Podbit · On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Towns was the only family member COVID protocols allowed to enter the hospital to say goodbye to his mother. He fixed her hair, cleaned her nails, and had the conversation they'd never had — telling her about Jordan, a friend he wasn't sure would become more, and asking his mother to guide him from the other side.
Where this was said
At 24:07 · chapter starts 22:42
COVID protocols allowed only one visitor, and the family chose Karl. He arrived in a hazmat suit, fixed his mother's hair, cleaned her nails, washed her face, and talked to her — even though she couldn't respond. [1] — Karl-Anthony Towns "Towns was the only family member COVID protocols allowed to enter the hospital to say goodbye to his mother. He fixed her hair, cleaned her…" 24:07 He felt the energy of the exchange nonetheless. And in those final moments, he finally had the conversation he and his mother had never gotten to: he told her about Jordan, a friend who might be more, and asked his mother to look out for her from wherever she was going. Seven years later, they're getting married. 'Obviously,' Towns says with a quiet smile, 'it was the right one.' Shetty then asks about the decision to end life support. Towns says he tried every other route — he would have taken her in any condition. But when a meaningful recovery was no longer possible, he made the call. He frames it as choosing 'the death of my ego for the best of her.'
Towns was the only family member allowed into the hospital to say goodbye to his mother before she passed, wearing a hazmat suit and fixing her hair and nails.
Social media feeds men and women the absolute worst caricatures of each other while stripping away the everyday, imperfect relationships that would calibrate their expectations. Combine that with smaller families and fewer cross-sex friendships, and you get a generation that talks about the opposite sex constantly but almost never to them.
The 'would you rather be alone with a man or a bear' debate went viral not because men are objectively more dangerous than ever, but because an entire fear industrial complex of influencers and safety products had already primed women to feel that way. Once the algorithm identifies you as worried about personal safety, the content and the scrunchie drink-covers never stop.
Women feel less safe not because danger has increased, but because trust in institutions — police, churches, schools — that used to enforce safety norms has collapsed. Young women are far less likely than older women to believe those institutions will handle sexual assault responsibly, leaving them with only individual self-protection as a fallback.
Even self-identified feminist women consistently told Daniel Cox in interviews and surveys that they want men to open doors, pay for dates, and show demonstrable care. The internet noise around 'benevolent sexism' drowns out this widespread, quietly held preference.
In focus groups in Philadelphia and Raleigh, every single hand went up when participants were asked if parents discussed financial stability and education. Zero hands went up for marriage or parenthood. Parents are shaping their children's ambitions with total silence on the experiences that matter most.
American families are smaller than ever, with roughly 1 in 5 children now growing up as only children. Without the daily friction of siblings — shared bedrooms, shared bathrooms, resolving disagreements — young people enter adult relationships without the negotiation muscles relationships require.
Online dating optimises for your existing preferences rather than expanding your horizons. People who meet online give bad first dates almost no second chances; people who meet through mutual friends are far more forgiving. The disembodied, checklist-driven nature of apps removes all the social cues that actually reveal character.
A split-sample survey found that men judge male and female cheating identically harshly, and women judge male cheating the same way men do. The outlier: young women are dramatically less likely to call female infidelity morally wrong, suggesting shared-fate thinking and personal experience of being cheated on are reshaping the moral calculus.
The monk mode trend encourages men to withdraw from social life to work on themselves — but this is precisely backwards. The research is clear: close friendships are the single most powerful predictor of whether a man dates, commits, and becomes his best self. Self-improvement without social reintegration is just sophisticated avoidance.
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