Latest news with #Sally
Boston Globe
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
‘Minecraft,' ‘Frozen' the musical, plus more movies and TV shows to stream this weekend
Jennifer Coolidge in 'A Minecraft Movie." Kristy Griffin 'A Minecraft Movie' It's time to step into the ring with Available on Max Advertisement 'Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical' 'A Minecraft Movie' won't be the only new title causing kid-friendly chaos for parents this weekend, as 'Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical' hits Disney+ on Friday. Brush up on the lyrics to 'Do You Want to Build a Snowman?' and 'Let It Go' with this Tony-nominated, live-action musical adaptation of the 2013 animated blockbuster. This version was filmed during its West End run, and stars Samantha Barks as the icy Elsa. Available on Disney+ 'Sally' Making its streaming premiere on Disney+ and Hulu earlier this week, the new documentary 'Sally' looks back at the life and legacy of NASA pioneer Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly to space. The film is narrated by Ride's partner Tam O'Shaughnessy and offers an intimate view of their 27-year romance. Available on Disney+ and Hulu Advertisement New TV shows now available to stream A Tyrannosaurus rex stalking through a forest in "Walking with Dinosaurs." Lola Post Production/BBC /Lola Post Production 'Walking with Dinosaurs' Among the many great Available on PBS Binge-worthy weekend TV pick John Cena in "Peacemaker." Katie Yu/Katie Yu/HBO Max 'Peacemaker' Before he makes the jump to James Gunn's reborn DC cinematic universe, catch the first season of 'Peacemaker' on Max. The action-comedy series stars Available on Max Movie night pick From left: Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal in "The Accountant 2." Amazon MGM Studios 'The Accountant 2' Ben Affleck is back as Christian Wolff, the mild-mannered math whiz with the Rambo-like action skills, in 'The Accountant 2,' which hit Prime Video earlier this month. The sequel to the hit 2016 thriller reteams Affleck with Jon Bernthal, who reprises his role as Christian's brother Braxton. Globe film critic Odie Henderson Available on Prime Video Advertisement Matt Juul is the assistant digital editor for the Living Arts team at the Boston Globe, with over a decade of experience covering arts and entertainment. Matt Juul can be reached at
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Young and the Restless Spoilers Preview June 16: Sparkly Fly En Route To Europe
For the Tuesday, June 16, episode of The Young and the Restless, spoilers photos show the Genoa City crowd begins to gather as they await the meeting with Dumas. The trip overseas to meet the mysterious Dumas hits everyone a bit differently. For Billy (Jason Thompson) and Sally (Courtney Hope), they are less concerned about the man of the hour than they are about romancing each other. They take this party as a personal vacation and turn up the heat as they enjoy the stunning views. MORE: Find out what happens next on Y&R. Sharon (Sharon Case) and Nick (Joshua Morrow) also enjoy their time away. The food, the atmosphere, all of it is designed to have them smiling ear to ear. They better enjoy the peace and tranquility while it lasts, though, because this is clearly the calm before the storm. As for the Abbotts, they'll have Audra (Zuleyka Silver) aboard their private jet as the speed away to their destination. This could become a sticky situation for Kyle (Michael Mealor). Having Audra this close is dangerous in more ways than one, especially since she's set on seducing him! MORE: Will this party end in disaster? Read our wild prediction! After the Abbott jet lands, they'll join the crowd and be ushered into he venue by Dumas's right hand man. Is all this pomp and circumstance supposed to impress them? Well, yes. And, it seems to be working since everyone in attendance so far are wide eyed with wonder. Check out Soap Hub Says episode 6.
