male bonding

It’s a common trope that adult men don’t value friendship as much as their female counterparts, and that men really don’t need and want friends like women do. But my guest today argues that assumption is wrong and comes from viewing friendship from a strictly female point of view. In fact, based on his research, most adult men very much want good friends but just don’t know how to make them. What’s more, he says, male friendships look different from female ones and we should stop judging the quality of male friendships based on how women do relationships. 
My guest's name is Geoffrey Greif, and he’s a sociologist and author of the book "Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships."
Today on the show, Geoffrey shares the common myths about male friendships, the benefits men get from having friends, and how male friendships are different from female friendships. He then discusses the four types of friends a man will have in his life, how friendship changes as men age, and how fathers have a huge influence on whether their sons will have friends as adults. Geoffrey then shares his research on how couples navigate friendships together and why some brothers are best friends, while others don't talk to each other for years.

Why are men (generally) more violent then women? Why are men (generally) drawn to competition? Is the idea that masculinity means having courage and strength just a complete cultural construct or is their a biological underpinning to it? Well, our guest today makes the case that we can look to our closest animal relatives, the great apes, to find answers to these questions. His name is Dr. Richard Wrangham and he is a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University. He's the co-author of the book, Demonic Males: Apes and Origins of Human Violence. In today's podcast, Dr. Wrangham and I look at what we can learn about human masculinity from chimpanzees and other apes. We discuss the biological underpinnings of masculinity as well as patriarchy and what insights we can gleam from that. It's a super fascinating show.