Man oh manosphere. Odds are, you’ve heard that there’s a wildly popular Louis Theroux documentary on Netflix these days, one where the extremely British documentarian spends an ungodly amount of time with prominent reactionary dude influencers. Garrett watched it, Sarah didn’t, so join along as he takes her on a journey through a strange world of washboard abs, one-way monogamy and, well, some of the worst imaginable opinions and actions. The big question: Do we really need to spend time with these guys? Or is there a more interesting story right outside the frame.

LINKS!

• A very good video about youth travel baseball.

• Official Netflix site for the Theroux documentary.

• Oops! Garrett snuck in Lindy West discourse into the episode. Here’s some important background, here’s Garrett’s piece, and here’s our bonus episode on polyamory and moving to the Midwest.

• You definitely shouldn’t take the “female delusion survey” we referenced in the episode but here it is.

• Some smart thoughts from Andi Zeisler and her teenage son (Salon).

• A good review from Lucy Mangan in the Guardian.

• H20 Just Add Water: An Australian show about mermaids and also a real estate developing dad who finds his heart (A Sarah recommendation? Maybe?).

• Too many people (Garrett included) have opinions about the fox and bunny’s relationship in Zootopia 2.

More:

• This Week In Breeders is a podcast! And you can listen to it wherever you like to listen to podcasts (Apple; Spotify; at the gym, where you’re working to turn your soy arms into tempeh arms).

• But if you really want to stay updated, you should go to thisweekinbreeders.org and subscribe, so that you get episodes delivered directly to your inbox.

• And then, after you do so, you should be like “but now I really want to support this podcast, and I’d also love to listen to their bonus episodes, like the recent one, where we were brave enough to ask POLYAMORY OR MOVING TO THE MIDWEST,” opt for a paid subscription.

• Or maybe you want another way to help us out, which is very kind of you. Would you consider dropping us one of those five star reviews on your preferred podcast app? Or telling your friends? Thank you!

• In every case, thanks for being here, pals!

Oh, what's this? Just a very chill, normal Ask Breeders Anything episode, dropping at a very chill, normal time (we originally intended to share this last week, but were thwarted by life events). But oh goodness, what a treasure trove awaits you. This is one of those episodes where your two hosts really lean into their urban coastal sophisticate/flyover…

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Oh wow. What great faces we’re making in that thumbnail image. It looks like we’re extremely concerned.

And with good reason, actually, because this week we too are considering whether the kids all right. Hard to say, honestly. On one hand, there’s a new poll out that reveals that Gen Z men have more conservative politics than their grandfathers. And oh buddy are there far too many bad faith dude whisperers trying to convince young fellas to join the He Man Women Hater’s Club. But the Breeders can’t help but root for our slightly younger compatriots. We too are figuring it out.

This was a fun episode. Sarah interviewed Garrett about a recent piece he wrote about that study. This dovetailed into a discussion of a critique that Garrett often gets, when he makes arguments about how it’s more important for guys to care about being better neighbors than being “better men.” Namely, that young guys aren’t going to listen to all that potluck-based pablum. What if they need somebody to appeal directly to their manhood? What if they’ll ignore folks like Garrett who aren’t willing to talk to them about masculinity specifically?

Interesting questions, for sure. Pretty good fodder for a podcast, actually.

Also discussed: Various places Andie Macdowell has lived; whether the movie Groundhog Day holds up; Garrett’s birthday (and the best age to have a birthday); Garrett’s entire taxonomy of the manosphere in less than five minutes; Sarah’s first ever boundary; a movie that is not out in theaters yet but that Sarah has already pre-analyzed; consensual open mouth stranger kissing… and a very bizarre novelty t-shirt.

Links:

• Literally just a Facebook thread of Missoulians bragging about seeing Andie Macdowell around town.

• “Why Phil Connors from Groundhog Day is actually a terrible person”

• Kings College study on international viewpoints on gender (broken down by generation)

• Garrett’s essay about the study (“An open letter to the 31% of Gen Z men who believe that a woman’s role is to obey her husband”).

• Another field guide to the manosphere (Media Matters)

• on the Epstein class and the elite male drive to separate themselves from any actual human relationships (“Never Eat With Women,” ).

• “There is one word that explains why so many men are in the Epstein files, so why is nobody saying it” ( in ).

