This video interview originally published on Audible.co.uk
Note: Text has been lightly edited for clarity and does not match video exactly.
Emma Rusher: Today we're speaking with Julia Baird on Becoming a Man, a collection of heartfelt and playful letters written for young men to spark conversations on what it takes to be a great man. Edited together with her teenage son, Sam, these letters are from men we know, like Daily Stoic's Ryan Holiday, Stan Grant, Justin Langer, Trent Dalton, and Tim Minchin, wrapped in with wisdoms from everyday men you'll discover and admire. Julia, welcome to Audible.
Julia Baird: It's such a pleasure to be here.
Thank you for taking the time. I cannot wait to talk about your new book that you've done with your teenage son, Sam.
It's all pretty fresh, so I'm excited to talk about it.
Well, let's take listeners back to the moment it began. It was a sunny Christmas, hot summer in Sydney. Your son, Sam, had just turned 16 that year, and the manosphere was loud. How did you respond to that, and how did this all come about?
Well, I think I was just thinking about it so much, like so many of us, with the constancy of the manosphere and all the discussion around it, and Adolescence, which we'd seen, which was so powerful. So much of that was about parents don't entirely understand. You'll never really understand. There's these currents and channels that our kids are swimming in and against and with, but we're not really even aware of. We can't really see. And so I'm kind of clocking it as just a human, but also as a journalist trying to work out all these gloomy headlines around men, as a woman trying to look at what the consequences of this often is for women, particularly when it comes to violence and negative attitudes to women, that we really see in the manosphere.
And then as a mother, bringing up a teenage boy who, as I said, is swimming in an ocean I don't entirely understand, but who's a good kid. I see him bumble around with his friends, just playing music and riding their bikes, and I just kept thinking about what they were dealing with, and I really wanted to provide some positive voices for Sam. That's how it came around. I was going to do it for his birthday, but I couldn't wait, so I did it for Christmas, and I just asked a whole bunch of men in our lives—family, our friendship group—to write him a letter on what is it to be a good bloke. It was kind of incredible. A bunch of them made me cry.
There's these currents and channels that our kids are swimming in and against and with, but we're not really even aware of. We can't really see.
How did the men respond, who you asked?
They were so enthusiastic. They were like, "Oh, I've always thought about this, and I've always wanted to do this," and they took it really seriously. I have to say, there's a lot of, "Well, being a good human is what being a good man is." The question is, how do we specifically talk to men about it? How do we specifically talk to boys about it? And why is it so loaded? Why is it so fraught? I would have zero problem talking to my daughter about what it is to be a woman. I don't think I'd say a good woman, because it seems overladen with compliance and obedience, all those kinds of things. But a good human who is a woman—no problem. But when it comes to talking about it with men, with young men, there's a hesitancy. People don't want to say the wrong thing, don't want to come across the wrong way. There's just this sense that it's fraught. And I think because people feel it's fraught, that area has been vacated.
You're talking about this world that they're navigating as young men being submerged and unseen. We don't really know all of the cues and how they're being taken on.
How quickly the algorithm changes. We're talking about that now. I remember my daughter's boyfriend, the moment he started going to the gym, his algorithm changed. That's when he was getting Andrew Tate videos, the moment he was going to the gym. So, things like that, which we don't kind of properly understand. I do feel that if we listen only to those voices, we get a very distorted perspective—
They're loud.
—of who's out there, and also what men are really about. And we all know that you don't have to go very far into your own community, your own family, to see blokes who are very humble, who really prioritise looking after their family, who get up early on weekends to lead the little nippers, or to help at an aged care centre. We know those guys. I wanted to give them the microphone—not because they're perfect or they think that they're flawless role models, but because they're the people we should be listening to, instead of endlessly dissecting how bad these disrespectful and racist and sexist dudes are that command so much time.
And how did you present these letters to Sam?
I put them all in a binder—a lot of them were handwritten, put on beautiful paper—and I just put them in a folder and gave them to him, and he was really taken aback. And he read them all in one go on Christmas Day, for three hours. He just said, "Oh, I just felt that if they'd taken the time to do that for me, I should sit down and read it all."
The power of letter writing, isn't it?
Yeah. I think he was kind of saying, "Oh, I've been thinking about all these things." You think, "How are you going at school? How are you going with your friendship group? How are you going with girls and all the rest of it?" But he was like, "But there's something else." And I think what he was saying is, "Who do I really want to be, and what is character, and how do we talk about that?"
I wanted to give them the microphone — not because they're perfect or they think that they're flawless role models, but because they're the people we should be listening to, instead of endlessly dissecting how bad these disrespectful and racist and sexist dudes are that command so much time.
