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1:18
This is Undaunted Life a Man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
1:22
Let's get into it. Our guys today on the podcast, we've got a very special guest for you. His name
1:25
is Daniel Cox. Daniel is the director at the Survey Center on American Life. He's also a
1:31
research fellow in polling and public opinion. He also specializes in survey research,
1:36
politics, youth culture and identity and also religion. He got his PhD in American government
1:40
from Georgetown. This guy is kind of right in my age range. He's done a lot of great things,
1:43
but he studies some stuff that I think is very, very important for you guys.
1:47
So you've heard me say a lot before that men don't have any friends. I mean, I just released
1:51
a seven part devotional series basically imploring you guys, begging you to build your foxhole,
1:56
to build up a group of men around you that are cultivating spiritual mental and physical resilience
2:00
on a daily basis and trying to get you to do the same thing, right? Where you're all sharpening
2:04
iron all the time, like that's kind of what I want you to do. But this guy did some very,
2:09
very interesting research this year that kind of looked at friendships in general in the United
2:13
States of America in a post COVID world, because yes, we are pretty much post COVID, but post lockdown,
2:18
all these different things. A lot of the researchers looking at friendships were shocked by some of
2:23
the things that came back, shocked by some of the the trends that they've seen. And guys,
2:26
the trends over the last 20 to 30 years should really, really scare you. Okay. So at the beginning,
2:32
we start with kind of just generic stuff about friendships in America. But then we really dig
2:36
into men and why men don't have friends and some of the reasons behind that. Now, we did not have
2:41
a lot of time with Daniel because he had several more of these talks to do today. He's constantly
2:45
going on the news, talking about this with different pundits and things like that. So we didn't ask
2:49
all the questions we wanted to. And then we added some more that we weren't planning on. But I really
2:52
wanted to kind of get to bedrock as to what are some of the main reasons and even just some things
2:56
for you to be thinking about and looking for as a man that's kind of looking around you. And you
3:01
don't see any guys that you think will actually be there for you. Again, as I call it, you got a
3:05
bunch of 6 p.m. friends and no 3 a.m. friends. So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
3:11
Daniel Cox, welcome to undaunted life of man's podcast. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Well,
3:16
the first place we're going to start, we're going to start really, really micro here.
3:19
You're a pollster by trade. And so what in the world does a pollster do every day? We keep hearing
3:24
about you guys. But what in the world do you do all day? Yeah, so I am a public pollster. And that
3:31
means that I conduct research on Americans lives and opinions, attitudes, experiences. And I provide
3:39
that information free of costs. And anyone can read it. And it's really an attempt to help us
3:45
understand where we are at this moment, who we are, what we believe. We're in tumultuous times here,
3:52
lots of change. And my purpose is just to help us get a little bit of a handle on it. And it's a
4:00
little bit different than some of the other research you may see out there and political pollsters and
4:04
market researchers working for private companies. They're all doing research too. And they're asking
4:09
people questions. But their purposes are just a little bit different. A political pollster wants
4:16
to help someone win an election. A market researcher wants a company to help you buy their product
4:22
or service. And our goal, and there's a number of people out there in this space who work at Gallup
4:28
or the Pew Research Center. And our goal is really to help us understand life is really,
4:33
really complicated. And we're trying to just make it a little bit easier.