• Garrett and Celeste’s live conversation ( “Scott Galloway is basically a Mormon housewife”).

• “The empathy perception gap” (Stanford Report)

• Nate Bergatze is… The Breadwinner

• Elvis Presley, who, whether we want to admit it or not, embodies how both Sarah and Garrett would act on stage if they were international pop superstars.

Ready to go for a ride? We’re covering some ground today. Two co-hosts. Reminiscing about four moments in their lives. Rapid fire (well, rapid fire with tangents). We think you’ll pick up the format pretty quickly, but the basic idea is that we each remembered back to when we were 5, 15, 25 and 35 and reflected on who, during that time, was our model for how to be a man or a woman. As we yelled out loud (with airhorn) on the episode… IT’S A JOINT REFLECTIVE EXERCISE.

You know what was interesting about this? Just about everything. The two of us know each other pretty darn well. And yet, we were surprised and intrigued in a new way. Should you try this with your friends? Oh yeah. And as Sarah mentioned, we also wouldn’t hate it if you wanted to share some of these reflections with us as well.

Topics discussed: Claire Danes, the 1987 Jefferson County (Montana) Cross Country Team, trying on your mom’s clothes, vicarious keg stands, older siblings, the motherhood internet, our moms, our dads, literally taking bites out of Infinite Jest, and of course, getting knocked down, and getting up again, because you’re never gonna keep us down.

Links:

• An Instagram reel (from Garrett) about what he packs for kids at his speaking events.

• If you’re ever in Oakland when Sarah and her husband are hosting trivia, you should go!

• Hubba Hubba Zoot Zoot by Caramba (a real song!)

• Edge of Seventeen by Stevie Nicks (a much better remembered real song!).

• The trailer for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (since you don’t have the opportunity to watch the 1987 Jefferson High School Cross Country video).

• WMFO at Tufts University (sadly “talkin’ about women” is no longer on the air).

• The intro scene to My So-Called Life.

• A reflection on how— contrary to Garrett’s one-degree removed fantasy— the late ‘90s Missoula, Montana literary punk scene might have been easier for young men than women.

• The woman who is eating Infinite Jest

• The Barbie scene about men explaining Pavement to women.

• Madison, Wisconsin’s undergrad party scene (not pictured: Steve).

• Circa 2008 Lily Allen profile (the Guardian, of course).

• Steven Hyden’s fatherhood-focused profile of Kanye West for Grantland (note: this is a CIRCA 2013 KANYE WEST… a lot hadn’t happened yet!).

• Alyssa Liu’s dad, very proud but also thinking about his fathering life and realizing he could have made some different choices (relatable!).

• Sarah is right— everybody loves Kip’s dad from Heated Rivalry.

• A wonderful tribute to the Mel-O-Dee karaoke night in El Cerrito.

More:

• This Week In Breeders is a podcast! And you can listen to it wherever you like to listen to podcasts (Apple; Spotify; the very feminism-friendly DJ booth at Tufts University in the late 1990s, etc.).

• But if you really want to stay updated, you should go to thisweekinbreeders.org and subscribe, so that you get episodes delivered directly to your inbox.

• And then, after you do so, you should be like “but now I really want to support this podcast, and I’d also love to listen to their bonus episodes, like the recent one where shared what snacks she sneaks into movies and also asked Garrett “‘so, does your wife dress you?'” opt for a paid subscription.

• Or maybe you want another way to help us out, which is very kind of you. Would you consider dropping us one of those five star reviews on your preferred podcast app? Or telling your friends? Thank you!

• In every case, thanks for being here, pals!

This week’s Ask Breeders Anything is brought to you by two very specific liminal spaces. Sarah recorded her half while watching Olympic figure skating. That means, the Sarah you hear on this episode did not yet know that Alysa Liu was going to win gold, but guess what… she did! And you better believe that present tense Sarah, proud Oakland resident and …

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You all! It’s here! Our most anticipated episode of the year (according to the two of us, and only the two of us). The This Week In Breeders Oscars Spectacular.

Friends, there was so much gender in the movies last year. There were women having mental breakdowns and/or founding religions. There were men (so many men) being sad, playing sad baseball, doing sad art heists, reanimating sad corpses, making sad albums about the death of the American dream, becoming dads, being sad about being dads, realizing they were sad dads and it was time to suddenly become happy dads… truly, so much gender (especially that one gender). Also, there was at least one movie that truly changed Sarah’s life, and also a couple guys we’d definitely let babysit our kids (all our love to you, Benicio Del Toro, and also the sweet projectionist Grandpa in The Secret Agent).

