How to Raise Good Men — Scott Galloway & Richard Reeves Answer Your Questions

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Speaker 2 Welcome to PropG on Masculinity, a special series where we're joined by Richard Reeves, the founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, and my Yoda and inspiration around all of this.

Speaker 2 We're taking your questions on all things masculinity, dating, fatherhood, identity, and everything in between.

Speaker 2 Anyways, if you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehours at propgmedia.com.

Speaker 2 Again, that's officehours at propgmedia.com, or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit. Richard, where does this podcast find you?

Speaker 3 I'm in Reykjavik, Iceland, Scott, and it's beautiful. I'm here for a conference.

Speaker 3 The only thing that's ruined it for me is that the president of Iceland was constantly name-checking you publicly this morning. She is,

Speaker 2 he literally got everything from me. You're literally like,

Speaker 3 I'm reading this book. I'm reading this book, Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway.
And I got to tell you, though, I mean, the way she was talking about it, credit to you.

Speaker 3 She's just like, look, we've got to be able to think about boys and men. Iceland's proud of its record on gender equality.

Speaker 3 But she says, I'm talking to a lot of young men in Iceland, and they're saying the same things that Scott is saying. And we've just got to react to that.
And so kudos to you, right?

Speaker 3 This message is reaching, like, it's really reaching around the world. So thank you for that.

Speaker 2 Richard, welcome. And are you ready to get into it?

Speaker 3 Totally. Yeah, let's dive in.

Speaker 2 Let's do it. Our first question comes from Winnie Cooper73 on Reddit.
They say, what's the best way to keep an open dialogue and communication with my six-year-old boy as he ages?

Speaker 2 What ages do I start talking about sex porn? How do I do it without making it a big deal or weirding him out? If you could go back and give yourself advice when your boys were six, what would it be?

Speaker 2 Richard, you kicked this off.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I mean, the thing about the internet and porn generally is that it's just everywhere.
That is the world that the 26-year-old is going to grow up in.

Speaker 3 There was actually a UK research report that said porn, it's everywhere, which means it's hard to get a control group. That's true of just on the online world.

Speaker 3 And so it's about equipping your son for the online world. And I do think that the conversation about pornography has to happen earlier than it used to.

Speaker 3 And there's no getting around the fact it's going to be weird and awkward. But the key message that I would try and get across more strongly now, and my sons are all in their 20s now, is just

Speaker 3 not to immediately morally shame around porn or sex drive or anything like that. It is to just point to the vast chasm between sex in real life and sex in porn.

Speaker 3 Porn is to real life sex what Harry Potter's Hogwarts is to the typical public middle school.

Speaker 3 The gap between what you're going to see and what it's like is just huge. It's like a fantasy movie or whatever it is.

Speaker 3 And I think that's part, so I would really work harder now to just make sure there's just an understanding understanding of how entirely artificial ERSATs that is compared to what the real-life experience is.

Speaker 3 I don't know how I would do that, but that's the, that's, I think, where a lot of the challenge is here, to be honest, is in that gap between what you see and what you're likely to experience.

Speaker 2 So just some data. A 2024 study found that one in five children age 10 to 12 are unintentionally exposed to pornography online.
Another 2022 survey of U.S.

Speaker 2 teens age 13 to 17 found that on average, participants see pornography for the first time at age 12, with 15% of participants seeing at age 10 or younger.

Speaker 2 Also, 45% of participants felt pornography provided them with helpful information about sex.

Speaker 2 So I'm not sure I have a lot of insight here. I don't think I've done this very well.

Speaker 2 I took this traditional route thinking that, oh, he's, I forget how he was, 14 or 15, it's time to have the sex talk. And we were in vacation.

Speaker 2 I took my son to the beach and said, okay, buddy, it's time to have a talk about sex. And he yelled yelled out this primal scream of no

Speaker 2 so fast. And he said, can we not, please? I really don't want to talk about this with you.
And there was just no way we could have the conversation. So I've never had the conversation.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it felt like forcing him to have the conversation would be more traumatizing than anything that's happening to him online.