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Daily Mirror
'My mum bludgeoned my father to death and I'm relieved she killed him'
Sally Challen was subjected to a lifetime of abuse before snapping and clubbing her husband Richard with a hammer some 20 times - now her son has spoken about about what led to the killing The harrowing story of a mum who killed her husband after years of bullying, coercive control and domestic violence – much of it sexual – has been told in full for the first time in a new book written by the woman's son. Sally Challen struck her 61-year-old husband Richard over the head with a hammer around 20 times on the morning of August 14, 2010. She then covered her dead husband's body with a pair of old curtains and left a note saying 'I love you' before leaving her family home in Claygate, Surrey for the last time. She had set off for Beachy Head, East Sussex, intending to end her life by jumping from the 530-foot cliffs. In a dramatic three-hour confrontation, a chaplain who had been escorted to the scene by police managed to persuade Sally to give herself up. Sally was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 22 years, reduced to 18 at appeal. Throughout her trial, she refused to reveal the full scale of the shocking treatment that she had been subjected to. Coercive control did not become a criminal offence until 2015 and after an appeal in 2019, prosecutors reduced Sally's murder conviction to the lesser charge of manslaughter. The new conviction carried a sentence of nine years and four months in jail, time she had already served, and she walked free. Speaking to the I newspaper, Sally's son David admitted that he was 'relieved' that his father was dead. He explains how his father's abuse of his mother had started long before he was born, but it was only as an adult that he grasped the full scale of the secret cruelty going on in his family home. Even as a small child, David knew something was wrong: 'I had that pit in my stomach as a child at the age of four or five,' he says. 'It's an atmosphere, and it latches on to you.' In his book The Unthinkable: A Story of Control, Violence and My Mother, David details countless acts of abuse both large and small, from mundane humiliations and name-calling to a violent sexual assault. He says that apart from the violence and abuse within the home, his father Richard heaped further humiliation on Sally by conducting countless extramarital affairs and visiting brothels. Bizarrely, David recalled, one Christmas Richard sent out Christmas cards to family and friends that featured a picture of him posing on the bonnet of his Ferrari with two naked models. But Richard was also pathologically jealous. While on a holiday to Los Angeles in 1998, a family friend had given Sally a friendly hug. Richard's response was volcanic. Sally, in a later statement, said: "Richard pushed me into the bedroom and forced sex on me. He was brutal and said nothing." Even the couple's children were aware something terrible had happened on that day. David, aged 11 at the time of that incident, said: "It was never talked about but it was always clear you never crossed my father." At one point Sally left Richard, unable to endure his daily mistreatment. However, having met him when she was 15, and he was five years older – she had been comprehensively groomed and gaslighted for decades and found life on her own a struggle. She begged him to take her back – at which point he forced her to sight a 'post nuptial agreement' with clauses that denied her any share of their money, prevented her from speaking to strangers or even interrupting while he was speaking. However, in May 2020, Judge Paul Matthews, sitting in the High Court in Bristol, ruled that Sally could inherit the estate of her deceased car dealer husband, which was valued at £1million. David said it was only when he visited his mother in prison that he understood what was behind the tense, toxic atmosphere in their posh Surrey home. As Sally listed the cruel acts of his father, David said, it suddenly came into focus for him: 'I didn't know that was abuse. I thought it was normal.' If you have been affected by issues of domestic violence or coercive control you can call Refuge's 24-Hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline for free. The number is 0808 2000 247
Vox
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vox
Why are so many straight guys so bad at gossiping?
is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic. What does it mean to be 'good' at gossip? A good gossip doesn't just tell you that Sally broke up with Joe, they tell you that Sally broke up with Joe just a week after posting a bunch of (now deleted) romantic international vacation pics to Instagram. They don't simply say 'Brittany's a bad coworker,' they tell you that no one at the office likes Britt because she microwaves her asparagus-heavy meal preps. They don't mention that Mary is having a tough time with her sister-in-law and then drop it, they explain that her brother's wife is a Disney adult who arranged for the entire family to spend their next Thanksgiving at Epcot and already sent out Venmo requests for a couple thousand dollars worth of Mickey Mouse breakfasts. According to stereotype, this is a skill men — particularly straight men — just don't have. Vox Culture Culture reflects society. Get our best explainers on everything from money to entertainment to what everyone is talking about online. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Their supposed inability to spin a good yarn has been a point of internet mockery, with memes and gags usually coming from the women in their lives who are forced to parse through the driest, most unsatisfying stories ever told. Like a hungry person fighting their way through a well-done steak, these tea-seekers must suffer to find a semblance of sustenance. It's hard not to laugh at the tension these skits and jokes highlight between the person wanting the entire story and the person giving them absolutely nothing. But underneath the comedy are deeper questions about the ethics, the stigma, and the history of gossip, especially who gets to participate. The way that the women who poke fun at their partner's reticence online seek (and are denied) connection speaks to larger concerns. What does dude's inability to share secrets — especially with other bros — mean for the much-discussed 'loneliness crisis' among men? Let's be clear: Men gossip! When people say that men are bad at gossiping, it might come with the assumption that men don't gossip. They can't be good at it, because they don't or only rarely partake. But that train of thought is built on a fallacy. That fallacy begins with how we define gossip. For a long time, it's had a negative connotation, the act of talking poorly about someone behind their back. But more and more recently, researchers and social scientists like Megan Robbins have begun reassessing the term, broadening it to define all the ways we talk about other people, good, bad, and neutral. Related The surprising truth about loneliness in America Robbins and her team conducted a 2019 study that examined the rates at which men and women gossip and if men and women had any differences when it comes to positive (e.g., 'John bought a pair of nice shoes!'), negative ('John bought a pair of ugly shoes!') and neutral ('John bought a pair of shoes.'). They found that men and women gossip positively and negatively at similar rates, but that women gossip neutrally more than men. 'It really corresponds with past evidence that women talk more about social topics than men,' Robbins, an associate professor in psychology at the University of California Riverside, says. 'So there's this practice element to talking about social topics, talking about people, even just in a neutral way, and men are just not doing it as much in the evidence that we have.' Robbins's study helps explain a few things. It debunks the trope that women are more inclined to disparage someone, and, at the same time, explains why people may perceive that women are better at gossiping or sharing information — if they're gossiping neutrally at a higher rate, so they have more practice. The project also shows that despite the stereotypes, men do gossip, positively and negatively. Getty Images/iStockphoto More than that, men enjoy gossip, even (and especially) when they're at the center of it. A 2025 study from professor Andrew Hales and his research team found that men, more than women, 'were consistently more open' to being talked about. 'I mean it, maybe it's as simple as men just like attention,' Hales, who teaches at the University of Mississippi, tells me. Hales's study focused on the targets of gossip, setting up a theoretical scenario in which a person leaves a party and then is asked whether they want the people who stayed to talk about them. Hales and his team found that people who were male and/or narcissistic were the most likely to want to be spoken about, even if the gossip was going to be negative. 'If you were to control for narcissism, men still are more comfortable being talked about than women are — so it's not just that men are more narcissistic, although they are,' Hales says, noting that the findings contradicted the popular ideas about how men don't enjoy gossip nor particularly like being the targets of it. The population who have been thought to like gossip the least, actually enjoy its existence as much, if not more, than everyone else. But if that's the case, why are they notoriously awful at it? Why are men bad at gossiping Comedian and podcaster Jared Freid intuitively believes what Robbins's study proves: that uninspired male gossips just haven't put in the work, like weight lifters who regularly skip leg day. 'I just don't think there's as many reps for men hearing a crazy story, and there's a lot more reps for women,' Freid, a man, tells me. 'We're just not trained, you know?' Freid primarily attributes men's unskillful gossip to a lack of cultural opportunities to yap freely. He sees things like weekend brunches, group chats, and the ample discussion fodder provided by Bravo's various reality shows as opportunities that mostly women have to sharpen their storytelling tools and observe how drama works firsthand. These conversations teach a person how to gab and, perhaps more importantly, how to respond to spicy information. Gossip is a two-way street; a question or quip can enrich the entire tale. Straight men, he says, don't have an equivalent. While men do hang out, it never gets too chatty. Freid explains that gossip feels 'messy' and, even something as simple as being curious about a story or a rumor could be construed as stirring the pot (men, he says, do not want to be seen as pot-stirrers). It's not that straight men are inherently bad at gossip, it's that they won't allow themselves to openly partake in or enjoy it. 'I don't think guys are really allowed to be messy and still have social credibility,' Freid says. Kelsey McKinney, the author of You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip and the founding host of the Normal Gossip podcast, sees this fear from men, too. 'Straight men seem to have the perception that gossip isn't talking about other people,' McKinney says. 