The Manosphere Report

0:00And this is the goal.

0:01The goal is no, because you're going to get no's.

0:05And then I'm going to call you after you've made the approach.

0:07You're going to text me.

0:08I did an approach. Did you get a no?

0:10Yeah, I got a no.

0:11That's exactly the point. That's the goal.

0:13Because everyone you admire, everyone you think has killed it, the only thing I can

0:17guarantee you is there were a ton of no's in getting to one of the

0:21top 10 podcasts in the world, getting to a person as a partner who's higher

0:25character and hotter than you, getting to make more money than you would have ever

0:28guessed that person would have made.

0:30The only thing that got them there was the willingness and the endurance to anticipate

0:35no. Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science -based tools

0:41for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at

0:50Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Scott Galloway.

0:53Scott Galloway is a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business and one

0:59of the world's leading public educators on intelligent life design, including finances, relationships, and as

1:05today's conversation also covers, on the sociopolitical landscape.

1:08Today, we mainly talk about masculinity and what men, young and old, and everything in

1:13between, are facing today in terms of their roles to take in work, in relationships,

1:18and their health. And today, we don't just review the data.

1:20You'll hear statistics, so Scott is very grounded in quantitative data, which is important, but

1:25he also shares several clear, actionable steps that you can take daily to ensure that

1:30you're making progress in work and relationships and finances.

1:33We also get into a bit of debate, or more, about things like alcohol, the

1:38benevolence or lack thereof of big tech and social media, and we talk a lot

1:41about the male -female dynamics in terms of the consequences of single mom homes and

1:46divorce, but just generally male -female dynamics.

1:48So, while today's episode does include a lot of exploration of different topics that, frankly,

1:52I didn't anticipate, it's also very proactive.

1:56Scott delineates the things that you can do and, frankly, should do each day.

2:00These aren't just lists or hacks, but effective tools that come from knowledge, data, his

2:05deep thinking, and that reflect the landscape we are in now.

2:08I'm very grateful that Scott took the time for this conversation.

2:11You'll see that we agree on many things.

2:13We disagree on several. He's a very deep thinker, extremely smart, obviously.

2:18He also cares about people.

2:20That comes through over and over again, and he's extremely generous today on your behalf

2:25with, indeed, tough love knowledge.

2:28Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching

2:31and research roles at Stanford.

2:33It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero -cost -to -consumer

2:36information about science and science -related tools to the general public.

2:40In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors.

2:43And now for my discussion with Scott Galloway.

2:46Scott Galloway, welcome. Thanks, man.

2:49It's good to see you.

2:50Actually, I was nervous driving over here.

2:53I like you and respect you.

2:54I was trying to figure out why I was nervous.

2:57I really want to do well today.

2:59And the last time I had this feeling was when I was going to do

3:02Rich Roll's podcast. I really like you.

3:05I really like and respect Rich.

3:06And I remember thinking I had that same feeling.

3:08I wanted to do well.

3:09Anyways, good to be here.

3:10Oh, man. Great to have you here.

3:12It's funny you say that because, you know, I was coming here and I was

3:15thinking, yeah, look up to Scott.

3:17Like, I respect him. And we've had one conversation prior to this that ended up

3:21being quite extended conversation. And I told Rob right before coming in here, our producer,

3:26I'm super fired up to learn from you and just sit down and chat with

3:30you. So I actually am going to do something differently this podcast than any other

3:35podcast, which is the question I'm about to ask or the kind of thing I'm

3:38about to pose, I normally would do off camera.

3:41Okay. I'm going to do it on camera, which is coming in here today.

3:44It occurred to me that we, as a, how old are you?

3:47I'm going to be 62 in November.

3:4962. You look great, man.

3:51Thanks, man. I can share what you're doing if we get the time, fitness -wise.

3:55I'm 50. And the risk we run into, I realize, is that when I was

4:0116, 20, 30, et cetera, yes, I wanted knowledge, maybe even wisdom from elders.

4:08But I also knew with certainty that they didn't understand a thing about what it

4:13was like to be that age at that time.

4:15So I realized that as much as we might think we know, we don't know

4:20what it's like to be 16, 25, 30, 40 -year -old men, and we'll also

4:25talk about women today, but probably mostly men, in 2026.

4:29And so how do we reconcile that in a discussion like this?

4:33I just wanted to ask you, how do you think about that?

4:35Because so much of your content and what you're teaching out there is about timeless

4:40truths. But there's also a lot of things that are happening now, not just pain

4:44points, but maybe opportunities that, I don't know, how do you think about, do we

4:51really know? Like, how should we pass along information in a way that's truly useful

4:55to people? Because that's what, obviously, we both want this to be about.

4:58Well, just what you said, you can't fully relate to a 16 if you're not

5:0216 years old and know what they're going through.

5:05You know, you guys are skateboarders.

5:07And when I was 16, I got home, and it was either watch cartoons until

5:12my mom got home, or it was take risks and go out and find friends

5:15and do things. And now there's so much temptation at home between big tech and

5:21having a casino in your pocket and Netflix in your pocket and porn in your

5:24pocket. your pocket. It's just hard to relate to what they go through.

5:27I think the first thing is just acknowledging, you know, you don't know what you

5:31don't know, and then turning to data because there are people who look at the

5:35data. And I try to counter my biases or my, you know, my uninformed theses

5:43with data. And so I try to find good people, good research, and inform it.

5:49Also, it helps. I have 15 and 18 -year -old sons.

5:51I ask them a lot.

5:52I observe them a lot.

5:54I hang out with them a lot.

5:55And you start to pick up on stuff.

5:57But I think the first is just being open to people pushing back and recognizing,

6:02unfortunately, every once in a while in the comment when someone points something out and

6:04going, if it really hurts and it's upsetting, it's usually because they're right.

6:08And they found some soft tissue and they've pressed on it.

6:11So, and I try to be open to learning and, you know, just acknowledging when

6:16I got it wrong. What do you think are the, could be three, could be

6:21five, could be 10 things that all males should strive to check the boxes on

6:26in order to have a good life, not just to, you know, be great in

6:32some particular role, but like what are the macronutrients, in your opinion, of becoming a

6:38healthy, happy, fulfilled male? I think every person, not just every man, needs a code.

6:45And that is you're going to be faced with hundreds of decisions each day and

6:47you want to make, generally speaking, a higher proportion of good decisions than the peer

6:51group, right? So what helps is a code.

6:54Some people get that code from religion, the military, there are really strong family connections.

6:59I actually got my first kind of code from my first job.

7:01I worked at Morgan Stanley and there was just a certain level of professionalism.

7:05I got code from sports at UCLA.

7:09But I, I wonder, there's so many lost men right now.

7:12I wonder if masculinity can be a code or some sort of aspirational form of

7:15masculinity where people born as males might have an easier time leaning in.

7:19And I should also say that I don't think masculinity or femininity are sequestered to

7:24people born as males or females.

7:26I'm drawn to men who are more feminine as friends.

7:28My close friends kind of take care of me and are more nurturing.

7:31But I think for young men, if they feel like they can lean into some

7:35positive masculine attributes that it could serve as a code.

7:38So I loosely break it down into three very reductive qualities.

7:42And that is the first is to be a provider.

7:45I'm not talking about the way the world is, but the way the world should

7:48be. I think every young man should have a plan and have an assumption that

7:51at some point he will have to be the economic leader provider for, for his

7:55family. Sometimes that means getting out of the way of your partner who's better at

8:00that whole money thing. Sometimes it means providing more domestic or emotional support and labor.

8:05If your partner is accelerating economically.

8:07When my partner had a kid, she was working at Goldman Sachs.

8:10She was making more money than me.

8:11I was a new academic at NYU.

8:13I was making $160 ,000 living in New York, which is may sound like a

8:17lot of money, but it wasn't.

8:19And she was making substantially more.

8:20So I tried to pick up slack and, and, and provide more labor at home

8:24and take charge of our finances.

8:26But I think at the outset, trying to find a plan to be economically relevant

8:30in a capitalist society is really important because whether we like to admit it or

8:34not, a male from a self -esteem standpoint, from a sexual currency standpoint, from the

8:39esteem of the tribe or the society is going to be disproportionately evaluated based on

8:45your economic viability. So from an early age, try and have a plan.

8:48You may not have to stick to that plan.

8:50I'm not saying you got to go to Harvard and go to work at Goldman

8:52Sachs, but maybe you're going to go to trade school, learn how to install energy

8:56efficient HVAC, but you just need a plan.

8:58You'd be moving towards something.

9:00The second is protector. If you think about the most masculine jobs, fireman, cop, military,

9:06the notion is you develop skills and strengths such as you can protect others.

9:10And the most, if you will, manly, masculine, satisfied I ever feel is a night

9:15when I feel as if my family feels protected.

9:18The kids are asleep. My partner feels loved and supported.

9:21And I've, I've been able to hopefully through partnership, through economic viability, been able to

9:26provide a warm, comfortable life for them so they can focus on the things that

9:31are important to them. And I think unfortunately, a lot of men that we should

9:35look up to, whether it's the president, I apologize for getting political, or the wealthiest

9:39man in the world who are naturally going to be seen as male role models,

9:43they seem to have skipped the protection part.