4:37
Okay, that's, that's super interesting, because it's, it's helpful for us to kind of know with
4:41
our perspective that you're coming from and where that all comes from. But really, this all hinges
4:44
on an article that was released here recently. And that's why we're talking, it's an article in
4:48
the survey center on America's life's survey on American life's website. So it was dated actually
4:54
June 8 of 2021. And it was on the state of American friendship. Okay, and then you talk about the
4:59
changes, challenges and losses there. And that was all based on a 2021, may of 2021 American
5:04
perspective survey. And we're going to summarize a lot because we don't have a ton of time here
5:07
today. But there were some general trends that you saw that even with the COVID pandemic, even
5:12
with some of the stuff that was going on specifically in America, that you saw a pronounced decline
5:17
in the role of friendships in American social lives. And you talked about a lot of things in
5:22
this and guys, we'll have the link in the podcast notes so you can check this out for yourself. But
5:26
you talked about a lot of broader structural forces at play. You mentioned the Americans
5:29
that are marrying later than ever, that they're more geographically mobile than in the past that
5:34
American parents are twice spending twice as much time with their children compared to previous
5:38
generations. And also, Americans are working longer hours and traveling more for work and all
5:42
these different things. But you know, is it just a too big of an issue to kind of come down to one
5:48
singular thing? Or is it just this amalgamation of all this crappy stuff that results in America's
5:54
Americans not really focusing on friendships? Yeah, so we're seeing, you know, and this is going
5:58
to be not a surprise to anyone who's lived through the last 10, 15, 20 years, we're seeing, you know,
6:04
fundamental shifts in American society and culture. Americans are marrying later than ever, fewer
6:10
Americans belong to places of worship, religious communities. We use about a whole range of ideas
6:19
such as families and relationships is changing as well. You know, young people are much less
6:25
likely to prioritize marriage than they used to, right? That these things are absolutely shifting
6:31
in tectonic ways. And so, you know, friendship is just one thing that's being buffeted by all this.
6:38
And one of the things that we saw in the poll is that there's a number of different ways that
6:42
we saw this decline. One is the number of close friends people have. And that was defined just as
6:48
do you have a close friend or not? And how many? The other was, do you have a best friend? And
6:54
who is the first person you go to when you have a personal problem? And this could be a friend,
6:58
a spouse, partner, parent, sibling, and fewer people are turned to their friendship friends when
7:05
they have these types of problems. Yeah. And when I was digging through those stats, it was kind of
7:10
a weird phenomenon, Daniel, like none of the results you found were terribly surprising,
7:15
but they were still concerning. And so, so one I wanted you to specifically talk about, it seems
7:18
kind of minor, but it's major considering some of the guys that I talked to is that you said that
7:22
Americans were more likely, as you mentioned, to make friends at work as opposed to, you know,
7:26
at school or in their neighborhood or place of worship or existing friend groups. Now,
7:30
doesn't this cause a major problem for the future in that, you know, younger generations,
7:35
they either one changed jobs all the time, or they're, you know, trying to be a solopreneur
7:39
and influencer. Isn't that going to have some really big future ramifications for us?
7:44
Yeah. So this, again, it may have been not that surprising given how much work is kind of taken
7:49
over. And it's always been kind of a central part of when we think about, you know, living a fulfilling
7:54
life, you know, workplace doing, having a job, having a career has always been at kind of the
8:00
center there. And so that that we're making, you know, close friends at work, the workplace is
8:05
actually a good thing. But when we talk about changes in workplace, you know, going remote,
8:11
workplace flexibility and scheduling, this is all going to have downstream effects on our ability
8:18
to form these relationships at a place we spend, you know, 10, you know, up to the 10 hours a day
8:25
at. Yeah. And one thing that you talked about in the study as well is basically, and you mentioned
8:30
it as well before, is that many Americans don't have a large number of close friends. Okay. So we
8:35
talk about all the time about a foxhole. So we just released a an episode series and a devotional
8:39
called how to build a godly and manly foxhole. And that's building a bunch of guys around you
8:43
that aren't 6 p.m. friends, you know, people that, you know, you can reach out to until about 6 p.m.
8:47
We're talking about the 3 a.m. friends that I'm on my way with a shovel friends, you know,
8:50
those types of people, but that the numbers are just terrible. That close to half of Americans
8:55
report that they have three or fewer actual close friends and the number of close friendships,
9:00
they've just declined every year or every decade after every decade. So what are some of the more
9:06
I'm going to try to get you down to like bedrock here? What are some of the foundational cultural
9:10
issues we're going to face because we don't have friends that we can go to when we have a major
9:15
life issue? What is that going to do to us? Yeah. So that's a little bit beyond the scope of our
9:22
poll. But we know from existing social science research that in terms of feeling anxiety and
9:29
loneliness, social isolation, depression, these are all a lot higher. Being alone is not good. You
9:36
know, we're all alone during periods of our life and for short periods of time. Some of them
9:40
must for longer, but we know that the long term effects of chronic social isolation and loneliness
9:46
is really, really negative for you personally, for whatever relationships you do have for your
9:53
work, for the broader community. It's really all around negative. There's nothing good about it.
