[00:00:00] Degan: Rough draft of a love letter. Thinking of you, sleeping in a field outside Knuckle Down Farm. Consider Wednesday, before dawn. Smell of ferns. You, asleep, curled up in your sleeping bag. Like a map in a pocket, slightly damp with tent dew. Add firefly in meadow, pale in pre dawn dark. You, folding and unfolding, like moth wings.
Consider me, dreaming me, dreaming beside you. Next, sky, almost starting like a fire. The wet logs taking time to catch. Silence, the wet grass. My feet cold and awake in the black add love a barely visible shift in the light almost imperceptible more a rustle a scent a change in the dark far off 
 
[00:01:13] Chris: Welcome to episode 7 of What Kind of Man Are You, the podcast about men, masculinity and boy, we love to talk about love and Degan another poem about love although this isn't a love episode. 
[00:01:31] Degan: No, we did two on love And this, so this is a segue another little love poem in the early stages.
But but this episode, we're going to respond to people who have commented on what they've heard so far. And it's, it doesn't really relate, but, I'm in a cottage right now. I'm outside Huntsville, and I'm looking out the window to Wasiosa Lake. Overcast skies, beautiful forest all around, and that poem, had a lot of wet grass, and firefly in meadow, and that kind of thing.
So it's more about where I'm at, I think.
[00:02:05] Chris: I am at home. This is, we've been recording remotely for the last two, three episodes. So I'm glad this technology exists. 
[00:02:17] Degan: Totally. 
[00:02:18] Chris: Yeah, "" we've been really wanting to listen to what our listeners are saying and, take their feedback.
W
e're going to respond to some of the feedback. The other thing I want to say is that we are coming close. We aren't sure how many more episodes we have but we're coming close to the end of our first season Keep those cards and letters coming We really want your feedback for what our second season should sound like, because we intend to do find people to interview and broaden our discussion.
We've been very focused on our own personal experiences, which I think has been necessary to lay the groundwork for our exploration. I haven't had this feedback, but in the back of my mind, there's questions of, different cultures experience manhood in different ways and and even, what is a woman's experience of masculinity and that sort of thing.
So those are areas I'd love to explore more and hopefully have some some guests to talk about with. So this is the beginning of exploring that, I think, because we want to mention some of the things that people have said to us. 
[00:03:31] Degan: Just on that, when you said having guests I had someone who had listened to the podcast, and she said what I would like, would be someone who identifies as female asking us very direct questions about what is your experience of being a man.
[00:03:49] Chris: That's an interesting thing for us to not just ask each other questions, but to face some questions from someone who is not a host. Yeah. Degan, do you want me to start with some of the comments?
[00:04:03] Degan: Yeah, read something and we'll riff and we'll see what what emerges out of it. 
[00:04:08] Chris: Let me start with a compliment, because, we love the compliments . Please tell Degan he's a great poet. 
[00:04:16] Degan: Oh, thanks. 
That's your response, Degan? Yeah, that's great. Yeah. We're recording this at the end of the Olympics, so I'm giving Degan a gold medal for poetry. Thanks. No, that's really great. And I really, yeah, I think we'll see how we end up doing the second season. 
 It's just another way that people can explore this topic, 
[00:04:38] Chris: But one thing I do want to say about the poetry and why we took this approach is, and I think we talked about it in the first episode a little bit, but and I have been interested in this topic for a large part of our adult lives.
This is not something we come to lightly and in fact, your book title is the same title as this podcast and I really felt like introducing each podcast with a poem from your book was an opportunity to different facets and do it in a way that was maybe a little different from other podcasts.
So I'm really grateful that we've been able to do that. And I don't know, we're going to run out of poems, so I don't know if we're going to be able to keep doing it for future seasons, but we'll certainly be referring to literary sources in our future conversations.
[00:05:38] Degan: Absolutely. Absolutely. 
[00:05:40] Chris: for our episode about friendshipsyou wanted to name some examples of famous friendships. And, and I drew a blank. I got Lennon McCartney, and then I went blank. Someone wrote in with a very long list of some famous male friendships.
Oh, read them. Do you want me to list them? Please. Okay, so in the vein of music, we have Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, of course. Hall and Oates, which, by the way, 
I think they, they aren't friends anymore. I've heard they've, I've heard they've split. I certainly haven't heard a song from them in a long time.
They were huge in the 80s . 
[00:06:22] Degan: It's making me think of Simon and Garfunkel and, their split and then their famous return for the concert in High Park. I don't know how to say it. 
[00:06:30] Chris: Central Park. 
[00:06:31] Degan: Oh, Central Park, Hyde Park. I tried to 
[00:06:33] Chris: Toronto's not the center of the universe, Degan.
[00:06:36] Degan: Yeah, I tried to deposit them on the I tried to take them for my own. 
