Here’s How We Help Young Men Thrive (A Lost Boys Special)

Thumbtack presents.

Uncertainty strikes.

I was surrounded.

The aisle and the options were closing in.

There were paint rollers, satin and matte finish, angle brushes, and natural bristles.

There were too many choices.

What if I never got my living room painted?

What if I couldn't figure out what type of paint to use?

What if

I just used Thumbtack?

I can hire a top-rated pro in the Bay Area that knows everything about interior paint, easily compare prices, and read reviews.

Thumbtack knows homes.

Download the app today.

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start?

Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to.

Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is?

With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro.

You just have to hire one.

You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app.

Download today.

If you're serious about investing, check out Public.com.

Public.com lets you access industry-leading yields like the 4.1% APY you can earn on your cash with no fees or minimum.

Go to public.com slash podcast to fund your account in five minutes.

That's public.com slash podcast.

Paid for by Public Investing.

All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal.

Brokerage services for U.S.-listed registered securities options and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc., member FINRA and SIPC.

Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures.

Hey everyone, Scott Galloway here.

We're back with another episode of The Lost Boys, our special series on the crisis facing young men.

In this one, Anthony Scaramucci and I sit down with Andrew Yang, entrepreneur, former presidential candidate, and founder of the Forward Party, to talk about why he's so concerned about the future of young men in America.

We also explore ideas for how to turn things around with Andrew.

Let's bust right into it.

Welcome to Lost Boys, the podcast where my friend Professor Scott Galloway and I dig into the unique challenges young men are facing today and what we can do about it.

In this episode, Scott and I talk with Andrew Yang, the businessman, author, and politician.

He is best known for his 2020 Democratic presidential primary run, where his his signature policy was universal basic income.

He's also someone who cares passionately about what's happening to young men in America today.

In his book, The War on Normal People and on his podcast, Forward,

he consistently focuses on the future of work, innovation, and how regular Americans can thrive.

In this episode, Andrew Scott and I talk about concrete steps we can take to help young men succeed, why Democrats have ignored this issue and why Scott wants Andrew to run again, even though he's convinced he won't win.

Here's my conversation with Scott Galloway and Andrew Yang.

So, Andrew, always good to see you.

I'm going to assume that you recognize the issue, recognize there's a need

to address that it's that the data's there.

So, let's skip to solutions.

If you were running, I'll just put out a hypothetical.

If you were to announce you were going to run for president again in 2028 and someone said, all right, Andrew, what is your platform or specific policy recommendations or programs that you would want to implement to address this problem?

What are your ideas of how at a federal level, on a legislative level, we could help address the issue of struggling young men?

The number one

recommendation would be to double or triple down on vocational and apprenticeship,

vocational education.

It turns out that men use vocational and apprenticeship type programs at a much higher level than women.

And it leads to good jobs.

You know, things like

HVAC repair,

plumbing,

maintenance, like a lot of those fields are going to be more resistant to AI and automation than a lot of other things.

So this is very pragmatic.

It would take a while.

I mean, even if you were to do a good job investing in it,

it would take years to have an impact.

But that's to me, like the most direct thing you could do.

It's like kind of a micro

dirty jobs

solution, which

I did champion when I was running.

I think other things you should consider would be

trying to incentivize men to teach,

because right now, that's like a female-dominated dominated profession.

I know that it would be controversial to have incentives for men,

but I think it would be a real positive because a lot of boys don't see men as role models in the day-to-day.

And if you had a guy in the classroom, it would go further.

I at the time was championing universal basic income in part because I think that men just having economic value is a win.

I think that there are ways, you know,

my wife and I joked at at least

woman would keep the man around because he had some money coming in.

So I think there's something fundamental to a guy having value.

And I'm sure you and Anthony have spoken about those things at length.

But those are some of the things that I'd be pushing for.

At the time, I was also pushing for

free MMA training for knuckleheads.

You know, you just get them into the dojo.

I mean, that's sort of a weird incentive, um, but uh, you know, like that's the place where people could get out aggression and learn some discipline, get community, get some fellowship.

