Episode 263: Professor Scott Galloway: Why Following Your Passion is Only For The Rich

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

So, this video that came up on my feed, or actually, I think someone sent it to me actually, was you talking about this idea of passion.

People shouldn't follow their passion.

And basically, was it like people shouldn't follow their passion and do things that are boring, or boring is sexy, or I don't remember the way you said it, but it was so refreshing because you only always hear people, especially on like social media nonsense like follow your passion like you know follow it and you're gonna be fine so because you were contrary which i by the way agree with it stood out to me and that's how i became kind of obsessed with all your other stuff uh thanks for that and and when someone tells you that the only thing you know is that the person telling you that is already rich yeah and the person telling you to follow your passion made their billions in iron ore smelting it there's what i have found is you want to find your job in your 20s is to workshop your life try stuff have a kitchen cabinet of people, and then if you're blessed to find something you're good at, and more importantly, something you're good at that people will pay you for.

I thought at one point in my life for about two weeks, I thought, oh, I'd like to be a professional athlete.

And then freshman year tryouts at UCLA disavowed me of any delusions around that.

And that was a blessing because figuring out what you're not going to do is important.

But ideally, find something you like that has 90 plus percent employment rate, which things like acting, modeling, sports do not have.

They have like a 2% employment rate, and then commit to becoming great at it.

And once, and that requires a certain level of grit, bullshit, injustice, perseverance.

And once you become great at tax law, for example, and how many eight-year-olds say, I want to grow up to be a tax lawyer or none.

But the best tax lawyers enjoy their work, have intense camaraderie, respect.

They get to fly private.

They have a larger selection set of mates than they deserve.

And they get the admiration of others and can have a really nice living and get to take care of their kids and their parents.

And all of those wonderful things make them passionate about tax law.

So if you find something you're good at and you start making money at it, the passion will follow.

So be a DJ on the weekends, you know, play in a soccer league, but find something you're good at that people will pay you for and the accoutrements surrounding it will make you passionate about it.

Yeah, no, I agree.

And that's why when I saw the video, it was a very refreshing, number one.

And then when I went on a deep dive with all your other stuff, I found you're very honest.

Then I read the book that you're one of your previous books.

I just read You're Adrift, which is your new one.

We'll get into after, but The Algebra of Happiness, which I really loved.

And you were very, again, super honest, but you were not exactly a great student.

You kind of were a jerk.

Like, you were very much like, here I am, this is what it is.

I'm curious about your, like, how you kind of evolved into someone now that when I watch your stuff and see your interviews, you seem super evolved and thoughtful and, you know, just different than what I read how you were from that first, for that book that you wrote like years ago about how you began.

So can you kind of just start with how you became this entrepreneur, how you became this professor at NYU, like just your backstory a little bit so people know who you are?

You're being generous.

I'm not.

Like the evolution of becoming, going from an asshole to someone who's less of an asshole.

See?

Look, there's the things that I I think people will relate to, you know, the seminal moments in your life that really impact you are the most basic.

The first was involved death.

My mother raised me.

I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary.

Our household income was never more than $40,000.

I was a Pell grandkid, and she was a lie to my life.

And then when she got sick and died, you know, when someone you love immensely dies, it just, and someone who loves you immensely, it just the harshness and reality of life, which up until that time, many of us never experienced.

You know, youth is mostly about Star Wars and prom

and, you know, getting your driver's license.

It's pretty joyous usually for the most, if you're, you know, if you're fortunate, if you kind of call it the upper median of childhood in America.

And then 25 to 45 is what I call the shit gets real period of your life.

And when you lose someone you love, especially someone who was as meaningful to me as my mom, there's just a certain reality check and a harshness that, wow, that like I never knew life could be so harsh.

And it creates, though, there's real benefits from it.

It creates an appreciation for the finite nature of life.

It makes you grow up and realize that you have to take account of your blessings and that it's easy to feel sorry for yourself, but as long as you have health, you're doing really well, that you should treasure your relationships.

If you're feeling affection and regard for people and love for them, you should express it and you should act on it because they're not going to be around forever.

So that was kind of the first quote-unquote grow-up moment for me.

And that was, I always say, that was the first thing I did right in my life.

Everything I'd done was for me.

I went to UCLA because I didn't know what else to do.

And I thought it would be a lot of fun.

I got a job in investment banking because I thought it would impress my mom and strange women.

I went to business school because I did know what I wanted to do.

Like the decision to kind of be there for my mom, I actually ended up moving in with my mom for about eight months, was the first thing I didn't do for me.

And it was kind of the first right thing I did.

And that process, you just grow up, I think, when you you lose somebody.

And then the second thing is on the other side of the life spectrum is when my first child came marching out of my girlfriend.

It just fucking freaked me out.

I didn't, I wasn't ready for kids.

I didn't want kids.

And I remember sitting there in that kind of wondrous moment that you're supposed to have.

I was so nauseous I couldn't stand.

And the nausea wasn't a function of how physically uncomfortable or the childbirth itself.

It was the recognition that at the age of 40, I didn't have enough money.

And it was terrifying and disappointing for me.

I lived in New York.

I had my first kid.

I had my girlfriend who's wonderful and but younger than me, a little naive, I think, about what's required to raise a family in New York.

And up until that point, I'd had a lot of success, but I'd always sort of doubled down thinking I'm a master of the universe.

I'll start another company.

And I was kind of dumb around not putting enough money aside.

And then the great financial recession hit in 2008.

I just got run over economically.

And this kid coming along, it's the first time in your life you recognize it's not all about you.

You know, I always knew when it was just me, I could make enough money, I could find enough interesting things to do with my life, find enough interesting friends to live a nice life.

And all of a sudden, this cosmic responsibility that it was no longer just about me was easily the most terrifying and anxiety-filled moment I'd ever had.

It was no like bright lights and guardian angels singing some choir about this beautiful.

It was not a life insurance commercial for me.

It was terrifying.

And then I think the other thing is, you know, as you get older, your narrative, if you're in any way self-aware, your narrative that you tell yourself, Jane, my narrative up into the age of 40 was, despite coming from the single mother household, despite having no money, I became a baller.

Check my shit out.

That was my narrative.

You know, really feeling good about myself and the things I'd overcome.

And then as you get older, you know, the good news is you become more thoughtful.

and self-aware.

The bad news is you become more thoughtful and self-aware.

And it wasn't hard to go, okay, being born in the 60s, a white heterosexual male, was hitting the fuckman lottery.

I got to go to UCLA, which had a 76% admissions rate when I applied.

I did not have good grades, but I didn't test well either, but somehow I got into UCLA.

I got a 2.27 GPA undergrad.

So what did Berkeley do?

Berkeley let me into graduate school.

Imagine that happening.

Oh, you have a 2.3 GPA?

Come to one of the finest graduate programs in America.

My total tuition, because I went to college in the 80s and 90s, was $7,000 total, total for seven years of education at UCLA and Berkeley.

I bought my first house in San Francisco for $285,000 when I was 28.

Who can buy a house at 28 now?

I came at a professional age with processing power, so I had this Gale Force 5 wind in my sales.

And then, despite being run over a few times by a financial recession, as I was coming into my prime income earning years in the late 2000s after the recession, I got to buy Apple and Amazon stock

at 130th or 140th of price now.

So it's like my narrative, my my story that I told myself was I've overcome these things.

I'm just such a baller.

And then as you get older, you realize any honest appraisal of my life is that I kind of hit the lottery.

And a lot of my success, I'm not a modest person.

I think I'm very talented.

I work hard.

A lot of my success is not my fault.

My freshman roommate at UCLA was very similar to me, very similar background, very similar advantages being at UCLA.

We're both really talented guys.

You know, but God reached into his soul and decided that he was homosexual, not heterosexual, and dedicated at 33.

So what I tell young people who are doing well is a lot of your success is not your fault.

So be humble and be grateful.

At the same time, a lot of your failure is not your fault and forgive yourself.

But I think like most people, my evolution has been a function of very big, basic things happening to me and just trying to be a little bit more self-aware about my blessings.

Well,

you said so many different things there.

But so are you saying that you got like luck plays a big role in success more than anything, your circumstances?

I know you talk about in one of your books, or the book that I read.

I read a few of them, but the one I was very much really liked was the algebra of happiness.

Was it depends on your zip code and your credibility that will kind of tell your story or what will happen, your success, I guess, trajectory.

Would you say then it's people, if they have the chance, like, because there's a whole debate here about do you go to the private school, do you go to the public schools?

Would you say put yourself in places where you would have an alumni that can help elevate you, where you could be lucky, where opportunities show up?

Like go to the private schools, go to the Harvards versus the Cal State.

I'm just making it up to kind of change the trajectory of your possible success?

Look, just the data is pretty clear.

The largest signal or indicator of your success is when and where you're born.

If I was born a male in 1920 in Germany, I probably would have died on a cold field in Russia.

I mean, it's just when and where you're born is, you know, as evidenced by the guy who was born, you know, the same year as me, but born with a different sexual orientation, you know, he hit the worst lottery.

He had the worst luck in the world.

Had he been born 10 years earlier, he probably would have been closeted, which is not a good thing, but he probably wouldn't have been as promiscuous.

If he'd been born 10 years later, the cocktail would have saved him.

Instead, he was born at exactly the wrong time as a gay man.

