KXEL Presents: The Jacobsen Group Podcast – April 5, 2025

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John Jacobson here on the Jacobson Group.

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for life, building a culture of life from room to tomb, helping specifically expectant mothers and babies on the way both before and after birth.

John Jacobson with you on KXEL on the Jacobson group and we've got coach Patrick J. Knapp, Jr.

and John Stewart are inevitable regular contributors to this beacon emulating

from Waterloo Seed Rapids, America's original 50,000 watt blow torch.

We canvassed the entire big 10 and up into Canada.

And guys, the update is that it wasn't during degrees.

It was Ben McCullum and we speculated last week with Scott Corey that it would be either McCullum or possibly Chris Jans.

And also another update.

Fran McCaffrey gets another head coaching job at 66 at the University of Pennsylvania and how ironic that the contract with Fran to pay Fran's Money that is owed on the contract by terminating it early is not mitigated by his salary at Penn Frans gonna get his 4.2 million a year and his pens salary

Let's go to Coach Knapp.

First off, Coach, what did he feel for Fran as it works out?

Is it a tough job at Penn for him?

Yeah, John, good day to everybody.

The Ivy League has totally changed with NIL and the portal.

I just read an article where Fran was being proposed as a new coach.

And as a matter of fact, there are several players who are going into the portal from that team.

that are top knots.

They now say that they will think over their decision.

But again, the portal and NIL money is draining the Ivy Leagues.

You know, not even the Great Yale could move forward in the NCAA tournament this year.

Penn looks at this position as not just winning the Ivy League, but

Doing damage in the NCA tournament.

That's the tradition that is there.

Dick Carter, Bob Weynauer, Fran Dunphy, on and on.

I wish Fran the very best of luck.

I was in that position once myself, and I wish him the very best, but it's a much different job now.

It sure is.

Coach Knapp, again, he's right at the Epa Center, Pennsylvania guy, very familiar with Penn Coach Patrick J. Knapp Jr., the Georgetown lesson.

John Stewart, I know you've always enjoyed Fran and been a supporter of his.

Are you delighted that he does a find a landing pad, John Stewart?

Well, you know, I kind of didn't think that he was done.

I just didn't know if it would be

uh, somewhere back east at Pennsylvania.

Um, but as coach said, you know, it's, it's a tough job.

And, um, with today's NIL, the way it is in things like that, if you can't attract some of those players that are out there in the portal, at least occasionally, I don't think you're going to be real successful almost anywhere.

I think you've got to be able to get

portal people and And then fortunately we have a number of schools that are the haves and the rest of them are the have nots and I think the richer will get richer

and interesting Darian derviz The erstwhile Drake coach one year at West Virginia who got lured away.

We thought to Iowa.

We made a bid for him He ends up at Indiana and in an ironic twist.

It looks like Josh Dix

is looking at Indiana.

Johnny, is that a surprise to you?

Do you think it's the DeVries connection?

I thought he might be looking at Craytoniana over there in Omaha, being a council blessed boy.

What's a you, Johnny?

Well, and the only things that I had read about him at all is that he was, uh, he was leaning to Kansas.

So I don't know what's going on.

Coach, any speculation, any thought, uh, Blake, why would any Iowa boy want to come to Kansas these days?

To have these in job, you know, always hard to fill the chees of Bill's self

though.

Uh, coach, your, your opinion on what we'll, uh, we'll, uh, well, well, let's talk about the hiring of my first choice, uh, Mr. McCollum, uh, Ben, I wanted him.

He's my first choice over degrees and, uh, we've got him and coach, what's your take on this whole thing?

And, uh, will he meet?

Well, he's bringing his top man from Drake with him.

So maybe we don't need to worry about all these Iowa guys that have fled for the portal.

Coach, size this up for us.

Yeah, Bennett Sturks who used to be on what's my line in the 1950s.

That was Bennett Cerf.

Bennett Cerf.

Yeah, wow.

I got him confused.

Well played coach.

Well played.

Go ahead.

Ben McCollum is 126 and 95 with an 81% winning percentage.

Bobby Knightall, we said that he met better coaches.

at D23 and in high school, then some of the guys he coached against in college.

And it seems to me that all Ben McCollum does is win.

So it looks like a home run hire or the Hawkeyes.

And when we talked about the portal, let me just comment on that.

I don't know where Josh Dix will end up.

He had a pretty good year this year.

There are a couple of Iowa players that should find success.

in other homes, but, uh, this kid, Owen Freeman, uh, 1.8 million to go to Creighton.

Is that confirmed?

That's, that's, that's out of control.

I'm sorry.

That's out of control.

Wow.

You know, for a team that doesn't know how to win in March very regularly, that does surprise me.

Uh,

yeah.

play the theme.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Listen, that's why, uh, that's why, yeah, we'll have Blake, uh, uh, interposing the Creighton fight song, which is the Soviet men's, uh, uh, Anthem chorus here momentarily.

You know, um, I didn't want to read precisely because of the 20 years that he coached under Altman and McDermott at Creighton.

They never made a sweet 16.

Uh, the discarding of Fran, uh, was precisely because Fran never got the sweet 16 has been Tom Davis in the last century.

that last got us to the sweet 16.

I still say Creighton always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

Johnny, I like the McCollum higher and even in the Kansas city area where we do other radio shows.

They're familiar with her from Northwest Missouri state.

All he did was win there.

He's bringing his big gun with them.