9:59
Yeah. And the thing that I've seen a lot, Daniel as well, is it has a very, very huge impact on
10:04
men. And that's why I talk about that's why I try to get guys to really focus on it. So now we're
10:09
going to kind of move into a lot of the things from this research that really affected men
10:13
directly. So from the study, you said men today are five times more likely to say that they don't
10:18
have a single close friend than they were 30 years ago. So 30 years ago, isn't that long ago,
10:24
guys like that? That's the first thing is like 30 years is like, Oh, that was forever ago. No,
10:27
no, no, no, that's not even a person ago. That's like a half a person ago, right? But that's a stark
10:33
increase in the people that say that they're less likely to have a single close friend.
10:38
And I know your research doesn't really dig into all of the ramifications as to how we got to this
10:43
point. But why do you think that that's happened? What's special other than the exploding technology?
10:49
What has been the thing that's happened over the last 30 years to cause this?
10:53
Yeah, so I think it's important to put these, these findings in context. So this isn't the first
10:59
study or research that has shown this. So this is part of a broader, you know, number of studies and
11:07
research papers that have shown that our social circles are shrinking, that we have fewer people
11:13
to support us and to support than we used to. So a survey we did a couple years ago
11:20
actually found that when you ask people, do you have someone that you've talked to in the last six
11:25
months about a personal matter? Nearly one in five Americans said that they didn't. And among the
11:31
young men, a group that was been suffering disproportionately when we come to when it comes to this stuff,
11:38
while more than one in four young men said they have no sort of close social contact. And again,
11:44
so that comports with what we're finding in this study on friendship. And there are some
11:49
structural factors that we really do need to pay attention to. We talked about the workplace a
11:53
little bit how important that's been. We know that, again, young men disproportionately falling
11:58
out of the workplace or the workforce that, you know, when it comes to the last 10 or so years.
12:03
So when they talk about people who are chronically unemployed or they're not even in the workforce
12:10
because they're not even looking anymore, these are people who struggle also with their social life,
12:16
you know, they just don't have the same kind of connection because a lot of it is through through
12:21
work. We know that again, marriage is actually a great way to build out your social network.
12:27
I think we often in our society, you know, pit marriage and friendship against each other,
12:33
right? Like if, you know, when you get married, you need to devote a lot of time to your spouse.
12:38
There's new responsibilities and all that. But actually, married people by and large have more
12:45
friends than people who are single with odor divorced. So actually, it tends to work out to
12:51
your advantage. So when Americans are marrying later, they're losing access to that sort of
12:57
more robust social circle earlier in life. We know that again, religion continues to be always
13:04
has been a great social outlet. For all, you know, the other stuff that it provides is really,
13:10
really a great place to find a family, find friends, find fellow travelers. And so I think like that's
13:18
been really important. And we know that for particularly for men, the decline of folks who are attending
13:25
and participating in religious services regularly has plummeted. We know that geographic mobility
13:32
people have a lot more options when it comes to traveling. We know people are job hopping a lot
13:38
more. We know parents, all sorts of stuff in a lot. You know, they're putting way more time into
13:42
their kids than they used to. And the thing that gets pushed out at the end of the day is friendship.
13:48
I mean, and friends, friends are just the easiest thing to sort of say, you know what, hey, my spouse
13:52
needs me to do this or my kids need me to do this or I have to take care of my dad or my mom
13:57
for one reason or the other. And, you know, it's the easiest thing to put off hanging out with friends.