[00:06:42] Chris: Yeah, I, there's an iconic photograph of that from the air, isn't there? That was a huge reunion. Any other music ones here? Some of these are famous, but maybe more. There's Axl Rose and Slash from Guns N Roses. 
[00:06:57] Degan: Okay. I didn't know they were particularly close. 
[00:06:59] Chris: That's Yeah, I would say that is a fraught friendship, probably. Another one for the Pink Floyd fans out there, David Gilmour and Roger Waters.
Another one that's probably not a friendship anymore. This is from a friend of mine. Sorry, I don't know their first names. From Metallica, Hetfield, and Ulrich. 
[00:07:21] Degan: Okay. 
I don't know much about Metallica he's going to be very disappointed in me. Just to move away from music for a moment, I got a text from a friend who was saying that People Magazine did an article on Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds.
[00:07:38] Chris: Oh, yeah. 
[00:07:39] Degan: And just, some of the pieces was really just about how they do say they love each other and how they've really, truly been a support for each other over their careers. And they talk, weekly a bunch of times in a week. And so that was it's interesting in a way that would be such big news, and they would, it would be a huge topic.
That male friendship, that people talking regularly and supporting each other. It goes back to that kind of bro, bromance talk, 
[00:08:10] Chris: Yeah, like it's weird that they're fond of each other. Yeah, there's something about it, yeah. Yeah, nothing yeah, and Isn't that, isn't there a Deadpool and Wolverine movie right now?
[00:08:21] Degan: Yeah. 
[00:08:22] Chris: Yeah. So they're, they even get to make movies together just like we get to make a podcast together. Although in the vein of movie stars, there's of course, Brad Pitt and George Clooney. Theirs is a much more, I feel like theirs is a much more, almost like a 1950s style friendship Clooney is the suave debonair suit wearing one, and Brad Pitt is more the I don't know, rough and tumble.
[00:08:50] Degan: Yeah, the slight James Dean 
[00:08:51] Chris: Yeah, slight. Yeah. Any other movie stars on this list? I don't see any here. A couple of computer guys like Steve Jobs and Wozniak. What's his first name? I don't know. 
 
[00:09:09] Degan: One of the comments that came from someone was, what they missed in the podcast about friendship.
Was really examples. And just yeah of men who are really close, and there was even from, we mentioned a couple so just to be honest, I can't even, we hardly mentioned it and I, we talked about mentorship a little bit, which is different and.
In a way, but I'm still feeling like I have to grasp and really think about, about, performative friendship, but friendships that we would know about, that kind of claim a kind of classic place, I'm thinking about, for example it's like Bernie Taupin and Elton John, Taupin writing the lyrics and Elton John writing the music and that's I don't know the this is I feel like we're maybe doing a rough draft of something of a podcast here, but it'd be interesting to know what, like how much of friendship is there and how much professionalism and how much dis cord is there.
[00:10:12] Chris: This is the thing, though. And I think the fact that we're stumbling is interesting, right? Because this idea of, and I like, I think about You mentioned Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman and that seems to be an example of two friends who are affectionate in a friendship way.
Care about each other, talk to each other, but the truth is the celebrities are hard to know, and so we look for, people to give us examples of these sorts of things, but, we'll never really know their realities, but we do know that something comes out of these friendships.
And other thing too is this a male thing? I don't know, but you think about Lennon McCartney, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards even the movie stars, Clooney and Pitt and Reynolds and Jackman, they're valued for their output. And this is something I would like to talk about in a future season is the idea of if women are judged by their appearance. Men are judged by their productivity almost productivity is valued more than appearance. I don't know, I'm thinking out loud again, this feels like a first draftbut at the same time,
What do we want from these, what do we want from these famous people? 
[00:11:42] Degan: I think for me, I think if I think about male friendship, we learn from watching people. I take risks in different ways, and find connection and love. 
And I'm just trying to think of I think about people I can be inspired by just individuals, for me, I've always been a great fan of Tom Waits, the singer and of George Saunders in the last decade, the short story writer and novelist who, just, is so full of compassion, but also can look at the true darkness in the world and find some light in it.
He has a wonderful sub stack and he's such a really powerful and wonderful writer. So those are individuals that are inspiring. So I just, I think I, I come at searching for male friendships, either public ones or my own friends or I'm, people I'm seeing have such a strong friendship as a way to say, okay it's not the norm.
We don't like the fact that we're struggling to try and figure, come up with people who have this strong friendship and can lead us or be like, yeah, like these people, like that's if they can do it, they do it. And that, that really can help men like to connect to one another. And you and I are doing this literally on the bedrock of our own friendship which is, one of the true lights of my life.