And so there's just no getting around it.

That is probably the biggest signal.

Now, having said that, within your band, you do have a lot of agency.

There are successful people.

You know, the bottom line is your own agency, your work,

your ethics, your character will kind of put you at the top or the lower end of sort of a band, if you will.

And some people break out of that band to the upside and the downside.

Two-thirds of billionaires globally are self-made.

We have this myth that it's all dynastic wealth.

It's not.

It's getting a little bit like that in the U.S., but two-thirds of billionaires are self-made.

So there are some people who claw their way out of some village in India, start a company, usually a tech company, and become hugely wealthy.

There's the millionaire next door is someone usually with not that impressive a background who started, you know, basics, right?

Spent less than they made, saved, slowly but surely built small businesses, owns five dry cleaners, and makes a couple million bucks a year.

So you have agency, but there's just no getting around it.

Luck plays a huge role.

I think the thing that really frustrates me is if you look at who are the most patriotic Americans, they're hands down, the people who invested the most in America, there are veterans.

People who serve feel very loyal to America because they've invested so much.

It's sort of anyone who's a parent can understand understand this.

You invest so much in your kid that you're just more loyal to that child than anything in the world because you've invested so much.

And veterans are incredibly patriotic people.

What strikes me as really disappointing, and that's a wonderful thing, but what's really disappointing is that I feel the most blessed people in our society, specifically tech billionaires, are the least patriotic.

They're the first ones to shitpost America and say the government should just get out of the way or to disparage government officials.

And there's a reason why Elon Musk is not shooting rockets off in Johannesburg.

There's a reason he's not producing or didn't start an electric car company in Seoul.

If you look up and down the West Coast, it is littered with companies worth $10, $50,000, $100 billion.

I mean, it doesn't matter where you are.

San Diego, you know, Genentech, Orange County, you know, you have SpaceX down in El Segundo, you have Snap, you have just these unbelievable, Microsoft, Amazon, Salesforce, they litter the West Coast.

You get to the Canadian border and it stops until you get to Vancouver and there's Lululemon.

You get to La Jolla and it stops until you go about 5,000 nautical miles until you hit Mercado Libre and Buenos Aires.

So to not recognize that American infrastructure, government, rule of law, culture didn't play a massive role in your economic success.

is just to be totally, not only lack self-awareness, but to be really un-American.

And it drives me crazy how many blessed Americans we have in the tech sector who made a lot of money who then immediately pivot to this screed of government is bad and the U.S.

is bad.

And I just don't, it drives me crazy that our most blessed Americans seem to be our least patriotic.

So what do you think of the correlation is between intelligence and success?

Do you think there's a correlation or it's all these other ancillary things?

Well, there's data, there's research on this, and there is a correlation, but it tops out.

It tops out at, I think, at about 120.

And that is a person who's got 120 IQ is much more likely to be successful than someone at 80.

But actually above that, it flatlines.

And they say when you get really, really smart, it actually turns on you.

And that is you become so thoughtful and see so many downsides to everything.

I mean, one thing that entrepreneurs have is we're too stupid to know we're going to fail.

There is a certain craziness.

No company that makes any sense, you know, doesn't exist.

Otherwise it'd already be there.

No startup makes any sense.

Otherwise it would already be there.

And once you get above a certain IQ, those people usually make great employees 30 or 40, but they're not good zero, one, and two.

Founders aren't usually, founders are usually very bright, but they're usually not by traditional metrics the smartest person in the company.

What they have is risk aggression and also more than anything, an ability to sell.

So there is a correlation between intelligence and money, but it tops out.

It's sort of like the correlation between money and happiness.

There is a correlation, but it tops out at some point.

At some point, once you get to a certain level, additional money or additional IQ points don't make you more successful or any happier.

By the way, you moved to London, right?

Are you in London right now?

No, I'm actually in New York.

Oh, you're in New York.

Okay.

So are you still a professor at NYU?

Yeah, I'm still affiliated with the university.

I'm not teaching right now.

I do seminars and fundraising and things like that, but I'm not currently teaching, which the students there remind me of like every day.

Since when?

When did you stop?

I taught an online class during COVID, but I haven't taught a class in about, I don't know, I've taught since I think 2021 or 2022.

What happened?

Well, nothing happened.

I moved to London.

I've taught 5,500 students, and I love teaching, but

I've wanted to live in London for a long time and finally did it, and it's just not logistically feasible for me to commute back and forth from London to New York.

Do you like living there?

Why did you move?

Not like it's my business, really, but I'm curious.

No,

the easiest questions are the ones the hardest to answer.

We move because I've always wanted to live in another country.

That's one of my bucket list things.

I wanted to live in another country, and I'm not getting any younger, and I wanted my kids to experience something different.

I thought, what could you do?

I mean, I said to my partner, every once in a while we sit down and say, like, this is finite.

This is not a dress rehearsal.

We're all so blessed that we love each other.

We have healthy kids, and we have resources.

So it's like, why wouldn't we just reach for the fucking stars?

And part of that is just sitting down and saying, like, what would you want to do that would make your life wonderful?

Like, and I'll tell you what I would like to do.

And one of the things we circled in on about six years ago was we'd like to live in another country.

And then we circled in on the UK because realistically London would just be easier because of the language.

And it's far from New York, but not too far.

So we said, okay, in five years, we're moving to London.

And four years later, you know, my wife went to London and bought a house.

And five years later, I was in London.

So we wanted our kids to experience something different.

We wanted a life experience.

My parents are from the UK.

My father's from Glasgow.

My mother from London.

I've always felt a calling.

We love Premier League football.

I've always felt a real kinship with the British.

I just like them.

I like the country.

I think they've been fantastic allies for the United States.

I think that's kind of the supreme partnership globally.

So it just made a lot of, you know, that was the place to go.

I am not loving it.

That's the sad part.

The weather fucking sucks.

Well, I was going to ask you about that.

The sun went behind a cloud in November.

It came out about two weeks ago.

It has a huge impact on my mood.

So that's been a downer.

The good news is Premier League football, I go to probably one or two games a week with my sons.

And also, I'm just on planes a lot again.

And in my age, I didn't want to be on planes again a lot.

In the last three weeks, I've been in Riyadh, Barcelona, San Diego, LA, Seattle, Austin, New York.

I go to Miami in a few days and then back to London.

And it just, it takes a toll on me.

Why are you just traveling so much for work stuff?

And just, like, how are you spending most of your time now, like, work-wise?

Are you just doing a lot of speaking engagements?

A lot of...

I would imagine.

Yeah, it's a lot of speaking gigs.

It's a lot of speaking gigs.

And I mean, why do I do it?

I'm a narcissist, and

I still have economic anxiety.

So to stand on a big stage in front of a lot of people who say nice things about me and look at me admiringly is still way too important to me.

And I have this desperate need to feel relevant.

And I'm still, even though I'm economically secure, I still have huge financial insecurity.

So if someone says we're going to pay you, you know, three times your mother's salary to come speak to us at our annual meeting, I'm like, yes.

And I want to stay relevant.

I want to stay in the mix.

And, you know, it's like Crimea River.

I travel really well and I do nice things and I always have a great time and I'm treated like a rock star when I go to these places.

So it's not the worst thing in the world.

But it's a lot.

It's just a lot of time on planes.

The only thing not perfect about my life is TSA.

Everything else in my life is perfect.

But so you're basically are you gonna do you think you're going to move back to the U.S.

then?

Is this just

for like a stint of time?

Especially if you don't like it, if you don't like the weather?

You know, I don't know.

It's like you have your plan and God laughs.

I was born and raised in LA.

Where are you from?

I'm from Canada, but I live in LA.

Oh my God, okay.

Canada, LA.

Yeah.

So, you know, life just happens to you.

I was supposed to go to business school.

I was at UCLA.

I went to New York, got transferred back to UCLA, didn't know what to do, applied to graduate school.

I enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin, fell in love.

You know, I said, well, I'm going to UT.

She was going to Berkeley for business school.

And she said, well, I'm going.

I said, I'm going to UT, da-da-da.

And she said, well, I'm going to Berkeley.

And I said, well, I'm going to Berkeley.

And so I followed her and ended up in technology.

I mean, you're so much a function of your context.

If I'd gone to UT, I mean, there's a chance I would ended up in like oil and gas or something else.

So it was just so random.

And then moved to New York thinking, I'll just be here for another few years because I love New York.

Was there for 10 years?

ended up living in Florida for 10 years, wasn't planning that.

So, you know, it's like

so random.

You know, mostly for the kids again, we had my the story ends well, but my oldest at the age of three was speech delayed and we couldn't get him into any pre-K program.

We got rejected by seven schools and it was so humiliating.

It's like, I've been single and an entrepreneur my whole life.

I'm used to rejection, but I'm not used to it for my three-year-old.

Yeah.

And I found the process so demoralizing and humiliating to not be able to get my kid into school that we had some friends in Delray Beach and we went to this beautiful school down there called Gulfstream and they met our kid and he was four by that time and they had a pre-cake program and we said we'd love, you know, we'd love to have your kid.

And, you know, now he's like headsless and thriving.

But we went down there more for kind of, we wanted to get out of the Manhattan school system.

It just wasn't for us.

We weren't successful at it.

We didn't like it.

And, you know, and the weather's great down there.

