"Women Are Furious About This Research." - Darby Saxbe
00:00:00Most people are familiar with mom brain,but you found that dad's brains gothrough a bunch of changes, too.>> Exactly. Yeah. So, I've been looking atnew fathers in my lab over the lastdecade plus. We've scanned men whenthey're midway through their partner'spregnancy and then again after they havetheir first child. And we find that thebrain, and I should caveat, this is nota bad thing, loses gray matter volumeacross that transition to fatherhood. Sothe patterns look similar to those thathave been observed in moms and they seemto be of smaller magnitude. They're morevariable and they're more tied to dad'sparenting experience.>> How does it differ from mom brain? Whatare the biggest differences?>> So new moms lose about 2.5% of theirgray matter volume across the transitioninto first time motherhood.>> And they lose volume in parts of thebrain that are really linked tohormones. So that includes not just thecortex which if you think about sort ofthe outer layer of brain tissue thatdoes a lot of our higher order thinkingand reasoning. It also includes what'scalled the subcortex which contains ouramygdala our vententral stratum whichprocesses reward and a number of otherstructures that are linked with
00:01:15driveand gut feelings. Dads change mostlyjust in the cortex which is that sort ofexecutive functioning thinking andreasoning part of the brain. Moms showprofound changes across the whole brain.>> And dad's changes are like I saidsmaller in magnitude. So dads do 1% oftheir gray matter volume. And my labfound that this was totally tied todad's parenting time and investment. So,dads who felt more bonded with theirbabies before birth, they were moremotivated to take time off after birth.They spent more day-to-day time withkids in the first few months, and theyreported feeling more bonded and havingmore pleasure in interacting with theirkids. Those dads showed the biggestbrain change.>> How would you categorize the change infatherhood over the last fewgenerations?>> There's been a dramatic change. So bysome estimates, dad's daily time inparenting has tripled or even quadrupledcompared to the father knows best dadsof the 50s and 60s. So there's been ahuge uptick. And what's interesting isthat there was an inflection pointaround the pandemic where men who mighthave been commuting to an office andmaybe missing a lot of the day-to-daystuff with
00:02:30their kids suddenly had theexperience of being hands-on parents ina different way. And a lot of peoplewondered whether that uptick wouldpersist and it has. So millennial dadsare spending more time with kids thanany other generation of US dads. Andthere's evidence that Gen Z dads arespending even more time than millennialdads. So there's been a pretty dramaticshift.>> How does modern fathering differ fromhuntergatherer societies?>> So it's interesting. So in my book Italk about the a model of huntergatherfatherhood, the aka which is a societyin the Congo where men spend a lot oftime within hands reach of infants andthey're very involved in infant care.And what's unique about the AKA and thisquality is shared by a number of otherhuntergatherer societies is that theyhave a very egalitarian flat socialstructure and there's a lot ofcooperative resource gathering. So weknow huntergatherer societies are thecontext in which we spent 95% of ourhuman history. So they tell us somethingabout the environments within which weadapted, within which we evolved.>> And uh we know that women contributed aton of calories. So when people
00:03:45say it'sunnatural for women to work, in fact,women have been economically productivefor most of our human history. But inthe AKA, the main form of resourcegathering is joint cooperative nethunting. So couples work together togain resources for the society. And as aresult, really differentiatedspecialized parenting roles don't makevery much sense, right? They would notbe economically adaptive. But you seeother models even within Africa. I talkabout another society, the keypigus,which is a day's drive away, where thereare strict prohibitions against menpicking babies up in the first yearafter birth. No way. So you'd never seea man carrying a baby outside his ownhome. They're not supposed to share asleeping surface with babies becauseit's considered that the the manlinessof the father will disrupt the infant'srearing and that the infant willcompromise the father's masculinity.>> So, and this is something I talk about alot in my book. There's so much societaland cultural variability aroundfatherhood. What is the resourcegathering process of the second tribe?
00:05:01>> Yeah. So, it's very different. It's muchmore risky. It's more hazardous. It's uhslash and burn forest forestry. And so,it makes sense just as in the Aka itmakes sense not to specialize toostrictly. It makes sense in the kipigusthat dads are going to do most of theeconomic work and moms are going to domost of the caretaking. And to be clear,dads are very involved with older kids.They'll teach them how to hunt.>> They'll teach them how to provision, butthey are not picking babies up.>> Do you see parallels between u modernsociety with more egalitarian access towork, more female breadwinners, and theaka? Yeah, I think there are some keydistinctions, but there there's more ofa through line, I think, between thatmodel of social organization andcontemporary societies, right? Becausewe have women in the workforce and ourjobs no longer require upper bodystrength or high risk tolerance for themost part, right? So, women have theopportunity to earn income and you know,like I said, most of human history, wewere either hunter gatherers or smallfamily farmers. So women werecontributing to economic
00:06:16productivityeven within those models. Butagricultural society has differentconditions and generally demands morespecialization. There's more stabilitythat allows you to accumulate and storewealth. You need armies to guard yourwealth and you end up with a lessflexible and less egalitarian socialstructure. So gender roles get a littlemore entrenched. I think what'sinteresting about contemporary societyis that we are in flux between thesedifferent models of what we expect frommen and womenand and men and women are changing atdifferent rates.>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, it makes sense thatwe'd need to be adaptable. So, I'minterested in the fact that you youchoose to do the first scan of thefather's brain halfway throughpregnancy. Is there any reason to not?Is there any concern that by doing itpartway through pregnancy that somechanges may have happened already? Woulda baseline be better? I guess you'retrying to get pregnant. You've thendecided to basically bet your study on abunch of people who aren't yet parents,but we promise we're really trying hard.>> Yeah. I think if we'd had more time andmore funding, we probably would havedone a preconception scan. Yep.>> And so there's a really good study thatcame out when I was halfway through datacollection for my dad's study. Itfocuses on mothers
00:07:31and they wererecruited from a fertility clinic. Sothey were trying to get pregnant. Abouthalf of the mothers did and about halfof the mothers or rather about half ofthe women remained non-mothers.>> And they found that the brain changedeven during pregnancy. So we didn't havethe opportunity to do that because I wasrecruiting couples who were alreadywilling to come into the lab>> pregnant and I wanted mothers andfathers to participate together. But Ithink we might have seen some differentpatterns if we'd started the studyearlier.>> What happens with fathers to be whentheir partners are pregnant?>> A lot. So we see hormone changes, we seenew emotional worries and concerns, wesee couple relationship changes, we seeeven sleep disruption that starts earlybefore the baby's born. And we don'tknow exactly the time course of brainremodeling because like I said, my scanstudy started in mid-reg. We don't haveother sources of information for themost part and so we're making our bestguess. My hunch is that what isreorganizing the brain more thananything else is parenting experienceand the way in which that challenges thebrain and the social demands that itplaces on the brain. So my guess is thatwhen we're looking at fathers, we'regoing to see most of the change
00:08:46happening after birth. But we don't knowthat for sure. We need to replicatethese studies and extend them.>> Right. Am am I right in saying thatthere's research that shows how therelationship manages conflict impactshow painful the child birth is?>> Yes, my lab did that study. Yeah. So, webrought Is is that stressing you out?>> It's just it's it's kind of tenuous,right? Like you've just explained thatrelationship stress happens, sleepdisruption happens, and it that feelslike quite a highbar. That's a that's a a a big impact ofpre-childuhlike regulation.>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think the bottomline is that kids are resilient. Humansare resilient. We have survived in allkinds of different conditions and that'skind of our superpower as humans is ouradaptability.>> But it's a relatively new phenomenon formen to be present at their baby's birth.Right? So birth is a very social processand that's unique for humans. So mostanimals can deliver an infant solo, noproblem. Birth is fairlystraightforward. We have thesecomplicated, annoying human pelvisesthat reshaped when we started walkingupright. And we also have
00:10:02these babieswith these gigantic social brains. Andso birth can be very cumbersome forwomen and they often require assistanceto steer a baby out of the birth canal.So you see in most human births therethere are helpers and in fact one theoryabout why we evolved to live insocieties is so that you would havepeople to assist in child birth. That'sone reason that we humans aren't justkind of you know solouh you know rors right like we need tobe embedded in society so that ourbabies will survive.But the people helping with child birthare almost always women through most ofhuman history. It's a midwife, it's agrandmother, it's sisters and communitymembers. So it was really only in the19th century that child birth becamereally medicalized and you have doctorsin hospitals who are presiding overchild birth. Even then, dads were keptout of the delivery room. So it was inthe 60s and 70s really that dad startedto advocate to be present during theirbaby's birth. Before that moms wereunder heavy anesthesia and the standardfather role was basically hang out passout cigars and you know getcongratulated
00:11:17by your buddies. Right? Sowe've seen this big shift and therehasn't been a lot of research on how thecouple affects the child birthexperience and also what is theemotional impact for both mom and dadwhen dad is present at birth. We nowexpect dads to do a lot of the supportthat might have been provided byintergenerational kin in previous erasand dads aren't necessarily trained forthat or primed for that. And so therecan be emotional fallout from witnessinga traumatic and stressful birth. Andlike you mentioned the study from mylab, we found that when couples foughtin more negative ways during pregnancy,the birth was more medically complex andriskier and both members of the coupleappraised it as being more stressful.>> That's likely just the impact ofemotional stress on a mother's body.Therefore, the downstream impact of thatphysiologically during childirth isgoing to be negative.>> Yeah. Exactly. So, we know stress,tension, fear, pain, right? So, whenyou're delivering an infant, your bodyhas to release and relax. You have toallow the infant to move down throughthe birth canal. If you're clenched up,stressed, and tense,
00:12:32it makes it harderand it's going to feel more painful, andit's going to lead to more difficultbirth outcomes. What's been the impactof having men in the delivery room? Doyou think it's been a good idea?>> I think it's been really good for somecouples and I think it's beenchallenging for others and it's becomecontroversial, right? So, every sportsseason there's a player that can'tparticipate because he has to be presentat his baby's birth. And I think it'sreally valuable for moms who benefitfrom having a partner there to providesupport again because we don't havethese close intergenerational ties thatmaybe were normative a couplegenerations ago.>> So I think having social support,continuous social support is one of thebest ways to have a positive birthexperience. However, I think when dadsare unprepared, when they're terrified,and when they haven't figured out how tocommunicate effectively with moms, theycan have a dealerious impact on thebirth process.>> What's couvade syndrome?>> So, that's male pregnancy and it's aphenomenon by which males to well, it'sa controversial thing. I talk about it alittle bit in the book. I think it'smore anecdotal than evidence-based. Sothe data on it, there have been a couplestudies that have that have been done,but I don't