14:04
And we should we just know that the benefits that accrue from from having those close connections
14:11
with your friends intimate connections is really important. Yeah, it's incredibly
14:16
unnerving to really kind of dig through this. I mean, it was it was an uncomfortable read. But
14:20
I'm glad I read through the stuff that you were finding because it seems to be true. And I'm going
14:24
to get back to some stuff on the parents here in just a second. But before I go there, there's
14:28
something else that you reminded me from from the study. The study found that married men are
14:31
significantly more likely than married women to say that the first person that they're going to talk
14:36
to when they have a serious problem is their spouse, right? So 85% of married men say that
14:40
they're going to turn to their spouse when they have a personal problem. Now, I feel like that
14:43
could be a very good thing and a very bad thing depending on the problem, right? But from your
14:48
perspective, is it just a preference that modern men are preferring to go to their spouse because
14:54
maybe they married at a more mature age? And so now they have this older spouse that they're doing
14:58
life with. That's just their preference. Or is it literally because men just don't have anyone
15:02
else to turn to other than their roommate? Yeah. So there's there's a number of things going on here.
15:09
And, you know, we can sort of hit it in reverse order. So yeah, that men are more likely to rely
15:14
on their wife than their wife's are to rely on their husband. That's been true. And number of
15:18
studies have found that. And one of the things that does, I think, is it puts a lot of pressure
15:24
on your spouse to kind of beat everything for you, right? To help you through problems,
15:30
to talk through sort of financial issues, to, you know, to do everything. You know, women by contrast
15:36
have a number of different people that they rely on. So whether it's friends or siblings,
15:41
maybe a colleague or co-worker. And so again, it's sort of more diffuse. And so they have a larger
15:49
group of folks. And that's just imperative. One of the key findings and it was really surprising
15:56
to us was that people with just one friend, one close friend, were not any less lonely than those
16:02
without any. And so more friends was really important. So when you get to like three or four,
16:07
five close friends, then you started seeing the benefit of friendship when it comes to things
16:11
like depression and anxiety and loneliness. So it wasn't just having one. The other thing is,
16:19
we know that having a closer, more intimate, emotional connection with your friends matters.
16:25
We included a number of questions in the survey to get at that idea. So you do receive emotional
16:29
support from your friends. Do you tell your friends you love them? Can you tell them about
16:35
sort of personal intimate details of your life? Women not surprisingly score much higher on all
16:40
those things than men do. All the men do do some of those. And the men who do, again, they score
16:48
much lower on all these negative social outcomes and health outcomes. So anxiety, depression,
16:53
loneliness, again, they're much lower if they have a more of emotional intimate connection.
16:59
The other thing that's really interesting, because I've heard this talked about a lot,
17:02
is that, you know, men and women just need different things out of their friendships,
17:06
you know, men stand shoulder to shoulder when they're hanging out, sort of doing a task, you know,
17:10
getting, you know, engaging in activity, whatever, whatever it is, for women, women sit across from
17:18
each other, sort of talking and moding all that. And I think it's true that men do are engaged
17:25
in sort of the activity based friendships more, but they need that emotional connection just as
17:29
much as women, and they benefit from it just as much as women do. Well, I'm glad you said that
17:33
they're at the end, because that's something I've said a lot, that men connect shoulder to shoulder,
17:36
women connect the eyeball to eyeball. And that's, that's just kind of a normal platitude that
17:40
people will say. But it is still very important. And I encourage guys to do things that aren't very
17:45
fun for them, like being vulnerable, right? So you are the businessman, but maybe you're having a
17:50
down quarter. And now it's the down quarter on the back of two other down quarters. And as
17:55
opposed to just letting your guard down for a second, admitting to some of the people in your
17:58
life, Hey, I don't got it all going on. I know the trucks, you know, perfectly clean. And I know the
18:03
front yard looks great, but man, my business may be falling apart. But most guys aren't willing to
18:07
just be vulnerable enough with their people because they have to kind of keep up that image. But I'm
18:11
going to chase about 1000 rabbit trails because you brought up a bunch of different things. So I'm
18:13
going to come back to the kind of the parent deal. One thing that you talked about in this study was
18:17
that a number of young men that they rely on their parents for personal support and how that is
18:22
doubled over the past decades. Now that's not incredibly shocking considering, you know, the
18:26
helicopter parent generation and parents had it basically been like knocking all the problems that
18:30
could potentially be in their kids ways out of their way. But a lot of this, I feel like stems from
18:35
the fact that most parents are seemingly okay with their kids just coming home and living with mommy
18:40
and daddy after college, right? So they're they're 22, 23. Why not extend adolescents all the way
18:46
to 30, right? Sure play video games, you know, look for a job maybe launch your YouTube channel.