Uh, I mean, if I were president, I would be having national tough man competitions and just having

like, you know, the county, uh, you know, the county champions and have this giant NCAA style uh tournament just so people would have uh things to aspire to.

What are your thoughts on national mandatory service?

I am very pro-national mandatory service with the giant caveat that I think the implementation would be difficult.

And one of the things that you and Anthony, I'm sure, have spoken about at length is that there are a lot of anxious and depressed teens.

And so what you hope is that service would give them purpose and structure and community and drive.

But the truth is, if you take an anxious and depressed teen and say, hey, now you're going to do this thing and it's required, maybe that person isn't actually

going to be able to contribute, but you're going to be forced to sort of pretend.

And then the program can end up having this somewhat dystopian air.

So, because I mean, you guys know, like, the US military is having trouble finding people that aren't addicted to drugs or, you know, like,

can actually

serve.

And so, so, if you had a mandatory service element, then you'd wind up

with a real implementation problem.

But

I still think it's something that we should be trying to do.

I mean, I ran a fellowship program for aspiring entrepreneurs for a number of years, and we had the benefit of being highly, highly selective.

So, you have a sense.

I mean, we were taking college graduates, which already is, you know, the top slice of the population, and then choosing from among them.

So we were getting the

creme de la creme,

and they were very, very strong.

But if you're going to try and go mass,

I do think that the intention is right

and we should be trying to make it happen.

But in reality, you know, it might get somewhat muddy.

Anthony?

I just want to react to what you're saying.

You're in a new party.

You have the forward party.

You have hyper masculinity on the side of the Republicans.

Let's call it that.

And so some of it could be toxic and frankly destructive.

But there's something going on with the Democrats that I don't understand.

They have like a 29%

approval rating.

And I know that they're very focused on pronoun definitions and all this stuff.

And it seems like they want to triple down on that, even though America sort of has spoken and said culturally that's probably not where America is.

What's your thought about the current political zeitgeist and how this is impacting this problem?

I think this problem is being driven significantly by politics.

And I know this because I was a Democratic primary candidate in 2020, and I was talking about how boys and men were struggling.

And I got told you can't talk about this in a Democratic primary, which I said, why the hell not?

Aren't boys and men not people don't they vote um but the democratic primary is very much about

women's issues um to be honest and i'm pro-women too i mean you know it's like what my my argument was look uh healthy men is good for women you know like healthy women good for men healthy people good for everybody like you know what are we talking about here um but you have

a two-party system that has become oppositional to each other, somewhat ideologically bent and not terribly practical.

And so what you do is you get in there and you tell people what they want to hear.

And if you tell them that men are struggling, it's like, well, no, it's not here in the Democratic Party, it's not about men.

It's about

women.

And the two are not mutually exclusive.

But I think that you have this really, really unfortunate, toxic dynamic that's come about that one side says men are the problem.

And then the other side says men can do no wrong.

And then if you're the average man, you're looking at being like, oh shit, like, you know, I guess I have to choose one of these two camps.

It's one reason why you need

more than two camps.

I would argue, by the way, I think that you and

you and Scott represent positive masculinity, which is what I would love, love, love for Forward to represent.

So that if there are reasonable men out there, they're like, you know what?

I don't think I'm the problem.

I also think I'm not infallible.

Let me choose this crew that we could go actually solve some problems.

But the two-party system is pushing solutions out of our reach because

neither side

has to address things in order to win power.

What they're trying to do is win arguments.

They're not trying to solve the root problems.

We'll be right back after a quick break.

Hey, everybody, it's Andy Roddick, host of Serve Podcast for your fix on all things tennis.

The U.S.

Open's coming up, and we're covering it on our show.

Can someone knock off Al Garazin Center?

Can Coco Goff win her second U.S.

Open title?

Can Shviatek win her second Grand Slam title in a row?

Can Sabalenka break through and win her Grand Slam in 2025?

You can watch our coverage of the U.S.

Open on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcast.

Brought to you in part by Amazon Prime.