And we had childcare down there in the form of in-laws.

You know, life happens.

Absolutely.

So then is it the same woman that you were with back then?

I'm just trying to follow the women.

Oh, no, several different women.

Several different women.

I'm trying to follow chronologically.

It's the same.

It's the same one.

So how long have you been married this time around?

We've been married.

We've been together about 20 years.

I think we've been married.

I don't know, 15 or 17.

I forget.

You know, most important day of my life, but I can't put a date on it.

You know, it's so funny.

You said something, like, never let your wife be cold or hungry, and that's one of the rules that me and my husband have, too, which is 100% true.

I love when you said that.

You forgot the third piece of advice, and it's less politically correct.

I'm like, always express sexual desire and affection.

Oh, yeah, you did say that, too.

You're right.

I didn't forget.

Actually, I just laughed at the other part because no one ever says that, but yes, you did say that, too.

Absolutely.

I think people want to be wanted.

Exactly.

I think that every time you, obviously in the right context, feel those emotions, you should express them unreservedly.

I think it makes, I think romantic relationships and sex and affection are singular and say, I choose you.

And I think it's important not to lose that.

But yeah, hands down, don't ever let a woman invest in dual climate zones.

When I look back at the really ugly fights, one of us was hungry and it wasn't me.

And

I got to trust you.

And also

invest, have giant Pashminas everywhere you spend any time.

Always have a blanket within

arms.

That's absolutely true.

And just on your third one that you were saying, are you Jewish, by the way?

I don't know if you are or not, but.

I am by heritage.

My mother was Jewish, but I'm an atheist.

I don't practice.

You don't practice.

Okay, I'm Jewish.

Well, I'm Jewish and I practice, but in the Jewish religion, this guy, rabbi, I remember his last name, but his whole thing is everybody wants to be chosen.

So if you're going to make someone feel chosen, and that's like the secret sauce to success in marriage or relationships.

Very similar

to what you said, right?

Because people, everyone wants to feel special and chosen.

Yeah.

That's right.

And so I'm getting totally off track, but I was very curious about your whole trajectory.

So, okay, so what I'm trying to figure out from just watching everything and understanding, so now you, how did you even become a professor at NYU after Morgan Stanley?

You've had so many successes as an entrepreneur and a professor.

I'm trying to get like how one thing led to another, right?

Like L2, you sold L2.

I know that.

Can you kind of start from after Morgan Stanley?

Sure.

So UCLA lied about my girlfriend, got a job at Morgan Stanley, went back to business school.

In my second year of business school, I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I just knew I didn't want to be an investment banker again.

And we got inspired by a professor named David Ocker who'd written kind of a seminal book on branding.

And I said, I'm going to start a consulting firm, a strategy firm focused on branding.

And the firm, you know, it was hard the first few years, but it then caught fire.

And it's now about 500 people.

I sold my stake in 2002 to Dentsu.

In 1997,

I realized the dot-com boom was in full swing.

And I I thought I want to try and monetize some of the intellectual capital we were garnering, advising everyone from William Sonoma and Levi's how to do their online or e-commerce.

So in the basement of Profit, we set up an incubator for e-commerce companies.

We launched two companies, a company called Aardvark, a company called Red Envelope that went public in 2002.

Oh, yeah.

And then in 2000, Red Envelope was supposed to go public, and I was supposed to be very wealthy.

And I sat down, I had one of those moments, and I said, what would I do with my life if money wasn't an issue?

Because it was supposedly not going to be an issue.

And I thought I would get out of this hamster wheel called tech entrepreneurship.

I don't like San Francisco.

I hate the weather.

I hate the political correctness.

I don't like extreme politics on either side.

And I just thought, I mean, it's a beautiful city.

I understand why people love it.

It wasn't for me.

And I thought, I'm going to press the reset.

I didn't like my life.

I didn't like my...

I didn't like my marriage, quite frankly.

A wonderful woman, but I didn't like being married.

And I'm like, I'm pressing the reset button.

I'm moving to New York and I'm joining the faculty NYU.

And I called an old marketing professor who was now the chair of the department.

He said, sure, come teach.

You start off with a small class, but I literally showed up in New York and literally rebooted my life.

And the first couple years were really difficult.

It was like I felt very much alone and kind of deserved that.

I had chosen that.

Took me probably five years to get any professional traction whatsoever.

My first year in New York, I think my tax return was, I made $12,000 as an adjunct professor.

But yeah, and then I started teaching and I've been teaching since 2001, 2002.

And along the way, started advising hedge funds on their tech and media investments.

And then started an analytics company or business intelligence firm called L2, sold that.

That was kind of life-changing.

You know, I'd done okay.

I'd had some wins, some modest wins, some failures.

That was a big win.

And then along the way, just got very involved in investing or co-investing along with hedge funds.

That's how I get to live the lifestyle I lead.

But what I do and my passion, where I spend most of my time is writing, I think of myself at the end of the day as a teacher who and my skill is to communicate across different mediums.

So I do newsletters, books, podcasts, but I see myself at the end of the day as a teacher and I try and focus on different mediums of communication.

But core, I'm a teacher.

This is how I got here.

And the other stuff is just such that I can live in Manhattan and go to fancy places.

What do you teach, though?

What's your specialty?

I know that writing and and communication for sure is something you're great at but what is your specialty where you are able to do the strategic consulting and and all that other stuff is it that you see things way before they become what they are like you the whole or what it like what is it more strategy branding how would you describe what that is what is your courses that you teach at nyu what's the classes called i've taught two courses one is brand strategy and the other is digital marketing and at the end of the day you're just trying to figure out what how do you get more out of a certain asset, whether it's a brand or intellectual property or distribution or some IP.

Like, how do you...

Any manager has the same task, and that is to get a greater ROI and a similar set of resources as an equivalent manager or an equivalent firm.

And I've always thought that brands were sort of under-leverage assets, but slowly over time, the course has sort of evolved to more a course on how traditional industries disrupt it.

You know, if you're Time Warner, how is technology going to change your business?

If you're Ford Motor, if you're P ⁇ G, if you're WPP, how is technology technology going to change your business?

So the course sort of evolved in kind of a disruption course because what I was preaching was getting tired.

Kind of the madman, Don Draper, brand is everything, great ad campaign can save your company.

You know, that shit's just got tired.

And that sort's gotten duller and duller.

And the masters in the universe, when I was getting out of business school, the Omnicoms, the IPGs, the WPPs of the world,

You know, big tech will lose or gain the value of all of those firms in a trading day.

They've just become less important.

So I pivoted through the 2000s to how do you build shareholder value by leveraging technology.

And that's kind of been my domain is talking about technology.

But the stuff that resonates with people is when you talk about fatherhood or you talk about the,

I found a white space around brand and I made a good living on it.

I found a white space around technology disrupting traditional industry and I made a living around it.

The place that has by far had the most impact, hands down in my life, is this real empty white space of a white heterosexual guy in his 50s talking about his emotions.

That has been the space that no one else occupied.

That's the place where people stop me on the street and say, talking about your mom or talking about your sons.

No one stops me and says, oh my God, the e-commerce strategy you launched for Old Navy was fucking genius.

No one cares about that.

You know, that paid my mortgage for a little bit, but people will stop me and say, you know, talking about putting your dog down.

You know, that's the stuff that moves people.

That's, at the end of the day, the stuff that I find most rewarding is when I have the confidence and the courage to speak openly and also in a raw fashion to speak about, I'm a profane, vulgar person, and it turns some people off, but it also, I think more of us are profane and vulgar inside between our ears.

We just don't say it out loud for fear of some sort of ramification.

I'm like, if you're economically secure and you have people who love you, you have an obligation to say what you're thinking.

You should not be unkind.

You never want to disenfranchise or diminish people, but you should say what you're thinking.

Yeah, I mean, it's funny because I did notice you speak about your mom a lot.

Almost in everything I've seen in books, your mom comes up a lot.

So she obviously played a huge part of shaped who you've become.

How about your dad?

Has your dad?

Not as much.

So my dad left us when I was eight.

And my dad was a, you know, neither of my parents got through past eighth grade in school.

Not very flagbed term, not very sophisticated people.

And, you know, I would say my dad was this handsome man with a strong jaw, a great sense of humor, and a Glaswegian accent, which meant in 70s, California, he could not only think with his dick, he could listen to it.

My dad's been married four plus times.

We think it's four times, it's probably more than that.

He started number three when he was still married to my mom and just kind of blew up the household.

And I think, like a lot of kids, you know, 50% of marriages end a divorce, but like a lot of kids, I found myself living with a single mother in San Fernando Valley.

And that, and I always say to kids, the learning here, other than, you know, know, feeling sorry for me, you know, I always say to kids, the most important decision you'll make is who you partner with, specifically who you have kids with.

I have a lot of friends who are hugely successful by all exterior metrics, but they don't have a great partner.

And their life's full of stress and disappointment.

And then I have other friends who are struggling economically, and that is a huge source of anxiety for them.

I get that.

But they have a real partner and their mate.

And everything burns a little brighter.

Everything's a little bit easier.

So the hands down, the most important decision you'll make is who you partner with.

And my mom made a bad decision.

I mean, my dad, he checked a really important box, and that is he was better to me than his dad was to him.

You know, he was physically abused.

I found out from his siblings later in life that he was literally physically abused by his father.