18:51
But ultimately, it's a lot of parents that are enabling this. No.
18:55
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly complicated. The millennial generation, which, you know, I am like
19:01
on the edge here, I'm like the like the youngest exer or the oldest millennial, depending on how
19:07
you want to cut it. Like the millennial generation graduated into like one of the worst, like the
19:13
big chunk of them graduated in one of the worst, you know, economic environments that, you know,
19:19
in I think a generation, they've had greater student loans than any generation previously.
19:27
College costs, you know, have increased tremendously over the past decade or so.
19:32
And so their economic circumstances are certainly part of the story, right? There's cultural
19:36
things going on, societal things going on, but I think that we can't ignore sort of their economic
19:41
circumstances. And when you look at those wealth gap where baby boomers were when they were the age
19:47
of millennials and where millennials are, boomers were far, far further along. And so I think, you
19:54
know, some of this is certainly about just needing some financial help. But the problem with that
20:01
is that there are some repercussions or downsides to this. Like, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm a parent
20:07
myself. I have a three and a five year old. I'm a super booster when it comes to parents.
20:13
But it's a unique relationship. And, you know, in many instances, it's not an equal relationship,
20:19
right? Where we might expect reciprocity, parents are going to be able to help you out in the same
20:24
way your peers will. They're not going to be attuned to, you know, the kind of problems you're
20:30
going to have exactly as a young person, maybe dating with relationships, you know, starting your
20:35
career. And so I think, yeah, there's a number of ways in which despite, you know, all their wanting
20:43
to help parents maybe actually setting their kids up for some challenges down the road by not
20:49
encouraging them to get out there and start building their social life. You know, we talk so much about
20:54
building a life, you know, getting a house, a job, a spouse, you know, a family. But we need to talk
21:02
about building a social life, building friendships. We know that it's not just for young people. We
21:08
spend most of our time in our early years as when we dedicate the most time to friendships.
21:14
But friendships are sustaining throughout. And in fact, among seniors, studies have shown that
21:19
it's not the relationships with family at that age. It's your relationships with your friends that
21:23
that are most correlated with with positive health outcomes.
21:27
Well, and I think as well, one thing that you mentioned is kind of the things you're able to
21:31
build off of that. But these children aren't building resilience either. I mean, we're obsessed
21:35
with resilience here. And I remember, because I've talked about it here on this podcast,
21:38
at one point, because I graduated from college in 2008. So I was right there in the middle of
21:42
graduating in a financial crisis. There weren't a lot of great options for me, regardless of where I
21:47
graduated and my GPA and all that stuff. I was down to my last 75 bucks at one point, right? This
21:53
was before I got married, which I got married at a young age. But it's like, I didn't have the avenue
21:58
for excuses, right? There was no avenue and my parents didn't have to tell me, Hey, you can't come
22:02
home after college. I just knew it. And I think most of these kids know that they have that safety
22:07
net. And they're all too eager to kind of, you know, go ahead and jump into it whenever they need
22:12
to. And so yeah, I'm with you. I think the parents are going to create some of these downstream issues
22:16
that maybe won't even be seen until this next generation raises their kids. But you know, one
22:20
thing I did want to kind of talk about is from another interview, you said you've gotten a lot
22:24
of interesting feedback to your research, specifically this research. So you said you've gotten feedback
22:28
on the survey from conservatives that, you know, have been that modern culture has feminized
22:33
men and that it makes it difficult for men to engage in traditionally masculine activities,
22:38
like no more all male spaces. And you said that you didn't really find that all that convincing.
