Conversation with Matthew Hussey — Set Better Intentions and Break Unhealthy Dating Habits
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Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. For

$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Episode 300. Route 300 is a highway running through the Hudson Valley of New York, and Noah's Ark is said to have been 300 cubits long. True story. I've been reading the Bible a lot lately. Think of it as cramming for finals. I've only read 12.5% of the Bible, as I'm an atheist. Get it? Atheist.

True story, I asked my priest what is a blowjob and he said $300 downtown. Asked for Mickey. Go, go!

Welcome to the 300th episode of The Prop G-Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Matthew Hussey, a leading dating expert and confidence coach. Last name is Hussey and it's a dating coach? I'm not even going to go there. We discuss with Matthew his new book, Love Life, how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what. I already have a question for Matthew and shouldn't

is really the key raising your standards. I think that's part of the problem is people don't want to give people a second chance. But said the guy who needed second and third chances over and over. Okay, what's happening? The dog is back in London. That's right. A lot of parks, a lot of green, a lot of places to lift his leg and mark his territory. London is like New York if Godzilla stepped on it and then it just went squish and spread out. And then someone poured massive amounts of fertilizer in

and turned it all green. True story. My dad was the national sales director for O.M. Scott's, a division of ITT. This was back when conglomerates were buying everything for some reason. They owned fertilizer and peanut butter and alarm systems. Anyways, people used to come over to our house in Laguna Niguel and bring like a food processor. And then my dad would wink at me and I would go get three bags of fertilizer and put it in the trunk of some man's car who I guess worked at a company that made food processors. Anyways,

Sort of my first lesson in economics. Before we get to the news, we have an announcement. Our Prof G Markets podcast is expanding to its own dedicated feed. What a thrill! Do us a favor and please sign up, subscribe. We were, get this, number three in, wait, no, we were number 24 of all podcasts globally.

Thank you.

That's right. The dog wants to go to soft food. I need more money. All right, moving on. What else is happening? The face behind meme stock mania is back in action. Roaring Kitty, who you probably are all familiar with now, tweeted a meme that depicts a man leaning over to get locked into a video game. It was Roaring Kitty's first tweet since 2021. Isn't that interesting? And sure enough, the tweet garnered tens of millions of impressions and GameStop stock went soaring.

closing up 74% on Monday. AMC also jumped 80% the same day. So the last time this happened, the stock skyrocketed 1,000 and 2,300% respectively in just a few days. So that's up, what is that? That's up 11-fold and 24-fold.

So this is, wow, this is what is referred to as a mob squeeze. And that is someone finds a company with a low float. They all go on Reddit. It's basically the essentially, it's essentially a pyramid scheme. And that is,

My mom used to talk about this. She went to a couple of parties in the Hollywood Hills and came home and said it was a pyramid party. I'm like, what's a pyramid party? And it's like you, someone forms their pyramid and tries to get two people below them to give a thousand dollars. And then those people try and go get more people and they try and create heat around investing in this pyramid. And once I guess there's 16 people, the top person gets the 16 grand. And then the next person, if there's another 16 grand in the pyramid, hopefully grows.

The problem is at some point people think I'm so far down the pyramid and I'm paying so much money for a fairly expensive

low ROI or low likelihood of a payout that they start leaving and the people who came in last lose everything. And this is a little bit like that because we're no longer dealing with fundamentals. We're dealing with a meme. And that is a movement to try and get rich quick and basically trade up a stock, almost like buying into a pyramid in 1970s Los Angeles, hoping that they'll maintain the momentum and the greater fool will come in.

before everybody decides to bail on this thing. It is a dangerous game. It's total speculation. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with it. I think if people want to have some fun and see if they can make some money and I don't know, it's to be clear, it's gambling. It's speculating.