And that's just, it's amazing. It's just like my life is better with it/
[00:13:10] Chris: So to just go to music for one second I and not necessarily music, but I think about like Lennon McCartney and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
These are people who intensely close and intensely creative together and the value of the, and I, perhaps we could we dare to say that about our podcast? Perhaps there is something with us where. Everybody's friendship is complicated, even ours, and I don't just look to what are the nice things about their friendship, but how do they respond to the difficulties and the tensions that naturally occur?
And sometimes those friendships end, and obviously, with Mick and Keith, there was a lot of waxing and waning in that friendship, but, we still seem to find a way to, what are those guys, a hundred years old now, and they're still rocking out 
[00:14:11] Degan: That's interesting, right? Because I read Keith Richards biography a few years ago. I have a lot of respect for him. He's probably, he's my favorite stone and he's played with Tom Waits. He's had his own career. I would say he's underrated as a guitar player as well.
[00:14:26] Chris: He was very inventive in terms of, yeah, musically. He, and as a songwriter, I'd say yeah, 
[00:14:36] Degan: but just to say, he certainly in the biography, they were chalk and cheese, they were so different. They are so different and I think it's interesting the fact that they still play shows and they seem to enjoy it and they still jump around the stage and whatever, try and do the splits and stuff, which is great.
I don't, it's funny, I don't feel that necessarily as a friendship and if it is, God bless them, Mick is a diva. And to me and a great songwriter and a wonderful performer, and Keith Richards is a more of a James Dean even Tom Waits ish kind of character, and just kind of real, like not interested in the theatrics in that way.
And it is, but the fact of a friendship, if there is a friendship there, God bless them, but I, 
[00:15:16] Chris: yeah, based on the, 
Of course, that biography really feels like it's written at a particular time. And who knows what he would write now about, about their friendship or whatever.
But yeah, I see, I agree with you, I think Mick is in love with the performance and Keith feels like he's much more about the music. But there's something about that works and that kind of. 
[00:15:42] Degan: Yeah, and about the songwriting. 
And the same thing with Lennon McCartney. Oh, sure. out.
Wonderful Get Back three part. Series on Disney plus that's, that was one of the, that was one of the most amazing kind of musical, even though they know they're being recorded and they are performing for the camera, there's moments where they forget and and they are creating those songs together.
Maybe that chalk and cheese creatively it's also something that keeps friendships moving, 
[00:16:10] Chris: Yeah, I think about you and me I'm quite introverted. You're quite extroverted. I will never forget the time that you Signalong Messiah and I was like, oh, I don't want to do that.
And you're like, come on, let's sing. That's. And and eventually I agreed to, and I had the best time. Like it was sometimes you need that person to either push you or rein you in, So I imagine that a lot in, in, good musical pairings.
[00:16:47] Degan: Totally. And, just talking about you and I too, Chris, the thing that we haven't done recently. And I think. Yeah, I'm not sure he did it just before COVID when we began, I don't know if it was your idea to say once a month, let's surprise each other with some event. Oh, yeah place to go and and that was like that was the I've never done that with any other human being in my life and you know we I you got in the car with me and had no idea where you were going and it was to a place called the tree museum in graham, ontario Which is this outdoor sculpture forest kind of garden.
And we just wandered around and looked at these metal and iron sculptures and and that, and you took me to something similar, the one in the Scarborough Bluffs. 
[00:17:37] Chris: What's it called? The Guild I don't know what it's called now. The Guild Inn, basically, where they it's a graveyard of old, features from mostly downtown Toronto.
And it's this really wild place. You can walk around and just see all these pieces of buildings that, and yeah that, that is fun. We should we should get back on that. Shouldn't we? 
[00:18:01] Degan: Yeah. I, in a way, I think, We're inventing inventing ways to, how great to go for a beer and watch a hockey game and that, but we're also like inventing ways to do things as friends.
You showed me the graveyard of 1930s architecture and the Scarborough Bluffs. And I think I was surprised you with a modern dance performance at the opera or the ballet, that kind of thing, just like. Curious stuff. And and I feel like you have to invent it, so I like maybe for second season, part of this is, this is just a thought now, maybe we could even have on a couple of really good friends, right?
[00:18:41] Chris: Yeah, that's a good idea. 
[00:18:42] Degan: And just say, tell us about your friendship. Tell us about tell us how it, how it deepened, you and I talked about this in a previous episode. Where I felt you were upset about something and this was early days and I was I remember being like maybe i'll just leave this i'm not doing it and feeling you know that was a big moment and just Yeah, we could ask.
Yeah, what started it? What deepens it? What keeps you guys going and there's other pieces too like I have friends who i've known for a long time childhood friends where you know certainly the tension has some of that Lennon Mccartney Mick Jagger, Keith Richards feel to it, almost like brothers and the closeness and the tension there.
So there's lots of pieces, and how people keep 
friendship going over the years. So yeah, that's something for the future. 
