobody's ever like if if as boys we were to ask women. And also, let's just be clear, women are also socialized in the same way, so we're not like not It's not like boys are socialized in this vacuum. Women and men are socialized in the same way, and there's a lot of un learning

on both sides that has to happen. And women also watch porn, and in some ways, I want to be very clear, I'm not calling out the whole porn industry, because I know I know a lot of folks who have been oppressed in their life is queer and gay folks who then have seen that for the first time and felt like they weren't alone too so, But at the end of the day, it's an industry, and I

do believe it's doing farm more harm than good. You also dig into your own experience with racism and your own reality of your racism, and I'm curious how hard that was, because that, again, justin is unlearning certain attitudes and stereotypes that I think subconsciously and consciously you're kind of promoted and fed to us from a very young age. Who well, yeah, that one was really hard. I really

had to look at my own behavior. And as I was writing the book, of course, it was over the pandemic and George Floyd was murdered and this again was just another example, but this time it was nine minutes and it was caught on video, and it's struck different

as it did for a lot of white folks. And um and I just went back and I remembered all of the little conversations I've had with my black friends and the defensiveness and my not willing to advocate as much as I've advocated for gender equality and sexism, which showed me that I was more defensive about it. That's all it did, was it showed me, like, oh, why wouldn't I fight is hard for the elimination of racial prejudice as I do for the equality of women and men.

There's something, there's a there's something missing, especially because it's growing up as a be high I'm told that you can't separate these two things and justices and justice, like you know, racial prejudice is, if anything, the most persistent evil in the world. Um and uh. And I just had to dig in and I had to look at it. And I had asked myself, why why am I offensive about it? What is it about? What is it about this subject that is more uncomfortable for me and maybe

for other white folks. And I hadn't seen the example of other people really going into detail about ways that they've been raisist, And I think I think everyone's afraid of cancel culture maybe a little bit and being held accountable. But if you look at that generally, that's when somebody is not willing to look at their stuff. It's not willing to bring themselves off of the quote unquote pedestal. And how can we learn, like if this is for white folks, how can how can we white folks learn

if we don't have that example. If I don't know the ways that Katie Kirk is messed up. I looked up to Katie Kirk, Well, how is Katie Kirk failed in this way? Well, one, it'll make me feel better, but too, I can learn from your mistakes. And I wasn't seeing that anywhere. I wasn't seeing that on Instagram post. I wasn't seeing anybody talk willingly, like willingly about ways that they have messed up and not and and been racist or mistreated black folks or or been a bad friend.

And so I then going through process it was also healing for me. I share a story about my friend Kay and I share one of my best friends, Jamie um and and and there's a lot more conversations than these and I did it because I want other white folks to know that it doesn't make them a racist or a bad person to have been brought up in a system that, without realizing it, um awards those of us that look a certain way differently, gives us a

head start, if you will. And of course we're going to say things that are dumb and we're gonna hurt people, but we have to recognize that and then we can move forward. And we have to apologize for it and come to terms with it. And not everybody's gonna want accept our polpology and that's okay too. So it was

really hard. I'm great full I did it. It's one of my favorite pieces of feedback has been from white folks who say that chapter changed their perspective on the movement, because again, just like the fragile male ego, we have the fragile white ego. You know, as a dad and as someone who writes a lot about experience that you had as a younger man, what can we start doing for this next generation. I feel like they're so far

ahead of us. I mean, you're are you a millennial justin or you like a I'm considered an old millennial, an old I'm a geriatric millennial, and I'm a young baby boomer. You're a baby baby boomer. I'm an old millennial. I think forties the cut off. Now I'm thirty seven, so you've got I don't. I'm not gonna well, I will say I'm sixty four. And what what can be done to help help It's all about the ring, right, honey. What can be done to to help your kids and

my kids? And you know, we talked about the suicide rate being so high. I think the average person who takes their own life is a year old male. And and how can we start shifting things so attitudes change and behavior changes. I think it starts. It starts very young. I think it starts in our parenting. Honestly, um, I go back to that idea of being imperfect, which is I think that's where perfection lies. And you know, raising our kids to recognize their own value, their own worth,

their own enoughness to not seek it externally. You know. One of the ways I'm in this day and age, well, one of the reasons, you know, I'm thinking about how the world's going to be socializing my daughter and my son, and how the world is going to be telling my daughter that she has to be one thing and how my son has to be another thing. Emily and I have been saying, Okay, well, how do we how do we start to reverse that damage early on and to