He grew up in Depression Air Scotland.

And, you know, he made an effort with me.

Even though after they were divorced, he made an effort, but there's just no getting around it.

The relationship was stressed because it wasn't that he was bad to me, but he was mean/slash/hostile hostile to the most important person in my life, my mother.

And so it was impossible for me not to take sides, right?

And also my parents were really unsophisticated about it.

They used to send really ugly messages to each other via an eight-year-old.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, just shit you wouldn't do now.

And they're not bad people.

They just weren't very sophisticated.

So I didn't have much of a, my dad did make an effort, but, you know, I'll give you an example.

My dad's not doing well right now.

When my mom wasn't doing well, I moved in with her.

My dad's not doing well.

I will pay for help.

I will have someone go there, but I'll go see him once every couple months.

It's just a different relationship.

But the growth there is 15 or 20 years ago, you know, I've always just struggled with having being close to him because I felt like he wasn't very good to me and my mom.

And then what I decided was, I'm just going to put the bullshit aside and I'm going to try and decide what kind of son do I want to be.

And the answer is, I want to be a really good son.

I want to be a generous, good son.

And I started behaving that way.

And it's been liberating because my dad is a funny, charming guy.

He does love me.

He did make an effort.

He treated me much better than his father treated him.

And so I hold on to that stuff.

I understand that more than you know.

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You talk about this in your new book, Adrift, about people dating and socializing, which I talk about all the time as well.

Just people aren't even having relationships anymore and people are not even able to socialize.

I want you to kind of talk about all the stuff that you've, your perspective on that.

And truthfully, like, what are we going to do about it?

Because I feel like people are losing the ability to even know how to socialize, know how to date, how to build relationships, even how to meet the proper mate, right?

Because it's based on usually now going on a dating app, swiping, and if you think someone's hot enough you'll go out with them so you're not you're you're kind of limiting who you're dating but at the same time you're not meeting people through friends going out in real life it's all just could be good and bad right it opens up your community right or it opens up your world because you can see people from all over the place but there's really zero other connections or connecting points to build relationships that are fundamentally going to last no one wants them to last they just go out to the next one yeah i think a lot about this i think i think it's the biggest threat to our society right now.

And people say, what are the biggest threats?

Anytime you transition one substance to another, when you transition plant-based calories to meat-based, you get methane and deforestation, right?

We know that meat consumption is not good for us.

Anytime you transition fossil fuels into energy, you have carbon.

Exceptionally damaging emission.

I still think they're all bested by these algorithms and really talented, well-resourced people and companies transitioning attention to advertising, to money.

And the algorithms have figured out a way to keep us so engrossed in our phones that the result is an absolute dearth or an enormous reduction in human contact.

The number of high schoolers that see their friends every day has been cut in half in the last 10 years.

40% fewer people say hello to their neighbors.

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are dying on the vine.

Church attendance has been cut in half over the last 40 years.

And we're mammals.

I don't care if you're orcas or a dog or a human.

We're literally supposed to lie on top of each other.

We're supposed to be physical.

We're supposed to be in the proximity of each other.

Your mental health, your mental wellness up until the age of 21, as evidenced by this great research my colleague Jonathan Hyde has done, is inversely correlated to the amount of time on your phone.

It's especially damaging for young men, and I think a lot about young men.

And it goes something like this.

Young men are biologically less mature.

Their prefrontal cortex is 12 to 24 months behind a girl's brain.

Women are much better at maintaining social contact.

They will make plans to go to brunch.

So they have stronger friend networks.

One in seven men don't have a single friend.

If you are given a choice between smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and having friends and not smoking but not having friends, you'll live longer if you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and have friends.

It is literally, all of this research coming out shows one thing, loneliness kills.

And these algorithms are giving you a bunch of low-risk ways to avoid human contact.

Do I really really want to go to that dinner party or that reception?

I don't know people.

I'm already in my pajamas.

I'm going to watch.

I'm going to binge succession and I can get great food via Instacart.

Do I really want to take the risk?

of trying to meet a woman and make the huge investment in the awkwardness and the shame if I get rejected?

Or should I just go on snap and talk to people or should I just consume pornography, which has a low risk, lower reward outcome?

Do I really want to go into the office and I'm going to find a job that's remote work?

And we're graduating, we're producing a cohort of young men who are emotionally and economically unviable.

There's going to be two female college graduates for every one male graduate the next five years.

And you think, well, that's okay.

Women are leveling up.

And by the way, that's a wonderful thing.

I'm not suggesting we do anything to slow that progress.

But here's the reality.

And we don't like to talk about this on the left.

Women, for the most part, are not interested in mating socioeconomically socioeconomically down.

They mate socioeconomically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down.

So as women have metaphorically, 50% of women say they won't date someone shorter than them.

I bet it's more like 70 or 80, but it's an embarrassing thing to know.

99%, but go on.

But here's the thing, metaphorically, women are getting taller, and it's awesome, and men are getting shorter.

And so you go on Tinder, 50 men, 50 women.

Are women really getting taller?

Well, I meant taller men.

Okay, I'm like, okay.

Graduating from college.

I'm like, more women, more single women now own homes than single men.

I agree.

Two to one female college grads to male college grads.

One in three men you pass on the street under the age of 30 has not had sex in the last year.

And people hear the word sex and it goes a bunch of different places, but it's an elemental foundation of establishing a relationship.

There are conservative newspapers and magazines now advocating for more teen sex because teens, there's like, it's a negative connotation or attribute of this important thing called socialization with teens.

And quite frankly, the massive drop in teen pregnancy indicates a larger problem, and that is teens aren't learning the skills around how to socialize.

And especially, you have this entire cohort of young men.

How many times do you hear people say, I know all these great women, and they can't find anything?

I was just going to say to you, I was going to say that the problem is everybody's become so PC that they're not saying what's really true in real life.

In real life, what girls are attracted to are alpha men who actually are providers, who go after you, who are,

I'm not saying aggressive in a bad way, but who are like, who are men, manly.

But you're you're not, but they're not breeding them the same way anymore.

There's no, there's very few and far between.

I know a lot of my girlfriends who are like rock stars.

They're beautiful.

They're super successful.

They're super educated.

And they're super single.

They can't find a guy to save their life.

They can't find one guy that is like that meets them where they are.

It's impossible.

I mean, and I see it.

I mean, like, and I'm like, I wasn't sure if it's just because in the big city, you know, in LA, New York, the big, you know, big metropolitan cities, but honestly, I think it's everywhere.

It's a real problem.

It's a major problem.

Like I talk about this a lot in my stuff and when I see you talk about it, I think that the world has become so scared of saying what's actually true with everything.

Everything now is like, I'm so nervous I'm going to get canceled.

I'm so nervous I'm going to offend somebody.

So everything is like watered down nonsense, which is not even accurate to what the real reality is in life is.

Yeah, so I find the way you avoid what can quickly become an emotional conversation that triggers people is you lead with data.

So here's some data.

75% of women say that economic viability is a key component, a key criteria in a mate.

25% of men.

Men don't care what women are doing professionally.

And by the way, that's a problem in itself.

But if you're not economically viable as a man, you're kind of off the dating market.

And in addition, women are choosier.

I say this at conferences.

I'll be in a conference with 500 people.

I'm like, if there's alcohol involved, the majority of the men men would sleep with the majority of the women in this room.

The majority of the women would sleep with none of the men.

When you have online dating, the women can apply their much finer filters and say, I'm just not interested.

And here's the thing: if you talk to couples, they will usually say one of them was more interested than the other at the beginning.

But online dating is about a snap reaction.

And here are the snap reactions instinctively that women have in terms of mating criteria.

For men, men are very base.

Oh, she looks nice.

Oh, she looks cute.

Swipe right.

Women are much choosier.

And there's an evolutionary component to that.

But women's criteria, and this is science for men or for a mate, are one, resources.

Not only the resources at the current moment, but their ability to signal that they'll have resources in the future.

So I'm 28, but I just got an MBA from MIT and I'm starting work at Bridgewater.

He's going to be just fine on the apps.

Number two is intelligence.

It's hard to get intelligence across on an app.

The quickest way to show intelligence is humor.

I've always said if you can make a woman laugh, you can kiss her.

And that offends some people, but I'm sticking by it.

And then number three is kindness.

Over the, you know, everyone talks about the bad boy, fine, but you can be rich, you can be smart, but if you're an asshole, people figure it out and don't want to commit to you long term.

It's those three things.

But here's the thing: numbers two and three cannot be communicated online, only number one.

So every profile that has a decent-looking guy who graduated from Stanford, lives in New York, and oh, what do you know, his Rolex accidentally slipped into his profile picture?

He's going to engage in what's called Porsche polygamy.

And that is 50 men on Tinder, 50 women.

46 of the women will show all of their attention to just four men.

Women are all chasing the same guy.

And online with its filters and its databases lets them find that same guy.

And so he has a date or three every night.

And it doesn't lead to good behavior.

It doesn't incent him to form a long-term relationship.

And quite frankly, maybe even he gets away with what would be considered inappropriate behavior, right?

50 to 90 among men just do okay.

If your average attractiveness on Tinder for a man or below, you have to swipe right 200 times before someone matches back to you.

And then, if you get five matches, four of the five will ghost you.

They'll decide, you know, I really didn't like it that much.