[00:19:27] Chris: Yeah, that this, consider this an open invitation. 
[00:19:31] Degan: Yeah, absolutely. 
Wait, Chris, I'm going to interrupt yourself and myself here.
We're going to have a brief break, and then we're going to be back with more questions. 
And we're back after that break. Give us another Chris.
[00:19:55] Chris: So there's one, there's a couple more that I'm just going to throw out there, because they're there's the Rat Pack, Sinatra Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
Lot of these are from the same person, Waldorf and Statler on the Muppet show Statler
[00:20:12] Degan: 
are they the critics? 
[00:20:13] Chris: Yeah, they're the guys at the balcony making fun of everything 
[00:20:17] Degan: Then you got Bert and Ernie and Bert. 
[00:20:20] Chris: Oh, they're yeah 
[00:20:22] Degan: They're chalk and cheese, they're, yeah, they're fire and lightning, or fire and rain, whatever you want to call it.
 
[00:20:28] Chris: Okay, I don't want to go down an Ernie and Bert rabbit hole here, but there was a big thing around whether they were gay or not. Oh yeah, because they shared the same bed, yeah. Finally they came out, the Sesame Street Children's Television Workshop said They're not a couple, they're puppets, , and 
[00:20:46] Degan: They don't have, they don't have any junk.
[00:20:48] Chris: Yeah, it felt like a cop out to me. But, I honestly, I don't 
care. But I actually saw them as kids when I was a kid and, 
[00:20:58] Degan: They were very adult though, right? 
[00:21:00] Chris: They had an apartment together. 
[00:21:02] Degan: They got in quite, like Bert was the adult and Ernie was the kid.
Yeah. It's almost like a dad son kind of thing. 
So many episodes where Ernie would like ponder life and Bert would just want to go to sleep. Totally. Give us a few more, Chris. Give us a few more. 
[00:21:24] Chris: There's okay, this is my favorite, which is Captain Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Ah, I love this. 
The holy trinity of male friendship. I, I love this because I feel like Kirk, Kirk is I'm not quite sure. He's the dreamer. He's the lover. He's the fighter. He's what's that? Passionate. Yeah. Yeah. And McCoy is passionate in his own way, but he's always like the realist, right? He's the doctor. He's the one saying, Jim, 
[00:21:59] Degan: His feet are on the ground, even though he's in the far reaches of space.
[00:22:03] Chris: Yeah. And then of course, Spock is the one who is partially human and partially what is it Vulcan? And so his primary motivations are logic. 
 A lot of these shows as a kid and I saw a few of the movies and that, that sort of, there's so much to say about about Star Trek because, one of the things that did is it had like cultures from around the world represented and it had women as important characters.
Yeah. But this, in terms of men, I'd be, I don't know perhaps Sulu and Scotty don't quite fit in with those three. Because I do see Kirk, Spock and McCoy as almost three facets of the same person. And I really like that suggestion. 
[00:22:53] Degan: That's great. 
 
I just want to say a little bit about some friendships. Like my friendship with you has been absolutely crucial. And I feel like I'd like to say a couple of things about other male friends of mine.
Because really the only thing I can really know is in terms of the experience of it is my own, and I had something curious happen. I, because my father was so much older than my mom and people would often say oh is that your grandfather kind of thing when I was walking down the street with him as a kid, and like I would be 10 and he would be 60 and as a result, I became pretty I became drawn to having friendships with older men and it was a very naturally occurring thing.
And I remember I lived in Japan for three years and became close to a wonderful teacher who went by Mr. Nakazawa sensei, Mr. Nakazawa. I think there was some, there was, it was a real friendship and I think he enjoyed, my take a being from Canada and being from another country and culture.
But also this sense that we could bring our different eras to each other, and that was just beautiful. And I remember, I think it was that I was about twenty eight at the time when I met him and my father had just died actually the year before that so and I'm not going to say as simple as that was a father figure like a replacement in that way.
It didn't feel that way exactly. 
 
But I think there was a kind of comfort and it's curious for me to think of how we are drawn to people? And what are the energies that draws in and that happened again as you met my friend, Stan Dragland mentioned in the previous episode of, wonderful writer and editor and supporter of writers who died a couple of years ago, and he was 20 years older than I was, and when I moved to St.
John's, Newfoundland I sought him out because he was to me, like this, wonderful, foundational figure in Canadian literature, and I just wanted to know him, and we connected through music and then we ended up playing music every Tuesday night for five years in his house in Newfoundland.
And so a lot of our friendship was based on, singing and exploring music and sharing music. But lots of other pieces as well. But I think there was something just something in, bringing these other worlds and for me just feeling yeah. I lost my father at 28 and I knew what it was like to be around an older energy, right?
