Why Young Men Are Struggling Right Now with Oprah & Scott Galloway

Speaker 3 Just to be raw about this, would you have sex with you?

Speaker 4 I can't believe I just said that on Oprah.

Speaker 6 Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining me here on the Oprah podcast.
I am just delighted to be on the road in New York City with this fantastic audience. Thank you so much.

Speaker 6 If you're watching us on YouTube, You'll notice that we have more men than usual in our audience.

Speaker 6 That's because we invited them here, because we're talking about the alarming statistics that show that many men, especially young men, are not okay.

Speaker 6 And actually,

Speaker 6 in what some people believe is a dire crisis. Before I introduce my guest today, I want to just hear from some of you here.
So what's on your mind? What's your reaction to all of the headlines?

Speaker 6 You all have been seeing the headlines yourselves and how is that impacting or reflecting on your life? So Max, what do you want to say?

Speaker 8 First off, thank you both so much. You know, I think this is such an important conversation.
I'm 23. I'm a senior at NYU and I think I am speaking for all of my friends when I say that we feel lonely.

Speaker 8 You know, young men, anger is really the only societally acceptable emotion that we can express.

Speaker 8 We're confused, and we kind of need a voice in this wilderness, and you are that, and that's why this conversation is so important.

Speaker 6 Wow.

Speaker 6 Can I just ask you this, Max? Do your friends say that to each other, or how is that expressed?

Speaker 8 This is something that we text each other late at night. You know, this is not something we talk about out in the open.

Speaker 8 These are conversations that we have, you know, over the safety of a digital wall. And this is something that is really hard for us to talk to each other about face to face out in the open.

Speaker 6 And what are you all actually saying? Because

Speaker 6 the use of the word lonely, I mean, I've never heard, you know, young men say, I am lonely. So are people texting each other saying, I'm lonely, or are they saying what?

Speaker 8 I mean,

Speaker 8 you've mentioned that it took you forever to cry. You know, I remember the last time one of my male friends texted me, I just cried for the first time in years.

Speaker 2 And it's out of...

Speaker 8 It's out of desperation. Yes, it's I'm lonely.
It's, I don't know what I'm doing with my life.

Speaker 8 It's, it's desperation.

Speaker 6 Okay, thank you so much. Alfer.

Speaker 11 Hello. Hi.

Speaker 15 I think something that really is something that I would focus on pertaining to this issue is a need for role models within our communities.

Speaker 15 I grew up in Bedford-Suyveson, Brooklyn, and there was an absence at the time of role models within my neighborhood.

Speaker 14 Of course, I grew up in a single-parent household, but I did have a relationship with my father.

Speaker 11 But

Speaker 14 extended role models to look to and to glean from,

Speaker 14 it was a dig. It was a dig.
And you speak a lot about it, you know, because sometimes it's really, really hard to see where you can't go a certain place if you don't see it.

Speaker 14 And you want to see, you want to be able to see where you can go. So I think role models is a really important part of.
growing up and doing well and finding your place in the community.

Speaker 6 Thanks, Alfur. Well, my guest that you're referring to has been sounding the alarm about young men in America as a father of two sons he speaks and he says he grapples with his this thought

Speaker 6 how do I figure out a way to raise confident decent young men and I'm sure a lot of you have had that thought for yourselves that question became the guiding force for his newest book and let me tell you it's an amazingly really profound, thoughtful book.

Speaker 6 And if you are a man you're going to want to read it and if you're a woman you want to send it to every man you know. It's called Notes on Being a Man.
Fantastic title, by the way. Thank you.

Speaker 6 Welcome, entrepreneur, best-selling author, NYU professor, and podcaster extraordinaire, Scott Galloway. Scott.
Thank you.

Speaker 16 Thank you.

Speaker 6 You say that what's happening to men is a five-alarm fire for men in the United States. Tell us what's going on as you see it.

Speaker 18 Well, the statistics are pretty stark.

Speaker 21 If you walk into a morgue and there's five people who've died by suicide, four men,

Speaker 24 three times as likely, we don't, I mean, we have a homeless problem and an opiate problem, but what we really have is a male homeless and a male opiate problem.

Speaker 26 Three times as likely to be addicted, three times as likely to be homeless, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated. More single women own homes and single men.

Speaker 27 Women in urban areas are making more money.

Speaker 12 And let me be clear, we should do nothing to get in the way of that.

Speaker 29 But if we don't have, if our young men continue to flail, our country and women aren't going to continue to flourish.

Speaker 4 And just a couple of things you brought up, loneliness and then role models.

Speaker 31 One out of four men can't name a best friend.

Speaker 23 One out of seven men don't have a single friend.

Speaker 35 And what I would say is there's a lot of factors around this, but something to be cognizant of is that...

Speaker 6 Can I just stop you for a second? Is that unusual? Is that new?

Speaker 37 It's getting worse.

Speaker 39 And typically when a man isn't in...

Speaker 20 Women are relationally more invested or more talented establishing relationships.

Speaker 32 And typically they use their friends as a means of gaining confidence to enter into romantic relationship.

Speaker 40 Whereas a man, if he doesn't have a relationship by the time he's 30, there's a one in three chance he'll be a substance abuser.

Speaker 42 And also, there's a cartoon Oprah of the poor woman in her 30s that didn't find romantic love.

Speaker 3 And she's in a big sweater looking out on a rainy day listening to sad music.

Speaker 46 What a tragedy.

Speaker 42 That's a cartoon.

Speaker 47 The reality is men need relationships much more than women.

Speaker 33 Widows are happier after their husband dies.

Speaker 50 Widowers, it's true, widowers are less happy.

Speaker 23 Women live longer in relationships.

Speaker 3 They live two to four years longer.

Speaker 37 Men live four to seven years longer.

Speaker 53 So men actually need relationships more.

Speaker 25 What I would argue or what I would be cognizant of the fact when you're talking about loneliness is you're up against the deepest pocketed, most talented companies in the world with godlike technology who are trying to do one thing and that is sequester you from your other relationships.

Speaker 4 They're either trying to get you to glue to the phone and one of the ways they glue you to the phone is by enraging you, elevating content that makes you angry at your neighbor, elevate content that makes you start blaming the other gender or blaming immigrants for your problems.

Speaker 6 And this is being done on purpose.

Speaker 34 Well, they didn't start out as malicious, but I'm in marketing.

Speaker 3 We used to think that it was sex that sells.

Speaker 39 Then the algorithms found something that sells even more in terms of gluing you to a screen, and that is rage.

Speaker 34 So I'm not suggesting we censor these folks, but they will elevate content.

Speaker 39 They will figure out your political leanings, your fears, and then start elevating content that enrages you, because enragement equals an engagement, equals shareholder value.

Speaker 40 So keep in mind the amount of time you spend on a screen as a young man.

Speaker 1 And biologically, your prefrontal cortex isn't as developed as a woman.

Speaker 9 It doesn't catch up until you're 25.

Speaker 4 The executive function, the need for DOPA, it's much more dangerous in a young man.

Speaker 36 Keep in mind that you will find they are trying to essentially convince you you can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen.

Speaker 36 So keep in mind you are up against a foe that is trying to separate you from the outside world.