'Gossip, to them, is a tone of voice that they avoid at all costs.' Gossip Girl (starring Blake Lively and Leighton Meester) was a TV show about popular teens terrorized by a secret, anonymous online gossip (who turned out to be a guy named Dan Humphries). The CW This attitude grows out from a misogynistic idea that gossip is a negative thing that women do, something Robbins, the social scientist, considered during her research. 'There's a stereotype that women [negatively] gossip more than men, but there hasn't been a whole lot of evidence for that,' Robbins tells Vox. 'And I feel like having the stereotype that women gossip more than men, you know, serves to keep them in their place, right?' Robbins believes that social skills are valuable, and being able to discuss social topics is a necessary piece of that puzzle. Yet historically, those abilities haven't always been prized. Dismissing all social talk as gossip was a way to dismiss the women who possess those talents. Now, so many men see gossip as unbecoming as well as unmanly, they don't allow themselves to really relish the juicy morsels, nor do they tease out the savory bits. Curiously, Freid is the co-host of the Betches media-produced podcast U Up? It's a show devoted to decoding dating and relationships. His professional life revolves around piquing people's interests and recounting people's stories in hilarious ways. Does that mean the careers Freid's chosen are at odds with his manhood? 'I had to learn to be a better storyteller,' Freid tells me. To do that? He talked to women; friends, his co-host, his coworkers at Betches. A lot of women. Could gossip cure the male loneliness epidemic? Okay, so men might be less adept at gossip. Do they really need to be good at it? As Robbins indicated, continuing research shows that gossip can be a helpful social tool. Talking about other people isn't just 'not all bad,' it can be actively good. McKinney says that social scientists and psychologists have been reassessing the tropes, narratives, and stigma surrounding gossip and gossipers, and they've found that gossip brings people closer together. The idea is that the individual piece of gossip is less important than the bond that's forged when someone shares information with another person. Maybe the true measure of a friendship is the 'Can I be a bitch for a second?' texts we sent along the way. We share stories with people we think we are close to, and sharing things with other people creates intimacy. The gossip we share, arguably, is as much about our own values and beliefs and dislikes as it is about other people. At the same time, over the past half-decade or so, much has been made of what's known as the male loneliness epidemic — the idea that men are lonelier than ever and that their friendships are dwindling. If intimacy is defined, in part, by the idea of sharing stories with one another, it's not that difficult to see men who are bad at gossip hit with a lose-lose situation. They don't have the close friendships that facilitate gossip and the bond-building that comes with it, and they don't get good enough at gossip to initiate the bond-building. That's a problem, because men are disadvantaged when it comes to intimacy and communication from an early age. 'Research shows that by the time little boys are 3, we talk to them less and touch them less,' Alexandra Solomon, a relationship psychologist at Northwestern University, tells me. Solomon says that fewer conversations and less physical affection in childhood have long-lasting social effects. As boys grow up, many will tend to see communication as transactional, or directive, or a means to solving problems instead of an avenue that builds relationships. Those men see the sharing of gossip and storytelling in general as uncomfortable or a taboo, instead of intimately sharing and engaging with a story. 'I really think there's a male fear of incriminating yourself.' 'I really think there's a male fear of incriminating yourself,' Freid, the comedian and man, tells me. 'I don't hear someone telling me their story and go, Oh, good. I can tell them all my stories.' Freid says he sees male friendships and female friendships as fundamentally different, echoing Solomon's explanation of the divergent ideas about communication. Female friendships, he says, involves a give-and-go, a trading of shoulders to cry on. That 'trading' allows for deeper friendships among women — but, he suspects, also opens the door for potential rifts when someone doesn't hold up their end of the bargain. Fried takes some comfort in the idea that he never has to worry about hypothetically disappointing his buddies. 'I just have no friends where I'd be like, I can't believe they haven't called recently,' he says. It's not too hard, though, to link not expecting anyone to check in with a larger, existential problem with loneliness. Is that lack of expectation worth the lack of support? If Saturdays are proverbially for the boys, why not mix in some yapping? If straight men (statistically) gossip anyway, is there real harm in openly enjoying it, seeking it out, using it to build connections? As easy as that seems, it's asking men to share things about themselves in ways that go against how they've been conditioned. 'I would actually be out of a job if men could do that,' Solomon, the psychologist at Northwestern, tells me. 'If the trade-off is not having a career, but men talked and shared more? I would do it.'
Vox
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vox
Straight guys are 'bad' at gossip. Maybe they should learn.