Someone from another, not in a completely another time, grew up with a very different world and
 
[00:25:25] Degan: I think one of the feedback pieces that you mentioned to me was that someone said, why was mentorship part of your friendship episode? And I'm hearing the answer to that question right there. Yes. Yeah. And you know what I like about that is, is that it's that you don't have to choose one or the other. Yeah. I think, you can have purely mentorship roles, and I think that's what they are. But yeah, and I would say also it can be a two way street, with Stan in particular, he absolutely mentored me in my career as a writer.
Supported me in writing letters of recommendation to the master's program that I'm still in right now, and as an editor and as a recommender of books. But in another way, because I had done a therapy and I was moving in that direction, I think he really appreciated the kind of emotional openness I could bring.
And I would, and he would sayit's really great to talk about this stuff. It's really great to be able to talk about relationships and loss and grief, as well as us drinking scotch at two in the morning and working on harmonies and stuff.
But, so in a way then, perhaps I did mentor him in that way, if we wanna say that but the fact that it's back and forth is what maybe keeps the friendship like in the more, more seminal, in the mentorship. 
[00:26:44] Chris: I don't have a lot to add to that, but I would say that any good mentorship is a two-way street.
Like the mentor has to, it, it is not this kind of passing down of knowledge from the senior generation to the junior generation. There's also the kind of, what does the questioning of the mentee, what does their experience bring to that? And I think that's really important to acknowledge.
[00:27:10] Degan: And then you have the whole trope, too, of, oh, the student has outgrown the teacher, right? That's right. 
[00:27:18] Chris: The servant becomes the master. 
[00:27:21] Degan: There you go. There you go. Yeah. 
[00:27:23] Chris: Okay. Let's move on. What should we address next? 
I think this was actually calling me out specifically, because I asked you if you were a feminist, you said yes, and you had good reasons for it.
And then you asked me, and I basically, quickly said, I don't call myself a feminist. And a couple people were rather shocked by that. So I would like to address that and I would appreciate any any comments you have about. So the reason I don't call myself a feminist is I feel like to give yourself an IST, an I S T at the end of your, you have to you have to have done the work, right? I could say I am pro feminist, no, no doubts there. I can say that feminism has taught me a lot and I can, I have a lot more to learn from feminism, but I don't feel like I've earned the title. That's why I don't call myself that.
So yeah, sure. I've read Judith Butler and I've read Gloria Steinem and I've read Oh, who's the famous one from the 50s and 60s? 
[00:28:39] Degan: Gloria Steinem. 
[00:28:40] Chris: Gloria Steinem, but earlier than that, Betty Friedan. 
[00:28:44] Degan: Betty Friedan, yeah. 
[00:28:46] Chris: And even like some of the radical feminists. I've done some reading, but for me to say that I'm a feminist I feel like it's, disingenuous and someone could easily come up to me and say if you're a feminist, have you thought about so and so's approach to blah, blah, blah.
And I'd be like, I didn't even know that person existed. So that's why I'm careful about. Using that word it is not 
[00:29:13] Degan: If you do your homework between season one and two you can come back and become a feminist 
[00:29:17] Chris: You too could be a feminist chris 
[00:29:19] Degan: You know just to say on that though that whole idea that you know. That idea of it's almost like it holds up a perfect definition of something, like i'm a an artist, you know I work with someone for about five years who I thought was a really great painter, but he never said the word the words i'm an artist and one day after you know in therapy session.
I said, can you try these words on and they were a Very powerful. It was a very powerful moment for him, too share that to say that out loud and I think it took him another few months to own it and just saying now he owns it in a lot of different ways And it just to say I think it may have a lot to do too with our sense of self and how we yeah, certainly an IST an artist a feminist a communist a socialist, whatever It's yes, it sounds so fulsome, I guess that you're a card carrying member of something.
 
[00:30:16] Chris: That's interesting. Do you would you consider yourself an artist because you're a writer? 
[00:30:20] Degan: I would consider myself an early stage artist. Yeah, yeah, I would even though I'm 53. I feel like i'm i'm just Finding my stride and there are it's you know I love reading stories about people who find their art and their sense of being an artist when they're in their fifties and sixties, and there are a lot a lot of writers, particularly female writers who have had to, have done the largest share of raising kids, right?
And even Alice Monroe saying I went to short stories because I simply didn't have time to write novels, and thank God for that because those are some of the greatest short stories. 
[00:31:00] Chris: Yeah, I guess there's a feeling of so it's like comment is usually like you believe in equal pay for equal work you believe that women should have the right to vote all these sorts of things and it's so therefore you're a feminist And it's like I don't know.
I don't know if I feel I earned the right to call myself a feminist just because I believe women should be, just because feminists made that happen. Doesn't mean I belong in the same class, but you know what, 
maybe the question doesn't matter that much. Maybe it's more like focusing on, I've had people call me feminist because of what I believe does it, maybe the label doesn't matter that much.
