Why 63% of Young Men Have Stopped Trying | Scott Galloway

Speaker 1 The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a bold design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live.

Speaker 1 And with SiriusXM, every drive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, the sports, talk, and podcasts that you love right in your vehicle or on the Sirius XM app.

Speaker 1 Every Sirius XM-equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three-month trial, so the experience begins the moment you drive. Learn more at kia.com slash sportage dash hybrid.

Speaker 2 Kia, movement that inspires.

Speaker 2 It's time for Black Friday. Dell Technologies biggest sale of the year.
Enjoy the lowest prices of the year on select PCs like the Dell 16 Plus, featuring Intel Core ultra processors.

Speaker 2 And with built-in advanced features, it's the PC that helps you do more faster. Plus, earn Dell rewards and enjoy many other benefits like free shipping, price match guarantee, and expert support.

Speaker 2 They also have huge deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC and make perfect gifts for everyone on your list. Shop now at dell.com slash deals.

Speaker 2 This episode is brought to you by Facebook. Facebook is where real connections happen, a place to find your people, rediscover old friends, and build new relationships that actually matter.

Speaker 2 From alumni groups and local events to marketplace and shared memories, Facebook helps bring people closer in meaningful ways.

Speaker 2 It's where nostalgia meets possibility, reminding us that the smallest interactions can spark lasting connections. Let's reconnect this holiday season.
Explore more with Facebook today.

Speaker 3 Men are struggling, four times as likely to kill themselves, three times as likely to be addicted or homeless, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated.

Speaker 3 If you go into a morgue and there's five people but died by suicide and four men if it was any other group i think we'd weigh in with programs and empathy i think more and more of them are going to be alone in a room with a screen scott's the host of the prof g pod and co-host the pivot and raging moderates podcast he's a best-selling author in his latest book notes on being a man is now the number one bestseller at amazon please welcome scott gallery

Speaker 3 My biggest fans are young men. My biggest supporters are mothers because they see what's going on.
The greatest alliance in history is the alliance between men and women.

Speaker 3 Why would you go through the effort, the expense, the potential rejection, humiliation, effort when you have synthetic, lifelike porn at home?

Speaker 2 How do they survive if you're not doing anything except for consuming all day?

Speaker 3 Just having men in your life that can give you a little bit of advice and not only that, just give you the sense you have value. I've been investing in stocks since I was 13 because of Psy Sarah.
Wow.

Speaker 3 I've made tens of millions of dollars investing in stocks. He taught me this incredible life skill around investing.

Speaker 2 What would you say are three things you would leave behind if this was the last day on earth for you many years away?

Speaker 3 The biggest unlock in my life was the following.

Speaker 2 Welcome back, everyone, in the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guests.

Speaker 2 We have the inspiring Scott Galloway in the house, who is the number one New York Times bestseller of notes on being a man. Welcome to the show, Scott.
Thanks, Liz. Good to see you, man.

Speaker 2 Excited that you're here. Congrats on the book.
Thanks.

Speaker 2 We were talking beforehand about that I wrote a book called The The Mask of Masculinity seven years ago that I think was ahead of its time.

Speaker 2 But I think people really need to hear what you're talking about today because there's so much confusion with men in society. And so I'm going to give you a layup question to start.

Speaker 2 What is the role of men in society today?

Speaker 3 Well, I think that's the issue. I think that the role was pretty clear.
It was sort of provider and procreator.

Speaker 3 And now that a lot of the on-ramps into a middle-class lifestyle, a lot of the traditional jobs,

Speaker 3 we've basically torn up the script for women and said, you can be anything. And women are ascending, and that's fantastic.

Speaker 3 Twice as many women have been elected to some sort form of parliament globally in the last 30 years. More women are now seeking tertiary education globally than men.
Women in urban areas in the U.S.

Speaker 3 are making more money than men,

Speaker 3 more single women own. homes than men.
And these are all amazing. We should do nothing to get in the way of that.
But I think sometimes the role of men is a little bit confused now.

Speaker 3 Like, what is my role? And men are, you know, there's just no getting around it.

Speaker 3 Men are struggling, four times as likely to kill themselves, three times as likely to be addicted or homeless, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated. So I think the

Speaker 3 question, what is a man's role in this society, is a little bit up in the air right now. And I think that's part of the issue is a lot of men don't feel like they have a code.

Speaker 2 They're not clear.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think some of them lack purpose, and that is

Speaker 3 a lot of the natural attributes they would lean into, whether it's vocational work, whether it's being the provider, whether it's initiating romantic interest, I don't want to say being the aggressor, but the initiator, a lot of those things are either not available, harder to attain, or being frowned upon.

Speaker 3 So what is their role? And I mean, what happened to auto, metal, and woodshop? gone, right?

Speaker 3 If you think about

Speaker 3 what people are looking for in terms of more women in medical school, more women in law school, and those are wonderful things.

Speaker 3 But typically the job, remember that guy in high school who was never going to go to college? There were a lot of them, but could fix your car?

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 3 And would go on and actually make a pretty decent living? Yeah.

Speaker 3 We have, we've essentially replaced all those classes with computer science. We've kind of gone all in on the guy who goes to Harvard, drops out, and starts a tech company.

Speaker 3 Kind of the nation's been optimized for that person. And the majority of men

Speaker 3 aren't that dude. In addition, fewer men are going to religious institutions, playing sports, connecting to work, remote work, I think it's been terrible, connecting to relationships.

Speaker 3 And then they're up against the deepest pocketed companies with godlike technology, really trying to sequester them from the offline world and relationships.

Speaker 3 And as a result, I think you have a cohort of young men who feel a little bit

Speaker 3 untethered.

Speaker 3 Their path is not as clear as it once was, don't have the same level of opportunities that my generation had. And some of it, to be clear, was unearned advantage.

Speaker 3 I had too much opportunity relative to other groups.

Speaker 3 But if, you know, if any other group was, if you go into a morgue and there's five people that died by suicide and four men, if it was any other group, I think it would weigh in with programs and empathy.

Speaker 3 But because of the underadvantage of my generation, there is a lack of empathy. And the stat that I remind people of, I understand the gag reflex when I talk about this, and that is from 1945 to 2000,

Speaker 3 a third of the world's economic growth was registered by the 5% of the population in America. So we had six times the prosperity of the rest of the world.
So 6X.

Speaker 3 And then you take all that prosperity and you cram it into the one-third of the population that was white, male, and heterosexual. If you were, I was kind of born on third base.

Speaker 3 You know, my rap till I was about your age was check me out.

Speaker 3 I've overcome, you know, I didn't have some of the same advantages as my peers, but what I've acknowledged now is that I really was born on third base, my kind of identity, demographics, and when and where I was born.

Speaker 3 But unfortunately, I think society is holding young men accountable for my unfair advantage, and they just don't face the same opportunities.

Speaker 2 They don't have the skills, also, right? It's like they don't have the skills to face that unfair advantage, I guess, or to manage it all.

Speaker 3 100%.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 3 you know, I had to go into work. I had to put on a tie.

Speaker 3 I had, you know, I had guardrails set up for me.

Speaker 3 And I think that, I think remote work has been an absolute disaster for young people,

Speaker 3 especially men who, quite frankly, mature later. And my first job was in downtown L.A.
at Morgan Stanley. If I didn't have to get up at 7 a.m., put on a tie, act a certain way, learn to behave.

Speaker 3 I was constantly pulled out of... meetings by my boss who was a real mentor.
And he would say, just like, don't say that shit.

Speaker 3 I don't. And I needed that.

Speaker 3 And I learned how to interact with people senior to me, more successful than me, learned how to interact with a boss, learned more about how to interact with a woman in a professional environment.

Speaker 3 And it was great seasoning for me. And while I think remote work is an unlock for people who are caregivers, I think it's really a negative for young people.

Speaker 3 And something we don't talk about one in three relationships begin at work.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 where do people meet and develop friendships, mentorships, and romantic relationships?

Speaker 3 And the reality is men need, young men need romantic relationships or benefit more from them than women. If a man

Speaker 3 hasn't been married or cohabitated with a woman by the time he's 30, there's a one in three chance he's going to be a substance abuser. There's this cartoon of a woman in her

Speaker 3 30s who never found romantic love. The reality is she's okay.
Women, when they don't have that romantic relationship, oftentimes pour that energy back into friends and their professional life.

Speaker 3 Men tend to pour it back into more negative things or less productive things, online, gaming, porn, oftentimes, unfortunately, conspiracy theory.

Speaker 2 So quite frankly, gambling or something else.

Speaker 3 Gambling, drugs, whatever it might be. That it takes on and manifests itself in worse ways.

Speaker 3 A woman in a relationship lives two to four years longer than a man. I'm sorry, than a woman not in a relationship, but a man lives four to seven years longer.

Speaker 3 Widows are happier after their husband dies. Widowers Widowers are less happy after their wife dies.

Speaker 3 So oddly enough, men benefit and accrete more advantage in a relationship than a woman does, which isn't to say nobody owes,

Speaker 3 you know, it's no one's responsibility to service men or provide them with romantic comfort such that they don't become poor citizens.

Speaker 3 But the reality is, I do think society and men of my generation have a debt to pay, and that is to try and get emotionally, logistically, and economically involved in young people's lives and level them up such that they have some of the same opportunities that my generation had yeah it's interesting because i saw this um

Speaker 2 this article on vogue the headline says is having a boyfriend embarrassing now yeah and you know hearing these stats if i'm a woman hearing these stats that essentially i live longer without a man in my life you know who knows the context of all these things but i also i'm fine without a man in some ways.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Why should women get in a relationship with a man if there's also benefit for women being single?

Speaker 2 Yeah, so there's unfortunately, I think that there's besides having a family and raising children and, you know, providing for society in a different way, obviously, but and not being alone your whole life.

Speaker 3 There's, there's, I think in online media, especially, but all media, there's a romanticization of the independent, feminine, strong woman. And I think a lot of that is really positive.

Speaker 3 But I also think it's created a culture where it's sort of women are encouraged to kind of be one striker out as a man. Oh, he doesn't get along with his parents.
Red flag.

Speaker 3 Like every yellow or magenta flag is a red flag. And you're the strong, independent, beautiful woman, and you don't need a man.

Speaker 3 And whenever I ask for a dating advice, the advice I give to men is, The first thing I ask is, would you want to have sex with you? Are you in shape? Do you have a plan? Are you kind?

Speaker 3 Do you demonstrate artisanship and interest in different things?

Speaker 3 How do you demonstrate excellence? And the advice I would give to women is what I call a second coffee. And that is, I think women are celebrated for exiting relationships,

Speaker 3 inspiring Carly Simon songs about walking out on that man and you don't need a man.

Speaker 3 And when surveys, when men are said, when men are asked, if a woman had 80% of everything you want, would that suffice for you? 75% of men say, yeah, that'd be great.

Speaker 3 When women presented with the same metric, 80% of everything you want, 75%

Speaker 3 say that's not enough.

Speaker 2 They need like 95% or 100% of what they want.

Speaker 3 Well, and again, I think that, let me go straight to the solve. The solve is for men to level up.
Yes.

Speaker 3 But if you look at kind of the content of what algorithms are like, it's a lot of women saying, like a basic standard metric is because, and I think it's happened because of online dating, where the metrics get distilled down to some very base, crude things.

Speaker 3 Six feet, feet six figures like that's not a lot to ask right six feet six figures if you take out married men obese men um uh men under the age of uh over the age of 50 it's two percent of the population

Speaker 3 and if you talk to people who've been married longer than 30 years 80 of them say one was much more interested in the beginning than the other And it was almost always the man.

