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We’ve been looking forward to Justin Baldoni’s (Jane the Virgin) weekly series Man Enough for a few months now. I first saw it announced in October of this year, described as a dinner-party-style show with male celebrities and public figures discussing issues of masculinity.

Baldoni recently gave a talk at the TEDWomen Conference and showed us what we can expect from those discussions. After watching the above video, I’m more excited than ever.

I highly recommend watching the whole video, as it covers a lot of ground. He talks about being bullied growing up because his father raised him to be thoughtful and empathetic—i.e. “soft.” He talks about the discrepancy between how he sees himself and how Hollywood sees him, and how the roles he gets typecast in have an effect on how he presents himself to the world, a world that insists boys and men present their masculinity by adopting an “almost disgusted view of the feminine.” But that rigid, exclusionary view of masculinity and femininity is toxic for everyone involved.

Not having a “desire to fit into the current broken definition of masculinity,” he’s reevaluating the “scripts” men are given, dictating how they present themselves and also how they judge themselves. He tells the men in the audience, “I’m not saying that everything we’ve learned is toxic. I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with you or me, and men, I’m not saying we have to stop being men. But we need balance, right? We need balance, and the only way things will change is if we take a real honest look at the scripts that have been passed down to us from generation to generation, and the roles that, as men, we choose to take on in our everyday lives.”

Baldoni has a large social media presence, using that presence to create what he calls “a daily practice of authenticity and vulnerability.” He uses the platform to express his love for his wife and his two children and he says the response has been overwhelmingly positive. But he also shares his analytics breakdown and his audience online is nearly 90% women.

At one point, he says he tried an “experiment,” and started posting more traditionally masculine pictures and videos, documenting his workout routines and meal plans. He says the shift was noticeable. Not only did more men start interacting with his posts, but he got his first-ever interview request for a men’s fitness magazine, naming him as a “gamechanger.” But, as he asks, “Is that really game-changing? Or is it just conforming?”

And see, that’s the problem. It’s totally cool for men to follow me when I talk about “guy stuff” and I conform to gender norms. But if I talk about how much I love my wife or my daughter or my 10-day-old son, how I believe that marriage is challenging but beautiful, or how as a man I struggle with body dysmorphia, or if i promote gender equality, then only the women show up. Where are the men?

He says he has a challenge for those men (“because men love challenges”).

I challenge you to see if you can use the same qualities that you feel make you a man to go deeper into yourself. Your strength, your bravery, your toughness. Can we redefine what those mean and use them to explore our hearts? Are you brave enough to be vulnerable? To reach out to another man when you need help? To dive headfirst into your shame? Are you strong enought to be sensitive? To cry, whether you’re hurting or you are happy, even if it makes you look weak?

Are you confident enough to listen to the women in your life? To hear their ideas and their solutions? To hold their anguish and actually believe them, even if what they’re saying is against you? And will you be man enough to stand up to other men when you hear “locker room talk,” when you hear stories of sexual harassment, when you hear your boys talking about grabbing ass or getting her drunk, will you actually stand up and do something so that one day we don’t have to live in a world where a woman has to risk everything and come forward to say the words “me too”?

He says that he’s been having to take a real look at the ways he’s been unconsciously hurting the women in his life. It’s hard to have toxic behavior (like, in his case, chronic interrupting) pointed out to you. It’s not easy to decide to talk less and listen more. There are a lot of things that aren’t easy, but are very much necessary.

As men, I believe it’s time we start to see past our privilege and recognize that we are not just part of the problem. Fellas, we are the problem. The glass ceiling exists because we put it there. And if we want to be a part of the solution, then words are no longer enough.

I love that Baldoni addresses how the toxicity of those “scripts” men are given is harmful not just to women, but also to men. And I’m looking forward to seeing how these kinds of conversations take shape with other men’s voices involved.

Man Enough was originally set to premiere on November 28th, but there’s now a countdown timer on wearemanenough.com that looks to indicate its new premiere is Thursday, December 14th. Look for it at that website.

(via People, image: Shutterstock)

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Fellow Hard NOC Media podcaster Preeti Chhibber, of Desi Geek Girls, stops by a brand new episode of Southern Fried Asian.

Preeti tells Keith about her childhood growing up in West Virginia (1:55) and her parents’ experiences (or lack thereof) with racism (7:30) before diving in to the differences between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation (9:30). Later, Preeti explains what led her to identifying as a geek (16:00) and the culture shock of moving from small town West Virginia to South Florida and no longer being the only POC in school (30:30). Then they talk about how 9-11 changed everything about the way kids were racist in the South (36:00) and what it’s like being the “hyphen” between Asian and American (42:50) and the fine line between authenticity and in-authenticity (47:00). As always, Keith closes the pod on a discussion about food, but with a twist as they discuss the politics behind certain people’s food preferences (53:00).

As promised on the pod, this is the Vice news segment regarding the racisim of anti-MSG hysteria.

Subscribe to the Southern Fried Asian podcast on iTunes and Google Play.

Our official theme music is the song “Top Down” by  Chops, Timothy Flu, and Mic Barz. 