I think the guy could probably recruit.

But Johnny, the thing to me is, I think that donors are opening up their wallets overnight again and restocking an NIL fund that was depleted because of some hesitancy about Fran continuing his code.

John, what's your opinion?

Well, that is my opinion, mostly of what you said, but I kind of any more somewhat discount all of the recruiting knowledge and things like that because I think a lot of these larger conference schools and coach could weigh in on this too.

They just go to the to the math conference and a few of the a few of the smaller ones on the east coast and the mountain west and stuff and just poach their good players and So I don't think I don't put quite as much emphasis on recruiting as what I would have Fiber even ten years ago.

Well, let me ask the intangible the coach snap so coach snap there was the

Even Blake is familiar with the big jinx against the Boston Red Sox for trading away Babe Ruth, right Blake?

Of course.

Well, we've had this in in both

Well, let's take a look at the Nebraska football team.

They fired Frank Solic, who all he did was win nine or 10 games every year, top 10 finishes in bowl games, and have been jinxed ever since until they brought Frank Solic back for his pat on the back, his award.

and his stadium revitalization, rehabilitation at Lincoln.

Huskers win their first bowl game with a first winning season in a while.

Coach, since McCullum is a student and a devotee of Dr. Tom Davis, is this time now for Iowa, now that the athletic directors are gone in the post-Avis era,

Uh, now that they've brought back in Ben McCollum, is it time to bring 86 year old Dr. Tom Davis back to a hero's welcome at Carver Hawkeye, where he was the last guy to take Iowa to the sweet 16, never lost a first round game through his entire coaching career in the NCAAs, whether it was Boston college or whether it was at, uh,

University of Iowa.

Do we bring back Davis and break the jinx?

And maybe does this help Ben McCollum revitalize the men's attendance

at Carver Hawkeye?

That's a great recommendation.

I would be for it wholeheartedly.

You know, I remember Tom Davis when he was at Lafayette, a small school north of Philadelphia in Eastern VA.

And then of course, in the big East at Boston College, he's a class act.

He won everywhere.

Iowa should recognize him once again.

And, you know, he came back kind of like Bud Grant did and a few other legends late their careers or, you know, Kurt Gowdy coming back to do some games during strikes is that idea of, you know, just, just making sure that, that there's always a way to give honor.

to the past and Tom Davis was called back into action about 10 years ago in his 70s to take the helm at a dilapidated Drake program and John Stewart, he brought them back to a winning team at Drake, solidified it and part of the resurgence for Drake is due to those seats planted by Tom Davis in his 70s.

Definitely and I think probably

To a certain extent, John is at least somewhat responsible for them having the arena they're playing in now.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So I rate it.

Blake Griffin, you're an outsider.

You're a Kansas and Ottawa guy.

Bill Self has struggled this year at KU.

It's a different world with NIL and portals and managing rosters.

What do you think of Iowa's higher of Ben McCullum from

basically from his tremendous record at Drake this year, 31 wins and winning the first game in the NCAA.

He's going as far as any Drake team did, going back that final four team of 1969 under Murray John.

I think he just goes to show that winning carries, whether that's the division two level or whether that be mid majors, winning coaches, make winning teams.

And a

final outro for you guys.

Coach Knapp, the Hawkeyes did well this year without Caitlin Clark.

They lost against Oklahoma pretty badly.

I know you and I thought they had a shot at winning that game.

How stands the Iowa women's program?

Are they still on solid footing?

It sounds like fear back is coming back.

Sadly, we lose Lucy Olsen due to the fact that it was her last year, but Iowa has some tremendous recruits coming in, including that lights out.

uh gal from southern cala with or the iowa program how goes it going forward coach for iowa women

uh... there they're going to be fine uh... there they have more than uh... several young players coming back who put time in got uh... at outstanding experience this year and they proved a year ago when the quoted number was two hundred fifty k or lucy olson

that they will play well in the portal.

So let's wait and see who they bring in.

Yeah, John Stewart, you know, that's really a cool thing.

And thanks to the efforts of guys like coach Patrick J. Knapp Jr.

who put National Women's Basketball on the map from Georgetown in DC, the media center of the world along with coach Gino over at UConn, getting those first national televised games.

John Stewart, it's got to be gratifying doors think for coach to know that the Iowa women are out drawing the Iowa men three to one at Carver, 15,000 to 5,000 home game.

John Stewart.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah, there.

They're far out drawing them.

I think, you know, the fan apathy had set in on the men's side and that's what you end up with.

Yep, uh, Johnny, I think we'll still be singing in heaven.

There is no beer at DJs and Omaha, you and me, uh, the, the unofficial Iowa fight song coach.

We're so delighted to have you on as always for this special report coach.

You've got a wonderful podcast out there and man, I can't wait to hear you go with Gino.

If only you would open the phone line so I could call in, but you're not going to give me that chance.

Are you a coach now?

Well, we're, we're not that sophisticated yet.

But how do we catch out here in Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, uh, and two provinces in Canada who are listening in today.

How do they catch that great podcast years, coach?

Play by play on Spotify, Amazon, iHeart, anywhere else you get your podcast.

We have Hall of Famer, Joan Bond Vassini, over 700 women's basketball college victories, made her bones at Long Beach State and Arizona.

That's a great podcast that is up right now.

And coach, who do you see in your final four?

We had games on Thursday and games on Friday.

Who do you see in your final four?