22:43
But then you said that liberals are saying that toxic masculinity is the root of the problem,
22:47
right? You know, toxic masculinity, the patriarchy and that men are socialized to not show affection.
22:51
And that it's affecting their relationships and ability to emote. You said that there's maybe
22:55
something there, but that's not the whole story. If I were to press you, which is exactly what I'm
23:00
doing, where would you say you land? And I don't mean politically as, you know, far as to the right
23:05
or to left conservative liberal. But who do you think has the better arguments for this? Because
23:09
I got to be honest for me. As soon as I heard you say that, you know, modern culture has feminized
23:13
men, I was like, yep, check moving on. Like that, that was such an easy explanation for me,
23:18
considering all the other options. But if you had to really peg it and say it's probably more
23:23
so this than that, what would you say? Well, I think that the entire idea of like what is feminine
23:29
and masculine, like, we're, we're renegotiating that, right? You know, every generation, you know,
23:37
they, they push back a little bit on the sort of received norms, the ways of doing things. And I
23:45
think that, you know, young people today are also rethinking a lot of what we're meant to find is
23:50
traditional notions of femininity and masculinity. And we know, right? This is, this is not a contentious
23:56
point, right? From an early age, women are socialized to be more nurturing and relationship-oriented than
24:00
men. Men are taught to perceive intimacy with other men as a feminine or weak or maybe unnecessary.
24:07
And how difficult vulnerability is like the, for, for an older generation, the only emotion that
24:14
was really acceptable is that anger. You could be angry, but you couldn't. And maybe you could be
24:19
happy. But like being sad, being melancholy, you know, being depressed, being anxious, we still see
24:29
social desirability here that, that, that people who feel these things don't want to admit that
24:33
they're feeling them. And, and that's a huge problem. The other piece is that is the relationship-oriented
24:38
part, right? Like, we should all be relationship-oriented, right? We should all care about
24:44
our relationships, whether they're friendships, whether it's a spouse, whether it's our kids.
24:50
And so I think like, yeah, I, you know, I don't know if I would call it toxic masculinity, but I
24:57
think like that, that, that some of the ideas of traditional notions of masculinity are problematic
25:02
if you want to encourage men to experience the entire range of emotions to be able to
25:08
with their male friends, you know, reach out when they have a problem, ask for help,
25:13
receive emotional support that we know they're not getting at the same rate that women are,
25:19
and that we know the, the group that is most likely to have an opposite gender friend
25:24
is single men. And we know those, one of the reasons that they, they are, because they're,
25:28
they're reaching out to their female friends with the kind of emotional support that I would argue
25:33
that they, you know, in a perfect world should be able to get from their male friends. And you,
25:37
you can see it with, with, you know, with kids too, like my, I have two boys, and they'll hold
25:44
hands with the, you know, other classmates, boy or girl, they'll hug. And at some point,
25:49
we're like, yeah, no, you know, you know, boys don't do that kind of stuff. Boys don't, you know,
25:53
don't show the kind of emotion. Boys don't engage that way. And that, that, that to me,
25:58
that seems problematic. Like, you know, if it's, if it's like your thing, it's not your thing.
26:01
But I feel like they shouldn't be that restriction placed on sort of the sort of available way that
26:07
we can relate to each other. So you use the word socializing, and I certainly don't want to frame
26:13
this improperly. So if I'm putting words in your mouth, please feel free to correct. But you talked
26:17
about how we're basically socializing these kids to act in a certain way as they become men or as
26:21
they become women. But doesn't that give a little bit of short shrift to perhaps actual wiring,
26:27
like genetic wiring? Because one thing you also said in the studies that there are no generational
26:31
differences, meaning younger men are more no, no more likely than older men to have shared their
26:36
personal feelings with a friend. And so here we live in this very progressive culture, where,
26:40
you know, gender is apparently fluid and all these things are just up in the air and you use the
26:44
word renegotiate. But even from your study, it shows that older generations are doing the exact
26:49
same thing that younger generations doing are doing. So is there something to that? Is that
26:53
more wiring and not just Western patriarchal, you know, associations with certain words and
26:58
certain actions? Yeah, and it's one of the reasons I, you know, in all the interviews I've done,
27:03
and the way I talk about this is, is I think that, you know, if you want to talk about masculinity
27:08
and whether that's part of the problem, you need to reconcile the fact that, again, if you look at
27:14
young men versus older men, young men have very different attitudes about traditional masculinity
27:20
when it comes to issues like homophobia, yeah, very, very different attitudes in older men. So
27:29
that can't be the entire story. That can't be the only thing that's driving this. And I think like
27:35
if you were to wave a wand or say, you know what, we're gonna, you know, make men and women, you
27:40
know, exactly the same when it comes to how they, you know, think about this and their socialization,
27:46
I think we would still see differences. And I think a lot of that are the sort of structural
27:50
issues that we talked about earlier. I think you just simply can't ignore them. And I think for far
27:57
too long, people in institutions, whether it's the workplace or church, have not paid enough
28:04
attention to fostering opportunities for people to develop lifelong friendships.