Speaker 3 The reality is, Liz, we're less choosy.

Speaker 3 If you have a room with 100 people, 50 men and 50 women, and and there's alcohol involved, the majority of the men would agree to have sex with the majority of the women.

Speaker 3 The majority of the women would sleep with none of the men.

Speaker 3 Women are choosier.

Speaker 3 And typically what's happened in these relationships where people end up together is the woman says, I wasn't initially that interested, but I liked the way he treated his parents at church.

Speaker 3 We hung out with the same friend group and I found he was funny. I liked the way he danced.
I liked the way he smelt. I found that he was really kind.
I was so impressed with him at work.

Speaker 3 He was outstanding at what he does. Where does a man, what venues now does a young man have to demonstrate excellence, right?

Speaker 3 If they're not going to church, they're not going to school, they're not going to work, where do they have the opportunity to develop the skills and then demonstrate their strengths and skills over time?

Speaker 3 And instead, it's kind of been consolidated now to the one medium where most people are mating or finding dates, and that is online.

Speaker 3 And anytime you digitize any market, it does become a winner-take-most environment. And then

Speaker 3 they're up against this almost indomitable foe.

Speaker 3 And that is 40% of the S ⁇ P by market value now is related to AI, the Magnums and 10.

Speaker 3 And their objective, they're not malicious, but unwittingly, the algorithms have figured out for every second we can take someone out of the organic mammalia world and put them on a screen, we can monetize it.

Speaker 3 And the person who is most susceptible to arbitraging their real life to an online life is a young man because of a less mature prefrontal cortex, the executive function, the susceptibility to addiction around constant DOPA.

Speaker 3 So ground zero for our economy right now, our monetizing our young people to drive trillions of dollars in value. is essentially trying to sequester young men from their relationships.

Speaker 3 So I worry that at the hands of this godlike technology regulated by Paleolithic instincts and medieval institutions, that we're evolving a new species of

Speaker 3 asocial asexual males.

Speaker 3 And my prediction is unless we weigh in with programs and regulate big tech,

Speaker 3 when you go to malls, I'm doing a live podcast tonight with 2,000 people. I think you are going to visibly see fewer and fewer young men.
I think they are going out or going to events.

Speaker 2 Going out in the real world.

Speaker 3 I think more and more of them are going to be alone in a room with a screen. And why

Speaker 3 go through the pecking order of trying to establish friends when you have Reddit in Discord?

Speaker 3 Why put on a tie, show up, try and navigate the difficulties and complexities of the workplace when you think you can trade stocks or crypto on Robinhood or Coinbase?

Speaker 3 And why would you go through the effort, the expense, the potential rejection, humiliation, effort, perseverance, willingness to endure rejection involved in establishing a romantic or a sexual relationship when you have synthetic, lifelike porn at home.

Speaker 3 So I think we're going to have essentially, I mean, there's now one out of seven men are called NEETs. They're neither in education, employment, or in training.
They're literally doing nothing.

Speaker 3 And 63% of men under the age of 30 aren't even trying to date.

Speaker 2 How do they survive? If you're not doing anything except for consuming all day and you're not developing skills offline or even online skills to create value in the world, how are you surviving?

Speaker 2 Is it just you're getting checks from the government or your family or people paying for them or how does this work?

Speaker 3 It's a really good question. There are government services, you know, everything from SNAP to unemployment to welfare to Medicaid.
They, you know, they got they.

Speaker 3 you know, had stimulus checks during COVID. One out of three men under the age of 25 is living at their parents.
One out of five under the age of 30. At 30, one in five men are still living at home.

Speaker 3 So I think that some part-time work, some government assistance, their parents, but yeah, a lot of men, and I wouldn't even say men because kind of my Yoda around all of this is Richard Reeves.

Speaker 3 Have you had Richard on your podcast? So Richard brings like the data and the actual rigor. I'm just louder than him.

Speaker 3 But he has this great litmus test for when a male becomes a man, because I do think a lot of males die never really having become men.

Speaker 2 When does a male become a man?

Speaker 3 I love this term used, is surplus value. When you approach relationships from a generative viewpoint, so growing up, I say to my boys, you're negative value right now.

Speaker 3 You got a school spending a ton of time and resources on you. Your parents are giving you more love than you're giving us.
Society is providing you with roads.

Speaker 3 If you call 911, someone's going to pick up. You're not generating any tax revenue.

Speaker 2 You're not adding value.

Speaker 3 You're negative value everywhere.

Speaker 3 And at some point, I think when you become a man, it's not when, it's not age, it's not some sort of religious ceremony. It's when you are generating more economic value than you're absorbing.

Speaker 3 It's when you're noticing people's lives and absorbing more complaints than you're making.

Speaker 3 Quite frankly, it's when you're giving more love and more cloud cover for other people than you have received. You're adding surplus value is the term that Richard uses, right?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 And I think

Speaker 3 a lot of males never get there.

Speaker 3 get, I still have, I still know people who call their parents and complain when their parents are 80. And it's like, okay, at some point it needs to flip where you're taking care of your parents.

Speaker 3 And also, I came to this conclusion recognizing I didn't really, by that standard, become a man until I was in my 40s.

Speaker 3 Cause I used to be that guy that approached every relationship of if I wasn't getting more joy and camaraderie from a friend than I was giving, it was like, I'm on the wrong side of this capitalist trade and I'd I'd exit the friendship.

Speaker 3 Interesting. If I spent time with my girlfriend's parents when they were in town, I would expect her to spend as much or more time.

Speaker 3 If I was, if I felt an employee wasn't giving me a lot more value than I was paying them, you know, I'm thinking, okay, this isn't working and I'd let them go.

Speaker 3 I was all about this mindset of relationships as a transaction. And then what I've come to realize is like, that's the opposite of what it means to add surplus value and be a man.

Speaker 3 That the ultimate kind of litmus test is first you got to take care of yourself. You got to fix your own, you know, oxygen mask.
Then you take care of your family.

Speaker 3 Then you take care of your community, ideally take care of your country or protect your country. And then the ultimate expression, I think, of manhood is you plant trees the shade of which

Speaker 3 you'll never sit under.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 it's been a kind of a journey for me, but I like the idea, this notion of surplus generative value in relationships.

Speaker 2 I love that. I used to think that you become a man, and maybe it's more emotionally or spiritually when you have a child and when you lose your father.
Like you have to step into some type of

Speaker 2 spiritual breakthrough. And but then I was like, okay, well, anyone could have kids.
They could just have lots of kids, but not really be there as a father or as a dad.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 and when I lost my father a few years ago, I really felt like, oh,

Speaker 2 something shifted in me. And I almost, I lost him mentally 20 years ago when he went through a brain injury.
He had an accident and he was alive alive physically, but emotionally, he wasn't available.

Speaker 2 He wasn't a provider anymore with spiritual, emotional, or financial support.

Speaker 2 So it was more like I had to support him and our family had to support him.

Speaker 2 But then when he fully passed physically, it's like something also shifted at a whole nother level of like, oh, I really need to step into this.

Speaker 2 spiritual or psychological way of being now because I can no longer rely that my father's going to rescue me.

Speaker 2 Even though he was here, like maybe he could have bailed me out some way, but no longer can my father bail me out.

Speaker 2 And now having twins, it's like, oh, I have to, I get to continue to step up as a man, continue to step up as

Speaker 2 a leader to myself, a leader to my spouse, a leader to our extended families and provide. emotionally, spiritually, physically, financially.

Speaker 2 And continue to evolve. I can't be,

Speaker 2 I don't know, I don't have the ability anymore to act like a child. You know what I mean? I can be childlike energetically, but I have to be able to provide a space to serve and serve beyond me.

Speaker 2 Obviously, I need to take care of me, but the goal that I'm hearing you say is, how can we add way more value than we're taking? And I think that is part of it.

Speaker 2 So I don't know what my definition now is, like, or when you truly become it i don't know if you can truly step into like manhood if your father's still alive and if you don't have kids i don't know if there's still some like childish boy energy until one of those things happen but i don't know what are your thoughts on that

Speaker 2 Life is unpredictable, and sometimes we're hit with an unexpected purchase after another. And I've been there before.
One day, the AC in your car decides to stop working in the middle of summer.

Speaker 2 And the next day, your cat got got into something that they shouldn't have.

Speaker 2 So now, the same week, you're stuck with a large bill from the car mechanic and another large bill from the vet, neither of which you accounted for in this month's expenses.

Speaker 2 This is not a fun position to be in, but the U.S. Bank Split World MasterCard can help make it a little easier in the moment.

Speaker 2 The split card is a new type of card that lets you pay later on every purchase.

Speaker 2 All purchases are automatically divided into three payments and placed into a payment plan plan to be paid back over three months.

Speaker 2 So, if you're looking for additional flexibility, you can extend your plan to six or 12 months with equal monthly payments for a low monthly fee.

Speaker 2 So, whether it's an unexpected vet bill or something more enjoyable like a last-minute contract ticket, you can pay later on every purchase with the U.S. Bank Split Card.

Speaker 2 Learn more at usbank.com/slash split card. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, Association, pursuant to a license from MasterCard International, Incorporated.

Speaker 2 Some restrictions may apply.

Speaker 7 It's the season to come together over your holiday favorites at Starbucks. Warm up with a creamy caramel brulee latte.
Get festive with an iced gingerbread chai, or share a velvety peppermint mocha.

Speaker 7 Together is the best place to be at Starbucks.

Speaker 2 If you're a small business owner, you already wear a dozen hats. CEO, HR, marketing, janitor, the last thing you need is to stress about insurance.
That's where the Hartford comes in.

Speaker 2 They've been helping small businesses for over 200 years, and they ensure over 1 million small business owners across the country.

Speaker 2 They know your time is precious, and they've made it easy to get the coverage you need without the hassle. Visit theHartford.com/slash small business to learn more and get a quote today.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think there's a lot of people who become men who never have kids.

Speaker 3 So the way you talked about kind of birth and death are tremendous points of inspiration to kind of grow up and start behaving in a way that makes you a man.

Speaker 3 But I think a lot of people have kids and never become men.

Speaker 2 That's true.

Speaker 3 And a lot of people,

Speaker 3 you know, who have parents live well into their 50s or 60s,

Speaker 3 never become a man. But what you say resonates in the sense that I think of kind of the two,

Speaker 3 I would say what motivated me to be a better man

Speaker 3 or get to manhood. And they both involve women.
And one's more virtuous than the other.

Speaker 3 And that is when my mom I was kind of sleepwalking through life didn't get my act together until I was about 25 26

Speaker 3 and my mom got really sick and I didn't have the money I she called me from graduate I was in graduate school she'd had her second mastectomy and got discharged early from the hospital you know because hospitals are expensive and she was at home and she called me and said you need to come home I'm really in a bad way my mom was not dramatic so I got on a flight back from Berkeley and I walked into a situation, Lewis, that I just didn't know how to deal with it.

Speaker 3 And there's just certain things a son can't do for his mother. And I remember thinking, I need to get her a nurse.
And I called, the nurses were 35 bucks an hour, and I had about $700 in my name.

Speaker 3 And just the shame, it's like, okay,

Speaker 3 I'm the only son, the only child of a single immigrant mother, taking care of me my whole life. She's really vulnerable right now, and I can't live up to my expectations.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's tough.

Speaker 3 That was really upsetting. And at that moment, I decided, look, you can't decide to be economically secure, but you can decide to kind of go all in.

