Gideon: I hear you navigating a kind of, I guess, a broad political space. I hear you talking like someone who is part of both left and right political groupings. You know, you obviously—a lot of the people that you hang out with in Silicon Valley, or around Elon, are libertarians or conservatives, and then there’s a lot of progressives as well, and from the backgrounds that you habitually hang out in, I’m guessing. So am I right that I see youth trying to thread together different political viewpoints and think about how they can be integrated?
Grimes: Yes. I really think one of our biggest issues right now is the polarization. Like, I refuse to be left or right. Like, you know, like, I’m—I’m scared about what we’re doing to young men and the discourse around men right now.
Lauren: What part scares you?
Grimes: There are a lot of issues with like male toxicity, but like—like we’re seriously, like we’re just telling men they’re evil for, like, things that they can’t—like testosterone is like a crazy war drug. Like why can’t there be a political platform that, like, makes space and room for—and honors—masculinity, like traditional masculinity, and like encourages it to be better in a constructive way, rather than, like, tearing it apart, that’s still is like into women’s rights and access to abortion and trans rights. It’s like, why are these things dichotomous? Like—like why are they fighting each other? Like—
Lauren: What do you think is an effective way to do that though?
Grimes: I—I think for me, it’s always about, like, the carrot and not the stick. What I would love to see is sort of, um, celebration of the good parts of masculinity. Like, how do you create a discourse that, like, encourages men to, like, push themselves and, like, be chivalrous? And like—like how do you romanticize, uh, a type of masculinity that is really respectful of women and supportive of discipline and like, I don’t know, like all the shit everyone makes fun of, but like—
Gideon: I think I understand what you’re trying to say again. I mean, it feels like you’re saying, simply, the default way to criticize toxic masculinity is to try to take apart masculinity itself. And instead—
Grimes: I think that, I think that’s, I think that’s what happens with—what’s happening too much, is like in our attempts to get rid of the things that have been so, so destructive, I think we’re tearing apart masculinity as a whole.
Lauren: Should we do a rapid-fire round?
Gideon: Sure, I’ll start off. What keeps you up at night?
Grimes: We have an education crisis across the board, like kind of globally.
Gideon Mm-hmm.
Grimes: Almost everything to do with how we raise kids.
Gideon: What makes you optimistic?
Grimes: Young people, kids. I see a lot of Gen Z stuff that’s like scary and bad and traumatizing, but like every Gen Z person that I personally know, I’m just like, “Wow, fuck yeah. You are so sick. Oh my God. And like, so enlightened.” I mean, my kids, it’s like, you realize humans are actually born really great. We just fuck ourselves up, but like we start out awesome. Like we start out like enlightened, and, like, you know, I—I think that gives me a lot of faith, that like the natural state of the human is, like, a—a pretty wonderful one.