Plus: The greatest surprise gift/musical interlude in podcasting history? Potentially! You need to listen to the end! We’re not just saying that!

• Last year’s Mother Of It All Oscar’s Episode (the secret origin story, both for this episode, and this podcast more generally).

• Sarah’s feature on If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (The Cut).

• Garrett is in Portland, Oregon this next weekend (Feb 20-22). Multiple events at Trinity Episcopal, including a public potluck on Friday night and a workshop on Saturday. Perhaps you’d like to come?

• Puppy bowl, baby (Garrett’s household is Team Fluff, by the way).

• The therapeutic board games that raised Sarah.

• Amanda Montei’s essay about how Frankenstein is much better than watching Frankenstein.

• Taffy Broadesser-Acker watches a Broadway show over and over again.

• Look! It’s Sarah and Garrett’s Letterboxd accounts.

• Garrett does not need this very expensive Testament of Ann Lee shirt (and Ann Lee would be disappointed in him if he did buy it), but you can understand why he’s torn, right?

• Though we both support buying the shirt

• Most importantly of all: The complete lyrics to “Gonna be hostin,” so that you too can sing along when Sarah performs it live on stage at the Oscars.

• Garrett would like to offer his apologies for mixing up the Skarsgards, and also for calling Ronald Bronstein “Richard,” but appreciates that Sarah was able to correct him.

• BREAKING NEWS: The number of living Shakers (reported by us as two) HAS RISEN TO THREE! LET’S GOOOOOO!

  

More:

• This Week In Breeders is a podcast! And you can listen to it wherever you like to listen to podcasts (Apple; Spotify; in your gothic bell tower where you reanimate corpses).

• But if you really want to stay updated, you should go to thisweekinbreeders.org and subscribe, so that you get episodes delivered directly to your inbox.

• And then, after you do so, you should be like “but now I really want to support this podcast, and I’d also love to listen to their bonus episodes, like the recent one where they shared their Instagram algorithms with each other and it was a WILD ride,” opt for a paid subscription.

• Or maybe you want another way to help us out, which is very kind of you. Would you consider dropping us one of those five star reviews on your preferred podcast app? Or telling your friends? Thank you!

• In every case, thanks for being here, pals!

This might be the platonic ideal of an Ask Breeders Anything episode, because we posed each other the same basic question (essentially: “so, um, the Olympics… any gender in there?”) but we each went to a very different place with it. Literally. Sarah did her half from a car wash.

Garrett’s half of the episode features a lot of unabashed Olympic fan-boyin…

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So, has this ever happened to you?

You and your cohost are recording a podcast. You’ve planned for this podcast. It’s going to be about the Oscars, a topic of intense mutual interest. And then, at the top of the episode, you start to talk about navigating this moment in American authoritarianism as a parent and before you know it you’ve decided to punt the Oscar talk to another week because this is literally all you can talk about now.

Oh, just us? Well, here you go then. We’re really proud of this one, because it feels like the present-tense contents of our heart literally split open. With jokes, still. And a heaping helping of affirmation and inspiration, because we really get into why this moment requires a wide variety of actions and activities. Is your contribution enough? Not alone, of course, but as one puzzle piece amongst several, absolutely!

What about the Oscars episode? Oh it’s coming. You better believe it’s coming. But in the meantime, thanks friends. Keep up the good work, even if it feels like it’s not enough. We love you.

[Full disclosure, there’s a little jump in the recording at the point where we decided to pivot the topic, but it’s just a blip and we hope it’s not too distracting].

Links:

• Want to give to the Minneapolis rental assistance project that Garrett talked about? It’s here! Thank you!

• Want to check out Garretts’s Love Letters To Minneapolis project (and add in your own)? It’s here!

• And here are some pictures of a few of those love letters, now hung up across the city of Minneapolis.

• Would you like a recipe for chicken tetrazzini? Remember that if you want it Sarah’s dad’s style you have to put it in the fridge “with a suggestion of foil” on top.

• Robert F. Worth in The Atlantic on the various lanes that Minneapolis activists are taking right now.