Speaker 3 And that's when I really got my act together and said, okay, you can't control the market trumps individual dynamics.

Speaker 3 And there's some exceptionally talented people that work really hard their whole life and take risks and never get there.

Speaker 3 So you can't control that, but the things you can't control, I decided I was going to work really hard. That was very motivating for me.
And then the other thing is less virtuous. I noticed early that

Speaker 3 guys who had their shit together professionally and economically

Speaker 3 seem to be attracting a broader selection set of mates.

Speaker 3 And I even saw through UCLA, the freshmen were interested in guys that were funny and cool and dressed well.

Speaker 3 And by the time they were seniors, They were very interested in that guy going to medical school.

Speaker 3 And we don't like to talk about this, but women are attracted to men for three reasons. The first is to signal resources.
And you don't have to show up with a Range Rover or a Panarai.

Speaker 3 You can just be someone who has shit together. It's like this guy's going to be a good provider.
The second is humor. We talked about this in the last one, or intellect.

Speaker 3 And then the third, and this is, I think, is the most underleveraged secret weapon in mating for a man, is kindness.

Speaker 3 And that is, women instinctively believe at some point they'll be vulnerable because of gestation or they're physically smaller. So they're very drawn to men who demonstrate kindness.

Speaker 3 And that is acts of generosity with no reciprocal expectation.

Speaker 3 So, and that's the most people, most men understand one and two,

Speaker 3 but what they don't understand is they need a kindness practice. Cause I do think you can learn kindness.

Speaker 3 It starts with manners, but if you try to, you know, small acts of generosity every day, I do think it starts to become second, second nature. But I wanted to take care of my mom.

Speaker 3 And quite frankly, I wanted more dates. And that was those, both those things were very motivating for me to try and be a better man.
And then what you talked about having kids.

Speaker 2 How old were you when you had kids?

Speaker 3 I started late. I was 42.

Speaker 2 Yeah, me too.

Speaker 3 42.

Speaker 2 Oh, you're 42. Just had kids.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you at 42 is a different look than me at 42.

Speaker 2 Anyways,

Speaker 3 I,

Speaker 3 but when my kid came marching or had the poor judgment to come marching out of my girlfriend, it was 2008 and I had lost everything.

Speaker 2 Oh, right at the housing crisis.

Speaker 3 Yeah. I had gone all, I always gone all in.
I kind of came a professional agent in San Francisco where you're supposed to go all in, borrow money against your stocks.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 you were kind of taught if you're really talented, you're in it to win it, and you can, you know, I'm so awesome that if I throw myself at something 100%, it's going to win, not recognizing, again, the power of diversity.

Speaker 3 So I've been wealthy three times, which means I've lost it twice.

Speaker 3 And I lost it in 2000. Then I crawled my way back.
had a kid and literally at that moment lost everything because I was too stupid to diversify. You're writing your book on money.

Speaker 3 I hadn't learned the power of diversification.

Speaker 3 And when my kid entered the world, it wasn't bright lights and angels singing. I literally felt anxiety and shame.

Speaker 3 I'm like, not only have I screwed up for me, but now I've screwed up for someone who is totally dependent upon me. And granted, I struggle with depression.

Speaker 3 So I have a tendency to see dark things as black. But I remember I was so nauseous and so anxious.
that I had to sit down.

Speaker 3 They were more worried about me, I think, than the mother of the kid at that point. And I couldn't say, I feel failure.
I feel like I've already let this thing down, you know, this.

Speaker 3 So for me, that was very motivating. I think having kids is stressful.
I'm not saying it's for everybody, but it definitely has made me a better man because I want to model good behavior.

Speaker 3 I take being a provider and a protector much more seriously now.

Speaker 3 And so I do think, you know, this kind of the three legs of the masculinity stool, provider, protector, procreator.

Speaker 3 I do think those are decent legs of the the stool and what you, the skills and strengths and attributes you want to develop to be all three of those things are loosely speaking,

Speaker 3 what I believe it means to be, you know, quite frankly, masculine. But the book is really more about where I screwed up and what I learned from it and tried to evolve around it.
But yeah, my

Speaker 3 first encounter, I know you just had twins. You're doing much better than I was at that moment.
But I felt a ton of stress and anxiety, but it also is very productive for me.

Speaker 3 And one of the things I worry about with my kids is that I didn't grow up with a lot, at least not economically. And I always say, if I had what my kids have, I wouldn't have what I have.

Speaker 3 And a lot of what I think about is how do you instill that sense of grit and a little bit of fear is probably good in kids.

Speaker 3 Because the things that really motivated me, if I had what my kids have, the only things I know I would have engaged in is like a Range Rover and a cocaine habit. I'm a fundamentally lazy person.

Speaker 3 When I was younger, I didn't want to save the world. I wasn't kind.
I wasn't trying to add value. I wanted economic security because an absence of it had caused so much anxiety in my life.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I think that

Speaker 3 if you grow up with money, did you grow up with money? No.

Speaker 3 If people have money, I think they can sympathize with people who don't. But I don't really think they can fully empathize because

Speaker 3 it's as if like my mom and I had this ghost following us around saying, you're not worthy. Like, you screwed up.
You and your mom screwed up.

Speaker 3 When I didn't get into UCLA down the road, they had a 74% admissions rate. And I was one of the 26% that didn't get in.

Speaker 3 I remember people, I went to my friends' parents, and they knew I hadn't gotten in. They're like, you should get on a plane tomorrow and go to Michigan and show up at the admissions office.

Speaker 3 And you're so smart. And I'm like, and I'm like, listening, I'm like, go to Michigan.

Speaker 2 I don't have a credit card.

Speaker 3 I don't,

Speaker 3 I've never, I've been on a plane like twice. We don't have that kind of money.

Speaker 3 I can't afford to spend two or three hundred dollars to go and show, there's just a lack of confidence, a lack of contacts, a lack of, quite frankly, a sophistication that people with money can't even relate to.

Speaker 3 And the anxiety, I remember like this, I don't call it trauma. People have worse trauma.
I was one of the, I'm one of those people that's always five. minutes away from losing your keys.

Speaker 3 I lose everything.

Speaker 3 And my ex-wife used to say, if my dick wasn't attached, we'd find it on a card table in Soho next to a Goodfella script and a Nirvana album.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I lost two jackets in one week, and jackets were 30 bucks for some reason. It was like a Monopoly or a cartel in jackets.
And I remember just the fear and anxiety.

Speaker 3 I purposely spent the night at my friends two nights in a row because I just couldn't face telling my mom I'd lost another jacket, you know, because I knew she was going to melt down.

Speaker 3 My mom was in a very vulnerable place and she would just lose her shit. And that was very distressing.
So

Speaker 3 I've been so focused and some of the critiques of the book is that, and it's actually an accurate critique. It's that I'm too focused on money.
And then I think money will solve a man's problems.

Speaker 3 And that's actually a really accurate critique, but that comes from a place of not having it. And things just got so much easier and better for me once I had economic security.

Speaker 2 Well, I think it's part of it for sure, like you said, but also if you're not kind and you have money, you're going to just ruin people's lives if you're just like mean okay i have all the money i have resources i'm funny and i'm intelligent but i'm mean that is a disaster for any person coming into a relationship with them whether it be a business partner or a team member if they're running a business or the president the president or a financial financial uh i say that i don't know the political leanings of you or your audience but

Speaker 3 I find that some of the role models for masculinity that we should naturally look up to, the wealthiest man in the world, he's won capitalism, and the president.

Speaker 3 And I don't think they're very strong role models for young men i think they've conflated masculinity with coarseness and cruelty you know being sued concurrently by two women for sole custody or child because you haven't seen that child that couldn't be any less masculine cutting off aid to hiv positive mothers

Speaker 3 i just can't think of anything less masculine than that it's like these guys have recognized tremendous prosperity That's really impressive.

Speaker 3 But the whole point of prosperity is you can move to protection. That's the whole shooting match, right?

Speaker 3 What's the point of prosperity if you can't get off your heels and onto your toes and protect others after you've protected yourself?

Speaker 3 And I think some of the most powerful men in the United States have just missed that whole part of their journey towards manhood. I think it's really disappointing.

Speaker 3 Even if you look back at the Gilded Age, some of these men who were just rapacious, kind of once they got there, they did feel a real obligation, a civic obligation.

Speaker 3 And that's where I think some of the individuals in big tech and in our government right now, I feel as if they've kind of skipped that whole protection part of the masculinity stool, if you will.

Speaker 2 Procreation, protection, and providing of those are the three stools.

Speaker 3 Provider. Provider.

Speaker 3 And then move to protection, operating system around always protecting, not just physical.

Speaker 3 You know, guys like your size breakup fights at bars. They don't start them.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Right. But emotional protection.
psychological protection, all these things, right?

Speaker 3 When you hear someone talking shit about someone behind their back,

Speaker 3 your default operating system should be to weigh in and minimum not participate and ideally protect them. You may not agree with the transgender community.

Speaker 3 You may be like me and think it's ridiculous that firms have to have legally mandated third bathrooms. I don't think that makes any sense.

Speaker 3 I think it's ridiculous that we allowed a transgender woman who's six foot five to show up to an NC2A swim meet. I think that's just irrational.

Speaker 3 It starts from a good place, but I think that's irrational.

Speaker 3 But at the same time,

Speaker 3 I'd like, I just don't see any reason why people want to demonize this community and start kicking them out of the military when they've served honorably.

Speaker 3 When we start passing laws in states that say there can't be any transgender athletes in high school, and then someone actually says, are there any transgender athletes in high school in South Dakota?

Speaker 3 And they can't find one. That's just demonizing a community.

Speaker 3 This is less than 1% of the American population. So yeah,

Speaker 3 have a Democrats. or people on the left gone way too far? Yeah.
But then to weigh in with just being mean and demonizing a community. So

Speaker 3 women should be able to cross the street because they see men on that side of the street, not avoid them. That's really, that's heartbreaking that women say they don't feel safe around men, right?

Speaker 3 I think we have to teach our young boys from a very early age. Yes.
Protection is really a key component. And then the last one is more controversial is procreation.

Speaker 3 And that is, I think men wanting romantic and sexual relationships has been pathologized and demonized. And I think it's a feature, not a bug.

Speaker 3 Because if men want to have relationships and quite frankly, sex, I didn't see my partner at the pool at the Raleigh Hotel in South Beach and think, I would like someday to have a relationship with her to get lower rates on auto insurance.

Speaker 3 I saw her and thought, quite frankly, I would really like to have sex with that woman.

Speaker 3 And that desire, that fire can be destructive.

Speaker 3 But most of the time, it's fire that's captured in an engine and creates progress, progress towards being fit, being a better dresser having a rep being a provider having perseverance and developing what i think is the key skill in life across multiple dimensions and that is the ability to endure rejection

Speaker 3 you know all the you've built here this didn't just happen the only thing i know that was involved in this was a lot of no's and the ability

Speaker 3 the ability to get hit in the face beamed in the face get up dust up and get back to the plate.

Speaker 3 And I think a lot of the skills men develop pursuing relationships are not only informative and educational, but really key to developing skills across the rest of their lives.

Speaker 3 And if you ever see someone who you think, oh, they're talented, but they seem to have made more money than I would have guessed, or they're with someone higher character and more attractive in them.

Speaker 3 I can almost guarantee you that one skill set, and that is the ability to get out a spoon and eat.

Speaker 3 And every great yes in your life, every great great yes in your life will involve one thing, and that is a ridiculous number of no's that come before it.