9:46That the whole shooting match, the whole reason you make money, that's the means, but

9:50the ends is such that you can protect others.

9:52I find that's the most rewarding thing in the world.

9:54And then finally, procreator. And that is, I think we need to stop demonizing young

10:00men's desire for relationships and sexual desires.

10:03I think a young man wanting to have sex is, can be a tremendous motivator

10:09to be a better man.

10:10It's like fire. It can be incredibly destructive, but if you put it in a

10:14steel casing with spark plugs, it can create tremendous progress.

10:17And the story I use is that I was at the Raleigh Hotel in Miami,

10:21and I saw a very attractive woman.

10:24And it was the middle of the day, and without the benefit of alcohol, I

10:26didn't have the confidence to approach her.

10:28But I promised myself I was going to approach her.

10:30And then I went out to get my car from the valet, and was sitting

10:32in the car, and I'm like, God, you're such a fucking wimp.

10:35So I ran back in, went up to her, and said, hi, I'm Scott, where

10:40are you from? Anyways, long story short, 18 months later, our son's middle name is,

10:44born was Raleigh. And I didn't look at her, Andrew, and think I'd really like

10:49lower rates on auto insurance.

10:51I looked at her. thought I'd really like to have sex with her.

10:54And I think young men's desire for relationships and sex, if channeled correctly, makes you

10:59want to be a better man.

11:00Have a kindness practice, demonstrate excellence, shower for God's sakes, work out, have a plan,

11:07have resilience, have perseverance, demonstrate excellence.

11:11So in sum, provider, protector, procreator, where I think I missed it in the book,

11:16and I'd love your response because I'm open to criticism here, is one, that's what

11:22worked for me. And I think a lot of younger people, there's different forms of

11:26masculinity that don't necessarily involve being economically secure or finding a mate.

11:30And also, the component I've really missed is service.

11:35And I think a great, great kind of one question or proxy for masculinity in

11:43terms of what you do every day is, are you optimizing for attention or service?

11:47Right? And, and then the litmus test that Richard Reeves kind of gave me, who's

11:53sort of my Yoda on this stuff is this notion of surplus value, that some

11:59men are born males, but never, they die never having become men.

12:03It's not about a religious ceremony and age, or, you know, some sort of experience

12:07or ritual. It's about at some point, can you honestly look in the mirror and

12:10say, I add surplus value.

12:12I create more tax revenue and jobs than I absorb.

12:15Everyone absorbs tax revenue if you're in America.

12:17I listen to more people complain than I complain.

12:20Right? I love more people than love me.

12:23And I didn't get that.

12:25I don't think I really became a man well into my forties because I was

12:28always, I had took a capitalist approach to relationships.

12:31I was wanted more. I wanted a girlfriend that was better to me than I

12:35was to her. I wanted a job where I was getting paid more maybe than

12:39I was contributing. And then what you realize as you get older is the whole

12:43shooting match is to, to create surplus value, provide, be a better friend, be a

12:49better partner. There's no way my kids will ever be able to return as much

12:53as I've invested in them.

12:55I mean, we have these, you know, the Hallmark channel and insurance commercials will tell

12:58me that I'll have these moments and I get those, but my kids are never

13:02up at 2am worried about me.

13:04They just aren't. Right? I'm spending a ton.

13:07I would say to them, you're adding negative value.

13:09Just be clear. You go to these amazing schools, all these talented people, negative value.

13:14Me and your mom, we are constantly investing in you.

13:16This would be impossible for you to pass back.

13:18What I figured out is that's the whole shooting match is I'm finally, finally, Andrew,

13:23finally at a place of surplus value.

13:25I apologize for the words, Sally.

13:27Provider, protector, procreator. Are you, are you optimizing for service, not attention?

13:35And do you, can you really say that you add surplus value?

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16:34I love all that. I don't have anything to add.

16:37I do have two questions and one reflection.

16:39The reflection is that what you started with, that every day you're making decisions all

16:46day long and you want more of those to be good decisions than bad decisions

16:50relative to your peers. I think that's a terrific way to think about striving and

16:57I've never heard it posed that way, so I really just want to bold, underline,

17:00and highlight that for everyone.

17:02For the eighth grader, for the 12th grader, for the college junior, the 40 -year

17:08-old man, make better decisions than the average around you.

17:14The problem I have, I guess I do have one caveat here, is that most

17:19people won't remember this, but that show Jerry Springer, I think, was so popular because

17:22people like to focus on all the people doing worse than them because it makes

17:25it easy to stay right where you're at.

17:27So who are the comparison points that one can keep in mind as they strive

17:31to make these better decisions each day?

17:32Because I think that first statement you made is touching into some serious wisdom.

17:37So who is the comparison point and how do you keep that framed?

17:41Because you study markets, you understand markets.

17:44What's the market comparison point in this make more better decisions than worse ones relative

17:50to the average as you progress through your day?

17:53I think it's really important.

17:54I mean, you're talking a little bit about role models and references.

17:57And so first off, one myth I think we need to dispel is that success

18:03equals exploitation. There's a very unhealthy zeitgeist, especially from the far left, that anyone who's

18:09very successful is exploiting others.

18:12And I think we need to puncture that narrative and say you should strive to

18:15be successful. And success might mean certain things for other people.

18:18I didn't grow up with money, so for me success for most of my life

18:21was trying to get economic security.

18:23I was, anxiety plagued my mom and I, economic anxiety, and it was like a

18:29ghost following us around telling us we weren't worthy.

18:31So my role models were always people who'd figured out economic success.

18:35And people have to pick their own role models.

18:38I always thought masculinity was getting back in someone's face who didn't give me the

18:42respect I thought I deserved.

18:43I was that asshole that when someone cut me off in traffic, felt like I

18:46needed to speed up and cut them off.

18:48That if the Delta ticket counter representative wasn't kind to me or was busy, I

18:54would get back in their face.

18:55It's like, well, do you realize I'm a 1K member?

18:57And then a decent reference point is just men you admire and they're everywhere that

19:03perhaps don't, can take blows.

19:05They realize someone might be having a bad day.

19:08But you said something that inspired a thought in that what I just outlined is

19:13pretty meta. You know, kind of themes that sometimes aren't that actionable.

19:17So I just want to bring it down one level.

19:19As we were talking about off mic, I try and mentor two or three young

19:22men at any given time.

19:24And these are young men that quite frankly need mentoring.

19:27They're struggling. Most of them might be still living at home.

19:30You know, they're not, these aren't people who went to Brown and are working at

19:33Goldman Sachs. And so some, just some more tactical things that I think serve as

19:38a reference point for how you succeed or how you make progress.

19:44The first thing I do, the first hack is I say, unlock your phone and

19:47I'm going to look at it.

19:48And there's a little bit of nervousness.

19:50So what I do to loosen them up or lubricate it is I say, okay,

19:53let me tell you two things.

19:54First is I gamble. I don't gamble on FanDuel.

19:57I gamble with options. I know it's stupid.

19:59I know I'm going to lose money over the long term.

20:01I'm a smart guy. I love markets.

20:03But that dopahit I get is too seductive.

20:06So I sell calls and puts.

20:09I consume porn. That's sort of not, that's not a, that's an embarrassing thing to

20:14say at 61. But yeah, I still consume porn.

20:17But I tell them that and it lubricates or it makes them more comfortable.

20:22I open their phone. Everyone has an advantage.

20:25Most young men who are not excelling, if you will, by traditional Western capitalist standards,

20:31their advantage is capital, specifically their human capital.

20:35They have time. And within about five to seven minutes, I can find eight hours

20:40of time from TikTok, from X, from porn, from gambling sites, from YouTube.

20:47I'm like, we're going to find eight hours.

20:48You tell me we're going to reduce this eight hours.

20:51And next week, I'm going to check.

20:53And we're going to reallocate that capital into three things.

20:56The first is we're going to get really fucking strong.

20:59I just think the best antidepressant is moving weights, building some bulk, or running far.

21:05I've jokingly said every man under the age of 30 should aspire to be able

21:09to walk in any room and know if shit got real, they could kill and

21:12eat everybody or outrun them.

21:14Like, there's different forms of fitness.

21:15You can be fast, you can be flexible, you can be strong, but there's no

21:19excuse. The male form is blessed with, you know, more bone density, double twitch muscle,

21:25all the things you talk about, this incredible substance that pours over called testosterone.

21:29You're going to look back when you're my age and think, why wasn't I just

21:33fast, sleek, a monster, just strong?

21:36So we're going to work out at least three times a week.

21:39The second thing is we got to make some money.

21:41And I want you to make money outside of your house.

21:43You know, I don't care if you're a Lyft driver, Tass Rabbiter, Panera.

21:47I was hiring people at 18 bucks an hour, and only one out of 10

21:50that accept a job actually show up the first day.

21:52So if you make, if you really make the effort, you can make decent money.

21:56And the great thing about getting a taste for the flesh of money is you

22:00start learning how to make more money.