I don't actually want to meet for coffee.

So, a man who isn't a baller or have the ability to indicate real success at a young age has to swipe, has to match, has to find a thousand women that he swipes right on to get one coffee, which validates that he, and he's been told this because he's having trouble getting a job, he didn't get into the college he wanted, because he demonstrates male behavior that colleges don't want.

He gets validation that he has no value.

And then what happens to these guys?

They become more prone to misogynistic content.

People have a gag reflex when I advocate for men because who has filled the void where we weren't talking about failing young men?

This thinly veiled misogyny from guys like Andrew Tate that say these vile things.

So they immediately associate advocacy for men with misogyny.

And these guys get drawn to this terrible content.

They're less likely to believe in climate change.

They're more likely to believe that vaccines are bad for you.

And in some, they turn into shitty citizens.

And we're producing millions of them.

And so it's not that women can't find a date.

Women can't find someone they want to date.

So unless we make, in my opinion, a massive investment in not men, but young people who have seen their wealth decline as a percentage of GDP.

It's gone from 11% of all resources to more like six, which will level up men if we give young people more generally more opportunities.

We're going to have a lack of household formation.

And when young men don't attach to work, don't attach to school, don't attach to women, they become the most dangerous person in the world.

And the one thing the most violent, unstable societies have in common, all of them, is they have a disproportionate number of young, broken-alone men.

And we are producing way too many of them.

And And the last thing I'll say here is people understandably have a bit of a gag reflex here.

They go, oh wait, so women are too successful or somehow women have an obligation to service men.

I'm not saying that at all.

We want our girls and our women to continue to kill it and continue to advance economically.

That is a wonderful thing.

It is a sign of our progress.

We should celebrate it.

Advocating for young men, highlighting their problems, is not a zero-sum game.

Compassion is not a zero-sum game.

Civil rights did not hurt white people.

Gay marriage did not reduce the quality of heteronormative marriage.

But unless we acknowledge the numbers, young men are four times more likely to kill themselves, three times more likely to be addicted, 12 times more likely to be incarcerated.

They are falling economically.

Unless we acknowledge this issue, we're not going to have an honest conversation about it.

And what I find is that the cohort I get the most support from is mothers who will say something along the lines of the following.

I have two daughters, one son.

One daughter's a Penn, the other's in PR.

The third is, my son is in the basement vaping and playing video games.

Who wants more economically and emotionally viable young men?

Women.

So I think that we need to have an open, honest conversation that the 95% of people who identify as binary have different criteria on what they're looking for in a mate.

Your criteria in a mate is different for men and women.

That's not to say that by any stretch of the imagination that non-binary people aren't entitled to the same rights and liberties, but we can have an open and honest conversation about failing young men.

It's a big drag in our society right now.

And what's the solution?

Because unless you stop with the dating apps and the technology that's just getting quicker and quicker, it keeps on like with all the AI now and everything else, there's a whole other thing.

I mean, you can't slow it down.

So it's just going to keep on getting worse.

How do you stop this from happening?

Because it's becoming, men are becoming in a way obsolete, right?

What are women supposed to do?

If they're becoming bigger and better, so to speak, they just should be resigned to the fact that they're going to be alone their whole life.

Because unless you're super hot, right?

And the guys then have a chance, the ones that are actually considered the good ones, they can pick and choose who they want, right?

And so what happens to the rest of them?

Number one, so what happens to the women?

And number two, how do you like stifle and stop this from happening to men so we can actually have like a society that's actually functioning unless you stop technology?

So I think the first is just having an honest conversation and recognizing that advocating for men does not mean you're a misogynist.

That there's real reason.

And also changing the language.

When we talk about people of color or women and the challenges they face we talk about it in tones of a societal problem that warrants investment when it was 40 60 female to men college admissions we leveled women up when blacks and latinos were underrepresented in our our higher education institutions we had affirmative action and we tried to level them up still a lot of work to be done but we took it very seriously we made investments when you talk about young men failing the nomenclature changes it's like well they need to level up you know well it's about time it just takes on an entirely different tone that lacks compassion, not recognizing that a 19-year-old, should a 19-year-old boy, and let's be honest, they're still boys of that age, should he be paying for the sins of his father and his grandfather?

Struggling, very prone to addiction, not a lot of opportunity, almost no mating opportunity.

So solutions.

One, and a lot of this is parroting Richard Reeves, who wrote a book called A Boys and Men, which is kind of the seminar, the landmark book on the topic.

And he's sort of my yoda around the stuff.

We should recognize that men or boys mature later and possibly redshirt them.

And that is start boys in kindergarten at six and girls at five.

I think we should have mandatory national service.

I think a lot of the problems we're talking about do not happen the same levels in countries with national service because when you put everyone in the same uniform at the age of 18 for a couple years in the service of something bigger than themselves, and I'm not necessarily saying it has to be the military, it can be senior care, it can be parks, whatever it might be, and you meet people from different economic, demographic, cultural, different sexual orientation, you start to see each other as Americans first, Give them a chance to make friends, make mentors, meet mates.

I invest in a lot of Israeli companies.

I'm shocked how many founders met each other in the Army.

I'm shocked how many people met their spouse in the Army.

I think we need more connective tissue that recognizes we're Americans before we're Republicans or Democrats.

I think we need an investment in something called third places, and that is opportunities for random interaction.

I don't think every kid should go to college, but I think every kid should have the opportunity.

I'd like to see, I thought the student bailout was terrible legislation.

I think we should have spent that money in dramatically dramatically expanding freshman seats, much more vocational programming, more investments in tax credits for things like parks or even companies that are starting.

There's a company in Britain I'm about to invest in that's investing in these things called Wave Gardens and Putt Shack, where people go during the day with their families and then at night it turns into kind of a singles bar.

We need more, if you will, kind of barber shops.

We need more parks.

We need more church groups, softball leagues, after-school programs, where you run into someone and go, okay,

maybe he's not making $200,000 a year.

Maybe he doesn't look like Brad Pitt, but he's funny.

Or I meet her and she's maybe really shy, but there's this thing called pheromones that just makes me really hot for her.

And I'm going to keep trying every time I randomly run into her at creative writing class.

Where do young people meet?

They meet online and there's no second chance online.

You're swiped left.

You're done.

And anything more than that is technically stalking.

And what about when no one's going into work?

That's a whole other thing.

We don't talk about

no one wants to work in work.

One, and this is again, we don't talk about this, one in three relationships,

one in three people have had a relationship that began at work.

And because of some abhorrent behavior by people who engage in criminal activity, every HR department has decided it's a bad thing.

Well, guess what?

99% of relationships that begin at work are consensual.

Yep.

And you get a chance to see people.

You get a chance to know them.

You get a chance to find out, oh, I wouldn't have been drawn to her, but I am because she's so impressive, or I just like the way she moves, whatever.

Whatever.

I mean, that's the wonderful thing about human sexuality is it's just so unpredictable.

But if no one's going into work, where are young people supposed to meet?

And they meet in the worst place possible.

They meet in the hunger games, where it's awesome to be a rich guy, awesome to be a hot woman, and a soul-crushing experience for everybody else.

Yep.

And also, I feel like it breeds laziness in general, like technology, all this stuff, because you don't have to get out of your pajamas.

You can can go on a Zoom and you can just like be lazy and you don't have to, like you said, you don't have to go to the movie premiere because yeah, you could just stay home and you scroll and do whatever.

Like, do you feel like today's just like we're not breeding tenacity like we used to?

Look,

I love what Esther Perel says that attractiveness plus obstacles is desire.

I was born without a lot of money.

I have a lot of money now and it's just fucking awesome.

And it's better than being born with money.

If I had to do it again and I wouldn't know I would have money, trust me, I would pick to be a trust fund kid because the insecurity of not having money would be too much to be a handle.

But knowing what I know now, not having money and then having money is the way to go because you appreciate it.

You love it.

You feel good about it.

It's like you've, it's victory.

It's just like, it just, the moment of getting to economic security is so liberating.

I love, I noticed how crass is, I love making money and spending it.

And much of that is because I didn't have it.

When you're attracted and drawn to someone and you get your heart broken, when you're attracted and drawn to someone and they're initially not interested, when you have problems in your relationship and you overcome them, and you get to spend time with that person, you get to be physical with them, you get to take fun vacations to them, you get to impress your friends by introducing this person.

That is the greatest form of accomplishment, desire come to fruition.

And the reason why romantic comedies are two hours and not 10 minutes is there's obstacles.

Meeting in real life is hard.

It's embarrassing.

It involves rejection and awkwardness and cringe and saying stupid things and things not working out and getting your emotions like just fucked with.

These things are painful.

And so through technology, everyone's taking like, okay, porn never says no to me, right?

I'll just swipe and maybe I'll find the right person instead of investing and getting to know someone in kind of a random encounter.

I'll buy crypto.

I don't want to actually work.

I can make money buying DojaCoin.

I saw a screenshot of someone who made money.

We're reducing the wonders of desire, like real desire.

I remember I had a 2.27 GPA.

The only reason I graduated from UCLA is I used to occasionally go to class in hopes that I might meet a woman who would eventually come to a fraternity party and eventually like have sex with me.

That was my motivation for going to college.

And you know what?

That's all right.

I was doing it for the right reasons.

I got me a college degree and then I started getting my act together.