It is something that was never existed before. And initially it was couched as sticking it to the man. Well, not really. And there was all this bullshit about it was a guy who, it was a kid whose parents lost his house in a great financial recession. Okay, maybe. What this is is fun and access to a phone and access to these message boards where people can sort of clot and come up with a strategy and find people

a victim, and that is a low-trading stock or a low-volume stock, and take it to the moon and hope that they know when to get out before everybody looks around. It's like they storm a castle.

And they get enough people to storm the castle. But they know eventually the British are going to show up and take the castle back and kill them and then cut William Wallace up into pieces, which they did and sent his limbs to the four corners of Europe to send a message. That is happening. You are fighting eventually an army that is much more powerful than you. That army? Fundamentals. I have found that so far all stocks are subject to gravity.

And that is eventually, eventually gravity wins. When Michael Jordan jumps from the baseline, it feels like he's never going to come down. But guess what? He always does. And at some point, people are going to realize that a movie theater stock and a company selling video games in a store is not worth 40 or 50 times revenues. Eventually, gravity takes over. The question is, how long can it stay in the air? And can you make money while it's still in the air? So this is what would be my advice here. If you want to play with it and gamble, have some fun, but ring fence your investment here and also recognize that

That while you could make double, triple, five times your money, you could also lose it all very, very quickly. And also the thing I don't like about this is you're constantly staring at your phone, one for a dope ahead and two to figure out when the British show up. And then while you're sleeping, everybody else abandons the castle because they know that this thing is not worth anything.

What it's trading at. But it's very interesting. It's definitely part of our zeitgeist. I believe that when you're young, and I think this is mostly young investors, that you should take no more than a third of your capital and invest in stocks and individual things like this. Why? Why?

One, it's not a bad idea just to put all of it into SBI or low-cost index funds. The entire financial services sector is mostly a scam. Anyone on CNBC or has ads is essentially engaging in a gigantic grift. Kathy Griffin has no fucking idea what she's talking about. I mean, absolutely none. And she consistently underperforms the market, but because she has big chunky glasses and says these very bold, provocative things and has a big following on social, she's

She can charge $220,000 and get very rich off your losses. And if you took all of the financial services industry, all the mutual funds, all the hedge funds, all the alternative investment funds, and you aggregated all of them, their performance is exactly the S&P minus their fees. So why not just invest in SPY or low-cost index funds and do your own diversification, which you can do with SPY, and

Make more money. You'll make more money. That's the good news. The bad news is the answer will be slowly. But if you're dying to get that DOPA hit and you think it's fun, that's fine. But keep in mind, it's consumption, it's speculation, it's gambling. So have a little bit of fun. Learn about the markets. I think what's going on on Reddit is really interesting. I think this is a cultural phenomenon. It has to do with communications, network effects.

understanding the markets, understanding capital flows, short squeeze, options, things like that. By the way, do not play options around this. If you want to buy some options, fine, recognize you can lose it all, but do not, I would be very careful writing options here are going short because this thing is unpredictable. You're dealing with an unpredictable dog. I don't like to use that metaphor because most dogs are not violent, but anyways, I'll make it

I don't think there should be government legislation here unless they find there's market manipulation or people who are weighing in and trying to move the market beyond kind of SEC rules. But have at it if you want to have some fun. It's like betting. It's like going to the racetrack and betting the exacto or whatever it is. Just be ready to lose it all. This is not investing. This is speculation. We'll be right back for our conversation with Matthew Hussey.

Support for Property Markets comes from BetterHelp Online Therapy. It's hard to resist the urge to compare ourselves to other people. We all fixate on what our neighbors have and obsess over what we're missing. This has been going on forever, but now that social media is fueling the fire, it's gotten out of control. Every day, we're flooded with images of photoshopped abs, foreign cars, and $50,000 watches.

It's easy to feel like you're falling behind. I know that I'm constantly benchmarking myself against other people and even as I get older it's something I struggle with.

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Stop comparing and start focusing with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash markets today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash markets. Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Matthew Hussey, the author of Love Life, How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person and Live Happily No Matter What. Matthew, where does this podcast find you?