00:13:47fully trust the results. Weactually looked at in my sample of dads.We didn't find any associations betweenhormones and dad's self-reportedpregnancy symptoms, but it's basicallylike a sympathetic pregnancy. And yousee it in different cross-culturalmodels. So,men feeling like they're experiencingnausea, pregnancy patterns of weightgain, uh, sympathetic labor pains, andthis study that was done in a UKhospital found that expectant dadsreported a bunch of pregnancy-l likesymptoms during their partner'spregnancy.>> Just empathizing, ladies. You say thatyou need us to open up more. We're justempath. I'm empathizing so much that I'mhaving period pains.>> Well, and a lot of these pains arestress related, right? So if you thinkabout things like gastrointestinaldistress and you know difficultysleeping those are things that come whenyou're really stressed and anxious>> basically pregnant.>> So yeah exactly>> basically pregnant.>> Needless to say a lot of expectant momsare annoyed by this research because youknow only one of you is actually pukingbecause of the baby. The other personmight just be freaking out.>> But I think it's interesting that we areso contagious and we soak up theemotional experiences of people aroundus. What do you think couples should payattention to as they're going throughpregnancy then?>> So,
00:15:02I think they need to learn how tocommunicate effectively and listen toeach other. I think a lot of the timewomen hear each other's birth storiesjust like you're at a picnic andeverybody's telling you the gnarly storyof, you know, their third baby's birththat got really complicated. men don'tnecessarily get the opportunity to hearabout different kinds of birthexperiences or watch media that portraysbirth in realistic ways because our popculture conceptions are sort of bananas.So, I think birth education thatinvolves fathers can be really valuableto normalize what to expect, what is theprogress of labor going to be like, andhow can you effectively provide supportand be a calming influence. I've heardyou say if you think that having a babyis going to fix your relationship, don'tdo it.>> Exactly. Why? Yeah. So, the studies showa reliable drop in relationshipsatisfaction around the birth of a baby.And it's unsurprising if you think aboutthe challenges of adjusting to life witha new baby. I used to joke that myhusband and I went from good time palsto we're suddenly operating a smallbusiness with a very disappointedcustomer. Right? You [laughter] havesomeoneYou have someone crying
00:16:18around the clockwho is not pleased with anything you'redoing to comfort them. Your sleep isdisrupted and you're suddenly worryingabout money and your living arrangementsand all of these new concerns that maybeyou didn't have before.>> Permanent on one-star reviews.>> Yeah, [laughter]>> exactly.>> Most people have no idea where theirtestosterone levels sit. But what if Itold you there was a solution? somethingthat identifies low tea faster than ahigh school bully. And it won't cost youall your lunch money. That's whereFunction comes in. Gives you access toover 160 lab tests, including a deepdive into your full hormone paddle.Every result is reviewed by clinicians.Anything out of range is flagged, andyou get clear explanations with apersonalized protocol with actionablenext steps, so if something's off, youknow exactly what to do about it.Whether you just need to go to the gymmore or you need to play Creed louder inyour car, Function will tell you exactlywhere your testosterone and everythingelse stands. Normally, this level oftesting would usually cost thousands,but with Function, it's $365 a year.That's $1 a day to stop guessing withyour health and start knowing. And rightnow, you can get $25 off, bringing itdown to 340 bucks. So, get the exactsame blood panels that I do and save $25by going to the link in the descriptionbelow or heading tofunctionhealth.com/modernwisdom
00:17:35using the code modernwisdom a checkout.Okay, so why is it that becoming afatherisn't enough. It's becoming a caregiverthat creates dad brain.>> So, why is it that you need to actuallyspend time parenting?>> Yeah.>> Yeah. because it takes practice andrepetition to build the brain just likeanything you learn whether you'relearning an instrument or a new languageor you know you're a London taxi drivernavigating the city.>> So I think with moms you have this kindof high floor of investment primed andready to go and partially that's becauseit takes so much energy to incubate apregnancy. It's thousands of calories.So moms have already devoted a lot ofenergetic resources to babies beforethey even arrive. So in if you thinkabout you sort of have a caregiving dialthat can be turned up or down, moms areturned all the way up by the time thebaby arrives. So the example I gave youof a village where dads don't pick uptheir babies in the first year. It'd bevery hard to find a village like thatmade up of moms who had similarprohibitions, right? Moms in many waysare biologically primed to care. Withdads, it's like the dial is set
00:18:50more inthe middle and it can be turned up ordown depending on culture and localcontextual demands. So, I think what'sreally cool about dads is that they comeequipped with the biology that makesthem ready to adapt to become sensitivecaregivers. But whether or not they turnthe dial>> is up to them. It's up to is momincapacitatedis uh am I in a culture where dads arereally hands-on? So in the book I talkabout this concept of facultativeadaptation which is to say an adaptationthat comes online when needed that canbe very useful. So you think aboutprimates who run on four legs but ifthey need to grab something they canstand up and walk on two legs. So youcan grab more stuff if you have thatability. If you can turn up the dial forfatherhood, you can enrich kids livesand you can benefit them and providethem with better outcomes and betterodds of survival.>> Presumably, paternity uncertainty hasgot a role to play here as well. Yes.>> You don't want to be locked inhormonally, neurologically to raising achild that you're not sure is yours.>> Exactly. And one of the really unique
00:20:05things about humans is we conceal ourovulation.>> So human males don't know for surewhether or not they've caused apregnancy. So it actually incentivizeshuman males to invest in courtshipbecause you can't just helicopter in,have sex once, and know that you've madea baby. You have to show up repeatedlyif you want to be sure you have verygood odds of success. And so you'regonna show up with gifts and you'regonna get to know that person and and soit's adaptive to pair bond which is whyhumans have really high rates of pairbonding compared to other species.>> So we do see that dad's prediliction tocare again can turn that dial up or downdepending on the stability of theirrelationship with the baby's mother. Oh,so a a less stable relationship with themother would result in a differentparenting style from the dad.>> It could. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it wouldmotivate different reproductive stastrategy.>> Are you familiar with the Westermarkeffect?>> I don't think so.>> It's how incest avoidance happens insidehumans. So it what's fascinating aboutthis is um because you don't havethere's no guarantees I suppose eveneven like
00:21:20Haram style gorillas and stuffdon't know that the big silverback isthe one that's had the kid and not someyoung upstart that's managed to sneak inor whatever. But for the most part thatwould be a little bit different. Umwhat's fascinating is when you've gotlike ecologically informeduh neurological and uh behavior change,hormonal behavior change,>> uh it happens there's this windowbetween the age of like 1 and 10. And ifyou see primarily your mother but alsoyour father giving care to anotherinfant,>> Yeah.>> you are uh grow up with a sexualaversion to them. And what what wasinteresting I I think it's a ummaybe an Indian an Indian culture uhthat they or perhaps a an Asian culturelike Far East Asian culture where theyused to find future wives for their babysons as infants and they'd raise themtogether.>> So you would have, you know, athree-year-old and a three-year-oldliving together. What they didn'trealize is they were basically lockingin this biological imprinting of that'smy sister.>> So it's highly maladaptive.>> Um but you can see where the similaritylies here that
00:22:36>> totally>> the father's level of brain adaptationis based on the behavior of how muchtime he spends raising the child, doingnurturing, doing caregiving. And thatmeans that you can go both ways. In thesame way as you could have a twin thatwas born but raised separately, youwould have no like imbued sexualaversion to them. There would be noincest discussed>> because the behavior that>> brings that in. So really mothers arethe only ones that have that like lockedin contract, biological contract withthe baby. and everybody else frombrothers to sisters to aunts to uncles,they're all kind of just learning asthey go,>> right? So there's that naturalvariability that you see in the otherparents, the people who are playing arole in parenting. And we know that ashumans, we evolve to be alo parents. Sowe're what's called cooperativebreeders, which is to say we participatein collective care of offspring, whichis very adaptive because human babiesare so uniquely difficult to raise. Werequire so much intensive care and it'stoo much for any one person to provideall of the roundthe-clock care. So, wehelp each other out with
00:23:51parenting andcaregiving, but the extent to which dadsplay a role is something that variesbased on societal context.>> What are the behaviors that most createdad brain? If I was to design a menu ora daily routine to maximize that 1%change, what would I be doing? Yeah,you'd be picking your baby up. You'd becaring for them. You'd probably besharing a sleeping surface with them.You'd be diapering them. You'd befeeding them. You'd be bathing them. So,you'd be doing the kind of intensivecare that helps you really get to know ababy and attunes you more to theirphysiology and to their mind.>> Because where we see a lot of the changehappening in men's brains is in what wecall the mentalizing network. And that'sa part of the brain that activates whenwe think about other people's minds andtheir intentions. It's what reads otherpeople's emotions. And you could thinkabout it as the seed of our empathy. Andso that is a dynamic part of the brainin new dads and also in new moms in partbecause when you are having to care foran infant who cannot communicateeffectively, right, cuz they can't talk,they just cry. You have to be able toread their emotions
00:25:07and you have to beable to problem solve to figure out whatthey need. So you're getting a lot ofexercise to that empathetic part of thebrain.>> The executive function has been tuneddown. So maybe your ability to come upwith novel solutions might be less.>> Well, no, because I actually think youhave to problem solve quite a bit. Soyour executive functioning is also goingto tune.>> Did you not say that some of the Oh, isit just moms that have got the executivefunction tuned down?>> No, moms. Both dads and moms. So it'stuning up. Well, it depends on whetheryou think of losing gray matter volumeas a tuneup or a tune down. Right.Right.>> And the jury's a little out on that. Wesee volume reduction, which we think isabout pruning and becoming moreefficient.>> What's lost?>> Well, our short-term memory for objectsthat aren't our baby. So, there's someevidence that working memory getscompromised. But we often use thisdeficit framing when we talk about mommybrain. like, oh, I, you know, I forgotwhere I parked the car.>> It actually looks like certain kinds ofmemory are enhanced. And it's salanceddriven. So, it's memory for your baby'ssmells, objects that are pertinent toyour baby. You know, rodents have tofigure out where they've stashed theirbabies, like in a nest full of bedding.