And by the way, spoiler alert, that's how 19-year-old men think.

And if I'd had all this online options around trying, you know, some illusion that I could make money online, some illusion that I was learning or getting education online, some illusion that I could find a mate online, none of this, nothing.

Every wonderful thing.

Every wonderful thing that'll happen to you is going to be a function of two things.

One, taking an uncomfortable risk, starting a business, starting a podcast, writing something that's raw, approaching a stranger and expressing interest in being their friend or romantic interest.

And you know what?

It's going to happen outside your house.

I mean, the really wonderful shit in your life, the landmark shit is going to involve taking an uncomfortable risk and it's going to happen outside of your house.

Unfortunately, it doesn't, I don't see the pendulum swinging backwards though, because we're just moving so quickly in the other direction.

But as a professor, I mean, you see students all the time.

Is there like one indicator or a couple indicators that you can point to that you can say that you notice that they will become successful humans?

And not just money success, I mean, in general.

Like, what do you see in school?

I mean, I know you haven't taught for a couple of years, but you're still involved in the middle of the year.

I mean, I'm around the elite.

I'm around, I'm teaching second-year MBAs who just have their acting.

Yeah.

They're smart, in shape, attractive, ambitious.

You know, these are the elite.

And they're every year, they're more and more impressive every year.

They're more facile with technology.

I actually find they're kinder, they're more socially aware.

I just, the graduating class of 2023 is just hands down, could kick the shit out of my class in 1992 on every dimension.

And so a lot of the cynicism you hear about young people, I'm not sure it's warranted.

The kids who haven't had exposure to that kind of success or kind of access, we live in a rejectionist, bullshit, luxury culture.

The richest man in the world sells desire and exclusivity, Bernard Arnaud.

And unfortunately, America has adopted the same rejectionist culture where once you have a college degree, we applaud our dean for letting in fewer and fewer people.

We love that 90% of applicants to our alma mater are rejected.

Now UCLA, when I got in, it was 76% acceptance, now it's nine.

And the majority of alumni like that because it makes their degree more valuable.

Once you have a house, you become very engaged in the local growth board meetings and show up and figure out intelligent, thoughtful ways for why we shouldn't build more housing.

And it takes the price of your house up because once you have a house, you don't want more housing built so young people can't find a house.

Once you have a tech company, you want to weaponize government, regulatory capture to make it harder for small tech companies.

So we've entered into this exclusionary luxury positioning, especially at higher universities, that makes it much more difficult for younger people to get ahead.

I think young people are more skilled.

I think they're more empathetic.

I think they're much more aware of their social surroundings.

The most encouraging thing that's happened to me is my 12-year-old told me the other day, and you know, he's always trying to get me, he's obsessed with malls for some reason.

We've seen every mall in London.

Mall?

And he's like, mall.

And he's got the ultimate trick.

He's like, I've spent too much time on my phone.

I need to get off my phone.

It's like this jet.

I think the guys,

the kids 18 to 30 are just fucked.

They grew up with the phone, their formative ears.

I actually think the younger ones are figuring it out.

They're like seeing so much on, they're seeing so much information that's just like, this is not good for you.

And so

I have an eight-year-old and a 10-year-old, and it's like really, really hard.

And everybody.

They're already drawn to it.

Oh,

I have to constantly like figure out ways.

I mean, if I'm not putting him in a million sports or taking him somewhere or my other daughter and dance,

it's really hard because now they're getting their own phones, you know, like the not my kids, but like their friends.

A lot of it's peers, right?

And then if they're not getting them, then it's very difficult.

Well, this is what you'll get from people who don't have kids.

Well, okay.

And from big tech.

We realize it's a problem.

Overusage is a problem.

We are fans of limiting, you know, you should limit your kids' use.

It's a parenting problem.

And here's the thing.

And again, Jonathan Haidt, and I think her name is Jean Twangy just came out with this research.

There's something called the cohort effect.

And that is if your kid's on snap and you say, okay,

it's hurting you mentally.

One in three teenage girls has contemplated suicide.

One in five LGBTQ youth have actually tried suicide.

I mean, think about this.

I just went back to my public high school, University High School in LA, and I met with the superintendent of all of LAUSD.

One in five LGBTQ youth will attempt to commit suicide.

You got a high school with 2,000 kids, somewhere between 5% and 10% will identify as gay.

So call it 200 kids.

That means 10, he's sitting there at orientation.

10 of those LGBTQ kids are going to try and kill themselves.

I mean, this is...

This is staggering.

When I was at university high school, we had a big high school, every week there were memorials for for a kid who had died.

And you know how they died?

All of them, car accidents.

We didn't have seatbelts, we didn't have airbags.

We used to get ridiculously fucked up and drive along Sunset Boulevard to get to a party, and inevitably, some kid would roll his Jeep and get killed or something.

Now, the same number of memorials, but it's a different thing.

It's not driving, it's deaths of despair.

It's depression, it's suicide, it's opioid addiction.

So, we've replaced the car as no longer the culprit in alcohol.

It's depression, mostly fed by social media on a mobile device.

You know, I'm hopeful, but until there's regulation and legislation, we have an FDA for food, we have an SEC for banks, there's no regulatory body for big tech, and they're very smart.

They will weaponize very attractive, compelling women who talk about gender balance and personal loss, and we need to do better, and we're proud of the progress we've made.

And then they send out an email to a 14-year-old girl in the UK, and this happened, where the algorithm picked up that she was depressed.

And they sent her an email, and the exact words were, here are some images on suicide we thought you might find interesting.

And they send her images of nooses, pills, and razors.

This happened, this happened.

So, these organizations, until there is regulation, just the same way you cannot put a diabetes drug on the counter without hundreds of millions of testing, just as you cannot pour mercury into the river, you cannot put pesticides above a certain limit in your food, until we have that in big tech, it's just going to get worse.

And they have figured out the game: pretend you give a flying fuck and then be a mendacious fuck.

That is the playbook and they are very good at it.

Like even people like you or me, right?

Like you're on social media all the time or are you?

Like how do you control?

Like you said yourself, like you want validation.

You're doing all these things because of it.

Like I get drawn in all that.

I'm on social media.

It's very hard for my brain, even though I know intellectually, I still can't help myself.

So how do you expect an eight-year-old or a 10-year-old or a 12-year-old to have willpower to not do it?

It's really difficult.

You can't.

I try to talk about this open.

I think everybody has a certain level of addiction.

And addiction is instinctively healthy.

When we don't have access to salty, fatty, or sugary foods, when we had access to them, you ate up.

Because who knew when you were going to find meat again?

You know, fruit, you know, who knew when you were going to find this again?

And our instincts, our appetite, our instincts haven't caught up to the institutional production of these things.

So we have obesity.

It's just hard when you have salty, fatty food in front of you to not go, God, I got to eat it because I'm about to go into a cave for two months.

But when there's not enough mating opportunities, we've become obsessed with them.

I'm addicted.

Everybody has a certain level of addiction in their life.

It can be sugar, trans fats, affirmation, codependent relationship, online shopping, porn, whatever it is.

Hands down, my addiction is the affirmation of strangers.

I've spent way too much time focused on what total strangers think of me and not enough time.

I've gotten much better at it worrying about what the people who love me think of me.

Like, I'm sorry, Nolan, that's similar.

I don't have time right now.

I'm checking to see how many likes I got.

I mean, effectively, that's what I'm doing on social media.

I give a speech, I'm on TV, I immediately hit Twitter, and I'm like, do they love me?

That is way, it is pathetic, but I at least recognize it so I can modulate it.

I don't engage on Twitter, I don't respond to people because I generally find it's probably someone who isn't who they say they are, who's angry, or whatever it is.

But it's social media is really, I would say of the,

I've had four or five mental health episodes in the last two years, two or three of them have kind of started on social where someone attacks me or makes a cartoon of my comments and it upsets me and it takes me to a bad place.

And I'm like, well, why would I engage in this?

And the reality is affirmation and wanting to be loved is a key component of a successful society.

So it makes sense to want to have that affirmation.

I'm able to modulate it, but as you said, I remember the moment it happened with my oldest.

He did a handstand and I videoed it on the beach in Montauk.

And he said, can you post on YouTube?

And I said, sure.

And he got a like and a comment saying, great handstand.

And then another one.

And he's like, and all of a sudden, I could see him like, oh, no.

And he's like asking me, can we check my comments?

And then, and then he got the comment saying, saying, this is a stupid video.

Someone just wrote, this is a stupid video.

And I saw the disappointment in his eyes.

And then he needed to check it every 30 seconds.

Because here's the thing.

Ogilvy and the ad industrial complex from 1945 to 1995, they figured out that sex cells and all ads and all media

were kind of loosely or about the same thing.

Drink our beer, and you're more likely to have a random sexual experience because you'll be, you're younger and hotter when you drink our beer.

You're more European elegance.

You're like a rock when you buy a Chevy, which will make you more masculine, more attractive to potential mates.

It was the prospect of sex and mating that was the ultimate draw in marketing and media.

Now the algorithms have figured out, oh no, there's something much better, and it's rage.

And if we can get you to say something really aggressive, dunking on someone else, that will force them to come back and create, invite a bunch of people into a dialogue around vaccines,

altering your DNA, around Trump, whatever it is, whatever we can get you to argue about, whatever we can get you to start rage, that'll get everyone to weigh in and we're going to sell more Nissan ads and make more money.