28:12
Okay. So at Undaunted Life, we actually have a definition of what a man is, right? Because everyone's
28:16
got their own definition of manhood and this and that. But we say it's a male that cultivates
28:21
spiritual, mental, and physical resilience on a daily basis. So not strength, because strength
28:25
can wane resilience is that ability to bounce back, but focusing on spiritual resilience,
28:29
mental resilience, and physical resilience, like that, that is what we say a man is. So no one's
28:34
going to live up to that standard. But from your perspective, in light of all the things that you
28:38
know and all the research that you've done that I have not had the opportunity to read yet,
28:41
do you feel like that's a pretty good target for men to shoot for?
28:44
Yeah, I, I, you know, really liked it. And we're going a little further afield from the data and
28:50
what I actually know about. But I do think, yeah, resilience is, is great. Because it,
28:56
it builds into it this idea that, that there's going to be ebbs and flows in your life, right?
29:02
You're going to, you know, be up and down. And resilience, you my understanding of it is,
29:07
it's that ability to get back up when you get knocked down. And I like the idea that, yeah,
29:12
it's separate from strength. Strength is great. But resilience is what's going to keep you going
29:17
when you get knocked on your butt for that third time. Right? Well, hey, I get the sense that you
29:21
and I are going to talk again. I get the sense that you're going to keep putting out some stuff
29:24
that's kind of in this vein, but I know we're running short on time. So I do want to kind of
29:28
move to our lightning round. So we do have a section here towards the end of our interviews
29:31
that we do sometimes called, what would you say to someone that said? And so I'm going to say that,
29:36
and then I'm just going to fill in the blank with a random statement. But here's the thing,
29:40
you got 30 seconds. Okay, that you can't like go off and you know, quote this thing and quote that
29:44
thing. It is just nuts and bolts, meat and potatoes. What would you say to someone that said,
29:48
I fill in the blank and then we go. So you up for it? Yeah, all right. First one here.
29:52
What would you say to someone that said, parents need to stop letting their sons move back home
29:57
after college? That it's great to have them home, but you know, in the long run, it'll be
30:04
helpful to get them out of the house. All right. Next one here. What would you say to someone that
30:08
said, I don't need a best friend? Well, I'm the best visitor says you don't need just one.
30:14
You need a number of friends. You need a group of friends to really help you,
30:17
sort of navigate all the challenges that life's going to throw your way.
30:21
You're doing great with lightning around. I feel like you've done this before. So yeah,
30:24
I need the names of all the other people that have done this and preempted you and helped you out
30:27
beforehand. So here we go. We're going to keep going. What would you say to someone that said,
30:30
it's okay for men to be stoic. I have no problem with stoicism, but we all need connection to.
30:37
You can be stoic and still have people in your life who support you when things get tough.
30:41
Great point. All right. Next one here. What would you say to someone that said,
30:44
it is okay for men to be lone wolves? Well, wolves hunting packs. So you know, really,
30:53
lone wolves, a lot easier to be picked off in the forest in the woods. So like the wolves
30:58
that lived the longest are ones that are part of packs. You're making my points for me. All right.