At Los Angeles. I'm in Beverly Grove. So let's talk about your new book, Love, Life, How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and Live Happily No Matter What. Can you walk us through what led you to write this? I wrote this book. It's called Love, Life. I suppose I wrote it partly because I hadn't written a book in over 10 years. The last book I wrote was about 11 years ago, and it was a very different book. It was more kind of

I suppose on some level on the strategic or tactical side of how to go out there and find someone. But this book really addressed some of the bigger reasons why we might struggle to do that. Why all the advice in the world that relates to dating can fail us when there are just fundamental obstacles getting in our way.

in either the way that our life is structured, in the mindset we bring to it, in the, frankly, the trauma we bring to the table when we go out there and date, the internal blockages, the continuing to go for what is familiar instead of what's actually going to make us happier. And so this book attempts to address those while also addressing the reality that life doesn't always go the way that we had hoped. And, yeah,

often doesn't. And people find themselves single at a time in their lives they never assumed they would be single, never dreamt they would still have not found the kind of person or love that they'd been looking for, or come out of a second marriage at, you know, 65 and are going, oh my God, what happened? You know, how am I finding myself alone right now? And

And for the people that had never been married and had never found that and are finding that they've spent their whole lives with a kind of chronic pain of loneliness, anxiety, sadness or depression around not having a fulfilling love life. So I wrote this book to deal with hard questions really and hard things that people go through as much as the dream of finding what we want to find.

What do you think are some of the macro there or the environmental factors that have resulted in it seems like there is a crisis of loneliness a lack of household formation But in general it feels like loneliness Especially men, but across both genders is kind of a lack of better term epidemic Levels, what are the what are the atmospherics that have caused that and what are some of the solutions or personal behaviors you would recommend? so I

Whatever issues people have with finding it harder to make friends the older they get, which I think is a real issue. I think that there are certain structures that we are kind of forced into age. You know, if people go to college, then you're forced into a social structure and you meet people and stuff.

every year after that, it tends to get harder for people. I mean, some, for some people it's easier, especially starting a new job is a chance at a new community, although it's still one related to your work, but it's still a chance to go. If you even work in a building anymore, it's a chance to go to a building where there are other people there and potentially meet people. Um, but outside of starting new jobs, um,

A lot of people I talk to don't have any forced structure where they're going to meet new people in this decade of their life, whether it's their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. And so I think increasingly we have to have the proactivity and the impetus to engineer those structures ourselves. And that's a hard thing to do. One of the things I love that I heard you talk about, Scott, is just this idea that

When you're talking about men, they're staying at home and they're not in the world. You know, they are, they're not building the robustness that comes from simply stepping outside their front door and being in teams, in groups, in situations where they can meet strangers. And I think that's true for a lot of women as well. Women typically from everything I've ever seen,

have empirically a much easier time staying connected to friends and being part of social groups with their friends than guys do. But on both sides, it's so much easier to stay home now. And by the way, all the changes in dating and tech in dating have made that easier again, because at least dating used to finding love used to be a motivator in getting out of the house.

And that might be something that forced us into situations where we had to meet with other people. But nowadays, you know, you don't even have to leave the house for that. So human behavior is always going to trend towards what's most comfortable. What's the path of least resistance? And that's what people are able to do in dating as well as every other path I see these days.