• The Potluck Manifesto (Garrett)

• Since we didn’t do Oscars this week and because Garrett referred to his account as “my bonsai tree,” here are Sarah and Garrett’s letterboxd accounts.

More:

• This Week In Breeders is a podcast! And you can listen to it wherever you like to listen to podcasts (Apple; Spotify; in a church basement, in hour four of a community organizing training, with your kid tugging at your jeans telling you they’re hungry and bored).

• But if you really want to stay updated, you should go to thisweekinbreeders.org and subscribe, so that you get episodes delivered directly to your inbox.

• And then, after you do so, you should be like “but now I really want to support this podcast, and I’d also love to listen to their bonus episodes, like the recent one where they shared their Instagram algorithms with each other and it was a WILD ride,” opt for a paid subscription.

• Or maybe you want another way to help us out, which is very kind of you. Would you consider dropping us one of those five star reviews on your preferred podcast app? Or telling your friends? Thank you!

• In every case, thanks for being here, pals!

You all, for better or worse, Sarah and Garrett have Instagram accounts. Also poor decision making skills. Put them together and you have this VERY REVEALING EPISODE where we live narrate our Instagram feeds for each other in attempt to answer one of the most frightening questions of our time: “Who does the algorithm think I am, and what if it’s right?”…

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Hi all, we’re back! It’s our first episode of the year, and our most timely one to date. We recorded this yesterday, with both the protests and the heinous ICE repression in Minneapolis deeply on our hearts.

This goes without saying, but these are simultatneously frightening and inspiring times. We wish that none of our neighbors had to stand up to this level of repression, but we’re unspeakably grateful for those who are. We’re also noticing something (and we’re definitely not alone here): In Minneapolis, as was the case in Chicago, Charlotte and LA, the care and resistance networks standing up to ICE are disproportionally led by women (especially moms) and trans people. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of cis men showing up (particularly in direct confrontations with agents), but there’s a pattern at play, one that should be familiar to anybody who's ever attended both PTA and DSA meetings. What’s going on? And what do we make of it? We’re proud of how we wrestled with a whole bunch of the relevant layers, and we hope you enjoy it.

Also: we didn’t just talked about fascism and its discontents (us, we are the discontents). We also leaned into our roles as hip coastal sophisticate (Sarah) and salt of the earth frozen Midwesterner (Garrett). Can you guess which one of us talked a bunch about ice skating and which of us attended an all mom dance party where she didn’t do drugs but only because nobody offered? Oh, you can guess? Well, you’re correct. Also: Rose Byrne gets a bearded lizard. And childless young people roast the hell out of us old childed weirdos.

Like we said, we’re back, baby. Love you all.

Links:

• Most importantly: our favorite list of ways to get involved and support activists in Minneapolis right now.

• Garrett’s organizing messages of support for Minneapolis organizers (only takes a few minutes! add yours!).

• Take a workshop with Sarah on choosing the right school for neurodivergent kids.

• Speedskating rules! And the sixty year old guy who only started speed skating at 50 and competed at the Olympic trials also rules.

• Mom’s only dance party! (Sarah’s verdict: it’s complicated).

• Jesse Watters on the (ugh!) “crazy looking” “single” women protesting in Minneapolis (Fox News: again, ugh)

• had an episode about Scott Galloway that made us give up on thinking we need to do a Galloway episode (scroll down for the comment about Minneapolis that we read aloud).

• Collectivism and Individualism in Status Hierarchies, an article by Vincenzo Iacoviello and Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi, two Italian men whose names we pronounced really well (International Review of Social Psychology).

• Gendered Activism: A Cross-national View on Gender Differences in Protest Activity by Kyle Dodson (Social Currents)

• The normative male alexithymia hypothesis by R.F. Levant (chapter in Assessing and treating emotionally inexpressive men).

• “Man enough to care” by ( ).

• Comedian Chris Fleming on modern parenting

• Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale love each other and their bearded dragon from New Jersey.

More:

• This Week In Breeders is a podcast! And you can listen to it wherever you like to listen to podcasts (Apple; Spotify; or in the back corner of a Fox News Studio, while Jesse Watters keeps yelling “WHERE’S MARK RUFFALO” at you for some reason).

• But if you really want to stay updated, you should go to thisweekinbreeders.org and subscribe, so that you get episodes delivered directly to your inbox.