Well, on the women's side, I have,

Without a doubt Yukon UCLA, South Carolina and TCU Is my sleeper beating Texas.

Wow, never said Carolina is losing right next to Maryland if people wanted to and and with the men I Have Alabama beating Duke.

I am not on the Duke train.

Yep.

I have Houston.

I have

Florida now that St.

John's was beaten.

So St.

John's was in it, but now they're not going to take Florida and finally Auburn.

So Auburn Duke

and

Houston, Florida.

John Stewart, you have the last word here.

Who's your final four pick?

I know you felt your brackets, Johnny.

Well, I had Florida as the champ and I think I had

Duke and Houston, I can't remember who I've got in the other read probably Auburn, but I'm not a hundred percent sure of that But coach if you watch that game last night, there's not too many people it could beat Alabama if they make 25 out of 52 3 Oh,

my unbelievable.

It was quite the circus great game to watch

Yes, it was

Blake Griffin's chocolate Blake.

I know you want in okay.

Who's your final four buddy?

I've got I've got Houston.

I think they looked a little shaky but that offense it only only compares to the Alabama offense when the Alabama offense is on like they were early earlier in this in this tournaments It's gonna be a tough one.

I but I've got Houston in Florida in my final in my final two first of all

And don't go away, we'll be back in our next segment after this quick message.

I will just say one final thought here.

So far, the new leadership regime in Iowa, President Wilson and Beth Getz as athletic director.

These two women coach seem to be getting the job done with some good hires, Coach Knapp, Jan Jensen and now Ben McCollum coach, do you agree?

Yeah, I think that it's not just who they hire, it's the timing of hires that are very important now.

So yes, give them an A.

All righty guys, John James with Blake Griffin, John Stewart, Coach Patrick J. Knapp Jr.

You're listening to Jacobson Group here on KXEL.

I love springtime in eastern Iowa and those April showers will continue to bring May flowers.

Speaking of beautiful aesthetics, just drive by the Hames Homes communities in Cedar Rapids.

You're going to find safe, affordable, beautiful homes that this multi-general

a great civic servant family found it by Kurt and Norma Hames now into successive generations and we're bringing back our beloved Barbara Hames Bryant today in her own right doing so much in our civic community both having been awarded

locally in the corridor there for their civic work at Haymes Homes, but also Barbara, of course, a player of extreme significance statewide with different women's civic and business groups.

Barbara, welcome back.

to the show today as we are in springtime and daylight savings and it's sunny till late nowadays.

It's so good to hear from you John and yes we love springtime in Cedar Rapids.

I will be coming back again shortly to visit mom of course mom god willing will be 89 years old this august and she remembers your father and mother so fondly and Barbara I love that you have that Marianne legacy phone number it's almost identical to my mom's home phone number that she's had since 1964 but you guys never stagnate there's always a progression now you are in

Southwest Cedar Rapids, near all of the beautiful retail, all of the airport, the transportation, just a close hop to Iowa City, whether it's healthcare or Hawkeye Sports down there, and talk about these beautiful, safe, affordable homes in these wonderful communities that you folks have.

John, I'm so glad you asked.

Our homes have changed a lot since 1969, although our number has not.

That gives you an idea of the consistency of our family through three generations of selling manufactured homes.

The original manufactured homes were called mobile homes or trailers, and they, let me tell you what, these new modern ones, they ain't your grandpa's trailer.

They're spacious, they're affordable, they have vinyl siding, shingled roof, and up to 2400 square feet.

in space most home sites are big enough for a two car garage also and our new residents just love that but one thing they still are our homes are still affordable it costs about half to build a manufactured home inside in a factory as it costs

to build a site-built home out in the weather and the elements and dealing with subcontractors and fluctuating prices.

Here with Barbara Hames Bryant, heading up the Hames Homes operation and Barbara, what you say is so foundationally key there and I think that it's so wonderful to look at.

Again, I go down to people are very safety conscious these days and you have this wonderful

blog site on your HamesHomes.com website and I really have enjoyed the one that just came out here within the last week or so on the safety

factor.

And we do pride ourselves in having safe communities.

Now people need to understand that no place is perfectly safe.

People need to be diligent.

They need to be good neighbors and watch out for each other.

But we do have on-site 24-7 emergency calls.

We have cameras.

We have speed limits.

We screen our residents before they come in so that you know that your neighbor has been vetted before they move in.

It's a planned, private,

development.

People agree to a set of rules and guidelines before they move in, and the folks that live here just love

it.

Barbara, I couldn't agree more.

You've highlighted three incredibly important aspects of your communities there.

The 24-7 on-call emergency services, the security cameras, the homeowner's screening.

Also, you've got additional police patrols.

We do.

with the Cedar Rapids Police Department and they do additional patrols at our request evenings and weekends and that is very comforting to our residents.

We have very low crime here not no crime but low crime but it's very comforting to our residents to see the Cedar Rapids Police also patrolling our neighborhoods.

Agreed, and also you bring that added value of vehicle tracking, Barbara.

Yes, each one of our residents registers their vehicles and puts a sticker on the back of their vehicle so that we know when someone is driving through the community's grand view and summit view whether they are residents there or whether they're visitors.

So if somebody is speeding through our communities and doesn't have one of those stickers on the back, we give them a lot of extra attention.

We love that.

And Barbara, lighting is the key to everything if you talk to anybody that does security and protective work.

You guys have got new overhead lighting.

Yes.

