Great evening with Nick Clegg’s former right-hand woman, Polly Mackenzie, just last week.
But we’re on to our next quick smart with what promises to be a mind-bending, weird, and slightly distressing incursion to the ‘manosphere’ with award-winning author James Bloodworth.
As the press release tells us to say: “You’ve seen the hit Netflix drama, Adolescence. Now read the book that explains it.”
Well, not all of us have seen it, but all who have agree it’s an important watch.
Rarely has there seemed a more confusing time to be a man. This uncertainty has spawned an array of bizarre and harmful underground subcultures, collectively known as the ‘manosphere’, as men search for new forms of belonging.
In Lost Boys, acclaimed journalist James Bloodworth delves into these worlds and asks: What does their emergence say about Western society? Why are so many men susceptible to the sinister beliefs these groups promote? And what can we do about their pernicious encroachment upon our social and political spheres? Along the way, he enlists in a bootcamp for ‘alpha males’, dissects cultural figures including Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, and accompanies modern-day Hugh Hefners as they broadcast their jet-set lifestyles to millions of followers.
Being Political Therapy, we will be delving into the politics of all this with James (including the relationship between testosterone, wars, and skyscrapers, (or garden bridges).