Speaker 2 When we have found objectional content on their iPad or whatever, I've said to my partner, I think unless it's really outside the lines of what would be considered normal, curious young male behavior, we leave them alone.

Speaker 2 I just

Speaker 2 so in sum, what have I done? Almost nothing.

Speaker 2 I don't know how to intervene thoughtfully. Any thoughts?

Speaker 3 Any follow-up thoughts, Richard?

Speaker 3 But you haven't done something, which is important.

Speaker 3 Given that it is ubiquitous, porn is ubiquitous, the sex talk is just very different now.

Speaker 3 And so I'm coming back to what I think is it's less like explaining what sex is and what it means and it's more explaining what it isn't, which is what you're seeing online.

Speaker 3 So it's not about the mechanics of it in the same way. But what you haven't done, Scott, and I think this is a really important message for every parent, you haven't just reflexively shamed.

Speaker 3 You haven't gone to surveillance followed by shame. And there's so much shame that can be attached to this anyway that just gets in the way, right, of healthy sexual development.

Speaker 3 And this is a really difficult balance to strike. But I honestly would say that your

Speaker 3 instinct to not panic, not go straight to shame and not try and shut it all down, and instead to give a little bit of space, I think is exactly the right one.

Speaker 3 And I see a lot of parents now

Speaker 3 not really knowing where the line is. And no one knows where the line is, Scott, right? You don't know where the line is, but you just had a sense.

Speaker 3 You knew that there was a line, a zone of privacy that you had and that you wanted your sons to have.

Speaker 2 Let's head on to question number two. It comes from Reddit user extension spell 40-56.
And they say, I'm a female teacher.

Speaker 2 Relating to teenage boys and trying to meet them where they are is hard, much harder than it was 10 years ago.

Speaker 2 I'm sure this is due to a variety of reasons, iPad parenting, the death of rec league casual athletics, the manosphere, etc.

Speaker 2 I know I've been an effective, energetic teacher in the past, but now I'm not so sure. It's like they've evolved different brains.
Any advice on commanding attention and respect in the classroom?

Speaker 3 Well, first of all, I think we should start by thanking her for her work.

Speaker 3 Yeah, actually, my own son has become a fifth grade teacher, and he's one of the very few men around those educational institutions.

Speaker 3 And I do think that one of the reasons I'm really sort of borderline obsessed with getting more men in education is I think it just helps to round out the culture.

Speaker 3 But the specific question is how she's relating in the classroom. I mean, there's a lot of worry right now that some of the online content boys are being exposed to

Speaker 3 is tempting them to you know almost play with misogynist content, right?

Speaker 3 I'm not, some of them, I'm sure, mean it, but I think a lot of it is just transgressive and it's become a bit more acceptable and you're kind of poking at the teacher.

Speaker 3 And I think female teachers are also, candidly, if the boys don't have a strong male role model in their lives, and you've written and talked a lot about this, Scott, I always think the female teacher almost becomes another female figure to kind of reject, to act against, to contend with, to sort of just push away from psychologically.

Speaker 3 And I don't know why that would have gotten worse, but it could be because if these boys are not doing more of the in-person

Speaker 3 relational stuff we talked about, the risk then of using, it's almost like the teacher becomes the counter, they're kind of pushing against, to define themselves almost against the femininity of the teacher.

Speaker 3 And I think given the sort of masculinity vertigo that a lot of, as John DeLavolpi's phrase, are feeling online, I think that might well be something.

Speaker 3 I think it could be part of just this uncertainty and that she's getting a bit of a sharp end of that.

Speaker 2 I just can't imagine how challenging it is for teachers right now because especially with boys, and I think part of the problem around why boys have maybe become more difficult to manage is I see what's happening with my

Speaker 2 one of my kids is more prone to, I think, device addiction than the other.