Speaker 55 And very simply, mathematically, the more time you spend on a screen,

Speaker 29 the less likely you are to have loving relationships, the less money you're going to make, the more likely you are going to be to engage in self-harm, the more likely you are going to blame other people.

Speaker 62 In some, the worse your life gets based on how much time you spend on a screen.

Speaker 43 We are mammals.

Speaker 36 We are meant to be outside and in the company of others.

Speaker 58 And we have for-profit companies trying to convince you to go the other way.

Speaker 34 So you're up against some very significant foes.

Speaker 63 On the idea of role models, the single point of failure for your reverse engineer a boy coming off the tracks is when he loses a male role model through either death, divorce, or abandonment.

Speaker 27 We have more single-parent homes than any nation in the world other than Sweden.

Speaker 56 And what's interesting is that girls in single-parent homes have the same outcome, same rates of college attendance, same income as dual-parent homes.

Speaker 55 A boy, when he loses a male role model, at that moment is more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college.

Speaker 63 What it ends up is that while boys are physically stronger, they're emotionally and mentally much weaker.

Speaker 37 And what we need, quite frankly, is we need more men to step up and fill the void.

Speaker 19 There are three times as many women applying to be big sisters in New York as there are men applying to be big brothers.

Speaker 52 So we have an obligation to get involved in a young man's life, right?

Speaker 59 And it's just to summarize here, if we want better men, we have to be better men.

Speaker 6 Well, I have to say, I think of this book, Notes on Being a Man,

Speaker 6 as a guidebook.

Speaker 6 And from your personal perspective, for how men can begin to show up in the world you talk about that everything from fitness to nutrition to money to work and how to meet women the thing that struck me was that eight men 18 to 25 45 percent of men 18 to 25 have not engaged personally on asking a woman out for a date or I find that to be shocking

Speaker 27 Almost half of young men have never asked a woman out in person.

Speaker 23 And there's a bunch of factors around that.

Speaker 24 One,

Speaker 3 it's difficult.

Speaker 37 I mean, it's just not easy.

Speaker 64 One of the key skills I think a man has to treat or try and give his son is to how to express romantic interest while making that person feel safe.

Speaker 23 And this is only anecdotal evidence.

Speaker 26 When I go out and I'm in social situations, I'll have women approach me and say, I'm here.

Speaker 24 I'm single and I'm ready to mingle.

Speaker 25 I look amazing.

Speaker 37 And a man hasn't approached me in three months, right? And 80% of women still expect the man to make that initial approach.

Speaker 60 And also, to a certain extent, men's interest in romantic and sexual relationships has been pathologized.

Speaker 20 Like there's something wrong if you want to meet women and ultimately have sex.

Speaker 37 And I think we need to start celebrating it because a man's desire to be in a relationship and quite frankly to have physical encounters is fire.

Speaker 68 And that is, it can be destructive.

Speaker 55 You spend too much time with porn.

Speaker 19 You start objectifying women.

Speaker 4 It can lead to misogynist or dangerous places.

Speaker 17 But that fire can also be captured in an engine and create tremendous progress.

Speaker 12 Wanting to have sex, if channeled correctly, which it is for most men, makes you want to dress better, smell better, have a kindness practice, have your act together, develop the resilience and the confidence to approach someone and maybe they're not interested and guess what?

Speaker 31 You're both going to be fine.

Speaker 68 These are key attributes.

Speaker 69 We need to celebrate men wanting to have relationships and making an approach.

Speaker 4 And if you don't develop those skills and that resilience and those calluses from rejection, you're going to struggle in other parts of your life.

Speaker 71 So the most rewarding thing in life is relationships, full stop.

Speaker 4 And I think the most rewarding relationship is building a life with someone and having kids.

Speaker 59 I'm not saying you have to have that to be happy.

Speaker 1 And quite frankly, just to be raw about this.

Speaker 1 When I saw my partner who I've had kids with, I wasn't thinking I'd really like lower rates on auto insurance.

Speaker 44 I was thinking, just to be blunt, I would really like to have sex with her.

Speaker 4 And that forced me to be a better person to try to have a kindness practice to demonstrate excellence.

Speaker 36 And 18 months later, we had our first son.

Speaker 12 So let's stop demonizing men for wanting to procreate. It's a wonderful thing as long as you channel it into wanting to be a better man.

Speaker 31 The only thing I can guarantee you is that anything wonderful in your life is going to have a lot of no's. Full stop.

Speaker 12 And unfortunately, men aren't getting to know because they're afraid to or they have what they think is a cheap substitute for these relationships online.

Speaker 6 So let's talk for a moment about your younger years, your parents, and what happened between them and your life after their divorce. That was all a huge, huge influence on you.

Speaker 6 How did your mother and father shape who you are as a man?

Speaker 65 I was raised by a single immigrant mother, lived and died a secretary, a lot of my life, right?

Speaker 65 And my father, like a lot of us, was a very handsome Scotsman, not very sophisticated, left at the age of 13.

Speaker 34 And just to be crude, he was a handsome man with a Scottish accent in 70s, California, which meant he could not only think with this dick, he could listen to it.

Speaker 41 He was married and divorced.

Speaker 4 I can't believe I just said that on Oprah. Yeah.

Speaker 12 He was.

Speaker 65 He was married and divorced.

Speaker 6 I can see how you could think with it. I'm just trying to understand how he listens to it.
But anyway, okay.

Speaker 23 He was married and divorced four times.

Speaker 41 Started his third marriage while he was still married to my mom.

Speaker 23 My father was not an especially high character person in terms of how he treated women and how he treated my mom.

Speaker 25 And so not having a male role model around, he moved away,

Speaker 16 I think took, quite frankly, a toll on me.

Speaker 34 But the worst part about it was he wasn't very good to my mom.

Speaker 38 He wasn't nice.

Speaker 20 And the lesson I carry forward as a father, I do think the best thing you can do to raise good men, quite frankly, is just to be a very loving, supportive partner.

Speaker 20 You want good men who are more secure and better in relationships.

Speaker 43 They will model you.

Speaker 4 You can tell them whatever you want.

Speaker 23 They're just going to watch what you're doing.

Speaker 37 The first rule as a man is you need to be very good to their mother.

Speaker 39 Even if you end up going through divorce, the more generous you are, the kinder you are.

Speaker 70 I think your sons are going to notice that and going to model it.

Speaker 21 My mom was, you know, every day, when you get older,

Speaker 33 You get more thoughtful. That's the good news.

Speaker 4 The bad news is you get more thoughtful and you start thinking about how did I get on Oprah, right?

Speaker 66 And the way I got on Oprah was, one, I'm a product of big government, the generosity and vision of California taxpayers and the regions of UC.

Speaker 4 I got to go to UCLA and Berkeley for almost no money, had a 74% admissions rate when I applied. This year was 9%.

Speaker 72 But also,

Speaker 31 just the irrational passion for my well-being and my mother.

Speaker 26 Every day, I remember going to lunch with my mom.

Speaker 23 I was...

Speaker 4 teenager, I was 5'10 with terrible acne, 110 pounds.

Speaker 56 And she would literally stop and go, you are so handsome. I can't get over it.

Speaker 3 And she would sit there and stare at me.