00:26:22So, one reason the hippocampus, which isthe part of the brain that we think ofas implicated in memory, is also reallysensitive to smell is you kind of haveto smell your way to find the baby toretrieve your pup. So, the hippocampusis really plastic in new moms and newdads.>> So, it's like our memory is actuallygetting a different kind of workout, butwe're maybe losing our sharpness in somedomains and improving our functioning inothers. better able to detect what doesthis small thing want? What does itmean? Where did I leave things that areassociated with it? Bottles and anddiapers and and it itself and stuff likethat.>> Yeah.>> But maybe less so where did I leave thecar? Where did I leave the keys? Whatdoes the rest of my day look likeoutside of the baby orchestrating theoperations of the rest of my life?>> Exactly. And it's also about value,right? is what domains are we motivatedto optimize?>> So, a lot of people find both moms anddads that after they have kids, theycare a little bit less about achievingat work, right? Which is not to say thatmoms and dads are bad workers. Ifanything, I actually think they makegreat contributions to organizationsbecause of all the skills they>> maybe a different domain to
00:27:37anon-parent,>> right? But priorities shift>> y>> and and at least in the short termalthough the good news is that itappears that having become a parent isneuroprotective in late life. So there'ssome work coming out of the UK bioankwhich is this big repository of scanstudies from middle-aged and olderadults that finds that when you've hadmore children you actually have bettercognitive functioning and brains thatlook younger. So if you use a a machinelearning algorithm to try to figure outhow old is the brain compared to itschronological age, people who've hadmore kids up to a certain point, it topsoff at around three kids actually havebrains that the machine learningalgorithm codes as younger.>> What's your proposed mechanism for that?>> So I think it's about socialintegration. So the fact that it showsup in dads as well as moms tells me it'snot just pregnancy hormones, it's notjust birth experience, it's not justbreastfeeding. I think it's about and weknow this in both men and women thatbeing more socially connected to otherpeople is really important for health.>> Even if that person is a mini version ofyou.>> Yeah. Yeah. I mean even more so maybebecause then you're especially attunedto them,>> right? It's good for longevity.>> It could. So the the thing that's comingto mind here is I wonder
00:28:53whether youcould replicate those neuroprotectiveresults by just having a really reallyreally deep friendship with one person.And I wonder whether you could createthe same brain changes in reduction ofsalience networks outside of this onething and increase of awareness,attention, etc. with business or a dog.Like if you just dedicate because ifthese networks are as flexible as yousay they are, if they're as malleable asyou say they are, then it shouldn't justbe a baby that's able to trigger this.>> Anything really vulnerable that you carefor or develop empathy for. So empathyis a you might not develop that muchempathy for your business.>> Maybe not or for your friend. I mean Iguess you can be very empathetic>> but if it was a a a animal that you'recaring for.>> Yeah. Absolutely. And I think a lot ofyoung people do adopt pets either in lieof or in preparation for having babiesand you are practicing a lot of thosesame kinds of skills. M is it just it'sliterally just the fact that salienceoutside all of the mum brain stuff allof the dad brain stuff the things thatthey are uh reporting being confused bymaybe being a little bit irritated bythose are primarilystuff anything that's not baby relatedis just a little bit less aware to me.>> Yeah. Although you might find
00:30:08and andthis is true. I talked to somebody thattook a parenting class and found that itultimately made him a much bettermanager at work. So, I think there'ssort of like this shortterm maybedowngrading of everything except thebaby and then there's a long-termbuilding of new skills and strongersocial networks ideally, right? Whenthings go right, that's not true foreverybody, but I think these aretransferable skills. So, if you thinkabout becoming an empathetic parent asanalogous to being a good friend or agood caretaker in other domains, youknow,>> transferable skills.>> Yeah. like men who are coaches, who areteachers, who are guidance counselors,who are religious leaders. You know, Italked to somebody for the book whosaid, "We often think about caregivingin very feminized ways, but the firemanwho pulls a family out of a burningbuilding is a caregiver, right? Thepoliceman who keeps a family safe is acaregiver, right? We can broaden ourunderstanding of care to include sort oftraditional masculinity and celebratehow important that is for society." M.So, if a dad's brain literally doesn'tchange unless he's hands-on withcaregiving, is it right to say like, "Ilove my kids, but I'm not a hands-on guyis more a
00:31:23biological confession than apersonality trait." I [snorts] think itdepends. I think it depends on what thecontext is and what is adaptive for aparticular family. Because I think thereare cultures in which having dads whoaren't hands-onmakes sense for that the local demandsbecause you have other caregivers orbecause dads are needed to do some kindof very specialized labor. I think incontemporary societies where we expect afairly high level of involvement frommost fathers,I would frame it as a missedopportunity.>> Have you seen Bob Odenkirk talking aboutwhat it means to be a dad? Yeah,>> it's so good and>> he's the man. Play that clip for me,Jared. I think it's I think it's socool.>> Who are you jealous of?>> Anybody who's still got little kids athome growing up.>> Oh,>> yeah. There's no question. I knew what Iwas doing when I had kids growing up.>> I was being a dad. I mean, that was myjob.>> And I didn't have to ask myself, what amI doing here? What am I doing? How can Ibe a part of this world? How can I bemeaningful today? Yeah,>> I didn't have to ask that question cuzthe answer is pick up everything betweenhere and the door. [laughter]>> That's right.>> And make sure they get to school and
00:32:38have a laugh with them. You know,>> it was life was I understood>> my purpose.>> Best answer. Who are you jealous of?>> I love that. Yeah. And I think we dofind that sense of meaning and purposewhich is so important for ourwell-being, our sense of connectedness,our sense of coherence. It's like hejust talked about like feeling like youhave a reason to do what you do everyday and that life is happening accordingto plan.>> That is so important for psychologicalhealth.>> I'm so excited to become a father. Ican't wait for it.>> So, are you working on it?>> Uh yeah. Well, reliably, you can't do iton your own. Um>> I've heard that>> which is which is I've have tried. Umbut uh yeah, that's you need somebodyelse to be ready at the same time. Yeah,that's the part.>> Um, what do you make of the deadbeat dadnarrative?>> Yeah, so I think it is true in somecases and it's unfair to dads in manyother cases. So in 1960 you had 88% ofkids living with a father at home.>> That dipped down in 2005 to 67% of kidsand it's actually rebounded. So todayabout 76% of kids in the US are livingwith a
00:33:53father at home. So there's been>> a father or the father. They're usuallythe father, but not always. So,sometimes there's complex fatherhoodwhere dads are living with>> um kids that weren't originally theirs,but at least having a stepfather figurein the home.>> So, there's been this kind of U-shapedchange in father presence.>> But, I think we often think aboutfatherhood as this binary absent dadversus present dad. And there are a lotof shades of gradation in between. So,many non-residential fathers are reallyinvolved in caregiving. I talk aboutthis in the book, but after my parentsgot divorced, we did join custody. So,my brothers and I were alone with ourdad every other week and he went fromfairly hands-off caregiver to suddenlythe primary parent in charge ofeverything we needed. And I watched howtransformative that was for him. So,there are different ways again to turnthat dial of fatherhood. And I thinkwhen dads fully check out, like I said,it's a missed opportunity both forthemselves and for their kid. But thereare a lot of ways to turn the dial backup. I talked to a dad for the book whospent the first three years of his son'slife in jail and was able to get out,reunite with his
00:35:08son, take parentingclasses. He now works at an organizationcalled Homeboyid Industries which doesuh intervention for gang involved peoplein LA. And he directs a projectfatherhood program. And he said havingthat bond with his son was the singlesaving grace>> that actually helped him to reroute hislife.>> Most people don't realize how much beingdehydrated impacts their performance.Which is why for the last 5 years I'vestarted pretty much every morning withElement. Element is a tasty electrolytedrink mix with everything that you needand nothing that you don't. This orangesalt in a cold glass of water is like asweet, salty, orangey nectar. And Ireally tell the difference when I takeit versus when I don't. It plays acritical role in reducing muscle crampsand fatigue. Helps to optimize brainhealth and regulate your appetite whilealso curbing cravings. Best of all, theyhave a no questions asked refund policywith an unlimited duration. So, you canbuy it and try it for as long as youwant. And if you don't like it for anyreason, they'll just give you your moneyback. Plus, they offer free shipping inthe US. Right now, you can get a freesample pack of Element's most popularflavors with your first purchase bygoing to the link in the descriptionbelow or heading to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklnt.com/modern
00:36:24wisdom. Are you aware if there's awindow similar to the western archeffect of time after which an older maleisn't able to attach to a younger childin the same way exists has um prettysort of positive connotations forstepdads>> um because it suggests that you can bondpretty much just as apart from thecognitive realization like this isn'tmine>> uh if you spend enough time with baby onchest, you're probably going to getlocked in. But>> especially with stepdads and maybefathers that are absent or working orwhatever, they might not be as availableduring those years. And I have to assumelike if I hang around with a 21-year-olddude lots and empathize and care forhim, I'm probably not going to see himas my son just like out of the gates. Soit suggests to me that there's a kind oftail off in some way. But I mean, thisis total bro sciency itself. This thismakes me feel that's the bro the broscience hat. Um but you understand whatI mean. Have you got any insight aroundwhether that's true or not?>> It's a really interesting question sortof at what point do you maybe miss thatopportunity to bond? And I think what'skey is that you have a front row seat toa child's development during somecritical period.