In the past, we've done individual lighting at home sites.

But that doesn't really give us the vision that is important for keeping our residents safe.

We've been reinstalling

replacing those lights with the tall overhead halogen street lights.

And it's made an amazing difference.

We also tend to put cameras on those light poles too, so folks feel even more secure.

Here with Barbara Hames Bryant from Hames Homes, they're wonderfully safe communities with these beautiful affordable homes.

Barbara, we are coming up, believe it or not, on the 60th anniversary of the infamous

Palm Sunday tornado spree that went through northeast Iowa in 1965, which literally brought Conrad Johnson and Grant Price convene a meeting in Kansas City of National Weather Service and journalists come up with a watch warning system that we currently have for tornadoes and severe thunderstorms.

You guys have emergency storm shelters there, Barbara.

Talk about those.

That's very important this time of year.

At Heyman's Homes, we really care about our residents.

So each community, Grandview and Summitview, have two emergency storm shelters.

They're open for residents' use.

We also have something new.

We have security volunteers who are residents.

They're wearing orange vests.

They help residents park during a storm emergency, get into the building, and make sure that everybody is comfortable and safe during an emergency.

Having said that, our homes are actually pretty darn secure.

They did better during the Durecho than my mom's residential housing in Marion.

John, the roof blew off of our brick office building, but not a single roof blew off of any of the manufactured and mobile

homes.

Awesome.

It really is a testament to how sturdy

the new modern mobile homes are.

Barbara, let's talk about an intangible too.

You guys have a Christian worldview and a servant leadership type of model.

You believe in neighbors helping neighbors and that enhances the value of these communities.

We do everything we can to make sure our neighbors know each other.

For example, this morning here at the Grandview,

community room which is also our storm shelter.

We have a free senior breakfast.

It's open to anybody in Grand View or Summit View to come and have a good hearty breakfast and visit with other seniors.

That kind of stuff you just can't put a price on, as you said.

Amen, sister.

Barbara Hamas Bryant, you've got two beautiful communities that are adjacent.

Summit View and Grand View.

Can you just describe those in brief again?

How many units there and how close it is to all the amenities there in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa City area?

Grand Island Summit View are very popular places to live.

In fact, about one out of every 50 people in Cedar Rapids lives in a Hames home.

Not only do we have parks, playgrounds, events, walking trails, and other amenities like that, but we're 12 minutes away from the Eastern Iowa Airport.

We're 15 minutes away from the Imana colonies.

We're 10 minutes away from downtown Cedar Rapids.

practically across the street from CRST.

We've got the best of both worlds.

You feel like you're living in the country, but you're close to everything.

I want you folks to get out there today and go see the folks at Haymes and I'm going to come out for a remote.

We're going to do a live remote some morning out there from Haymes Homes.

Barbara, in the interim, how can they find you if they want to drive?

call or surf the web.

What's the best way for them to get in contact with you?

Drive out to see us seven days a week.

Our salespeople are here.

We're at the corner of Wilson Avenue and West Post Road Southwest.

So Wilson Avenue, West Post Road, seven days a week.

To call us, as I mentioned earlier, our legacy Marion phone number is 319-377-4863.

That's 319-3863.

Most folks, though, check us out first on our website.

H-A-M-E-S H-O-M-E-S

Here

with Barbara Hamas Bryant.

Barbara, it's such a joy to be with you always.

And I know you folks are listening.

I know that you guys are listening in force.

That's why we want you to get out there and look these folks up.

The ratings here, and I got to congratulate my old friend Dr. Jeff Stein here at NRG at KXEL.

The recent ratings for this America's original 50,000 watt, third channel blow,

torch mega wattage are just incredible to think Barbara that this waterloo market here is getting close to a nine share in the male 25 to 54 bracket is just absolutely incredible ratings.

So we know they're listening in and we know that this would be a great day and a great next couple of weeks from the come by and see you guys.

Yes, please come and visit us.

We love showing off our beautiful neighborhoods, and we've got some magnificent homes for sale.

All the way from small, 1,000 square foot homes to large, 2,400 square foot homes, we love showing them off.

Please come and see us.

And they're easy to find because you're going to see old glory, the state of Iowa flag underneath that, our liberties, our rights, we will maintain, and that great salute to our

our armed forces with the POW, MIA flags, all three of those proudly atop the flag poles.

This Hames family, the product of the greatest generation that liberated the world literally in World War II.

That respect and homage to our veterans, to our Constitution, Proders to this day.

Barbara, we're so proud to have you on the program weekly here with us.

It's my pleasure, John.

Thank you.

Barbara Haymes Bryant, guys.

Get down there to Haymes' homes.

I can't wait to do a live remote down there here sometime in spring or summer.

And we will be back here after this station identification.

If you're enjoying this KXEL podcast, then we invite you to listen to KXEL's great programming in real time, too.

You can hear us on the radio, statewide at AM 1540 and in the Cedar Valley at FM 100.5.

We stream live on the web, not only through KXEL.com, but also through our free KXEL mobile app.

And Alexa knows how to find us too.

It's where Iowa comes to talk, News

Talk 1540, KXEL.

Economics is the study of human choice in the world we live.

Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

By investigating faith in economics, we can learn how they lead to human flourishing.

This is the Faith in Economics podcast, a presentation of the Gortney Institute at Ottawa University.

Welcome to our show today.

I'm Paul McCrae, producer and undergraduate scholar for the Gortney Institute.