22:01If you want to make a lot of money, unless you're smart enough to be

22:04born to rich parents, start off by making a little bit of money, and you'll

22:08start to figure out capitalism, right?

22:10And the final thing is, at least three times a month, we're going to put

22:14ourselves in a group sitting where we are trying to achieve something great in the

22:18agency of others, a nonprofit, a church group, a sports league, a riding club.

22:24And then the second phase of that is we're going to do something what I

22:26call is the approach. Hey, man, you want to go watch the Jets game, right?

22:32An expression of friendship. And then if you're really comfortable, an expression of romantic interest

22:37while making them feel safe.

22:38Would you like to grab a coffee sometime?

22:40And this is the goal.

22:42The goal is no, because you're going to get no's.

22:46And then I'm going to call you after you've made the approach.

22:48You're going to text me.

22:48I did an approach. Did you get a no?

22:50Yeah, I got a no.

22:52That's exactly the point. That's the goal.

22:54Because everyone you admire, everyone you think has killed it, the only thing I can

22:58guarantee you is there were a shit ton of no's in getting to one of

23:01the top 10 podcasts in the world, getting to a person as a partner who's

23:05higher character and hotter than you, getting to make more money than you would have

23:09ever guessed that person would have made.

23:10The only thing that got them there was the willingness and the endurance to anticipate

23:16no. And unfortunately, big tech is setting up an algorithm that convinces you that a

23:21frictionless life is a good life and that you never need to endure no.

23:25And what you end up with is a lack of skills to persevere, to realize

23:31you're OK. And that's what I ask the kids the next day.

23:33Are you OK? Yeah, I'm bummed out.

23:35But you're OK. If a man under the age of 30 works out three times

23:39a week, works 30 hours a week outside of the house, right, and is volunteering,

23:44that immediately puts him in the top 8 % of all young men.

23:49And I apologize for the word salad here.

23:50But something I hate is the incel movement, involuntarily celibate, right?

23:56Throughout history, 99 % of men have been involuntarily celibate for most of their lives.

24:01There's few things young men would rather be doing than having sex.

24:03Only 40 % of men have reproduced throughout history, 80 % of women.

24:08So no man has a birthright to reproduce.

24:11In the West, it's actually now 75%.

24:13So young men have more agency than they ever have.

24:16Now, if you do those things, right, just those three things, work outside of the

24:21house, work out, have a kindness practice, volunteer in the service of others, you're immediately

24:27going to put yourself in the top decile of young men.

24:30And if you're in the top decile of young men, I can guarantee you, over

24:34time, you will become voluntarily incelibate, which is awesome, because you'll establish a relationship.

24:41And young men under the age of 30, a lot of the research shows, benefit

24:44more from a relationship than women.

24:46Yet only one in three men under the age of 30 is in a relationship,

24:49whereas two in three women are in a relationship.

24:52And you think, well, Scott, that's mathematically impossible.

24:54It's not because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable

25:00men. So I'll circle back to the more tactical recommendations.

25:04Get fit. Start making some money.

25:07Have a plan. And start doing things in the agency of others.

25:11I think the ultimate hack for depression, or if you're feeling bad about yourself, is

25:16to start helping others and to always keep in mind, and this is the hard

25:21part, that the antichrist of your progress as a young man, the devil, the fucking

25:28enemy, the villain here, the bond villain with trillions of dollars is big tech.

25:33They are trying to figure out with AI a million times a second how to

25:38convince you to spend one more second a day on your phone sequestered from your

25:42relationships. Because they're a shareholder value.

25:45Forty percent of the S &P is 10 companies whose sole mission is to monetize

25:50your time. And unfortunately, they're not bad people, but what they're doing has resulted in

25:56a small group, a cohort of men.

25:58It's not small. Millions of men who are evolving into a new species of asocial,

26:03asexual males who wake up at the age of 30 thinking they've had a frictionless

26:07life, living at home, obese, anxious, and depressed, having never developed the skills that they

26:14need to do well professionally, personally.

26:17So big tech is not your friend.

26:19If you do not figure out how to modulate big tech products, whether it's Instagram

26:24or YouTube, you are falling into a trap of eventually being sequestered and not developing

26:29the skills to establish the most important thing in life, and that is relationships.

26:35Two questions about big tech, and I'll just push back a little bit on the

26:39big tech thing, not because I'm afraid of big tech.

26:41I did grow up in Silicon Valley, so I - When you're at Stanford.

26:45Yeah, invariably have a different relationship to it.

26:47And I'm not name dropping.

26:50I happen to be close with some of the people that run these companies or

26:53in number two or number four slots, or in some cases who run the companies.

26:57One who I've never met, who I'll just raise first, is who you referred to

27:01earlier, the richest man in the world, is Elon Musk.

27:04Yep. And I was, frankly, a little bit surprised that you called him out when

27:10discussing the importance of being a protector.

27:13I understand - Thank you very much.

27:14Thank you. political side. Well, let's just, for the moment, I will just set Trump

27:18aside. I'm a very polarizing figure.

27:20Happy to go there if you want, but I know your stance on him.

27:23But the mention of Elon as a non -protector surprised me because I think of

27:28Elon as somebody who seems to love his children very much.

27:33He's organized family differently than most, but he certainly has the capacity to take care

27:37of them, who is committed to big projects.

27:41I mean, a superhuman level of output in terms of just Neuralink, the field that

27:45I'm closest to, right? Phenomenal progress.

27:48And that's just one of the SpaceX, Neuralink, Tesla X, et cetera.

27:52So I'm just curious what motivated that that makes you, because I don't see him

28:00as a non -protector. I don't know that I see him as a protector of

28:04a particular kind in his personal life, but I don't have access to that.

28:07But in terms of his motivation to protect our species, I personally believe his desire

28:13to get to Mars is a genuine one, to have an option for humanity.

28:19So I see him as a protector.

28:21And I'll probably piss off a lot of people by saying this, but that doesn't

28:24mean I universally adopt everything he says and does.

28:27But I see him as kind of an awesome figure in our history who's like,

28:29let's get to Mars in case this Earth thing doesn't work out.

28:32And also, let's get to Mars because it's awesome.

28:34I think that's an entirely fair viewpoint and you're adding nuance to it.

28:38So let's talk about Elon Musk.

28:39If I had a red button that I could push and get rid of all

28:44of big tech or Elon Musk, somehow we could float away like a Gabriel Garcia

28:48Marquez character and not die, but just not have happened, I wouldn't press the button.

28:55I think big tech and Elon Musk are net goods for the world.

29:00We're going to get to EVs.

29:01We're going to get to Mars faster because of Elon Musk.

29:04He inspired the EV race, which is good for the world.

29:08The problem is with the word net.

29:11And as it relates to masculinity and as a role model for young men, he's

29:14probably one of the best role models in terms of being super aggressive, taking risks,

29:20ignoring the noise, and just being laser -like focused, telling an amazing story, garnering capital.

29:27I mean, there's just no getting around it.

29:29The guy's just an inspiration.

29:30I think the whole shooting match is if you become the richest man in the

29:33world, I think you move to protection.

29:36I would argue that he's not a great role model and that he has not

29:40done a great job of convincing younger men that protection and taking care of others.

29:46I think the way he acquits himself online by punching down when he says something

29:51mean about somebody, and I know this and I'm fine because I have money and

29:56I'm not dependent upon any one person's opinion of me, but if he says something

30:01negative about you and calls you names, his 120 million followers come for you.

30:06And I think as a general rule, and this is true for everybody, but especially

30:09for men, you never punch down.

30:12You just don't. Anyone, I'm openly, I make personal attacks on people.

30:17This is technically a personal attack on Elon Musk.

30:19To call someone not good, a good role model, that's a personal attack.

30:24But I never make personal attacks of anyone who isn't markedly more powerful than me.

30:29And I find that a lot of these people, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, have

30:33no problem punching down. So again, it goes back to this.

30:37Is he a net good for the world?

30:38I acknowledge the point. And I would even argue, yeah, he is.

30:42But that doesn't, he should also be held accountable for his blessings.

30:45I can't stand the fact that he shitposts America and the government.

30:49If you look at the most successful companies in the world, they're littered up and

30:52down the coast we're on right now, whether it's Qualcomm in San Diego, SpaceX and

30:58Snap here, head north to Salesforce and Meta and Google, keep going, you hit Amazon

31:04and Microsoft, and then it stops once you get to the Canadian border.

31:08And then you have to go all the way up to Lululemon to find a

31:10multi -billion dollar company. Come back down to where you teach at UC San Diego

31:14and those great companies, and it stops.

31:17And you got to go to another 7 ,000 kilometers to get the Mercado Libre

31:20in Buenos Aires. There's something about America that creates unbelievable opportunity that creates the wealthiest

31:27men in the world. And I find that these tech brothers have a total lack

31:30of appreciation for the sacrifices in the system built in America and are the first

31:35to shitpost the government and complain about regulation and things getting in the way.

31:39I find that especially obnoxious.

31:41But let me acknowledge the point.

31:43I think on the whole, Elon Musk and big tech are a net good for

31:47the world, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't hold them accountable and ask, why would

31:51you do these things when you're so blessed?