Speaker 3 And there's a scary stat that just came out that 40% of America of men 18 to 24 have never asked a woman out in person.

Speaker 2 Wow, really?

Speaker 3 So if you're a dude that's willing to go up to a woman, figure out a way to express romantic interest while making her feel safe, you're almost already in the top half of men.

Speaker 3 But men aren't approaching women. And this is anecdotal evidence.
I don't have data on this, but when I go out to places on a regular basis, when I speak to single women, they'll say, I'm here.

Speaker 3 I'm single. I'm ready to mingle.
Look at me. I look amazing.
They're signaling it. Yes.
And no men approach me.

Speaker 3 And regardless of what the Atlantic, the New York Times will say, 80% of women still say they want the man to make the approach.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 They don't want to be approaching men. It just doesn't feel natural for

Speaker 3 four out of five women. And I worry that men are being tempted, have been getting

Speaker 3 mixed messages. No guy wants to be that guy, right?

Speaker 3 Makes an approach, inartful, doesn't go well, often.

Speaker 2 Or

Speaker 3 it ends up, we both work at Google. And now I'm that guy.

Speaker 3 And there's actual professional ramifications between, I mean, the moment a woman says at work,

Speaker 3 fairly or unfairly, oh yeah, that guy, he hit on me at a bar. He's a creep.
That is not. So, so I think that men wanting to pursue romantic and sexual relationships is a feature, not a bug.

Speaker 3 And we've demonized and pathologized it.

Speaker 3 And I think we're now getting to a point where people realize that men being initiators, and I don't want to say aggressive, because that has negative overtones. But

Speaker 3 when I coach young men, one of the things I tell them is they need to put themselves in the agency of strangers. And then we have a practice called know, get to know, express platonic friendship.

Speaker 3 Hey, do you want to grab a beer and watch the game?

Speaker 3 And then also maybe romantic interests. Would you be interested in grabbing coffee? First, you got to open, establish some sort of rapport, where you're from, you know, et cetera.

Speaker 3 And then the key is no, because what you're going to do is you're going to call me the next day and I'm going to say, how are you? And they're going to say, oh, you know, I'm bummed. I'm fine.

Speaker 3 And that's the key is developing those calluses.

Speaker 2 I'm alive.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm fine. I'm alive.
And by the way, she's fine too. Yeah.
She's fine too.

Speaker 3 And if you don't know the difference between expressing platonic and romantic interests and harassing someone, you got much bigger problems.

Speaker 3 But where do men even have the venues to do that right now?

Speaker 3 So, provider, I think you got to be economically viable in a capitalist society. I think your own self-esteem, the way society judges you, is unfairly.

Speaker 3 It's unfairly based on the economic viability for men. It's unfairly based on the aesthetic qualities of women.
And I'm not saying this is the way the world should be, but it is the way the world is.

Speaker 3 And then, two, immediate move to protection. I think that's the most rewarding thing about having some prosperity.

Speaker 3 That's when I feel most at rest and most of purpose, when I feel like my kids are safe, my partner feels noticed. I feel I can

Speaker 3 get involved in great charities. You know, I'm doing a lot of virtue signaling right now, but it's true, but that gives me a sense of purpose and makes me feel strong.

Speaker 3 And then finally, I think we've got to celebrate young men's desire to be in relationships.

Speaker 3 I think it's a feature, not a bug.

Speaker 2 Well, I think society is better when men learn to improve themselves so they can attract a female partner or a partner where they can be a better human being. They can provide to that partner.

Speaker 2 They're less selfish, hopefully. They're more, you know, thoughtful about how they can serve their friends, their family, their community.

Speaker 2 If you find a man like that who can improve their life to attract a healthy, conscious woman that wants to be with them, you're going to have less war, less suffering, less pain, less aggression, less anger, and less men hurting other people.

Speaker 2 And I think that's what we need as society. And I saw you go on the view and there was a reaction video that someone said, you know, okay, Scott, so you need women to come rescue men

Speaker 2 because,

Speaker 2 you know, unless men are with a great woman, then they're going to be, you know, going around the world hurting people and just like causing a mess. And now we have to go and save men.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, when they've been oppressing us or hurting us for years and pushing us down, like that doesn't work for me. So what are your thoughts around that?

Speaker 2 Where it's like women feel like they're already working so hard. Why do they have to come rescue the man now

Speaker 2 to be a better man

Speaker 2 a warm dinner a full table a peace of mind for every family that's the holiday we all wish for the feeding america network helps make it possible not just for one family but for communities everywhere because when we act together hope grows give now and your impact may be doubled visit feedingamerica.org slash holiday

Speaker 2 The holidays can be chaotic. Flights get delayed, houses full of guests, wrapping paper everywhere, burnt pies in the oven, and we don't always get the sleep we're hoping for.

Speaker 2 What if the best gift you gave or got this year was just a full night's rest? You really can't go wrong with a gift from Coop Sleep Goods.

Speaker 2 They even hook you up with a free pillow consultation with a sleep expert and a 100-night free trial.

Speaker 2 Plus, Coop is offering up to 60% off this Black Friday, a premium sleep upgrade at the best value of the year.

Speaker 2 And when I took Coop's sleep quiz, it told me the Cool Plus Adjustable Pillow was my match, and they were right. I can't stand overheating when I sleep.

Speaker 2 And this one's got gel-infused memory foam that's made to be 50% more breathable. Coop gets it.
Give the gift of rest, or finally, gift yourself better sleep.

Speaker 2 Visit coopsleepgoods.com/slash greatness to shop the Black Friday Cyber Monday sale for a limited time. Save up to 60% off during Coop's best sale of the year.

Speaker 2 That's C-O-O-P-SleepeepGoods.com slash greatness.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so it's not, nobody has an obligation to service or save men, especially women. I don't,

Speaker 3 you know, men have to level up. Women don't have, I don't think women need to lower their standards.

Speaker 3 You know, I tell women to agree to a second coffee because traditionally, as we referenced before, sometimes it takes time to find that you're interested in this man.

Speaker 3 But I've never, ever in any way connoted or intimated, and I feel like

Speaker 3 some of these comments from Fair, they say these men are just entitled and feel like, and women are like Zoo said, supposed to come save them.

Speaker 3 I think unless men level up and unless we put in place physical programs that restore more economic viability to all young people,

Speaker 3 women, you can't tell women to lower their standards and save men. I get it.
I 100% get it. So

Speaker 3 I have three parties that I think need to weigh in here with help. One is a society.
I think we need to stop the transfer of economic power from young to old.

Speaker 3 We transfer $1.2 trillion every year, the biggest transfer in history of money from working-age people to old people, who are the wealthiest generation in history. My generation,

Speaker 3 people my age are 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. People under the age of 40 are 24% less wealthy.

Speaker 3 This has a disproportionately negative impact on men who are falling behind women because men are still disproportionately evaluated based on their economic viability.

Speaker 3 Beyonce could still marry Jay-Z if she worked at McDonald's. The opposite is not true.
And the reality is men are evaluated as romantic partners disproportionately based on their economic viability.

Speaker 3 So men need to, we need fiscal policies that put more money, I don't think in men's pockets, but in young pockets.

Speaker 2 But is that women who are looking that they don't feel safe if a man doesn't have money? Or is that women who are attracted to men with money? Is that...

Speaker 3 I don't know if it's they don't feel safe, but 75% of women say economic viability is key to a partner. Only 25% of men.
I mean, you've seen the state.

Speaker 3 Men made socioeconomically, horizontally and down, women horizontally and up.

Speaker 3 And when the pool of horizontal and up, because women keep getting taller economically, which is wonderful, don't do anything get in the way of that, the pool of horizontal and up keep shrinking.

Speaker 2 And so what do you do?

Speaker 3 I don't think we want economic

Speaker 3 affirmative action for men. I think what we want is to stop the transfer of wealth from young to old.
The two biggest tax deductions in America are mortgage interest rate and capital gains.

Speaker 3 Who owns homes and stocks? People my age. Who makes their money from working, current income, and rents? Young people.
And

Speaker 3 when a young group of people does not have money, you end up with a group with women who are two and three women under the age of 30 in a relationship, one and three men. Now, why is that?

Speaker 3 I think that's mathematically impossible. It's not because women are dating older because they want more emotionally and economically viable men.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 3 look, I think that we need to weigh in with policies that level up young people again: raise minimum wage, more progressive tax policy. Corporations are paying the lowest tax rate since 1939.

Speaker 3 The 25 wealthiest families are paying about 6% tax rate. We just transfer massive economics.
There's a sucking sound from young people to old people. I think it's taken an especially damaging toll on

Speaker 3 young men. And then

Speaker 3 the second group is: I think men my age really need to lean in and get involved in a young man's life or a boy's life because we have a debt.

Speaker 2 To mentor young kids. Well,

Speaker 3 we had unfair advantage. And I understand the gag reflex because I see a guy of my skin color, sexual orientation, gender, and age and think, dude, you had a 3,000-year head start and

Speaker 3 you're complaining about men now. And I'm like, I get it.
But should a 19-year-old male pay the price for my advantage?

Speaker 3 So we have an obligation, especially men of my generation, to get involved and try and lift them up.

Speaker 3 And then I also think women play a role because I do think there's an unhealthy zeitgeist in our society where women and progressives say to young men, you don't have problems, you are the problem.

Speaker 3 And the answer is you need to act more like a woman. And I don't think that's the answer either.
I don't think it is. But I feel like sometimes,

Speaker 3 and I hate this term, people take this stuff out of context and say, you're expecting now women after finally getting some progress are responsible for saving men. No, they're not.

Speaker 3 Our society is responsible for creating a healthy next generation, which means continuing the progress of women and also lifting up our young men who by any standard are really struggling.

Speaker 3 And empathy is not a zero-sum game. We can still acknowledge the huge obstacles women just face.
Your wife just had twins. When women have kids, they go to 77 cents on the dollar.

Speaker 3 We have not figured out a way to maintain a woman's professional trajectory when she has kids. That's a problem.

Speaker 3 Black and Latino families have an average household net worth of 22,000. White families, 160.

Speaker 3 There's still an economic apartheid in the U.S.

Speaker 3 But we can acknowledge those problems, still exist and work on them, but at the same time, also realize

Speaker 3 The country and women are not going to continue to flourish if young men are flailing. Full stop.

Speaker 3 So, again, empathy is not a zero-sum game. Gay marriage marriage didn't hurt heteronormative marriage.
Civil rights didn't hurt white people.

Speaker 3 Helping some of our young men, and specifically with programs for young people economically, that's not going to hurt women. It doesn't come at the cost of women.

Speaker 3 And one of the things I hate about the Manosphere, what people traditionally think is the Manosphere,

Speaker 3 is they believe there is an inverse correlation between women's assent. and how men are doing.
And the reality is without women's assent, we wouldn't have won World War II.

Speaker 3 Hitler wouldn't let women get into the factories. He thought they needed to stay home.
And we let women build P-51 Mustangs and we sent a lot of them overseas to be near the front lines.

Speaker 3 That literally won the war or was a big contributor to the war.

Speaker 3 Women entering the workforce in the 70s and 80s in the United States is probably the biggest driver of economic growth for the United States.

Speaker 3 And in a capitalist society where our expectations keep going up, you know, having dual-income households is really important. So I think women's ascent has been accretive to men.

Speaker 3 I think it's been great.

Speaker 3 And we need our young men to recognize that when they really lose the script is when they start blaming women for their romantic problems and immigrants for their economic problems, that women's success is great for them.