is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic. What does it mean to be 'good' at gossip? A good gossip doesn't just tell you that Sally broke up with Joe, they tell you that Sally broke up with Joe just a week after posting a bunch of (now deleted) romantic international vacation pics to Instagram. They don't simply say 'Brittany's a bad coworker,' they tell you that no one at the office likes Britt because she microwaves her asparagus-heavy meal preps. They don't mention that Mary is having a tough time with her sister-in-law and then drop it, they explain that her brother's wife is a Disney adult who arranged for the entire family to spend their next Thanksgiving at Epcot and already sent out Venmo requests for a couple thousand dollars worth of Mickey Mouse breakfasts. According to stereotype, this is a skill men — particularly straight men — just don't have. Vox Culture Culture reflects society. Get our best explainers on everything from money to entertainment to what everyone is talking about online. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Their supposed inability to spin a good yarn has been a point of internet mockery, with memes and gags usually coming from the women in their lives who are forced to parse through the driest, most unsatisfying stories ever told. Like a hungry person fighting their way through a well-done steak, these tea-seekers must suffer to find a semblance of sustenance. It's hard not to laugh at the tension these skits and jokes highlight between the person wanting the entire story and the person giving them absolutely nothing. But underneath the comedy are deeper questions about the ethics, the stigma, and the history of gossip, especially who gets to participate. The way that the women who poke fun at their partner's reticence online seek (and are denied) connection speaks to larger concerns. What does dude's inability to share secrets — especially with other bros — mean for the much discussed 'loneliness crisis' among men? Let's be clear: Men gossip! When people say that men are bad at gossiping, it might come with the assumption that men don't gossip. They can't be good at it, because they don't or only rarely partake. But that train of thought is built on a fallacy. That fallacy begins with how we define gossip. For a long time, it's had a negative connotation, the act of talking poorly about someone behind their back. But more and more recently, researchers and social scientists like Megan Robbins have begun reassessing the term, broadening it to define all the ways we talk about other people, good, bad, and neutral. Related The surprising truth about loneliness in America Robbins and her team conducted a 2019 study that examined the rates at which men and women gossip and if men and women had any differences when it comes to positive (e.g., 'John bought a pair of nice shoes!'), negative ('John bought a pair of ugly shoes!') and neutral ('John bought a pair of shoes.'). They found that men and women gossip positively and negatively at similar rates, but that women gossip neutrally more than men. 'It really corresponds with past evidence that women talk more about social topics than men,' Robbins, an associate professor in psychology at University of California Riverside, says. 'So there's this practice element to talking about social topics, talking about people, even just in a neutral way, and men are just not doing it as much in the evidence that we have.' Robbins's study helps explain a few things. It debunks the trope that women are more inclined to disparage someone, and, at the same time, explains why people may perceive that women are better at gossiping or sharing information — if they're gossiping neutrally at a higher rate, so they have more practice. The project also shows that despite the stereotypes, men do gossip, positively and negatively. Getty Images/iStockphoto More than that, men enjoy gossip, even (and especially) when they're at the center of it. A 2025 study from professor Andrew Hales and his research team found that men, more than women, 'were consistently more open' to being talked about. 'I mean it, maybe it's as simple as men just like attention,' Hales, who teaches at the University of Mississippi, tells me. Hales's study focused on the targets of gossip, setting up a theoretical scenario in which a person leaves a party and then is asked whether they want the people who stayed to talk about them. Hales and his team found that people who were male and/or narcissistic were the most likely to want to be spoken about, even if the gossip was going to be negative. 'If you were to control for narcissism, men still are more comfortable being talked about than women are — so it's not just that men are more narcissistic, although they are,' Hales says, noting that the findings contradicted the popular ideas about how men don't enjoy gossip nor particularly like being the targets of it. The population who have been thought to like gossip the least, actually enjoy its existence as much, if not more, than everyone else. But if that's the case, why are they notoriously awful at it? Why are men bad at gossiping Comedian and podcaster Jared Freid intuitively believes what Robbins's study proves: that uninspired male gossips just haven't put in the work, like weight lifters who regularly skip leg day. 'I just don't think there's as many reps for men hearing a crazy story, and there's a lot more reps for women,' Freid, a man, tells me. 'We're just not trained, you know?' Freid primarily attributes men's unskillful gossip to a lack of cultural opportunities to yap freely. He sees things like weekend brunches, group chats, and the ample discussion fodder provided by Bravo's various reality shows as opportunities that mostly women have to sharpen their storytelling tools and observe how drama works firsthand. These conversations teach a person how to gab and, perhaps more importantly, how to respond to spicy information. Gossip is a two-way street; a question or quip can enrich the entire tale. Straight men, he says, don't have an equivalent. While men do hang out, it never gets too chatty. Freid explains that gossip feels 'messy' and, even something as simple as being curious about a story or a rumor could be construed as stirring the pot (men, he says, do not want to be seen as pot-stirrers). It's not that straight men are inherently bad at gossip, it's that they won't allow themselves to openly partake in or enjoy it. 