• And then, after you do so, you should be like “but now I really want to support this podcast, and I’d also love to listen to their bonus episodes, like the recent one where they invented “Nighttime Routine ASMR,” opt for a paid subscription.

• Or maybe you want another way to help us out, which is very kind of you. Would you consider dropping us one of those five star reviews on your preferred podcast app? Or telling your friends? Thank you!

• In every case, thanks for being here, pals!

Subscribe now

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If you expected that the first ever This Week In Breeders movie episode would be a placid, predictable affair… oh buddy, get ready. Here’s an incomplete accounting of nonsense that went down over the course of our recording:

• Sarah revealed the extremely inappropriate film that she and her siblings watched during a childhood snow day.

• A few minutes later, we pause the episode because Sarah needed to buy Lily Allen concert tickets super urgently, and then we debrief every single possible element of that experience.

• Sarah then reveals the EXTREMELY CONTROVERSIAL way that she got revenge on a super mean man she encountered on a plane.

Huh! When we put it like that, it sounds mostly like this was a Sarah Gone Wild Episode, and, sure, but (1). Who doesn’t want that? (2). It’s not like Garrett didn’t also go on multiple tangents (again!) about that character from K-Pop Demon Hunters whose only personality trait is “abs” and (3). None of that prevented us from peeling back so many layers about the movies that raised us, the movies that are raising our kids, and what they did and didn’t teach us about what boys and girls are allowed to do/be/feel.

Links:

• If you’re wondering… was it really THAT impressive that Sarah successfully purchased Lily Allen “West End Girl Tour” tickets, the answer is YES! Those puppies went fast!

• Shout out to our pals at ( and ), who you too can join for a Lily Allen concert in San Francisco for the low price of a one million dollar premium subscription to both of our pods.

• The 2020 Geena Davis Institute report on gender representation in children’s films.

• American International Pictures and the “Peter Pan Syndrome” marketing method (TV Tropes)

• Spoilers for the plot twist hiding in your child’s Lego Friends Set (wait, mild mannered Paisley is secretly international pop star Ley-la????)

• “Why Girls Can’t Be Goonies” (Wit and Folly, who has a standing invitation to watch Lily Allen with Sarah).

• Why do Minnesotans call people from Edina cake-eaters?

• Boymom by , a very good book that Garrett has read once and that Sarah has read twice (but who’s counting).

• The legacy of Free To Be… You and Me (NPR)

• Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Two (2 Pants, Two sisterious)

• U.S. Viewers Overwhelmingly Want to See More TV Shows Depicting Realistic Work-Life Balance, Family Care and Gender Equity: Survey (Variety, Todd Spangler).

More:

• This Week In Breeders is a podcast! And you can listen to it wherever you like to listen to podcasts (Apple; Spotify; or delivered in the pocket of a pair of traveling pants).

• But if you really want to stay updated, you should go to thisweekinbreeders.org and subscribe, so that you get episodes delivered directly to your inbox.

• And then, after you do so, you should be like “but now I really want to support this podcast, and I’d also love to listen to their bonus episodes, like the recent one where they invented “Nighttime Routine ASMR,” opt for a paid subscription.

• Or maybe you want another way to help us out, which is very kind of you. Would you consider dropping us one of those five star reviews on your preferred podcast app? Or telling your friends? Thank you!

• In every case, thanks for being here, pals!

Subscribe now

So, the ironic thing about this episode is that it’s all about our very labor intensive methods of transitioning from dinner to bedtime, but after we recorded it we realized that there’s something oddly soothing about hearing a parent who is not you or your spouse outline their nighttime routine. So voila! We invented Bedtime Division of Labor ASMR. We …

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Friends, it is here. The Holiday Season. A time of to-dos, both explicit and implicit. A time of joy and stress. A time when we say “the holidays” but mostly mean Christmas. A time when Garrett is told that he needs to stop playing Monster Mash because apparently it’s not that holiday season. And, oh yes, a time of gender discourse.

Our conversation? It was fun. What a knotty topic. On one hand, it’s obvious, right? In heterosexual couples, the holidays are a time of disproportional work for moms. Just layers of societal expectations, piled on top of one another like a Martha Stewart trifle. But also: when does social construction stop and actual enjoyment begin? What if you like hosting the cookie exchanges, earnestly? And what about the holiday cards? We (Garrett and Sarah) don’t want you to feel like you have to send us one, but man oh man do we love hanging yours up.

Are we the only podcast discussing gender and the holidays this year? No! But are we the only podcast that talks at length about Dr. Ann Burnett’s holiday card archive at North Dakota State University? And where there’s also an extended, not safe for work or children digression where Garrett tries to explain the difference between South Dakota State University (home of the Jackrabbits) and NDSU (home of the Bison) and Sarah offers a VERY UNEXPECTED musical interlude? Yes, without a doubt. That’s the This Week In Breeders promise.

Links:

• “All I want for Christmas is you” is objectively the best holiday song, but Garrett would not be the exact kind of white dude he is if he didn’t also admit that his personal favorite is, of course, “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues.

• “Holiday Magic is made by women, and it’s killing us” (Gemma Hartley, Huff Post)

• Anne Helen Petersen on “The Mom Does It” (Culture Study)

• The Sum of Small Things (Elizabeth Currid-Halkett)

• “The History of our love-hate relationship with the Christmas letter” (Ann Hodgman, Smithsonian Magazine)

• “How being busy became a badge of honor” (Minnesota Public Radio)

• All hail Dr. Ann Burnett, keeper of the North Dakota State University Christmas Letter archive which may or may not still exist now that she’s an emeritus Professor (oh God we hope it’s still there: if it is you can send letters to Department No. 2310 P.O. Box 6050 Fargo, N.D. 58108).

• Also, Sarah’s other podcast ( ) did a banger holiday episode as well, as did our pals at .

More:

• This Week In Breeders is a podcast! And you can listen to it wherever you like to listen to podcasts (Apple; Spotify; or performed for you, at your doorstep, by carol singers).

• But if you really want to stay updated, you should go to thisweekinbreeders.org and subscribe, so that you get episodes delivered directly to your inbox.

• And then, after you do so, you should be like “but now I really want to support this podcast, and I’d also love to listen to their bonus episodes, like the really incredible one they just did about the Gen Alpha “six seven” phenomenon, and opt for a paid subscription.

• Or maybe you want another way to help us out, which is very kind of you. Would you consider dropping us one of those five star reviews on your preferred podcast app? Or telling your friends? Thank you!

• In every case, thanks for being here, pals!

  Subscribe now

Listen up, grindset alpha males and hard hustling girl bosses, have we got an episode for you! This week, Sarah and Garrett woke up at 4:00 AM, did 1000 crunches, closed some deals in the Tokyo office, plowed a field, and split a cord of wood, all to bring you the definitive podcast about ambition and gender.

Ok, that isn’t quite true. We only did 950 crunches. We did, however, have a real blast talking about men and women’s relationship to ambition at work. Does ambition look differently across gender lines? Is the provider myth killing men slowly? What can a vintage 1989 Outburst Jr. game teach us about gender socialization (and also types of cookies)? And oh my god, does the subject of VENOMOUS ANIMAL CONTACT enter the chat?! All this, and more, answered this week by America’s favorite breeders.

Links:

• Sarah is correct: Women get lice more often because they’re emotionally intelligent (THE Ohio State University)

• Nit Pixies (the Bay Area’s premier choice for lice removal)

• Garrett is sorry that he couldn’t stop making “Did Women Ruin The Workplace?” jokes. (link to the world’s most cursed New York Times piece).

• A beautiful tribute to the city of Philadelphia (damp men yelling anti-Italian slurs at each other while complaining about how they’re in a bad mood).

• Shout out “It’s Your Move Games” in Oakland (for the record, Garrett’s favorite game store is Board Game Barrister, with excellent locations throughout the Milwaukee metro area).

• “Navigating the Gender Gap in Workplace Ambition” (InPower Coaching)

• The AskMen subreddit has some thoughts on masculine struggle and also raptors

• Gender Inequality, Work Hours, and the Future of Work (Institute for Women’s Policy Work)

• “Pressure to prove your manhood may shorten your life” (Greater Good Magazine)

• “The Pressure to provide is Making Men miserable”(Maria Cassano)

More:

• This Week In Breeders is a podcast! And you can listen to it wherever you like to listen to podcasts (Apple; Spotify; inside your tractor, so you can listen while you joylessly circle your fields for hours on end, the raptors circling overhead).