31:55So this gets to the heart of something that I think is extremely important, which

31:59is we're living in the age of everything pretty much being public about public figures.

32:07Not everything, but many more facets of their lives than ever before in history, in

32:13part because they share many more facets of their lives.

32:15It's not just that stuff gets unearthed.

32:17It's like they're talking about their company.

32:19They're also in the role of arguing with their ex on sometimes online.

32:24You know, you see that their kids sometimes will, will be a parent who they

32:28are. You know, it's interesting.

32:29My dad, his first generation immigrant who came here, became a scientist and he's from

32:34Argentina and he, along these lines, he always said it was funny to him that

32:38when you would go to somebody's office in the United States, a professor or a

32:42businessman, or something. The picture of his family was facing out.

32:45He said, that was so weird.

32:47He said, in Argentina, your picture of your wife and your kids and your, and

32:50your dog, we're facing in, that's yours.

32:52You don't share that with a person coming to your office.

32:54Like who would do that?

32:55This oversharing thing, if it, when you look back as a kind of a longstanding

33:00theme in American business, and it shows up even more so, of course, online.

33:05So to me, this, this idea of, okay, like Elon, for instance, but very different

33:11role model figure, someone that I consider a close friend, Jocko Willink, incredibly impressive, true

33:17warrior. Yeah. Great dad, great husband.

33:20I know his family, amazing human being in so many ways.

33:24And he's kind of like the tough football coach that a lot of guys didn't

33:27have that young guys. I think that's one of the reasons people gravitate towards him.

33:30You don't wonder whether or not he really can do what he says you ought

33:33to do because he does it every day and he posts it on his watch.

33:36So Jocko is a really good example of somebody that people admire.

33:40And I consider Jocko one example.

33:42So why not look at public figures, you and perhaps even me, for instance, and

33:48just look at it, these people as a buffet of options to adopt certain traits,

33:52but not others, be doing great things.

33:54And assuming that the other things they're doing aren't, you know, truly atrocious, right?

33:58I mean, criminal, atrocious, you know, I don't know that we're asking the people who

34:03are role models, leaders, business leaders.

34:06Well, I don't think we're placing a reasonable expectation on them.

34:09I don't say this for any personal reasons.

34:11I've known I'm replete with flaws for a very long time.

34:14So I don't claim to not have them, never have.

34:16But then young guys might be thinking, well, I have to be perfect too.

34:22And if I'm not perfect and I don't have 150 million followers, I better have

34:26a fraternity of people to protect me.

34:28This is the kind of the underlying current that I think has driven the toxic

34:33end of the, I hate the word, the manosphere.

34:37I hate it because it's become too mishmashy.

34:40It's not even a continuum.

34:42It's just a mess. So what do you have to say and think about the

34:47expectation that the leaders of the world, the role models not have these flaws at

34:55the same time telling guys, Hey, like asking and get told no.

34:59I mean, you and I both know, I don't know if it's real world data

35:02or if it's statistical data, but I have many women friends in my life and

35:05I have a sister. If an attractive guy rolls up on a woman and says,

35:10Hey, you want to get coffee sometimes?

35:11It's romantic. It's romantic. If a guy that's not attractive does that, it's creepy.

35:16So how do you tell a guy that isn't good looking to do that and

35:22then not be called a creep and not just be called a creep, but be

35:25called a creep on an app, which isn't just designed to prevent sexual assault, but

35:28is also designed to share information about who to date and not to date.

35:32And guys get black. I'm told by young guys, I'm not on dating apps, but

35:36that guys get blacklisted basically, not because of sexual assault, but because, you know, they

35:42get called out as like a bad kisser.

35:44He didn't smell so good or something.

35:45This is the stuff that used to be in private discussions among women.

35:48I know this cause I have a sister, right?

35:50Women talk, I listen through the wall, right?

35:52What do they talk about?

35:53And now it's public. There's parallel construction here.

35:57I'm sure you're tracking it, but for everyone listening, it's like, this is a serious

36:00problem. I mean, can't we acknowledge that somebody like Elon, let's just stay on that

36:05example, is a, is a phenom that probably has never existed in a hundred, at

36:10least a hundred years, has huge vision.

36:13Sure. He might have some like issues in his, in his life that are none

36:17of my business. And yet he has a lot of good example to set for

36:22young men. I believe that.

36:24And it also gives permission to not be perfect without harming people.

36:30So, uh, acknowledge the point.

36:33There's a lot there, but I still think if someone is, um, constantly optimizing for

36:41attention to draw cheap capital to his firms and is very open and very critical

36:46of others and is probably the most dominant force in electing the next president, um,

36:54that we should pay very close attention to his activities, whether it's, uh, reported addiction

37:00to ketamine and sleeping with a loaded gun next to his bed and not living

37:05with any of his children, whether it's, you think that should be public fair game.

37:09I think if he wants to put certain aspects of his life out there constantly

37:13for affirmation, that that type of scrutiny is probably fair game.

37:17I also acknowledge the point that people are human and you need to have some

37:23grace and say, well, unless you're perfect, try and learn from people, try and understand

37:28them and try and demonstrate some grace.

37:30The other thing going back to big tech is that we have connected, um, economic

37:37value to tearing down people.

37:40So you've had bestsellers. I've had bestsellers.

37:43I said my book hasn't come out yet.

37:44I hope for it to be a bestseller.

37:45You haven't, you haven't. No, it comes out in September.

37:47It's been delayed for a while, but, but I appreciate the, uh, I feel like

37:50I've already read it. No, well, God, God willing, if it doesn't, it does.

37:54Let me, let me prepare.

37:55Cause I think you're actually my, I don't know you well, but I do know

37:58you. I get the sense that like me, a lot of the criticism doesn't just

38:02bounce right off you, that you take this stuff to heart.

38:05And sometimes it upsets you.

38:07I know what it's okay.

38:08I'll say it upsets me.

38:09Some of it does, but.

38:10It's not the criticism that people think upsets me that upsets me, but that's a

38:13different story. Your book will be a bestseller.

38:16You could put out, I don't know, the script of The Sound of Music, and

38:23it's going to be a bestseller.

38:24It'll be better than if I had done that, but not better than The Sound

38:28of Music. There you go.

38:30And this is what TikTok and YouTube, the algorithms, someone will immediately say, this is

38:36why Andrew Huberman's book is bullshit.

38:39Because if they put a well -known figure's name in front of a bestselling book

38:43and says bullshit and creates antagonism and comments, the algorithms pick up on that, optimize

38:49it, it'll get millions of views, which is more Nissan ads and more shareholder value.

38:54So there is not only a healthy check on people's power, more scrutiny.

38:59The president should get a lot of scrutiny.

39:01The president deserves to have his business and personal life, to a certain extent, at

39:06least where it demonstrates character, looked into and examined.

39:09And I think a certain amount of power and healthy check on power is probably

39:13a healthy thing. Unfortunately now, there's economic incentive around tearing people down.

39:18Like, I don't know about you, I do have a real fear.

39:21I am highly imperfect, professionally and personally.

39:24I've engaged in a lot of professional and personal behavior that I am not proud

39:28of. I've been divorced, I haven't been as kind to people that have worked for

39:32me as I should have been, and I'm worried it's all going to come crashing

39:35down. And a lot of times I feel like the stuff I'm saying on podcasts

39:38like this, I'm trying to portray myself as being better than I actually am.

39:42I have huge imposter syndrome.

39:44And big tech has an economic incentive in trying to find as many guardians of

39:51gotcha pins as possible. Because if you get to a certain point of fame or

39:55credibility, there's just too much money in trying to find the soft tissue on you.

40:00So there's a very unhealthy attribute in our society where we're all just waiting for

40:05bad news and there's economic incentive to say, well, this person isn't perfect, look what

40:08this person did. So I agree with you, we need to demonstrate a little bit

40:12more grace. Something I really hate about my party, I consider myself a proud progressive,

40:17is these purity tests, right?

40:19That, oh, you know, I put out a picture of me and a bunch of

40:25buddies that I went to UCLA with.

40:27One's an aircraft carrier pilot, one's an ophthalmologist.

40:32Like, it was a picture of all of us, and I've said, you know, find

40:34impressive men and befriend them.

40:36I think I saw that post.

40:37You were the one towering over the rest of them.

40:39Yeah, I think I shrunk.

40:40Huh? It's not weird. You're a tall guy.

40:42No, I don't think you shrunk.

40:42I only know you now.

40:43I was 6 '3 in college.

40:44I'm 6 '1 1⁄2 now.

40:46That's nice I'm at an age where I'm shrinking.

40:47Anyways, and I knew I was just waiting for it.

40:50Why privilege? What a douchebag.

40:52What, you know, just all the comments and all the sort of, you know, people

40:57coming after you, right? Or people who can't just say, oh, good for you.

41:02Well done. And that's just part of it.

41:04And that's a small price to pay for a certain level of success.

41:07But the algorithms immediately grab that and elevate it because there's money and antagonism.

41:13A thoughtful, nuanced conversation online and a positive reinforcing comment, that doesn't tickle the sensors.

41:20If you can create a fight online, if you say mRNA vaccines alter your DNA,

41:26you're going to get a lot of comments.

