This Past Weekend with Theo Von - E547 Scott Galloway

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00:00:28.580 See AirCanada.com.

00:00:30.000 I have some new tour dates to tell you about for 2025.

00:00:33.700 I'll be in Toledo, Ohio.

00:00:37.460 O-H-I-O.

00:00:39.200 I'll be in Rama, Ontario in the Canada.

00:00:42.460 I'll be in Pittsburgh.

00:00:45.740 Eugene, Oregon.

00:00:47.180 We pulling in.

00:00:49.060 Kennewick.

00:00:50.400 Seattle, Washington.

00:00:52.000 Victoria, B.C. in the Canada.

00:00:54.540 Belton, Texas.

00:00:55.920 San Antonio.

00:00:57.860 Durant, Oklahoma.

00:00:59.260 Amarillo, Texas.

00:01:01.260 Oxford, Mississippi.

00:01:02.820 Over there.

00:01:03.820 Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

00:01:06.820 Tallahassee, Florida.

00:01:07.820 And Rosemont, Illinois.

00:01:09.180 That'll still be the return of the rat tour.

00:01:12.540 When will everybody know?

00:01:13.940 It's the return of the rat tour.

00:01:15.140 Yes, some of it changes over time, but it's not a new tour.

00:01:18.880 So hopefully we'll get it done soon.

00:01:20.460 We just, there's places to go, you know?

00:01:23.940 So get all your tickets at theovahn.com slash T-O-U-R.

00:01:28.340 And thank you so much for your support.

00:01:30.420 I am excited to announce that I'm starting a foundation.

00:01:34.600 I'm starting a foundation.

00:01:35.780 So thank everybody for coming out and seeing the live shows and stuff.

00:01:38.620 And yeah, we're going to have a foundation.

00:01:40.960 And so it's going to be exciting that next year we'll be able to do things through that.

00:01:47.140 So it's one step at a time.

00:01:48.860 But I just wanted to say just thank you guys for the support.

00:01:52.960 And I'm excited to see what else is possible.

00:01:56.340 Amen, baby.

00:01:58.620 Today's guest is a professor at NYU.

00:02:01.740 He's the host of the Prof G Markets podcast.

00:02:06.260 He's a marketing and business expert and a public speaker.

00:02:10.080 I'm most interested personally in his work that often explores the issues that young men are facing in the changing world.

00:02:18.820 I'm really grateful for his time today.

00:02:21.000 It's one of the reasons that we're in New York City.

00:02:23.680 Today's guest is Mr. Scott Galloway.

00:02:43.840 Scott Galloway, thanks for coming, man.

00:02:45.960 I can't tell you how excited my staff is that I'm here.

00:02:49.220 I've never literally, when my chief of staff found out I was coming out,

00:02:53.100 and she wanted to come with me.

00:02:54.500 I said, what is it about your content you like?

00:02:57.200 He said, no, I just think he's really hot.

00:02:59.160 Oh, God.

00:02:59.680 And is it a man or woman?

00:03:02.260 Yeah, yes.

00:03:04.100 No, Mary Jean Rebos, friends for 20 years, wonderful woman.

00:03:08.280 And my Prof G Markets co-host, Ed, who I can't get to come into an office, decided he was coming to this with me.

00:03:17.780 So you're a legend at Prof G.

00:03:20.500 Work from home, Ed.

00:03:21.700 They always show up, right?

00:03:23.140 Yeah.

00:03:24.380 Thanks, man.

00:03:25.080 Yeah.

00:03:25.280 I got to get over to Prof G then, man.

00:03:28.660 The next time I come into this city, we'll have to get over and have some experience over there.

00:03:33.360 That'd be cool, you know, and I appreciate that.

00:03:35.880 And, yeah, I feel lucky to have an audience.

00:03:38.800 You know, I think sometimes it kind of blows my mind, you know?

00:03:41.500 Yeah.

00:03:41.740 And I think I mostly just keep working, you know?

00:03:44.820 That's, like, the only feel, like, the thing I know how to do best.

00:03:47.480 Like, my biggest relationship is probably with my work.

00:03:49.860 You know, I was thinking the other day, somebody's like, are you going to get a wife?

00:03:51.980 And I'm like, well, I have, you know, 40 hours a week I have this woman, you know?

00:03:56.860 I have this work is, like, feels like my wife, you know, a lot of times.

00:04:01.660 But I just to press pause there, I think that's, I think young people have to have a sober conversation with themselves around tradeoffs.

00:04:11.060 And that is, I ask my kids, when I say my kids, my students, where they expect to be economically and in terms of influence.

00:04:17.560 And 70% of them expect to be in the top 1% within 10 years.

00:04:21.680 And what I have found is that if you want to be in the top 1% from an influence, from a real spiritual reward from your work, from a financial standpoint,

00:04:30.540 you pretty much have to go all in for 10, probably 20 years.

00:04:34.160 The capitalist society is very good at figuring out who's really in, you know, in it for the full 110%.

00:04:41.400 I don't know anyone who's reached the level of success you've reached without pretty much going all in on work.

00:04:48.320 And it comes at a tradeoff.

00:04:49.620 It comes at a tradeoff of relationships.

00:04:51.480 It comes at a tradeoff in terms of your own fitness, your own mental well-being.

00:04:54.520 But from the age of, like, 25 to 45, I really don't remember much else than working.

00:04:59.580 Really?

00:05:00.260 Yeah, and I'm not saying that's the right way.

00:05:01.980 Right, yeah, no.

00:05:02.800 But it was my way.

00:05:04.560 Yeah.

00:05:04.860 And I don't regret it.

00:05:06.340 Huh.

00:05:06.500 Yeah, it's funny because I think I do.

00:05:09.420 I think I lament sometimes.

00:05:11.000 Like, it's so funny you say that.

00:05:12.340 Like, this afternoon, I know I have, like, about two hours, you know, and I'm like, do I go to an AA meeting or do I stretch, right?

00:05:20.420 Those are, like, my two.

00:05:22.280 Like, which one is going to help me more for tomorrow?

00:05:26.000 Like, you know, like, but really, like, it's like, yeah, do I do some type of a fitness thing or do I do, like, a wellness thing?

00:05:32.620 You know, like a recovery thing.

00:05:36.080 But, yeah, it's funny.

00:05:37.960 I just, I thought about that a lot recently.

00:05:40.380 Like, because work was, like, something that I think was, like, I knew what the return could be, right?

00:05:45.460 So it was a manageable relationship.

00:05:47.580 Right.

00:05:47.800 Whereas I think other relationships for me, and I'm not getting into self-pity, those have been tougher to manage or I didn't have as much luck.

00:05:54.680 And not luck in meeting women, but luck in actual managing relationships.

00:05:59.560 Yeah.

00:05:59.700 And so then I was like, well, but this relationship I can manage, you know, and I know what the return can be based on my investment.

00:06:07.600 And there's not a ton of emotional pain involved in it for me or other people, you know, unless you work for me.

00:06:14.460 Sometimes I can get a little heady, you know.

00:06:15.960 Yeah, and this is going to sound crass, but the opportunities, your selection set for mating will broaden as you become more successful professionally.

00:06:24.560 That's just the cruel truth of capitalism.

00:06:26.300 The trade-off will become the relationships with your parents, your relationship with God.

00:06:30.220 I know you're a spiritual person, the relationship you have with yourself.

00:06:33.680 But you'll, it's, the world is unfair as it relates to men.

00:06:37.080 And that is, as long as we, our trajectory of success professionally and economically is upward, we are afforded a disproportionate number of mating opportunities.

00:06:45.800 So, wait, so say that part again, the end part again?

00:06:48.480 If you have money, you can get laid.

00:06:50.060 Okay.

00:06:50.300 Okay.

00:06:51.540 Yeah.

00:06:52.080 Okay, yeah.

00:06:52.620 If you have money, you can get laid.

00:06:55.600 But then, but there's trade-offs too.

00:06:57.660 Huge trade-offs.

00:06:58.520 Yeah.

00:06:59.100 One of the things I wish I'd done, I wish I'd started with kids a little bit earlier.

00:07:03.320 I only, I have two boys.

00:07:05.300 One of my biggest regrets is I wish I had a third.

00:07:07.160 I wish I had a daughter.

00:07:08.360 I think a lot about like how much I'm enjoying it.

00:07:10.560 And I was working so hard that I didn't have a lot of time with them.

00:07:14.560 And, you know, they're gone.

00:07:15.680 You know, that, that eight-year-old that, you know, used to come in and sleep in my bed with me on the Sunday mornings, he's gone.

00:07:21.580 And I see the kind of the gentleness my friends have with some of their girls.

00:07:25.600 You know, I really messed up.

00:07:28.420 And I'm blessed to have two boys.

00:07:29.900 I'm a glass half empty kind of guy.

00:07:31.560 I look at stuff.

00:07:32.700 I know rationally I'm blessed to have two boys, but I look at it like I wish I'd had more kids.

00:07:37.940 How old are you?

00:07:38.480 Yeah, I'm 44.

00:07:39.320 I need to have, I need to get some children.

00:07:42.300 So I'd like to get some.

00:07:43.800 I mean, I don't know much about you, but I would argue that I'm not one of these people that says you can't be happy without kids.

00:07:51.080 But I didn't want to have kids.

00:07:52.960 I wanted to be rich and awesome.

00:07:54.780 Those are my priorities in that order.

00:07:57.980 And what I found is all of that is a means to an end.

00:08:00.500 In a capitalist society, you have to be able to be economically viable.

00:08:04.120 Otherwise, your kid's going to feel that stress.

00:08:05.680 It's going to put stress on your partnership.

00:08:07.680 But for the first time in my life, you know, there's these moments, Theo, where you're watching Premier League football and your kids roll in.

00:08:16.060 And they jump on the couch and the dogs come over and your kids just sort of naturally throw their legs on yours.

00:08:22.120 And it's the only time I've ever had this feel, and maybe you've had it other places, where I'm like, this is enough.

00:08:28.600 You know, when I was your age, coming to New York, staying at a hotel like this, I wanted, every afternoon, I'd start thinking, where am I going tonight that's cool?

00:08:37.480 I was at Equinox yesterday.

00:08:38.860 Is there a cooler gym?

00:08:39.780 I'm at Zero Bond.

00:08:40.660 Is there a more exclusive club?

00:08:41.900 I'm hanging out with this interesting, hot group of people.

00:08:44.740 Tomorrow, can I hang out with more interesting, more hot people?

00:08:47.720 This is how much money I made this month.

00:08:49.260 Can I make more?

00:08:50.020 It was just like more.

00:08:51.020 Fuck it.

00:08:51.260 I want more.

00:08:51.960 Where did it come from?

00:08:53.540 Sorry, go on.

00:08:54.360 And the only thing?

00:08:55.420 The only time I've ever been like, okay, this might be enough is usually in the presence of my kids.

00:09:01.180 That's interesting, man.

00:09:02.240 You know, I have moments of, yeah, I think there was, like, I do remember, like, leaning against my dad when he was on the couch or something in, like, a shirt that he would wear.

00:09:10.660 Or that's, like, probably the fondest memory I have of him, you know, of, like, just leaning in, you know, like, and it didn't really matter, like, what was going on.

00:09:20.280 It was just, like, being right there.

00:09:23.060 Or of, like, your dad touching you on the back of the neck.

00:09:25.460 That kind of stuff, I think, is very important for kids.

00:09:27.960 Like, it's such a, like, a safe position that a dad can put their son in, kind of, like, not choking, but just one hand.

00:09:34.860 And what made you create that first idea that more is the thing, you know?

00:09:41.280 Because obviously you've seen that, you know, guys, we want to feel like the hunters, the gathers, you want to feel like the create, the person who can put it together, the provider, right?

00:09:52.440 Yeah.

00:09:52.620 But what made it, you think, so crucial, like, in that next thing, like, that hire?

00:09:56.560 Was it almost like an addiction kind of to achievement?

00:09:59.760 A little bit.

00:10:00.540 But I know the exact moment I got my act together and I got really motivated.

00:10:05.980 Growing up, I had, I described my child as remarkably unremarkable.

00:10:09.660 It wasn't especially good or especially bad.

00:10:11.900 I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary.

00:10:16.080 And it was, but it wasn't a bad life.

00:10:18.960 But the moment that changed everything for me was my mom got, my mom got very sick when I was in graduate school.

00:10:24.560 And she called me and said, you need to come home.

00:10:26.880 And my mom's not a dramatic person.

00:10:28.480 And so I flew home and went into a situation that was, she had been released early.

00:10:34.080 She, we were kind of underinsured.

00:10:35.740 She just had her second mastectomy.

00:10:37.680 She'd been through chemo and the hospital basically booted her out kind of prematurely.

00:10:41.980 And I walked into a situation I just did not know how to handle.

00:10:44.740 Wow.

00:10:45.320 And I started calling nurses and nurses were 35 bucks an hour.

00:10:48.820 And we just didn't have that kind of money.

00:10:50.140 Yeah.

00:10:50.440 And that feeling, you'll feel this, and maybe you feel it now with your staff and your parents.

00:10:59.320 But as a man, I think you have a very healthy instinct around protection.

00:11:03.400 And this woman who'd been so good to me, I couldn't take care of her.

00:11:07.020 And to be honest, Theo, it was humiliating.

00:11:09.280 And that was when I said, okay, I got to get my act together.

00:11:15.360 I got to be able to take care of my mom.

00:11:17.160 So that was, that was really sort of my driving.

00:11:20.180 I thought, okay, I didn't want to save the whales.

00:11:22.640 I didn't want to be a good person.

00:11:23.640 I didn't want a close relation with God.

00:11:25.640 I wanted economic security for me and my mom.

00:11:28.300 Yeah.

00:11:29.120 And that was, and also the other flip side of it isn't nearly as noble.

00:11:33.140 I also noticed that my male friends whose parents had homes in Aspen and were driving BMWs were hanging out with higher character, better looking women than I was.

00:11:43.200 Yeah.

00:11:44.080 And that women were drawn to men with resources, not only because they could offer them a better life, but because it reflected discipline and character and that they might be better dads.

00:11:54.740 Yeah.

00:11:54.920 But my, the bottom line is the, the thing that got my, or motivated me was women trying to take, wanting to take care of my mom and wanting to be more attractive to a potential mate.

00:12:06.040 That's when I got my act together.

00:12:07.380 Yeah.

00:12:07.860 And I guess that's really the, probably the truth for a lot of, and some of that's nature, right?

00:12:12.260 Yeah.

00:12:12.780 A hundred percent.

00:12:13.940 Yeah.

00:12:14.120 Because women want to be felt safe, you know?

00:12:17.480 Oh, dude, I remember this dude, Mr. Willie put a fence up on his fucking house in our neighborhood.

00:12:21.780 And people were like, look at this fucking hero over here, you know, because nobody else had it.

00:12:27.200 That's what takes a fence.

00:12:28.660 Well, it was one of those double door fences.

00:12:30.780 And we're like, this guy's, they live in a damn estate, you know?

00:12:35.780 Nice.

00:12:36.340 And, but yeah, I think there is something about that, about being able to provide.

00:12:40.920 So it makes you feel, especially if you don't know anything else, I think it's the, it's the first and most, I don't want to say the easiest thing to do, but it's something you can immediately start to do.

00:12:51.780 Well, I think everybody needs a code, right?

00:12:53.640 It sounds like you get a few codes from different places, whether it's your spirituality, your church.

00:12:58.740 I think AA has a nice code.

00:13:00.380 Yeah, that's probably my biggest one.

00:13:01.840 And it's a powerful one, right?