At what point did you and Sam realise it's bigger than just this beautiful folder that you gave him as a Christmas gift?
Probably when I was talking to my publisher about it. I'm working on another book as well at the moment, but I was telling her just about the impact this had had on both of us, and even the guys we asked to write for it. And she just lit up and said, "Let's do something this year." I had to go back and speak to Sam, and he didn't want any of the letters to him to go into the book because, I mean, you don't want your mum who's a writer to have done this really special private thing for you, and "Okay, now we're going to publish it." So, I completely understood that. And it also became very clear to me that I wanted him to be a co-editor, because I am not, and never will be, a teenage boy, and I really needed his sensibility on it.
And he was up for that.
He was, amazingly, straight-up, "Yep, I could do that."
What an opportunity. And how interesting that he could see the possibility of it because of how he had received it, and that it might help others.
He just felt there were conversations that they hadn't really been having.
Well, it is amazing what you two have pulled together in Becoming a Man. There's a galaxy of more than 60 contributors, and the breadth of the men who have contributed is extraordinary—cricketers, comedians, boxers, builders, musicians, scientists. Some names we're really familiar with, like Ryan Holiday or Tim Minchin, Justin Langer, Stan Grant. But so many beautiful letters from men who are really unfamiliar to us, the everyday men. Tell us a little bit about how you and Sam decided who to put in, who to approach, even.
Yeah, honestly, it was very hard to stop—my publisher will tell you I kept going, "Just one more. Oh, I've just seen this documentary, this person said this incredible thing, was very vulnerable about this." We wanted a really diverse group of voices, but we were aware that we're never going to encapsulate every viewpoint.
Because the group of letters that I pulled together for Sam was very organic, it was kind of the same way. I contacted some people who I didn't know, who were in the public eye. You know, Richard Tognetti—what did he learn growing up in Wollongong in the 1970s, this brilliant head of the chamber orchestra and violinist? And how does he nurture that creative spark? What would he say to someone like him? Another street artist, Rone—what would he say from his time in the graffiti community, and now he's a really renowned artist. He spoke a lot about community.
But I also wanted to have someone who had not had an easy time of it, and had to come through and really decide—like coming out of prison, for example, and saying that was when I decided I had to become a man. Lincoln Lynch, he was saying that he'd had domestic violence, he experienced it when he was a kid, he was homeless when he was about 12, and then there was a life where there was drugs and fraud and prison. But it was really in there that he had to say, "Who am I going to be?" And he decided he wanted to be a man that didn't leave a trail of wreckage behind him. Instead, it was someone that people trusted and built up.
Or a policeman, who used to come on The Drum—you may have seen him on Q&A as well—Vincent Hurley, who was undercover in drugs as a detective as well, but also worked for a long time with victims of domestic violence. What would he say, having worked in the forces? What would Stan Grant say? What would Tony Birch say? All of these people who've got such depth. Christos Tsiolkas—
Oh yeah, that's an amazing entry —
It's an incredible piece, isn't it?
It really is.
He writes about discipline, and you don't have to be religious, but think about the rites and rituals of religion. Why does that matter so much? What is prayer, actually? And meditation and fasting and community. He even ends with talking about pornography, which I thought was fantastic. He says, "Try to use your imagination," because so much of it now is kind of through screens. And he said, "Be careful of just looking through screens when it comes to that, because those phantoms are cold to the touch." I love that he directed that straight-on, and it's not in a hectoring way. It's like, just think. Just think about things and people in another way.
Well, you're talking about all these stories—the overarching theme to me that comes through is the agency that these men have taken on at moments of their life, like you mentioned Lincoln and many others. When you were looking at all these letters together with Sam, I think you've done a brilliant job of shifting them into seven pillars in a way, and that's how you've structured it. How did you decide on those seven? Did they just speak to you from these letters?
I remember really stressing out about it. I remember I was in Ningaloo and I was away, and my editor was saying we really need to be putting these in specific sections. I just read through them all and realised that there were themes coming out, and there's a slight bit of overlap.
Firstly, it was really about character—who are you, and who do you want to be? What kind of man do you want to be, and what have you seen in the men around you? And there's a lot of men who wrote about broken relationships with men around them, especially fathers, and the need to have someone you can talk to about where you want to be, and about the things that hurt you. I'm thinking of Bernie Shakeshaft, who runs programs in rural Australia for kids, and he actually went back to a lot of the kids that had been through them for 20 years. And it was something about, "I hope you heal from the things you can't talk about"—was one of his lines.
It was really about character—who are you, and who do you want to be? What kind of man do you want to be, and what have you seen in the men around you?