41:27And the algorithms love that.

41:28And it'll elevate it. So, unfortunately, we have attached 40 % of the market value

41:33of the S &P to incendiary content that tears us apart.

41:37And the result is people now don't believe that Russian troops pouring over the border

41:41in Ukraine is their enemy.

41:42They believe that their neighbor with a Trump sign is their real enemy.

41:45Or someone who doesn't believe your ideology around gender politics is your enemy.

41:51And, unfortunately, it's being, I believe, and I know this sounds paranoid, but it doesn't

41:55mean I'm wrong. These poorest platforms that have an economic incentive and antagonistic content are

42:01being fueled by bad actors, whether it's the GRU or the CCP, who look at

42:07America and say, we can't beat them economically.

42:09We can't beat them kinetically.

42:11So let's get them to hate each other.

42:13And that is Americans now perceive other Americans as the biggest threat.

42:17So, one, it is healthy to look at powerful people that have huge influence, such

42:22as you and, to a lesser extent, me, and question their beliefs and write critical

42:26articles of them. It crushed me when the, I can't remember if it was the

42:30Atlantic or the New York or New Yorker, came out with sort of a critical

42:34review of my book. It was really upsetting to me.

42:37And I think part of the thing that was so upsetting was, when we were

42:39talking about this off mic, it meant some of it was true.

42:42That's healthy. It's healthy when there's thoughtful criticism around your book.

42:47But when I have hundreds of comments accusing me of shit that never happened, and

42:53then you look at it, and it's Dog Mom Wisconsin 331 with three followers, that's

42:57a bot. And the fact that these platforms choose not to screen out those bots

43:02because they know more incendiary comments that create more comments and more Nissan ads, I

43:07think that is tearing at the fabric of America.

43:09But I just want to acknowledge the point.

43:11I think maturity is realizing people aren't perfect.

43:14Learn from them what you can.

43:15But I do think the wealthiest man in the world and the president should be

43:18held to a higher standard.

43:20I think they have extraordinary blessings.

43:21I think their decisions matter.

43:23And I think the scrutiny they come under is warranted.

43:27And I will say this.

43:29I think the president, to a certain extent, Elon Musk, have created a lot of

43:32cloud cover for our imperfections.

43:34As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for nearly.

43:37Thank you so much. Thank you.

43:37Thank you. Thank you. 15 years now.

43:39I discovered it way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and

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44:11daily nutrition. Now, of course, everyone should strive to eat nutritious whole foods.

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44:58I disagree vehemently with one point, which is that I'm more influential than you are.

45:03You're incredibly influential. In fact, an ex -girlfriend's sister who went to NYU asked me

45:09if I knew who you were.

45:10I said, of course. And she said her words, for our generation, Scott is like

45:15a father to us. It's like we and she happens to be in venture capital.

45:20But so maybe there's a finance link there, too.

45:23But I pressed on that a little bit and just asked.

45:25And she said, yeah, you know, we look up to him.

45:28We listen to him. He's very paternal to us.

45:30So I thought you might appreciate that.

45:32I do appreciate that. Although I would have - You're coming from a woman as

45:34well. I'd appreciate it more if she'd said older brother.

45:37I'm very conscious of my age now.

45:40Are you? Really? A hundred percent.

45:42You're in your 60s. You're super fit.

45:44You've got two healthy boys.

45:45You're in a happy relationship.

45:47You've got huge reach. I imagine your bank accounts are fine and you're actively engaged

45:52in service. In my eyes, you're doing great.

45:56I appreciate that. But I'd rather be in this spot at 41, not 61.

46:01I'm very self -conscious about my age.

46:04But I just want to go back to something I think that gets in the

46:07way of success and has been a huge unlock for me is, I mean, it's

46:14not - But your fear, your fear of criticism.

46:16If you're going to be successful, you're going to face criticism.

46:19Starting a business is subjecting yourself to public failure.

46:23I want to go back to something you said about approaching women and guys being

46:26afraid to be that guy.

46:29I think some of that is a little bit exaggerated.

46:32And that most women, if you are respectful, the vast majority of women, if you're

46:36respectful and approach a woman at a bar, hi, how are you, and she's not

46:40interested, you're going to be fine.

46:41And you're both going to be fine.

46:43And just as I think there's two myths that are damaging to the mating market,

46:47which is really upsetting to me.

46:48One, that men think that all women are looking to, or a lot of women

46:52are looking to embarrass them and they might get canceled professionally.

46:55If you're respectful to a woman and approach her and make her feel safe, and

46:58then if she's not interested, politely exit, you're going to be fine and so is

47:02she. And I don't buy that you're taking your career in your hands.

47:04I think that's just bullshit.

47:06And an excuse to be an incel.

47:08I just don't buy it.

47:09And two, what really has been an enormous unlock for me is I believe in

47:15my atheism. I believe at some point I'm going to look into my kids' eyes

47:17and know our relationship is coming to an end.

47:20I was fucking their age.

47:21You've got a bunch of young dudes in here who look like former Abercrombie and

47:24Fitch models. I remember they look like they're 25, they're probably 35.

47:29It was yesterday I was their age, which means just in an instant I'm going

47:33to be, again, at that moment where I know I don't have much time left.

47:37And in 100 years no one's going to give a shit what I said or

47:39thought or did or the mistakes I made.

47:42And embracing that and accepting that has given me so much courage, right, to start

47:48businesses, to make dumb investments that might be crazy, to tell men in my life

47:53finally that I love them or I'm impressed with them.

47:56When I was their age, I had this weird sense of masculinity that if I

47:59said, oh, dude, look how handsome this dude is, that it took away from my

48:03prestige somehow, that I couldn't tell people they were impressive.

48:07I couldn't tell a woman, God, I'm just crazy about you, and I would give

48:11anything to spend more time with you because I was worried that she wouldn't return

48:16my affection and I would be just too hurt and I had to be cool

48:19and, like, not need her.

48:21All this bullshit that got in the way of me really having a good life.

48:24And what I realized is every failure I've had, people go, oh, his business went

48:29bankrupt. Okay. And then they go back to thinking about themselves.

48:33So everyone you're worried about really doesn't give a shit about you.

48:37And by the way, the dude that's not very good looking and is with a

48:41ridiculously, like, high -character hot woman is one of two things, as rich parents, or

48:46two, or two, is willing to endure rejection.

48:50So I just don't buy, you know, that myth of the man risking his personal

48:59and professional reputation, I don't think that's true.

49:01On the other side, the myth I hate, I don't know if you've seen this,

49:04on TikTok, on TikTok. A lot of women are saying, I don't date because the

49:08risks of being unalived, which I guess is the woke version of saying murdered.

49:12I think it's because on social media platforms, if you say murder or suicide -

49:16Oh, it goes ranked down?

49:17I don't know if it actually does, but it's this idea that, yeah, that it's

49:21going to be ranked down.

49:22Here's the data. Okay, if 2 ,500 women a year are murdered by men, that's

49:29way too many. It's a huge problem.

49:31Sexual assault is a bigger problem.

49:33The majority of women who are murdered are murdered by someone they know.

49:37So the reality is a small number of women are murdered on dates with strangers.

49:42It just doesn't happen that often.

49:44And 40 ,000 men a year kill themselves.

49:47So if you go on a date with a man, the man is 16 times

49:50more likely to go home and hurt himself than hurt you.

49:53So what I would say to men is make the approach, take the risk, and

49:57as long as you're respectful, you're going to be fine and so is she, and

50:00you are not taking your professional or personal reputation into your hands.

50:03And what I would say to women is if you go on a date with

50:05a guy that you met on an app, there's all sorts of digital breadcrumbs.

50:09And it's a lot, you are, and I can statistically prove this, the ride over

50:14an Uber, the Uber was a lot more dangerous than the date itself.

50:18And you are more likely to die of choking during dinner than to be hurt

50:22by that man. So what I hate is that there's all this inflammatory content being

50:28boosted on online media that's getting in the way of the most rewarding thing in

50:33life. And that is to find someone who you are physically attracted to, who you

50:37sync up with spiritually, and you decide to build a life together.

50:41And not enough of that is happening.

50:43We're in a sex recession, right?

50:45And online is making it worse.

50:47The dating apps have an incentive in you finding a bigger, better deal.

50:50And the genders have done an amazing job of convincing each other it's the other's

50:55fault. And I think one of the big foci that need to be really, pay

51:01more attention to is what I call renewal of alliances.

51:04I'd love to see a renewal of alliances between us and our great allies in

51:07Europe. Renewal of allies who are moderates.

51:10I know nothing about you.

51:11I just don't, I just can't believe you're an extremist on the left or the

51:13right. I just don't. Bullseye.

51:15There needs to be a renewal of alliances between what I'll call moderate lefties like

51:19me and moderate conservatives that are everywhere.

51:22We're all Americans. But the most important alliance that needs renewal is the greatest alliance

51:28in history, hands down. And it's the alliance between men and women.

51:32The integration of female and male energy, the ability to find someone you want to

51:38procreate with, to build something together, that is the most rewarding thing in life.