And dopamine, I think, also plays a huge role in the problems that people are experiencing because the addiction that we have to our phones, the addiction that we have to constant hits of attention or novelty. And I'm not just talking about the areas where it's directly social, like addiction.

liking getting people to like our instagram posts or getting a match on tinder even just the dopamine cycle we're in of constant stimulation that has nothing to do with our social life i think is a real problem for building relationships because it we're just wired these days for that kind of novelty and instant gratification and friendships attraction long-term relationships

they require a calmer slower pace to actually build the trust the you know the the reciprocity the time spent together that actually leads to real friendships real relationships and what i see now is that people have so many superficial connections but they're just

They're not building friendships they can actually rely on. They're building a network of people they can show off to, but they're not building the relationships that when they're having a terrible time in life, when the shit really hits the fan and they need someone to talk to, they don't necessarily have an abundance of those people in their lives. And a lot of the ones they do have are unhealthy relationships. They're not supportive. How has online dating impacted relationships?

how people meet, like what's your view on online dating? And my sense is it's impacted men and women differently. What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Online dating has made it easier for people to get that dopamine hit that I was talking about, but it's made it harder to

for many people to get to the point of actually getting to know someone, actually having any real moment of social interaction. You know, the number of people I speak to that get locked into cycles of speaking to someone for weeks or months where it's just a texting dynamic. There's no moment, you know, how many people never even get to the point of a date that

with someone that they are seeing in an online environment. You know, I say seeing in quotes because the real danger I see with so many people and I see this time and again is we are not present with the reality of our actual lives and relationships, especially in our love lives. We are more concerned with the fantasy of what could be online dating and

gives us ample kind of fodder for those stories.

without necessarily training us to be disciplined and ruthless about actually focusing on people that present as real prospects. And people, I see people waste years or even decades of their life on those stories. And time is, time is ticking the whole time. We're spending six months in a like quote situation ship and

with someone who's not progressing, that's six months. You'll never get back. Um, so that I see that a lot on the, on the women's side. I'm curious to, to know what you are seeing on the men's side and how it presents differently.

Well, with men, it's... So women have a much finer filter than men. And also there's more men on these apps. So what this all distills down to is that a man of average attractiveness on an app has to swipe right 200 times to get one match.

And so for men who are kind of in the bottom 90, online dating is pretty humiliating. And so you have this kind of Porsche polygamy effect online where the top 10% of men get an abundance of opportunity and the bottom 90 get almost none. And so it feels like women are all kind of pursuing the same guy. And those guys who get an abundance of attention, it doesn't incentivize them to behave well. And then the bottom 90,

are just very frustrated and upset and start going to dark places. You said something that struck me in your book, and I really liked this. You said, we have to be wary of the instinct to transfer the importance we feel for the position we are looking to fill to a new person who only might one day fill it. And I was thinking about my own personal experience with dating, and that is whenever I've become a little too, obsessed is the wrong word because it's never taken over my life, but infatuated with someone,

It wasn't about that person. It was about where I was in my life at that moment, that I wanted something that was going to take me away. And I envisioned this new life because I wasn't enjoying my current life. And the prospect of this person or being in a relationship with this person filled that vessel, that opportunity to do something differently. Anyways, say more about what you meant here. Well, I love what you just said. I think when we're trying to derive our source from something,

something or someone else, then, you know, we, we can't afford to lose it. And I do think the more we find ways to create that source of

from within or, you know, even just from more diverse external sources so that it, you know, in the book, I get people to kind of, as an exercise, draw what I call an identity matrix of all of the different things that make up the identity they've constructed for themselves. And I know on a mindfulness level,

That would be seen as just all being a problem because any kind of identity we take from anywhere makes us vulnerable. And of course, that's true. But that doesn't mean it isn't wise to diversify the sources of confidence and identity in our lives. And, you know, that's why...

for people who have hobbies that they love or creative endeavors that they derive purpose from or careers that they derive an enormous amount of satisfaction from or friends and family relationships. They are diversifying the sources of their confidence. And that's a very powerful thing. Now, romantically, there's always gonna be this incredible draw to that square in our identity matrix.

Uh, and you know, for so many people, I would argue universally, whatever form it comes in, we are looking for love. We want that feeling of having a mate. We want that feeling of being attractive to the people we're trying to attract. Um, we want to feel fulfilled in our love lives. So that desire to find that becomes so important.

in some cases, anxiously driven, especially when time is running out or it feels like time is running out. That's true on a very literal level for everyone who's looking for a family of their own biologically and for women more than men, although for men too, more than a lot of them realize. That fear of time running out amplifies this feeling of, God, I have this really important position that I want to fill in my life.