00:37:40However, I think weoften overemphasize early infancy. Andthere's this idea that if we miss thefirst hour after birth or the first 3days after birth or the first month thatwe've somehow missed our chance to bondand that's not really true, right? Weknow that adoptive parents andstepparents can have profoundconnections with their kids. I grew upwith a stepdad who I met when I was nineand he ended up being a really formativeinfluence in my life. And and so I thinkit depends on when the dad comes intothe picture and what kind of work andpractice he's willing to put in to makethat connection. But I would say as longas there's any stretch of a child'syouth that a dad is witnessing andparticipating in, he can play a role asa parent.>> What about impacts on hormones in men?>> Yeah. So we see changes in testosteronearound the birth of a new baby. We don'tknow as much about how hormones changein adoptive or stepparents because therejust isn't a lot of research about this.Most of the work is on early parenthoodand most of it is focusing on biologicalparents.>> So testosterone gets tuned down.>> Mhm.
00:38:56>> Does that increase with caregiving?>> Yes.>> In fact, does that happen withoutcaregiving?>> No.>> Right. So it's linked as are the brainchanges to dad's participation in care.>> Okay.>> So we see this not just in humans, wesee this in animal models as well. Youare probably familiar with the challengehypothesis. The idea that we want highlevels of testosterone under certaincircumstances, it's adaptive fortestosterone to drop in othercircumstances. So>> birds are the classic example.Testosterone levels rise at the start ofbreeding season. When birds arecompeting for mates, they're looking tospread their seed. They want as manyopportunities as possible. So, they needstatus to try to find a partner. Andthen after mating has been accomplished,it's immunologically costly to maintainperpetually high levels of tea,testosterone naturally decreases and thereproductive strategy is shiftingtowards more nurturing. So instead ofmaximizing our numbers of babies that wecan produce, we want to maximize theodds that any given baby is going tosurvive. And our hormones kind of followsuit.>> And you see it in primates,
00:40:11you see itin rodents as well as in humans. You seethese natural shifts.>> What what are the behavior changes thathappen in menbased on their hormones? So typicallywhen testosterone decreases, it'sserving a function whereby dads aregetting more invested in the partnerrelationship. They are more interested,more motivated to maintain a stable pairbond and they're less aggressive. So alot of the work in in rodents has lookedat sort of territorial aggression andyou know when you see a new pup in thenest, do you want to kill them or do youwant to care for them? and testosteronelevels can sort of modulate where youend up along that continuum. So we wantin general if anyone is spending a lotof time with infants to be lessmotivated to kill and more motivated tocare>> risk-taking behavior as well>> goes down and you see that you you knowyou you see actually in some ways healthimprovements we we can talk about dadbotat some point I'm sure but uh you seesome health improvements in terms ofless risky driving less likely to getinto fights lower levels of substance
00:41:26usebeing more conscientious about doctorcheckups. So all of those behaviors thatkeep us alive and ready to provide forour offspring.>> Blame it on the testosterone>> shift. Sure.>> Blame it on the testosterone. You know,one one of my favorite studies around umrisk-taking behavior and uh male andfemale relationshipslooking at studies of men crossing theroad and the distance from them to thenearest car in the presence of women orwithout the presence of women.>> Yeah,>> dude. If there's a woman there, it'slike three times closer. Like, dude,look at how hard I am. Harder than thiscar. Um, [laughter]>> but>> yeah, that doesn't end well a lot oftime.>> Typically, in a fight between you and acar, you usually lose.>> Yeah.>> However,>> the thing that's interesting there, likewe know that testosterone can change. Ifwe had um a ton of weapons on thistable, like axes and and spears and andguns and stuff, and me and the guyswalked around and like picked them upand played with them, our testosteronewould go up.>> Yeah. And I would be terrified. It'svery Yeah, that that happens after.That's what the way that we close theshow out is by wielding weapons inside[clears throat] of this.>> Okay. Yeah, remind me to get out of herefor a>> second. No, we're live action roleplaying. It's the middle ages. Um, so>> thatsense, the fact that we can be soreactive as
00:42:41men that we talk about howhormonal women are and yes, butreliably. Men much more unreliable. Uh,similarly, a lot of hormonal changes,but they don't happen on the same sortof lunar schedule. Um, but what thatmust mean, I don't know whether thiswill be the primary driver because a lotof it's like there's a girl there andI'm just going to show how how hard I amand how how masculine and therisk-taking.>> Yeah.>> But also there'll probably be a bit ofan increase in testosterone and thatmight push it a little bit more.>> Yeah.>> And the same thing will be presumablyhappening here as well that there's arelational component. There's the sortof top down baby must be here for babymust not drive recklessly or text whilstdrive etc. But also there is this sortof bottomup uh environment that's beingcreated which encourages us to behave inthat way too.>> Exactly. Biology and culture worktogether as they do in so many ways inparenthood and and yeah I think it'sreally interesting the extent to whichour culture is kind of in flux betweendifferent models of fatherhood.>> And so you know are are we low tea dadsor high tea dads? But there's plenty ofwork suggesting that, you know, inathletic competition, in um otheropportunities for men to raise theirstatus, you see
00:43:56changes in testosterone.So testosterone, you know, I think wecan talk about testosteronesupplementation and what that means formen who want to be dads. I think to mewhat is adaptive about testosterone aswith any other hormone is that it'sresponsive to context and we want to beflexible because we want to have abiology that sets us up to achieve ourgoals. You're saying that if you were tobe taking testosterone enhancementwhilst becoming a father, you think thatyou're able to outwit biologiesuh u wellproven environment that it'strying to create inside of you andyou're just plowing through it byinjecting yourself with tea.>> I think that's the fear. That's therisk. And and anecdotally, I hear frommoms who say, "Yeah, my husband's beentaking tea and he's has no patience withthe baby." Who knows? We need better,more rigorous studies to see if that'sactually true.>> Yeah, but he's jacked.>> But exactly. So, there's a>> The baby's growing up with a jacked dad.Come on.>> Well, and in some context, that could bereally good. Like if you have to fightyour way out of a cage to get a leg oflamb for your kid, then you probablywant
00:45:11high testosterone in earlyparenthood.>> But that might not serve the style offatherhood that is more desired>> presumably as well. If that environmentwas the one that you were in, your bodywould detect it and go, "Hey, there'ssome more testosterone for you." Asopposed to you going, "No, shut up.1,000 nanogs per deciliter is absolutelyfine." Like,>> yeah. in risky>> belieing that you do you know betterthan your body does.>> Yeah. When we're in a risky orcompetitive environment, men want highertestosterone and that's going to servetheir goals. It's not always going toserve their goals when they're in aparenting environment. And so, you know,I think the thing about supplementationis we sort of have this idea thatmanliness is about maintainingperpetually high tea. I think actuallypositive masculinity is more aboutadaptability, being flexible, andshowing up in the way that you need tofor changing situations.>> Well, what a horrendous own goal itwould be if you decided to keep yourtestosterone high in an attempt to showyour masculinity and in the processended your lineage.>> Yeah.>> Like, well done, dude. Like, you blewthrough all of the warning signs thatyou should have been tuned down from.>> Yeah. So yeah, I guess testosterone
00:46:26drops when men become engaged fathers,right? So some men will hear that andthink, okay, so fatherhood makes youless of a man,>> right?>> Do you think that the fear of losingmasculinity by caregiving is actuallydriving avoidant fatherhood in someways? Maybe>> this was something I worried about whenwriting this book and trying tosummarize the science around fatherhoodis that the subtitle I joked for a whilewould be fatherhood gives you a smallerbrain, makes you sleepier, sadder,fatter, and have lower testosterone. Butit's really good,>> Jared.>> It'll give you know, so that I don'tthink that would that wouldn't sell verymany books. Yeah. And we've talked aboutsome of the benefits of fatherhood likean increased sense of meaning andpurpose and neurop protection in latelife. I would argue that being a gooddad is one of the most manly things youcan do. You're literally rearing thenext generation. You're guiding them.You're protecting them. You're inspiringthem. You're teaching them. So, when youthink about what is masculinity for,I would argue that in some ways it's foryour ability to be a good dad. So, Ithink we confuse like just having acertain hormone level equalsmasculinity.And I would counterargue it's more aboutwhat is your social role and how are youshowing up to do the things
00:47:42that areneeded of you>> and what is your definition of success.>> Exactly.>> Especially this a more I'm going to putit's a more controversial area uh totalk about but if you were to say forwomen>> what is your definition of success? Ithink mumbrain is seen as quite a bigloss by a lot of women. Well I'm uhexecutively less competent. my abilityto remember. Maybe I was a an assistantor a teacher or or someone who worked inmarketing or whatever and I can't holdon to the ideas in the way that I usedto. You say, "Well, that looks like amassive loss in all of the ways thatsociety says that a woman should besuccessful,>> apart from the one that's mostimportant, which is being a good mom."Yeah.>> And it's all about definition ofsuccess. And if you're in a meritocraticcapitalist world that says your abilityto produce economically and to rise upthrough the ladder of status andprestige and socioeconomic hierarchy,that's your primary goal. That's exactlywhat you bring to the world. Yeah, thatlooks like a loss. Apart from the factthat your kid is happier and you're morein tune with them and more in love withthem and so again, it's the same thingas the as the dad masculinityconversation. I just think it's a it's abit more of a minefield.>> No, I think you're right. I think we weundervalue
00:48:57care and we don't prioritizeit as a public social good, which itcertainly is. And I think as a result,we have this whole discourse aroundbouncing back after baby. You know, howquickly can you get your preab bodyback? How quickly can you get yourpre-baby brain back? And in fact, it'ssupposed to be transformative. You havea whole new role to play. And I think wewant to celebrate that.>> It's a weird kind of denial of thepreciousness of parenthood.>> Yeah.>> It's a real middle finger to that to goI had this>> inconvenience for a while. I was kind ofafflicted with motherhood or orfatherhood and my goal is to get back towhat I was before as opposed to becomesomething new.>> Yeah. Exactly. And I will say as aparent of teens, I don't want to go backto my pre-baby self cuz I was clueless.I think you learn a lot and figure a lotof things out.>> I can use that as my excuse>> as a parent.>> As a as a non as a non-parent, mycluelessness is exclusively because ofmy lack of child.>> That's right.>> Does the dad brain and the mom brain,does that happen again and again? Doesit rekickstart?
