American comedian Stephen Colbert has shown an entirely different side of his personality during a Q&A session for a young adult’s magazine.

Colbert sat down for Rookie magazine’s “Ask a Grown Man” segment to answer fan questions about everything from misogyny to sex.

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While he kicks off the chat with some trademark humour – “I’m honoured to be considered a grown man, thank you very much” – he quickly adopts an uncharacteristic sincerity.

The final result is something like having the awkward “birds and bees” chat with a cool, smart, non-awkward uncle.

Here are some highlights:

On young men who make cat calls or rape jokes:

I think the reason why boys do this kind of stuff is to get your attention. My advice would be if you don’t know the person I’d ignore it, but if they’re a friend, they really care what you think…I would say ‘please don’t do that because I really don’t like it’. They may blow you off at the time but I promise you they will remember it. For this sort of thing to stop, boys need to be educated.

On misogyny:

Does our society educate boys to be misogynistic? It probably doesn’t value girls and women as much as it should.

On having the sex talk with a particularly close-minded father:

He may not actually be close-minded about sex – after all you exist, so he’s fairly open-minded about it – he may think that sex and a relationship aren’t the same thing.

Maybe he’s embarrassed to talk about sex with his daughter and that’s not unusual.

On parents and independence: 

You’re 19, you’re legally an adult, why are you still living at home? If you don’t feel like you’re ready to be out on your own, maybe you’re not ready to be out on your own, but you certainly have the right to be.

If there’s a reason you still need your parents’ help financially, maybe it’s not too much to ask to accept their help in terms of relationship advice.

On boys who lie:

If he lies to you and is mean to you he may like you but he’s not treating you well. If he lies to you a lot how do you even know that he really likes you? Maybe he’s lying about that too. I would give this person one last shot and say ‘don’t ever lie to me again’ then kick him to the curb.

On how you can tell if someone likes you:

They want to hear your stories, they care how you feel, they want to make your day better…they reach out to you. If somebody goes to the effort to call you, write you, come over and talk to you, smile when they see you – those are good signs that they like you.

See the full video below: