In this episode, Tim had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Niobe Way about the social and emotional lives of young boys and men.  

Dr. Niobe Way is an internationally recognised NYU developmental psychologist who has spent nearly 40 years researching social and emotional development and has found that boys and young men desperately want and need the same thing as everyone else: close friendships. Yet they and we grow up in a stereotyped “boy” culture, one that devalues and mocks those relationships, rather than recognising that they’re necessary for human survival. Her social science research has made her an expert on friendships, loneliness, teenagers, gender stereotypes, masculinity and the roots of violence.  

In this conversation, Dr. Way shares insights from her latest book, ‘Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves and Our Culture’. She explains how these “rebels,” as she calls the boys and young men in her research and in her classrooms, teach us about their and our crisis of connection, evidence of which is visible in our soaring rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, suicide, and mass violence. They also teach us about the solutions to the crisis, which is to care, to listen with curiosity, and to take individual and collective responsibility for the damage we have done to them, to ourselves, and to the world around us. 

Find Dr. Way here: https://www.niobe-way.com/

TIMESTAMPS 

00:00 – Intro  

01:26 – How Dr. Way got started researching boys and their friendships 

03:57 – The four themes she learned from young men 

10:56 – Close: the movie about boy friendships 

12:08 – Which men are most at risk of suffering from this crisis of connection? 

16:38 – What Dr. Way means when she refers to ‘boy’ culture 

17:20 – Why curiosity is key to connecting with others 

21:29 – Dr. Way’s advice for parents 

24:06 – The impact of technology and how we use it on ‘boy’ culture 

26:07 – How we could change technology to connect better with others 

28:15 – Having feelings is normal for everyone 

33:41 – Why ‘boy’ culture is not just about masculinity 

38:40 – Society tolerates our ‘soft sides’ more when we’re younger 

39:37 – What we can learn from listening to children and teenagers 

43:02 – Why this book is not Dr. Way’s opinion 

45:25 – Dr. Way’s hopes moving forward 

49:11 – Why Dr. Way focused her work on boys and young men 

50:32 – Where to find more of Dr. Niobe Way 

52:54 – Outro 

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