Speaker 3 At the same time, I do think that we need to stop this demonizing of, there's this thing online, this trend where women say they're not dating any longer because they could be unalived, which I guess is a politically correct term killed murdered

Speaker 3 unalived unalived unalived yeah if they were dating someone they would be killed well no that one of the reasons they're no longer dating is they feel like they're taking physical risks being in a man's company because men are violent

Speaker 3 and 2500 women every year are murdered that's a huge problem 70 by the way by people they've known for a while But if you look at the actual data, if you go on a date with a man, he's 16 times, 16 times more likely to go home that night and hurt himself than hurt you.

Speaker 3 Why is that? I think men sometimes get very, look, men are engaging in a lot of self-harm. You go into a morgue and there's five people died by suicide, four are men.

Speaker 3 And, you know, you're four times more likely to get hurt on the drive over or choked during dinner.

Speaker 3 So we've decided, I think the algorithms have decided, let's portray young men as, as quite frankly, as a danger to society.

Speaker 3 And the reality is men who are dangerous, and the vast majority aren't, but the small minority that are, are dangerous towards themselves. They're much more likely.

Speaker 3 The majority of gun deaths are suicides.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 I think that we also need

Speaker 3 my biggest fans are young men. My biggest supporters are mothers because they see what's going on.

Speaker 3 They see I have two daughters and one son, one daughter at Penn, one daughter in PR, and my son's in the basement playing video games and vaping. So I think that recognizing

Speaker 3 what I call restoring the alliance, and that is the greatest alliance in history is a NATO or between democracies. The greatest alliance in history is the alliance between men and women.

Speaker 3 I think a combination of masculine and feminine energy in a household makes the happiest, most productive households.

Speaker 3 And by the way, sometimes two women can bring that chemistry or two men can bring that alchemy, right?

Speaker 3 But that combination of masculine and feminine energy, I think, is a wonderful mix. And what the genders have done a great job of is convincing themselves that it's the other gender's fault, right?

Speaker 3 Men got to stop blaming women. That just doesn't hunt, hunt.
Right. And at the same time, I do think that some women and feminists, well, it's actually not feminists.

Speaker 3 I'll call it progressives, liberal versus illiberal thought

Speaker 3 just need to look at the data and think, okay, lifting up our young men is going to be good for everybody.

Speaker 2 Yes, it is.

Speaker 3 Do you think,

Speaker 2 you know, I'm here you share that it's great that women are earning more and are constantly progressing in their careers and getting more opportunities than ever.

Speaker 2 And we want to continue that thriving.

Speaker 2 We also want want to see men continue to improve, especially young men who maybe don't have the skills anymore, the tools to become financially successful, or they haven't figured it out yet.

Speaker 2 Do you think, is there any data around

Speaker 2 the majority of women being able to earn more than men and still be attracted to them in a long-term romantic relationship?

Speaker 2 Or is there any data that you've seen around that that women can make more and still be attracted to the man they're with long-term?

Speaker 3 So 17% of households now, the woman is the primary breadwinner.

Speaker 3 And so I do think over time, society is becoming.

Speaker 2 But are they attracted to their partner still? Well, okay, so this is just because they're together doesn't mean it's happy.

Speaker 3 Like the data is not, I'm going to, there's the way the world should be and the way the world is.

Speaker 3 The way the world is is the following, is that when the woman in the relationship starts making more money than the man, the likelihood of divorce doubles. Really?

Speaker 3 The use of erectile dysfunction drugs triples because the man feels has less self-esteem and has problems.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 the honest answer is I don't know how to get past.

Speaker 3 We're going to have to figure out things and we're going to have to train our...

Speaker 2 Is that biology? Is that like psychology around that

Speaker 2 that causes these things, these challenges to arise when women earn more than the men they're with?

Speaker 3 I think it's very anthropological in that is women feel innately that their job or one of the things they need to be focused on is how to protect offspring.

Speaker 3 And they need to partner with someone who's strong and can protect them and their offspring. And in a capitalist society, strength is conflated with economic power.
So there's just no doubt about it.

Speaker 2 So if the woman is stronger financially, emotionally, physically, then it's like, why do you need the man then, right?

Speaker 3 Well, so 70% of divorce filings are by women. And

Speaker 3 actually, the increase in divorce rates is probably a good thing because women no longer feel economically indentured or dependent upon trapped anymore yet from that.

Speaker 3 But there's just no getting around it.

Speaker 3 so men need to continue to figure out how to earn more than the partners they're with in order to have a happier marriage it sounds like based on the data but also at a minimum if a woman ascends economically relationships at the end of the day are somewhat of a transaction if a woman is ascending economically what you see is men aren't stepping up logistically and emotionally and domestically they're not keeping pace with that ascent no and so at some point the woman in the relationship does the math and says okay i'm the provider i'm the procreator and you aren't stepping up at home, then I'm definitely out of here.

Speaker 3 So, there's a difference between, I think, working on the relationship and trying to evolve the relationship, which I think a lot of couples, where the woman is the primary breadwinner, I think they can work through it.

Speaker 3 There's no reason they can't have happy marriages, but there's just no getting around it. The data shows that innate sexual attraction is at risk when the woman is the provider.

Speaker 3 Wow, and I'm not saying that that can't work, but there's just a lot of data that

Speaker 3 women lose sexual interest in a man when he fails as a provider or diminishes as a provider.

Speaker 3 The cocktail or the afterburner, the fuel on top of that division or dissent is that when men don't step up in the other parts of the life.

Speaker 2 They don't own their role, if they're not generous, if they're not kind, if they're not. considering her role, whatever it might be.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I think being part of a provider is quite frankly sometimes getting out of the way and being more

Speaker 3 supportive of your partner who might be better at that whole money thing.

Speaker 3 And I think we're going to have to figure this out and train our boys to step up emotionally and logistically and domestically because the reality is more women are in medical school, more women are in law school.

Speaker 3 We're probably going to have two to one female to male college grads

Speaker 3 in the next five years. And so women more and more, that 17% number is going to grow.
So we have to figure out a way to train our boys to say, okay,

Speaker 3 part of being a provider is contributing on a lot of, you know,

Speaker 3 a lot of different dimensions. But also, we need, there are a ton of mainstream, mainstream jobs in vocational programming.

Speaker 3 13%, 11% of LinkedIn profiles in the UK and Germany say apprentice. It's 3% in the U.S.
We don't have an apprentice culture and we have shamed vocational jobs.

Speaker 3 I don't know if you've seen all these articles, but there's now a bunch of

Speaker 3 juniors and 17-year-olds men in high school. who are learning like how to install HVAC energy efficient heaters and making making 80 or $90,000 a year by their senior year.
That's great for that.

Speaker 3 There's actually a lot of vocational jobs ready.

Speaker 3 And we hate to admit this, but men seem to enjoy and quite frankly, on average, not always, be better at these types of this type of vocational work that requires sometimes strength or working out men.

Speaker 2 Many later outside, yeah.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 we need to help men level up because I don't think it's What I don't think it is, I don't think the descent to the anxiety or the lack of sexual chemistry, the sexual diffusion, if you will, necessarily happens once the woman is making a dollar more.

Speaker 3 It's quite frankly when the guy, okay,

Speaker 3 economically, maybe you're not there with me, but you're not contributing.

Speaker 2 You're not adding that surplus of value.

Speaker 3 There's no raise. You got to bring some to the table, right? And traditionally, the roles were very defined.

Speaker 3 The female offered kind of more empathetic, understood how to create a healthy, loving household better than the men, kind of what we call the emotional labor that they, that's been undervalued. Yes.

Speaker 3 Men aren't stepping up around that. So it's a very honest conversation.
It's like, okay, your wife's doing great. You want to be supportive of her because you need money, you need economic household.

Speaker 3 But quite frankly, boss, what are you bringing to the table?

Speaker 2 Do you feel like in some ways, I'm going to give an example, and this is just one example, but do you feel in some ways that women have been lied to around

Speaker 2 the need to

Speaker 2 you know, be career driven and earn as much as possible and delay having kids and delay getting getting married as long as you can until you're financially stable.

Speaker 2 And I'll give you context around this.

Speaker 3 And maybe it's just case by case.

Speaker 2 There's someone I know, I'm not going to call them out, but there's someone I know who is very career-focused and driven on their career for probably the last 12 or 13 years and since college.

Speaker 2 and just always seemed a little frustrated, always seemed a little unhappy, just always seemed like a little,

Speaker 2 I don't know, something was always off

Speaker 2 around the energy of this person.

Speaker 2 And they just had a child, you know, maybe six months ago. And I've never seen them happier.
Every time around, it's like something transformed.

Speaker 2 And there's, and it's like, she loves being a mother. She, she's like, it has changed her world in a positive way, energetically.
It's like, it's like she's on purpose.

Speaker 2 And she hasn't stopped working. She's gone back kind of part-time, but it's like, I can just see her come alive.

Speaker 2 And do you think there's there's in any way women have been lied to about delay having kids as long as possible, make as much money as you can, be financially stable first, develop yourself in your career.

Speaker 2 Don't rely on the man to do this. Otherwise, you're going to get screwed over.
Where I just saw someone have the most joy in the last six months of like stepping into this role as a mother.

Speaker 2 Maybe that's just one case, but what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 3 I think the sort of you've been lied to,

Speaker 3 you worked hard, you became a baller professionally, now you're miserable because you didn't take the time to find a man or have a family.

Speaker 3 I think that's a little bit of this trope or this myth from the far right that wants to take women back to the 50s and 60s. Because,

Speaker 3 okay, what if that woman also wasn't able to find a romantic partnership

Speaker 3 and was also economically insecure? True. So I don't, I find sometimes that's an excuse to try and take, to regress and repeal women's rights.

Speaker 3 Now,

Speaker 3 I think,

Speaker 3 now, the reality is, if a man focuses on his career and is out of shape, not especially nice, but a baller professionally, he's still going to find a mate.

Speaker 3 And that's not as true for women.

Speaker 3 A partner at a law firm who's a male, who's maybe just modestly attractive and not that nice and not that nurturing, he's going to find a wife. I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 I mean, it's just, it's just a little bit unfair, quite frankly, because we put the same economic responsibilities on women and the same expectations, but we don't reward them romantically and sexually with the same currency as we reward a man for that focus.

Speaker 3 So quite frankly, but I don't think,

Speaker 3 I think women

Speaker 3 wanting to be economically independent and enjoy having strangers applaud for them on a stage financially and professionally, I think we need more of it.

Speaker 3 I do think that both men and women need to make a real effort to

Speaker 3 approach people, be approachable, say yes, put yourself in situations where you might meet somebody. Maybe if there's not sparks on the first date, give a second coffee a chance.

Speaker 3 But this notion, I don't like the rights trope or this narrative around women have been lied to and they should be home barefoot and pregnant. I just think that's that's kind of inadvertently saying

Speaker 2 this is not me politically saying these things. I'm just curious about like quite frankly this is what Charlie Kirk said

Speaker 3 that women are miserable. And here's the data flies in the face of that because you know who's really miserable is the dude that wakes up in his 30s and isn't in a relationship.

Speaker 3 The data is pretty clear. Men need relationships more than women.
One of the things I say in the book that's gotten some pushback is,

Speaker 3 you know, I try to be very honest. I tell my my boys that if they're ever in the company of women, they pay.

Speaker 3 People say, well, that's sexist.