'I don't think guys are really allowed to be messy and still have social credibility,' Freid says. Kelsey McKinney, the author of You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip and the founding host of the Normal Gossip podcast, sees this fear from men, too. 'Straight men seem to have the perception that gossip isn't talking about other people,' McKinney says. 'Gossip, to them, is a tone of voice that they avoid at all costs.' Gossip Girl (starring Blake Lively and Leighton Meester) was a TV show about popular teens terrorized by a secret, anonymous online gossip (who turned out to be a guy named Dan Humphries). The CW This attitude grows out from a misogynistic idea that gossip is a negative thing that women do, something Robbins, the social scientist, considered during her research. 'There's a stereotype that women [negatively] gossip more than men, but there hasn't been a whole lot of evidence for that,' Robbins tells Vox. 'And I feel like having the stereotype that women gossip more than men, you know, serves to keep them in their place, right?' Robbins believes that social skills are valuable, and being able to discuss social topics is a necessary piece of that puzzle. Yet historically, those abilities haven't always been prized. Dismissing all social talk as gossip was a way to dismiss the women who possess those talents. Now, so many men see gossip as unbecoming as well as unmanly, they don't allow themselves to really relish the juicy morsels, nor do they tease out the savory bits. Curiously, Freid is the co-host of the Betches media-produced podcast U Up? It's a show devoted to decoding dating and relationships. His professional life revolves around piquing people's interests and recounting people's stories in hilarious ways. Does that mean the careers Freid's chosen are at odds with his manhood? 'I had to learn to be a better storyteller,' Freid tells me. To do that? He talked to women; friends, his co-host, his coworkers at Betches. A lot of women. Could gossip cure the male loneliness epidemic? Okay, so men might be less adept at gossip. Do they really need to be good at it? As Robbins indicated, continuing research shows that gossip can be a helpful social tool. Talking about other people isn't just 'not all bad,' it can be actively good. McKinney says that social scientists and psychologists have been reassessing the tropes, narratives, and stigma surrounding gossip and gossipers, and they've found that gossip brings people closer together. The idea is that the individual piece of gossip is less important than the bond that's forged when someone shares information with another person. Maybe the true measure of a friendship is the 'Can I be a bitch for a second?' texts we sent along the way. We share stories with people we think we are close to, and sharing things with other people creates intimacy. The gossip we share, arguably, is as much about our own values and beliefs and dislikes as it is about other people. At the same time, over the past half-decade or so, much has been made of what's known as the male loneliness epidemic — the idea that men are lonelier than ever and that their friendships are dwindling. If intimacy is defined, in part, by the idea of sharing stories with one another, it's not that difficult to see men who are bad at gossip hit with a lose-lose situation. They don't have the close friendships that facilitate gossip and the bond-building that comes with it, and they don't get good enough at gossip to initiate the bond-building. That's a problem, because men are disadvantaged when it comes to intimacy and communication from an early age. 'Research shows that by the time little boys are 3, we talk to them less and touch them less,' Alexandra Solomon, a relationship psychologist at Northwestern University, tells me. Solomon says that fewer conversations and less physical affection in childhood have long-lasting social effects. As boys grow up, many will tend to see communication as transactional, or directive, or a means to solving problems instead of an avenue that builds relationships. Those men see the sharing of gossip and storytelling in general as uncomfortable or a taboo, instead of intimately sharing and engaging with a story. 'I really think there's a male fear of incriminating yourself.' 'I really think there's a male fear of incriminating yourself,' Freid, the comedian and man, tells me. 'I don't hear someone telling me their story and go, Oh, good. I can tell them all my stories.' Freid says he sees male friendships and female friendships as fundamentally different, echoing Solomon's explanation of the divergent ideas about communication. Female friendships, he says, involves a give-and-go, a trading of shoulders to cry on. That 'trading' allows for deeper friendships among women — but, he suspects, also opens the door for potential rifts when someone doesn't hold up their end of the bargain. Fried takes some comfort in the idea that he never has to worry about hypothetically disappointing his buddies. 'I just have no friends where I'd be like, I can't believe they haven't called recently,' he says. It's not too hard, though, to link not expecting anyone to check in with a larger, existential problem with loneliness. Is that lack of expectation worth the lack of support? If Saturdays are proverbially for the boys, why not mix in some yapping? If straight men (statistically) gossip anyway, is there real harm in openly enjoying it, seeking it out, using it to build connections? As easy as that seems, it's asking men to share things about themselves in ways that go against how they've been conditioned. 'I would actually be out of a job if men could do that,' Solomon, the psychologist at Northwestern, tells me. 'If the trade-off is not having a career, but men talked and shared more? I would do it.'