Speaker 12 Anyway, if you believe,

Speaker 21 if you say to a kid every day in, you know, explicit and implicit ways, you're wonderful, I just don't, I think at some point they start to believe that.

Speaker 36 So that confidence is still with me.

Speaker 6 That's really one of the first things I underlined on page 28 when you said,

Speaker 6 this is something for us all to remember. Having a good person express how wonderful you are hundreds of times changes everything.
I was tethered.

Speaker 6 I'd never thought of it that way before. Having a person express how wonderful you are hundreds of times actually tethers you in a way that nothing else can.

Speaker 38 Yeah. Yeah, I was grounded.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 53 the thing is, and this goes back to mentorship, and there's a lot of men in this audience.

Speaker 22 And by virtue of the fact you're here, you probably have your act together more than you realize.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 52 And there's a fear that you need to be a CEO or a baller or an adolescent psychiatrist to get involved in a young man's life.

Speaker 18 It is so easy to add value.

Speaker 70 What I would suggest is masculinity is taking care of yourself, taking care of your community, taking care of your country.

Speaker 40 But I think the ultimate expression of masculinity is to get involved in a young man's life.

Speaker 39 And the place to start is with single mothers in your workplace.

Speaker 58 Do you want to come over and watch a ball game?

Speaker 51 Would you like to hang out?

Speaker 23 I'm watching my car this weekend.

Speaker 22 Would he like to come over?

Speaker 70 But that really is the single point.

Speaker 18 And even just saying that boys needed men a few years ago was seen as triggering.

Speaker 28 What? Women can't raise men?

Speaker 60 Of course they can.

Speaker 18 But the research is clear.

Speaker 48 Boys need men and there's an absence of them in our society right now.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I remember years ago doing a show and a lot of women, single mothers, getting offended when the experts said at that time that you can be a great mother, but you can't be a father.

Speaker 6 Because a lot of mothers think that they are also the fathers, but men need male role models, period. That's what you're saying.

Speaker 74 100%.

Speaker 26 And also, to be clear, I think that masculine, we talk in the book about masculine and feminine energy.

Speaker 27 that masculine energy can be brought in a household headed by two women.

Speaker 34 That feminine energy can be brought, that mix, I think a mix of masculine and feminine energy is the greatest alliance in history.

Speaker 4 The genders have done a great job of convincing themselves that it's the other gender's fault.

Speaker 19 And I hold on to that the greatest alliance in history is a mix of the wonderful kind of healing, nurturing, gracefulness of femininity.

Speaker 4 and the more risk-aggressive, more what I'll call protective instincts of masculine energy.

Speaker 3 But I want to be clear, neither of those attributes are sequestered to people born as men or women.

Speaker 4 My closest male friends tend to be more feminine in nature.

Speaker 20 I'm drawn to men who are more caring.

Speaker 44 But I do think masculinity comes easier to people born as males.

Speaker 12 And that if they need a code, they can lean into an aspirational form of masculinity.

Speaker 45 I think that we all need a code.

Speaker 40 And I think young men are desperate for some sort of guardrails.

Speaker 11 Okay.

Speaker 6 On page 137, you say every man needs to develop a code, a series of adjectives or behaviors that guide and define his everyday behavior.

Speaker 6 So how do young men develop a code amidst so much, you know, divisiveness and distractions? How do you get a code?

Speaker 4 Well people get it from different places.

Speaker 20 They can get it from their religion.

Speaker 45 They can get it from the military.

Speaker 35 They can get it from their family.

Speaker 58 I got my first code, I would argue, from my workplace.

Speaker 22 There was just a way you approached work and other people, and I started to, that was very helpful to me.

Speaker 20 But what I put forward in the book is I think masculinity can serve as a code, but an aspirational vision of it, specifically be a provider.

Speaker 26 I think every man at the outset of his career should assume at some point he might have to take economic responsibility for his household.

Speaker 6 Because you believe that's one of the tenets of being a man.

Speaker 4 Well, I think in a capitalist society, men are disproportionately evaluated on their economic viability and also the way men evaluate themselves.

Speaker 23 And if you're not economically viable, I think you're going to have a tough time having the self-esteem, having society respect you, and quite frankly, attracting mates.

Speaker 4 And we don't like to say this out loud, but 75% of women say economic viability is key to a mate.

Speaker 53 Only 25% of men say this about women.

Speaker 53 So the reality is, as much as we'd like to think it doesn't matter, when the woman starts making more money than the man in a household, the likelihood of divorce doubles.

Speaker 4 The use of erectile dysfunction drugs triples because the man feels worse about himself.

Speaker 19 I am not suggesting that we do anything to get in the way of women's assent economically.

Speaker 1 It's wonderful.

Speaker 14 We need it.

Speaker 68 Quite frankly, it won World War II because we put women in factories and it has saved our economy that women are killing it.

Speaker 40 It's an amazing thing.

Speaker 52 But as a man,

Speaker 12 you should assume at the beginning, you need to find the certification and demonstrate the the discipline and the will to be economically viable.

Speaker 31 And sometimes that means getting out of the way of your partner and being more supportive of her because she happens to be better at that money thing than you.

Speaker 65 That is also a form of masculinity.

Speaker 68 But I hold on to the fact if you are not economically viable as a man in this economy, in this society, not saying it should be this way, but it is, you are going to struggle.

Speaker 19 You're going to struggle in terms of what society thinks of you, what you think of yourself, and quite frankly, what a lot of women think of you.

Speaker 54 Economic, being a provider.

Speaker 21 Two, protector.

Speaker 20 The whole point of prosperity, the whole shooting match, is such that you can move to being a protector.

Speaker 26 Think about the most masculine jobs, fireman, cop, military.

Speaker 21 The end of the day, they protect.

Speaker 64 And then the ultimate expression of masculinity, planting trees the shade of which you will never sit under.

Speaker 5 You want to be a provider, you want to be a protector, and you want to be a procreator.

Speaker 3 And I think that vision of masculinity as a code can serve as really wonderful guardrails for a young man.

Speaker 76 We need to take a quick break. Up next, we'll talk to the man behind an emotional viral video he posted about his own fears and struggles with relationships.

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Speaker 76 Hi and welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. We're talking to best-selling author and podcaster Scott Galloway.
You may know him as Prof G.

Speaker 76 We're talking to him about his revelatory new book, Notes on Being a Man.

Speaker 6 In the introduction, you say you heard from a lot of moms who say something like, I have a daughter who lives in Chicago, works at PR, and another daughter who's at Penn, my son lives in our basement, vapes, and plays video games.

Speaker 6 You believe that a lot of mothers are also the ones who are sounding the alarms on what's going on with young men.

Speaker 33 The dialogue Oprah has gotten so much more productive.

Speaker 64 Five years ago, when I saw this data and I started talking about it, the reaction was pretty much a gag reflux because the reality is

Speaker 20 People who look and smell and feel like me have had a 3,000-year head start.

Speaker 4 From 1945 to 2000, America registered a third of all economic growth or just 5% of the population.

Speaker 37 So we had six times the prosperity in America.

Speaker 59 And then all of that prosperity was essentially shoved into a third of the population that was white, male, and heterosexual.