Support for the show comes from Mercury.

What if banking did more?

Because to you, it's more than an invoice.

It's your hard work becoming revenue.

It's more than a wire.

It's payroll for your team.

It's more than a deposit.

It's landing your fundraise.

The truth is, banking can do more.

Mercury brings all the ways you use money into a single product that feels extraordinary to use.

Visit Mercury.com to join over 200,000 entrepreneurs who use Mercury to do more for their business.

Mercury, banking that does more.

Hey, this is Peter Kafka.

I'm the host of Channels, a show about the biggest ideas in tech and media and how those things collide.

And today we're talking about AI, which is promising and maybe terrifying.

And if you happen to be in a very select group of engineers that Mark Mark Zuckerberg wants to hire, it's incredibly lucrative, which is why I had the New York Times Mike Isaac explain what's going on with the great AI pay race.

I'm talking to executives across the industry who are pissed off at Mark Zuckerberg because he has dumped the entire market for this stuff, right?

And like, this is something that's painful for OpenAI, I think, because they can't shell out a quarter of a billion dollars for one dude.

That's this week on channels, wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

And Andrew, when you think about,

so I'll put forward a thesis, and that is

there's been this enormous transfer of wealth from young to old.

People talk about poor to rich.

I see it more as young to old, and that is.

A person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago.

Someone under the age, someone over the age of 70 is 72% wealthier.

And I think the reality is one of the things that gets in the way of the discussion is just an open and honest discussion.

And the reality is, men are still primarily evaluated as mates based on their ability to signal resources.

And we don't like to talk about it because it

ostensibly portrays women in a negative light.

But that's the reality: that without economic viability, men are going to have trouble finding a mate.

When they can't find a mate, they have a difficult time kind of staying on track.

Or relationships are fantastic guardrails for young men.

What economic policies, well, one, do you agree with the need to economically disproportionately

level up young people in terms of economic viability?

And if so, what would those, in your view, as someone who ran for president, what would those economic policies look like?

100% agree with the wealth transfer from young to old.

100% agree with the fact that if men don't earn money, then they are not appealing mates.

One thing I'll point out is that there's now like an educational mismatch, and college-educated women essentially refuse to marry non-college educated men almost regardless of economics.

You know, that's sort of a cultural

problem

and mismatch.

I think that you'd have to make very, very dramatic moves.

You know, it's something like a universal basic income to me is inevitable as AI eats more jobs.

I mean, I talked to a founder that you guys probably know here in New York who says he's replacing his 2,000 customer service employees with AI.

And so if you're trying to give young men in particular a path forward, the easiest narrative, which I did try and disseminate when I was running for president, was, look, manufacturing workers were two-thirds men, and then a lot of them did not have college degrees, and they had middle-class lives.

And we got rid of that, got rid of that for 5 million households.

And so, now, what are the new paths for non-college-educated men?

And it has to be, in my view,

vocational and apprenticeship.

But there should be this massive investment in the young, a reversal of the wealth pump that I think you've described.

And it's going to have to be dramatic because we've set so many young people up to fail.

And then them becoming reactive and angry is

somewhat natural.

And then people are looking at and saying, Oh, what's happening?

I mean, when I talk to young people, Scott, I used to say, You guys should either be really sad or really angry.

And I'm sorry.

And I had nothing to do with what's happening to you all, but like, I need your help to fix it.

And that message actually did go a pretty long way with young people.

I mean, I won the Iowa Youth Straw Poll.

So if you'd cut the voting off at age 18, I might have become president.

I also won candidate you know, I just want to have a beer with, so good on me.

Yeah.

Yeah, I just want to, I want to, I want to bring something up and get your reaction to actually both of you.

So, uh, the Tate brothers are in the news, right?

They, they come back to Florida.

Um, I think they represent the apotheosis of toxic masculinity.

If you guys disagree, please chime in.

But I, I have uh friends of mine who have 14, 15, 16-year-old young men that gravitate to that narrative, you know, the,

you know, take the protein powder, take potentially the steroids, beef your body up, have this,

I think, overly misogynistic approach towards women, etc.