51:42And I can prove it's key to the species, progress, and existence.

51:46And men and women have been taught not to trust each other and to blame

51:50each other. I hate the fucking manosphere.

51:52And I hate the, quite frankly, some of the reactionary notion on the left where

51:57it's misandry, cosplaying is social commentary.

52:00There's a lot of bullshit misandry online where you're assuming every young man is a

52:06predator. And quite frankly, that every billionaire is evil or that every white person is

52:10racist. But the alliance between men and women needs to be reformed.

52:15It's the greatest alliance in history.

52:17And online, it's teaching men to blame women for their problems.

52:21No, women's assent saved our ass.

52:23Women in the factory in World War II is the reason we won the war

52:27in four years, not in seven.

52:29Women going into the workforce in the 70s and 80s and protections of their rights

52:33for fair pay is the reason we're not a second -tier power to China right

52:37now. If women hadn't assented, we'd be really squarely and duly fucked, right?

52:44And their assent is in no way inversely correlated or correlated to men's dissent.

52:49Men have to stop that bullshit.

52:51An immigrant didn't take your job.

52:52He made it such that you could have lower rent, a meal for a reasonable

52:55price, and have someone take care of your mother when she's older.

52:58And at the same time, if you're having romantic problems, it's not her fault.

53:03Women are ascending, and naturally, they have higher standards because they're no longer economically dependent

53:08upon men, which should be a motivator for men to level up, not to start

53:12blaming women. And all this shit is being totally inflamed and taken totally out of

53:18proportion by online because it creates more attention, it's interesting, it's novel, and it creates

53:24more Nissan ads. But I'm trying to figure out, what is the economic incentive to

53:30try and figure out a way to get more men and women appreciating the other

53:34gender beyond just the basics, right?

53:37How do we renew that alliance?

53:41I love that statement. I saw somewhere, of all places, on X, you know, every

53:46once in a while you encounter something that really sticks with you.

53:48Every once in a while, there's a gem that just falls through, really makes you

53:52think. And I don't know who this person was, might have been an account with

53:55one follower. And it landed in front of me and it said, the way you

53:58destroy a society is to get the men and women to hate each other.

54:01And as a biologist, first and foremost, I thought, well, that makes perfect sense, right?

54:06If you want to eradicate a population of any species, you get the males and

54:10the females to start hating each other.

54:12Not just because they don't mate, but because you throw off the mating dynamics in

54:17a way that then can create infighting among the males.

54:20We see that too. Infighting among the women.

54:22Although, I don't know, I think that there's a lot to explore around this sort

54:28of what the standard is that we're holding the opposite sex to.

54:31It's an interesting question. And I can't say I've really evolved my thinking around this

54:35enough to maybe dive into it, but I know you thought about this.

54:39I think a lot of males hide behind this notion that they have to be

54:44everything. They have to be tall.

54:47They have to be rich.

54:47They have to be jacked.

54:49They have to be kind.

54:50They have to be, you know, hopefully everyone's kind.

54:52But you know what I mean, that they can't say the wrong thing even once.

54:56You know, so they're hiding behind that.

54:57And if they go out and look, they'll get plenty of evidence for that, right?

55:01No protectors, no this. Actually, I brought, I did something I rarely do, which is

55:07I brought my phone into this because right before I came in here, a woman

55:10that I've known for 20 years wrote and asked me if I would ask you

55:13a question. No, and it's directly related to this.

55:16So I'm going to do this.

55:16Of course, I'm not going to say who this person is.

55:18And she said, because I mentioned that I'm speaking to you today.

55:21And she said, please tell Scott that I'd personally like to thank him for his

55:26efforts, encouraging men to embrace their duties as protectors, providers, and generally just being accountable

55:31because we have a serious shortage among hetero dudes.

55:35She lives in San Francisco, particularly in the Bay Area.

55:38And I said, will do.

55:40But can you tell me what you mean by accountable?

55:42Serious question. I want to make sure I'm specific.

55:44She said, when I say accountability, I'm referring to the fact that many times in

55:49romantic relationships, men seem to want to avoid feelings of shame and guilt to such

55:53a degree that they often respond to their partner's feelings towards them without empathy or

55:57accountability. I find that here in, okay, San Francisco, there are many women in San

56:02Francisco. I don't think I outed her here.

56:04Or perhaps all major US metros, chivalry is dead.

56:07Men are afraid to assert their desires because they don't want the obligation that it

56:12might entail. Interesting. They give up when something requires internal growth or leveling up.

56:16They shy away from acting protective of their partners in favor of egalitarian dynamics, which

56:21is flawed since men clearly have more physical strength.

56:25Oh, my God. This goes on and on.

56:26This is almost overwhelming me, but I think I can grapple with it.

56:31Oh, thank you. I swear I didn't plant this.

56:33She said, none of this has ever applied to you in case you're serious.

56:37Thank you for that one, by the way.

56:38She says, they're wimpy. They avoid relationships that require work and responsibility because they don't

56:43want to feel inadequate. They avoid difficult conversations and repair because they don't want to

56:47feel shame or guilt. They avoid asking for anything explicitly because they don't want to

56:50feel obligated or complimenting a woman or giving her flowers or romance.

56:55They're all scared to do it.

56:56It's so odd. Anyway, that's it.

57:01That's all, huh? Okay. So I'm hearing that second part for the first time, the

57:05long part. And I have to say, if I were a 25 -year -old guy

57:09now, I'd be like, whoa, that's a lot.

57:13Okay. There's something there. They want me to bring flowers, be romantic, be affectionate.

57:19Clearly, there's a reference towards being sexually proactive there.

57:24And yet, assume responsibility, level up, be empathic.

57:28You know, I'm not trying to defend or attack this person who I'm close to

57:33in my life, but that's a lot.

57:35That's a tall building right there to scale for a guy who's trying to figure

57:41out how to work out three times a week, get off porn.

57:44Anyway, I thought I'd share that and just get your reflections.

57:47I think that, first off, I think that we all have a set of insecurities

57:55around not living up, mostly because, again, I really do think big tech has had,

58:00while it's a net good, incredible economic growth, job growth, I connect with my buddies

58:07from college. I get to build a business and market it less expensively.

58:12I can break through voices that can bubble up just based on their talent.

58:18Teen suicide has skyrocketed since social went on mobile.

58:21It's not the only reason, but it's either number one or number two, according to

58:25my colleague Jonathan Haidt and Gene Twenge at San Diego State.

58:29I don't believe there's any reason that anyone under the age of 16 should be

58:32on social media where they encourage, young girls are encouraged to sexualize themselves, where if

58:37they start having suicidal ideation, they are sent an email that says verbatim, here are

58:42some images on suicide we thought you might find interesting.

58:45But also, it's created unreasonable expectations for a lot of young men and young women

58:49about what they need to look like.

58:51If they haven't made millions of dollars, if they aren't on a private jet going

58:54to Coachella, if they don't have a boyfriend with a six pack, if they don't

58:58look just amazing all the time, I think it creates tremendous anxiety and unreasonable expectations.

59:04But I do, you know, so I would argue that who's, okay, so who's at

59:09fault? We're at fault. And that is we keep hoping or waiting for the better

59:13angels of tech CEOs to show up.

59:15That's not going to happen.

59:16I've been working my whole life with CEOs.

59:19They're going to make incremental decisions to do whatever moves the stock price up.

59:22That's their job. That's capitalism.

59:24Their job is to take a set of resources, figure out an offering where they

59:28get more than they paid to garner those resources and create shareholder value.

59:32They will do anything to do that.

59:35That's their job. And then we're supposed to tax them such that we can build

59:38our roads, take care of our veterans, and have a set of laws so they

59:42don't get out of control, so that they don't lie and say, no, smoking's not

59:45addictive. And then our mothers, our sisters, and our dads start dying, right?

59:49We have regulation. We are net beneficiaries from fossil fuels and pesticides, but we still

59:55have an EPA and an FDA.

59:57There's absolutely no regulation on big tech.

59:59There's more regulation in the...

1:00:01Mike, than there is on big tech, because they have weaponized Washington and money and

1:00:06Citizens United. There are more full -time lobbyists living in Washington, D .C., working for

1:00:12Amazon, one company, than there are sitting U .S.

1:00:15senators. So they have very effectively avoided all regulation to the point where they basically

1:00:20run unfettered, whether it's bots, whether it's harm to children, whether it's letting bad actors

1:00:26try and influence elections. And they, in my opinion, if your content can be reverse

1:00:31-engineered to self -harm among teens, if your podcast, if we could prove statistically that

1:00:37your podcast was resulting in self -harm among teenage girls, this podcast would be shut

1:00:42down. You would be sued, and you would eventually decide to go out of business.

1:00:46Yeah, well, if we were harming people, appropriately so.

1:00:49I would argue big tech does that and more every day.

1:00:53And these cases that just came down, actually, one in L .A.

1:00:55that found Google Liable. Do you realize that the New Mexico Attorney General, do you

1:01:00know what he did in his case?

1:01:01He created an account posing as a 12 -year -old girl, and within minutes, he

1:01:05was getting messages and solicitations from known sexual abusers.