[00:31:42] Degan: Yeah, maybe it's about allying yourself with what you think is right, other shapes of society in a way that you think is just, is good. 
[00:31:50] Chris: Yeah another topic. Okay. 
So I have had also more than one person say that we should talk about stoicism. I'm going to be honest here. I don't know much about it. Do you know anything about stoicism, Degan? 
[00:32:07] Degan: I would come at that if we just touch on it a little bit, not from any kind of perspective. Philosophical standpoint if you going back to a Greek term I'm not going to wax about that, but if we think about being stoic, the word that comes to my mind is being resilient and and, being stoic in the sense of, yeah, like you're under duress and you stick with something, and I think if I just,speak about my own self and my own childhood, that I I feel like kids in general and let's talk about being boys, which, boys and men, I feel like there's a certain stoicism boys are forced to reckon with.
Simply by saying, I'm a boy and being seen as a boy and you and I've talked about being bullied at times and having to figure that out but not having places to talk about it, not having support for it. And so to me, that kind of invites stoicism.
What else are you going to do? In this memoir I'm working on right now about panic, I had panic, a lot of panic attacks for a long time in my 20s, which you know about. And in it, I say children never claim victimhood. Children are victims.
Adults are victims, but children never claim it. And maybe in rare cases they hear someone acting a victim and they would be doing that to get attention or something because they need help. Fair enough. But children don't, they don't present themselves as victims.
They are often silent sufferers, and so that to me invites stoicism and that stoicismbecomes this adjustment in their personalities to say, I am going to survive this at all costs. And that's what I feel like a therapist job is to look at that stoicism and say you absolutely needed this here, like for, in my case, it was I will become independent.
Almost invincible in my independence and in some ways I'm really proud of that I feel like I can do a lot of things on my own. But the other side of that is when you really need help how do you reach out for it? And so 
if I can say there's a stoic part of me that I really admire in myself and that was really like I really I describe it in this book I'm working on that i've just finished actually as a kind of superpower. You know, no one's going to get to me until, which is totally fine until you absolutely fall to pieces and need someone, and then you don't know how to 
[00:34:41] Chris: Someone does get to you.
[00:34:43] Degan: Yeah. Someone does get to you or you get depressed or you have a panic attack and you're like, what is going on here? I feel like I'm going to die, or I feel like I'm, I don't want to live anymore, that kind of thing. So to me, I think kids are. Boys in particular, but all of us have, yeah, are invited to be stoic and then it's unpacking that and saying, okay, but again, that's just my definition right here.
 I'm not even sure what that word meant to the person who asked.
 
[00:35:12] Chris: It actually was a couple of people. First of all. I think, yeah, I think it's important to distinguish between the modern idea of being stoic, which I would think of as not showing emotion, like being tough in the In the face of adversity which, I think has its roots in the concept of Stoicism, but I think Stoicism is a way of looking at the world using reason and logic and trying to understand what's really going on rather than just reacting to it, but I think maybe we'll have to look more into this and follow it up to see.
[00:35:59] Degan: You could just go back and put resilience instead of stoicism in terms of what I've just said about, yeah. But, an interesting piece there might be, what is in being a boy and a man how stoicism at least from a general sense of how we see boys and men, dominant cultural ideas doesn't that sense demand stoicism? So you can say, Oh, I can choose this, but how much has been expected from a very early age, simply boys don't cry, right? How do you invent a stoic person? Tell them boys don't cry over and over again and hit them or berate them for crying, call them a girl, call them a sissy, and suddenly you see what happens, you turn those tears to whatever, stone or something, and there you go. To me, I don't find the idea very, I shouldn't say I don't find it interesting it doesn't seem a choice. It doesn't seem or it just seems like society pushes it. 
[00:37:01] Chris: Yeah I also probably you and I differ on this, but I tend to resist ancient wisdom as a way of modeling my life and 
[00:37:14] Degan: Does that mean you don't do human sacrifices in your backyard, or burn goats and things?
[00:37:18] Chris: I tried it, and it just didn't help. 
[00:37:21] Degan: Were there human sacrifices? Yeah, there were human sacrifices for sure.
[00:37:24] Chris: In some in some cultures for sure. And in fact, sometimes they wouldn't be called human sacrifice, but that's a whole other whole other topic. no that, that that I don't do.
 I don't want to deny the value of, you look at the Greeks who have developed the very basis of science and how we know the world. We don't want to throw all that out. But at the same time, I don't think I need a model from 2 to 3000 years ago as a way to run my life.
And so that's where I resist, but at the same time, I want to be open to hearing what other people have used to understand their own selves and own the world they live in better. Okay, I think we need to take a quick break and we'll be right back with more of your comments and questions. 
 Welcome back. We're here with your questions. 