With us, we have Dr. Russ McCullough, founder of the Gordney Institute in Lane Angel Chair of Economics, Dr. Justin Clark, the Medard Family Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, and Dr. Peter Jacobson, the Gordney Professor of Economic Education and Research.

All right, so I

grew up a boy in Minnesota in a suburb, and Peter wanted to talk about, I don't know, boyhood, changes, boyhood, growing up, how that's maybe changed over the years.

What were you thinking, Peter?

Yeah, so I just wanted to talk about our society and changing landscape, respect to what it means to be a boy growing up.

And so I'm going to give two examples.

And then I don't really have any overarching point that we need to get to or anything like that.

We can just choose to follow one of the examples really closely or the other one, or we could go in a different direction too.

But here's the two examples.

The first is education.

And so Justin informed me before the break that Christina Hoff Summers is the woman who kind of raised this alarm in the early 2000s.

And it turns out she is pretty precious.

In fact, as I was looking through some of the research, they were like in 1999 articles, like the boyhood problem, it's not actually a problem.

You know, these people are wrong about this.

But 20 years later, it turns out that she was right.

And so what was she saying?

Well, Christina Hoff Summers was pointing out that boys were beginning to fall behind in school and academically, essentially.

And she also, you know,

had other things too, but this was one of her major points.

And so I just found this article in Education Week about academic achievements.

So just a few things.

Boys are way more likely to repeat.

It looks like about 45% more likely to repeat kindergarten than girls.

Girls outpace boys in literacy.

Girls are educating, or excuse me, are taking more advanced like AP courses in high school.

46.6% of girls do, only 38% of boys do.

Girls are now the majority of college graduates.

And I don't know that, you know, the success of girls isn't necessarily what we're worried about in this podcast, but just the

sort of failing ability of boys in the academic setting is one thing.

Was this a recent article?

Yeah.

So the data in ed week was 20, 25 this year.

And I also had stats on the graduating from college, but I'll have to track those down as we talk.

That was one realm is that boys seem to be doing worse at college.

They're graduating college less frequency than they used to.

And so academically, as far as we can measure, things seem to be getting worse for boys.

Here's the other side of things, and this is more anecdotal.

Haley and I are going to have our first son in May, and one of the things that was a big part of my childhood and my growing up was the Boy Scouts.

So I was in the Boy Scouts for essentially the entire life that I can remember, because I started off in Tiger Scouts, which was like five or something like that, went all the way through Eagle Scout, and worked at a Boy Scout camp for several summers.

Yeah.

Put that on your resume.

It's on there, on that.

It's on the show.

I

always look for people who are Eagle Scouts and...

I'll usually interview.

I'm surprised I even interviewed.

You should know.

Yeah, my dad is too.

So it runs in the family.

But for those who haven't kept up with the Boy Scouts over the last two decades, the Boy Scouts have done a lot of things that I consider to be just questionable in general.

For example, there's like a new eagle-required merit badge that I have looked at the requirements and I think they're pretty bad, but that's a little bit beside the point.

The other major thing that the Boy Scouts have done, they've recently changed their name to the Scouts to reflect this,

is that they're not for boys anymore, at least not primarily or not exclusively.

Maybe it's the best way to put it.

In other words, the Boy Scouts aren't the Boy Scouts anymore.

They are just the Scouts.

Girls can join, boys can join.

Now, that doesn't mean that boys can't be in the Boy Scouts.

But one of the things that I appreciated about the Boy Scouts growing up is it was one of the few environments where I could be around other guys where they weren't necessarily competing for the attention of girls.

And my...

At least my personal experience was the other guys who were my age behaved differently when that was the case.

Now, I'm not saying that those spaces don't exist at all anymore.

You know, your high school football team, there's probably not any girls on, though some places there are and there can be.

And so it's not like those places don't exist at all, but it seems like they sort of have gone away.

And it seems like a lot of the, like, activities that boys have done growing up, you know, like, wandering, you know, through different streets.

Like, taking your bike.

Other kids did this too, so it's not just boys.

But the point is, everything feels a little bit more boxed in with less opportunity for boys to do whatever boy things are.

So, I don't know.

Again, pretty vague.

One stat-based explanation, one anecdote.

Passed off to you guys what you think about this.

Can I say something about what I think the voiceouts have done and maybe...

You can tell me whether I have this right or wrong.

Sure.

So I think there was this move to say like, well, girls want to do the Boy Scout stuff, and this is the same move that gets made in football, right?

The girls want to play, and they're willing to play football, let them play, right?

Right.

And then there's a separate move, which goes, we need to change the rules of this club or sport or whatever to make it more welcoming to girls.

which hasn't happened in football, right?

They don't say football is a violent sport.

Now that we have girls playing it, we need to change it to make it more accommodating to the girls that are playing it.

And it seems like the Scouts have done both of those things in the SEM room.

They have not only said, hey, if girls want to do this, you're welcome.

They have also said, and we need to change the Scouts to make them more accommodating to girls.

Yeah, I think that's true.

At the top of my head, I can't think of an example of it, but I... I don't

know what badge you're talking about, but maybe it seems like some of the rules have changed too.

And I just would point this out because it seems like you can object to one or both of these moves, right?

Which is like, I'm not opposed to girls who want to play football, playing football.

I am opposed to changing the rules of football to be more accommodating to girls, because then I think it's not football anymore.

Right.

Yeah, I think, honestly, to a certain extent, and so I think two open questions is why are boys falling behind in school?