So, there was a sense of a forming of character, and then a stillness—people advocating, like Tony Birch, about listening to country and being on country when you're going through difficult times. The need to deeply listen to other people, really properly, in a world where listening is becoming increasingly rare. Be the person that puts down the microphone and says, "Okay, tell me why," and try to understand each other. And that sense of almost something sacred. Peter Garrett, of course, from Midnight Oil, he wrote about the environment and the times in his life, too, when he's drawn strength and solace from the environment. I think that's something he did a lot when he was a teenage kid. So, we don't want to underemphasize how important it is to be in the natural world, I think.
Then we just moved on to those who really emphasise standing up for other people, supporting other people, standing by women who've been abused, speaking up about racism—but really, actually, just people around you. And there was another area that we got so much discussion about, which was a need for mentors, but also friendships. A lot of letters about friendships, about needing strong female friendships in your life. To really do an audit sometimes, which is what Darcy Moore from Collingwood wrote about, in the AFL: Just stop and think about why am I friends with this person, and where is this friendship going. And actually take time to sit down and praise each other, because we don't do that enough, and tell each other when things are good and when things are working out. Ben Law, the author and screenwriter, who says it's always good to have a gay best friend, on so many levels.
That was funny.
I kind of loved that that came through, because it's absolutely true—and how important it is sometimes to have female best friends, to pull you into line. Not that it's their job, but just to say, "Mate...", you know.
Yeah. Another perspective.
Yeah, exactly.
Which letter sparked the biggest conversation between you and Sam?
It's funny, we didn't actually have a lot of arguments about it. We tended to respect each other's position, and especially because we both had roles to play. He was like, "That's patronising. I'm getting talked down to. Someone's labouring the point." He really didn't want to be lectured, and I really appreciated that.
There was one dispute, which was about someone saying, "Oh, going off to their room and grunting or something," and he's like, "That is a stereotype, and I hate that stereotype." I'm like, "But there's some truth to that." It was a hypothetical—teenage boys go off and grunt in their rooms. I was like, "Mate, you've done a bit of grunting." And [he's like], "Maybe it is when I'm going through all my stuff, or I'm tired, or I've had a big day at school, or maybe there's mental health issues, or maybe there's friendship stuff you don't even know about. And I'm managing that, and that's called grunting?" So, I kind of did appreciate that.
We also had a talk about a letter writer who was talking about managing depression, and what were the ways in which you could do it, and was it just getting out of the house? We had a long conversation, because he's had friends who have gone through depression himself, and I've noticed in his friendship group how careful they are, and actually tender they are with that person who's going through it, and how much they gather around. So, we had to have a kind of a big chat about what you might say, and what would be helpful for an adult to say, and what might seem dismissive. So, that was kind of interesting as well.
When you've worked with so many collaborators in your career—as a broadcaster, journalist, writer—how was it collaborating with your teenage son?
Pretty funny. Because you didn't want to be like, "Okay, have you done your washing up, and also you've got to read this extra chapter." The joy of it was, he's very strong and simple and straight on what he wants and what he likes, and we've got very different brains. He's very mathematical, engineering, and he talked a lot about structure and the force of an argument, and I would sometimes get lost in other things as well. But it's really good to work with someone who's got a fundamentally very different perspective to you, but that you have a respect for.
Oh, I can imagine it being a fabulous project to work on together. Becoming a Man is narrated by Tim Potter, with you and Sam contributing your own notes. What do you hope for the audio experience of this?
It's funny, we just did Sam's recording, and his voice is so deep. I'm like, "What is that voice?" I really hope that people will be able to dip in and out of it. It's not like, "Here is a guide of the man you must be," or "Here, take up a pen and paper, we're going to start some dictation." This is really thoughtful, very different people, from the poetic to the sporting to the cerebral to the activists—
They're meditations on being a man.
Yeah. They're compressed into letter after letter. I just hope that people will kind of dip in and out of it, and it will just make them think. And there'll be different points in your life, probably, when different letters and different approaches would strike you, I think.
It's not like, 'Here is a guide of the man you must be,' or 'Here, take up a pen and paper, we're going to start some dictation.'
I think audio is going to be great for this book. I can almost imagine it being pressed play on in the car on the commute, because I think it's the kind of background noise that could surface some really interesting conversations between family members in the car.
Because everyone will have a take on it.
Yeah, it really will spark good discussions.
Yeah, and they're so beautifully written as well, and conversation is the ultimate thing that we kind of want to come from this book—people talking about it. We've left some pages at the end of the book, so people in your own life can write. Your own father or your own uncle, or someone that you'd really be interested to say, "What do you think it takes, what does it mean to become a man?" So, I kind of would like it to be infectious in that sense.