 
[00:38:35] Degan: This makes me, think about male friendship over time. And what it'd be interesting to have someone on who, a historian, have a historian on friendship in the ancient world, the medieval world which I think that'd be a fascinating friendship to me is one of the more powerful forces in the world, I even think it can be, and it has been for me recently, more
important than romantic relationships, because I haven't been in one for a couple of years and I'm just moving into that world now, but friendship so I have a whole, my whole philosophy of life now is, is planting friendship.
As one of the most important relationships that exist period, and so anyway, all to say, I would love to continue talking about male friendship through the ages and 
[00:39:25] Chris: Yeah, that would be great because I think that it's still, given how much we, you and I have talked about it on this podcast alone, there's there's so much to explore and there's so much so many unwritten and unspoken rules that we just don't even talk about that are that just happen.
 
[00:39:45] Degan: This has happened a number of times in my counseling role where a female client is talking about their male partner. Male partner is going through either depression or a loss of a job or something, and they're doing their best to support them.
And they're saying, Hey, talk to a therapist yourself. But what they're really always coming back to is I want him to share this with his male friends. Want him to build those those relationships more. And on the occasions and there are a number where that person does reach out to friends often, for the first time, the female client comes back and says, I can't tell you how relieved I am that he has begun to share this.
And it's as if if it doesn't go out to friendship, she's going to try and hold it as best she can. But our partners partners, our role is. You know is we cannot hold friendship lover spouse, mother, parental role, person who does housework like we talked about this in an earlier episode on our partners and to add friendship to that and I think you know, it's too much and I think that sense that they female clients of mine have come back and said I can't tell you the relief
I feel that he has gone out and chatted and talked to somebody about what, what was happening. And it just feels oh, he's come back a new person, just from an hour going out and really saying, yeah, I'm having a hard time. 
[00:41:10] Chris: Yeah. And this is something I think is really true in our culture is that we, as men, we tend to see our, as straight men I can only speak to we tend to see our partner as our source of emotional support and when we get into a relationship, it's almost girlfriend, wife, whatever suddenly becomes something maybe they didn't fully sign up for, right?
It's you used to hang out with your friends more often maybe talk to them about some of this stuff and I think one relationship I had ended because I had become too emotionally dependent on that person, and 
[00:41:54] Degan: A friendship you mean? 
[00:41:55] Chris: No a love relationship.
[00:41:57] Degan: Got it, yeah. 
[00:41:58] Chris: And if I had been more I don't know, it may have ended for a lot of other reasons too, but maybe one thing I can learn from that breakup is that my partner is not my only source of emotional support. It's not it's not like my wife now is unsupportive because she's very supportive.
But if she was the only one who had that job, and I didn't have friends like you I would be so much more difficult to be married to. 
[00:42:27] Degan: Yeah. And absolutely agree. And I think this is, why we're talking about, bringing to light this idea of how to do male friendship, how to find it, how to deepen it.
[00:42:40] Chris: And maybe why we wanted to look at are there examples of it out in the pop culture that we can look to at least get an example of it.
[00:42:49] Degan: It just makes me think we, we read some of that poem of mine, Facebook Open Group for Men. And one of the lines. I'm just going to look for it here early on because it touches on that sense of of friendship.
Wait a moment. Click to ask, will the easeful Saturday night camaraderie of watching hockey be enough? And it's yeah, it's great to do, great to watch sports and have fun and and is it enough? And that's, it's a really crucial question for health, right?
It's a crucial question for our health and just, I don't know, being vibrant human beings, 
[00:43:24] Chris: Yeah. 
And I think about 
You and I really like watching sports together, but one of the things I really like about getting together and watching sports with you is that, between hockey periods, we have great conversations and we can talk about our lives and that sort of thing.
It's not this, it's not that watching sports is the problem. It's just If there's nothing else, then it becomes then it's not enough. 
[00:43:52] Degan: Yeah. I want to just read the last couple of lines from this Facebook poem. Because it does, I think, touch some of that. So remember, this is called Facebook Open Group for Men here.
Click if you're making it all up, just like the rest of us. Click if you have the wounding, the bites, and the burning, but not the transformation of high school. Click if no tribe was waiting for you after grad. Click here to learn how to be nine again, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty two, thirty six, forty one, fifty five.
Click here to say, man, this is cold sober now. I love you. 
[00:44:37] Chris: Which is a callback to an earlier line in the poem about being drunk and saying, man, I love you. 
[00:44:44] Degan: Totally. Yeah. Four pints in. Yeah. I love you, man. Yeah, exactly. And, yeah and, again, we say, you have to always use that language, but that idea of just being real and risking something, risking even to say, man, I'm having a hard time with my relationship or, I got this new boss and it's really hard to take, it's just I don't want to go into work or whatever.