The other stat that I promised I'd look up is that girls are 60% of college graduates now.

Yeah.

And so, again, like, I don't know, I'm not saying it's a bad thing that girls are 60% of college graduates, but there is something kind of odd about like this, a lot of the rhetoric that you'll hear, like, you know, and these phrases actually are kind of like a millennial thing now.

So they feel actually a little stale, but like the phrase, the future is female was big for a long time.

It's like,

Well, at least in college, the presence is female.

So we're trying to push it down to 30% of college graduates are men or 20.

At what point are we satisfied with how few men are graduating from college?

And so it's this weird situation where it seems like society is increasingly concerned about making sure spaces work for girls.

And I don't know that I have a problem with that.

As a father of girls, I'm happy when girls are welcome to good spaces.

But it also seems like, again, at what point do we say, well,

don't men need to graduate from college sometimes too?

Not even necessarily all the time.

I mean, I think there's lots of great male jobs that aren't college graduate requirement.

But so again, I just want to throw out there like, what's going on?

That's one question we could ask.

Like, why are men seemingly, and you know, there's there's other stats out there too, like young men are having more trouble with alcohol, drugs, suicide, like all the all these social indicators and they're single more often, like more young men than ever have never been on a date, these sorts of things.

And so it kind of seems like the young male life right now is trending in a bad direction, right?

We would want people to have more good social interactions.

We would want people to have more relationships rather than less, you know.

obviously with some limiting principle.

We would want people and we would think that the college graduation split should be somewhere around 50-50 at least that would be like off the top of my head what I think would make sense rather than 60-40 and continuing to trend in that direction and so and one more thing and I'll pass it off to Russ is I actually would go even a little further than Justin which is that I would say I actually wouldn't

have even and I feel I've mixed feelings about this and I felt differently when it happened but I wish that the Boy Scouts didn't allow girls to join the the scouts and it's not because I have anything against girls in fact funnily enough there were programs already in the scouts that girls could be a part of that weren't the official Boy Scouts and some of the most dedicated people I knew in Boy Scouts were those girls and so I was happy for them that they were able to participate in that way.

But I do think that like there's something valuable about a boy only space and a boy only organization, especially with respect to like things like camping and like staying overnight and stuff like that.

And it's just like gone.

I mean, you could still get together boys and do this.

But like the number of organizations where that's even possible is just getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

And I think something major is lost there for for young boys.

So can I just say real quick?

I

actually don't disagree with you.

Yeah.

My argument for letting the girls in was, I'm okay with letting girls in to football.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, it seems like the elephant in the room is, you know, this last 10, 20 years of gender doesn't matter.

There is no such thing as gender.

Certainly that's impacted a lot of things.

The DEI changes that were made, whether it's from government level to other things.

So my immediate thought is, is it starting to head the other direction with?

some of the even the recent changes that that trumpet did granted their executive orders but didn't he declare male and female and you know women transsexuals and sports and I mean to me that's obviously the scouts probably couched out to that in some way socially it seemed like the nation was heading that direction and then all of a sudden I think with

the election of Trump.

And I don't want to bring politics into this, but I think this is an important part of it, that maybe the silent majority wasn't speaking because they were uncomfortable with that talk.

Yeah.

Well, so I think maybe Paul, like I do certainly think that like a lot of these organizations were led by politics.

Like it's no coincidence that the Boy Scouts made these changes at the time where sort of social unrest or like desire for social change was at its peak, right?

Like

the 20 teens is when we changed this really happened.

I actually think the girl thing was even maybe a little more recent but the point is like when all this was at its height.

So politics is a role but you know academically I just wonder how much corporatization, administrativeization, bureaucratization, bureaucratization, bureaucratization, there we go yeah yeah I wonder how much like that's

at the beginning of things.

Like, there are studies out there, and I don't know if they're junk science or not, because some of these, like, natural science studies, psychology has a lot of junk science stuff.

But, you know, there's lots of studies about how boys do so much better at school.

And not that girls don't, too, but the boys, it makes much more of a difference if they have things like the recess breaks, or if they have things like, you know, a little bit more flexibility within the classroom.

It does seem like the- that boy energy just does not thrive very well sitting in, you know, desk.

for eight hours straight.

And I even see this, I teach Sunday school and I see this in my Sunday school room.

I'll be teaching a lesson and the girls will be all in a straight line like paying attention and the boys will have found a way to like take off their shoes and throw them at each other in like two minutes.

And it's always the boy-girl breakdown.

It's never just like, you know, it's some boys are doing, messing around.

It's always that way.

And so, you know, I wonder if maybe our increased obsession with putting a metric on every single thing in our world has caused us to build systems which girls are more naturally able to thrive in and boys are more naturally able to fail it.

Well,

one thing with your education that I guess would probably be pretty easily researched is I think there's too many people going to college number one.

We've been kind of over-collegized, if you will.

but has manual labor come back stronger, guys choosing to not go to college, therefore reducing the number of college graduates, but they're the ones going into the trades and doing more manual labor, making good money, by the way.

I kind of wonder that that would be an empirical question we could look at to see if that's the substitution effect, right?

So we have the fall off of college because there's a good alternative of manual labor that might be more suited for

men and women.

The only fundamental disagreement I have there, and I don't even know if it's for sure a disagreement, but I'm not certain that the manual labor wasn't always there.

Like, I don't know that there's been any resurgence.