1:01:09That was their first piece of evidence, that if you create an account and you

1:01:13say you're a 12 -year -old girl, within hours, they were getting overtures from known

1:01:17sexual predators. So the fact that this company can target you and know that I'm

1:01:24wearing Warby Parkers and start serving me ads by looking at the screen, or know

1:01:28that I'm at Coachella listening to David Byrne and start serving me albums of David

1:01:32Byrne's greatest hits, then they can figure out that a 12 -year -old girl shouldn't

1:01:36be getting overtures from 55 -year -old men.

1:01:39I'll bracket that sentence right, that very fair and very important statement, that if there

1:01:44were some balance of optimization towards real protections, that that is important.

1:01:50But they made, I think, $11 billion last year from people under the age of

1:01:5318. But you ask who's to blame?

1:01:55We're to blame. Because we haven't elected people who are willing to hold these companies

1:02:01accountable. And their sole mission is to get re -elected.

1:02:05And in 97 % of elections, whoever raises the most money gets re -elected.

1:02:08And these companies are now the fastest growing expense line amongst big tech, isn't AI

1:02:13as a percentage basis, it isn't R &D, isn't CapEx, it's lobbying.

1:02:17Because the greatest ROI in history is spending money on politicians.

1:02:23I give money to politicians because I'm getting more politically active.

1:02:28And it doesn't surprise me that they're whores.

1:02:30The most disappointing thing is what cheap whores they are.

1:02:32If I give $50 ,000 to a senator, he'll have dinner with me when he's

1:02:36in New York, or she.

1:02:38Because they have to. Because the system is set up such that whoever raises the

1:02:42most money gets elected, and big tech has figured that out.

1:02:45So until we have the judgment to elect people who are willing to stand up

1:02:51to big tech and actually implement safe and common sense regulation, I don't want them

1:02:55to go out of business.

1:02:56Let our thoroughbreds run. I actually believe the American model of less regulation versus more

1:03:01is one of the reasons we're much more successful than Europe, which hasn't grown in

1:03:0420 years. But this has gotten to a point where we seem to have a

1:03:08total lack of regard for our children's well -being, and the fact that Americans hate

1:03:12each other, and that we're kind of eating ourselves from the inside out.

1:03:16So again, we need an EPA and an FDA or some sort of equivalent for

1:03:21big tech, especially with AI.

1:03:22But I want to acknowledge the point.

1:03:24None of this could have happened without fossil fuels.

1:03:27There is a tradeoff here, right?

1:03:30Pesticides are important for our food safety, but there is an FDA.

1:03:34We have decided to just let big tech run unfettered.

1:03:38And I think it's been gotten to the point where it's pretty damaging for society.

1:03:42I think we've robbed kids.

1:03:43My kids are in the kill zone, 15 and 18.

1:03:45I think they've been robbed of a lot of their youth.

1:03:47I understand this shit. And I have a son who has device addiction who will

1:03:51lie, take his phone, say he doesn't feel well, take his phone into the bathroom

1:03:55for 45 minutes. And I have to bang on the door and jokingly scream, start

1:03:59masturbating, because this kid is addicted to TikTok.

1:04:03What the British did to the Chinese in terms of getting them addicted to opium,

1:04:07I think that the Chinese via porous platforms that are shareholder driven in the GRU

1:04:12are addicting our youth. And we're going to raise a generation of civic nonprofit and

1:04:17military leaders who fucking hate America.

1:04:19We are teaching kids to hate each other, hate America, hate every special interest group,

1:04:25hate every ideology that doesn't fit their own.

1:04:28And there's no grace around what it means and how fortunate are we to be

1:04:32American. And I think at the center of it is a total lack of regulation

1:04:36amongst these incredibly brilliant companies.

1:04:39The most technologically sophisticated, deepest pocketed companies in the world are trying to sequester our

1:04:45youth from us. And they're stealing youth.

1:04:47The number of kids who see their friends every day has been cut in half

1:04:50the last 20 years. Men between the ages of 20 and 30 are spending less

1:04:55time outdoors, Andrew, than prison inmates.

1:04:58We are robbing youth because we refuse to regulate these companies.

1:05:04So do I want these companies to go away?

1:05:06Do I think they're bad people?

1:05:07No. But we have a system that values wealth and shareholder value above all.

1:05:12And so tech CEOs and their boards will make a series of incremental decisions regardless

1:05:16of the damage to the public.

1:05:19And we have a set of elected leaders that don't do their job.

1:05:23And that is they're there to prevent a tragedy of the commons.

1:05:25And it's Democrats and Republicans.

1:05:28It comes down to very boring shit.

1:05:30Unless we reform Citizens United, unless we de -gerrymander the United States Congress, money is

1:05:36going to win, and these companies have more money.

1:05:39But no, I would push back.

1:05:40I think these companies are starting to do a lot of damage to our youth.

1:05:44I'm worried my kids are going to grow up so used to getting DOPA so

1:05:48easily and squeezing it so fast, and this is your field, that we're flushing into

1:05:53society a series of young people who are so ready for addiction because they're so

1:05:59used to getting an automatic DOPA by just flipping out their phone really fast.

1:06:03One thing that I don't think I've emphasized enough on this podcast, this and certainly

1:06:10not this, but other episodes as well, is a kind of reframe around the dopamine

1:06:14in phones. I'm not trying to correct you here, but I think it might be

1:06:16helpful for this discussion and for people listening to.

1:06:21We need to move our minds away from the idea that the phone is providing

1:06:24these dopamine hits because it's not.

1:06:28The behavior with social media but phones generally is a lot more akin to true

1:06:35clinical -grade obsessive -compulsive disorder.

1:06:39Colleagues of mine that work on obsessive -compulsive disorder, I just want to give a

1:06:42shout -out to the pioneer of this field was a woman I just adored, Judith

1:06:46Rappaport. She passed away recently.

1:06:48People can look up her obit.

1:06:49There's a really nice one in the Times.

1:06:52identified the brain structures associated with this thing that we call OCD, right?

1:06:56Hand -washing, scratching, hair -pulling, you know, all the variations of it.

1:07:00What defines obsessive -compulsive disorder is that the engagement in the behavior, the compulsion, doesn't

1:07:07relieve the obsession. So to call someone OCD because they need everything perfect, but then

1:07:12when it's perfect, they're like, okay, I can relax.

1:07:14That's not OCD. OCD is when you engage in a compulsive behavior over and over

1:07:18again, and all it does is serve to reinforce the obsession.

1:07:22That, to me, more closely mimics what I see in terms of phone use than

1:07:28the idea that it's like, no way, this amazing thing on the phone.

1:07:30That comes every once in a while.

1:07:32But after you've spent a day or so on social media or on YouTube, we

1:07:37are all engaging in a much more passive, slow degradation kind of way that I'm

1:07:43sure impacts the dopamine pathway.

1:07:45In fact, OCD is directly tied to the dopamine pathway, so I'm not divorcing it

1:07:48from dopamine. But I think if we started to look at our relationship to the

1:07:51phone as more of an induced obsessive -compulsive disorder than an addiction, I actually think

1:07:59that's one of the potential ways out.

1:08:01Not just because words matter and concepts matter, but because I think in order to

1:08:07get out of that loop, you have to see yourself from the outside, and you

1:08:10have to realize that you're being hijacked.

1:08:12I think right now, there's just so much incentive for being on it, for being

1:08:16in the bathroom, you're looking at the phone.

1:08:18Look, I'm not addicted to my phone, but I will tell you, there are days

1:08:22when I feel like I pick up that thing even though I don't want to.

1:08:25Yeah. And that's different than addiction.

1:08:28I know what addiction feels like.

1:08:30That's not addiction. That's happening just reflexively.

1:08:34People aren't even thinking about it.

1:08:35The lack of awareness is just not there.

1:08:38So forgive me for going on this tangent, but as you're saying everything today, I'm

1:08:42trying to think solutions. And I know Mark.

1:08:45I actually am friendly with Mark.

1:08:47So I think they care.

1:08:48I do think they care.

1:08:49I think they've created something so big that it's very hard to navigate and keep

1:08:53up with shareholders and all this stuff.

1:08:55But I would love to see the world's relationship to their phones and social media

1:08:59change so that it is more in our individual control, more benevolent.

1:09:05But that's against their economic interests, and they'll fight that tooth and nail.

1:09:08But I wonder if there is a way to incentivize that.

1:09:12Well, let's talk about that.

1:09:14I'm trying to think of solutions.

1:09:15Yeah. So let's move to solutions.

1:09:17One, antitrust. I don't think Meta should have ever been allowed to buy Instagram.

1:09:22I think their ability, their scale of data suppresses any formidable competitor.

1:09:27Two -thirds of all social media now goes to one company.

1:09:29And with a lack of competition, there's really no oxygen for a company that might

1:09:33say, we're not going to allow 18 -year -olds on here.

1:09:35Any content that's incendiary, anything that looks like it's been weaponized by bots or might

1:09:40be from a bad foreign actor, we're not going to allow it.

1:09:43I think there's a lot of parents and a lot of people that would like

1:09:44to be on that platform.