Speaker 17 So I have had gale-force hurricane winds in my sales.

Speaker 36 I have had unfair advantage.

Speaker 43 The problem is, is that we are holding 19-year-old men accountable for my privilege.

Speaker 23 They do not benefit benefit from the same unfair advantage that I had.

Speaker 4 And that's probably a good thing.

Speaker 29 But we are holding them accountable.

Speaker 43 Young men are on any metric really struggling.

Speaker 3 And the alliance between men and women needs to be restored such that we can be the afterburners for their success and their ascent as women.

Speaker 46 But also I do think women play a role in not falling into this trap of thinking, well, you've had a 3,000-year head start.

Speaker 36 I don't feel sorry for you.

Speaker 23 You know who wants more economically and emotionally viable young men?

Speaker 25 Women.

Speaker 6 So let's bring in more of the men in our audience. Let's take a look at this video that Brandon posted on Instagram.

Speaker 79 I don't know if I'll ever

Speaker 79 be a husband or a father.

Speaker 80 And that really, really hurts me.

Speaker 79 Because that's all I've wanted since I was a kid.

Speaker 6 And it eats at you.

Speaker 64 And you wonder if you're ever going to get what everyone else has.

Speaker 3 If you're good enough.

Speaker 18 If you deserve it.

Speaker 64 If it's something that's meant for you.

Speaker 79 And I've had to come to terms with maybe it's not.

Speaker 64 And while that brings tears to my eyes and makes me as sad as someone could be,

Speaker 79 you just got to trust God's plan.

Speaker 79 But I can still dream.

Speaker 6 Brandon, why do you think you feel that way? What's behind it?

Speaker 79 I've struggled with that alone feeling my entire life. I got to live my dream job as a sports reporter on TV, and people would see me on NFL sidelines interviewing the biggest stars.

Speaker 79 But behind the scenes, I was struggling with that. alone feeling.
I thought I met my wife, the woman I was going to have kids with, and unfortunately it was a really toxic relationship and breakup.

Speaker 79 And it put me at a spot where I was suicidal and didn't want to live anymore. And so I had to check into a hospital, get help, and I realized for the first time that I wasn't alone.

Speaker 79 And I took that moment and I decided to, similar to what you're doing, be hopefully a vulnerable man that can help others.

Speaker 79 And so I created the mental game where I interview athletes and celebrities like Terry Cruz, Nate Burleson, Kevin Gates, these men who you think might not have any problems in the world.

Speaker 79 And they struggle with the same things as me and other men in this room.

Speaker 79 And I also go all over the country and try to speak.

Speaker 79 We've been to 46 states, spoken to over 250,000 kids, adults, men, women, just trying to show that, look, it's okay to be alone and to be vulnerable as men, but you have to show those emotions.

Speaker 79 You know, I watched my dad my entire life hold it all in. And it wasn't until the night that I called him and said, hey, I'm going to take my own life that we ever talked about mental health.

Speaker 6 So is all that talking and speaking about it, has it helped you resolve your own?

Speaker 79 Yeah, I mean, I was emotional watching that video. We locked eyes as soon as it started playing because I posted that three weeks ago on a Friday night, not thinking it would do anything.

Speaker 79 And it had 5 million views when I woke up because I think a lot of other men felt just like me. So it is like therapy.
I go to therapy. I spent two weeks in the hospital.

Speaker 79 This has become my purpose to help myself and others.

Speaker 79 But I think what I've learned traveling the country and working with these athletes and celebrities and just anyone that's struggling with their mental health, specifically men, is a lot of us feel the same way as I did in that video.

Speaker 79 And that's why it went viral. But we're scared of what our peers, other men in the room, women will think of us.
I mean, I gave up on dating. I want to get married.
I want to have kids one day.

Speaker 79 But since, you know, I lost to I thought was going to be my wife and the mother to my children, I kind of put all that energy in me. And so I'm not on dating apps.

Speaker 79 I don't, the rejection thing, that's the biggest thing I'm scared of. I would never go up to someone at a bar and say, hey, you're beautiful.
Let me buy you a cup of coffee. I don't drink anymore.

Speaker 79 I'm sober. I struggle with addiction.

Speaker 79 And maybe in my younger days in college, I'm cool. All right.
You get no. Great.
Go to the next one. Now is being someone that's 32.

Speaker 6 So what Scott said here earlier about rejection, how did that land with you?

Speaker 79 I mean, it hit hard because like, it's funny, my professional life, I took all of the risk I could possibly do, leaving a job as an NFL reporter and starting my own thing.

Speaker 79 Personal life, I have no interest in that. Just because of that fear.

Speaker 79 And so rather than risk that, I'd rather pour that energy into myself, going to the gym, working on my business, working on my mental health.

Speaker 79 I think loving yourself, I didn't love myself until like a year and a half ago. And it took me a long time to get to that point.

Speaker 6 Okay, what's your question for Scott?

Speaker 79 I think for me, it bounces off that of how can you balance loving yourself, but also trying to find that person to love.

Speaker 79 I feel like for the first time, like I said, I do love myself and I'm ready to date. I want to get married one day and be a father and have kids, but it's like, how do you balance the two?

Speaker 79 Can you do both at the same time?

Speaker 4 So I just feel like I need to disclose, I have no domain expertise or training in psychiatry.

Speaker 3 And so when you talk about mental health issues, I can talk to you about my own mental health issues, but I don't ever want to supplant the notion that you should talk to professionals and get real advice.

Speaker 39 I'm speaking to you as someone who's been through a lot of what you've been through, but my advice is anecdotal.

Speaker 3 So just that asterisk.

Speaker 58 I coach a lot of young men, and I have enough respect for you not to PG-13 or whitewash my content.

Speaker 66 When men usually say young men, the young men I work with usually want to move out of the parents' house.

Speaker 32 They want to start making some money. And then ultimately what they end up is like, when they start trusting me, I'd really like a girlfriend.

Speaker 23 And I go through a series of exercises.

Speaker 3 And the first thing I ask them is like, would you have sex with you?

Speaker 75 What do you look like?

Speaker 41 Do you take your appearance seriously?

Speaker 24 Do you have a plan?

Speaker 30 Do you have a kindness practice?

Speaker 31 How do you demonstrate excellence?

Speaker 2 Right? The basis of that.

Speaker 6 I love the way you talk about, you emphasize kindness so much in Notes on Being a Man.

Speaker 35 There are three reasons women are attracted to men sexually, and there's a ton of research here.

Speaker 4 Number one, and we don't like to talk about this, is the man's ability to signal resources.

Speaker 29 All right?

Speaker 68 We don't like to admit that, it's important.

Speaker 41 Number two

Speaker 38 is intellect.

Speaker 29 Because instinctively, people who make good decisions for the tribe, the tribe lives longer.

Speaker 35 So women are drawn to intellect.

Speaker 25 The fastest way to communicate an intellect is humor.

Speaker 31 And just so I can offend everybody,

Speaker 36 it's a joke, but we can be funny about this.

Speaker 31 This is my impersonation of a woman.

Speaker 30 I'm laughing, I'm laughing, I'm naked.

Speaker 51 If you can make a woman laugh,

Speaker 59 the only dates I ever got with people I can make laugh, if you can make a woman laugh, she will likely have a coffee with you.