I'm trying to fill the position of my life partner. And we get so obsessed with how important it is to fill that position that the moment we go on a date and we see even the faintest hope that this person could represent a candidate for that position, which by the way, Scott, normally is not based on any deeper character traits because how many of

people's deeper character traits can we really ascertain on a one-hour first date. Usually it's based on the fact that they were charming or they were charismatic or they kind of, you know, swept us off our feet a little bit or, you know, they made us feel really good about ourselves in that hour or they were sexy or they had the body shape we're attracted to.

we see those things and our brain kind of lights up and goes, Oh, this could be it. This could be that person. And all of a sudden is very subtle, but insidious move. All of the importance of the role we're trying to fill suddenly gets shifted over to this person sitting across the dinner table from us. And then, you know, a week in, we're wondering why am I obsessed? How I'm obsessed with this person. And, um,

We, you know, cognitive dissonance, I think, makes us tell a story about why we're obsessed. Like, no, I'm obsessed because I really do feel an amazing connection with this person. I haven't felt this in a long time. And we try to tell ourselves a rational story about why this person we just met is instantly so important to us. But the reality, I think, is one we have to confront in order to

actually let the air out of that balloon in a healthy way, which is that I do not know this person. All I know is their impact at this stage. I don't know their character, much as in a job interview. I don't know about you, Scott. I've been humbled by... I've always thought I'm an incredible judge of character. I really am. I'm great at judging character. And then

I hire someone for a role because in the first hour I thought this person's incredible. They're going to do wonders for our company. And then six months later, I'm humbled by how wrong I was. And so the idea of, oh, I know this person from this first hour is just, it's an arrogance a lot of us have. The truth is character is consistent and consistency can only be measured over time.

We'll be right back. This podcast brought to you by Ring. With Ring cameras, you can check on your pets to catch them in the act. Izzy, drop that. Or just keep them company. Home soon. Make sure they're okay while you're away. With Ring. Learn more at ring.com slash pets. If you could give men and women, or maybe it's different for each, of kind of one or two best practices or behavioral modifications that would increase the likelihood they might end up in a healthy relationship, what would that be?

What are those one or two things? You know, I think firstly, set your path before you go out there into dating because otherwise you're going to be swept away by whatever is the shiniest thing, not by someone that's actually aligned with your values, not that someone presents as someone who's going to make your life better now and in the future. You know, we've all seen men and women attracted to

sex appeal, charm, charisma in a violent way where that just becomes everything to get that person and secure that person without ever really assessing, am I really going to want the thing that I'm working hard to get? And there are plenty of marriages that people end up in where they find that, oh, I got the person.

Now, what does my life look like with this person? And it's like, that actually becomes a secondary question in the equation. And it should be the primary question before all of our, the chemicals kick in that make us suddenly run headfirst into a situation that brings us an enormous amount of pain and suffering. And sometimes are very hard to extricate ourselves from, especially when our life becomes enmeshed with a person like that. So first to decide what

is valuable to me. And one of the ways to decide that is looking backwards. Most people, myself included, can look at a relationship where they overvalued the wrong thing and undervalued the right thing and as a result were miserable. I remember a relationship where I was trying desperately to hold on and to keep this situation, this person, and yet it was making me miserable. And I was terrified that if I lost it,

I would be in hell. But the truth is, I was already in hell by being in it. I was just telling myself that if I could just secure it, then I'll be okay. I'll be happy. And I was missing something fundamental. You know, teamwork, loyalty, a...

a feeling that I mattered, a feeling that I was seen, that there was equal investment on both sides. I didn't have those things. So I was an anxious wreck in that relationship. I was like a version of me that I look back on now and I cringe. I'm like, oh my God, that was...