00:13:03.140 And it's a construct that works for millions of people.

00:13:05.060 And the thing I like about AA is it's both an opportunity to improve yourself, but immediately move to how you help others.

00:13:13.840 Being in the service is something bigger than your self-help.

00:13:15.720 It's just, it feels to me like a really strong code.

00:13:18.080 But yeah, I'm trying to figure out how, if masculinity can be a code for young men.

00:13:23.500 I feel like a lot of young men now, they're not attaching to church.

00:13:26.060 They're not attaching to school.

00:13:27.360 More single parent households in any country, but Sweden.

00:13:30.140 They're not joining the service.

00:13:33.420 They're not in a relationship.

00:13:35.020 Only one in three men under the age of 30 is in a relationship, whereas two in three women under the age of 30 is in a relationship.

00:13:41.040 Why?

00:13:41.860 Because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men.

00:13:45.440 So if a guy has, is not going to church, he's not playing sports, not in college, not in a relationship, and he doesn't have a male role model, where does he get his code?

00:13:55.640 And I actually think that while masculinity has been conflated incorrectly, in my view, with toxicity or something bad, how can we better define a modern form of masculinity such that it can serve as a code for young men?

00:14:07.700 A guiding light, the same way kind of AA has for you.

00:14:10.960 And I think very loosely, and I'm writing a book on this, and I still haven't figured it out, and I'm curious if you have any thoughts.

00:14:16.140 I think the kind of the three legs of the stool are provider.

00:14:19.820 We live in a capitalist society.

00:14:21.460 I'm not talking about the way the world should be, the way it is.

00:14:24.120 Men are disproportionately evaluated based on their economic viability.

00:14:28.060 If your son lives in a, or your daughter lives in a household that's economically strained, he or she is going to have a higher resting dystolic blood pressure.

00:14:36.140 Stress from economic stress invades everything in a capitalist society.

00:14:39.880 You're expected to be a provider.

00:14:40.980 And by the way, sometimes that means getting out of the way or being some more supportive of your partner who happens to be better at this money thing than you.

00:14:48.180 More women are graduating from college, two out of three jobs now need college degrees.

00:14:52.460 But you should start from a position of, I need to be economically viable.

00:14:55.600 I need to learn a trade, a skill, get certified, show up, work hard, and try and have some discipline around saving, develop a savings muscle.

00:15:04.400 Don't be that idiot that orders bottle service.

00:15:07.500 You know, try to show you have your act together economically.

00:15:10.480 Two, protector.

00:15:12.160 I think a really nice default setting for a man should be an immediate movement to protection.

00:15:17.040 Like real men break up fights at bars.

00:15:19.620 They don't start them.

00:15:20.480 Real men protect their country.

00:15:21.860 They don't shitpost it.

00:15:23.620 You know, real men don't complain.

00:15:24.880 They're there to absorb.

00:15:26.260 They add surplus value.

00:15:27.700 They create more revenue for the government than they consume.

00:15:30.100 They help people more than maybe they require help.

00:15:33.400 And sometimes that can go off the rails because some men feel like it's not masculine to express vulnerability.

00:15:40.120 So there's a downside to that.

00:15:42.040 Maybe you don't understand the LGBT community.

00:15:44.200 Maybe you don't believe in all this, what's going on with the focus on trans rights.

00:15:49.060 But your first instinct should be, if you see a community that's being demonized, whether it's migrants, the LGBT community, your first instinct as a man I think should be to protection.

00:15:59.940 You hear someone talking shit about someone behind their back, your first instinct should be to protection.

00:16:05.080 So I like that notion of protection.

00:16:06.920 And the final one that's more controversial is procreator.

00:16:10.100 I think the desire, where I am now, most rewarding thing in my life I'm talking about is my boys.

00:16:18.420 If we reverse engineer it, it's them, it's my partner having birth, it's us living together, it's us getting a dog, it's us spending a lot of time together, it's us having a relationship.

00:16:29.580 But if I reverse engineer it to the source code of the most rewarding thing in my life, it's me seeing this very attractive woman at the hotel pool at the Raleigh Hotel.

00:16:37.000 And I didn't think, oh, she's going to be great at buying land and developing it.

00:16:42.040 And she's going to be economically viable and she's going to be a great mom.

00:16:45.000 It started with me really being physically attracted to her.

00:16:48.640 And I think men need to look at themselves and say, how do I put myself in a position where I can be not only attractive to women, but get the skills where I can express physical desire while making them feel safe?

00:17:01.380 And it's a very basic question.

00:17:03.480 Would you want to have sex with you?

00:17:05.020 Would you want to be romantic with you?

00:17:07.000 Are you in good shape?

00:17:08.320 Are you a good person?

00:17:09.260 Are you kind?

00:17:10.740 Do you have your act together professionally?

00:17:12.940 Do you listen?

00:17:13.780 Do you give notice to their life?

00:17:15.980 But protector, provider, and procreator, I would like to figure out a way to develop a more aspirational model for masculinity that serves as a role model or a code for young men.

00:17:27.480 The book that you're working on now is something that you're saying that that kind of addresses some of that space, you know, like figure like kind of almost giving a like kind of charting a course, but, you know, adding some coordinates to a course for young men.

00:17:39.420 Yeah, that's what I'm hoping.

00:17:40.940 Young men, there's no group in the world that's ascended faster than women.

00:17:45.520 Right.

00:17:45.640 More women are seeking tertiary education globally than men now.

00:17:49.080 Yeah.

00:17:49.340 Twice as many women have been elected to some sort form of parliament in the last 30 years.

00:17:53.760 More single women own homes in the U.S. than single men.

00:17:57.460 In urban centers, women are making more money under the age of 30 than men.

00:18:01.600 And by the way, we should do nothing to get in the way with that.

00:18:04.280 Yeah, no, dude.

00:18:04.800 That's amazing.

00:18:05.480 I'm going to league of their own fan, you know?

00:18:07.320 That's amazing.

00:18:08.360 But the second order effect we were planning on, and we don't like to talk about this, is that 50% of women say they want to date a guy shorter than them.

00:18:16.700 I bet it's 80%.

00:18:17.580 They're just embarrassed to admit it.

00:18:18.880 And metaphorically, every year, women are getting taller and men are getting shorter.

00:18:24.260 Yeah.

00:18:24.780 So.

00:18:25.620 Is that true?

00:18:26.600 Well, metaphorically, if you look at how many, oh, 100% women are killing it right now.

00:18:31.960 Yeah.

00:18:32.620 50% more women will get college degrees this year.

00:18:36.140 Right?

00:18:36.680 So.

00:18:37.060 More than men?

00:18:38.140 They'll be, it's 60-40.

00:18:39.440 Right.

00:18:39.540 It needs to be 40-60.

00:18:40.600 Got it.

00:18:40.900 So that's it.

00:18:41.480 Yeah, it's about the same.

00:18:42.140 Yeah, it's about 50% more in a couple years.

00:18:44.060 One in three men walking down the street under the age of 30 hasn't had sex in the last year.

00:18:48.040 So in mating, if we're going to have an honest conversation about mating, we have to have an honest conversation.

00:18:53.620 Women mate socioeconomically horizontally and up.

00:18:56.620 Men horizontally and down.

00:18:58.560 Three out of four women say economic viability is key to a mate.

00:19:01.600 Only one in three men state that.

00:19:03.700 So when the pool of horizontal and up of men is shrinking, there's less household formation, there's less relationships.

00:19:11.260 And the weird thing about a lack of a relationship is that when a woman doesn't have a romantic relationship, she finds more productive uses for that additional energy.

00:19:19.520 She'll channel it into work.

00:19:20.940 She'll channel it into her friends, into her family.

00:19:23.780 Guys come off the rails when they don't have the guideposts of a romantic relationship.

00:19:28.960 I know I did.

00:19:29.700 But I was getting high every night.

00:19:32.340 I love marijuana.

00:19:33.580 And I remember my girlfriend saying to me, basically, what it came right down to is she said, if you don't stop getting high every night, I'm going to stop having sex with you.

00:19:41.940 And so I decided to stop getting high every night.

00:19:45.000 Yeah.

00:19:45.160 Because I really enjoyed what we were doing and I enjoyed the relationship.

00:19:48.620 Oh, yeah.

00:19:49.020 I think guys need that guideposts of a relationship.

00:19:52.340 And oftentimes when men don't have the guideposts of a relationship, they become insecure.

00:20:00.100 They start becoming more prone to conspiracy theory.

00:20:03.500 They start blaming women.

00:20:05.020 They start blaming other people.

00:20:07.020 I mean, the skills to some of the skills to maintain a healthy relationship are some of the same skills required to be professionally successful.

00:20:13.900 And so single men are basically the most dangerous thing in the world, a young, single, broke man.

00:20:21.900 And I don't want to pathologize every guy that doesn't have a girlfriend.

00:20:25.320 Yeah.

00:20:25.860 If you look at the most violent, unstable societies in the world, they have a preponderance of one thing, and that is young men without a lot of economic or romantic opportunities.

00:20:33.360 And you're saying we're creating more of those now?

00:20:35.420 Oh, 100%.

00:20:36.480 Wow.

00:20:36.980 Twice as many women under the age of 30 are in a relationship versus men under the age of 30.

00:20:41.300 Three million millennial men have given up on dating.

00:20:43.980 They're not even trying.

00:20:44.940 Yeah.

00:20:45.180 I'm in groups with a lot of them.

00:20:46.880 Here's one thing I would, so how does it start?

00:20:49.380 So let's say like, how does it kind of start to, if a lot of people are growing up, because it feels like a lot of times that a lot of our media or our society has wanted to break up the nuclear family, right?

00:21:02.800 Yeah.

00:21:03.100 And I don't know if that's sometimes like I buy into that.

00:21:06.260 But, you know, I grew up outside of a regular family like you did, and so, you know, you definitely see the side effects of that.

00:21:12.940 You know, like I have siblings that went kind of errant ways and found, you know, hope and purpose and friendship in people that were making poor choices.

00:21:23.560 You know, I got kind of lucky and found some friends that were doing the opposite kind of, but not having that role model, I think, in the home probably is probably a big start.

00:21:34.420 So if that's something big that's going on, how do we, like, where do we even start with that, you know?

00:21:40.900 Like, how do you start to fix the family first, I guess?

00:21:44.780 I mean, what do you fix first, you know?

00:21:47.320 Well.

00:21:47.720 Like role models?

00:21:49.640 You've exactly zeroed in on the ground zero of it.

00:21:53.520 If you look at, so first off, let's look at the problem.

00:21:56.160 If you go into a morgue and you have five young people who've died by suicide, four of them are men.

00:22:01.900 Wow.

00:22:03.020 But women aren't, I mean, women aren't, women don't want to, they would rather have somebody kill them, I think.

00:22:11.000 Or, you know what I'm saying?

00:22:11.640 Or that's crazy to say, but it's like.

00:22:13.460 I agree with you.

00:22:14.140 That was crazy to say.

00:22:14.820 But they love Dateline.

00:22:15.820 You know what I'm saying?

00:22:16.260 Like women, there's something.

00:22:17.540 Well, they like crime dramas.

00:22:18.740 There's a difference between, like, crime drama.

00:22:20.760 Yeah, but they want a guy to unexpectedly come over type of shit.

00:22:23.080 Well, there's some weird shit.

00:22:24.480 Like, so, for example, women are just as prone to try to commit suicide.

00:22:28.200 Unfortunately, men are more comfortable with gunplay and are more successful at it.

00:22:32.180 But if you look at where a guy comes, a boy comes off the tracks, it's when he loses a male role model.

00:22:38.900 Right.

00:22:39.660 More single-parent homes than any country except for Sweden.

00:22:43.600 And the interesting thing is, is that a girl in a single-parent home, when we say single-parent, we mean 92% of the time headed by mom.

00:22:51.420 Right, because usually children stay with the mom.

00:22:53.720 The family court is very biased towards women for a lot of good reasons, some less good reasons.

00:22:58.300 So, a girl in a single-parent home, just living with mom, has the same college attendance, the same levels of self-harm and depression, the same likelihood of depression.

00:23:09.380 She's fine.

00:23:10.100 Once a boy loses a male role model, he becomes dramatically more likely to be incarcerated, less likely to go to college, more likely to engage in self-harm.

00:23:18.760 What most of the studies show is that while boys are physically stronger, they're mentally and emotionally much weaker than girls.

00:23:25.560 I can see that.

00:23:26.100 They mature later, they mature later, they're more prone to violence, they're more prone to self-harm, they're literally 18 months behind their prefrontal cortex, they're biologically less mature.

00:23:38.220 And without the male role model, the deep voice, the admiration, the virtuous role model of a man, they come off the tracks.

00:23:46.560 And when you look at a lot of our communities with how many single-parent homes they have, when you look at a lot of kids aren't in after-school programs, kids are obese, not playing sports as much, so they don't have as much interaction with a coach.

00:23:58.120 Maybe they don't know a pastor because they're not going to church or temple.

00:24:01.300 There are millions of young boys who grow up, and the first male role model they have is a prison guard.

00:24:07.080 And so the solution, if you were to try and weigh in with programs, it's, all right, I think of another, I go back to masculinity.

00:24:18.480 The first circle of masculinity is you take care of yourself.

00:24:21.160 You're in good shape.

00:24:22.220 You have good self-care.

00:24:24.360 You are economically viable, right?

00:24:26.580 You take care of yourself.

00:24:27.560 Next ring out, you can start taking care of your family.

00:24:30.040 Help out your parents.

00:24:31.120 Help out your siblings.

00:24:32.520 You can start taking care of people at work.

00:24:34.860 You overpay them.

00:24:35.840 You're concerned about them.

00:24:37.720 You're empathetic with them.

00:24:38.400 Help out.

00:24:39.720 Yeah, don't listen.

00:24:40.640 Because there are two of them in here.

00:24:41.760 You start taking care of your community.

00:24:43.760 Okay.

00:24:44.540 And then-

00:24:45.280 Yeah, things that make you feel good, things that make you feel purpose.

00:24:49.020 Surplus value.

00:24:49.900 And then I think also we need to create a kind of a gestalt or a default or a zeitgeist in our society where one of the ultimate expressions of masculinity is you take an interest in the well-being of a boy that's not yours.

00:25:02.920 And unfortunately, because of some very unfortunate instances in the Catholic Church or well-publicized stories about-

00:25:09.760 Chuck E. Cheese's.

00:25:11.020 Or Michael Jackson.

00:25:12.600 Oh, yeah.

00:25:13.640 I was on Bill Maher and I said, more men like you, Bill, need to get involved in a young man's life.

00:25:17.940 He's a single guy.

00:25:18.740 He's a good role model.

00:25:20.280 He's like, I can't get involved in a 15-year-old boy's life.

00:25:22.680 You know what they'd say about me?

00:25:23.860 And that's the problem because there's a lot of men out there with a lot of love to give who feel a lot of fraternal and paternal love.

00:25:31.260 And if you just did a quick survey of the people in your work and your neighbors, you're going to find single mothers or a lot of your friends whose sons are struggling.

00:25:41.700 And you don't have to be a baller.

00:25:43.400 You just need to be a virtuous guy trying to live your life.

00:25:46.040 Yeah.

00:25:46.620 And my mom was really good at that.

00:25:48.480 I had a guy down the hallway come over with his girlfriend and say, hey, we're going horseback riding.

00:25:53.020 And he took me.

00:25:53.900 And he would start taking me.

00:25:55.620 My mom, a couple of my mom's boyfriends stay involved in my life after they were broken up.