And so I'm wondering if there's such a vacuum, is that

Is there a gravitational pull towards the Tate brothers?

And again, I'll give you another example.

One of my buddies in Florida said, My son, the Tate Brothers were live streaming from the lobby of some hotel in Miami, and my son wanted to have me drive him over there.

He's 14, drive me over there to witness the live streaming.

And I told him, NFW, I'm not going to do that.

What's your reaction to all that?

Is there just such a vacuum going on that people are gravitating towards the wrong things?

Or I don't know, do you guys like the Tate Brothers and their approach to masculinity?

Don't like the Tate Brothers.

Have two boys whose

fondest dream is to become a YouTuber.

So I get how kids are drawn in.

For them, their idol is Mr.

Beast.

They think that dad is uncool.

But Mr.

Beast is the bomb.

So

I think that men and boys are going to

get attracted to anyone who seems like they're speaking to them.

And if the messages are noxious and toxic, sometimes that drives the appeal because young men also like rebellion.

Maybe it's one reason they like Scott.

Scott has a

real rebellious streak.

I had some young men fans too, and I'm really proud of that.

And when I was in my 20s, you know what my fridge looked like?

It had a giant container of chocolate protein powder and then some yogurt inside because I felt rejected by women because I didn't have a successful enough career.

And so I was at the gym all the time working out.

Now, happily, you know, in my case, there, you know, there wasn't some draw towards like a Tate Brothers equivalent.

But I understand

a male drive to

be strong, improve your body, uh, seem invulnerable and invincible.

Uh, you know, like that, there were these times where

you feel a little bit lost, hence the name of this series you guys are leading.

Uh, and you want anyone uh to be something of a mooring point or an anchor.

Uh, and if they're talking to you, then uh, it's much better than someone who's yelling at you or

uh seems to be ignoring you.

Now,

you know, I feel like it's on us.

It's one reason why I'm so glad to be with you guys is to provide positive

alternatives

because I understand the appeal of like a Tate brothers type, though I haven't seen shit of theirs, so I actually have no idea what the heck they do, but I just imagine, you know, so I imagine people, you know, broing out and talking trash about women.

Yeah, it's look, the Tate brothers are,

I actually think that the Tate brothers are a little bit of a weapon of mass destruction.

I think it's another vehicle for Trump to try and get us to look away from surrendering to Putin or exploding the deficits.

Because if you, I think most of the surveys show now that the Tate brothers, most young people, just aren't, I kind of realize them for what they are, and that is people who are held in a Romanian prison on charges of sex trafficking, who are trying to get you signed up for some sort of crypto scam.

So I actually don't think they're a threat.

I think rather than focusing on the people who fill the void, it's why does the void open up?

And I think as long as you have young men who for a variety of reasons, biological, sociological, economical, are not going to be economically or emotionally viable, they're going to be drawn to whoever fills that void and tells them it's not their fault.

and tells them to blame immigrants, tells them to blame women.

So if it's not the Tate brothers, it'll be someone else.

So I think young people are figuring out that these guys are, quite frankly, just not role models.

And the problem with their content is that

it starts off strong.

Be fit, take control of your life, and then it just comes off the tracks.

But I actually don't think they're that big a threat.

I think if we close the void and give more men more opportunity, you're just not going to have the wide open lanes for people like them or other people.

I think that same void, and Anthony, I would put this back to you.

I think that same void of people not addressing the very real issues that young men are facing, I think it's been filled by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who are demonizing immigrants, who are the biggest swing to the, from blue to red was Latinos.

The second biggest swing was people under the age of 30.

And if you're not doing as well as your dad,

you know, you're just inclined.

You just want disruption.

You just want to vote for the chaos change candidate.

And that was clearly Trump.

So I think Tate, I almost think they're sort of irrelevant and a bit of a distraction.

I I think what's worse is that void.

You close the void, you don't get the Tate brothers.