Speaker 2 I don't think it's sexist. I think it's generous.
It's adding value. It's being courteous.
It's being thoughtful. That's right.
It's like, why is that sexist?

Speaker 2 You ever walk out of the grocery store or fill up your tank and just think, how is everything this expensive? Feels like prices are going up everywhere.

Speaker 2 And how great would it be if just once something actually just went down in price?

Speaker 2 Well, at Metro, that's exactly what's happening they've lowered their prices and are giving you a five-year price guarantee on talk text and data one line now 20 lower family plans also lowered oh and you also get a free 5g phone all with no id required and no activation fees stop by your neighborhood metro store visit metro by t-mobile.com or call to find out about their amazing offers bring your number not available if currently at t-mobile or with Metro in the past 180 days.

Speaker 2 Guarantee covers monthly price of on-network talk, text, and 5G data for customers activating on an eligible plan. Exclusions apply.
Details at Metro by T-Mobile.com.

Speaker 2 This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. As the seasons change, the shorter days can sometimes cause you to isolate yourself without even realizing.

Speaker 2 This season, BetterHelp encourages you to reach out, check in on friends, reconnect with loved ones, and remind them that you're there.

Speaker 2 And don't forget about connecting with yourself and your emotions during this time too.

Speaker 2 Sometimes reconnecting with yourself and others takes a little courage, like calling that person you haven't talked to in a while or setting up your first therapy appointment, but it's all worth it in my opinion.

Speaker 2 It might even leave you wondering, why didn't I do this sooner? With over 30,000 fully licensed therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms.

Speaker 2 They'll do the initial matchwork for you so you can focus on your goals with your growth. This month, don't wait to reach out.

Speaker 2 Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out to a therapist yourself, BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step.

Speaker 2 And our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash greatness. That's betterhelp.com slash greatness.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 2 the way the land offer to pay, if they say no, then okay, you don't have to. I can do the offer.

Speaker 3 I think you just pay.

Speaker 3 And I'll get my land acknowledgement now. So the rationale that I try and propose is that

Speaker 3 men benefit more from relationships than women. There's just, you know, widows happier after their husband dies, widower is less happy.
A woman's fertility window is much shorter than a man's.

Speaker 3 The downside of sex for a woman is much greater than a man's. Bigger risk, yeah.

Speaker 3 So when you look at the fact that on average, a man's going to benefit more from the relationship, that the woman is taking more risks in terms of downside or risk, when her fertility window is shorter.

Speaker 3 And when you also acknowledge that almost every mammal has some sort of courtship ritual, it makes sense for one way that you recognize that asymmetry, one way you step up and say, I value your time.

Speaker 3 I value this situation, if you will. One easy way to recognize and acknowledge that asymmetry is to pay.

Speaker 3 And also, innately, regardless of what someone might say, what I've told my 18-year-old son, is anytime you split the check with anyone, it means they are never going to kiss you and you are never going to kiss them.

Speaker 3 That's the bottom line.

Speaker 3 And I think those genes are wired into us for thousands of years and regardless of what we say well it's who asked who out i'm just saying to my boys and my view that if you're in the company of women you pay yeah to guys like you would who are in great shape is not necessarily because of the aesthetics of being a great

Speaker 3 the discipline it says you show up it's it says you can commit to something yes it says that you're on your game it says you're not

Speaker 3 up every night it says that you know how to show up every day and do something and commit to something so but anyways my point is that going back to the, I don't think, I think women's professional assent is great for them.

Speaker 3 I think over the long term, it's great for society and great for men.

Speaker 3 But we also have to recognize there's just some externalities and some knock-on effects when we're in a society where men are falling behind women economically. Don't get in the way of this, right?

Speaker 3 Fix this.

Speaker 3 Get men back on track. And I don't even like any program that specifically targets men economically other than investing more in vocational programming, expanding freshman seats.

Speaker 3 What I'm suggesting is a series of public policy programs that would lift all young people up.

Speaker 3 Because

Speaker 3 it's not about the guy making,

Speaker 3 if the woman's in the relationship is making 80,000, it's not about the guy needing to make 81.

Speaker 3 But the guy needs to be sort of in a weight, contributing. He needs to be in that weight class where he's contributing.

Speaker 3 And I think a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of men right now, young men, are seduced by having a reasonable facsimile of life online and then show up with no skills and no ability to contribute to a relationship.

Speaker 3 And I think that's, and again,

Speaker 3 when a woman doesn't have a romantic relationship, she pours that energy into her friends and her professional life. When a man doesn't have a relationship, not always, but often, he pours that energy

Speaker 3 into, yeah, you know, into conspiracy theory online, goes extremely online.

Speaker 3 You know, all these mass shooters, I did some research on political violence and the far left wants to blame the far right. Far right wants to blame the far left.

Speaker 2 And it's a totally hollow argument.

Speaker 3 98.6% of mass shooters are men. Almost all political violence is committed not only by men, but young men.
And these guys are less politically engaged than probably you or me.

Speaker 3 What do they have in common? They're young men, not attaching to work, not attaching

Speaker 3 schools, no relationships, economically strained. They go extremely online, find these conspiracy theories, they get radicalized online, and then they have access, then they have access to guns.

Speaker 3 And again, I feel I have to do another land acknowledgement. I'm not suggesting that it's women's responsibility to solve this problem.
I'm suggesting it's a society.

Speaker 3 If one group is struggling, we can focus on lifting them up.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and that's why I love that you wrote this book, Notes on Being a Man. And it's one of the reasons why, you know, eight years ago, I wrote The Mask of Masculinity, because

Speaker 2 I went down my own path of

Speaker 2 realizing and coming to the awareness that all of these

Speaker 2 shootings,

Speaker 2 most of the domestic violence in the USA and the world,

Speaker 2 and just any destruction happening in the world is typically from men who haven't healed their traumas or haven't created a healthy, conscious

Speaker 2 respect about themselves and having more tools on how to navigate society and the world better.

Speaker 2 And the mass shooters that you're talking about, they have a lot of traumas that they haven't healed yet. They haven't processed the wounds of whatever they've gone through.

Speaker 2 They don't have good relationships. They're isolated.
They're alone, or at least that's how probably they're feeling.

Speaker 2 And they don't have the tools on how to navigate their mind or their emotions on how to get beyond those things that are destructive.

Speaker 2 And I think that's what you've been talking about in Notes on Being a Man is how to

Speaker 2 overcome the loneliness feeling, the sadness, the lack of resourcefulness, and having the courage to be in the world, dealing with failure over and over and over again, and not going back into a cave in your parents' basement saying, this girl rejected me or this guy made fun of me.

Speaker 2 I'm worthless. Now I'm traumatized and I'm going to go destroy the world around me.

Speaker 2 And I think when men, especially younger boys, because I was very internally destructive most of my life, I said a lot of mean things to myself. I'd physically hurt myself.

Speaker 2 I was never like cutting myself or like going into alcohol, but it was more like, how can I get into as many fights as possible to be destructive to inflict pain on myself and other people thankfully sports gave me a safe outlet to do that where i could do it in a constructive way but i was still destructive in the process of wanting to inflict as much pain on myself and others because i just felt like i was bad and wrong i felt shameful growing up dealing with sexual abuse from a man that i didn't know i felt like i was worthless yep My brother was in prison for four years when I was eight.

Speaker 2 So just the stress of that on the family dynamics, my parents going through divorce listen i was a white man born in ohio in america so i was born on third base in some ways but that doesn't hold back the psychological stress and mess that i had to deal with and a lot of people have to deal with so i could have been completely destructive but there was different moments in my life and different mentors like like you mentioned there's a lack of now

Speaker 2 that that came to me and gave me a high five, that put their arm around me emotionally, spiritually, physically, and said, why are you so destructive? Why are you trying to hurt yourself so much?

Speaker 2 Why are you reacting this way? Like, why are you getting so angry at the littlest things?

Speaker 2 Like, come over here.

Speaker 2 And I had mentor, and I allowed myself to be coached by mentors. I didn't push them away.
I seeked it out as well.

Speaker 2 And there were different seasons in life and stages that I had to fail over and over again and realize, oh, this behavior is not supportive to me or other people.

Speaker 2 It's hurting people around me, friends, family, girlfriends, whatever it might be.

Speaker 2 And I never ever physically hurt anyone, but just like my behavior, my reactions when I was younger, it wasn't conscious. It wasn't healthy.

Speaker 2 And it was based on a wound or multiple wounds that I didn't know how to navigate. I didn't know how to heal.
And it wasn't until I was 30 when I opened up about sexual abuse for the first time.

Speaker 2 to anyone.

Speaker 2 And I finally was able to release some of the shame.

Speaker 2 And then I went down the rabbit hole of studying why I was behaving this way most of my life,

Speaker 2 how I could start the healing process and how I could be a better person in the world. It's the same time when I launched the School of Greatness because I was like, I need to humble myself.

Speaker 2 I need to learn from great men like yourself who have mastered this or understand the science of this. And how can I start to apply this to myself? How can I be a student of life?

Speaker 2 And I feel like that's where a lot of young men are struggling.

Speaker 2 They don't know how to manage the emotional psychological spiritual physical traumas that they've been through yeah and listen it may not be as traumatic as what a lot of people are going through in the world but still you've got to learn how to overcome it yeah and when we have the tools like your book on how to navigate the wounds that we've all been through men and women i feel like we can become more peaceful internally and when we're peaceful internally we're usually better externally but most men don't know how to have peace in their heart yeah a lot there.

Speaker 2 So what do you hear me say? What opened up for you there?

Speaker 3 Well, no, there's a lot of,

Speaker 3 I like a lot of that.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 3 I would reverse engineer a lot of the world's problems to old men who won't leave.

Speaker 2 Really?

Speaker 3 And they're clinging to power and they move to autocracy and then they weaponize young men who have a lack of economic or romantic possibilities.

Speaker 3 The middle class in America, which I think is the greatest innovation in history, is an accident. The natural state of

Speaker 3 being in our species is that a small number of men, through luck, inheritance, brute strength, accrete a disproportionate amount of power

Speaker 3 and then get a disproportionate amount of the economics and the mating opportunities. 80% of women have reproduced through modern history, only 40% of men.

Speaker 3 And what happens to the 60% of men who can reproduce is that the older men who won't leave weaponize their anger for war or for nationalism, right?

Speaker 3 The most unstable violent societies in the world have a disproportionate amount of one thing, and that is young men with a lack of romantic or economic opportunities. They're very easily weaponized.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

Speaker 3 And we're producing way too many of them in the United States.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 you have, and then going back to your experience,

Speaker 3 you've been, I think, very brave and really helpful to a lot of men because you've been very open about your own abuse.

Speaker 3 But so two 15-year-olds, both abused, right? Both sexually sexually abused, a girl and a boy. Neither crime is any less or more heinous.

Speaker 3 But the studies I've read is that the boy, when he gets older, is seven to 10 times more likely to engage in self-harm than the girl.

Speaker 2 Well, because those men don't usually have a forum of sharing. You know, it's one in six

Speaker 2 men have been sexually abused, one in four women, I believe, unless I'm reversing the stat. But

Speaker 3 just going back to,

Speaker 3 so what it ends up is that while boys are physically stronger, they're emotionally and neurologically much weaker than girls.

Speaker 3 The moment a boy loses a male role model, at that moment, through death, divorce, abandonment, he becomes more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college. Wow.

Speaker 3 What's interesting is that in single-parent homes, girls have the same outcomes as dual-parent homes.