00:25:59.320 I had a stockbroker.

00:26:01.540 Theo, when I was 13, I walked into Dean Witter Reynolds with $200 my mom's boyfriend had given me.

00:26:07.280 And I bought 12 shares of Columbia Pictures for $16 a share.

00:26:11.480 And every day for two years, I'd go to Emerson Junior High pay booth, put in two dimes, and call him.

00:26:16.640 And I wasn't a very popular kid.

00:26:17.940 Two or three times a week after school, I'd go to the stockbrokerage.

00:26:20.280 If you're buying stocks at lunch, yeah, you're not popular.

00:26:23.040 You know?

00:26:23.440 Hey, you're forward thinking.

00:26:24.740 True.

00:26:24.940 Yeah, but you're-

00:26:25.940 It's paid off now.

00:26:26.800 Yeah, no, I get that part.

00:26:28.100 Got me cool.

00:26:29.000 Made me cool later in life.

00:26:30.280 Yeah, at a certain point.

00:26:31.340 Yeah, for sure.

00:26:32.220 But this guy, Cy Saro, this 30-year-old guy we're going to Dean Witter, and 46 years later, I got a text from Cy yesterday.

00:26:40.600 We're still close.

00:26:41.700 Oh, that's cool.

00:26:42.160 Yeah, we were out of each other's lives for 30 years, and then we reconnected.

00:26:46.160 I actually asked my class to try and track them down, and they did.

00:26:49.600 But if you're-

00:26:51.440 You know, I love the statement.

00:26:52.580 I think the true expression of manhood or being a good person is planting trees the shade of which you'll never sit under.

00:26:58.520 But I think more specifically for men, I'll ask you straight up.

00:27:02.800 Yeah.

00:27:03.100 Are you mentoring any young men or boys?

00:27:05.180 Let me think about that.

00:27:08.960 Maybe one of my nephews.

00:27:11.300 But I mean, he has his father, you know?

00:27:13.000 Yeah.

00:27:13.080 But I think I keep a constant relationship with him because I want to be a part of his life.

00:27:17.040 But in a more local environment in my community, no.

00:27:20.940 Do you realize in New York, there's big sisters and big brothers.

00:27:23.360 There are three times as many applicants for big sisters than there are for big brothers.

00:27:27.100 And why?

00:27:27.780 Is that because young men just aren't-

00:27:29.460 Mothers don't get there, or the kids, the male-

00:27:32.140 The boys don't apply?

00:27:33.640 I think men have been told that if you take an interest in the life of a boy, that there's something wrong and people need to be suspect of you.

00:27:39.600 Yeah, people would definitely question it.

00:27:41.760 Oh, it's crazy.

00:27:42.580 I remember this started maybe about 10 years ago.

00:27:44.680 If I saw somebody's kid or something and I wanted to give them a compliment, you feel like you couldn't.

00:27:50.340 You've got to be careful.

00:27:51.120 Yeah, and then suddenly, everything, there's a legal issue or you can't-

00:27:56.840 Or people are suspicious.

00:27:58.080 Yeah, there's a famous case of this kid, Greg Kelly, can you bring that up?

00:28:01.100 Who was, his mother was watching children.

00:28:04.140 She ran a home in their, after-school care in their home.

00:28:08.140 And one of the kids accused him of something.

00:28:10.360 And they don't, it seemed very flippant, but he ended up going to jail for three years and it seemed like a witch hunt, you know?

00:28:16.820 Yeah, there was that childcare place in California where it ended up, it was all made up.

00:28:21.800 But Theo, what you were talking about with your nephew, you can still play a huge role because I can attest to this.

00:28:27.720 There's research showing your nephew right now, especially once he hits 15 or 16, he's more inclined to listen to you than his dad.

00:28:34.880 Wow.

00:28:35.740 So I noticed this.

00:28:37.280 Yeah, did you notice things?

00:28:38.120 Yeah, who were some people that, yeah, when you, because sometimes I do, I think about a voice that could be just like, dude, sometimes it was like, I remember one of my mom's boyfriends bought me and my brother tickets to go see a Saints game, right?

00:28:50.260 And we were so excited.

00:28:51.400 It was like a big adventure for us, you know?

00:28:54.440 So it is funny how little things that somebody shares with you are moments that they have.

00:29:00.320 I remember there was a teacher that would sit outside with me and talk to me sometimes after class.

00:29:04.840 That was huge to me.

00:29:08.560 Yeah, it's amazing the effect that you can have, I guess, you know, that you don't realize.

00:29:13.480 Who were some of those people for you?

00:29:15.300 I was really lucky.

00:29:16.620 I had, I played sports, so I had coaches, a couple of my mom's boyfriends, like I said, after they broke up, stay involved in my life.

00:29:23.140 I had Cy, the stockbroker.

00:29:26.040 And also, I'm a big fan of the Greek system at colleges.

00:29:29.240 I joined a fraternity.

00:29:30.540 Yeah.

00:29:30.860 And while people talk about, everyone's got to find their tribe.

00:29:35.420 You got to find your brothers or your sisters.

00:29:37.300 You got to shrink the world down to a small group of people.

00:29:39.980 And for me, I don't think I would have graduated from UCLA had I not joined a fraternity.

00:29:44.400 I immediately got something called a big brother.

00:29:47.180 I had roommates.

00:29:48.260 We all kept tabs on each other.

00:29:49.660 We all gave each other a tremendous amount of shit, but it was sort of like a guiding guidepost.

00:29:53.680 Yeah, it's fun.

00:29:54.640 Yeah.

00:29:55.100 Oh, dude, there's so much fun.

00:29:56.420 Like, there's nothing better than like when you think about the times you were on a team of some sort, right?

00:30:01.920 100%.

00:30:02.200 Just like the feeling, you know?

00:30:03.620 Did you play sports growing up?

00:30:04.980 I didn't, until I was like 11 years old, I didn't get, I didn't do much sports.

00:30:09.280 I played a little bit of baseball, but it was like, the field was like uneven in our town, you know?

00:30:13.980 And so the fucking, every ball went to the same guy, you know?

00:30:17.560 The field was uneven?

00:30:18.400 Yeah.

00:30:18.920 We had a bad field over there.

00:30:20.980 And so all this dude, and I was-

00:30:23.160 You couldn't get the guy with the radical, like the amazing fence to give you the new field.

00:30:29.280 Yeah, that's not a bad idea, right?

00:30:30.780 But it doesn't have to be sports.

00:30:32.080 It can be band.

00:30:32.840 It can be chess club.

00:30:34.080 It can be church.

00:30:35.300 But everyone's got to find your tribe.

00:30:36.800 Right.

00:30:37.020 So that's, so now we're looking at some solutions to some of the things you're talking about for young people.

00:30:40.500 And even for mothers that have single, that, you know, because a lot of times with moms, it's hard to find that space.

00:30:44.780 Like, how do I put my kid into a place that's going to be safe?

00:30:47.940 Or what's the type of thing to get them involved in, you know?

00:30:50.560 And yeah, I think that was one thing that was tough for my mom.

00:30:52.260 And she just didn't have as much time.

00:30:53.720 I was fortunate.

00:30:54.540 I had a basketball coach that would give me rides home from practice.

00:30:56.860 And so that changed a lot of things.

00:30:58.340 Because then as long as I could get to practice and I could get home.

00:31:02.180 So that was like an amazing role model that I had this guy, Coach Steve.

00:31:05.160 That was really awesome.

00:31:08.040 Yeah, I think.

00:31:08.760 And yeah, you're right.

00:31:09.840 Like, how can I do that in my own community?

00:31:11.460 Like, what are ways that I could start to do that?

00:31:13.900 But yeah, so creating a group for your kid, finding a group for your kid to be in.

00:31:18.020 Well, there's a lot of, and there's a lot of more systemic things we could do.

00:31:20.860 So for example, I'm a big fan of vocational programming.

00:31:25.040 In America, we have this kind of zeitgeist that if your kid doesn't go to Dartmouth and

00:31:29.340 end up at Google, then not only has the kid failed, but you failed as parents.

00:31:32.540 And two thirds of our kids are going to end up with a college degree.

00:31:36.100 Three percent of LinkedIn profiles in the U.S. say apprentice.

00:31:39.280 It's 11 percent in the U.K. and Germany.

00:31:40.980 We need more of an apprentice culture and we need to stop shaming kind of trades jobs.

00:31:45.500 I think we should start boys, we should redshirt them.

00:31:49.660 We should start them a year later in kindergarten because they're literally biologically less

00:31:54.840 mature than their female counterparts.

00:31:57.080 You don't notice this as much because you don't have kids, but I have a 14-year-old.

00:32:01.440 My 14-year-old just had a Halloween party, 15 boys, 15 girls.

00:32:04.420 The boys are 14.

00:32:05.920 A couple of the girls look like they could be the junior senator from Pennsylvania.

00:32:09.120 Yeah.

00:32:09.400 They look 35.

00:32:10.440 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:32:11.080 And they act that way.

00:32:12.220 They act that mature.

00:32:13.060 But they literally mature faster.

00:32:15.140 I think if a college isn't growing its freshman seats faster than population, it should lose

00:32:20.040 its tax-free status because it's no longer a public service.

00:32:22.900 It's a hedge fund with classes.

00:32:24.800 I'm a big fan of the idea of mandatory national service.

00:32:28.180 I've spent some time in Israel recently.

00:32:30.580 Despite the existential threats and the problems in Israel, there's less young adult depression

00:32:35.780 in Israel than almost any Western country.

00:32:37.860 And I think it's because of national service.

00:32:39.900 They're serving the agency of something bigger than themselves.

00:32:42.260 They're outside.

00:32:43.700 They're in great shape.

00:32:44.580 They're learning how to handle weapons, equipment.

00:32:47.220 It's where they meet co-founders of businesses.

00:32:49.520 It's where they make lifelong friends.

00:32:51.040 It's where they meet potential mates.

00:32:52.980 So I think mandatory national service would be huge for us.

00:32:55.720 Many of you know that I used to have a job in my hometown and it was off the books.

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00:36:15.100 It feels a lot of times like there's an attack on being a man.

00:36:21.420 100%.

00:36:21.740 You know, you're like, you feel like these days, if you're a kid that's not bi, then you're not even going to be welcome at school.

00:36:28.180 No, there's.

00:36:28.820 And I don't know if that's true.

00:36:29.940 I don't talk to kids.

00:36:30.760 You know, I don't know that, but it's like, you know, you get this feeling sometimes like, I don't know.

00:36:37.860 I don't know what I'm talking about.

00:36:39.280 Well, to your point, did you have the Presidential Fitness Awards when you were in?

00:36:43.540 Yeah.

00:36:44.520 I got badge one.

00:36:46.180 You got a number on.

00:36:46.780 I got badge one, badge two, and I had a growth spurt and I couldn't do the pull-ups.

00:36:50.260 And I trained for a year, pull-ups, and I got strong again.

00:36:54.200 And now the awards were done away with because it was sauce fat shaming.

00:36:58.720 So, and if you walk down the halls of NYU, you're going to see all these support groups for women.

00:37:03.660 Yeah.

00:37:03.980 You know, black women in consulting, golden seeds, women in venture capital.

00:37:07.820 There were no support groups for men.

00:37:09.660 Yeah.

00:37:10.240 And I don't think men have a place in our political world.

00:37:13.020 I think the far right is kind of telling men to be, quite frankly, a little bit coarse and cruel.

00:37:18.940 It's toughness and strength gone a little bit overboard.

00:37:21.680 But on the far left, their definition of masculinity and their advice to men is to be more like a woman.

00:37:28.160 That doesn't work either.

00:37:29.660 Yeah.

00:37:30.160 So, we need to re-embrace the notion.

00:37:32.280 I mean, I say jokingly, when Russian troops come pouring over the Ukrainian border, you want some of that big dick energy.

00:37:39.080 Oh, yeah.

00:37:40.420 There's nothing wrong with being physically strong.

00:37:44.080 I think any man under the age of 30, our bone structure and that double twitch muscle with this amazing substance called testosterone poured over it is a fucking amazing thing.

00:37:55.080 You're going to look back on your physique right now and your strength, and you're going to wish, and you kind of look this way, that you were a monster.

00:38:01.080 Any man under the age of 30 should be able to walk into any room and know that if shit got real, they could either kill and eat everybody or outrun them.

00:38:08.420 Yeah.

00:38:08.860 And that is a wonderful feeling.

00:38:10.420 It'll make you less prone to mental illness.

00:38:12.380 It'll make you more attractive to mates, less likely to be depressed, and you'll be that guy that breaks up fights at bars, not that's insecure, right?

00:38:20.500 This is strength, re-embracing strength, re-embracing protection, re-embracing initiating relationships.

00:38:27.300 I forced my kids, I don't do this anymore because I've had enough of it, but when we left the house, I used to say, I'm not going to let them back in unless they talk to a stranger.

00:38:35.440 And it was easy for one of them.

00:38:37.420 It was hard for the other.

00:38:38.740 I'm like, just go up to them and pet their dog and say what kind of dog it is.

00:38:42.260 Because your ability to initiate contact is key to finding a job.

00:38:47.560 It's not easy to email strangers or go into a strange interview.

00:38:51.620 Your ability to express interest, romantic interest, while making someone feel safe, right?

00:38:57.700 Demonstrating excellence.

00:38:58.620 Where does a guy demonstrate excellence right now?

00:39:00.960 Doesn't go into work, doesn't go to church, right?

00:39:03.920 Isn't playing sports, right?

00:39:05.820 Isn't going to college.

00:39:06.740 So where do men demonstrate excellence and attach to relationships?

00:39:10.860 But there is, we talk a lot about misogyny.

00:39:14.420 It's a huge problem.

00:39:15.500 It has been for a long time.

00:39:16.600 What we don't talk about is misandry.

00:39:19.880 And that is-

00:39:20.420 What is misandry?

00:39:21.280 A hate of men.

00:39:23.340 There's generally-

00:39:23.920 Yeah.

00:39:24.300 If you were to talk, have you ever heard the term toxic femininity?

00:39:27.980 People don't use that term.

00:39:29.420 But toxic masculinity, it's almost like it's become one word.

00:39:33.120 Oh, I feel there are places I feel embarrassed to even be in because I feel like people look

00:39:36.880 at me and think like, oh, this guy thinks he's some kind of man or something, you know?

00:39:42.300 That would be true.

00:39:42.960 But that happens to me in New York City sometimes.

00:39:46.060 You feel that way here?

00:39:47.060 Yep.

00:39:47.240 There's certain places I'll walk in and just by the ambiance of like the people that work

00:39:52.300 there or something, I'll think that.

00:39:53.500 And I'm not saying that that's real, but it could just be perceived in my head.

00:39:57.960 But I'll feel like I almost have to play down being a man or if I'm going to be like accepted

00:40:02.480 in this space, you know, or feel welcome here.

00:40:07.320 Yeah, there's definitely, but there's definitely, and if you look at, if you look at the stats

00:40:13.340 though, men are really struggling.

00:40:15.680 Like we don't have a male homeless problem.

00:40:17.280 I'm sorry.

00:40:17.780 We don't have a homeless problem.

00:40:18.720 We have a male homeless problem.

00:40:19.760 Yeah.

00:40:20.260 We have an opiate problem, but we really have a male opiate problem.

00:40:23.500 Three out of four homeless, three out of four addicts are men.

00:40:27.820 And if you had four out of five people killing themselves that were in any one special interest

00:40:32.580 group, we would do something about it.

00:40:34.820 And there's a lack of empathy because of the 2000 year headstart we've had on women.