But I think Trump is a bigger manifestation of that void and the issues facing younger men and how people are moving towards chaos.

What do you think, Anthony?

You follow this stuff.

Yeah,

I'm worried, Scott.

I'm worried because you're not going to run for office.

You know, Andrew may run again.

Hopefully we'll get him back on the field.

Andrew, I've donated now to several of your campaigns.

I just want to be on record for that.

I'll tell you why I'm worried, because if Galloway ran for office, he would be explaining to people directly what is going on.

And

the guys that are running for office,

they don't want to do that.

And you brought it up in the Democratic Party even.

I don't know.

I mean, the Democrats think that Bernie Sanders and AOC are the answer.

I don't see that personally.

I think they've got to go for the independents who held their nose and voted for Donald Trump last time.

And I think the left will come along with them.

I guess I would say to you, Scott, let's say you were the advisor and you could fill the person with software.

They had a good, healthy operating system, but you were the software engineer.

You were going to develop the messaging for a candidate.

that could reach these women.

You know, remember, the exit polling for the Democrats was terrible.

The women said, I voted for my son.

That's right.

54% of the white women voted for Trump.

46%

of the women overall voted for Trump.

Why'd you do it?

I voted for my son.

Yeah.

So, Scott, if you were the operating software engineer, you know, and let's say Andrew was running for president again, what advice would you give him?

Let me just say, I co-signed candidate Galloway as well.

So

too much sex talks and rock and roll.

Look,

that doesn't matter anymore.

That was your street, Cred Scott.

Let's go.

It doesn't matter anymore.

No, I want to hang out with Anthony and Andrew and be able to get drunk and not worry about who's watching us.

So, look,

and I'll be curious what Andrew thinks.

So, first off, I want to acknowledge that

what you said, Anthony, is really powerful about the election.

And that is women, and again, this triggers people, a large portion of women will vote for what they think is best for their sons and their husbands.

And they'll put their own views of politics aside and think, who's going to be best to get my husband that job back or my son?

And when, for the first time in our nation's history, a 30-year-old isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30, you just want change.

The incumbent's done.

Doesn't matter how powerful the incumbent is, the incumbent's done, and you want the chaos candidate.

Okay, so the messaging.

I believe to be effective, the Democratic Party needs to get away from identity politics.

And that is, for example, Andrew, when you were saying saying we need more male teachers in high school, I'm worried about any program

that specifically calls out people by their gender, including men.

So, for example, what I would do is say we need overtime pay for people who coach and participate in after-school programs, which tend to be men who don't get money for coaching baseball and football or band.

And A, kids need more time, they need more community, they need more social interaction, interaction, and that would level up a lot of male teachers who want to make more money and want to be coaches.

Because I think if you start targeting men, I think one of the biggest problems of the Democratic Party is we see everything through the lens of identity.

And I think we need to move away from that.

And I think the message needs to be the following, that

if you have your world of work, you have your world of friends, you have your world of kids, anything comes off the tracks with one of your kids, your whole world shrinks to that person.

And so a decent platform is a unifying theory of everything.

And the unifying theory of everything for me, if I were a candidate yang, is that every person under the age of 40 needs to have the platforms, the opportunities, and the venues to find someone that they can fall in love with and mate with.

And that means more social interaction, more freshman seats, more bars, quite frankly.

I think the anti-alcohol movement is the worst thing other than remote work.

The risk to a 25-year-old liver is dwarfed by the risk of social isolation.

Go out, drink more, make a series of bad decisions, and my payoff is my motto.

That's too much for a bumper sticker.

Tax holiday under the age of 40, 7 million homes built, manufactured homes that are 30 to 50% less expensive than on-site homes.

We are going to give every young person under the age of 40 the opportunity to meet someone, have a home, and should they choose, have children, which 60% of Americans used to have 40 years ago, now it's 27%.

And by the way, if you choose not to have children,

spend the money on brunch and St.

Bart's, that's your call.

But every person under the age of 40, including women in America, needs to have the most rewarding thing in their life available, and that is to find someone to partner with and have children.

