For years, I’ve yearned for The Economist’s 16-page supplements, which I could rip from the magazine and read on my flight to Ottawa and emerge an hour later awash in knowing lots about something I knew nothing of before, like nanotechnology, quantum mechanics and iambic pentameter.
I remember the first sentence of the report on Japan, published in November 2011: “If you’re a baby girl born this morning in Tokyo, the chances of you living to be 100 are one in two.”
In 2015, The Economist issued a special report on Men Adrift. It was subtitled: “Badly educated men in rich countries have not adapted well to trade, technology or feminism.” Little did I know then that I would be reading the first distant early warnings of a concern whose reporting has risen a thousandfold since: What to do about men and their juniors, boys. Especially white men, and pointedly undereducated white men whom it’s clear now that AI will consume like whales do krill.
Today, it’s hard to read a magazine, stream a Netflix series, see a newcast or talk show, scan a blog, hear a podcast, scroll an Instagram post or buy a book on how young men are not only in huge trouble, they’re creating existential peril, not just for us, but for all of Western civilization. Last month, Janice Stein spoke to a group of wealth managers and their clients and said, “Boys are the most urgent problem the world faces today.”
The problem is a jumble of too much social media, too few blue collar jobs, fear of even fewer blue and white collar jobs via AI, wild housing prices, post-COVID depression, inability to connect with young women (see “incels”), political polarization, and easy access to deadly street drugs.
It was 10 long years ago that The Economist spotted something few others could even imagine. I mean, there was less social media back then, no AI, no COVID, Barack Obama was the President of the United States, Justin Trudeau was Prime Minister of Canada, andAngus Deaton had just won a Nobel Prize for his work on “deaths of despair.”
To me, the surprise is not that the boy problem arose so suddenly, but so slowly.
And what is the answer? More treatment programs, less time on phones, more exercise…there are scores of answers. Dozens of new charities and causes have sprung up in the past year in Canada alone to fund and get boys to enroll in these problems.
One thing we know for sure: the solution is “multivariate.” It’s going to take a lot of new ideas working in tandem all at once to really break this cycle. Scott Galloway, who’s become the spokesman for the boy problem in America, says: “A boy comes off the tracks when he loses a male role model.”
I’m no more qualified than any of us to put forth a solution. But we all have something we never did even last year. We have AI that can answer questions more complex than “What is 2+2+2?”
So I asked Perplexity and in addition to sending me back this…
“Solutions should include reinventing civic spaces where intergenerational mentorship and purpose are central; designing youth “start-up civic labs” to foster entrepreneurial and practical skills; deploying dynamic mental health support teams led by peers; and creating transition villages that offer housing with life skills training.”
…it also sent me some “outlier concepts” to consider:
Create a “Civic Olympics” for young men—city-wide competitions in creative arts, science, and service, celebrating effort and resilience more than winning.
Universal Service Corps: mandatory, but flexible, short-term public service for all young men—a rite of passage offering belonging, purpose, skills, and mentorship.
A “Men’s Arts & Repair Network”: join art and technical repair, giving agency in both creative and practical expression, run by young male teams throughout neighborhoods.
Now I’m just a kid on AI with no skills when it comes to using it for more than research. But Perplexity gave me hope that a technology so easily slagged and demonized might hold in its head the answers to the very problem it’s played a role in creating.
Meanwhile, next week’s essay will be on the results of the Writing Contest…
For now…
1. Snow in Toronto? The most embarrassing moment in the city’s history came in January 1999 when Mayor Mel Lastman called out the army to shovel the streets after successive snowstorms. Worse still, Montreal refused to send its snow-removers. But now that snow is in the air here, it’s good to see what real snow means, and where. It’s also good to recall that snow is old: the world’s oldest skis, made by hand 5,400 years ago, pre-date the pyramids of ancient Egypt. But the latest on snow is a big new book called Sno: AHistory by Swede Sverker Sörlin. Here he is now.
2. Blowing things up. From mines to buildings…to whales and the Giller Prize, which is wonderful. They’ll be awarded next Wednesday Nov. 17 from this shortlist. The Giller is now sponsorless because of the preening righteousness of protesters. Sadly, the Giller’s death is now foreseeable.
3. Betting on bad pitches. Who knew that $77 billion USD a year is gambled globally on sports, some of it on how fast a Major League Pitcher throws a certain pitch in a certain inning in a certain game at a certain speed. Welcome to the extremely particular world ofprop bets.
Last week Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, both of the Cleveland Guardians, were chargedwith taking bribes to telegraph to insider-bettors how fast they would throw particular pitches. Clase, who makes $6.4 million a year, and Ortiz, who makes $820,000 a year, made just $12,000 each in bribes, while their insider-bettors made $460,000. Here’s the 23-page indictment.
4. How to understand…The federal budget…why young people view the media as“biased boring liars”…Canada’s uber-rich, whose list came out this week…what animals are really saying…and where to get Michelin-starred ramen.
5. The problem is, the worst don’t lack all conviction. Take The Kennedy Center in Washington where so many staff, donors and ticket-buyers have fled that The National Opera is aching to leave. Last week its artistic director, Francesca Zambello, said “we have to consider other options.” The next day National Opera President, Andy Pharoah, said they have no plans to move out. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, near-unanimous down-thumbs for the new legal drama All’s Fair starring Kim Kardashian as The Worst TV Drama Ever.
6. Lovely long essays on…George Emerson’s 103-year-old cousin Carla Emerson Furlong, U-boat hunter, musical prodigy and keeper of secret lore (and speaking of centenarians who double as Energizer Bunnies, meet Anne Angioletti…Plus Dan Gardneron how to build Canada back better. Plus Mike Brock on the end of political inevitability in America. Plus Paul Wells on post-budget Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney.
7. An intellectual personal trainer. For £1,200 a year, you can receive handpicked books from Heywood Hill, Mayfair’s most storied bookshop, and the personal touchalgorithms can’t match.
Or…you can Zoom into the Winter Edition of Ben McNally’s 45 books in 45 minutes on Nov. 25 from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. ET.
8. One big reason restaurants are so loud: they play music no one listens to. Why? And why is there just one among all the Western nations that has a birthrate above the replacement rate of 2.1? And how did Jess Rowe and Miriam Payne just row 15,000 kilometres non-stop across the Pacific, from Peru to Cairns, Australia? Practice. They entered The World’s Toughest Row across the Atlantic in 2023.
9. Why are cats cute and aardvarks aren’t? It’s not just taste; there’s a science behind it. Indeed, cuteness is one of evolution’s most enduring survival strategies. Here…kitty kitty…
10. I used to not like Margaret Atwood’s writing much. But then I heard her talk at Writers at Woody Point, the Newfoundland authors’ festival that’s small-town and decidedly low-tech. This cool, acerbic woman had suddenly become a laugh-a-minute comedienne. She laughed. She cried. She made us laugh and cry. And ever since then, she’s been funny. Still, when I picked up her 624-page memoir, I thought: “This feels like a duty, not a pleasure.” I was wrong again. She’s droll, self-deprecating, and deeply in love with her late husband Graeme Gibson. Atwood’s 85 now, and she landed in Toronto when many of us did, so Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts reads like a social history.