And that rage, the transition of the substance of attention to Nissan ads, to shareholder value, is, in my opinion, the worst omission that's happened.

And that rage that we're putting into kids' lives and that lack of self-worth.

Who wants to be presented with their full self at the age of 15?

You know, I was, I mean, I don't know you at 15, I was 5, 10, 120 pounds of bad skin, but I got to go home and take a break every once in a while.

I wasn't ridiculed, but it wasn't like,

high school wasn't like an esteem-building experience.

No, it was not.

100% agree with you.

What if you're faced with your full self 24 by 7?

It's especially bad for girls.

Think about what a place of perversion Instagram begins with.

Instagram's algorithms encourage a 16-year-old girl to take pictures of herself in very revealing clothing such that her peers and strange men all over the world can evaluate and comment on it.

It's unbelievable.

I totally agree.

And it's like, and also because now if you don't, you don't get the likes, you don't get the affirmations.

So you feel...

like it becomes like it's like a slippery slope where then you're just basically naked and it's just normal normalized.

Yeah, it's rage and porn.

That's what I see.

Meta is brought to you by rage and porn.

Totally.

It's the truth.

I mean, so how do you monitor yourself, modulate it?

Are you giving yourself a finite, like, I'll go on an hour?

Like, do you do your own social media?

Do you have someone else to help you?

How do you do it?

I don't do it nearly as much myself.

I have someone, I basically use it as a marketing vehicle now.

And that is, I splice up my content.

I'm actually using AI to help me.

If I write a post, I'm like, you know, kind of my center of gravity or what my baby, if you will, is my newsletter, No Mercy, No Malice.

It goes out to about 350,000 people.

But now I can feed it into a generative AI and say,

give me eight tweets from this content.

And I'll pick two or three of them.

And then I have a social media manager who snakes it through LinkedIn, Instagram, Medium, all the different platforms.

But I use it as a vehicle for marketing my content.

I no longer engage with people.

I no longer go on YouTube and respond to the comments.

Because the comments, other than occasionally saying thank you when I get a nice message from somebody, and I want to to be clear 90 it depends on the platform 98 of the comments on linkedin are positive 90 on youtube are positive 70 or 80 on instagram twitter is kind of like 50 50 but i no longer just quite frankly i just no longer engage i'm like what am i doing why on earth would i engage here put your content out there use it as a business tool but i'm not going to paint their fence for free i'm not going to i'm not going to make them rich so i can like yell at someone who might be you know a fake account i just what's the point and it's pathetic that i would get so emotionally involved in arguing with someone.

It happens.

It's so with everybody, though.

Are you on TikTok also or no?

I am, but just, again, for promotional material, I can watch TikTok.

I find TikTok addictive.

I love it.

If it were up to my 12-year-old, if I said to them, okay, you can do anything you want, my 12-year-old would put on diapers, go into his room, lie down like he was in an opium den, and use the diapers so he wouldn't have to get up to pee and just watch TikTok until he literally passed out.

That would be his dream.

The Chinese are doing to our youth what we did to the Chinese or the British did to the Chinese with opium.

That thing is addictive.

I mean, I just think it's incredible.

So I try not to spend too much time on it because I look up and I'm like, well, that's 30 minutes on the route back.

And it's all, although it is kind of interesting to see what the algorithm decides you're interested in because it knows you better than yourself.

And what do they pull up for you?

What do you get on your?

Oh, for me, I'm wonky.

It's like economists, videos of great Danes, because I have a great Dane, and someone talking about social justice who also just happens to be ridiculously hot

that's kind of what it's figured out it's zeroed in on me and I'm like oh that makes sense that's hilarious

and occasionally a chiropractor adjusting someone I'm fascinated with that

yeah so that's my life that is my favorite

fitness because do you still do CrossFit or you stopped it I do, but I do old man CrossFit.

Do you do CrossFit?

No, I think it's too intense for me.

I'm a big fitness person, though, so I get a lot of fitness.

I mean, but, you know, I saw, I heard you talk about like how you do old man CrossFit and you love CrossFit and blah blah blah so you still do it oh yeah I mean it's my antidepressant it's what I do to sort of keep level headed I think yeah you know I coach a lot of young men and I'm like every young man every man under the age of 30 has a goal should be able to walk in any room and know that if shit got real they could kill and eat everybody or outrun them Totally true.

We talk a lot about the female form.

Women are beautiful.

It's just great art.

Like the female form is intoxicating, beautiful arresting.

The male form is ridiculously fucking strong and it's really impressive.

And there's nothing wrong with letting testosterone pour over a bone structure and a massive amount of double twitch muscle such that you can get ridiculously strong.

And I was an athlete in college and I got huge confidence, huge work ethic.

really tested my limits by being just ridiculously strong in my 20s.

And every man should be ridiculously strong at some point.

It'll make you kinder.

You want to see someone break up at a fight at a bar?

It's usually a guy who has his shit together and is really strong.

Totally true.

I did a talk on this actually.

I think maybe you don't agree that there's a correlation between how, like, being fit and success because all the disciplines it teaches you.

Like, it teaches you patience, teaches you discipline, it teaches you, you know, just so many different things about also being physically strong makes you more mentally strong and resilience.

I can go on and on.

And I think that most people I've spoken to or know or my friends who are, and I say success, not just money, by the way, in life, is they do take their health and their fitness seriously to some extent.

If you look at Fortune 500 CEOs, the thing they have most in common is not where they went to school.

It's not even their ethnicity.

Something like 484 of the Fortune 500 work out four plus times a week.

That many.

You're just...

And they're finding all sorts of stuff about it's how useful it is for depression, your success.

I mean, we're a very luxur society, and obesity is going to hold you back.

I mean, a lot of, and we know this, but we don't like to talk about it.

I find in culture on the far right, we weaponize vaccine amass.

For some reason, we decided science was somehow political.

And on the left, to a certain extent, we've weaponized obesity.

We don't want to have an open conversation about it because we're worried that we're fat-shaming people.

But the reality is, kids who are overweight are much less likely, much more likely to be depressed, alone, have fewer economic prospects,

low self-esteem,

Low confidence.

Well, depression.

And we need to solve food deserts.

We need to get people eating better, but also we need to celebrate fitness again.

There was something called the Presidential Fitness Awards when I was growing up, and they decided that it was bigoted or prejudicial against kids who were overweight or not in good shape.

And I'm like, yeah, okay.

But we should celebrate fitness.

And the fashion industrial complex was telling women for 50 years to be anorexic.

Now it's telling women to be diabetic.

I'm like, when do they zero in on like a good human form here?

And the same is true of women, but now more younger women are working out than men.

But I mean, embrace your, you know, I think a lot about masculinity and I think a key component of positive masculinity is being really strong such that you can protect others.

You know, firemen and cops and people in our military are generally really, really strong.

And I think they get a lot of confidence from that.

And I think that you want to take advantage of it, especially while you're young, because when you get to my age, you're going to realize, you're going to look back and think, oh my God, the shit I could do with my body back then.

And I'm glad I really tested the limits it helped me professionally it helped me emotionally it's part of my process when I go into a dark space mentally the first thing I do is sweat I find it kind of resets me you know I have a series of other techniques of things I do I have kind of a pattern for trying to get out of a dark place when I feel depression coming on

well I have an acronym for it scaffa the s is for sweat just sweat immediately sweat running whatever it is you got to sweat that resets your system a little bit the c is for clean i try and eat clean I try and cook at home a lot.

I just find it grounds me, just eating better, eating better, cleaner.

Abstinence, not abstinence in the way you think of it, but abstinence from THC and alcohol.

I love alcohol and THC.

I'm really good at them.

They make me, I'm a little bit, I'm a better version of myself, a little bit fucked up.

I'm nicer, funnier, more engaging.

I like alcohol.

I've gotten more out of alcohol than it's gotten out of me.

But when I'm not feeling good, I just decide and my head's in a weird place.

I just take a break from everything.

F is for family.

I find my boys are very grounding for me because they're so demanding and they can be such assholes that they demand my full attention.

So I'm not in my own head feeling sorry about my shit.

And then the last is, last A is affection.

With my dogs, with my boys, I find human touch or touch with another animal, being in the presence.

You know, everybody on the couch, dogs allowed on the couch, flopping all over each other, watching the Mandalorian.

I find that is very restorative.

And so I try to over-index across those five things when I feel myself going to

a bad, ugly, angry place.

Does it happen often?

Yeah, it happens more than it should for me.

You know, I'm blessed on every dimension and I get pissed off a lot and I hold a lot of anger.

I'm hard on myself.

I'm hard on other people.

You know, I struggle with depression.

And so it's something I think about a lot and how to treat it and how to recognize it.

Because, you know, it's sort of like the cobbler's kids have no shoes.

I talk a lot about these issues and yet I find sometimes I'm really bad at them.

I talk about, you know, we're talking about our kids and screen time.

My youngest developed out-of-control screen addiction.

And it's like, aren't you the last person that should let that happen?

Right?

I talk about this shit all the time.

I'm off railing against Shell Samberg in my home.

My son is home depressed, addicted to a screen.

It's always that way, though, right?

It's like that's the irony of life.

That's exactly what happens.

Yeah, so it's something it happens more.