Speaker 23 And then the third thing, and this is the most underleveraged secret weapon in mating, kindness.

Speaker 34 Because women instinctively know there might be periods in their life through gestation or because they are smaller physically that they need someone who baseline is kind, right?

Speaker 12 So a kindness practice.

Speaker 38 I'm not proud of this.

Speaker 6 You say you were not always kind.

Speaker 36 I'm not proud of this.

Speaker 31 I was not born with the kindness gene.

Speaker 44 And when I had kids, I realized that they were going to model me.

Speaker 1 So I believe, like anything, you can develop a practice.

Speaker 4 And every day I tried to do something.

Speaker 55 that demonstrated some sort of generosity towards someone with no reciprocal expectation.

Speaker 6 When did you realize you were not a kind person?

Speaker 81 Professionally, when I realized that I could have been so much nicer, I could have...

Speaker 6 Were you unkind? Were you an asshole?

Speaker 36 Never mean, never unkind.

Speaker 17 But what you realize is that you have...

Speaker 31 Everyone has capital.

Speaker 28 When you're young, you have more time than money.

Speaker 26 When you're older,

Speaker 34 I've got some early success.

Speaker 47 I would have been so easy for me to lift young people up.

Speaker 68 I was never mean, but it would have been so easy for me to say, you were just outstanding in that meeting.

Speaker 31 Or, I've been watching you.

Speaker 12 I think you're going to do great. This is where I think you could improve.

Speaker 62 I just, it's so easy.

Speaker 59 And you don't have to be a baller.

Speaker 68 I now stopped.

Speaker 42 I saw an old couple.

Speaker 4 I'm virtue signaling right now, but it's true. I saw an old couple in the street.
They looked amazing. It was one of those New York couples.
And I stopped them and I said, you guys just look amazing.

Speaker 44 And I could tell it made them feel good and it made me feel better about myself.

Speaker 83 And now after doing this for 20 years,

Speaker 51 it's common practice.

Speaker 35 But these are basic reasons why women are drawn to men.

Speaker 44 What I would say to you is it sounds like you've worked a lot on yourself and you're ready.

Speaker 83 Boss, there's no free lunch.

Speaker 19 If you want to make real money, if you want to hang out with someone higher character than you and better looking than you, quite frankly, get ready to eat shit because it involves rejection over and over and over.

Speaker 19 Nothing wonderful will happen to you without taking an uncomfortable risk.

Speaker 36 And a lot of it is just practice.

Speaker 47 Get used to know.

Speaker 69 And when I tell these men I mentor, church group, sports league, whatever it might be, and then you got to express friendship or romantic interest.

Speaker 44 And this is what's going to happen.

Speaker 4 You're probably going to get to know.

Speaker 32 And then you're going to call me the next day.

Speaker 58 I'm going to say, are you all right?

Speaker 4 And that person's going to say yes. I'm going to say, okay, now the next time it's two approaches.

Speaker 46 You just got to build some calluses.

Speaker 39 There's no easy way around it.

Speaker 4 No is the path to wonderful yeses.

Speaker 7 Got that, Brandon.

Speaker 25 I got it.

Speaker 79 I'm going to try my best.

Speaker 2 I think the humor part helps.

Speaker 79 Thank you.

Speaker 6 I applaud you, Brandon, too, for being so, allowing yourself to be so vulnerable on that tape. That's why you got 5 million responses because people respond to your heart.

Speaker 6 Jermaine is 25, and first, here's a quick look at one of his TikToks.

Speaker 24 America, I'm not going to lie.

Speaker 14 I really think that the like us as men, the male power, we are literally having a crisis that nobody is talking about.

Speaker 80 There are so many men that I know that are struggling with like mental health and depression, especially in these times where the economy and like

Speaker 80 money and jobs, more men don't have jobs right now. More men are going through financial struggles.

Speaker 80 More men my age who got degrees, who went to college, who did all the right things, cannot find jobs. And nobody's really talking about it.

Speaker 80 And yet we're seeing these stats that say like, oh, less men are having kids, less men are getting married. Do y'all think that's by choice?

Speaker 59 That is not by choice.

Speaker 80 This is not our father's and our grandfather's economy. Why would I sit here and put myself in a bigger bond of trying to get married, have a kid, and buy a house if I can't even survive on my own.

Speaker 80 And I feel like nobody is talking about this. And eventually, this has to become a part of the public conversation as society is moving forward.

Speaker 6 Okay, we are having that conversation right now.

Speaker 7 We are. We are.

Speaker 6 So ask and it's given. So what's your question?

Speaker 80 Yeah, I think my question and relating back to the video is that I think we're having a conversation about men. who are just, you know, in the basement and just unsure where life is taking them.

Speaker 80 What we're not having the conversation about is men like me who did do the right things.

Speaker 80 You know, you go to college, you have the right job, you don't really struggle necessarily with relationships or women or whatever, but you do have this kind of fear of I'm doing all the right things right now at 25.

Speaker 80 How do I stay on track with the way the political climate is going, the way the economy is going? This is a whole new era that we're in.

Speaker 80 And so my question is just, what do you say to men who are 25, who are on the right path, doing the right things to stay focused and stay ahead of the curve for the future when it looks very unpredictable here in the United States?

Speaker 34 You just wish as you got older

Speaker 30 you could wrap your arms around people and give them the confidence they deserve.

Speaker 23 You know, if I had your looks, I'd be the leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination right now.

Speaker 2 Look,

Speaker 5 this pivots to solutions, but the reality is my generation and old people have figured out a way to continue to vote themselves more money.

Speaker 41 People over the age of 60 are 72 percent wealthier than 60 year olds 40 years ago.

Speaker 58 People under the age of 40 are 24 percent less wealthy.

Speaker 54 Marriage is a new luxury item.

Speaker 51 If you're in the top quintile of income-earning homes, there's a four in five chance you'll get married.

Speaker 55 If you're a man in the bottom quintile, there's a one-in-five chance you'll get married.

Speaker 30 Unfortunately,

Speaker 53 income as it relates to college, certification, confidence, the ability to put yourself in environments for mating, it's really unfortunate.

Speaker 54 It's now related to the income of your parents.

Speaker 34 So what I would suggest is the following.

Speaker 50 Realize that a lot of this is not your fault and forgive yourself.

Speaker 58 And two, as citizens, there are common sense solutions, but they're not that romantic or don't make for good TikToks.

Speaker 24 We need $25 an hour minimum wage.

Speaker 44 We need, you know what would be the best thing for young men right now?

Speaker 42 Universal child care.

Speaker 48 Where a man is at the greatest risk of self-harm is in the year after he gets divorced.

Speaker 41 He loses his primary relationship.

Speaker 69 One out of three men no longer have contact with their children six years after divorce.

Speaker 70 That is the zone of suicide.

Speaker 29 And why do young people get divorced?

Speaker 41 Is it a lack of shared values?

Speaker 27 No.

Speaker 4 Is it infidelity?

Speaker 29 No.

Speaker 67 It's financial strain.

Speaker 23 So if we want healthier, loving households, it's pretty damn easy.

Speaker 69 My generation needs to stop hoarding so much wealth with economic policies that benefit us.