I've not

gotten

10 years,

I guess, but

yeah, I don't even know if I agree with that.

I think we

could go back to Obama and we're just kind of wondering, like, don't we have too many people going to college?

College degree is not worth as much as it used to be.

I guess what I'm saying is I don't know that the return for manual labor relative to the return for college education is better 10 years ago than it was today than it was 10 years ago.

In fact, I think the stats are pretty like persistent that like the college's return has stayed pretty constant relative to manual.

But I'm not sure I could be wrong about that.

I think it's partly the metric thing that you talked about, but it's

really, I

think it's the safetyism, this idea that we need to keep making sure everything is safe, and what that leads to is the elimination of free play and the elimination of dangerous play, which, these are generalizations, but...

These are generalizations that show up in every culture, show up in every comedian who has kids.

This is in their chat.

They go, boy, you know, my friend has girls.

And, you know, I have girls.

This is like a Nate Barghatsy bit.

And he goes, and, you know, my friend watched my girls.

And I was thankful, you know, they went over there and colored.

And then he dropped off his boy for one afternoon, and that is not a fair trade.

He's underneath my deck, fighting with my dog, you know.

Is this kid on the house?

Is he in the house?

Little boys just are...

they tend to enjoy danger more they like all the all the studies say they enjoy rough and tumble play more they benefit from these things it's not just that they enjoy them they benefit from them and our current society is on the path to slowly eliminate all danger and all forms of pain or whatever from childhood and that's i think that's

to the detriment of boys.

All right, well, that looks like a good spot for a break.

I think we need to build on that when we come back.

So continue on with, I made the reference of Bam Bam is what I thought from the Flintstones old cartoon.

That was their young boy that carried around a club.

Well, we'll pick up with the club in a bit.

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All right, so we're back, Justin.

I kind of cut you off.

I think there's a lot more to say on that safety stuff.

Why don't you continue on with where you think we're going wrong with not allowing a little more danger?

If we look historically and if we think that, you know,

We are, at all a product of our history, one of the primary jobs for men in society has been soldiers, warriors, people who fight and people who keep society in line.

And...

Yeah, hunter or hunters, yeah.

Yeah, protector.

War was a constant feature of society.

You look at like the percentage of men in Great Britain who died in the Great War, whatever.

I think after World War II was actually when you saw the rise of sports really in America.

And one of the reasons you saw that rise, I think, is because it's an outlet for aggressive competitive energy.

So I don't think that that's an accident that that happened.

And I think the mistake is thinking something like, oh, well now we can get rid of that aggression too.

In the same way that, you know, I think I've said before, like I think people are just kind of neurotic and no matter, you know, you can remove as many like stressors from people's lives and they're just going to find something new to stress about.

There's, I think, an underlying amount of aggression in society and the attempt to make it the case that this never shows up.

This just leads to like, you know, putting a penny in the fuse box.

So you can see the elimination of the traditional masculinity in the armed services.

The corollary for that in the corporate world is the rise of HR as a percentage of an organization, and not only a percentage of the organization, but the amount of things that have to go through HR.

HR is in the business of making sure that no disputes are settled outside of HR.

And we have this method for settling all disputes.

And I just think that this is

kind of anathema to the way...

Traditionally boys tend to do things.

Yeah, I I agree with you 100% Justin especially you know and this actually ties into something Ross said earlier with with whether or not this is changing and you know Trump comes with a lot of baggage and so I hate to make him the face of like any like larger movements than he already has his face on but there has been sort of a rise at least in some circles in terms of rhetoric that like strikes me as like traditionally masculine and so what I mean by that is

pretty struck by a tweet by Mark Andreessen.

And this has been like, he's not the first person who said this either, but.

Andreessen is a tech mogul.

I actually don't even totally trust Mark Andreessen in terms of like his personal like politics and beliefs and stuff like that like I have some pretty major disagreements I think with him but he made this tweet and it was like one of these AI videos of like a guy standing on a cliff and still the only cat and it's like a free bird playing in the background like a remix and the caption on the tweet and I heard have heard a lot of people say this recently is you can just build things.

Right like that's been one of the big themes out of sort of like the tech bro side of the Trump movement has been like let's just make our country and Trump actually to his credit act started saying this first but let's go back to actually like building things and yeah I think that like this is like you know such a and again

All of these of course are generalities and they're exceptions to all of these things but like you look at what little boys are doing at resource they're either built or recessed they're either building something or they're destroying the thing that is being built by themselves or someone else right it's like you know inside of you there are two wolves or whatever right and so I think this is also why you see in a lot of the entrepreneur spaces and Russ maybe you can attest to this but there's a lot of guys in those spaces too I think it is you know just from this history of like

whether it was like, learned, you know, generationally over the years, or whether it's cultural, you know, we don't have to untangle that all right here.

But I think there is an innate thing in boys to want to go out and to explore and to build something and to do something dangerous.

Again, not saying that this can't exist in a girl.

And I think our society has increasingly said, well, let's be really careful how we build things, everybody.

Here's our different rules for building things.

I know you want to put a new, you know, four by four.

Concrete pad in your backyard, but let's call the city and make sure that you're not in a zone where you've got it like so many of you hear so much history about in Earth history you hear so much so many cases out of California of people leaving because it's like oh You know this place is where like this one bird lives and so we can't let you develop this lands and you know It's it really seems like our society has decided that building things as bad like no one will say that out loud But that's what it seems like society's general attitude is towards building is that it's dangerous and bad

And we should try our best to just make do with the things that we already have.