I don't know what you're, what I'm going to do. That kind of thing, putting it out there is like half the battle and these sound like such obvious things, but I think, they're they are cliches in the sense that they keep arising over and over again. This is why we, we've we've gone to an area around friendship and male friendship here again.
But it's like it's I want to keep bringing this stuff up because it's so pervasive it's so pervasive that there's this isolation and and, isolation is really at the heart of most mental illness. You get depressed and you often isolate from others, you lose out on the friendship or on sharing what's actually happening.
And same with panic, the whole point of panic, the first thing you do with a panic attack is try and contact somebody. Try and have some kind of touch. And I say this because in the sense of friendship if that door's not already open, if you haven't already, if I haven't already said to you, Hey Chris, can I talk to you when I'm feeling down?
And you and I have a contract around that, right? Even if I'm busy or you're busy, we have our thing that we can rant to one another. You can rant to me about work, I can rant to you about work, or about whatever's happening, in writing, or in relationships, and it's like, there's, that, to me, even though you might not read it for a day or two, even if you might say, I've hardly got any time, but I will read these later, which I know you will.
Like those have been like, really helped, but if you don't but we have a contract to say, Hey, we've been able to talk about this stuff. And so that means we can, I can write this, I can text this stuff to you and be like, I know it's cool to do that because you're just going to say I'm with you, and yeah, amazing.
How, like how I can dislodge a lot of frustration and feeling alone just from sending that stuff. 
[00:46:54] Chris: That's that is so that term contract at first I'm like contract. That seems a little rigid, but that is you were describing it. It's yeah, because, you and I have said to each other anytime, right?
Anytime we don't really mean at 2 in the morning if you have a neat idea that I want to get a phone call from you. What we mean is, and this is what we've done this. We've developed these ways that if I can't be there for you in that moment, I've said you can do this and vice versa. And that has really been so helpful. Like the sort of text rant. We call them rants. They aren't always rants. But or just even are sometimes they are. Yeah. I would say. Yeah. The majority of the time they are rants. And but It's we usually say this is going to be a rant.
I don't need a response. I just need I need somewhere to send it. And that has been like, so helpful to me in bad moments. And there are times where you're maybe you're working or whatever. And obviously you can't answer, but I didn't need that. All I needed to know was that you wouldn't say, don't text me anymore.
Like that you, that there was a place I could put that besides dumping it on my partner. 
[00:48:22] Degan: Totally. 
I'm just thinking, Chris, we've been chatting for a while. Are there any last comments that you've got on your sheet? 
[00:48:28] Chris: I only
 have one more comment. Do you have any? 
[00:48:31] Degan: Nope. 
 
[00:48:33] Chris: We have been chatting for a while, but the last comment is an hour is a long time to listen to a podcast.
Can you make it shorter? And I think we could 
[00:48:44] Degan: I think 42 minutes might be perfect. 42 minutes? Between 38 and 42 minutes. 
[00:48:50] Chris: Isn't 42 minutes the length of the average hour long TV show? 
[00:48:54] Degan: That makes sense. In the golden age of television, 
[00:48:56] Chris: with commercials and everything.
So maybe that's what we should do. If you get in touch with us 
[00:49:03] Degan: Wait. When you said the average the average, what did you say? Average length. Before you put TV show, I thought you were going to say the average length of good sex, just putting that out there. That's what came to me.
[00:49:15] Chris: I would have to do, I'll have to do more research on that, Degan. 
[00:49:18] Degan: If you want us to accompany you for good sex, 42, 38 to 42 minutes. Yeah. 
[00:49:24] Chris: No commercial breaks though, you won't have to do that. But if you want to buy a commercial on our podcast, we're quite open to that. All right. So I think we don't need a question from each other. Cause we been doing that. Yeah. But I do have a joke for you. 
[00:49:41] Degan: Do you got it? I'm ready. Okay. 
So I told my wife that I want it to be cremated when I die. And she was like, why? And I said. It may be my last chance to have a smoking hot body. Oh, man. 
[00:50:04] Chris: Not bad. 
[00:50:05] Degan: Not bad. 
Do you make that up? 
[00:50:08] Chris: No, I stole it. 
[00:50:09] Degan: You stole it.
[00:50:09] Chris: It was on Twitter. And we should invite jokes from listeners too.
If you've got a good dad joke, we want to hear it. 
[00:50:18] Degan: Yes. 
[00:50:19] Chris: Make us groan. Does that sound right?
 
[00:50:23] Degan: Make us groan. 
 
[00:50:32] Chris: What Kind of Man Are You is hosted by Chris Garbutt and Degan Davis. Produced by Chris Garbutt at VQC Media. You can support us at buymeacoffee.com slash Chris Garbutt. Music composed and performed by Degan Davis. You can buy Degan's book at brickbooks.ca. 
 Thank you to all our supporters and listeners.