Speaker 68 For the first time in our nation's history, in 275 years, a 30-year-old isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at the age of 30.

Speaker 31 National service, tax credits for third places, $25 an hour, minimum wage, more vocational training, universal child care, Pell Grants.

Speaker 36 When I went to UCLA, the admissions rate was 74%.

Speaker 17 This year, it'll be 9%.

Speaker 34 I went for $7,000 total tuition.

Speaker 60 My first house in San Francisco cost $280,000, which I bought when I was 28.

Speaker 67 But now my generation has weaponized college and housing.

Speaker 4 Once I get a degree in a house, I want the admissions rates to go down, and all of a sudden I become concerned with traffic, and I don't like any more housing permits.

Speaker 74 This is pretty damn simple.

Speaker 36 We got to put more money in everyone's pocket here.

Speaker 68 I got to stop buttressing my own wealth with your credit card, deficit spending that elevates my wealth and robs economic opportunity from you.

Speaker 33 The greatest thing we could do about the loneliness crisis and the mating crisis, pretty damn simple.

Speaker 69 Put more money in your pockets.

Speaker 21 Full stop.

Speaker 6 Makes sense, Mesa? Makes sense. Thank you.
Thank you, Jermaine. Let's talk about the term toxic masculinity.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Now, you say that this elicits all sorts of reactions, and you call that phrase the emperor of all oxymorons. What's your take?

Speaker 68 Well, I don't think there's any such thing as toxic masculinity.

Speaker 65 I think there's cruelty, there's abusive power, there's violence.

Speaker 37 But masculinity is supposed to get in the way of those things.

Speaker 70 Women need to cross the street when they see men because they feel safer, right?

Speaker 69 It breaks my heart and that you hear in New York, women are afraid to get on subways and they'll say because there's too many men.

Speaker 25 Yep.

Speaker 62 So from a very young age, we have to teach our boys, you're a protector.

Speaker 55 That's how you demonstrate masculinity.

Speaker 56 And it's not just physical.

Speaker 31 Real men break up fights at bars.

Speaker 52 They don't start them.

Speaker 29 Your default operating system as a man should should be to weigh in and protect.

Speaker 72 That's why we're here.

Speaker 42 We have denser bone structure, better double-twitch muscle, and this amazing thing called testosterone.

Speaker 43 And the whole reason we're given that is such that we can protect people.

Speaker 12 Move to that.

Speaker 76 Time for a break. If you're finding this to be an eye-opening conversation, I invite you to share it with a friend or the young men in your life.
More when we come back.

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Speaker 78 Terms apply.

Speaker 76 Hey there, welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. If you have a young man in your life who's struggling, I'm hoping you'll share this podcast and start a conversation together.

Speaker 6 Okay, so some women heard we were talking to men today and wanted to be here.

Speaker 61 Maria Claire, what do you want to say?

Speaker 10 I just want to say your household name in my apartment of three 25-year-old women. So I'm very, very grateful for the work that you're doing.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 10 really, anytime I hear this conversation being advanced, it brings me a lot of joy and hope to see thought leaders just stepping in, wanting to to protect and honestly redeem and restore my generation because,

Speaker 10 I mean, I'm heartbroken by what's going on, and I'm heartbroken for everyone in this room. I'm heartbroken for myself.

Speaker 73 What breaks your heart the most?

Speaker 10 The desperation. It breaks my heart for me and like my girlfriends that I talk to.

Speaker 10 Any hope and desire that we'll be married with kids is like faith-driven. Because if you look at the facts, there's no reason to it.

Speaker 10 You know, like why would I hope that someone would like want to say I do to me a bunch of times throughout my life if like they can't even use the word date?

Speaker 10 And it's heartbreak and it's not anger because I know that it's a systematic problem.

Speaker 6 But I think that's a very, very profound distinction that it's heartbreaking not anger.

Speaker 10 It's not anger, it's heartbreak. And

Speaker 10 I mean, I could talk all day about how I think big tech is the enemy of community and fruitful relationships. And social media almost ruined my life.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 10 I can only speak for myself when I say that, but it really almost did. And I think it is ruining some lives.
And I think it will continue to do so if we don't do something about it.

Speaker 10 But I guess my question for you is something a little bit more abstract and loftier.

Speaker 10 In the midst of this crisis, how

Speaker 10 can we love each other well in this generation? How can we show up for each each other? And

Speaker 10 what type of encouragement do men need to hear from their peers?

Speaker 37 I just don't think there's any getting around it.

Speaker 25 I think we have robbed prosperity and opportunity from your generation to transfer it to mine.

Speaker 4 The DN democracy is working too well.

Speaker 26 Old people have figured out a way to vote themselves more money.

Speaker 37 I would suggest is in terms of how we show up for each other, I think big tech is part of the problem.

Speaker 53 I think synthetic relationships for people under the age of 18 should be outlawed.

Speaker 4 I think social media, there should be no social media under the age of 16, no phones in schools.

Speaker 32 My colleague at NYU, Jonathan Heights, done a lot of great work around this.

Speaker 46 But what I would suggest is that

Speaker 54 getting out,

Speaker 4 saying yes a lot, yes to invitations.

Speaker 54 I think young people do have more agency than they recognize.

Speaker 33 And that the key to happiness, I think, is almost entirely correlated with how much time you spend out of the house.

Speaker 34 And so what I would say to any young person is try to say yes to as much many things as are out of the house.

Speaker 34 And also I feel like young people through Instagram and online dating had developed a series of red flags where they immediately say, oh, he's not over six feet.

Speaker 29 or she doesn't have a certain color hair and they they ride off each other.

Speaker 58 So this is the reality of human sexuality.

Speaker 41 Men feel, men are much less choosy.

Speaker 41 We're much more promiscuous.

Speaker 53 The reality is men need venues to demonstrate excellence.

Speaker 81 And if you talk to people who've been married longer than 30 years, almost always one was more interested than the other.

Speaker 37 And it was usually the man that was more interested than the woman.

Speaker 1 But what happened is at church, I liked the way he treated his parents.

Speaker 22 I found out he was really talented.

Speaker 45 He made me laugh.

Speaker 70 Where does a man demonstrate excellence right now?

Speaker 69 They're not going to church.

Speaker 34 Remote work, I think, is the worst thing to happen to young people.

Speaker 55 A third of relationships begin at work, and 99% of them are consensual.

Speaker 1 It's not like it's all predatory.

Speaker 58 I've had 11 marriages at the companies I've started, and I'm like, I had no idea they were sleeping together.

Speaker 29 Did anyone know?

Speaker 2 And they get married.

Speaker 31 And that's a wonderful thing.

Speaker 29 Anyways, what I would say is that vote for people who are going to recognize the young people need to share in this prosperity, but also to realize you do have agency, right?

Speaker 4 And getting out, being friendly, being open, you know, that's the only advice I can provide. And try and put away the phone because

Speaker 4 200 times a day, you're going to get a reminder that you're not living up to this fake life that someone else is pretending to have.

Speaker 62 This is the best.

Speaker 6 I see you guys nodding. Everybody's nodding because it feels like you've gotten this, right?