00:40:39.060 There's a lack of empathy for women.

00:40:40.580 Who had it mended?

00:40:41.440 Oh yeah.

00:40:42.100 How?

00:40:43.060 Oh, come on.

00:40:44.600 Even when I grew up, Theo, when I came of it professional age in the nineties, 98% at least

00:40:51.020 of venture capital went to the 24% of the population that were white heterosexual males.

00:40:57.000 Oh, okay.

00:40:57.440 So men had that.

00:40:58.320 I see what you're talking about.

00:40:59.300 Until the last 30 years, men have had literally a 2000 year headstart, but because of my advantage,

00:41:05.740 does that mean a 19 year old male should be punished for it?

00:41:08.120 Right.

00:41:08.380 There just isn't a recognition that a 19 year old male with a single mother in Appalachia,

00:41:14.640 he's got no advantage.

00:41:16.180 As a matter of fact, he's kind of disadvantaged right now.

00:41:18.640 Oh, well, there's an attack.

00:41:19.420 There's certainly an attack on white males, it feels like.

00:41:22.160 And then if you're white, you can't, there's, you can't be like, Hey, can we do a white

00:41:25.700 help group?

00:41:26.460 You know what I'm saying?

00:41:27.280 Because suddenly you're racist.

00:41:28.720 If you, you know, there's definitely this like shaming of like being in white skin, you

00:41:33.560 know?

00:41:33.720 And it's like, we're constantly doing that, like reliving the past or refocusing on the

00:41:38.680 past and using it as a scope to aim at the present, you know?

00:41:42.420 And it's not very fair.

00:41:44.480 And I definitely see it as a lot of people feel embarrassed to be white, you know?

00:41:50.500 And that's a shame, you know, because you didn't choose to be white.

00:41:54.120 And a lot of people, white people, we didn't have shit, dude.

00:41:56.600 You know what I'm saying?

00:41:57.320 Like, at least when I was growing up, I felt like if you were black people, like, like

00:42:01.320 you at least had the, like, well, I'm fucked because of society, you know?

00:42:06.200 But if you were white, you're just like, people were like, you didn't even have an

00:42:09.620 excuse, you know, if you weren't doing good.

00:42:12.040 You're like, well, how'd you not do good?

00:42:13.960 You know, you're like, I don't know.

00:42:15.200 It's a nuanced conversation though, Theo, because.

00:42:17.340 Yes, I know it's nuanced.

00:42:18.740 I'm, you know, I'm kind of generalized and I'm not trying to correlate anything.

00:42:21.180 I'm just saying, yeah, you can't make a, hey, white people need help also group.

00:42:25.220 But, but we're talking about the bias against males.

00:42:27.960 Our education system, the business I'm in is highly biased against men or boys.

00:42:32.040 70 to 80% of primary school teachers are women.

00:42:36.400 Who are they going to naturally champion?

00:42:37.740 Someone who reminds them of themselves.

00:42:39.260 What are the behaviors we promote in school?

00:42:42.020 Be organized, be a pleaser, sit still.

00:42:44.380 You're basically describing a girl.

00:42:45.900 They're more per capita female fighter pilots than there are male kindergarten teachers.

00:42:50.500 We don't need male kindergarten teachers, I don't think.

00:42:52.720 Oh, sure we do.

00:42:53.680 You think so?

00:42:54.440 Young men need male role models.

00:42:55.880 Right.

00:42:56.120 I agree with that.

00:42:56.900 Yeah, yeah.

00:42:57.160 I think we need a PE teacher with some short shorts, you know what I'm saying?

00:43:00.240 Who's kind of, you know, who doesn't want to go home to his wife.

00:43:04.060 But I don't know if we need, if I'd have walked into a kindergarten, you know, I mean,

00:43:09.460 but I still keep in touch with a lot of my teachers.

00:43:10.940 I had a lot of affinity for them, whether they were male or women.

00:43:13.540 I did have male middle school teachers.

00:43:15.900 I don't know, would I be alarmed if there was a male kindergarten teacher?

00:43:18.480 But an example of that, the bias, a boy is on a risk, on a behavior adjusted basis to be,

00:43:23.760 is twice as likely to be suspended.

00:43:25.600 You have a girl and a boy, two different times, same infraction, cheating on the chemistry test.

00:43:31.260 The boy is twice as likely to be suspended as the girl.

00:43:34.900 The black boy is five times as likely to be suspended.

00:43:37.500 So a lot of the issues we're talking about, self-harm, depression, lack of success in school,

00:43:45.840 is really difficult among young boys, and it's even more acute among non-white.

00:43:50.940 Now, when you get to college, the whole DEI thing, right, 60 years ago,

00:43:56.680 there were only 12 black people at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale combined.

00:44:00.140 That was a problem.

00:44:01.360 So giving them the advantage or a lift up with race-based affirmative action

00:44:06.500 was the right thing to do 60 years ago.

00:44:08.600 Now, this year, two-thirds of Harvard's freshman class identifies as non-white.

00:44:14.440 Seventy percent of those people, however, come from dual-parent upper-income homes.

00:44:18.400 So when you're letting in the daughter of a private equity Taiwanese billionaire,

00:44:23.160 that's not diversity.

00:44:24.200 That's not helping anybody.

00:44:26.080 So what I would argue is affirmative action is a wonderful thing,

00:44:29.280 but it should be based on color, but that color is green.

00:44:31.920 Right.

00:44:32.260 And that is a white kid from Appalachia, deserves just as much.

00:44:35.720 I'm a beneficiary of affirmative action.

00:44:38.000 I got Pell Grants in 1994.

00:44:40.540 Oh, yeah, I got them.

00:44:41.700 There you go.

00:44:42.300 I think that's the way to go.

00:44:43.760 Because the wonderful thing about America today,

00:44:45.940 and we don't celebrate America's progress enough.

00:44:48.360 Young people want to shitpost it as if we've made no progress.

00:44:51.120 We've made extraordinary progress.

00:44:53.100 And as fucked up as we are, we're less fucked up than I believe any nation in the world.

00:44:57.320 You would rather be born in America, and this is a good thing.

00:44:59.880 You'd rather be born today, and the stats show this,

00:45:02.680 you'd rather be born gay or non-white than poor.

00:45:05.320 The people who need a hand up, the best way to identify who is most screwed

00:45:10.420 and is going to face the biggest obstacles and deserves the most additional resources

00:45:14.600 and kind of unfair help is a poor kid.

00:45:17.900 We need to get out of identity politics and focus on economics.

00:45:22.120 Yeah.

00:45:22.960 Yeah, it's a good point, man.

00:45:24.540 I don't know how, you know, I know we're looking at a lot of the issues.

00:45:29.720 It's like, how does, how do we, like, get into, like, solution and keep it kind of,

00:45:36.060 and also, like, keep it positive?

00:45:37.300 Because sometimes I'll get in this space where I'm just looking at the problems, right?

00:45:41.160 So how do I start looking at the solutions to, like, I mean, I guess you said, like,

00:45:44.760 you know, you can get involved in your community.

00:45:46.500 You can try to take care of yourself as a young man.

00:45:49.400 But then it just also feels like a ton of pressure on young men, you know?

00:45:53.320 Yeah, but you feel that pressure, right?

00:45:55.160 I mean, you're here in New York.

00:45:56.260 You got to get gas.

00:45:57.140 You got to, you feel pressure, I'm sure.

00:45:59.720 That's part of it.

00:45:59.860 Oh, yeah, I definitely feel pressure.

00:46:01.220 I guess I'm thinking, like, as a young man, you know?

00:46:03.440 Yeah.

00:46:03.720 Like, how do you start to create masculinity if you were just a young, if you're, you know,

00:46:08.180 say you're 20 years old and you were raised by a single mother and you're out in college

00:46:12.820 right now, how do you start to, I guess, define your world of, you know, staying, feeling

00:46:18.360 masculine and creating more masculinity in your life?

00:46:20.640 And maybe you've outlined some of those things already, you know?

00:46:23.500 I think, again, it's come back.

00:46:25.260 Masculinity is a social construct.

00:46:26.680 We get to decide what it is.

00:46:27.860 And by the way, it's not sequestered to people just born as males.

00:46:31.720 I used, before my shoulders got all fucked up, I used to go to CrossFit and I noticed

00:46:36.180 over 20 years, more and more women showing up.

00:46:38.640 Some women demonstrate wonderful masculinity.

00:46:41.460 I'm drawn to men.

00:46:42.520 My closest friends are more feminine.

00:46:44.240 They're more caring.

00:46:45.240 I have male friends who kind of take care of me.

00:46:47.820 Right.

00:46:47.940 So, but I think using those things as a code could be a great guidepost for young men, right?

00:46:54.900 There's nothing wrong with wanting to make money.

00:46:57.380 There's nothing wrong with wanting to be strong.

00:46:59.360 There's nothing wrong with wanting to have sex and wanting to find romantic and sexual partners.

00:47:05.260 And using that as a guide.

00:47:06.840 Why are women, for example, why are women drawn to men?

00:47:10.560 What are they attracted to in reverse order?

00:47:13.160 And there's research around this.

00:47:14.260 Number three, kindness.

00:47:15.700 They want a guy that's nice to his parents.

00:47:17.740 They want a guy that treats strangers well.

00:47:20.020 They want a guy that thinks about other people when, even when they're not in front of them,

00:47:23.160 that treats them well, even though they'll never see them again.

00:47:25.640 Number two is intellect.

00:47:27.260 And this goes way back anthropologically.

00:47:29.460 The guy who makes good decisions for the tribe, the tribe's more likely to survive.

00:47:33.800 At some point, typically throughout history, women are much more vulnerable because they

00:47:37.960 give birth and they're much more physically vulnerable.

00:47:40.720 So a woman wants a man who is smart and makes good decisions.

00:47:43.420 By the way, the fastest way to communicate intellect is humor.

00:47:47.600 Yeah.

00:47:48.120 And my, I jokingly say my impression of a woman is I'm laughing, I'm laughing, I'm naked.

00:47:52.300 If you can make a woman laugh.

00:47:53.720 Oh, wow.

00:47:54.440 If you can make a woman laugh.

00:47:56.380 Yeah.

00:47:56.740 Look at you.

00:47:57.140 You're looking guilty.

00:47:58.100 No, I'm thinking this.

00:47:59.120 I'm laughing.

00:47:59.620 I'm laughing.

00:48:00.100 And then, oh, you're missing, you know?

00:48:04.100 That's more because it's like, I'll always won't close a deal.

00:48:06.820 You know what I'm saying?

00:48:07.320 I'll literally be fucking.

00:48:09.140 I don't, I don't buy that for a minute.

00:48:10.700 I'll stand on the curb and I will not get in the Uber, dude.

00:48:12.840 I just, there's, I just, I mean, I just, I get afraid.

00:48:15.960 The other day I talked to some girl, right?

00:48:17.340 I saw her at the fricking Whole Foods, dude.

00:48:20.080 She was getting, I thought it was spaghetti or something.

00:48:22.360 And I was like, oh, you like spaghetti?

00:48:23.600 And, but I had looked at the wrong thing or whatever.

00:48:25.500 And she was buying flowers, right?

00:48:26.620 And she's like, what is this guy talking about?

00:48:28.200 But I guess she thought it was cute or whatever.

00:48:30.040 And so then I kept talking.

00:48:31.120 And then I was like, oh, do you know if there's a hot bar around here?

00:48:33.900 And she goes, it's on the other side.

00:48:35.200 So I went, then I'm like, fuck, now I have to go to the other side away from her, right?

00:48:39.560 Then she comes over there and I'm like, this is it, you know?

00:48:43.160 And then I just kept looking at her and then she left, you know?

00:48:48.220 Yeah, but this, this is a good segue to the number one thing.

00:48:50.620 Okay.

00:48:50.940 And that is the ability to signal resources.

00:48:53.180 Yeah.

00:48:53.720 And it's not necessarily you have to be a baller at that moment.

00:48:56.000 Yeah.

00:48:56.180 But you have to have a plan.

00:48:57.500 Yeah.

00:48:57.940 You have to be the guy that's disciplined.

00:48:59.360 One of the reasons women are attracted to men who are in good shape is it shows you show up.

00:49:03.920 It shows you have discipline.

00:49:05.240 So if I could give you any advice in that specific situation, it would be, oh, hi, are those flowers?

00:49:10.760 By the way, I have one of the 10 biggest podcasts in the world.

00:49:14.820 Boss, that's how, anyways, but you get my meaning.

00:49:18.640 Yeah.

00:49:19.100 Three, kindness, two, intellect, and one, your ability to signal resources.

00:49:23.220 I see.

00:49:23.940 Would you like to go to Holland where they have tulips year round?

00:49:27.460 I could say that.

00:49:28.040 I'm leaving tomorrow.

00:49:29.000 Yeah.

00:49:29.460 Yeah, yeah.

00:49:29.820 And then I'm not, but still, you know?

00:49:32.060 Take her to holland.com, you know?

00:49:34.360 I know where you got that.

00:49:35.600 But still, yeah, that could be interesting.

00:49:37.920 Yeah, I think there is that, but yeah, that confidence, it's a good point, you know, to

00:49:42.100 signal that you just have confidence in yourself.

00:49:44.160 That's really what that is, you know, is just saying I have some confidence enough in myself.

00:49:48.900 And sometimes I'll, sometimes I will make the extra step, but it's just like, I have

00:49:52.160 to just practice it more.

00:49:53.260 And I have to realize that if that one girl says no, it's not that every girl's saying no,

00:49:56.680 man, that this is just a, it's just a momentary, it's just a momentary challenge.

00:50:01.900 What would you say to mothers who have children, right?

00:50:05.260 Single mothers who have children, how can they do that for their kids?

00:50:07.840 You know, one thing that I will think is put your kid into a Brazilian jujitsu class.

00:50:13.160 I think it's the best.

00:50:14.320 It was the best place that I ever went.

00:50:15.960 I trained for like maybe a year and a half, right?

00:50:17.900 Yeah.

00:50:18.640 It was the first place I ever went where you would be wrestling one second, but then having

00:50:24.320 an emotional conversation with somebody the next second, because it was very-

00:50:28.260 You and Lex Friedman, you're both really into jujitsu, right?

00:50:30.420 No, he's really, he's still doing it, practicing, right?

00:50:32.920 I just kept getting hurt so bad and it was affecting my ability to work.

00:50:36.480 Yeah.

00:50:37.420 But it was like, you were like monkeys, you know, like you, you would like be battling

00:50:42.960 against somebody, but even if you lost, they still cared about you.

00:50:45.920 So there was this element of safety that you started to learn.

00:50:48.680 Yeah.

00:50:48.920 Right.

00:50:49.420 And that felt like years of manhood in months that I was learning.

00:50:54.320 But you said something really important and that is, I was asked, so I'm an entrepreneur,

00:51:00.700 I've registered some success and I go, what's the secret to your success?

00:51:03.760 I'm like, one, it was being smart enough to be born in America.

00:51:07.160 There's just more opportunity.

00:51:08.300 You'd rather be good in America than great in almost any other country.

00:51:11.080 Wow.

00:51:11.880 There really is, you have more agency here if you work hard and you're a good person to

00:51:16.700 be successful than any place in the world.

00:51:19.400 And none of that was my fault.

00:51:20.940 It was my parents' fault.

00:51:21.860 They'd gone on a ship, a steamship in the 60s from Europe, take a huge risk, which paid

00:51:26.340 huge benefit for me.

00:51:27.840 I came to professional age in California where I got free education that was accessible,

00:51:31.900 came of age in the internet.

