And the Hello and welcome to Belabor the Point. I'm your host Kate Riga.

Today I'm joined by a very special guest, TPM Associate Editor and my best friend,

Nicola Fond.

Nicole, welcome.

Hi, thank you for having me.

So Nicole and I just wrapped up talking

to Karen Lee Ashcraft,

this incredibly cool and smart professor

at University of Colorado Boulder,

who wrote this really fascinating book

about aggrieved masculinity. It's kind of, you know, intrinsic connection to the far right,

how the internet is like a super spreader of this virus.

And one thing that I was really struck by in our conversation.

I'm interested to hear what you think, Nicole, is that the framing of this, you know,

aggrieved masculinity, I think what maybe most people know as like, quote-ununquote toxic masculinity as like an illness that needs like a

public health response.

Right, like a virus that spreads online and in every aspect of our communication and

existence and how we view and just exist in the world. It was really fascinating

and illuminating. Yeah because it's like such a good way of describing what we got into with her when she, how she kind of told us how it has such cross-cultural applications because it's so like emotion base that you don't necessarily

have to have any kind of specific context to understand it like beyond the binary of kind of like men v women.

Yeah and I thought you made such a good point when you said this I wanted to be like yes

Kate so good but just like the idea that when something's a feeling, you can't debate it.

...