Speaker 6 You know this is happening. So Jack is in our audience.
And I hear, Jack, you read Scott's book and you have a question about dating

Speaker 84 yeah a lot of excerpts from your book stuck with me yeah but one in particular is a callback to the point you were making on how one of the most important strengths a young man can develop is a willingness to endure rejection yeah

Speaker 84 I love to go to run clubs and try to be intentional about going to third spaces with my friends.

Speaker 84 And we often talk about like how many strangers are we going to say hi to? How many people are we going to ask to coffee? And we say five, ten. And then we check in at the end, and it's usually zero.

Speaker 84 It might be one.

Speaker 84 What would you tell your 25-year-old self who may have felt that way, or maybe you never felt that way? But for all the men that you mentor, what do you tell them?

Speaker 7 So,

Speaker 21 look.

Speaker 49 I live a life that is just my parents wouldn't have believed, right?

Speaker 61 I'm here here with Oprah, right?

Speaker 23 And when I reverse engineer those things, they come back to the rational passion for my well-being of my mother.

Speaker 57 I'm a product of big government.

Speaker 24 I got assisted lunch, Pell Grants, public school.

Speaker 32 My mom access family planning.

Speaker 4 If we hadn't had access to that,

Speaker 20 we would have been in poverty.

Speaker 40 So it really upsets me that immigrants built my companies.

Speaker 26 I ran tech companies.

Speaker 4 It really upsets me that America today seems to be attacking everything that got me kind of where I am.

Speaker 36 If I could go back in time, I would say forgive yourself.

Speaker 3 Because,

Speaker 24 you know, I remember thinking like, oh, gosh, I had companies go bankrupt that I'd started.

Speaker 85 I endured a lot of rejection from women.

Speaker 54 I wish I could go back and say, all right, you can add value to a company.

Speaker 32 You will make someone happy.

Speaker 55 If you keep trying and you're a good person, you will

Speaker 28 make money.

Speaker 23 But my superpower, quite frankly, and this is the superpower I'd want everyone to inherit by doing what you're doing, approaching strangers, my superpower is rejection.

Speaker 4 Specifically, I'm willing to endure it.

Speaker 30 I applied to nine graduate schools.

Speaker 4 I got into zero, and then one let me off the waiting list.

Speaker 85 I can't tell you the amount of rejection I've endured from women.

Speaker 58 And the ability to mourn and move on, I mean, I get a lot of power from my atheism, and I believe at some point I'm going to look into my boy's eyes and know our relationship is coming to an end.

Speaker 56 And embracing my insignificance and your insignificance makes me feel so much better because when I say something stupid or I endure some form of rejection,

Speaker 53 it gives me comfort to know they're going to be dead soon and so am I.

Speaker 40 And it doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 So why on earth would I not squeeze as much juice out of this lime called life

Speaker 25 and

Speaker 59 establish the ability to mourn and move on.

Speaker 70 So what you're doing is a key practice because the ability to endure rejection again, it's kind of everything.

Speaker 59 Everybody sees the guy or the gal who has it all.

Speaker 12 I can't imagine everything was a yes for you.

Speaker 3 I can't imagine the amount of no's you got to get to this point.

Speaker 12 But the ability to look in the mirror and go, that's okay, we're both going to be fine.

Speaker 62 It's everything.

Speaker 53 This fact that you're out, you're at run clubs, and you're even having these conversations with other men.

Speaker 44 I'm not worried about you.

Speaker 39 You should be mentoring me.

Speaker 2 You're going to be just fine.

Speaker 6 Okay, Jack. So, Anne-Marie, what did you want to say?

Speaker 86 So this has been such a great and enlightening conversation. I have so many thoughts that I want to add.
I have to say for a lot of my friends, we've just completely given up on dating.

Speaker 86 We're more focused on our family and our friends and our careers. And for me personally, I feel like I've gotten to a point where I've really loved the version of myself that I've become.

Speaker 86 I put a lot of work into her. I'm really focused on my career and that emotional independence.
And It feels really great to be in that space.

Speaker 86 So I thought when I started dating again, that would actually make dating easier.

Speaker 86 But I feel like it's getting so much harder to actually find someone who is willing to come to the table and meet me where I am.

Speaker 86 So my question for Scott is: as women continue to level up more and more, why do you think that we can't find as many men that are willing to meet us there?

Speaker 41 So what you said was really telling that you're pouring your energy into family, friends, and work.

Speaker 34 That is very telling.

Speaker 33 That's more indicative of women than men.

Speaker 23 And that is women tend to channel that energy, that romantic energy, or lack thereof or interest into very positive things, whereas men sometimes channel it into

Speaker 51 negative things.

Speaker 4 The reality is, my message, I'm not here with a message for hope on this, because the reality is women made socioeconomically, horizontally, and up.

Speaker 67 Women, generally speaking, and this isn't true for everybody, but generally speaking, women who graduated from college don't want to date men who didn't graduate from college.

Speaker 67 Not always, but generally speaking.

Speaker 59 It's the high heels effect.

Speaker 68 And again, this is an uncomfortable conversation.

Speaker 53 50% of women say they would never date a man shorter than them.

Speaker 58 I think that's bullshit. I think it's more like 80%.

Speaker 33 I think women instinctively want a dude they feel that could physically protect them.

Speaker 53 And the problem is, or the issue is, and it's both a wonderful thing, but something that's created knock-on effects in mating.

Speaker 44 is that women metaphorically are getting taller every year and men appear to be getting shorter, when I'm saying metaphorically.

Speaker 34 And the divorce rates have skyrocketed and 70% of divorce filings are from women.

Speaker 68 And it's because, and it's actually for some good reasons.

Speaker 51 Women no longer feel like they're economically indentured servants.

Speaker 25 They have their own game.

Speaker 24 And their ascent economically has not been matched by men's ascent emotionally and logistically.

Speaker 31 So women wake up and say, okay, I'm making more money than you.

Speaker 24 You're not pulling your weight at home.

Speaker 5 And you're kind of not there for me.

Speaker 53 You're not really noticing me. And so a lot of women are doing the math and exiting the relationship.

Speaker 23 What I would say is what you're feeling, quite frankly, I think is what a lot of women are feeling.

Speaker 39 And a lot of women say there are no good men to date or there are no men to date.

Speaker 56 No, there just aren't that many men they'd want to date.

Speaker 30 And so where I try to go to solutions is how do we lift up young people such that they're all or more of them are economically viable, which I think will on the margin lift up or disproportionately impact young men.

Speaker 54 But just the fact that you said you're self-conscious or aware enough to pour that energy into really productive things means you're going to be fine.

Speaker 31 I don't think romantic love is the be-all end-all for everybody.

Speaker 3 It's really rewarding, but I think you can find what I'll call that sort of purpose, relational love in a lot of different areas.

Speaker 4 And the fact that you're even thinking about how you channel that energy into stuff that's more productive, you're the role model for young men right now.

Speaker 4 Not everyone's going to find romantic love right away, or it's going to happen, it's going to take longer. But

Speaker 4 how do you transfer it into more productive means that make you a better person, a better citizen, a better sister, a better daughter?

Speaker 55 So anyways, there's a long-winded way of saying, right on.

Speaker 33 You're being a productive human.