build strong foundations. And so we teach our daughter at home the opposite, that she can take up all the space she wants, that she can be loud, that she can take physical risks, that she can be brave and strong and tough, um at the same time not not having her kill off the sensitive parts of herselves like we make boys do, as she can be a full

human being. And we teach our boy that it's okay to ask questions, that it's okay to be sensitive, that it's okay to cry, that it's okay to ask for help when he's hurting, to express himself, that it's also okay to not take physical risks, that it's okay we gotta be mindful of the space that he takes up, because the world is going to tell him he can take up as much as he wants. So that's one way, that's one thing that we're doing while also just allowing them to be who they are and not trying to

change them. So one way is I think the way we're intentionally raising our children. Um. The other way is as parents, by modeling the behavior we want our children to grow up accepting. And oftentimes as parents, we try to hide our imperfections. We try to hide our flaws, We try to be superheroes, when in reality, all we're doing is setting our kids up for failure, for expectations that will never be men and what are expectations, They're

just planned disappointments. So when we when we're flawed, when we're human, when we cry, when we're angry, when we use that as teaching opportunities to let them know that we are flawed and imperfect. Because the more that we can raise our children to recognize their own enoughness, the more they're going to not have to seek their validation by making someone else feel like they're not enough. The other part of youre, a part of this whole thing is that we have to learn to see each other.

We have to see each other and listen to each other, even when we're listening two things that maybe are uncomfortable. We can't be so fragile in our identities and so attached to our beliefs in our politics that it prevents us from seeing another segment of the population, from seeing our own family members. We have to be open, we have to be willing to learn to be curious. That is the thing that's going to I think solve more than anything, is helping people realize that they are not

their faults. They're not there insecurities, they are not their subconscious racist behavior. They are not their sexist behavior doesn't make there's no like, there's no there's no perfect person. There's no good or bad except that, which makes it so. We're just people, all of us trying to figure out what the hell we're doing on this floating rock, knowing we only have a limited amount of time on this earth, and trying to be happy and and create a world

that is sustainable that our children can inherit. None of us know, and we're surviving. We're trying to put roof keep roofs on our heads. And I think that if we can just have empathy for each other, and again I recognize it's easy to say in the position of privilege that I'm in, but if we can just go back to having empathy for each other, not ampathy, empathy then we'll start to see each other and recognize our enoughness as that as we are, and little by little

and day by day, things will improve. And that's kind of all I got. I mean, we could go deeper and deeper and deeper, but that's great. And I know you're writing books to kind of address this, so people can expand their minds kids at an early age and stop before it's too late, honestly, And is it too late? I mean, I've I've had it again. My neighbor is eight five years old, saw me on one of the Today Show or whatever and asked if you could read the book, and I gave him a signed copy and

telling me how much he's learning. I'm hearing from guys in their sixties and seventies saying, Wow, this is the this is the first time I'm seeing myself. I've read all that, I've read other masculinity books, but nobody ever talked about their own problems. And I see my problem. I see my stuff in yours, and and that's what it comes down to. Is it ever too late? I

don't know. I don't think it is. My dad see learning, evolving, growing, having conversations he's never had before that were never modeled for him. I believe so much in our capacity as human beings to remember to remember our innate worthiness, our goodness, our humanity. I don't think it's ever too late. Thank you to Justin Baldoni, such a nice guy. His book

is called Man Enough, Undefining My Masculinity. Oh and just to heads up, dear listeners, my memoir Going There is coming out on Octobers, and I'll be heading on a national book tour like in person fingers crossed. To find out when and where I'm headed, and to get your tickets, check out ticketmaster dot com slash Going There. So I hope to see you guys on the road on the next installment of my Summer book series. When you play a character for seven years, it can be hard to

let her go. She was so so embedded under my skin still when I would see that scene or think of that scene tear up. Julianna Marghalie's on Alicia Floriic and the memoir she wrote after The Good Wife came to an end. I wanted to start exploring who I was and not just this person running into circles trying to make it everything work. That's next week on Next Question. Next Question with Katie Kurik is a production of I Heart Media and Katie currk Media. The executive producers Army,

Katie Curic and Courtney Litz. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen. Associate producers Derek Clements, Adriana Fasio, and Emily Pinto. The show is edited and mixed by Derrick Clements. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my morning newsletter, wake Up Call, go to Katie Currek dot com. You can also find me at Katie Curic on Instagram

and all my social media channels. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,