00:51:33.540 And when I was your age, I was like, all my success in my mind was because of my character

00:51:37.620 and my grit.

00:51:38.360 And then as you get older, you realize a lot of your success isn't your fault.

00:51:41.180 But if I've done one thing well, it's what I call failure.

00:51:46.160 And that is, I ran for sophomore, junior, and senior class presidents.

00:51:51.160 I lost three times.

00:51:52.580 And based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president where I went

00:51:56.200 on to, wait for it, lose.

00:51:58.480 I've started nine businesses.

00:52:00.700 Seven have failed.

00:52:01.600 I can't tell you how many women in Whole Foods and other places and other retail establishments

00:52:06.280 I've been rejected by.

00:52:07.940 But the reason I get to live the life I lead, the reason I'm with a very high character,

00:52:13.380 attractive person is because I have always been able to endure rejection.

00:52:18.880 And that is the key.

00:52:20.160 That is the skill.

00:52:20.860 Because one of the great things about America is we don't embrace failure.

00:52:23.700 That's bullshit.

00:52:24.340 But we tolerate it.

00:52:25.700 If your business fails, but you're a good person, usually your investors will back you

00:52:29.520 again, and if you approach a woman and express interest and she's not interested, you're both

00:52:34.980 going to be fine.

00:52:36.020 Yeah.

00:52:36.500 And show me a guy.

00:52:38.060 Show me a guy.

00:52:39.700 You know, we all know that guy.

00:52:40.780 You think, okay, he's a nice guy.

00:52:42.760 He's modestly successful.

00:52:44.660 He's not that attractive.

00:52:46.120 And he's with just such a high quality woman.

00:52:49.620 That guy is not afraid of rejection.

00:52:52.040 That guy cycled through nine women who said, get the fuck away from me.

00:52:55.840 Yeah.

00:52:56.100 Before he found that one woman who gave him a chance to be funny, kind.

00:53:01.540 She was drawn to his smell.

00:53:03.000 She liked the way he treated his parents.

00:53:05.180 The key to success in America is what Winston Churchill said, and that is the willingness

00:53:10.200 to fail or your ability to fail and not lose your sense of enthusiasm.

00:53:15.180 And the one thing about jujitsu and about sports is quite frankly, it teaches you how to lose

00:53:19.520 and show up the next day.

00:53:21.900 Yeah.

00:53:22.140 Right?

00:53:22.840 So I think you got to put your kids and mothers got to put their sons in an environment where

00:53:28.160 they-

00:53:28.260 This is off and it's ringing.

00:53:29.300 So that's the government.

00:53:31.120 I'm not even joking.

00:53:33.680 It happens a lot.

00:53:35.120 Go on.

00:53:36.000 Anyways, your willingness or your ability, resilience, your ability to move through rejection without

00:53:41.240 losing your sense of enthusiasm.

00:53:42.680 Yeah.

00:53:43.120 It's funny.

00:53:43.620 A lot of times when I would, if I felt rejection, it attached to some old feelings inside of

00:53:47.720 myself that were of rejection.

00:53:49.480 And that would be, it felt demoralizing at times.

00:53:53.400 But I agree with you.

00:53:55.060 Yeah.

00:53:55.380 We've seen those guys who are like, how did that guy do it?

00:53:57.920 You know, how did he figure it out?

00:53:59.580 You know, how was he able to just continue, you know, show up for himself in the face of

00:54:03.820 rejection?

00:54:04.160 But I bet rejection does get easier the more you start to swim in it, you know?

00:54:08.840 You realize that, I mean, here's the thing.

00:54:11.500 So I know you're religious.

00:54:12.620 I'm an atheist.

00:54:13.700 I think at some point I'm going to look into my kids' eyes and know our relationship is

00:54:17.340 coming to an end.

00:54:18.660 And it's empowering.

00:54:20.420 It's one of the biggest unlocks in my life because I realize if I fuck up on this podcast

00:54:26.220 and you don't think a lot of me, I'm bummed, but you're going to be dead soon.

00:54:30.500 And so am I.

00:54:31.660 It really doesn't matter.

00:54:32.760 Everything we're worried about, we're a group of mites on an unremarkable rock in one of

00:54:38.680 a billion universes in 10 billion galaxies.

00:54:41.600 We're not even here for the blink of an eye.

00:54:43.520 So why on earth wouldn't you squeeze as much lemon or juice out of this lemon as possible?

00:54:51.000 Because the moment you think you've done something embarrassing, the moment you're worried about

00:54:54.880 approaching that woman at Whole Foods, everyone who saw you, everyone you're worried about,

00:54:59.660 she, they go on to thinking about themselves right away and it doesn't matter because you're

00:55:04.940 both going to be dead soon.

00:55:06.460 Yeah.

00:55:06.760 I find that liberating.

00:55:08.320 Why wouldn't you go up to someone and tell them you admire them?

00:55:10.780 And it's also an unlock for me emotionally.

00:55:12.600 I started telling people I love them.

00:55:14.540 I started telling people I care about them.

00:55:16.740 I started when I was single going up to people outside of my weight class and telling them I

00:55:21.440 was interested in them romantically.

00:55:23.400 Most of the time they'd say no.

00:55:24.760 And guess what?

00:55:25.160 We're both going to be fine because we're both going to be dead, Theo.

00:55:27.880 It doesn't really matter.

00:55:29.760 So this ability to get back your embarrassment, get over your fear, for me, that sounds strange,

00:55:36.320 but it comes from a recognition that I'm just not going to be here that long and either are they.

00:55:42.520 It's this enormous unlock.

00:55:44.080 Because if you think about what you said about, I mean, for God's sakes, you're like this baller.

00:55:49.160 You're a handsome guy who's got a top 10 podcast and you're intimidated by some woman at Whole Foods.

00:55:55.000 Can you imagine how most men feel?

00:55:57.160 Yeah.

00:55:57.780 So what you got to do is, what I'm trying to do with my sons is I'm trying to encourage them to say,

00:56:01.960 okay, get out, talk to strangers, talk to strange women.

00:56:07.440 Also, kind of a segue here, try and modulate your use of porn such that at some point you become so

00:56:13.280 fucking horny you're willing to take those risks.

00:56:15.440 Yeah, now that's it.

00:56:16.000 Let's, we can wait, we can definitely go there, brother.

00:56:19.100 Because yeah, I think that was something that I got sidetracked with pornography for sure, man.

00:56:23.500 You know, and I'll tell you why too.

00:56:26.280 For pornography, for me, it was, it was a relationship that I could manage, right?

00:56:29.860 It was the first kind of interaction with women.

00:56:31.740 It felt like that I could manage this.

00:56:33.860 It's, it's like, it's low risk.

00:56:35.380 It's low risk.

00:56:36.240 It's a, it's, it's available when you need it to start and when you need it to stop.

00:56:39.880 Right.

00:56:40.120 It was like, um, that was something that was very manageable for me.

00:56:43.580 Uh, but then over time it starts, you realize that it kind of devalues women.

00:56:47.080 It makes you think of sex, like, and just like still frames and instances.

00:56:50.320 Right.

00:56:51.120 And, um, and he would see sex as individual scenes of things.

00:56:54.560 I would have a date set up.

00:56:56.380 Then I would end up, uh, masturbating.

00:56:58.760 And then I wouldn't even go on the date.

00:57:00.380 Cause I was like, well, now I don't feel any fire inside of me.

00:57:02.940 Who's your mojo.

00:57:03.540 Yeah.

00:57:04.220 And that, and then you do that for a decade and you don't, your mojo is a ghost.

00:57:08.520 But we were talking about school and society and, and a bias against men that, that hurts

00:57:16.880 men.

00:57:17.260 Right.

00:57:18.540 And what I would say is that one of the biggest obstacles men face right now is the most talented,

00:57:25.140 deepest resource companies in the world that attract the brightest minds and the most capital

00:57:29.360 and have the best technology are all trying to do the same thing.

00:57:32.480 They're all trying to give men the false impression.

00:57:34.980 They can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm.

00:57:38.740 You don't need friends.

00:57:39.660 With a facsimile, I'm sorry.

00:57:41.000 They, they can have a fake life.

00:57:42.760 They can have a life on a screen with an algorithm.

00:57:45.860 Oh yeah.

00:57:46.400 So you don't need friends.

00:57:47.600 Having friends is hard.

00:57:48.540 Remember making your posse of friends and in elementary and junior high, trying to break

00:57:53.120 into the right, the right pecking order of friends.

00:57:55.720 It was high barriers of entry, but it was high barriers of exit.

00:57:58.560 Right.

00:57:59.400 And you learned a lot together.

00:58:00.600 And we used to take off, you know, I think parents overprotect their kids now.

00:58:04.320 I used to leave my mom's house at nine in the morning on a Saturday with a Schwinn bike

00:58:08.520 and Abba Zabba bar and 35 cents.

00:58:10.540 And she wouldn't see me for 14 hours.

00:58:12.900 But what are tech companies?

00:58:14.620 What are the brightest companies in the world that are the most well-resourced?

00:58:17.200 You don't need friends.

00:58:18.580 You got Reddit and Discord.

00:58:20.120 You don't need to go through the humiliation of trying to get a job and buying a suit and

00:58:24.160 showing up on time.

00:58:25.900 Trade crypto or stocks on Coinbase or Robinhood.

00:58:28.980 You don't need to go through the humiliation, the rejection, the perseverance of trying

00:58:34.440 to establish a romantic relationship, going on dates, being funny, trying hard, enduring

00:58:39.200 rejection, following up.

00:58:40.820 Why?

00:58:41.860 Why would you do that?

00:58:42.640 You got you porn.

00:58:43.860 And what we got to tell men, what we got to convince them of is over the long term,

00:58:47.960 nothing wonderful is going to happen to you on a screen ever.

00:58:50.840 And also, you porn is a distant second to your porn.

00:58:56.000 I'm convinced I wouldn't have graduated from UCLA if I didn't think there was a reasonable

00:59:00.860 probability that if I went to class and went on campus at UCLA, I might meet someone.

00:59:06.980 That was my far.

00:59:08.300 And I, quite frankly, if I had you porn at home and I had these new AI girlfriends, I'm

00:59:14.980 not sure I would have ever gone on campus.

00:59:17.060 So this is what young men are facing.

00:59:19.660 They're facing a low risk, low barrier of entry, reasonable facsimile of life that over time

00:59:26.840 they get depressed and lonely because the reason romantic comedies are two hours and not 15

00:59:31.760 minutes is this shit is hard.

00:59:33.840 But here's the good news.

00:59:35.120 It's worth it.

00:59:36.380 It's absolutely worth it.

00:59:38.020 Well, right now, I think you have like, even with like elections, like you're almost people

00:59:42.960 are trying to vote that back into, I think there's a little bit of like, well, we need

00:59:47.000 to get something masculine going on, you know, because it's definitely this world, it has

00:59:52.180 a big labia on it, you know, and we need to, and that's fine.

00:59:57.380 You say that like it's a bad thing.

00:59:58.500 No, I don't.

00:59:59.420 Look, we're happy with a decent amount of labia, but we need to make sure it's, you know.

01:00:04.100 Hey, are you buying flowers?

01:00:05.340 Yeah.

01:00:05.540 Oh, that's pasta.

01:00:10.080 But here's what I think.

01:00:11.040 I think people are expecting the government to rescue them.

01:00:14.580 That's what I mean with the, with some of the voting, right?

01:00:16.980 We want the government, but how much of that is us having to govern ourselves and how much

01:00:21.920 of that is, do we need some like changes in our actual like laws and stuff like that?

01:00:27.360 Like what is realistic of one to expect?

01:00:30.180 Well, I've been thinking about this election.

01:00:32.680 Yeah, I do, but, but I've been thinking a lot about this election and I was vocal.

01:00:37.460 I supported Harris.

01:00:38.760 I was shocked.

01:00:39.680 She got beaten and she got beat.

01:00:41.620 She got destroyed.

01:00:42.380 She just got beaten.

01:00:42.980 She got destroyed.

01:00:43.700 She went seven of the, she lost seven of the seven swing states.

01:00:47.180 As I looked at the data, I would describe this election as the testosterone election.

01:00:52.300 And what do you have?

01:00:53.900 You have men doing more poorly, men under the age of 30 doing more poorly than they have

01:00:59.820 in a long time.

01:01:00.580 And it all, all the election all zeroes down to one piece of data for me or the results

01:01:05.360 for the first time in our nation's history, for the first time in 275 years, a man or

01:01:10.260 woman at the age of 30 isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30.

01:01:13.620 That's never happened before.

01:01:14.820 Okay.

01:01:14.940 So let's say that.

01:01:15.600 I can see you say that again a little bit slower, Scott, just so I can, we can really

01:01:18.020 digest that a little bit.

01:01:19.140 A man.

01:01:19.780 For the first time in our nation's history, a man or woman at 30 isn't doing as well as

01:01:24.680 his or her parents were at 30.

01:01:26.460 Wow.

01:01:26.720 It's always been your kids are doing better than you on average.

01:01:30.560 Right.

01:01:30.920 And when that doesn't happen.

01:01:32.600 You start to feel like a failure as a child, especially in light to your parents, for sure.

01:01:35.680 Not only your self-esteem, but it creates rage and shame in the household.

01:01:38.660 And who's doing really poorly under 30?

01:01:41.260 Men.

01:01:42.160 The average 70-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago.

01:01:47.080 The average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy.

01:01:50.580 Wow.

01:01:50.760 And 210 times a day, they get a notification on their phone reminding them that they're

01:01:55.060 failing because it seems like everyone is at the Almond Hotel or flying in a Gulfstream.

01:02:00.000 Yeah.

01:02:00.400 But I'm not, everyone's telling me that the economy is good.

01:02:03.560 I keep hearing about crypto going to $80,000, stock market hitting 71 highs in the last 12

01:02:08.500 months.

01:02:08.780 All these things are true.

01:02:10.300 But I'm living at home and I can't afford rent.

01:02:12.480 Well, if I meet one more little coin pussy running around about this Bitcoin stuff, I'm going

01:02:16.280 to fucking eat my own nuts off my body.

01:02:18.700 That stuff, I lost $2,000 in it like every one of my friends did about four years ago

01:02:23.740 and I didn't touch it since then.

01:02:25.200 I'm a no-coiner too.

01:02:26.360 This is a pyramid scheme, it feels like.

01:02:28.400 I'm a no-coiner.

01:02:29.540 You are?

01:02:30.180 Yeah, I've never owned a coin.

01:02:31.260 Well, it just seems like it's like, oh, I can sit here and win this thing from home.

01:02:35.060 Easy money.

01:02:35.900 And that's more to part of the trap that you're saying is you can't sit here and win this

01:02:40.180 thing from home probably.

01:02:41.200 But when your kids aren't doing well, you're not interested in hearing about territorial sovereignty

01:02:47.700 and Ukraine, you're not interested in talking about trans rights.

01:02:51.600 Your kid isn't doing well.

01:02:53.400 And when your kid isn't doing well, you don't want change.

01:02:55.960 You don't want a Democrat.

01:02:57.280 You not only don't want change, you want disruption.

01:02:59.780 You want chaos.

01:03:00.740 Oh, yeah.

01:03:01.520 And you also, you want some of that what I'll call male energy back.

01:03:05.800 And look at how Trump positioned himself.

01:03:07.700 What did he do?

01:03:08.980 Crypto.

01:03:10.180 Embrace of cars and rockets.

01:03:12.300 Elon, what medium?

01:03:13.860 Did he go on MSNBC and CNN and Fox?

01:03:15.760 UFC fights.