• But if you really want to stay updated, you should go to thisweekinbreeders.org and subscribe, so that you get episodes delivered directly to your inbox.

• And then, after you do so, you should be like “but now I really want to support this podcast, and I’d also love to listen to their bonus episodes, like the really incredible one they just did about how they used to spend recesses in elementary school” and opt for a paid subscription.

• Or maybe you want another way to help us out, which is very kind of you. Would you consider dropping us one of those five star reviews on your preferred podcast app? Or telling your friends? Thank you!

• In every case, thanks for being here, pals!

  Share

You all, we had to do it to you. We couldn’t resist tackle a question that is less about gender and more about the only real form of monoculture we have left.

We’re talking, of course, about “six seven,” the Gen Alpha mantra/calling card/meme/lifestyle that has left a nation of teachers and parents befuddled. Do we have takes? Yes! And in sharing our ta…

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We’re back! And we’re still talking friendship dynamics. You have probably heard the trope about how, when out with their friends, ladies love to talk about their feelings and fellas just want to name baseball players they remember from when they were twelve. Is it essentialist? Sure, but also…it sure feels like there’s some truth there.

This week, we hold the trope up and look at it from as many angles as possible, like a gorgeous gendered diamond. Does Garrett host a makeshift version of the Newlywed game for Sarah and her husband? Does Sarah reveal some surprisingly nuanced thoughts about “Waterfalls” by TLC? And somehow, by the end of the episode, do we discover a new lasagna-based benchmark by which to judge the quality of male friendship? Yes, yes and yes.

It’s fun, you all. And we probably don’t talk too much about Tony Shalhoub’s mustache, though that’s debatable.

Links:

• All the cool liberal families are getting landlines (Vox)

• We didn’t actually talk about the legendary “BBQ dad” Craigslist ad but Garrett always wants an excuse to repost it so here it is (Reddit)

• “Against Hating Men”— includes the screenshots of the tweets we discuss (Mindy Isser’s newsletter)

• Theorizing Mankeeping: The Male Friendship Recession and Women’s Associated Labor as a Structural Component of Gender Inequality by Angelica Ferrara and Dylan Vergara (Psychology of Men and Masculinities)

• “Why Women Are Weary of the Emotional Labor of Mankeeping” (New York Times gift link)

• Were you curious as to Boomer humor columnist Dave Barry’s take on Mankeeping? Well, he’s got one!

• Sarah Wheeler’s favorite TLC songs (Spotify) (Publisher’s note: Sarah DOES have a fifth favorite TLC song, and it is “Case of the Fake People.” Glad we set the record straight!)

• “She wants to talk, you just want to watch Youtube” (Make Men Emotional Again)

• Read Boymom by Ruth Whippman (a perennial This Week in Breeders recommendation)

• Men calling their friends to tell them good night

More:

• This Week In Breeders is a podcast! And you can listen to it wherever you like to listen to podcasts (Apple; Spotify; everywhere that groups of men get together and wordlessly grunt their non-feelings at each other).

• But if you really want to stay updated, you should go to thisweekinbreeders.org and subscribe, so that you get episodes delivered directly to your inbox.

• And then, after you do so, you should be like “but now I really want to support this podcast, and I’d also love to listen to their bonus episodes, like the really incredible one they just did about how they used to spend recesses in elementary school” and opt for a paid subscription.

• Or maybe you want another way to help us out, which is very kind of you. Would you consider dropping us one of those five star reviews on your preferred podcast app? Or telling your friends? Thank you!

• In every case, thanks for being here, pals!

  This Week in Breeders is a listener-supported joint. Subscribe for twice-monthly free episodes directly in your inbox! $5 a month gets you two extra Ask Breeders Anything bonus episodes!

Lots of firsts in this episode! It’s the first bonus episode where free subscribers can hear a sample to help decide if they want to make the jump. But more importantly, it’s the first bonus episode where we ask each other the same question. This week, we talk recess. Namely, our own recess memories. What we did, with whom, and whether it was gender-cod…

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Oh, you just knew that we were going to do a “can men and women be friends?” episode. But we’re not quite doing it in the classic romantic comedy way (meaning, we’re not asking “will the innate sexual tension between straight men and women get in the way of friendship?”). No, we’re far too middle-aged for that. This is more of a “can man and women be friends? In this economy?” conversation. Like, how have each of us done at keeping up friendships as we’ve aged? When has that been easier and harder (both intra and inter gender)? And who, in our life, does the emotional and physical work of friendship?