And everything needs to be reverse engineered from that one thing.

You get away from identity politics.

You don't have special programs for this group, this race, this gender.

You just say, look, folks.

Doesn't matter how prosperous we are.

If our young people aren't doing well, we have failed as a nation.

And here's a basic.

we want the American dream.

We're going to make America America again.

And we're going to figure out a way for young people to meet, fall in love, and have kids and have the economic wherewithal to do that.

And here's a series of programs, whether it's national service, more freshman seats, vocational programming, tax advantages, housing programs, whatever.

We're literally going to reverse engineer.

And I think that's something we could all rally around and not trigger people as you do when you start saying we're going to advantage men over women.

I love it.

It's the love and prosperity campaign.

It's party.

But you see what it's like.

It's getting people out of the house.

Let's go.

Scott's calling for is quote unquote risky to some of your friends on the Democratic side of the aisle.

Am I wrong, Andrew?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I mean, I'm down for every, I'm ready to tattoo most of that on my

bicep, what Scott just said, and I'm ready to run with it.

But don't you agree with me that these people are not willing to take the risk, Andrew?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, you can see what's going on in the Democratic Party.

And

I think that people would get behind what Scott's calling for.

I think it's one reason why you need a positive, independent political movement that's free of the current ideologies.

Let's go.

I mean, I'll join you in the tattoo, Anthony.

I saw when I heard that, I thought love and prosperity, but you can come up with better names, Scott, because you're a marketing guy.

The single biggest variable in my mind about these men isn't the messaging.

It's like, what do they wake up and do every day?

Like, where do they go?

And if we can create places for them to go and things for them to do, then we're back on track.

But, Andrew, I do want to say that I really do hope you run again because I'll be honest with you, I don't think you're going to win.

But what you did when you ran in in 2020 was you normalized the idea that it's okay to redistribute income to people

who might be less fortunate.

That the easiest way to improve people's lives is just to cut them in check.

And before that, everyone called it socialism.

Everyone had a gag reflex.

And you sort of normalize the idea that, okay, let's be honest, the world's wealthiest nation should be able to ensure that everyone has the minimum level of economic viability.

I think you could have the same impact around leveling up young people.

Even if you don't win,

you're articulate, you're powerful, you have a huge following.

I think you could help normalize this idea

and perhaps start a movement.

Anyways, it sounds like Anthony's already a giver.

We're partners on other things, but you have two donors.

Should you decide to run again?

We're going to have to sort out which of the people on this podcast is going to run and champion the youth.

Let's go.

If I had your brains and Anthony's here, I'd already be president.

Yeah, and if I had Galloway's height and your brains,

I would be president.

There we go.

All right, well, God bless, Andrew.

It's really good to have you on, man.

I'm not sure what ingredients I would have needed to be president.

You got close.

Maybe it's Scott's hair and Anthony's brain.

You got to try it again, man.

You got to try it again.

That's the bottom line.

Hey, guys, I tell people all the time, I've got another 30 years, and there's definitely another run in me at some point.

So I appreciate you guys.

And much.

Power of now, Andrew.

Power of now.

The power of now.

We're all going to be dead soon, boss.

The power of now.

It is true.

I mean, my joke is that it'll be another 30 years just to comment on the age of a lot of our candidates, but like, I don't think that we collectively have 30 years.

So I'll be back in the field before then.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of Lost Boys.

If you'd like more information, please go to our website, www.lostboys.men.

In our next episode, Scott and I talk about the changing definition of masculinity, the problems that causes, and what we can do to help young men find their place in the world.

So be sure to like, follow, and subscribe to Lost Boys, wherever you get your podcast.

And please share it with someone who cares about this or should care about this.

And let's spread the word.

Lost Boys is a production of Salt Media and the Casablanca Strategy Group.

Barbara Fedita and Keith Summa are executive producers.

Tanya Salati is our researcher.

Holly Duncan Quinn and Stanley Goldberg are editors.

Special thanks to Christina Cassesi, Mary Jan Reebas, and Drew Burroughs.