Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Laura Owens. And I'm Jan Black. What does it take for boys and men to thrive in America these days. Our guest on this episode, Andrew Reiner,

says it's about time for us to change the way we think and talk about males in our society.

He says many boys and men are struggling now worse than ever before, and that affects all of us.

Andrew has written on men's issues for the New York Times and the Washington Post, among others.

He's a professor at Towson University where he offers a seminar on the changing face of masculinity.

And he's the author of a great new book called Better Boys, Better Men, The New Masculinity,

that creates greater courage and emotional resiliency.

Andrew, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me.

You say masculinity is in crisis these days.

Tell us more about why you feel that's the case and how it's happened.

Sure.

So I think, you know, one of the things I first started realizing being on the education

side in the classroom, I started noticing this a while ago. I didn't notice it so much,

I actually had taught at the middle school level and I didn't notice it so much then. But when I

started teaching at the college level, I saw a huge gap, a huge disconnect. And when I started

talking to other folks who are educators, they weren't really

so much paying attention to the same thing. But when we started talking about it and I started

asking them, well, you know, do you see a difference, for instance, in the willingness for the

young men to come forth and to ask for help or to take part in classroom conversations?

They would always say, yeah, you know, now that you mentioned, I do see a difference in the young women and the young men when it comes

to, you know, asking for help or taking chances and raising their hand during conversations.

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