Thank you for those kind words.

I suppose the thoughts about explaining style were not fully formed enough for their own essay yet. I had a moment listening to the podcast where they talked about some hot take by one of the authors as something that the dads would store up to share with each other at the bbq to make it sound like they know something.

My wife and I travel sometimes and occasionally I feel the need to speculate on something we see. I do it such a manner that it sounds like I actually know things, when in fact I'm just throwing out a guess. I carry so much confidence that she will ask if it is true or something I just made up. At one point she said "As if" to one of my explanations, and then it became a thing for her to throw an "as if" at me when I was bullshitting or speculating about stuff I'm not actually knowledgable in. In many cases I was right about xyz, but I think that is not the point.

Broad generalization here: there is something about the way boys are raised to be confident about things that they are 10% sure about, and girls are raised to add qualifiers to things that they are 90% sure about.

I heard Rebecca Solnit in an interview talking about men who will explain man-splaining to her, and she literally wrote the book on it. I had to laugh. I think there is a currency for boys to being right about things - there is a safety to knowing the answers, which leads us to act like we know more than we do. Not a fully formed idea for an essay, but simmering.

Thanks again.