Speaker 2 And you can just see their brain being rewired such that if they don't have a DOA bag on demand following them around that they can squeeze and get a DOA hit right away, they become

Speaker 2 so difficult. And so they'll start, they'll start, you know, they want, how do you get DOPA? Action, reaction.
I click a button, something happens in a video game.

Speaker 2 I swipe right, something happens, and I get DOPA. They're sitting in a class or just sitting at dinner.
I occasionally notice with

Speaker 2 one of my sons.

Speaker 2 He would rather say something inappropriate, lash out, be unreasonable, just to get that dope, just to get a reaction because he's gotten action, reaction, action, reaction, action, reaction for so long that if it's just, okay, take a break and eat your dinner or do your homework, it becomes almost impossible to break the cycle, even if that, to an inspired reaction, the action is

Speaker 2 difficult. I can't imagine what it's like trying to get a kid, especially a boy, to sit still for 60 or 80 minutes and recite French verbs.
I just, I got to think it's just an enormous

Speaker 2 challenge, but I can't think of a hack for a female teacher to better relate to her boys. And I just don't, I think that's a really tough one.
I don't.

Speaker 3 I sort of feel like in a way what's happening is she's sort of paying the price for a lot of other failures for the boy to get enough sleep for him to have strong male role models around him to have had breakfast to be exercised.

Speaker 3 There's a couple of schools now just reading a story about this where they're just bringing the kids in earlier and they're just running them around before they even start school.

Speaker 3 And they're reporting much better results for the boys.

Speaker 3 It was a really interesting study, too, that when they just started secondary schools later, you know how absurdly early secondary schools start. No, no, that's not the specific age group here.

Speaker 3 It helped the boys more than the girls. And so it's bad for all teenagers to be starting school so early with so little sleep, without without

Speaker 3 sleep, without food, wrong circadian rhythms. And so my sense is that there's still a lot going on in those boys' lives around those basic needs of sleep, mentoring, and food.

Speaker 3 And unfortunately, teachers and probably female teachers are bearing the brunt of our collective failure to just provide a more boy-friendly environment.

Speaker 2 All right, we'll be right back after a quick break.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Train Dreams, the new film from Netflix. Train Dreams is a film that stays with you.
It's about a man standing alone against the backdrop of a changing America.

Speaker 1 What makes it powerful isn't the scale of his story, but its simplicity. It's a reminder that a life doesn't have to be big to be meaningful.

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Speaker 1 In a world obsessed with progress, Train Dreams asks us to take pause and reflect on our relationship with loss, nature, and the need to belong. And maybe that's the modern journey.

Speaker 1 Not domination or conquest, but learning how to live with change, grief, and tenderness without losing our sense of purpose.

Speaker 1 Train Dreams captures the tension between progress and preservation between the machines that build our world and the nature that still defines it.

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Speaker 2 Welcome back onto our final question from R Vasco III. My son is two months old.
I want to raise him to be a good man and model positive masculinity as much as possible.

Speaker 2 And as someone who was born and raised in Blue Collar, Ohio, but went to college and lived in major cities that helped broaden my worldview.

Speaker 2 I find it incredible how wide the scope of the term masculinity can be.

Speaker 2 Given the extremes of this conversation, how have you been able to best navigate the entrenched, oftentimes narrow-minded ways in which people define the concept of masculinity?

Speaker 3 Richard?

Speaker 3 Well, here, I think I'm probably going to be copying a lot of what you've said, Scott, but

Speaker 3 I think that firstly, it's show, don't tell.

Speaker 3 I think it's less about talking about what it means to be a man and more about showing what it means to be a man. And the mere fact that

Speaker 3 your questioner is already thinking about that suggests to me that they're probably going to be okay. And the danger is they'll overthink it.