01:03:17.200 And he went on podcasts.

01:03:19.560 Your podcast.

01:03:20.940 Yeah.

01:03:21.800 I wonder if that affected a lot.

01:03:23.220 I don't know.

01:03:24.000 Oh, my gosh.

01:03:24.780 Are you kidding?

01:03:25.420 The UFC is what did it to people.

01:03:27.060 And the guy didn't fucking stop.

01:03:30.180 People can say whatever they want.

01:03:31.440 That's a 70 or 80 year old dude who for four years.

01:03:35.300 The guy, I don't know if he doesn't sleep, but the guy works hard.

01:03:38.080 He got killed a couple of times.

01:03:39.980 He climbed back out of the coffin or whatever.

01:03:43.280 He kept dying and getting up and going.

01:03:45.940 He didn't stop.

01:03:47.040 There's something.

01:03:47.620 At a certain point, you just have to be like, I'm not betting against that dude.

01:03:52.060 You know?

01:03:52.400 Well, let's look at the media.

01:03:53.600 And he got Elon.

01:03:53.700 People love Elon.

01:03:55.860 He got, you know, he got, it's, I just feel like the parties have changed.

01:04:00.360 I used to be, feel like a Democrat.

01:04:02.080 I don't even know what, nothing really embodies me anymore.

01:04:05.420 It feels like, I don't know.

01:04:07.440 It's, it's all changed now.

01:04:08.920 It feels like.

01:04:09.720 But look at, look at, let's just use some examples.

01:04:12.160 MSNBC, which is considered like the left or the big political network.

01:04:15.840 Average a million.

01:04:16.760 It's most popular shows get a million viewers.

01:04:19.180 You know what the average age is of MSNBC?

01:04:22.180 70.

01:04:23.360 Wow.

01:04:23.920 And it veers towards women.

01:04:26.000 Podcasts, Joe Rogan.

01:04:27.680 Trump goes on Joe Rogan.

01:04:29.260 Yeah.

01:04:29.820 40 million views on YouTube.

01:04:31.540 15 million downloads.

01:04:32.840 Average age 34.

01:04:34.100 55 million 34 year old males versus 1 million 70 year old women.

01:04:39.920 And what do you know?

01:04:40.800 Let me guess.

01:04:41.600 He was on your podcast, right?

01:04:43.220 Yeah.

01:04:43.820 Okay.

01:04:44.100 He was on who the boys.

01:04:45.300 They call him the whoop.

01:04:46.160 He, his strategy was, I'm going to take the top 10 podcasts, right?

01:04:50.840 Eight of them lean right and lean male.

01:04:52.820 I'm going on every one of them.

01:04:54.420 I'm not going on CNN or Fox.

01:04:56.940 I'm going, I'm flying into the testosterone storm and the media of men right now is podcasting.

01:05:03.960 It's where young men are going.

01:05:05.760 Yeah.

01:05:05.960 That's probably true.

01:05:07.440 Yeah.

01:05:07.640 I mean, I like watching podcasts and podcast clips and stuff like that more, but it's also

01:05:11.720 you look at Rogan used to be a Democrat.

01:05:13.580 He was a leftist.

01:05:14.580 I'm a Bernie fan.

01:05:15.580 It's like these people fucking alienated my heroes in the democratic party.

01:05:20.180 It's gotten like, you know, it's very bizarre.

01:05:23.960 I mean, the political part of it is very bizarre to me.

01:05:27.740 But I do think there's a lot about what you're saying is like, yeah, a man wants to feel like

01:05:31.220 it's okay to be a man.

01:05:33.160 And you're like, sometimes you leave the house.

01:05:35.140 Like, is it okay to be a man?

01:05:36.360 Do I have to put my, do I have to check my dick at the door of this restaurant or whatever?

01:05:39.780 Like it's, it feels like that sometimes, you know, and it's not how somebody should

01:05:43.960 feel.

01:05:44.660 So yeah, I think it's, I think it's great that we're talking about this and that we're thinking

01:05:47.800 about that stuff.

01:05:48.560 You know, what do you think of the effects of like social media are on young men?

01:05:53.320 Oh, it's a disaster.

01:05:55.200 There's my colleague at NYU, Jonathan Heide, he wrote this book called The Anxious Generation.

01:06:00.320 Jonathan Heide?

01:06:01.380 Heide.

01:06:01.880 Jonathan Heide.

01:06:02.660 H-I-D-T.

01:06:03.640 Okay.

01:06:04.200 Essentially, there's a lot of peer reviewed research, including research that just came

01:06:07.220 out of Oxford showing that there's about a 60% increase in self-harm, eating disorders

01:06:12.580 and anxiety for people who spend too much time on social media.

01:06:16.520 Imagine, did you have social media when you were in school?

01:06:19.980 No, dude.

01:06:20.480 You had to yell at somebody, right?

01:06:23.040 But imagine the cafeteria.

01:06:24.580 The graffiti.

01:06:25.320 That was the only social media you've had, dude.

01:06:26.740 You'd be like, you know, Larry likes dudes.

01:06:29.200 And it was like, well, who knows, bro?

01:06:31.280 But it never told you their last name.

01:06:33.320 It was very, and it would be like, but now even, even graffiti, dude, especially like

01:06:37.420 in Brooklyn, it's so, it's like, Larry likes dudes, but only if he's okay with it.

01:06:41.160 I read that.

01:06:41.760 And I was like, that's not, what is it?

01:06:45.680 Everything's fucking confusing, dude.

01:06:47.140 Nobody cared if Larry liked dudes or not.

01:06:48.780 It was just the fact that somebody got to say it, you know?

01:06:51.160 And then now it's like, only if he's cool with it.

01:06:53.320 It's like, who's right?

01:06:54.740 Anyway, what were you going to say?

01:06:56.260 The bottom line is social media is bad.

01:06:59.320 It's bad for teen girls and it's bad, really bad for young men.

01:07:02.640 There's a direct, there's a linear correlation between anxiety, eating disorders with young

01:07:06.960 women, anxiety with men, because it's like, you never get to leave the high school cafeteria.

01:07:12.280 And it's especially hard on girls in high school because boys bully physically and verbally.

01:07:17.840 Girls bully relationally.

01:07:19.120 And we put these nuclear weapons in their hands.

01:07:21.040 They're actually a little bit, it can be a little bit meaner.

01:07:24.080 And so, and then you take online dating, anytime you digitize a sector, it becomes a winner

01:07:31.000 take most environment.

01:07:33.020 So, okay.

01:07:33.440 Say that one more time.

01:07:34.100 Anytime you digitize a sector, like what does that mean?

01:07:36.720 Anytime a sector becomes all about the internet.

01:07:39.740 So retail used to be stores.

01:07:41.820 It becomes online.

01:07:43.380 Amazon now controls 50% of all e-commerce, right?

01:07:47.940 We used to go to the Encyclopedia Britannica or to the library to microfiche or to different

01:07:52.720 newspapers.

01:07:53.100 Now we go to Google.

01:07:54.420 Google has 93% of search.

01:07:57.020 Social, Facebook and Meta owns two thirds of all social media.

01:08:02.240 Online dating.

01:08:03.160 Everyone has access to everyone.

01:08:04.680 You think that's good?

01:08:05.520 It's not.

01:08:06.940 Because women all want the same dude.

01:08:09.940 And if you have 50 men on Tinder and 50 women, 46 of the women will show all of their attention

01:08:16.320 to just four men.

01:08:17.620 Wow.

01:08:18.100 So that leaves 46 men fighting over four women.

01:08:21.460 And the reality is those women can have sex with the top 10%, but they're usually not

01:08:26.320 going to have a relationship.

01:08:27.060 And because that top 10% of men get 80 to 90% of the opportunities, they can engage in what

01:08:33.140 I refer to as portion of polygamy.

01:08:35.140 And that is, it doesn't encourage long-term good behavior.

01:08:38.440 It doesn't encourage them to settle down.

01:08:40.340 Whereas when we were kids, you went to your church, your temple, your high school, and

01:08:44.540 you kind of figured out your weight class.

01:08:46.240 There were eight single women at your temple, eight single men, and you sort of paired off.

01:08:50.520 Yeah.

01:08:50.780 And men had an opportunity to demonstrate excellence at some point.

01:08:54.000 If you talk to married couples that have been together longer than 30 years, 75% of them

01:08:57.880 say one was much more interested than the other and was always the man who was much more

01:09:02.660 interested.

01:09:03.480 But over time, she saw that he was kind.

01:09:05.880 Wow.

01:09:06.040 She worked with him.

01:09:07.020 He was good at what he did.

01:09:08.060 So where do men demonstrate excellence now?

01:09:10.480 And then a man goes online.

01:09:11.860 Here, check out this stat.

01:09:13.100 On Tinder, a man of average attractiveness has to swipe right 200 times to get one swipe

01:09:19.380 back for one coffee.

01:09:20.880 And then four of five of those coffees will ghost him.

01:09:24.940 Her screen will come up again, and she'll decide not to show up for a coffee.

01:09:28.440 So a guy of average attractiveness on a dating app has to swipe right 1,000 times to get a

01:09:33.940 coffee.

01:09:34.420 So he feels rejected by women.

01:09:36.640 He becomes much more prone to misogynistic content online, prone to conspiracy theory,

01:09:41.480 less likely to believe in climate change.

01:09:43.300 And he's hopped up on caffeine, too, because he's been fucking sitting there sipping by

01:09:46.400 himself, you know?

01:09:47.760 And some, he becomes a shitty citizen.

01:09:49.980 So social media and online dating have been really bad for young men and women.

01:09:53.880 I think online dating has been especially rough on men.

01:09:57.640 Yeah.

01:09:58.300 Yeah, I don't like to be online dating.

01:10:00.780 I haven't been on.

01:10:01.600 I'm like seven years off of it.

01:10:04.240 Raya won't let me on there because I told an awesome joke on Twitter that they got offended

01:10:07.900 by, I guess.

01:10:08.600 Um, so fuck them anyway, dude.

01:10:12.280 Um, but I also, I didn't want somebody to be able to say no to me when I wasn't there

01:10:16.820 in person.

01:10:17.540 That's how it felt to me.

01:10:18.720 Right.

01:10:18.940 I just didn't want to give somebody that pleasure that they could say no.

01:10:21.420 And even though it's not a real no, it is, you know, it's all very hypothetical, but I

01:10:24.800 just didn't want to allow somebody to have that.

01:10:27.400 But then also, um, by not doing that, it's, it is hard.

01:10:30.640 You have to meet people in real time, in real life, you know?

01:10:33.100 And so it is more of a challenge, but it's also, um, you know, it is, I guess, uh, you

01:10:39.100 just feel like you're not getting rejected.

01:10:41.000 Um, when I started podcasting and online stores, the furthest thing from my mind, the last thing

01:10:47.140 I was thinking about other stuff, hot air balloons and making love and different stuff

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01:10:51.220 And mostly women and other stuff.

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01:13:37.200 How do we prevent moms from just having to raise these young men by themselves?

01:13:41.500 Like what would you say to a young couple that's starting out, if the male is listening or the

01:13:48.000 female, to help give them the best chance to stay together, which would seem like would help

01:13:51.480 affect other positive things along the way?

01:13:54.860 So again, we have a tendency in our society to assume that all divorce is the man's fault,

01:13:59.780 that the man is either a predator or not a good person, and the woman has no agency, and

01:14:05.320 she's the victim.

01:14:06.300 And the reality is 70% of divorce filings are filed by women.

01:14:09.920 And the majority of those divorce filings, if you look at why the woman is filed for divorce,

01:14:14.200 it's not infidelity.

01:14:15.880 It's not a lack of shared values.

01:14:17.160 It's the man has something happens that makes him less economically viable.

01:14:21.120 A mental breakdown, a loss of a business, a bankruptcy.

01:14:24.940 Women still look at men primarily as being providers.

01:14:29.320 And once a man, a man going through divorce, so young men are four times as likely to kill

01:14:33.860 themselves.

01:14:34.560 A man two years after divorce is eight times as likely.

01:14:37.960 He no longer serves a role in his church.

01:14:39.940 He no longer serves a role in his primary relationship.

01:14:43.280 He might lose his kids.

01:14:44.340 One out of three men have no contact with their children after six years.

01:14:48.660 So he has literally no role.

01:14:50.280 After six years of a divorce, you mean?

01:14:51.740 After six years of divorce, one out of three men has absolutely no contact with their children.

01:14:55.920 Yeah.

01:14:56.300 Oh, man, that's heartbreaking.

01:14:57.820 Well, it's hard when you're not around a lot.

01:14:59.500 So what I would suggest is that, one, I think we need to level up young people economically.

01:15:06.500 And I don't think you can just target men for economic programs.

01:15:09.480 I think it's too political.

01:15:10.700 But I think we need to restore the child tax credit.

01:15:12.960 I think we need a massive program to build more housing.

01:15:16.300 I think we should have national nuclear energy projects similar to what Truman did in the

01:15:21.100 50s with the National Highway Act.

01:15:23.500 It'll create hundreds of thousands of good, millions of good paying jobs for young men.

01:15:27.940 So what do you mean talking about?

01:15:28.740 Like Space Mountain going everywhere?

01:15:32.060 Like, what do you mean?

01:15:32.600 You mean like a train system?

01:15:34.540 No, so if you look at what's happening in our economy with AI and some of the innovations around digital, the choke point of the friction is energy.

01:15:43.680 We're not going to have enough energy.

01:15:45.060 We're not going to.

01:15:45.560 So nuclear energy is, in my opinion, the cleanest form of energy.

01:15:50.840 And we're going to need a massive number of nuclear power plants built.

01:15:53.860 Those are good jobs.

01:15:56.000 For the National Infrastructure Act, 70% of those jobs are for young men.

01:15:59.020 That's a good thing.

01:16:00.000 In sum, let me back up.

01:16:01.740 Biggest innovation in history is not the microchip or the smartphone.

01:16:05.160 It's the American middle class.

01:16:07.160 And the way the American middle class happened, it's an accident.

01:16:10.420 It's not normal throughout history to have a middle class.

01:16:12.840 The way the American middle class formed in America was we had 7 million men return from World War II.

01:16:18.440 And they had demonstrated excellence in uniform.

01:16:20.520 They were in good shape.

01:16:21.340 They were strong.

01:16:22.340 They had demonstrated real heroism.

01:16:24.780 And then Truman put in place a variety of programs that leveled them up economically.

01:16:29.300 The GI Bill, FHA, or subsidized home loans, National Transportation Act.

01:16:34.440 He created millions and millions of men who, quite frankly, were really solid citizens who were attractive to women.

01:16:41.680 There was huge household formations, and it gave rise to the baby boom.

01:16:45.520 And this created a number, millions of American households that thought, I want to give other people this opportunity.

01:16:51.600 I want to bring women into this opportunity.

01:16:53.280 I want to bring non-whites into this opportunity.

01:16:55.180 Eventually, I want to bring gay people in this opportunity.

01:16:57.300 It created a more loving, generous, what I'll call liberal society.

01:17:02.040 We have to feed the middle class.

01:17:04.440 And the part that's failing the middle class right now is young men.

01:17:08.040 So the question is, how do we level up young men, quite frankly, economically?

01:17:12.100 And I think it's a variety of programs, national service, more job programs, more apprenticeship.

01:17:17.260 What does national service mean?

01:17:18.860 Two-year mandatory national service.

01:17:20.300 You get out of high school.

01:17:21.300 Oh, I see what you're saying.

01:17:22.140 You serve either in the armed services, maybe going to senior care.