00:50:13Do you regrow? How doeshow do multiple children play into this?So, there's some really interesting newresearch about this. And I shouldpreface by saying the researchliterature is really scant. Part of whyI wrote the book is because I want morestudies to get funded and more studiesto get done in both dads and moms. So,there's one study that I know of thatlooks at what happens to the brain whenyou have a second kid. It was done inmoms. It was done in the Netherlands.And what happens is the brain shrinksagain, but it actually shrinks in somedifferent ways and in some differentplaces. So, there's some rebound. So, weactually think maternal brain change andI'm guessing paternal brain change toowhen we have more longitudinal datapoints is actually U-shaped. So, youlose volume and then you regain which isadaptive. Exactly. Cuz you don'tnecessarily want to end up with a muchsmaller brain after having had many morekids. So, you get some rebound, but then>> 10 kids and you can't function. The kidsare looking after you.>> Yeah. You're walking around like the guyin Beetlejuice with the tiny shrunkenhead, right? Um Yeah. You don't wantthat to happen. But you end up actuallywhere you lose gray matter volume with asecond pregnancy is actually in areasthat are tied more todeploying uh let's see what's
00:51:28a good wayto say this like managing multipleinputs. So those are areas that if youstreamline and tune them they'reactually salient for taking care ofmultiple kids. So, it's kind of liketask switching, okay? And being orientedcognitively to variable demands. Thoseare the places where you see thatsharpening of functioning. Second timemoms,>> you know, I'd love to see I'd love tosee a comparison between that andmothers who have twins or triplets.>> Yeah. I don't know. Wouldn't that be socool?>> Yes. And the studies unfortunatelyexclude twin and triplet moms becausethey're going to add too muchcomplexity. Yeah. But it's>> if you did a study specifically on them,>> it's a really interesting paradigm,right? Because you kind of get doublethe dose of parenting experience and youget more parenting hormones, too.>> Do you have Yeah. more time on skin? Imean, both dad and mom will be really atthe upper limit of that one to 2.5%range.>> But also, I wonder if you basicallyspeedrun level one and go straight tolevel two as mom where you've got thethe multitasking like baby jugglingskill. Yeah. um>> you might advance to that second timebrain a little faster.>> And my guess is also with twins andtriplets, dad gets more involved. Soagain, you're talking about
00:52:43tuning thedial up that turns fatherhood behavioron. When you have multiples, you needdad more because you need more help toparents.>> You basically had a baby with leverage.>> Yeah.>> Right. You invested you invested at liketwo or 3x on the starting capital in thebeginning. That's right.>> Uh I read about the daughter effect.Yeah.>> Is that real?>> Which say say what you mean by it.>> When uh fathers have daughters, theirbehavior changes in unique ways thatwouldn't have done with a son.>> Yeah. So, I'm glad you asked thatbecause my lab literally just wrote apaper over the weekend. We do thesepaper in a day retreats where we all gettogether and we write chunks of a papertogether and we looked at how men'sbehavior and well-being and hormoneschange when they have either a son or adaughter. So we found that when men havedaughters and this is from ourlongitudinal sample, they show more of adrop in testosterone across thetransition to that parenthood>> and they also spend less time caring fortheir babies and they report moreparenting stress and worse bonding. Soit's kind of bad news for girlsactually. Uh and we need to figure outwhat modulates that and you know how tooffset it.
00:53:58But it suggests that when menare expecting girls, they might be inneed of some additional coaching andpreparation to figure out how they canshow up as effective parents.>> Does the sex of the baby change how thebrain adapts in the other directionthen?>> So, we don't know because there haven'tbeen enough studies of this. I've lookedat this a little bit in our data and>> should be pretty easy to do, right? Wasit boy, was it girl? Compare groups,>> but you're cutting your sample in half.So if you already have an underpoweredsample, then you know you're losing yourability to pick up on effect.>> Put the hat on and just throw some sunhypothesis. It doesn't matter. it.Yeah.>> Yeah. I um I know of a a little bit ofwork suggesting that it shifts uhcertain brain responses. Like I think umthere was a study actually it was doneat Emory in Atlanta that found that uhthe the brain was more primed to happyfacial expressions from girls anddistressed expressions from boys and sothere were some different patterns ofbrain responses but the literature istiny. We don't know a lot about thosekind of sex specific effects in thebrain.>> In other news, Shopify powers 10% of alle-commerce companies in the US. They arethe driving force behind Gym Shark andSkiims and Aloe
00:55:13and Newonic, which iswhy I partnered with them because whenit comes to converting browsers intobuyers, they are best-in-class. Thecheckout is 36% better on averagecompared to other leading commerceplatforms. And with Shop Pay, you canboost conversions up to 50%. Basically,you didn't get into business to learnhow to code or build a website or dealwith the inventory stuff on theback end. You just want to get down tocreating and promoting an awesomeproduct. And Shopify takes all of themess off your hands and allows you tofocus on the job you actually came hereto do, designing and selling the thingthat you love. So upgrade your businessand get the same checkout[clears throat] that we use withNewtonic with Shopify. Right now you cansign up for a $1 per month trial periodby going to the link in the descriptionbelow or heading toshopify.com/modernwisdismall lowercase. That'sshopify.com/modernwisdom.Do we think the uh increase reduction oftestosteronearound girls is because rough and tumbleplay more protection needed for child?It's interesting, right? Because youwould also assume that the small boywould become physically stronger sooneras well. So more
00:56:29protection from theoutside world might require moretestosterone, but less risk-taking andless aggression toward the inside worldrequires less testosterone. So there's astrange balance that's going. Do youunderstand?>> Yeah, I think that's an interestinghunch. I mean, I think our time coursewas just from mid-reg to the first 6months. So we didn't really have enough,you know, the babies aren't even moremoney. Someone needs to give you a tonof money.>> Thank you. From your lips to God's ears,right? Give us more grants. We'll studythis long. We're actually doing aseven-year follow-up right now.>> So, we'll see what happens when the kidsare hitting first and second grade.We're collecting that data as we speak.>> But our hunch is exactly what you saidfirst, which is that we think that dadsmight behaviorally be interacting withnew babies differently depending onwhether they're a boy or a girl. Andthere's evidence that even before babiesare born, if you ask parents, what arethe traits of your new child? They areshaped by knowing the sex of the baby.So, new parents tend to describe a babygirl as being more delicate, um, morevulnerable. They might, yeah, sweet,soft. They might describe a baby boy asrambunctious or mischievous or tough andstrong. And so, it may be that dads aregetting more active
00:57:44and are playing withgirls in a way that's more aboutcuddling and nurturing and are playingwith boys in a way that's more aboutplaying and activating. And we know thatin fact dads do have these kind ofsignature styles of playing with kids.They do tend to engage in more of what'scalled propriceptive touch, which islike picking babies up, moving themaround in space, like really activeexploratory kind of boundary pushingplay. And it may just be that dads aredoing more of that when they've got ababy boy and that is why theirtestosterone isn't falling in exactlythe same way. but also that the behaviorof the boys and the girls will be theboy is more likely to want to play withtrucks, linear objects, etc. and thegirl is more likely to want to do thecaregiving stuff.>> Although again, these are six-month oldbabies, so they can't even truck alone.>> I was thinking I was thinking more aboutwhen you get to sort of 2, three, four.I had Joyce Benninsson on the show. It'sjust the best. And uh she was saying shelooked at the playground ofkindergartenerslike 3 4 years old and you know there'snot been a massive amount of time tosocialize you into your gender rolealready. And all of the girls wereplaying a game where they had to keep
00:58:59something alive>> and all of the boys were playing a gamewhere they had to fight something in awar. [laughter]>> You know what I mean?fighting something in a war is alsokeeping something alive sometimeskeeping yourself alive. But I would saylike I would actually push back on thata little bit and say there is a role forsocialization even in very young kids.So in the book I talked about anexperiment that was done by the BBCwhere they brought a bunch of toddlersinto a playroom and they got these adultvolunteers and they switched thetoddler's names and outfits. So they hada little girl, they put her in boyclothes and gave her a boy's name. Theywere trying to trick these playmate,these adult playmate volunteers. So,they took a little boy, put him in adress, gave him the girl's name, andthey found that the volunteers playedtotally differently with the the I thinkthese were 2-year-olds depending on thename and the outfit, and they sort ofappraised the play differently. So, youknow, they taped these sessions and withthe boy who's dressed as a little girl,oh, you know, she loves the pink dollyand with the girl who's dressed as alittle boy, you know, he wants to pushthe truck. So, I do think we have thisway of sort of sorting self-fulfillingprophecy,>> boys and girls. And so, it's, you know,like with everything, it's a mix ofbiology and