Finally the moment we’ve all been waiting for is here! The first trailer for director J.A. Bayona’s Jurassic World sequel, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, has been unleashed on the viewing public and it’s ACTION-PACKED!

The trailer not only delivers some pretty outrageous dinosaur action, but it also confirms the plot that the cast and crew have been hinting at over the last few days. It looks like we’ll be following Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) back to Isla Nublar on a mission to save the creatures who’ve now overrun the remains of the ill-fated park. They’ll be joined by Justice Smith and Daniella Pineda, both of whom are still yet to be named, and from the looks of it they’ll be right in the center of the action. We also see another beloved cast member return too in the shape of the classic T-Rex from the OG Jurassic Park.

Though director Bayona is best known for his simmering horror effort The Orphanage, he does also have a big budget back catalogue that includes true story tsunami tale The Impossible and the criminally underrated A Monster Calls. This first look at the movie confirms that Bayona won’t be holding back when it comes to spectacle, with huge set pieces that include massive amounts of dinosaurs–likely more than we’ve seen in any of the previous films, including a particularly epic moment that focuses around an erupting volcano.

The trailer also gave us more of an idea of what role Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm will play as he seems to be testifying at some kind of deposition, discussing whether or not the dinosaurs should be saved. After all, Jurassic Park always needs a good corporate government foe. Could this hint that our team have entered the island after going rogue? With no backup? Uh oh!

We cannot wait to check out more from Fallen Kingdom, but what do you think of the trailer? Happy to see the return of Ian Malcolm? Excited to see some badass dinosaur fights? Or just want to see 1,000 dinosaurs running away from a volcano? Let us know in the comments!

Images: Universal Pictures

Can we actually bring back extinct animals?

Editor’s note: Nerdist is a subsidiary of Legendary Pictures.

The rumors appear to be rumors no longer: Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek pitch has achieved warp five speeds, with potential writers screened and Paramount seemingly agreeing to the director’s requirement that the film be R-rated.

A few days after the initial buzz of Tarantino’s positive meetings with J.J. Abrams and Paramount (and Teresa exploring the reasons why this creative mash-up gives us pause), Deadline Hollywood today has this report:

Tarantino met for hours in a writers room with Mark L. Smith, Lindsey Beer, and Drew Pearce. They kicked around ideas and one of them will get the job. I’m hearing the frontrunner is Smith, who wrote The Revenant. The film will most certainly go where no Star Trek has gone before: Tarantino has required it to be R rated, and Paramount and Abrams agreed to that condition.

It’s not 100% clear if Tarantino would direct the movie himself or be involved in some kind of producing role, but the implication is that he’d direct—which is why the over-17-and-up rating was on the table:

That rating was crucially important to Tarantino, who hopes to direct this Star Trek and who has helmed R rated films his entire career. Imagine how this could open storytelling lanes, or even what the banter on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise might be, if you conjure up memories of the conversations between Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, or the banter at the diner between robbers before the heist gone wrong that triggered the action in Reservoir Dogs.

Honestly, as a lifelong fan of Star Trek and someone who respects Tarantino’s films well enough, I’m not against this development, nor fundamentally against the idea of a more adult Trek. The movies have been heading in that direction anyway. It’s just still really hard for me to imagine Tarantino’s trademark style grafted onto the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Like, can I picture Kirk and Spock cursing a blue streak while blood fountains out of the decapitated head of an enemy alien? Can I? At least Dr. McCoy would finally get to speak his mind.

Comicbook.com points out that when Tarantino has talked about his interest in directing Trek in the past, he’s cited the Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise” as “one of the best episodes of Star Trek ever written.” In “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” the crew encounters a temporal rift that throws them into a timeline where the Klingon Empire and the Federation are locked in a brutal war, which Tarantino calls “the bloodiest war imaginable in the history of any universe,” and says that the episode “could bear a two hour treatment.”

While it’s unknown if his current pitch has anything to do with “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” I’m kind of a glutton for Star Trek stories that mess with time, so this wouldn’t be the worst thread to follow. Regardless, it seems like any Tarantino Trek take is going to see a whole lot of blood.

(via Deadline, image: Wikimedia Commons/Paramount)

• Our new live-action Mulan, Liu Yifei, looks incredible in this Mulan-themed photoshoot to celebrate her casting. (via Colorwebmag) 
• Justice, for once: Michael Slager, the ex-cop who murdered Walter Scott in 2015 in South Carolina, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Slager shot Scott in the back as he was running away, a slaughter caught on video. Scott’s brother thanked witness Feiden Santana, who filmed the shooting, for being brave enough to do so. (via ABC)
• For some reason, Kate Winslet keeps saying good things about Woody Allen. Quit while you are far behind, Kate. (via The Cut)
• Marvel announced an animated film called Secret Warriors that will feature not-so-secret faves like Ms. Marvel, Miss America, Squirrel Girl and Spider-Gwen. Wait, is it Christmas already?! (via Comicbook.com)
• Also looking, um, pretty good in a photo shoot is Jason Momoa in an Aquaman first look. Yeah, this is fine. This will do. (via EW)

It’s officially safe to go back into the water, seems like. What’d you see today, swimmers?

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