01:17:25.820 Maybe you help the four, you know, whatever it might be.

01:17:29.380 Right.

01:17:29.540 It could be like digging down, you know, installing like stuff like that.

01:17:33.500 Fighting fires, whatever it might be, helping seniors.

01:17:36.000 Wow.

01:17:36.320 Because then, first of all, you're going to feel an attraction to your own country.

01:17:40.320 You're going to feel like you contributed.

01:17:42.360 And once you feel like you contributed something, it means something to you.

01:17:44.540 It's like whenever you used to, you know, your dad would drive you through the neighborhood

01:17:47.920 or your grandfather, and he'd be like, I built that house or I painted that.

01:17:50.880 Or, you know, I used to, you know, eat sandwiches over there or something.

01:17:54.820 It just makes you feel connected to an area, right?

01:17:56.800 But rather than you and me seeing each other, you go, okay, Scott's a libtard.

01:18:00.680 And I go, oh, this is a Republican pretending to be an independent.

01:18:03.740 We just say we're Americans.

01:18:05.120 Yeah.

01:18:05.340 The greatest legislation in history, or at least in America, in the 50s and 60s,

01:18:10.500 and the reason we had such a productive Congress and they got along was because they served

01:18:13.940 in the same uniform.

01:18:14.960 They weren't blue or red.

01:18:15.800 They were Americans, right?

01:18:17.060 Yeah.

01:18:17.360 You go through those grave cemeteries, you go through them, and it's different ethnicities,

01:18:21.180 different religions, different-

01:18:22.260 There's no red or blue.

01:18:23.340 Yeah.

01:18:23.640 It doesn't say Democrat or Republican.

01:18:26.600 So a massive leveling up economically of young people.

01:18:30.880 I'd like to do what Portugal did.

01:18:32.140 Portugal has said, we're turning into this retirement place for hedge fund managers,

01:18:36.600 and the brightest young people in Portugal have one thing in common.

01:18:39.500 They leave.

01:18:40.540 So you know what they've done, Theo?

01:18:41.500 They've decided no taxes age 20 to 30.

01:18:44.700 And it actually doesn't cost them that much because most people age 20 to 30-

01:18:47.940 Aren't making much money.

01:18:48.580 Don't make much money.

01:18:49.400 Right.

01:18:49.840 It's beyond that.

01:18:50.640 You make your money.

01:18:51.240 We need 40% of our budget goes to seniors, which leaves less money for education, programs,

01:18:57.740 investment in R&D, which are more productive investments.

01:18:59.860 We have a political system where old people keep voting, and more old people who vote

01:19:04.420 themselves more money.

01:19:06.140 Right?

01:19:07.120 The $120 billion cost of living adjustment increase for Social Security flies right through.

01:19:11.860 The $40 billion tax credit to help young families, that gets stripped out of the Inflation Reduction

01:19:16.660 Act.

01:19:17.520 We need to massively economically lift up young people, which will disproportionately benefit

01:19:23.360 young men who have fallen further faster and, quite frankly, make them more attractive.

01:19:27.080 And people are going to start having kids again.

01:19:29.380 40 years ago, 60% of 30-year-olds had a kid.

01:19:32.640 Now it's 27%.

01:19:33.940 The average age of a home buyer this year is 54.

01:19:37.020 40 years ago, it was 36.

01:19:38.620 Do people-

01:19:39.080 Are people not buying homes and not having kids because they don't want them?

01:19:41.760 No, they can't afford them.

01:19:42.680 And guess what?

01:19:43.580 When a guy shows up and says, I am not economically viable, you are not going to be able to buy

01:19:48.860 a home with me.

01:19:49.980 I am not going to be able to protect you.

01:19:51.360 The woman doesn't want to pair with this guy.

01:19:54.580 We need a massive lift up of young people.

01:19:57.400 And everything we do is nothing but a thinly veiled transfer of wealth from your generation

01:20:04.480 to mine.

01:20:06.260 COVID, $6 trillion in stimulus.

01:20:09.100 85% of it wasn't needed.

01:20:10.620 85% of it wasn't spent.

01:20:12.160 So where'd it go?

01:20:12.980 It went into the stock market.

01:20:14.520 Stock market hits all-time highs.

01:20:16.560 Housing prices have gone from 290, average house pre-COVID to 410.

01:20:20.680 Again, that's great for me.

01:20:21.900 I own stocks and I own homes.

01:20:24.440 Ed, my co-host at Prop G Markets, he doesn't own homes or stocks yet.

01:20:29.220 So what's going to happen?

01:20:30.900 We're spending it all on his credit card.

01:20:33.340 We're running up these massive deficits, which he will have to pay back.

01:20:36.260 So I get the champagne and cocaine with his credit card.

01:20:39.540 We need to stop this crazy deficit spending that both-

01:20:42.320 The only thing that passes this bipartisan behavior right now is reckless spending.

01:20:46.460 We need economic responsibility and we need to transfer wealth back from the incumbents

01:20:51.540 to the entrance and level up young people, which will disproportionately benefit the group

01:20:57.000 that has fallen furthest fastest and is young men.

01:20:59.600 We need to make young men more economically viable again, such that they can form households.

01:21:04.580 Yeah.

01:21:05.540 Yeah.

01:21:05.980 And it's, yeah, it's like, yeah, almost if you're a young man these days, you just want

01:21:09.660 to just hide sometimes, I think.

01:21:12.540 You know, and it's not even their own fault.

01:21:14.260 That's one thing I want to say.

01:21:15.300 Like some of it is the society that we're in isn't really doing its best to support you.

01:21:20.260 Is that okay to say that?

01:21:21.820 Oh, a hundred percent.

01:21:23.200 One in three.

01:21:23.780 Yeah.

01:21:23.920 I just want, I don't want young men to hear this and feel like I'm a loser.

01:21:29.480 Young men have it.

01:21:31.460 I mean, on one level, people have more agency in our nation than they, than they've had in

01:21:35.740 a long time.

01:21:36.440 But young men, there's definitely in our society, a bias against them.

01:21:40.920 If you go to the Democratic National Committee's website, there's a section that says who we

01:21:46.520 serve.

01:21:47.000 They actually spell out, we're the Democratic Party.

01:21:50.040 This is who we serve and I list 16 demographic groups from Asians and Pacific Islanders to

01:21:55.180 black Americans, veterans, the disabled, immigrants.

01:21:58.260 I added it up.

01:21:59.660 It's 76% of the population.

01:22:01.820 So when you're purposefully advantaging 76% of the population, you're not advantaging them.

01:22:07.780 You're discriminating against the 24%.

01:22:10.080 And who are the 24% that aren't mentioned?

01:22:12.840 Young men.

01:22:14.240 The Democratic National Convention was a parade of every special interest group, but they

01:22:18.740 never once mentioned the group that has fallen furthest, fastest, and quite frankly, in

01:22:23.160 my view, needs the most help right now.

01:22:25.260 And that is young men.

01:22:26.640 So we need a more productive conversation that looks at the stats.

01:22:30.040 Four times as likely to kill themselves.

01:22:31.680 Three times as likely to be addicted.

01:22:33.180 12 times as likely to be incarcerated.

01:22:35.140 If that was happening to any other special interest group.

01:22:38.220 It would be through the roof insane.

01:22:39.580 We'd be weighing in with programs, with empathy.

01:22:42.840 And here's the thing.

01:22:43.860 Empathy is not a zero-sum game.

01:22:45.900 Gay marriage didn't hurt.

01:22:46.920 What does zero-sum game mean?

01:22:47.980 Well, there's a field.

01:22:49.920 When I talk about young men, people go to, well, that's going to hurt women.

01:22:55.000 No, it's not.

01:22:55.660 You know who wants more economically and emotionally viable men?

01:22:58.560 Women.

01:22:58.860 Women.

01:22:59.540 Yep.

01:23:00.140 Women.

01:23:00.840 God.

01:23:02.060 Civil rights didn't hurt white people.

01:23:04.420 No.

01:23:05.060 Gay marriage, in my opinion, didn't hurt heteronormative men.

01:23:07.380 It didn't get in the way of me marrying a woman.

01:23:09.520 And having empathy for men isn't going to hurt women.

01:23:12.480 We can't, women are not, women in the United States are not going to flourish if men are flailing.

01:23:19.200 And they are.

01:23:20.000 And because it's men and because of the privilege I recognized, there's a lack of empathy for them.

01:23:25.720 And quite frankly, because some, I would argue, fairly unproductive voices entered that void about five, ten years ago, a lot of people had sort of a gag reflex when you started talking about men.

01:23:37.040 And you know who's leading the charge around this topic right now, who I get the most emails from?

01:23:41.720 Mothers.

01:23:43.640 And it goes something like this.

01:23:45.080 I have three kids, two daughters, one son.

01:23:47.000 One daughter is in Chicago in PR.

01:23:49.160 The other's in graduate school at Penn.

01:23:50.880 And my son is in the basement vaping and playing video games.

01:23:54.120 And if you look at the election, the two groups that swung most viciously away from blue towards Trump were two groups, people under the age of 30, young people aren't doing well.

01:24:07.060 And the second group, and the most surprising, 45 to 64-year-old women, or put another way, mothers.

01:24:14.100 So this was, in my opinion, the kids are not all right, or kind of the testosterone election.

01:24:22.040 And that is, if your kids aren't doing well, you want to blow everything up.

01:24:26.580 All you want, you don't just want change, you want chaos.

01:24:31.000 And one guy was the chaos candidate.

01:24:33.780 Yeah.

01:24:33.940 Well, I think also, though, one great thing that Trump did was when he brought RFK Jr. in, because RFK Jr. was also a very, was a rogue.

01:24:44.200 Remember, people were like, this guy is like a crazy guy or whatever.

01:24:47.820 Like, he's eating, you know, he's, you know, he didn't believe in that.

01:24:51.680 You know, he just got so labeled by the media.

01:24:53.980 And so I think bringing him in was a great point, a great idea.

01:24:57.420 Yeah, I agree with you that he's crazy.

01:24:59.360 Yeah, you do?

01:25:00.800 He's batshit crazy.

01:25:01.820 Oh, he's a great guy, man.

01:25:03.280 Oh, dude.

01:25:04.040 He's a great guy.

01:25:05.140 I don't know if you're holding vaccines, but let's shoot up.

01:25:07.720 No, no, no.

01:25:08.260 There's nothing I love more than being high than not being sick.

01:25:10.760 Vaccines are the best thing to happen in modern society.

01:25:13.300 I don't disagree that they are.

01:25:14.400 I just think that they just need to make sure that they are.

01:25:17.760 He's great on the environment.

01:25:18.860 I'll give you that.

01:25:19.540 I think he's great on the environment.

01:25:20.820 Yeah, that's fair.

01:25:21.660 We don't have to agree on it.

01:25:24.060 Why do you, so let's, I know you're a professor here at NYU.

01:25:27.660 And why do you talk about, I've heard you talk about advising your students not to follow their

01:25:33.280 passion, but to follow their talent.

01:25:36.020 Is that right?

01:25:36.600 Yeah.

01:25:37.000 Okay.

01:25:37.280 I think anyone who tells you to follow your passion is already rich.

01:25:40.800 I think this is your job.

01:25:42.380 I think your job is to find what you're really good at.

01:25:45.060 Okay.

01:25:45.360 Because I think a lot of times young men mistake their talent for their hobbies or mistake their

01:25:49.680 hobbies for their passion.

01:25:51.060 Okay.

01:25:51.240 They mistake their hobbies for their passion.

01:25:53.420 I wanted to be a football player when I was 17 and I wanted to be a pediatrician.

01:25:58.160 I mean, what I found was I was really good at analytics and very few boys grew up thinking

01:26:03.620 I'm really good with data.

01:26:05.260 And so the majority of the quote unquote passion fields are really shitty industries because

01:26:09.440 there's too many people going into them.

01:26:10.940 There's 180,000 people in the SAG-AFTRA union, which is the union representing actors.

01:26:16.780 83% of them last year didn't qualify for health insurance because they didn't make over $23,000.

01:26:21.820 They're not even making any movies anymore.

01:26:24.240 Try and be a DJ.

01:26:26.080 Do you know what percentage of high school basketball players may get into the NBA?

01:26:29.800 I mean, it's insane.

01:26:31.040 I don't know.

01:26:31.580 Yeah.

01:26:31.980 The very few.

01:26:32.840 The more romantic or sexy an industry is, the lower the ROI on your effort.

01:26:37.560 This is your job.

01:26:38.320 Find something you're good at instinctively, you have an affinity for, that you could someday

01:26:44.340 maybe in the top 10% or the top 1%.

01:26:46.700 And here's the key part.

01:26:48.040 It has a 90 plus percent employment rate.

01:26:51.440 Because if you're good, I'm renovating a house right now.

01:26:54.300 And this guy comes in.

01:26:55.320 He's the soapstone guy.

01:26:56.420 He knows more about soapstone than anyone.

01:26:58.040 He's this Iraqi immigrant.

01:26:59.440 And he got really into it.

01:27:01.280 And he was very open with me.

01:27:02.420 He makes 1.8 million pounds a year.

01:27:04.060 He clears 800,000 pounds a year.

01:27:06.120 Right?

01:27:06.320 I don't think he grew up as a child thinking, I'm going to be the soapstone guy in Marlebone,

01:27:10.420 London.

01:27:11.040 Yeah.

01:27:11.920 No one grows up thinking, I want to be the best tax attorney in the world.

01:27:15.820 The best tax attorneys fly private and have a larger selection set of mates than they deserve.

01:27:19.600 And the guy telling you at NYU to follow your passion made his billions in iron ore smelting.

01:27:25.340 Right?

01:27:26.100 Yeah.

01:27:26.380 The boring industries, the boring shit is where you can make a great deal of money.

01:27:32.600 Yeah.

01:27:32.980 Be a DJ on weekends.

01:27:34.600 Be a welder during the week.

01:27:36.080 That's right.

01:27:36.980 Find a job that you're good at, you become great at, that's got a 90 plus percent employment rate.

01:27:42.280 If you're just good in that industry, you're going to make it.

01:27:44.120 And this is what happens.

01:27:45.100 What does it mean?

01:27:45.480 The 90 plus?

01:27:46.040 Before you, I just want to make sure that that's clear.

01:27:47.940 That has a 90 percent.

01:27:50.200 What were you saying that part?

01:27:51.160 Employment rate.

01:27:52.120 And what does that mean when you say that?

01:27:53.860 Tax law.

01:27:54.560 Anyone with a degree in law.

01:27:56.180 Oh, you're going to get a job and a 90 percent chance.

01:27:57.960 That's what you're saying.

01:27:58.620 Employment rate.

01:27:59.240 Okay, got it.

01:28:00.160 Employment rate in basketball, DJ, art, modeling, sports, owning a club, a restaurant.

01:28:06.400 I would bet the unemployment rate is 90 percent.

01:28:08.780 Yeah.

01:28:09.480 Because there's too many people pursuing too few jobs.

01:28:12.100 Right.

01:28:12.520 So I don't want to crush your dreams.

01:28:13.660 If you want to be a DJ, you want to be the next Lionel Messi, just make sure you're getting bright signals very early that you're in the top 1 percent,

01:28:21.300 which is where you're going to need to be.

01:28:22.940 Right.

01:28:23.460 Because at a certain point, you have to play to the odds.

01:28:26.220 Well, this is what you become passionate about.

01:28:28.360 You're going to see this as you get older.

01:28:30.240 You become passionate about taking care of your kids.

01:28:32.780 You become passionate about taking care of your parents.