Speaker 3 They're a little bit more promiscuous because they're looking for male attention in the wrong areas. Same rates of college attendance, same income.
A boy, wham.

Speaker 3 So we just have to acknowledge that boys are weaker and we need to create a societal norm where the moment a boy clearly doesn't have a lot of male mentorship in his life, even saying that boys needed men was triggering five years ago.

Speaker 2 They do need a men.

Speaker 3 This dialogue has gotten so much more productive and it's mostly been led by women who recognize

Speaker 2 single mothers without a man in the home. It's, they can probably see their young boy struggling.

Speaker 3 They struggle, but also men aren't stepping up because in New York, and I think at the same, approximately the same numbers in LA, there are three times as many women applying to be big sisters as men applying to be big brothers.

Speaker 2 Why is that? Are just men more selfish and just don't want to be as generous with mentorship?

Speaker 3 I think naturally they're not as nurturing. And two, I think there's a taboo.
That say you're a guy in your 30s and you like the idea of hanging out and helping young boy.

Speaker 3 You could provide paternal and fraternal care. You're worried that people are going to suspect you of being a pedophile.
That's true. And it's interesting.

Speaker 3 So when I was on Bill Maher, I said, you know, we have an obligation to get involved in teens life. And Bill said, oh, if I get involved in a 15-year-old boy's life, you know, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 And the whole audience laughed. I'm like, that's exactly the problem.

Speaker 3 Because there are a lot of men out there that think, well, one, I don't want anyone to be suspicious of me. And two, I'm not an adolescent psychiatrist.
I'm not a baller.

Speaker 3 That I can tell you, as someone who mentors young men, it is so easy to add value. value.

Speaker 2 Just showing up and playing basketball at the rec club like for an hour.

Speaker 3 You have value. Yeah.
No, no, no. You can't survive on pineapple juice and creatine.
You know, no,

Speaker 3 you got to spend less time gaming. No, your mom is not your enemy.
Come on, man. She's on your side.

Speaker 3 She may not get it right all the time, but she's on your side. Like, oh, you feel like, what did you eat today? Right? Are you exercising?

Speaker 2 Yeah, are you up till 4 a.m. on the right? Right.

Speaker 3 Oh, you're really upset. You're not going to your prom.
Did you ask anybody? Did you ask anybody? All right. Well, then you're choosing not to go.
This is your choice. Right.

Speaker 3 So it's so, I have found the easiest job I've ever had was mentoring young men. They make so many stupid decisions, Lewis.

Speaker 2 I've made a lot of stupid decisions.

Speaker 3 I mean, just you just start asking them questions.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 3 You got a good job. You just got a job.
Your mom is sick, but you're going to move to Alaska? Why? I saw this amazing documentary on Alaska. I'm like, have you ever been?

Speaker 3 Why don't we do this? Why don't you save a little bit of money, take a trip there, and then decide if you really want to move to Alaska from Maryland right now? Is that a good idea?

Speaker 3 Just a couple of questions. And not only that,

Speaker 3 they will listen to you. They don't listen to their mom.
And what's weird is sometimes, or a lot of times, a boy who's a teenager will listen more to his dad's friends than to him.

Speaker 3 So I just think we need, we as men need to get involved in a boy's life. That's the single point of failure is when a boy loses a male role model.

Speaker 3 And there's a lot of really wonderful men out there who maybe don't have their own families yet, who have a little bit of spare time and think, you know what, I'd be pretty good at this and I would enjoy it.

Speaker 3 And it's really easy. Big brothers, there's a ton of mentorship programs, but for some reason, men aren't stepping up.

Speaker 2 I've got a few final questions for you before we get you out on Bill's show here today.

Speaker 2 But what was your relationship like with your father? And what was the biggest lesson he taught you that you still apply today?

Speaker 2 Cold mornings, holiday plans. This is when you just want your wardrobe to be simple.
Stuff that looks sharp, feels good, and things you'll actually wear. That's where Quince comes in.

Speaker 2 And the bonus, Quince pieces make great gifts too. This season's lineup is simple but smart and easy with Quince.

Speaker 2 Think $50 cashmere sweaters that feel like an everyday luxury and wool coats that are equal parts stylish and durable. And it's not just their clothes, Quince also makes it easy to level up your home.

Speaker 2 Martha and I have the European linen duvet cover set, and honestly, it's become one of our favorite things.

Speaker 2 It's unbelievably soft, looks great, and just makes our whole bedroom feel more relaxed and elevated. Give and get Timeless Holiday Staples that last this season with Quince.

Speaker 2 Go to quince.com/slash Lewis for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too.
That's q-u-in-ce-e.com slash L-E-W-I-S. Free shipping and 365-day returns.

Speaker 2 Quince.com slash Lewis.

Speaker 2 Should it stay or should it go?

Speaker 2 What if I mess it up? What if I have to pay taxes now?

Speaker 8 If you're unsure about an old 401k, it's okay. Fidelity can help you understand your options, avoid mistakes and taxes, and feel good about your decisions for your retirement savings.

Speaker 8 To learn more, visit fidelity.com slash rollover. Be sure to consider all your available options and the applicable fees and features of each before moving to retirement assets.

Speaker 8 Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC member NYSE SIPC.

Speaker 3 Generous question. Look, my dad, my dad wasn't very sophisticated.

Speaker 2 He got pulled out of school at the age of 13.

Speaker 3 I think he got a lot of validation from attention and affirmation from women.

Speaker 3 And I jokingly say, but there's some truth in it, that being a handsome man with a Scottish accent in 70s, California meant that he could not only think with his dick, he could listen to it.

Speaker 3 My dad was married and divorced four times. Wow.
He started his, that we know of, he started his third marriage while he was still with my mom. So, my dad, quite frankly, was just really

Speaker 3 had a really tough time with monogamy. And that wasn't the worst of it.
The thing that really strained my relationship with my father is that he was not kind to my mom.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 when my parents got divorced, my dad.

Speaker 2 How old were you then?

Speaker 3 I was nine. Okay.
My dad could have made mine and my mother's life much easier with a little bit of money, and he didn't. And

Speaker 3 not having your dad around was bad, but a mom who was financially insecure and it felt emotionally very damaged was just created a household of constant sort of.

Speaker 3 It was like you always had high blood pressure. You were wondering.

Speaker 2 Fight or flight always.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And she was just very easily upset.
She was a strong woman, but she was dealing with a lot.

Speaker 3 So I resented my father for a long time. I used to go for long periods without speaking to him.

Speaker 3 And then the big unlock for me, and what I would recommend for anybody, the biggest unlock in my life was the following.

Speaker 3 I was constantly keeping score. My dad wasn't a very, he was an okay dad, not a very good dad, but I'm not, so I'm not going to be a good son.

Speaker 3 And then what I realized is I would get a lot of joy and reward from having a good relationship with my father. So the unlock is the following.

Speaker 3 Look at your relationships and rather than having a scorecard, put it away and say, what kind of partner do I want to be? What kind of boss do I want to be? What kind of son do I want to be?

Speaker 3 What kind of brother do I want to be? And maybe your sister didn't show up when your dad was sick. But do I want to be a loving, generous brother? Yeah, I do.

Speaker 3 So put away the scorecard and just hold yourself to that standard. And I decided about 20 or 30 years ago to put away the resentment of my dad and say, I really want to be a loving, generous son.

Speaker 3 And I have been for the last 20 or 30 years. My father passed about four months ago.
And my dad mellowed as he got older. He got more generous,

Speaker 3 couldn't get off the phone without saying a couple of times that he loved me.

Speaker 3 And the first time I heard that when I was 40, I'm like,

Speaker 3 I'm like, dad, I don't need that shit now. I could have used it when I was eight, but then I leaned into it.
And so what I would say is the big learning is People are flawed. Put away the scorecard.

Speaker 3 Decide

Speaker 3 what kind of person you want to be in that that relationship. And the other big learning was my dad evolved.

Speaker 3 My dad was a better dad to my half-sister, his daughter by his third marriage, than he was to me. And that's evolution.
That's cool. He got much more loving and kinder as he got older.

Speaker 3 So, and, you know, I also just little things. I've gone entirely the other way.
My dad was so traumatized by money. He was so cheap.
I've gone the other way.

Speaker 3 I don't go out unless I can pay for everybody. Not that I do.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Because, you know, I'm at a point now where all my male friends are trying to show how big their dick is and we're all fighting over the check. But,

Speaker 3 but I also, I'm very affectionate with my boys. My father wasn't very affectionate with me.
I decided I'm taking affection back.

Speaker 3 You know, I kissed my boys on the lips, which they stopped doing when I was 15. But my best friend, Lee, his father, was this guy, Lee Lotus Sr., who was this guy who looked like Burt Reynolds.

Speaker 3 And when he'd come pick up Lee at college at UCLA, he'd walk in to the fraternity or to Lee's apartment and he'd roll up this big, handsome guy. And Lee was a big, handsome guy.

Speaker 2 And they'd kiss.

Speaker 2 And it just seems so natural. I guess it's Italian.
So yeah, just real quick, real quick, I kiss.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, wow, I like to be like, whoa.

Speaker 3 And I remember thinking, if Burt Reynolds can kiss his kid, his son, so can I. So I'm, I'm really, one thing I got going the other way was I got a lot of affection.

Speaker 3 I decided to be very affectionate with my boys. And two, that's cool.

Speaker 3 I make my living like you telling stories. And a lot of that is not my fault.
I got a lot of that DNA from my father. My father can hold a room like nobody.

Speaker 3 And so there's no reason not to be grateful. Like you're big and huge and good looking.

Speaker 3 Like there's no reason not to be grateful to your parents, even though they didn't go out of their way to give it to you.

Speaker 2 They did.

Speaker 3 And so there's no reason not to be grateful. Like, God, I got, I got this skill from my father.

Speaker 2 You're alive because of him. There you go.
You're going to be here.

Speaker 3 Life helps. But the big unlock for me was

Speaker 3 put away the scorecard. Just be the man in the relationship you want to be and hold yourself to that standard.

Speaker 2 Is there anything you wish you would have said or he would have said or any interactions you wish you would have had with your father?

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 the nice thing about my relationship with my father, my father lived to be 95.

Speaker 3 Nothing went unsaid. That's beautiful.
We were very emotional with each other, very emotive.

Speaker 3 He was constantly, couldn't stop telling me how proud he was of me. That's nice.
Yeah, it was really nice.

Speaker 2 It may have been a rough childhood seeing, you know,

Speaker 2 go with different women and abandon your mom in that way.

Speaker 3 Were your parents together or were they divorced?

Speaker 2 They were together. They got divorced when I was a teenager.
So, but they were, they never showed each other love.

Speaker 3 So they were there.

Speaker 2 They showed us kids love. I was the youngest of four, but they were constantly fighting and it was very emotionally straight.
It didn't feel safe at home. I left home at 13.

Speaker 2 I begged them to send me away to a boarding school. They didn't want me to leave.
Right. You want to leave? My brother just got out of prison from four years.

Speaker 2 It was very traumatic going to a visiting room of a prison every weekend. I didn't have any friends for four years because you're in a small town in Ohio.

Speaker 2 Everyone knew in the neighborhood that my brother had been to prison, so the parents wouldn't let their kids hang out with me.

Speaker 2 My parents were financially struggling, stressed. They weren't showing, you know, affection or love.
It was just anger. It was sadness.
That's rough. So we had a home.
It's not like I was homeless.

