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How do you raise a man?

I'm Sean Elling and I'm your host for Vox Conversations.

A few weeks ago, we invited Michael and Black onto the show to talk about his latest book, A Better Man.

Black is a comedian and a writer and an actor who you likely know from his roles in WET Hot American Summer, The State and Stella.

His book is an open letter to his son and it's the kind of thing only a thoughtful comic could write.

It's always walking the line between funny and serious and it never strays too far from its core purpose,

which is Black's attempt to talk to his son about what it means to be a good man in a culture that seems very confused about masculinity.

Michael's son was a student at an elementary school right by Sandy Hook when that massacre happened in 2012.

And then there was the Parkland shooting in 2018.

That's when Black decided to write this book and ask, why are boys committing these acts of violence?

And what are fathers of boys supposed to do?

A few days before we recorded, 19 children and two teachers were gunned down in yet another mass shooting by a young man in Yvalde, Texas.

There are, of course, lots of practical policy-centered conversations happening now about gun control, about the Second Amendment, about congressional inaction.

This is not one of those. Instead, Black and I step back and try to reflect on a bigger question.

What the hell is going on with young men in America?

We obviously deal head-on with the recent tragedy in Texas, but we also talk about our own struggles to define masculinity.

Why so many American men have such a hard time asking for help?

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