01:00:14culture. There's somebiological propensity there, but weamplify it through our culture andthrough the way we socialize. And Ithink that leads to more divergentoutcomes. That's like the Dartmouth scaruh study but done on kids. Kind ofhilarious. Uh what was the housework andcortisol research?>> So this was work I did in my graduatetraining. This was part of mydissertation. So we looked at dualincome couples who were followed aroundtheir homes for a week. This was like aweek in the life study of thesemiddle-class couples in LA. and werecorded how much time they werespending in common household activities.So we looked at housework time, leisuretime, child care time, other kinds ofactivities. I found that housework isbad for your health, which I thinkanyone could have told you. So the moretime you spend doing houseworkon, you know, as part of a typical week,the less cortisol recovery you have atthe end of the day. So we looked at themagnitude of cortisol change from theafternoon into the evening and you wantthis drop in cortisol levels at the endof the day. So cortisol has a dal rhythmhas kind of a circadian pattern. Youwant to start high and you
01:01:29want to endlow. And when people were doing morehousework in the evenings they had lessof thatnater that they were hitting at bedtime.And we also found that uh when youentered moms and dads time used togetherin the same model, moms benefited interms of their cortisol when dads weredoing more housework and dads benefitedwhen they had more leisure time andtheir partners had less leisure time. M.>> So, kind of a mixed bag of results whereit's sort of, you know, if you're a mom,you want your partner to be helping withhousework and if you're a dad, you wantto be sitting back and relaxing whileyour partner is taking care of business.>> It's a bit zero sum in a way.>> Yeah, it's sort of depressing.>> Yeah, it is. What's stress contagion?>> So, stress contagion is when couplesinfluence each other's hormone levels.So, I found that you see linked cortisollevels in cohabitating couples and I'velooked at this in moms and dads. I'vealso looked at this in non-parent maleand female couples. So, when one personhas higher cortisol, their partner hashigher than usual cortisol as well. Andit seems like when the relationshipquality is compromised, when you havemore conflict, you have
01:02:44more tightlylinked patterns of cortisol. So peopleare actually increasing each other'sstress rather than helping to balance ormodulate it.>> How do you fix that?>> You help people communicate better andfight more effectively so that they cancalm each other down rather than ampeach other up.>> Right?>> I think when you're frustrated andstressed and you have a partner who'sexacerbating that, it's very hard torecover. If you have a partner who canhelp to talk you down and sort ofbalance out yourirritated state with a calm state, thenyou can better recover in terms of yourbiology.>> What are the downsides of fatherhood formen?>> Well, we talked about already, you know,weight gain. Um, we talked abouttestosterone changes. There are alsoincreased vulnerability to mooddisorders. So the prevalence ofdepression in new dads is about twicethat of the general population. There'sa lot of controversy about whether wecall it postpartum depression in dads. Alot of>> observed this in in your opinion. Dodads get postpartum depression?>> So in the book I say I think paranataldepression is a better word that justmeans around the birth
01:03:59of a baby.>> But to me it's semantic. It doesn'tmatter that much whether we call itpostpartum or paranatal. I think somepeople really are attached to the ideaof postpartum really means having givenbirth. That's not really what the termmeans. It just means occurring after thebirth of a baby. And the fact is that alot of the risk factors for depressionare shared by new moms and new dads.You've got stress, you've got disruptedsleep, you've got relationship conflict,you've got new responsibilities,identity crisis,hormone changes, brain changes. So eventhough you're not the person that's physphysically delivered an infant, you arestill experiencing a lot of the sameoverlapping risks.>> What does postpartum mean?>> So it just means after the birth of ababy, the time>> after your birth of a baby.>> Yeah. It doesn't necessarily mean it>> is a gender neutral term.>> Yeah, it's a gender neutral term. Itdoesn't necessarily mean that youbirthed the baby. It just means the timeperiod that falls after the birth of ababy. That said, I don't want toantagonize the moms who keep coming intomy Instagram uh comments to get mad atme for talking about postpartumdepression because I understand, youknow, I>> What are they mad about? Are they madabout the fact that this is our term?Like we want it to be it needs to belike paternal
01:05:15postpartum depression orit needs some sort of a qualifier on it.It sounds to me like and I saw a bunchof comments on Instagram talking aboutthe same thing. Uhit's not about this is a term that wecare about it. My best reading of itright and this is me trying to steal manit as best I can.>> Yeah.The process of childirth for a woman isso arduous and traumatic and scary thatany man who appears to be flippant ordismissive or to kind of liken thechallenge that he goes through to theone that the mum goes through.>> That is seen as being very callous andand it doesn't fully appreciate orunderstand the sacrifice of a of a mum.I think that's the best reading of it.>> Yeah, I think that's a good reading. Ithink another piece of that>> That's me with my peaceful hat on.>> Yes. Where's your peaceful hat? You'remissing that prop. You need to You needa new prop.>> I would say that a lot of womenlegitimately feel like they've had towork very hard to get postpartumdepression recognized. There'sinadequate funding. There's inadequateattention paid to reproductive
01:06:30healthand mood disorders in moms. And so ifthey're fighting to get access totreatment and to get education abouttheir mental health, they feel like howcan dads just sort of show up and makeit all about them? That seems veryunfair.>> And I'm totally sympathetic to thatargument. I mean, I talked to apsychotherapist who works with new dadsfor my book, who's done a lot ofadvocacy for postpartum mental health inmen, and she says a lot of the women'shealth advocates are just like, "Can'twe have this one thing? Can't we havethe postpartum period? This is ours.">> Right? I mean, that my peaceful hats gottaken off now. That is stupid.Like, because what you're saying is, canwe not not support men because we wantwomen to have most of the attention? Yougo, "Well, hang on a second. Are youmost concerned about owning this area ofcognitive real estate like it's somesort of cultural appropriation by men?Or do you care about the outcome of thekid and of the mom? Because if you don'ttreat the mental health of the father,how do you think the mum's going tofeel? And how do you think the child'sgoing to grow up? So what you're sayingis you would rather be intellectuallysuperiorbut in the real world have negative sideeffects. Like that is the outcome.Whether that's what they know or whatthey mean
01:07:45doesn't matter. Like it's notmy job to sugarcoat the fact that youtrying to own some area of cognitivereal estateag.So like not recognizing and if you didthis in reverse right and this is truefor a very very very long time there wasall research was done on men. It wasjust the male body standard inside ofthe medical industry.No one said, "Well, this is cancer.That's men's thing." You go, "No, thisis not a gendered issue." So, Imean, I've got I got a video to showyou. I got a video from the Times thatyou've probably seen that I think isvery interesting. And the video isinteresting and the comments are waymore interesting.>> So, it's this one. It's this one on TikTok. Jared,>> I had postnatal depression. Yes, dadscan get it, too. [music] In 2021, whenmy daughter Aurelia was about a monthold, my wife turned to me in bed onemorning and she asked, "How much do youlove her?" I froze. I kind of gritted[music] my teeth and said, "Yeah, Ireally love her, but inside I knew itwasn't there yet." I struggled to bondwith my baby. Felt disconnected [music]and had growing shame that I was not
01:09:00being the natural father I thought Iwould be. About 6 months intofatherhood, I opened up to my wife. Iwanted to be a rock to Chess who had hada complicated pregnancy. Eventually,[music]I got therapy, but postnatal depressionwas never raised. It wasn't untilAurelia was a year old that I cameacross an article about men's PND[music] that everything started to makesense. About 10% of new dads willexperience depressive symptoms duringthe perinatal period and first year of achild's life. For me and my wife, it wasa Eureka moment. Men are not routinelyscreened for PND. [music]So many cases go undiagnosed. I thinkthe system is not changing quicklyenough to offer support and spot thesigns of depression in dads. My bondwith Aurelia is now incredible. And withnew understanding [music] and support, Ihope I won't suffer from P&D again, butI think new dads should know they mightnot have that emotional bond straightaway.>> All right.>> Let me pause it there. Jared,>> I love that.>> Just look at the Just press on thecomments on the right hand side for me.>> I don't think I want to see thecomments.>> Uh Matt, please. I already had a longday. How do I make this about myself?Thank you for telling us that's TomScaro. Oh, Matt, it's not the samething. This isn't depression. It'sdiscomfort and uncertainty. Postpartumdepression is linked to the dramatichormonal changes that happen afterchildirth,
01:10:15such as sudden drops inestrogen and progesterone. Not sure howthis affects the father. Time ofirritation. 1:41 p.m. Playing on my Yes,however, calling it postnatal depressionisn't the right phase. I think heultimately just didn't like all theattention in the relationship shiftingto the baby. Please, I'm already annoyedtoday. How can I make this about me,too? I feel left out. Is there poo in myAirPods?>> Oh my gosh.>> Like,>> yeah, I've been I've been fighting inthe comments sections like these for awhile now. And uh you know, peoplereally come out of the woodwork to befrustrated with this kind of material.And I think there's a gatekeeping aroundparanal depression that is unfortunatebecause mental health is a familysystem. You need the best possible teamaround a baby. And the best predictoractually of mom's mental health is thesupport that she gets from her partner.So if dad is not well,>> dad is not showing up mom's mentalhealth either. I think the idea thatthis is a fixed pie or that it's a zerosum game, like there's a finite amountof resources that are going to go to aparent's mental health and they need tobe directed solely to mom, I think isreally limited. We need to be thinkingabout how do moms work together withdads to make sure that the baby isgetting well cared for and thateverybody's mental health