Speaker 2 I was going to school, but it was like,

Speaker 2 it was just not emotionally safe feeling. I didn't feel physically like I was under harm, but emotionally, it just didn't feel safe.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Look, they were doing their best, you know, it was like they only had the tools they had.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And it's good that at some point you just forgive them, right?

Speaker 3 If they tried, I think the box every parent needs to check is to be a better dad or mom to you than your father or your mother was to you. And my dad checked that box.
And, you know, there's a lot.

Speaker 3 you know, that I took from that relationship. And also when your parents get divorced, as mine did, you have a tendency to sanctify once and demonize the other.

Speaker 3 You have a tendency to go, one was wrong, one was right. And what you realize is neither is perfect.
But the reality is, Lewis, is that my dad, and it was a different age.

Speaker 3 My dad kind of left it when I was nine. He moved to Ohio.
I didn't see him a lot.

Speaker 3 And that was not ideal.

Speaker 3 Fortunately, I had a lot of men. I'm doing this live thing tonight downtown in LA.
And I've invited two of my men to two men who got involved in my life randomly when I was a kid.

Speaker 3 And I reached out to them. They're in their 70s and 80s and said, will you come to this thing tonight? That's cool.

Speaker 3 You know, one was a stock broker.

Speaker 3 My mom's boyfriend gave me 200 bucks and said, go to one of those fancy, I started asking about stocks. And he said, here's $200, go into those fancy barbarages in Westwood.

Speaker 3 And I walked him at $200 at the age of 13. Like, what do I do? Into Dean Witter.
And I said, hi, I have $200. And I said, wait here.

Speaker 3 And this guy with this jufro came out named Cy Saro and he goes, I'm Cy Sero. And he took me back to his cubicle and he gave me my first lesson in the stock market.

Speaker 3 And he said, when there's more buyers than sellers, the sellers raise the price until there's fewer buyers. He gave me the first lesson.

Speaker 3 And then I came back the next day and he said, all right, let's look at some stocks. He's like, what are you interested in? I'm like, well, I love the movies.

Speaker 3 And Close Encounters of the Third Kim had just come out. And he said, okay, Columbia Pictures is the company that made it.
It's a stock.

Speaker 3 We bought 16 shares of Columbia Pictures for like 12 bucks a pop. And every day for two years, I used to go into the payphone booth in Emerson, put in my two dimes and call to check in on my stocks.

Speaker 3 And once or twice a week, I'd go into the Dean Witter Reynolds office in Westwood and he'd give me another lesson on stocks. And he used to call my mom and it wasn't trying to sell her.

Speaker 3 We had no money. And he would just say nice things about me to my mom.
And I used to hang out with this guy at his office for a couple of years until I went to high school.

Speaker 3 And this is a flex, but I'll make it. I've made a lot of money starting and selling companies.
I've made

Speaker 3 tens of millions of dollars investing in stocks. I've been investing in stocks since I was 13 because of Sai Sarah.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 3 So in addition to giving me some confidence that this nice, impressive man liked me,

Speaker 3 you know, it taught me this incredible life skill around investing.

Speaker 2 So is he coming tonight? Is he coming tonight?

Speaker 3 Yeah, he's coming tonight. That's cool.
Yeah. First time I've seen him in.

Speaker 2 45 years. No way.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 We stay in contact over text. You haven't seen him? I haven't seen him in 45 years.

Speaker 2 That's incredible. Are you going to see him tonight?

Speaker 3 Nice thing I see him tonight. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That is cool. Send me a photo of it.
Yeah, that'll be nice.

Speaker 3 But I was really lucky.

Speaker 3 I had this

Speaker 3 guy and his girlfriend noticed that my mom and I, you know, it was just my mom and I, one day knocked on our door and he said, does your son want to come horseback riding with us?

Speaker 3 And he and his girlfriend used to take him to horseback riding. And just having men in your life that can give you a little bit of advice and not only that, just give you the sense you have value.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 I think is

Speaker 3 huge. But anyways, back to, you know, it sounds like, when did your dad pass?

Speaker 2 Three years ago. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. So look,

Speaker 3 I think as you get older, you try and focus on the good things. Yes.
You try and forgive your dad. And whatever you think he got wrong, you try and course correct around for your own boys.

Speaker 3 I think that's the basis of... trying to be more human, evolve.

Speaker 3 But the one thing,

Speaker 3 the one thing I would,

Speaker 3 I mean, I've had five one things,

Speaker 3 but the thing I really took away from my father, his real flaw, that quite frankly was not great for me and took some time to repair.

Speaker 3 I think the best thing you can do for boys is just treat their mother really well. They just see it.

Speaker 3 I really go out of my way. I take some real arrows for my wife sometimes in front of the boys.
I really try to demonstrate

Speaker 3 emotion and affection around her. I defer to her judgment in front of the boys.
I just try to make sure the boys know that their mother is really valuable and they see it by the way I treat her.

Speaker 3 I think that's going to create much more healthy relationships for them.

Speaker 3 I think that's the best thing you can do for your boys is just treat your, even if you're divorced, just be really good to the mother.

Speaker 3 Because my dad wasn't, and I think it really, quite frankly, damaged my relationship probably with women.

Speaker 3 Or maybe I'm just, just, like a lot of people, looking for trauma for my parents, and I'm just a selfish person. But I think I could have been kinder to women when I was a young man.

Speaker 3 I don't think my dad was a great role model for that.

Speaker 2 You mentioned earlier, and we got to wrap it up here in a few minutes for you, but you mentioned earlier that your dad used to watch Bill Maher.

Speaker 2 All the time. Favorite show.
Favorite show. And you're going to go on there here in a couple hours, you know, right down the street.

Speaker 2 And you said every time you go on there, you get a little nervous, but also excited because you feel like he's watching.

Speaker 3 I almost get a panic attack every, I do a lot of TV.

Speaker 3 I do a lot of speaking in front of, you know, I'm flexing thousands of people. I freak the f ⁇ out on that show, Lewis, because I think my dad's watching.
Wow.

Speaker 3 And my dad watched Premier League football and Bill Maher.

Speaker 2 That's it.

Speaker 2 What is the message? You know, you're about to go in there. So I'm going to ground you for a moment.
What's the message?

Speaker 2 that you really want to make sure you land no matter where Bill takes you all over the place.

Speaker 2 What would you really like to land that if your dad's watching, you feel like will be really special that you get to share a specific message?

Speaker 3 Well, the message I would want, if I could wrap my arms around all young men and just

Speaker 3 give them a mission and just trust me on this, trust me, you know, search your feelings, you know this to be true.

Speaker 3 It would be really try to resist the temptation to live your life on a screen with an algorithm. And that

Speaker 3 at the end of your life, or even in your 20s and 30s,

Speaker 3 the anxiety and loneliness

Speaker 3 you're going to feel without establishing relationships and taking those risks

Speaker 3 is going to be so much greater than any fear you might have

Speaker 3 around what lays beyond that room. And that is,

Speaker 3 there is an enormous correlation between the amount of, the ratio of time you spend in the presence of other people versus the time you spend on a screen.

Speaker 3 I don't think we've really come to grips with the fact that young men are up against an indomitable foe,

Speaker 3 a big tech that literally makes billions for every additional minute they can get you on your phone and away from friends, mentors, and mates.

Speaker 3 Get out of the house, take risks, express friendship, express romantic relationship, apply for jobs you're not qualified for. You know, take as many shots as you can,

Speaker 3 but get, for God's sakes, get out of the house.

Speaker 2 Yeah, get out. Notes on being a man, number one New York Times bestseller.
Make sure you guys grab a copy right now.

Speaker 2 Follow you on all of your podcasts. You're all over the place, but you've got podcasts on money and

Speaker 2 everything, life. politics, all these different places.
What's the best place to follow you specifically?

Speaker 3 I'm like AOL in the 90s.

Speaker 3 You put your hand into a cereal box. You're going to grab me.
So

Speaker 3 to resist is futile. I am overexposed at this point.

Speaker 3 As you mentioned, I have podcasts. I have a newsletter called No Mercy, No Malice.
ProfGalloway.com. You'll see if you're interested, a ton of ways to get my content.
Awesome.

Speaker 2 This is an awesome book, and you've got a great show and great content. I would acknowledge you, Scott, for...

Speaker 2 taking on this subject because I know it's not easy and there's a lot of pushback on talking about vulnerability and masculinity and all these things.

Speaker 2 I felt it for years when I started to open up about this stuff.

Speaker 2 So I acknowledge you for doing it because I think we're even more at risk now than we were seven eight years ago with younger boys not having the tools to be out in the world to develop relationships to look other people in the eye and just have a conversation let alone build a relationship and so i acknowledge you for speaking up for taking on the criticism you take for sharing these things as well because we need more great male leaders sharing this information so younger men can be inspired and hopefully take action.

Speaker 2 And I hope everyone gets a a copy of this book and gives it to a young man in their life as well, or an old man who needs some lessons and learning as well. I asked you these two questions before.

Speaker 2 I'm just going to ask one of them. I asked you before the definition of greatness.
So I'll have people go back and watch that from our previous episode.

Speaker 2 But this is a question I asked you as well called The Three Truths.

Speaker 2 After writing this book now and being at this stage of life where your father has recently passed,

Speaker 2 what would you say are three things you would leave behind if this was the last day on earth for you, many years away, and we would not have access to any of your content, but you've got to leave behind three lessons to the world.

Speaker 2 What would those three lessons be that you would leave behind?

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 it's sort of an indirect way of answering, but I think of the tombstone test, what three words would you want on your tombstone?

Speaker 3 I'd want to be known as a generous person who created more value than I absorbed.

Speaker 2 That's the whole point.

Speaker 3 If you leave the world having provided more love, more economic opportunity, noticing people more than maybe you absorbed through your life, that's the whole point. You've won.

Speaker 3 So I'd want to be known as generous. I'd want to be known as patriotic.
You know, the smartest thing I ever did, Louis, was to be born in America.

Speaker 3 I want to reinvest in America and help make sure that many of the amazing things that helped me, state-sponsored education, Pell Grants, I got assisted lunch.

Speaker 3 You know, America loved unremarkable people when I was growing up.

Speaker 3 And I worry it's falling out of love with the unremarkable so i would like to be hopefully seen as someone who's patriotic and then the final thing i just want to be seen as you know a dad i was that i was really into my sons

Speaker 3 and and that it was clear that later in life i saw my purpose as raising patriotic loving men that that was you know so generous patriotic dad that's what i aspire to i love it i still got some work to do

Speaker 3 thanks brother congratulations on everything thank you brother appreciate it man

Speaker 2 i have a brand new book called called Make Money Easy.

Speaker 2 And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy.

Speaker 2 I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

Speaker 2 Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links.

Speaker 2 And if you want weekly, exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2 Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.

Speaker 2 I really love love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.

Speaker 2 And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something

Speaker 2 great.

Speaker 6 With Venmostash, a taco in one hand, and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back. Nice.

Speaker 6 Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card.

Speaker 6 From takeout to ride shares, entertainment and more, pick a bundle with your go-tos and start earning cash back at those brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash.

Speaker 6 Venmo Stash Terms and Exclusions Apply. Max $100 cash back per month.
See terms at venmo.me slash stash terms.

Speaker 4 Now's the time to start your next adventure behind the wheel of an exciting new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 4 With the largest largest lineup of hybrid, plug-in, hybrid, and electrified vehicles to choose from, Toyota has the one for you.

Speaker 4 Every new Toyota hybrid comes with Toyota Care, two-year complimentary scheduled maintenance, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 4 Visit your local Toyota dealer today, Toyota. Let's go places.
See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.