31:02
So I just need all my guys to listen to this because I've been saying a lot of these things,
31:06
but you seem way smarter than me. So this is going to work out great. All right. Next one here.
31:09
What would you say to someone that said, connecting via technology is just as good
31:13
as connecting face to face? Yeah. So there's been tons of research on this and the problems
31:19
of technology. And we know interpersonal trust is much higher when you can connect face to face.
31:25
It's a lot more fun too, quite frankly, when you can engage and see someone in person.
31:30
All right. Next one here. What would you say to someone that said,
31:33
as church attendance continues to decline in the West, so will the state of American friendships?
31:39
Yeah. I think that there's some truth to that. And we know that there's a lot of benefit from
31:45
being involved in religious community for an entire family. And so we know that it's a great
31:51
place to raise your kids. We know it's a great place to make friends. So yeah, absolutely.
31:58
All right. Just a couple more left. What would you say to someone that said
32:01
men connect shoulder to shoulder? Women connect eyeball to eyeball. That's just the way we're wired.
32:07
I would say that men and women equally benefit when we can create enduring
32:14
intimate connections with other people. All right. The last and perhaps the most important
32:18
question of the day, what would you say to someone that said there are three kinds of lies, lies,
32:23
damned lies, and statistics? I'd say come follow us on Twitter and check out our website.
32:28
Hey, come on now. Mark Twain, he hooked me up with that last one. You're not even going to give
32:33
him any. You're not going to give him his play. You haven't heard that one before. I know you've
32:36
heard that before. Absolutely. Yeah. And point of fact, like for any research you're going to look
32:41
at, you should absolutely pay attention to the methodology. Do your research, look at them,
32:47
look what they're doing and make your own decisions. All right. Well, hey, we've gone
32:51
everywhere in this conversation. I know we had limited time, but I'm glad we got in the
32:54
information that we did. But that is all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your
32:57
chest? No, absolutely. Love the conversation. All right. Daniel Cox, thanks for coming on
33:02
on Daunted Life of Man's podcast. Thank you. There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with
33:07
Daniel Cox. I really enjoyed that conversation because we didn't really get to drill down too
33:11
far. We didn't have enough time to get into some of those areas, but I was really glad that we got
33:14
to focus on male friendships and what what males are losing out on when they do that. I assume that
33:19
he and I have a lot of areas of disagreement when it comes to some of these things and some of you
33:23
out there might be wondering like, Hey, Kyle, why didn't you press him on this? Why didn't you press
33:26
him on that? Guys, we had a limited amount of time. We are are going to do something like this again
33:30
down the road. I can pretty much guarantee it. So hopefully we can have some more time to dig down,
33:33
but this is a guy that really likes to stick with the data. This is a guy that wants to describe
33:37
things as they really are based on their studies, which they assume are not flawed, right? And so
33:42
he doesn't really like to, you know, articulate opinions that go outside of that. That's something
33:45
that he and I talked about off air. So I can respect that. All right, guys, before we let you
33:48
go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost. As you know, by now, at Daunted Life, our mission
33:52
is equipping men to push back darkness. So specifically, we do that by providing you
33:56
conversations like the one you just heard that helps you forward spiritual, mental and physical
34:00
resilience. So with that, I've got the link to that study that we talked about. So that's the
34:04
state of American friendship, change challenges and loss, and also a link to Daniel Cox's Twitter.
34:09
All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to this episode. We really do appreciate it.
34:12
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive review.
34:16
If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, just email me info at undaunted.life.
34:20
That's I N F O at undaunted.life. You can follow us on Instagram and TikTok and like us on Facebook.
34:26
Check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like this
34:29
coming your way. Just go to www.undaunted.life. And lastly, we want to thank the band, August
34:34
Burns Red, for allowing us to use their music for our content. The intro outro track on this
34:38
podcast is our song, Cutting the Ties, which is off their 10th anniversary re-recording of their
34:42
album, Leveler. The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
34:47
Remember, keep pushing back darkness. Keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
34:54
Keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
35:24
[Music]