That really brought out the worst in me in every way. So when we look backwards, we can often see a relationship where we were told ourselves it was important to us and yet we were missing something crucial. And by missing that crucial thing, it became hell. If we remember those situations and the ingredient we were missing that made us miserable, well, it stands to reason that that ingredient should be the number one priority going forward.

And yes, we still want attraction. Yes, we still want some chemistry. Yes, we still want some of those things that light us up. But importantly, if we find those things, but we don't have that ingredient, we don't bother because we know when we had all those things last time around, but we didn't have that ingredient.

We could not find a way to be happy. We were just in constant suffering and we should not wish that on our future selves. So that's, uh, one big important thing. I do think we have to look practically at the areas where our ego is maybe driving us too much instead of our happiness. You know, often we, we,

want the person who we can bring to our friends and family and everyone's going to pat us on the back and celebrate us and tell us we did great. But usually that's based on a lot of superficial things or, you know, the way that person walks in and charms everyone. It's often not based on the deeper things that make us really happy. So I think we really have to tune into what's going to make me happy and what's going to bring me peace. What's going to bring me calm. What's going to bring me a better life. Not

who do I bring to my friends and family? And everyone says, you did great. Or we show a picture and everyone's like, ah, good job, buddy. Like those are, that's us being driven by ego. So I think we have to be very careful if we're being driven by what egoically satisfies us or what actually makes us happier, happy on a deeper level. And also look for areas where you're addicted to a certain feeling that

that you keep telling yourself is happiness or you keep telling yourself is like the great stuff when romantically, when actually it's just, it's just a feeling you've become addicted to over time. And you can find examples of this in different places in your life. I remember the realization that when I was late to things that I kept asking, I kept, I would get annoyed at myself when I would show up late.

And I would go, why am I late? Like, there was no reason for me to be late today. Why am I late to this thing? And part of it I realized was, oh, I'm addicted to the feeling of rushing somewhere.

Like there's something adrenaline seeking about leaving a little too late and then having to get there on time. And all of that frantic energy is something that I was used to. I was used to chaos in my life. So I would, even if I was on time, unconsciously, I would always find a way to engineer needing to then rush at the last minute. And so it took me away from calm because calm to me presented as kind of boring.

getting somewhere five minutes early and, and then just sitting with my thoughts. That was a, that was like boring and uncomfortable. Whereas rushing to get there was adrenaline. And so you can apply that to any relationship in your life. And so I would, I would invite people. I don't think this is an easy process. It's certainly not a simple process or any, even an intuitive process, but I would invite people into the process of

Looking at feelings you keep chasing that really don't serve you jump, you know, going on Instagram and scrolling for a few minutes will give you a feeling, but it 99 times out of a hundred, nothing about visiting Instagram is going to serve you. Um, so what's the feeling we're chasing and do we need to start chasing feelings and experiences that create a better quality of life for

for us? And that's a harder question. And it might take us some time to even calm our nervous system down from the feelings we're used to. I mean, if you take a drug addict and the day they quit, you sit them in front of a sunset and ask them to appreciate a sunset, that's going to be a difficult moment for them to take in the beauty of a sunset. But months or years later,

they may truly have the ability to sit there and go, wow, this is amazing. I just, but my body needed to, you know, physiologically there needed to be a period of kind of detoxing from that old experience in order to truly appreciate a new one. And so for some people, the answer might be stop dating for a while and detox from that. Some, for some people, it might be have some

Have a real sit with yourself and start to write down what do I value now? And let me, let me be wary that the old feeling is still going to be exciting to me. And I'm still going to feel the drug of that. And that's the dangerous part. And I have to respect the drug. I have to respect what it does to me, but I have to train my focus to the, to the kinds of people and relationships that make my life better, not worse.