You probably have a guess as to the answer to that last one, but this was a super layered and vulnerable conversation (lots of friendship guilt from both of us, and also some actual READING OF THE COMMENTS, INCLUDING THE RUDE ONES, in response to Sarah’s essay on this topic). Oh, and we also imagined a premium tier where Sarah comes to your house and ruins your dinner. Fun!

Links:

• Garrett caught on national television just going to town on some frozen custard (link to Garrett’s Instagram).

• Chaos Muppets vs. order Muppets (Slate)

• Robin Dunbar says we can only have 150 relationships (BBC)

• The friendship dip ( )

• “Where have all my guy friends gone?” (Sarah in The Cut)

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More:

• This Week In Breeders is a podcast! And you can listen to it wherever you like to listen to podcasts (Apple; Spotify; in homeroom, whilst passing “do you like me? check yes or no” notes to your would-be best friend)

• But if you really want to stay updated, you should go to thisweekinbreeders.org and subscribe, so that you get episodes delivered directly to your inbox.

• And then, after you do so, you should be like “but now I really want to support this podcast, and I’d also love to listen to their bonus episodes, like the one they just did about Berkeley moms vs. Oakland moms” and opt for a paid subscription.

• Or maybe you want another way to help us out, which is very kind of you. Would you consider dropping us one of those five star reviews on your preferred podcast app? Or telling your friends? Thank you!

• In every case, thanks for being here, pals!

Great news, paid subscribers. It’s another “Ask Breeders Anything,” and this week neither of us are in our cars (though Sarah is doing laundry and Garrett is walking to the grocery store, in the business we call that “authenticity”).

As for the episode, we’ve got two questions for each other. Garrett wants to hear Sarah explain the difference between a …

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Friends, this will likely come as a surprise, but we crunched the numbers and it appears as if some of our political choices are… influenced by gender. “Wait, what?” you’re no doubt saying, but yes, it’s true, and we’re on the case.

In this episode, your stalwart TWIB team tackles the dark arts of American electoral politics. Our question: What does it take for a candidate (of any gender) to be considered “authentic” and “relatable?” Also: why is it that even many of us who have purchased multiple Little Feminist books for our households still default to “tough talking dudes” when it comes time to punch our ballots? Plus: how do you get all the text messages to stop (just kidding, we didn’t discuss that; everybody knows that they’ll never stop, that long after this planet implodes you’ll still get a text saying “[INSERT NAME], WE’RE IN TROUBLE.”). But still, there’s lots of fun stuff here: we watch some ads, we yell at Gavin Newsom (of course) and Sarah does an admirable job of trying to steer the conversation towards 90s R & B.

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Links:

• The platonic ideal of a Midwestern rec room (link to Garrett’s Instagram— swipe to the second picture in the carousel).

• When “authenticity” means “dudes” by Danielle Kurtzleben

• Katie Porter Ad

• Mallory Macmorrow Ad

• Monica Macdermot and Dan Cassino’s Masculinity in American Politics

• Nadia Brown and Danielle Casarez Lemi’s Sister Style: The Politics of Appearance for Black Women Political Elites

• Patriarchal Bargains (Moira Donegan on Andrea Dworkin)

• Is it Brandy or Monica Quiz clearly made by a bot

More:

• This Week In Breeders is a podcast! And you can listen to it wherever you like to listen to podcasts (Apple; Spotify; at the very end of a political convention, long after the crowds have left and the janitors are sweeping up the balloons and the AV intern mercifully turns off the playlist just as the last notes of “Fight Song” filter through the empty hall).

• But if you really want to stay updated, you should go to thisweekinbreeders.org and subscribe, so that you get episodes delivered directly to your inbox.

• And then, after you do so, you should be like “but now I really want to support this podcast, and I’d also love to listen to their bonus episodes, like the one they just did about Field of Dreams and pastel razors and trad wives and Hungry Man dinners” and opt for a paid subscription.

• Or maybe you want another way to help us out, which is very kind of you. Would you consider dropping us one of those five star reviews on your preferred podcast app? Or telling your friends? Thank you!

• In every case, thanks for being here, pals!

  Subscribe now