Speaker 3 You know, there's that great meme, which is like, excuse me for a moment while I go away and overthink this.

Speaker 3 There's a danger that you overthink this, and you're sort of so worried about masculinity and the role modeling and stuff that you kind of lose touch with just your own instincts.

Speaker 3 And sounds like an awesome dad, probably going to do an awesome job, not by telling his son how to be a man, but by showing it. And this, this, what are you showing?

Speaker 3 You're showing this is really just your riff, which is that

Speaker 3 you're serving others. You're protecting

Speaker 3 and providing for the tribe, for the community in one way or another. And I'll just give you an anecdote of massive paternal pride for me.

Speaker 3 I mean, I never talked to my sons about masculinity or what it meant to be a man. Like there was literally never a discussion.
More so recently because of the work.

Speaker 3 But one of the things I always used to do is if someone got onto a train carriage or a bus and needed a seat more than someone who was the young man who was sitting down, I would say to the young men, hey guys,

Speaker 3 who's going to give up the seat?

Speaker 3 I would just gently shame them into it. And always one of them would get up.
And my sons would be mortified. They would be, dad, dad, that's so embarrassing.
You've got to stop doing it. So

Speaker 3 just so embarrassed. And then a couple of years ago, I'm on a train with one of my sons.
Someone gets on and needs a seat. There's a bunch of guys sitting down.

Speaker 3 And my son says to them, Guys, who's going to give up your seat?

Speaker 2 No other.

Speaker 3 I'm just job done. And I said to him, I'm so embarrassed.
Please don't do that. Stop doing that.
But the point is, that's this flex, this sort of parenting flex. I'm going to give myself that.

Speaker 3 But it's also like they're embarrassed when I did it. It is a difficult thing to do to publicly say, come on, guys, someone like, come on, this is what it means to be a guy.
You look around.

Speaker 3 You should be looking around for people who need you in some way or another. Right.

Speaker 3 And just just magically over time, that particular message got through. I never told my sons they had to do that.
I never did it, but they now do it.

Speaker 3 And so I think that's the, there's going to be a million versions of that where they will just watch what you do. They will see how you treat your partner, their mom.

Speaker 3 They will see how you treat people in the street. They'll see how you conduct yourself in your life.
And if you're a good dad, they are going to be good dudes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's hard to beat. You know, it's not what you say, it's what you you do.
One of the things I've tried, I've really tried to,

Speaker 2 and obviously I'd like to think it comes naturally. I try to be really good to their mother in front of them.
And that is, I try to show them how much I really like adore their mother.

Speaker 2 And also, in a weird way,

Speaker 2 I'm not weak. I'm not a doormat, but I make it clear

Speaker 2 on a lot of stuff around the home, mom's in charge. And I defer to her a lot.
And I don't have this weird sense of when she gets angry at me, I got to get back in her face or something.

Speaker 2 I show her that.

Speaker 2 I do think there's something to the fact that one of the best things you can do for boys in terms of helping them establish healthy relationships with women later in life is just to be really good to their mom.

Speaker 2 And I do have this practice that's a little bit more overt called what a man does. And I'll say to them, this is what a man does.

Speaker 2 And I say, a man immediately when they're a guest, we have a lot of friends who come stay at our place.

Speaker 2 A man immediately, when he hears there's guests, runs out to their car, gets their luggage, and puts it in their room. That's what a man does.
A man never pours his own water first,

Speaker 2 right?

Speaker 2 Never. And so I'll literally like, you know, look at them, but they start pouring their own drink or their water.
I look at them and they know what it is.

Speaker 2 And they're like, look around and then they pour other water. And I remember my mom doing the same thing for me with manners.

Speaker 3 I also.

Speaker 2 And I love your take on it, and I've heard it, so I want to inspire this again. I tell my boys that when they're around a woman socially, a man always pays.
And I've gotten some pushback, but my

Speaker 2 rationale for that, and I don't go into this with them, is that a woman's fertility window is shorter. There's a lot of research showing that men garner greater benefit from relationships than women.