01:11:30needs aregetting met. Having a zero sum view ofempathy is like one of the dumbestespecially with something like this.It's just a guy going I went throughthis really hard thing and people goingno you didn't. No you didn't. Or I wentthrough something that was way worsethan that.>> Yeah. Why are we gaslighting dads andwhy are we pitting dads against moms?And my response to that is if we want tohave a society where men are stepping upas parents and they're fullyparticipating in caretaking, they'rewaking up with the baby, they're doingthe hard parts of care, we need torecognize that that's going to havemental health consequences. It's goingto be taxing. It's going to beisolating. It's going to be draining.And if we really want men toparticipate, we have to respect thattheir mental health matters, too. Wecan't guard it as though it's the soledomain of new moms because we want dadsto act more like primary caregivers, butwe're not willing to accept that they'regoing to have vulnerability tied tothat.>> Bingo. Yeah. Saying the same thing intwo different bre saying differentthings in the same breath, which is wewant dads to be fully involved, but wedon't believe that they can have thenegative outcomes that other peoplewho've been fully involved for all ofhistory have.>> Right.>> What's the rate of post-natal depressionin women? It's a little higher
01:12:46in newmoms than it is in new dads. I thinkit's it ranges across studies but like19 to 21%. It's about 10%.>> Which is however the same as the changein brain 1% to two two and a half.>> And I think important context is thatwomen have about twice the rate ofanxiety and depression in the generalpopulation.>> So it tracks with that overall baserate.>> Wow. That's a spicy realization that itcould just be an increase in whateveryour predisposition was and that dadsare actually getting it at the same rateas moms.>> And now that we've got more involvedcaregiving, which is the primaryenforcement mechanism for the thechange, I'm going to guess postpartumdepression in fathers is mediated by theamount of caregiving that they do.>> Right. And that's the other thing. So,you're telling me like that's brutalthat any dad that's listening to thisnow knows the more that I care for mybaby, the higher my likelihood ofgetting postnatal depression is.>> Well, let's keep in mind it's still alow rate anda lot of people experience baby bluesthat don't [clears throat]>> turn into full-blown de debilitatingdepression, right? There's a continuum.So you can have depressive symptomswithout
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01:15:16I actually think probably not. Ithink it's more of a sign of anevolutionary cultural mismatch, which isthis going back to this idea that we ashumans are cooperative breeders and weevolve to have a lot of support aroundcaregiving. So, we evolved to trade offcare, to share care with people in thecommunity, with our kin. I think we nowplace a lot of pressure on individualparents and on the individual nuclearfamily to serve the roles that dozens ofpeople used to serve when there was alot more proximity and people helpedeach other out a lot more with care. Sowe isolate new parents. We>> don't value their work. We've alreadytalked about, you know, the incentivesof a very late capitalist society wherewe want people to be ambitious driversand we want them to move on quickly fromthis interruption of birth>> and and so we're not providing thesupport. You know, in this country, wedon't have universal paid maternityleave or paternity leave. So,>> a lot of women go back to work probablybefore they feel like they're ready. Alot of men do, too. We don't giveinadequate or we don't give adequatetime and protection,>> right?
01:16:31>> And we, you know, we create an uphillbattle where parents feel isolated anddrained.>> So, is there any evidence of postpartumin huntergatherer societies?>> Not that I know of, but I'm also notsure how well it's been tracked ormeasured.>> Yep. Okay.trying to see if this mismatchhypothesis kind of it can just be splittested across like civilizations.>> Yeah, I mean I I think it's a reallyreally interesting question anddepression in general you know hasn'tbeen observed as much in thosepopulations.So it's a really interesting questionbut you know in huntergatherer societieswhen a woman becomes a mother shebecomes if anything more sociallyintegrated into the life of thecommunity. In contemporary society, whena woman becomes a mother, she oftenbecomes more isolated. We have all ofthese public spaces that, you know,don't bring the baby to a wedding, don'tbring the baby to a restaurant, don'tbring the baby to a cafe. People don'twant to Yeah. to work, right? Like ahunter gathering mom can actually stillgo to work. She can still be wearing thebaby. She can function economically,>> swaddled up, grab some berries. Yeah.>> Had a good day in the office. she canoccupy a
01:17:46high status social role.>> Yeah.>> And and she can be, you know, fullyintegrated into the community.>> That's interesting. So the the this thewhat is rewarded socioeconomically atthe moment specifically for women uh isnotbabyaccommodating.>> We have this kind of sharp dividebetween work and home which I think is alegacy of the industrial revolution.Right? We before that work generallyhappened at home. Dads were around alot. Moms were around a lot. Kids wereraised as workers. They werecontributing to the family business, thefamily economy.>> Jared, if you brought your kid in hereand they were able to write good cop, ifyour eight-month-old was able to writegood YouTube copy, I'd be down. But Iwould be I would be absolutely fine. Imean, you're allowed to come as long asyou contribute, but>> yeah,>> yeah, he's trying. Um,>> good way to hone those skills. What I'minterested what do you think's the bestadvice for dads like trying to be greatfather, great husband, still take careof themselves whilst supporting a momwho's going through postpartum.>> Give yourself grace. Don't expect thatit will be easy. Forewarned isforearmmed. So, you know, know that thisis going to rock your world and it'sgoing to be transformative, but it'ssupposed to be transformative. And
01:19:01Iwould say steer away from the myth thatdads don't have any innate wiring toknow how to take care of a baby. I thinkwe have this idea that moms are justborn knowing what to do when a babyarrives and men are going to be helplessand useless.>> Does that help moms postpartum?>> I don't think so because I will say whenI had my kids I was like what am Isupposed to do with these people? youknow, you have to learn and you figureit out. And it's about your motivationand your willingness to practice morethan it's about just, you know, havingsome inborn reflex that's telling youhow to care for a child. And dads havethat capacity to care and to build thoseempathetic, responsive, caregivingbrains.>> I've got two potential hypotheses in mymind. Uh first one is like postpartumcontagion. M>> I have to assume that if the mom isdealing with it, it's more likely thatthe dad's going to deal with it.>> But I wonder if level ofpaternal child caringdecreases the likelihood of uh femalepostpartum depression. Yeah.>> Do we know>> do we know whatlevels of household
01:20:16setup can increaseor decrease the likelihood? So, there issome research on this and itcorroborates both of your hunches.>> Dude, don't test me. Don't test me onthis>> So, you can keep the the science hatoff. Yeah, you don't need it.>> Good.>> Um, good instincts. But there's researchthat depressive symptoms are correlatedwithin moms and dads. So, if mom is moredepressed, dad's more likely to bedepressed. If dad's depressed, mom'smore likely to be depressed. And if onepartner is well and can support theother partner, that's also a hugeresilience factor. That's a buffer.>> So they track together.>> Yep.>> And there's also evidence that when dadsare more involved, moms benefit. So onereally cool study tested a paternityleave reform program in Sweden wherethey were expanding flexibility ofpaternity leave for dads. They foundthat if you look at babies born rightbefore and right after that policyintervention, you actually see lowerrates of anti-anxiety medication.Prescriptions were filled less often bythe new moms. So if dads have moreaccess to leave, moms actually show thispopulation level mental health benefit.And my lab has done similar work and wefound that if you look at prenatal topostpartum trajectories of depressivesymptoms, when dads
01:21:32get access to paidpaternity leave, moms are less likely toget depressed after the birth of a baby.So it seems like for postpartumdepression, maybe for dads as well asmoms, one of the key drivers is socialintegration, level of socialintegration. Does that mean that ifyou're struggling with postpartumdepression, you should try and like turnon the the socialization taps a littlebit, do mommy daddy daycare meetupthings. That seems like an interventionthat might work.>> Exactly. And that goes back to theevolutionary mismatch idea, right? We'resupposed to be embedded in socialnetworks that help us care for our kids.We're not supposed to do it alone.>> Is postpartum basically like, this is a lot and I'm overwhelmed.>> Yeah. I mean, that's part of it.>> Yeah. Compounded with sleep loss,identity challenges, relationshipstrain,money and life worries, and your brainand hormones getting totally, you know,disrupted.Does that mean
01:22:39does that mean that there is asocioeconomic predictor for postpartumdepression because people who are morewealthy are more likely to have childcare which means that they have moreassistance, less pressure and bettersleep?>> Yes,>> dude.>> Yeah.>> Yes. So there is a socioeconomic linkbetween postpartum depression risk andpart of it is you know there are moms inthe US who go back to work less than 2weeks after the birth of a baby. So ifyou're a shift worker, if you're a gigworker, if you're at Walmart, you areprobably not getting time to rest,recover, and bond. And that's reallystressful and really taxing to yourability to adjust to parenthood. Sothat's part of it. It's also like whatare the community resources that areavailable to you? Can you afford supportand child care? But some of the bestinterventions for postpartum depressionare around shoring up your socialsupport networks. So helping get peopleto be more proactive about asking forhelp, helping to invest in yourrelationships. And you can even dopreventive intervention before a baby'sborn to say and we actually do this ummy lab leads psychoeducation workshopswith a big um hospital system thatserves low-income