It's like, man, that kind of stinks because everything that I think is cool are things that were like huge building projects.

It's like the peak of civilization, skyscrapers, cathedrals, like all of these things that are like generational building projects.

Yeah, so.

Let me throw something out a little bit different.

So I just heard this within the last few months.

Kansas is pretty free in terms of alternative school options for micro schools and other things.

And so one of the schools has changed the playground rules.

to kind of go the opposite direction of don't do this, don't do this.

They kind of have a more hands-off approach.

And again, I don't have the paper.

Maybe I'll try to hunt that up for the show notes, but they have found it to be very beneficial of just letting kids go, kids get hurt, their broken arms again on the crying grounds.

I don't know exactly all the details of what they're doing, but they were trying to let them be more free because they felt like the...

the public schools have restricted the playground so much and so protected that they're not really free and to do that and and they've had good results.

Yeah, so I have something to say about both of yours.

So for Peter, I agree and I think that like the California examples aside is a great example of the way in which as a culture we've shifted from build something and let's see if it works out to all building is bad and therefore you need to ask permission for everything, right?

And if you have to ask permission for everything,

That's like, that's a disaster and it's, you know, it's like a recipe for authoritarianism.

And then on the school thing, there's, Lenore Scanesi has like free range kids, which is an organization that does a lot on this stuff.

Yes.

And she has stuff like, if you're in New York, like teach your kid how to ride the subway and let your kid ride the subway.

send them on a trip or stuff like that, which had a while.

That's great results.

My wife and I were touring schools for a sender, Lilos got a kindergarten.

And we went to the two Catholic schools in Lawrence.

And one

of

them was much nicer than the other, but it seemed like more regimented and it was a lot cleaner too.

But my wife and I were both like,

we kind of like the dirty one for elementary school.

We want the kids to be like rolling around and stuff and messy and yeah yeah and so I mean that's gonna be where we end up sending our youngest for elementary school but it's this idea that like everything has to be sterile and perfectly clean like that is not the way humans have grown up for millennia and I think

Making kids grow up in that kind of an environment is kind of a recipe for having kids that freak out whenever there's a sign of something new or out of place like it's a kind of It like it generates this kind of allergy to being

able

to deal with novelty or dirtiness or confrontation that I think is just bad because

I like to think that the point of being a human is to be able to organize your own affairs and run your own affairs and to act as an autonomous person.

But the way that things are set up isn't... One way that things are set up is not to treat you like an autonomous person.

It's to treat you as, you know, a cog.

The machine is what needs to be working and you need to be doing your little part here.

Well, I love that school.

We went and visited with Christian Academy in Wichita.

I kind of had that same impression.

I kind of loved it that it was just a little bit chaotic.

A little weird.

Yeah, a little strange.

In a good way.

Yeah, a little...

side projects of people's work and

yeah that's a lot of that was kind of the key is like you can see that people are trying to figure things out right like that that's like it actually relates to our other podcast which might be out by now in conversations of like you're you're actually trying to like do something new and like generate something rather than just like

Do the pre-written scripts that is set out for you that is officially approved, TM?

I know we're probably getting pretty close to you.

And how about just to verge on that for a second, with AI now, we need critical thinking, we need the new thing more than we need the rote memorization of something or other.

We have AI, we have all of the history right at our fingertips and our phone.

All the more so, we need this exploration stuff where I think critical thinking skills and courage and other things are built up.

Yeah, what's funny is the fields that AI succeeds in tend to be those administrative fields, right?

And actually, this isn't what people predicted.

Everybody thought that, oh, robots are going to take the manual labor jobs away.

No, it turns out they're going to take away the script writing jobs.

And I don't mean movie scripts.

Here's what you need to do.

Here's your schedule, you know, here's your

employee handbook.

Here's some recommendations about restaurants, TDA, like all that.

So that is kind of interesting.

I think you're right that in the age of AI, we really need more people who are willing to be like risk takers and explorers.

I think, you know, I don't know that we've come to a clear solution on this.

Unfortunately, I think some of, you know, what you have to do now is just build things that maybe aren't going to be as good as what you had, but maybe can still exist.

So I can't.

put my boy in the Boy Scouts because there's not the Boy Scouts anymore, right?

I could put them in the Scouts with girls and boys, but I'm not gonna do that for lots of reasons, right?

I don't want to be on campouts where there's boys and girls.

I think that causes all sorts of problems for me as an adult if I'm volunteering in terms of like risk and liability.

There's also all sorts of weirdness when kids get older about that.

And I don't know how the Boy Scouts is sorting that all out.

I have no interest in being part of that.

So instead, I maybe I'll get together like my friends boys and we can go on a camp out together.

And it's not going to be as good because, you know, there's not multimillion dollar infrastructure and huge camps and climbing towers.

And, you know,

so

you you're going to lose

some of that, but you know, unfortunately we play the hand that we're dealt, right?

We don't play with the ideal hands.

And so you just kind of have to make things the way that you want them

to.

But I would say if we're right and we're market economists, there's probably a profitable opportunity for a new boy only, whatever that is thing, percolating up.

I agree the historical infrastructure built up and climbing walls, but a lot of those places can be rented too.

So if it's a

a boys club of some sort that does some of those things.

There can be good infrastructure to do that with and it should be an opportunity for somebody.

So, all right.

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