01:28:34.960 You become passionate about going to the Hotel Du Cap or going to F1 in Austin.

01:28:40.540 I went to Wimbledon for the first time.

01:28:42.400 Oh, yeah.

01:28:43.460 And I'd rather be Roger Federer than me.

01:28:46.040 I'd rather be Nando Al than me.

01:28:47.520 But I'd rather be me than the number five seat in the world.

01:28:50.220 Yeah.

01:28:50.420 Who's that?

01:28:51.180 I have no idea.

01:28:52.120 Right.

01:28:52.500 That's what I'm saying.

01:28:53.020 And all I know is the number five seat is in the 0.0001 percent.

01:28:57.620 All I need to be is in the top 10 percent of my field, and I can buy my way into Wimbledon.

01:29:02.460 Right.

01:29:03.240 So find something you're great at.

01:29:06.400 And if you're great at it and you can make money at it, you're going to have a great relationship with your wife and your kids.

01:29:12.480 You're going to be able to be able to be able to do that.

01:29:13.260 We live in a capitalist society.

01:29:14.980 Right.

01:29:15.360 And that's not going to change, right?

01:29:16.620 A hundred percent, no.

01:29:18.060 America becomes more like itself every day, and that is it is a loving, generous place if you have money.

01:29:25.080 It's a rapacious, violent place if you don't have money.

01:29:27.500 And I'm not saying that's the way it should be, but that is the way it is.

01:29:31.440 So your job as a young person, what could I be great at that pays, that has a 90 plus percent employment rate?

01:29:39.800 And this is where passion comes from.

01:29:42.200 The accoutrements, the camaraderie, the economic relevance, the status of being great at something where you're making good money, that will make you passionate about that thing.

01:29:52.460 Mastery, artisanship, being a ninja-like warrior in anything will make you passionate about that thing, regardless of how boring it may sound when you're nine years old.

01:30:01.060 Yeah, it's funny.

01:30:03.060 The better I've become at some things, the more I like them.

01:30:06.240 Is that what you're saying?

01:30:07.060 A hundred percent.

01:30:07.860 Yeah.

01:30:09.420 That's cool, man.

01:30:11.720 I've heard you also talk about the four horsemen, right?

01:30:14.380 Yeah.

01:30:14.480 And a lot of the dangerous collaboration of media, right?

01:30:21.920 And with Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

01:30:27.240 Yeah, very good.

01:30:28.320 And you've been a part of like antitrust activation towards them?

01:30:33.680 I think they should be broken up.

01:30:34.920 I think they're too powerful.

01:30:36.180 Me too.

01:30:36.860 Yeah.

01:30:37.240 It's very dangerous, right?

01:30:38.720 Well, we don't have any choice.

01:30:40.200 If you're a parent and your kid is on social media, you don't have any choice.

01:30:45.520 The kid doesn't have any choice.

01:30:46.620 He's going to be on a meta platform.

01:30:48.420 Right.

01:30:48.600 And these companies are so powerful that they're able, and they make so much money that they're able to kind of weaponize government.

01:30:53.620 We've had 40 congressional hearings talking about child safety.

01:30:57.920 We've had zero laws passed.

01:30:59.680 Yeah.

01:30:59.840 And I think competition as a whole is a great way of bringing down costs.

01:31:03.660 I think the best way to handle inflation is competition.

01:31:06.100 And you have one company with 93% share of search, Google, 66% share of social, Meta, 50% share of e-commerce.

01:31:16.260 Two companies control 93% of AI, AI LLMs, and the GPUs.

01:31:24.460 That's OpenAI and NVIDIA.

01:31:26.040 So there's already monopolies forming in AI.

01:31:29.180 Yeah, it's unbelievable.

01:31:30.400 Here's Australia wants to ban kids.

01:31:31.880 I saw this the other day on 16 from social media as world government seek to crack down on the addictive apps.

01:31:36.160 I think that that's a great idea.

01:31:38.080 I don't think that kids, so, and also, especially if kids aren't going to be protected.

01:31:42.200 Like, did you see that moment where they had Zuckerberg with all the parents of children who were killed by adults on Facebook,

01:31:49.180 and they were allowed to contact them?

01:31:51.160 Like, why should an adult be allowed to contact a child?

01:31:54.440 You should easily, if you have all the data, you should easily know this is a child and this is an adult.

01:31:59.100 There's no reason for them to contact each other without going through the parent.

01:32:03.260 There's no reason anyone under the age of 14 should have a smartphone.

01:32:06.900 I mean, I've said this.

01:32:08.000 I think Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook are basically crack dealers outside of junior high school.

01:32:13.320 No one under the age of 14 should be on a smartphone.

01:32:16.020 Could you have, at 14, handled a casino, a betting, you know, an IMAX theater, a porn site in your pocket all day long?

01:32:26.840 I couldn't handle it at 34, 37.

01:32:28.460 Right?

01:32:29.420 So, and then, no, I don't think anyone should be on a social media app under the age of 16.

01:32:33.800 And parents are stepping in.

01:32:35.600 And a lot of this, again, is because of the inspiration of my colleague, Jonathan Haidt.

01:32:39.640 But entire countries are banning phones and social media.

01:32:43.140 There's just, there's so much evidence around the mental.

01:32:46.060 Think about what a place of perversion Instagram begins with.

01:32:50.380 It encourages 15-year-old girls to pose provocatively and sexualize themselves such that their peers and strange men around the world can evaluate and contact them.

01:33:02.160 Imagine, imagine, imagine there was a park and there were 15-year-old girls and they said to the park, we'd really like it if you showed up and hauled tube tops and miniskirts.

01:33:13.360 And then your peers get to sit around you and comment out loud.

01:33:18.140 And strange men from anywhere can come and comment and then contact you.

01:33:24.100 Would we allow that?

01:33:25.520 Not a chance.

01:33:26.640 That's Instagram.

01:33:27.820 Why do we allow that then?

01:33:29.380 Like, do we expect our government to save us or who's, or do we have to save ourselves?

01:33:34.460 Well, I think at the end of the day, I think it's our fault.

01:33:37.520 We haven't voted in the people who understand these technologies are willing to stand up to these companies.

01:33:41.160 They're very savvy.

01:33:42.500 They spent a lot of money on lobbying.

01:33:44.340 And I also think in the back room, they're probably doing deals around national security to help us kind of hunt down the bad guys.

01:33:50.600 I think it's a nuanced argument.

01:33:52.400 But at the end of the day, our government has really let us down.

01:33:54.600 When we look back, Theo, on this era around big tech, I think we're going to regret the concentration of power, the monopoly power, the weaponization of some of our elections, some of the misinformation that's come out.

01:34:06.040 But more than anything, we'll look back on this era and think, how did we let this happen to our kids?

01:34:11.280 If you don't have kids, I should know better.

01:34:14.460 My son developed device addiction.

01:34:17.760 My kid hides in the bathroom so he can be on TikTok.

01:34:20.440 I don't know what he's on on TikTok.

01:34:21.640 There's been some instances of bullying, both him being bullied and bullying others.

01:34:27.280 And I think we're probably not as bad as some households.

01:34:30.420 This is literally, there is no addiction in America.

01:34:33.880 Twenty-four percent, two-thirds of teens are on social media.

01:34:37.760 Twenty-four percent qualify as addicts.

01:34:40.460 Can you imagine any?

01:34:41.860 We age-gate pornography, the military, motorcycles, weapons, but we don't age-gate social media.

01:34:48.440 What other substance, what other company could get away with getting two-thirds of kids on that substance and then having a quarter of them be identified clinically as addicts?

01:35:00.000 We wouldn't put up, we wouldn't and haven't put up with it anywhere else.

01:35:03.940 But these guys are so smart, have so many lobbyists.

01:35:07.040 There are more full-time lobbyists.

01:35:08.960 And there are representatives and senators.

01:35:11.780 Just at Amazon.

01:35:13.360 Amazon has more full-time paid lobbyists living in D.C. than there are sitting U.S. senators.

01:35:18.940 We've been overrun.

01:35:20.320 Our government's been overrun by money.

01:35:22.260 And we haven't been able to vote in people that are able to stand up and pass laws.

01:35:27.020 This shit is difficult and complicated.

01:35:28.680 And these companies have taken advantage of it.

01:35:31.140 Also, they have the propaganda to turn up the dials.

01:35:35.020 Because they own the information that's going out.

01:35:37.720 They can manage it.

01:35:38.300 A hundred percent.

01:35:41.440 God, Scott, I don't even know if I can fucking get out of this room today.

01:35:45.620 Let's go to Whole Foods.

01:35:48.920 Right before you leave, you said one of the biggest choices is the person that you will marry.

01:35:52.720 I've heard you say that.

01:35:53.640 Have kids with.

01:35:54.480 Have kids with.

01:35:55.140 A hundred percent.

01:35:55.560 And that goes back to a willingness to endure rejection such that you can find someone who's really high character that you're attracted to.

01:36:03.000 I have friends who, on exterior metrics, are really successful.

01:36:09.520 Smart, talented, ballers professionally, a lot of money.

01:36:12.960 But they don't really have a partner.

01:36:15.300 And I find that their life has an unnecessary amount of stress and disappointment in it.

01:36:19.380 And at the same time, I have a lot of other friends who are not as economically successful.

01:36:25.540 But they have a real partner.

01:36:26.960 And everything burns a little bit brighter.

01:36:29.660 And I hope, oh, I hope I'm around.

01:36:32.440 But I hope we have the chance.

01:36:33.420 In 10 or 20 years, I'm confident you're going to find someone to have kids.

01:36:37.360 All of this, right?

01:36:38.820 Podcast, AI, social media, GDP growth, Trump.

01:36:43.820 It's all bullshit.

01:36:45.440 It's all a means.

01:36:47.060 The ends, the whole shooting match, is finding someone you care about and having kids.

01:36:53.340 That's what I found.

01:36:54.260 I didn't want to have kids.

01:36:55.400 I didn't want to get married.

01:36:56.520 So that actually disproved what your original thoughts and feelings were.

01:36:59.800 I got it wrong.

01:37:01.040 And you can't, no one who doesn't have kids can fully understand it.

01:37:04.640 And by the way, I want to be clear, there are other ways to find and receive love.

01:37:07.620 I don't think you have to have kids to be happy.

01:37:09.080 What I can tell you is that the majority of people I know who've had kids who've said,

01:37:12.520 it's a tremendous amount of stress, but it's the first time in my life I felt like I had

01:37:16.960 real purpose and real meaning.

01:37:18.900 And that's what our economy is supposed to do.

01:37:21.060 It's supposed to give young people, specifically more young men right now, the opportunity

01:37:24.660 to engage in loving, supportive relationships and have kids.

01:37:28.620 That's the whole shooting match.

01:37:30.380 Everything else is the means.

01:37:32.400 That's the ends.

01:37:36.180 The G-Prof podcast that you're-

01:37:38.680 Close, Prof G.

01:37:39.960 The Prof, sorry.

01:37:41.420 I like that better.

01:37:42.140 That sounds like a new Mercedes vehicle, the G-Prof wagon.

01:37:45.280 There we go.

01:37:46.640 We got it.

01:37:47.560 Co-branded.

01:37:49.140 By the way, hashtag Prof G.

01:37:51.240 The Prof G podcast, that's yours, Scott.

01:37:53.960 Yeah.

01:37:54.400 Thanks for coming and just thinking with us, man.

01:37:56.680 And yeah, we don't want to look down on young men.

01:37:58.800 We don't want to do that.

01:37:59.720 We're just looking at stuff.

01:38:00.880 Because part of it is to let young men know, and men know that like some of the system

01:38:06.240 that we're in and the environment that we're in is not set up to help us.

01:38:09.200 So don't feel like ashamed of yourself, right?

01:38:12.960 That's the thing I don't want to push that at all.

01:38:16.520 At 24, I was living with my mother.

01:38:19.480 No economic prospects, no romantic prospects.

01:38:22.320 I was broke at 34, then I was broke again at 42.

01:38:26.660 And the first emotion I felt when my oldest son had the poor judgment to come marching

01:38:32.620 out of my girlfriend, it was 2008, great financial recession.

01:38:36.300 I'd lost everything, was I felt shame and humiliation.

01:38:40.820 Forgive yourself.

01:38:42.380 Forgive yourself.

01:38:43.280 Everyone's been there, right?

01:38:44.340 If you're not doing well.

01:38:45.860 Be a good person.

01:38:46.760 Get in good shape.

01:38:48.060 Start making some money, even if it's just a little bit of money, right?

01:38:50.920 The way to make a lot of money is to start making a little and get a taste for flesh.

01:38:54.360 Be out of the house every day, be in the company, the agency of others, right?

01:38:59.500 Yeah.

01:39:00.060 And work your ass off and try and show, like show up, get the easy stuff right.

01:39:04.980 Develop a savings muscle, see if you can save some money.

01:39:07.480 And don't be afraid to approach strange women.

01:39:11.720 The ability to make a woman feel safe while expressing romantic interest is not only the

01:39:17.060 key to finding a great partner, those same skills are going to serve you really well

01:39:20.880 and work.

01:39:21.720 There's nothing wrong with that.

01:39:23.060 You are a protector, you're a provider, and you're a procreator.

01:39:26.220 Let's go, dude.

01:39:27.700 Dude, I'm unapproved.

01:39:29.140 Let's go to Whole Foods.

01:39:30.040 No, I'm going to...

01:39:30.460 Where is she?

01:39:31.660 Oh, I'm going to approach so many strange women this year.

01:39:35.020 Next year, dude.

01:39:35.620 That's a little scary.

01:39:37.300 It's strange women 25, baby.

01:39:39.820 There you go.

01:39:40.820 Scott Galloway, thank you, man.

01:39:42.180 Thanks for thinking with me.

01:39:43.440 Thanks for being somebody that I find inspiring and educational and also able to be earnest about

01:39:49.260 themselves and their own journey.

01:39:50.580 I just appreciate that, man.

01:39:52.140 Thanks, man.

01:39:52.620 Congrats on your success.

01:39:53.880 You're a nice role model for young men.

01:39:56.220 You really do.

01:39:56.780 You bring a different vibe.

01:39:57.840 I think it's important.

01:39:59.280 Yeah, thanks, dude.

01:40:00.020 I don't know if I feel like a role model, but it's nice of you to say.

01:40:02.440 I definitely feel like a young man, though, so I feel like I'm, you know, we're going to

01:40:08.140 keep going.

01:40:08.940 It goes fast.

01:40:09.920 Trust me, you're younger than everybody, and one day you'll show up and you'll be the

01:40:13.140 oldest person in the room.

01:40:14.180 It's really weird.

01:40:14.920 Time goes fast.

01:40:16.780 You're enjoying it.

01:40:17.860 You're really grabbing life by the balls and squeezing right now, so congratulations.

01:40:22.840 Well, I work really hard.

01:40:23.740 That's one thing I do do.

01:40:24.720 You know, I know that I have learned that.

01:40:26.540 You know, I learned that, like, just from my mom.

01:40:28.480 You just, if you, yeah, that you can do that.

01:40:31.600 You know, that's in my control, you know, and the rest of the stuff we'll figure out

01:40:34.680 along the way, and thank you for being here today and helping us think of and learn about

01:40:39.260 some of it.

01:40:39.960 Thank you, and welcome to New York.

01:40:41.280 Thank you, brother.

01:40:41.680 Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.

01:40:47.680 I must be cornerstone.

01:40:52.700 Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.

01:40:58.260 I can feel it in my bones, but it's gonna take a long time.

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - November 27, 2024

E547 Scott Galloway

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