I have blessings that are the size of Saturn, and unfortunately, a moon, you know, I have a mood that is more like one of those tiny moons.

I need to do a better job of my mood and outlook footing to my blessings.

Yeah.

Again, you're so honest.

I think that is like the charm of you.

It's very endearing.

Go on.

No, it's true.

It's super endearing.

I didn't even ask you.

I mean, I'm keeping you on it forever, but are you ever coming to LA in the next little while?

Oh, I love L.A.

I do the same thing.

I land in LA.

I got an In N-Out burger on Sepalveda.

Then I check into the Beverly Hills Hotel and I eat at the counter and I put on a pink robe and I pretend I'm a Hollywood executive from 50 years ago and put on big black glasses and I put an unlit cigarette on my face and just wave at people like I know them to see if they wave back.

I love it there.

And then I always invent excuses to go there.

I absolutely love LA.

I have never made a dollar in LA.

I have an agent.

I'm not sure why,

but I'll meet with him and he'll tell me why my latest TV project didn't get green lit.

So that's fun.

Are you trying to dig it?

What are you, who's your age?

Are you a WME or CAA?

Which one?

I'm a WME.

And by the way, they're really smart, good people.

And I'm being a little bit provocative here.

We actually have had some success, but something about LA, if I'd stayed in LA, I would not be making a lot of money.

Whatever it is I'm selling in Hollywood does not work.

I've had three TV shows canceled.

I'm the COVID-19 of TV networks.

I take sick networks and put them on a ventilator and kill them.

Wait, wait, wait.

What happened?

Okay, so by the way, just a side note, this was supposed to be, this was sold as this TV show to NBC, this podcast.

And just to kind of, you know, kind of say, yes, I agree, it was taking so long, nothing was happening.

I changed it around and made it into a podcast because it's entertainment.

Like, exactly.

If you wait for them, you're waiting for Godot, nothing happens.

You're putting your destiny in like the devil's hands and nothing ever goes on.

I find it, I gotta, the best thing to do is that New York's the best place to make money.

LA is the best place to spend it.

I go there.

I have an amazing time.

I do not know how people make money there because every meeting I have met with some of the most famous A-list actors and producers in the world.

And I'm not exaggerating.

Let me just still or summarize every conversation.

We'll be talking.

It's going really well.

I'll outline my project and what I'm thinking about.

Or they want to talk about a book.

Could we make Andrew Happiness into like an R-rated Wonder Years kind of thing?

Or could we turn the four into what succession was for family-controlled media?

We'll turn it into big tech.

We hit it off.

We outline this thing.

And the guy will literally, and it's always a guy, he'll stop me.

And he'll like, I'm not exaggerating, put his hand on mine and go, promise me one thing, that we're going to work together.

And I like leave the meeting.

My agent will call and say, how'd it go?

And I'm like, that was the best meeting I've ever had.

And then a week later, I'm like, have you heard back?

Like, no, nothing.

We haven't heard back.

And it's like, but he promised we would work together.

Oh, my God.

So checking out.

And he's like, he's like, Scott, he's like, he said, my agent, I said, what am I doing wrong?

Like, do you guys want to fire me?

I'm not making you a lot of money.

And I'm like, no, no, you're doing great.

And they're really like, people are somewhat cynical about agents.

My agents, Dan Worshafter or David Worshafter and Dan Alone, are like the nicest, smartest people in the world.

And they'll say to me, Scott, you've kissed about 50 frogs.

You got to kiss about 5,000.

So buck up, buddy.

This is not easy.

The rest of your life has been easy compared to Hollywood.

This is a hard place to get stuff done.

But yeah, I don't, I've never, I'm terrible in LA, terrible professional.

But you're not really, because now this is just like bonus, right?

Like you've made your money.

You've had such success.

It doesn't matter.

Like if something happens here, it happens here.

You're not banking your life on what happens here.

I want it.

I don't need it.

Exactly.

Like, if it happens, it's like great.

It's a cherry on the cake, but it's not like the be-all end-all.

What are you trying to sell?

Sorry.

Is it like,

are you trying to sell the algebra?

No, we're working on, you know,

what we're working on now is literally what billions was to hedge funds or succession was to media.

We're trying to get a basically original scripted series of drama about big tech, you know, season one, Tesla, season two, Cheryl Sanchez.

That'd be amazing.

And no one's biting it.

Oh, no.

Everyone bites.

It's just everyone gets indigestion because, like, who do you sell to?

Apple can't do it.

Amazon can't do it.

And it would be very controversial because this is the most important story that's never been told.

But these are individuals who are very powerful and they have a lot of hair on.

I mean, there's an underbelly.

A lot of weird shit has gone down at these companies and with these individuals.

So I think it's a little bit of a hot potato.

Like, everyone loves the idea, they want to do it, but it looks like I have an amazing, I didn't realize it's all all about the writer.

I have an amazing writer, amazing producer.

So, this actually might happen.

We'll see.

Oh my gosh, I'm so excited for you.

When are you coming back?

You think?

Oh, I come back to LA every couple months.

I love LA.

You guys have it figured out.

It's literally when I leave LA and I make a right and I'm thinking about In N Out and I go over Zuma Beach and I see the hills.

I'm like, why wouldn't everyone live in LA?

Well, it is expensive, the tax.

Well, yeah, if you could afford it.

But

I left San Francisco.

I never need to go back.

I lived there 10 years.

Beautiful city.

I'm done.

LA, oh my gosh.

I love everything about it.

I love the hot Uber drivers, hottest Uber drivers in the world.

You get into an Uber and you're like, Jesus Christ, you're good looking.

What do you do?

It's like, how do they get hot Uber drivers?

Because they're all struggling actresses.

Yeah, they're all trying to be actresses.

They're all models or whatever, right?

But great dispensaries, like cool parties.

The weather is like every day.

It's spectacular.

The Hollywood Bowl, I just can't get over LA.

I'd love it there.

And I walk around UCLA and just marvel at how blessed I was to get to go to school there.

I totally love LA.

You know, a lot of my friends who live here are from the UK.

You did the opposite.

You moved to the UK, which is like

I mean, at your age, like you have financial security.

Why wouldn't you just move here and live on the beach in Malibu?

Does it make any sense?

Yeah, I wish we talked a year ago.

I know, right?

That's kind of crazy.

Well, I was looking for

Yeah, but soccer games with myself.

Is that a great, I don't know, that doesn't seem like a great thing.

Oh, it's wonderful.

Okay, sorry.

It's wonderful.

It's wonderful.

Okay, well, I will wrap, even though I didn't ask you any of my questions really, because I was just more intrigued by the other stuff.

Maybe we can do this yet again for this, for part two when you come back to LA.

Thanks for that.

Yeah, I don't want to join it.

Will you let me know when you're here?

When it's a TV show.

Yeah, it might be.

Listen, they came back to me now, which is the irony.

Well, I can, so I don't, I mean, this can sound pretentious.

My team will say I don't do a lot of this and they look at downloads you reach more people with this than 90% of television shows.

I do

oh yeah.

You understand you understand how few people TV is the definition of empty calories.

It appeals to narcissists like me who want to see their

want to see their face on a screen.

But if you look at the actual economics, if you look at how many people are watching actual television.

Well, I don't know the exact numbers of you, but

between Pivot and Prop G, we get about a million downloads a week if i did a weekly show i would never get a million oh no you would never i mean you're right about that i mean the truth of the matter is you're right it's more of a narcissistic play but also it gives you a lot of other opportunities that you can leverage from tv that you can't really do from a podcast even though you're not wrong like i think right now i'm number three in business or something like that but but it comes it goes up and down but your podcast you get a that's amazing what do you talk about on yeah but that's combined i want to be clear that's prof g which is four times a week, and then that's Pivot twice a week.

So ProfG takes four shows to get the same number of downloads as Pivot.

It doesn't.

Do you ever put people on your show?

Is it just mostly you?

Will you put me on your show?

Of course.

Yeah.

We had Senator Mark Warner on today talking about the Restrict Act to try and potentially ban foreign media companies from adversarial countries.

So

we go very wonky, but we also have other

hitters such as yourself.

Well, I had a book that came out.

I was going to show it to you.

I had a book that came out a couple months ago, three months ago, called Bigger, Better, Bolder.

And so if you want to put me on your podcast, that would be very appreciative.

All right.

Well, we'll let you expect to hear from our producers.

Oh, God.

That means I'm not going to hear from you.

Just do this.

Promise me we'll work together.

That was good.

That was good.

By the way, I have someone that you should talk to, though, if you're serious about your show.

They're at WME too as a producer trust me WME knows everything about what I'm trying to do here so I think I'm set I think you are but like you never know like it's one of those things where it's always the most random person that introduces you to somebody you never know but if what if my friend is the one that's gonna make your movie or make your show you never know you know you never know but okay so you're gonna get back to me on your show and then you're gonna get back to me when you're in LA These are both good things.

Jennifer, congratulations on your success and thanks for this.

And you're good at what you do.

I really enjoyed this.

No, you're, listen, I appreciate you very much.

I really enjoyed this.

You're one of my favorites in this space.

So actually, probably right now, my favorite.

And I'm not just saying that because you want validation, but it's actually the truth.

So this is, I really appreciate you coming on my show.

Seriously.

Thank you.

It was my pleasure.

Thanks for your kind words.