I think the feedback is going to be amazing for you both to come through and see how people respond. Do you think that audio brings more of an intimacy to these letters?
I do think so, yeah, absolutely—going straight in your ear. Hearing the kind of humour and dry wit, and the lament. Some are sad and confronting, and talking about relationships with estranged fathers that were never healed. Others are really uplifting and joyful, and others are kind of funny and wry. It's a really lovely mix. So, I think that with the audio, you'll really get a strong sense of that.
Speaking of which, I cannot possibly pluck out all of the amazing authors and observations that you can take as a listener. But I did wonder if you could explain to us—Tim mentions fridge magnetism.
I think he said his grandmother used to call it fridge magnetism. He speaks about a lot of things in his letter, starting off with, he would have started cooking earlier if he'd thought about it more. But he gets to an area—fridge magnetism, the kind of things that you would stick on your fridge with a magnet. And he talks about the Golden Rule, for example: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Serenity Prayer: Being granted the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And he also, in that section, talks about that he's always really liked—because he's a strong atheist—but he loves that bit in church services when people turn to each other and extend their hand and say, "Peace be with you." And what a lovely idea that is—why don't we do that more? Why don't we do that at music festivals or sporting stadiums? That sense of, I give you peace.
It's the greatest gift.
Kind of a beautiful idea, yeah.
Thanks for explaining that. Now, unfortunately, Sam couldn't be with us today because he is at school. But I did want to offer his wish from his note in Becoming a Man. He writes, "No single letter will tell you how to live your life. But I hope this collection will help you decide who you want to be." What did you think of that?
Yeah, I kind of love that, because it's a very gentle way of saying, "Have a think." For him, I think the most important part of it was "I haven't really been directly thinking about this. I know empathy is a good thing. I know kindness is a good thing. I'm still trying to work out what strength looks like in different contexts, but strength is a good thing." But to just sit and have it as your North Star, the person that you want to be—I think that can really ground you.
Chas Licciardello of Planet America writes in his letter, he said he was quite a rebellious primary schooler. And when he was about nine, it was New Year's Eve, everyone else was enjoying the fireworks, and he was lying down having a serious think, which is what he does at New Year's Eve. And he was thinking, "I'm not happy with the person I am. I need to change the person I am. And it might take me a couple years before I get to secondary school, but I'm going to be that person by the time I get there." Just very deliberate. And he talks about the image of a Venetian blind, he wanted to be someone that things could kind of flow through. It's a really strong image, isn't it? I've actually thought about it a lot. So, Sam's point being, it's about having a think.
And having a North Star.
Exactly.
It has been so great to chat with you today, Julia. Please extend my huge congratulations to Sam as well, and I wish you all the best. I think that this could be a great podcast for you, too. I'd love to listen, if that's what you end up deciding to do.
Thank you. There's so many voices. I think it's really great to kind of turn up the volume on some really good ones that can inspire and lead and just make us think and laugh.
And now we're going to hear Julia read one of her favourite letters. Over to you.
So, this is by Sacha Molitorisz. I first met him at the Sydney Morning Herald when he was a journalist. He's now an academic in ethics, law, and media. A man who does not take himself too seriously, so he's having a bit of fun. He says:
Here is a ten-point plan for what it takes to be a good man, in order of importance. One: Don't trust lists. You can't reduce wisdom to a ten-point plan. Two: Read books—start with mine, they're meditations on modesty, and they're brilliant. Three: Drink tequila. This magical elixir makes you smarter, funnier, and sexier. Four: Avoid tequila. This toxic tonic makes you think you're smarter, funnier, and sexier. Five: Drink tequila in moderation—ha ha ha, no one has ever managed this. Will you be the first? No. Six: Be kind, even to people you don't like. Be so kind it's kind of like a kick in the pants. Seven: Don't kick people in the pants. Eight: Be playful—some people think growing up means being serious all the time. Treat those people with caution. Nine: At the gym, don't skip leg day—I'm kidding, seriously, leg day? Ten: Ignore ten-point plans and turn it up to eleven, by which I mean—Eleven: Be you, then be you some more. No one does you the way you do. In fact, no one does you at all. You have a complete monopoly on you, and this is a choose-your-own-adventure, my friend. Pretty thrilling, right? Which means you get to choose to—Twelve: Be good, and by that I mean be a good human. Respect everyone. Help others. Improve yourself. Simple, really. All you need to do to be a good man is to be a good person. This truth is self-evident, not least because a twelve-point plan is never wrong. Thirteen: Of course, I could be wrong.
So playful and fun. Thank you for sharing that.
Listeners, you can enjoy Becoming a Man and all of Julia Baird's titles on Audible now.