Matthew Hesse is a leading dating expert and confidence coach. He's also a podcast host and the New York Times bestselling author of Love Life, How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person and Live Happily No Matter What. He joins us from his home in Los Angeles. Matthew, I enjoyed the conversation and good luck with the book. Thank you, Scott. I really appreciate it and I appreciate the conversation. I hope you'll come join us on ours sometime.

Algebra of Happiness. I've been watching a show called Baby Reindeer. My favorite show of the year was One Day. It's this really wonderful program about two people and it attracts them through their younger years and how they kind of come in and out of each other's life. It's really nice. Well done. It's totally been trumped by Baby Reindeer. And this is one of those programs that I actually, first time in a while, I had to shut off. I found it so disturbing. And I think it's really nice.

But it's an important piece of work. It's the story of a comedian played by the comedian himself, a guy named Richard Gad, who is stalked and also talks about a lot about some of the things he's going through. And it deals with very important, disturbing issues that affect a lot of people, but a lot of people don't talk about, um,

Male rape, subjugating your morals to try and attain some sort of professional success, the obsession with some level of professional success, our need for affirmation, stalking. There's also some uplifting, really uplifting moments in the show. I really like the fact that there's a trans woman whose role in this feature is not about her being trans, but just about what an impressive person she is. And she's kind of the most likable shit together person in the program.

And about also he has a wonderful relationship with his ex-girlfriend's mother, and she comes back into his life to try and help him. The unique thing here is none of these issues are new, but they're new seen through the lens of a young man who has his act together, apparently together. And I think this is an important piece of media, A, because it's so well done, but I think it's also going to give young men the greater license or greater confidence to be more open about

around when these things happen to them. People didn't used to talk about cancer. People didn't used to talk about mental illness. And these things came into the open. And because 90% of people who are victims of sexual violence are women, we are not, I don't want to say normalizing a discussion around it, but we have a healthy approach to it, that women should talk about it and that we have empathy for them. We're not there with men. These issues facing men, men do not feel comfortable talking about it.

And the result is they're much more bottled up around these emotions. I read one really scary stat, and that is two 15-year-olds, a boy and a girl, sexually molested, both of them. And the boy who's sexually molested is 10 times more likely later in life to kill himself. That doesn't make either crime any less heinous.

But what it shows is that men have a tougher time dealing with these types of issues. And I think some of that is because society has told them to suppress it and not to talk about it, that it's their fault. It demonstrates weakness and humiliation. Anyways, this is a wonderful piece of media. The acting is wonderful. I also think it plays a larger role or could play a much more productive role in our society. And that's the following. If you are a young man and you are subject to something really ugly and painful, you

To believe that somehow demonstrating or talking to someone about it makes you less of a man and that you're somehow guilty of this, it's only going to make it worse for you. And there is such a powerful scene in the last episode where he's talking to his parents about what he's been through.

And one of his parents shares with him that they have that in common. It is such a powerful scene. And I think you're going to find, if you can find friends, find whoever it is you turn to for problems and share something that you're really upset about, ashamed about, feel really rattled by, I think more often than not, you're going to find out you are not alone. And there's a lot of people who have shared these types of experiences and that your ability to communicate your vulnerability is

is really powerful. I was just on the podcast with this guy who's this handsome former NFL player, and he just casually mentioned during the podcast that he was subject to sexual violence when he was a five-year-old boy. And I thought it was just so wonderful that this big, handsome guy, we're now in a society where men can openly talk about those things and not feel embarrassed. And

Anyways, Baby Reindeer, a wonderful piece of media that plays an important part, should play an important role in our society. And if you're hurting and if something awful has happened to you, reach out and tell someone and you're going to be surprised, unfortunately, about how many people have experienced the same thing.

This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer. And Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Profiteer Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And on Monday with our weekly market show. Make her laugh. This is what women think when a guy makes her laugh. I'm laughing. I'm laughing. I'm naked. I'm naked. That's the key. Humor.