01:23:54new parents. We say wehave them make a social support map. Sowe say who are you going to be able toask for help in different domains afterthe baby comes. You know, maybe yourolder brother isn't going to be thathelpful when it comes to taking the babyfor a nap, but he can help with yourlawn care, you know? So, how do you plugdifferent people in your life intodifferent roles to make sure that yoursocial support needs are are met? And wetry to coach people to be more assertivefor about asking for help because Ithink we're conditioned in our societyto be very agency individualism.>> Yeah. Yeah. I I learned from LouisePerry that in uh like RenaissanceEngland there was a period called lyingin laying in>> Yeah.>> where for 2 weeks the mother didn't moveafter childirth waited on hand and foot.>> Yeah.>> Anything that was needed. All she didwas hold baby and and like feed baby andeverything else done. Right. the wholefamily comes in and and and desists andyou just you know you physicallytraumatic things happen to you like thatit just seems it seems very contrary tothis
01:25:11like hyperspeedproductivity engine thing and it's it'skind of strange right because my>> original background was as aproductivity dork um which I still havevestigages of And the way that I startedthe show was trying to learn life hacksand memorization tools and how to have agreat to-do list manager and stuff likethat because that was what I thought wasreally important to me. And I think Ialways just assumed that at some pointyou become an adult and you sort of growout of that. But that really is one ofthe drugs of the 21st century, thishyperoptimized efficiency culture, getmore out. And there's no reason, it waskind of naive of me to think that, ohwell, just when you become a parent, youforget about that or you realize thatother things are more important like myparents did. My parents were neverafflicted with productivity culturebeforehand, right?>> So that's interesting. And then thisother story that it really it gets meevery and I mentioned to you I justfinished this silent meditation retreat.So my uh heart is particularly tender.But I I went to a meetup when I firstmoved to Austin about four years ago andit was a bunch of business owners,millionaires and decaillionaire like acouple of
01:26:26millionaires in there andeveryone was a founder. I was by far thepoorest person in the room. And>> uh they were all talking about um whatthey were doing with their businessesand plans and oh I know a guy that canget you in at Target and so on and soforth. And I was like sat kind ofsilently the white belt at the back ofthe class and um it was a circle thingand then someone dinged the glass andsaid um well we'll we'll have a littlebrainstorming session. If you've got aproblem that you're dealing with at themoment, put your hand in the air.There's a lot of competent people in theroom. We'll see if we can help you. AndI'm thinking some guy's going to go,I've got a massive problem with the IRS.I'm like trying to get my offshoreaccounts working, but the Cayman Islandsdon't like some other stuff. This guyjust went his hand straight in the air.He said, "My wife's 6 months pregnant,and I don't feel anything>> and I'm scared I'm going to be a bad dadand that I'm not going to love thebaby." And she keeps asking me about howI feel and there's nothing there. And II feel so guilty and ashamed about thefact that I I really want this and Ilove my wife and I want to be a good dadand I'm terrified that I'm going to beI'm terrified I'm going to be a bad dad.I'm terrified I'm not going to be ableto support her. I've got guilt and shamearound. I've got this secret. I feellike I'm keeping a secret from her.>> The room was likethat wasn't what we were expecting. Oneof the guys over the far side straightaway
01:27:41went, "Dude, don't worry about it.Happened to me. Happens every single dadwas like every single time. Alwayshappens. Wait 6 months. It'll all befixed. like wait six months, lie with iton your chest for a while. It gave allof the dad hacks, I guess. I justremember thinking like, like thisguy's in a roomsurrounded by really impressive businesspeople and he was one too and he wascompetent, all the rest of it, and hecould have asked anything that he wantedabout his business, but the most salientthing in his entire life was the factthat he was watching his wife go throughthe hormonal changes that make a mother.Right. Pregnancy doesn't just make ababy, it also makes a mother. Yeah,>> but pregnancy doesn't make a father inthe same way.>> Right.>> I I it makes him in some negative ways,right? The lack of sleep and the stressand you know got the Puvade syndrome orwhatever it's called.>> Um>> but it doesn't>> it doesn't prepare you in that way. Andthen when you layer on top our abilityto judge our own>> competence in these things, we think,well, what are you judging? Well,judging how good of a dad I think Imight be. Maybe I wasn't cut out forthis. I wasn't a dad before.>> And I bet if you were to look at,>> what could we call this?>> Like uh potential parent
01:28:56guilt.>> Um if you were to look at potentialparent guilt or potential paternal guiltmight be better. Um>> I bet that it doesn't happen on secondkid.>> Yeah. I think this is a common thingthat I hear from expectant dads thatthey're terrified, that they're notgoing to know what to do, that they'renot going to be good at it. And I thinkwe expect men to be highly competent,you know, women, too, but we reallysocialize men to be good at things. Andit's hard to be really good at takingcare of a baby in the abstract becauseit's all about what does your particularbaby need and how do you get to knowyour baby and that's individual and itdepends on your time and your motivation>> and your practice. But I think that ideathat men are sort of flailing aroundreally uncertain. I talked to a guywhose whole career is talking to startupentrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and hesays very similar story as yours. He'stalked to men who are great at all kindsof, you know, conquering the businessworld>> and yet when you get them onto thesubject of their kids, they're alltotally worried that they don't knowwhat they're doing, right?
01:30:12But it's adomain where we don't have that samesense of of skill and power and it'sharder to optimize. And I would say, youknow, you you mentioned this kind ofself-optimization culture andproductivity.>> And it's interesting if you watch thekind of like get ready with me videos orhere are all the, you know, here's myregimen, here are all the things I do tocompletely, you know, biohack my way tosuccess. frequently they're of someonewho's alone and they take a lot of timeand they take a lot of solitary activityand they're not necessarily about beingconnected. They're not about giving toother people. They're not about caringfor someone who's vulnerable. And Iwould say when you think about whatmakes life worth living, a lot of it isabout our relationship health. You know,that's what the best studies oflongevity have told us. That's what workon men has told us that you know whenmen are socially isolated in late lifethat's a real risk factor for earlymortality. So how can men get moreconnected? Well, part of it is bydevoting yourself to learning how tocare for other people. And so againgoing back to this idea of how do wereframe masculinity in more pro-socialways?It's manly to take care of
01:31:27vulnerablepeople.Well, I hope that whenbaby life does begin for me thateverybody is ready for me to shove itdown their throat for ages. It's justgoing to be an endless end like a asickening barrage of fatherhood content.I can't It's going to be It's going tobe fantastic.>> You're going to be the new doctor,Becky.>> Uh that's Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter]We'll see about that. Um what do youthink is the worst advice that new dadsget?>> Well, we already talked about, you know,you can fix your relationship by havinga baby. So definitely that's very badadvice.>> It's the worst advice the potential dadscould get. Yeah. Yeah.>> I think other bad advice is just, youknow, dads don't know what they'redoing, so keep your distance. And Ithink there are these preconceptionsaround should we invest in paternityleave for new dads? Well, dads areuseless in the early months. Thesethey've got nothing to contribute. And Ithink that is bad advice because as withmoms, dads are capable of learning andtheir neurobiology is going to comealong for the ride as they learn how totake care of kids. I think the otherthing is we sometimes privilege earlyinfancy as the sort of only time fordads to shine. And I talked to RichardReeves who's written
01:32:42a lot about healthymasculinity. He said he thinks that menshould be able to take paternity leaveup to their kids 14th or maybe even 18thbirthday.>> Yeah. Well, there's some roles,especially for dads with girls aroundpuberty that are more important>> Yeah.>> than perhaps in early life.>> Yeah. And he told me he was astay-at-home dad to his sons for aperiod when they were school age, andthat was a great experience. And heloves taking his kids on trips andexcursions. And so I think there's a lotof value that dads can add at differentstages along the lifespan. And I thinkwhen we decide that men don't know whatthey're doing and we kind of opt themout of a key parenting role, we'relosing that opportunity and we're notgiving them the windows in which tobuild their competence.>> I love it. Dobby Saxby, ladies andgentlemen, you're great. I love yourwork. I think it's fantastic. It's braveto do this stuff and to talk about it,and I think the world's a better placefor having you in it. So I appreciateyou.>> Thank you. Real pleasure talking to you.>> All right, goodbye everybody.>> Yes, you did it.>> Yay! Fun. That was great.>> Congratulations. You made it to the endof a full podcast episode. You are notso Tik Tok brain that you've completelydissolved into nothingness.Why not watch another one right
01:33:57here?Go on, press it.