Speaker 2 And the downside of sex, which oftentimes is the objective for a man in a social situation or a date, is much greater for a woman. So the asymmetry of the value trade is there.

Speaker 2 There's a more benefit that could accrue to the man. Her time, quite frankly, biologically, from a propagation standpoint, is more valuable.

Speaker 2 And one way you demonstrate that valor and one way you show you're serious and one way you recognize the asymmetry in the trade, or one simple way, is to pay.

Speaker 2 Now, I'm not saying that works for everybody. Some people say whoever acts whoever out,

Speaker 2 they should

Speaker 2 pay. There's a lot of people who will say, no, you split the check.
And I'm going to stand by this. I think you should pay.
Your thoughts on this, Richard.

Speaker 3 My sons would agree with you on the first date. I think it also is partly because there's an expectation, I think this is a correct one, that probably the guy has made the move to ask the girl out.

Speaker 3 Hopefully, you've seen the declining numbers around that. And then I think it's okay, having asked, you then should actually offer to pay.

Speaker 3 And actually, one of my sons does something really wise about this to me. And he's actually the one who's a teacher.

Speaker 3 And so he's well aware that some of the women he's dating may well be kind of more economically successful than he is. although he works really hard.
He coaches and summer school and everything too.

Speaker 3 And he says it's actually, you're not signaling to them by paying, offering to pay, and they're usually paying. You're not signaling, I've got more money than you.
Don't you worry about money.

Speaker 3 Don't you worry your pretty head about the labor market, right? I'll be the breadwinner.

Speaker 3 What you're signaling is you have some economic resources and that you are willing to spend those economic resources on her. It does not mean superiority.
It means service and it means giving.

Speaker 3 And so that's a really kind of powerful distinction, I think.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the tough thing to say about this, Scott, is that

Speaker 3 some of these things may have significant symbolic value

Speaker 3 well after they still have significant material value. And there was this beautiful example from Barack Obama recently when he was on Michelle Obama's podcast.

Speaker 3 And I listened to it and I immediately sent it to a friend of mine because he was always teasing me about this, which is you always walk street side of a woman.

Speaker 3 That's one of the things my dad taught me and my mum taught me, right? You always

Speaker 2 splash back carriage, right?

Speaker 3 Splashback or exactly. So it's, it's a carriage.
And for me, of course, it's just at this point, I just can't not do it. I just feel, I just feel uncomfortable not doing it.
It's like a second.

Speaker 3 And these female friends will sometimes tease me, especially this old woman, she'll tease me about it sometimes, saying, there are no carriages. You don't need to be there, but I just can't not do it.

Speaker 3 And it's a great example, but she also really appreciates it. And she appreciates the symbol of the thoughtfulness,

Speaker 3 even if the actual risk has gone away or is minimal. It's more about a signal of an intent.
And it's a signal that you're thinking about them and the people around you in a different way.

Speaker 3 And that is at the core of masculinity, Donewell.

Speaker 2 Richard Reeves is the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men and author of the bestseller of Boys and Men. His work explores inequality and the crisis facing young men today.

Speaker 2 Richard, as always, very much appreciate your good work and your generosity.

Speaker 3 Likewise, I'm back at you and congrats again on all the work right now, Scott. You're killing it.

Speaker 2 Thanks, brother.

Speaker 2 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our assistant producer is Laura Jannaire.
Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop GPod from Prop G Media.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Train Dreams, a new film from Netflix. A man stands alone in the wilderness and watches the world move on without him.

Speaker 1 What makes Train Dreams so powerful isn't the tragedy. Instead, it's the quiet resilience and the reminder that you don't need to live a big life to live a meaningful one.

Speaker 1 It's not about conquest or control. It's about endurance, grace, and decency in the face of change.
Train Dreams, now playing only on Netflix.

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