Speaker 4 You're going to be happy regardless if you find that or not.

Speaker 3 And I just wish more men would take your lead and say, all right.

Speaker 23 Maybe things aren't working out for me romantically.

Speaker 26 I'm going to continue to work on myself.

Speaker 47 I'm going to pour that energy into into other relationships.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's what Brendan did.

Speaker 6 That's what he said at the very beginning.

Speaker 76 We have to take a break now. I want to know what our audience is taking away from this conversation.
Maybe the same ahas you're having. That's when we come back.

Speaker 76 Welcome back to my conversation with Scott Galloway and an audience of young men. Here we go.

Speaker 6 So we have another question. Mike, what's your question?

Speaker 87 So thanks, Scott. This really touches home for me.
My wife and I have triplets, 24 years old. My one son graduated from college.
He's doing pretty well, lives in Chicago, works for a big firm.

Speaker 87 My son actually has a job, but he's not happy with it at all. My daughter went on to get a master's degree.

Speaker 87 My question to you is, as you stated earlier, this is the generation that we don't see outdoing their parents.

Speaker 3 My wife and I, kind of troubling to us.

Speaker 87 What can we do as parents? What advice would you have for this generation and what can we do as a society to help out?

Speaker 50 So

Speaker 4 the first thing is you and your wife need to forgive yourselves, recognizing the market's bigger than any individual performance.

Speaker 4 So by virtue of the fact you're really involved in your kids' lives, that's probably the most important thing, just being there and present.

Speaker 54 But I do think we need to acknowledge that, again, there are programs, economic and social programs, to help lift young people up.

Speaker 23 One out of three young men under the age of 25 is living at home.

Speaker 2 One out of five men, right, is living still at home at the age of 30.

Speaker 45 So the number of people living at home, men living at home, has doubled.

Speaker 23 And it creates rage and shame across our whole culture because whether you want to or not, you're kind of, by them living with you, you're kind of a reminder they're not doing well.

Speaker 34 And you also take it on like, you know, at the end of the day, as fathers and as mothers, we feel like that's our one job.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 And so when it's not going well, it just attacks our self-esteem.

Speaker 53 So without knowing your specific situation and not having the domain expertise to counsel you in a thoughtful way, what I can say is this is an issue facing America.

Speaker 59 I think it's our biggest issue.

Speaker 53 And we need to stop sending to DC a cross between the golden girls and the land of the dead.

Speaker 70 Two-thirds of Congress is going to be dead in 25 years.

Speaker 75 Do you think they're really worried? Do you think they're really worried about you or the national deficit or climate change?

Speaker 44 So my point is, young people, vote, get out, and also as a parent, forgive yourself.

Speaker 58 You're doing your best, and a lot of this is out of your control.

Speaker 87 Yeah, one more, because as you said, being there in the home form,

Speaker 87 my parents didn't know where the heck I was when I was these guys his age.

Speaker 87 Is that helpful or is that a hindrance?

Speaker 33 I actually think it was a good thing.

Speaker 46 I think we overprotect our kids.

Speaker 51 offline and underprotect them online.

Speaker 24 We won't let a nine-year-old, two-thirds of nine-year-olds have never walked down a grocery shopping aisle alone, but they go online where they face, they interact with strangers and bots.

Speaker 54 I used to leave my mom's house at 9 a.m.

Speaker 53 on a Saturday morning with an Abba Zabba bar, a Schwinn bike, and 35 cents, and she wouldn't see me for 14 hours.

Speaker 33 I got bullied, I got into trouble, and it was great for me.

Speaker 31 It was great for me.

Speaker 40 I developed resilience, a sense of adventure, camaraderie.

Speaker 46 I'm not suggesting anyone should be traumatized, but we over-protect children.

Speaker 5 The two things that appear to be spiking teen depression are one when social went on mobile and also the concierge bulldozer parenting of my generation where we clear out every obstacle for kids and then they get to college and they get their first D or they get their heart broken and they literally freak out.

Speaker 30 They've never known that.

Speaker 35 So it's a combination of things, but I think the over-parenting of my generation, I don't know if you're guilty of this or not, but I would not come home till 11 p.m.

Speaker 51 My son's five minutes late from school. We call MI6 in the CIA.

Speaker 33 So I think some of it is over-protection.

Speaker 4 I don't think it's been a good thing for kids.

Speaker 12 Thank you, Mike.

Speaker 6 Thank you, Mike. Thank you for this book.

Speaker 11 Thank you.

Speaker 6 Thank you. You're all getting it.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 6 At the end of the book,

Speaker 6 I love the message. It's a long message, so I wanted you to summarize.
You write a message to your sons.

Speaker 6 What is the ultimate message that you want to give them and want to give to the world through this book?

Speaker 57 Well, so at the end of the book, I wrote a letter to my sons.

Speaker 6 Which I think everybody should write a letter to their sons. Sure, why? As I was reading that, I was thinking, yeah, everybody should write a letter to their sons.

Speaker 24 One,

Speaker 28 first and foremost, I want them to know how immensely I love them.

Speaker 1 Two, I want them to really realize the best decision their dad made and the best decision they made was being born in America.

Speaker 23 I really do think there are certain wonderful attributes, some of which unfortunately appear to be on pause right now.

Speaker 70 I hope they haven't gone away, but I hope that they always appreciate how fortunate and blessed they were to be born in America and that they reinvest in America.

Speaker 32 And then, more than anything,

Speaker 28 that they take care of their mom.

Speaker 6 Thank you. Thank you.
No tune being a man.

Speaker 6 Scott Galloway,

Speaker 6 Big shout out. Thank you, New York.

Speaker 80 Beautiful.

Speaker 16 Thank you.

Speaker 18 I'll vote too.

Speaker 6 Wow, that was interesting. Thank you, guys.

Speaker 11 Thanks for coming out on a rainy day in New York City. Thank you.

Speaker 6 Thank you. So what will be your takeaway?

Speaker 12 Be kind.

Speaker 6 Be kind.

Speaker 11 Get out to the ballot box and vote.

Speaker 2 Vote. Vote.

Speaker 11 Vote. Yeah.

Speaker 6 That was one of my big takeaways, too.

Speaker 82 It's clear, yes.

Speaker 3 My big one was take care of your mom.

Speaker 18 I just lost my dad this year, so very important to me.

Speaker 4 Be an active participant in the redefinition of masculinity.

Speaker 11 Well now.

Speaker 2 Okay, I love that.

Speaker 7 I love that.

Speaker 53 Don't just listen to this conversation. Go do something.

Speaker 49 Go mentor a younger man.

Speaker 6 Go mentor a younger man.

Speaker 86 Men have struggles too, and I can accept that, and we can work with it.

Speaker 6 We can work with it. Yeah.

Speaker 82 My takeaway is that men don't want to be told how to be men. We want to feel like men.

Speaker 18 So create spaces for men to thrive, to access the full range of emotions that we have access to, and model behavior.

Speaker 7 And model behavior.

Speaker 79 Did you have a takeaway, Bernard? Be okay with rejection. Go for it.
Like, don't worry about getting told no. It's okay.

Speaker 6 Thank you all for being here. Thank you so much.

Speaker 73 You can subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week.
Thanks, everybody.