1:09:46The game's over. They've won.

1:09:47I don't think Google should have been allowed to buy YouTube.

1:09:50And people say, well, they're great companies.

1:09:52If YouTube was divested from Google, the next day, YouTube would decide to start a

1:09:58basic search algorithm and Google would start another video platform and we'd have two competitors

1:10:03and there'd be lower rents on labor and on advertisers.

1:10:06Competition is an amazing thing.

1:10:08These companies are a set of distinct monopolies that extract rents from labor, from the

1:10:13consumer, and from the well -being of America.

1:10:16So antitrust, Senator Klobuchar has done great work here.

1:10:19Basically, she says, I'm overrun.

1:10:21She's like, I got a staff of 60 people.

1:10:22There are 200 lawyers hired by Meta and Facebook who are doing nothing but getting

1:10:26in the way of anything to do with antitrust and giving money to people who

1:10:31will delay and obfuscate anything around antitrust.

1:10:33Two, removal of Section 230 for algorithmically elevated content.

1:10:38Their basic premise is we're not a media company.

1:10:42We're just a platform. We're just putting stuff on a board.

1:10:44Well, OK, but if you decide this content gets more views, they elevate it.

1:10:52They make the decision to elevate it.

1:10:54And sometimes the content they elevate is...

1:10:56It's not good for the mental health of America.

1:10:58It tears of the fabric of America.

1:11:00I think if you algorithmically elevate content, you should be subject to the same liability

1:11:06as, say, News Corp. When News Corp and Fox told its on -air anchors to

1:11:12repeat a lie that they knew was a lie, that Smartmatic voting machines had been

1:11:16weaponized by Hugo Chavez and they knew it was a lie, and then Smartmatic sues

1:11:21them and says, you caused this economic harm, they had to pay $750 million fine.

1:11:26What happened on Fox was a dumpster fire compared to the nuclear mushroom cloud of

1:11:30what happened on Facebook that day.

1:11:32But these nascent platforms, which in 1997, we were trying to give them running room,

1:11:37those protections are in place for tech platforms that are not in place for media

1:11:42companies. So if you algorithmically elevate content, you are now a media company.

1:11:46You should be subject to the same liability as every other media company.

1:11:50And then finally, three, age gate this shit.

1:11:53The downside of Instagram and YouTube for 15 -year -olds is way greater than the

1:11:59upside. And people who say to me, Scott, this is about parenting, that's a tell

1:12:03for they don't have kids.

1:12:04This is where they get their homework.

1:12:06And my colleague at NYU, Adam Alter, who also has an appointment at the psychology

1:12:10department, said when you take kids off of screens totally, it actually is more damaging

1:12:14to their mental health because they're ostracized from all social activity.

1:12:18So, and what's happened, the greatest uptick in school scores in recent history is when

1:12:25they do what my buddy Jonathan Haidt suggests these schools do and they ban their

1:12:29phones. So I think there are common sense solutions that keep a lot of the

1:12:34good stuff these companies do while recognizing, well, maybe a 14 -year -old shouldn't be

1:12:38spending seven hours a day on TikTok or Instagram while his or her single mother

1:12:43is at work and can't police it.

1:12:44So I think there are common sense solutions in a meeting of the minds here,

1:12:48but everything I propose, they will spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars

1:12:52to get in the way of and make sure it never happens again.

1:12:55I really appreciate your answer.

1:12:57I like to think that they are listening, especially in the wake of these recent

1:13:01lawsuits where they had to pay out, granted, a drop in the ocean compared to

1:13:06their total revenue. But those were very public cases and maybe I'm overly optimistic.

1:13:11I like to think that they care enough to pay attention.

1:13:15I mean, look, many of those guys, it's mostly guys running those companies now.

1:13:19YouTube used to be a woman, but now almost all of them are run by

1:13:21guys. They have kids. I can guarantee their kids don't spend a ton of time

1:13:25on their phones. They send them to schools who are not allowed to be on

1:13:28screens. Right. They're doing their job.

1:13:30We're not doing ours. I don't even kind of resent them.

1:13:33I think Mark Zuckerberg has been especially damaging, but they're doing their job.

1:13:37Capitalist society has to have for -profit companies that within the bounds of law make

1:13:41a lot of money. Look, you can't have a Navy.

1:13:45You can't have innovation. You can't have, you know, parks unless you have the tax

1:13:51revenue to support this shit.

1:13:53So we need our thoroughbreds to run.

1:13:55They're great companies, but there's basic common sense regulation that should be applied that they've

1:14:00managed to delay and obfuscate and ensure it never happens to them.

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1:15:15I'm glad you mentioned the Navy.

1:15:16Recently, I was invited out to the Naval Academy in Annapolis and had the privilege

1:15:22of giving a talk to 4 ,000 midshipmen, which includes both young men and women.

1:15:26It was an amazing experience.

1:15:29I'll tell you this. A guy who's been a guest on this podcast was the

1:15:32one that organized this. Coleman Ruiz has amazing life stories.

1:15:35He's not particularly public -facing, but amazing story of his own life.

1:15:41And, okay, so you go there, and all these young men and women are, of

1:15:45course, in their, you know, cadet fatigues and going about.

1:15:49They live two to a dorm room.

1:15:51They do PT, physical activity, every morning at 5 a .m.

1:15:55Lunch was the most incredible experience.

1:15:58You walk into a dining hall with thousands of men and women, tons of noise.

1:16:04A bell goes off. Everyone's quiet.

1:16:07Everyone sits down. A bell goes off.

1:16:10Everyone starts eating. 15 minutes later, bell goes off.

1:16:12Everyone stands up and walks out.

1:16:14Everyone has to play a sport competitively.

1:16:18Everyone there is forbidden from using their phone most all of the day and night.

1:16:25One member of this dorm room might be studying while their roommate is sleeping.

1:16:29Every single question was about how to be a better human being physically, mentally, emotionally.

1:16:36And this visit was right in the early days of the recent war with Iran.

1:16:43So they have a lot to worry about.

1:16:45And they're very close to all these things.

1:16:47A young woman came up to me and told me that she's part of the

1:16:49space program, military space program.

1:16:52Amazing. Like just a complete contrast to everything that we're talking about.

1:16:58I thought to myself, like, goodness, like these people, young people like this still exist.

1:17:03Yeah. All firm handshakes, all eye contact.

1:17:06And by the way, every color you could possibly imagine.

1:17:10Every color you could possibly imagine.

1:17:12You know, every stature you could possibly imagine.

1:17:16Every income class. I would ask people, where are you from?

1:17:18You know, part of the meet and greet, the problem was they were like, you

1:17:20know, my problem is I actually want to know about where people are from, what

1:17:24their name is, what they're interested in.

1:17:25It can just take days, right?

1:17:27But it was incredible. And I thought to myself, okay, there's hope.

1:17:31Like we came out of there.

1:17:32Our team was like, yeah.

1:17:33Like there's hope. Okay. It's associated with the military.

1:17:36I'm sure people will scratch at that point.

1:17:38But like, thank God that these kids and this thing that we call the Navy

1:17:43exists because it gives – it was so inspiring.

1:17:47It made me level up as a 50 -year -old man who thinks these guys

1:17:50shit mostly together, emphasis on mostly.

1:17:53I was like, whoa. I like step it up.

1:17:57Now, probably their only quote -unquote flaw was I did a poll.

1:18:01There were a lot of questions about nicotine.

1:18:03And I asked approximately what percentage of the room takes nicotine every day, and I

1:18:06would say about 20 % to 30 % of the hands in the room went

1:18:09up. Nicotine is a major use in young people.

1:18:12Are they using the – The oral nicotines, yeah.

1:18:14Which, by the way, don't cause cancer, but yes, it's very addictive, raise blood pressure,

1:18:18and, you know, I'm not encouraging people to do it.

1:18:20But this brings me around to a separate point.

1:18:23I just wanted to kind of paint that picture.

1:18:24But to a separate point, you and I have never had a public argument, nor

1:18:27are we going to now, about alcohol or about cannabis.

1:18:30But you and I share somewhat different views on alcohol.

1:18:34I've been very vocal, and perhaps our most popular episode ever was the episode on

1:18:40alcohol. I didn't foresee that.

1:18:42And the deal is zero is better than any if we're strictly looking at health.

1:18:47Two per week is probably fine.

1:18:49If you're going to drink more, you should probably do a bunch of other things

1:18:51to reduce inflammation and offset it and get good sleep and et cetera, et cetera.

1:18:56I'm not telling people what to do.

1:18:58They should just know what they're doing.

1:18:59I mean, you've made the argument quite aptly that alcohol can be an important social

1:19:03lubricant for young and older people so that they can socialize and have a life.

1:19:11I worry that if young people now drink more, they're going to end up drinking

1:19:15alone. They're going to end up masturbating to porn more alone.

1:19:20They're going to end up with more hangovers after all their alone behavior.

1:19:24I think what you've argued for is the notion of healthy fraternity, healthy dating and

1:19:32socializing. You've mentioned bars a couple times.

1:19:36Alcohol as something that can bring people together in a positive way.

1:19:40If you don't mind, if you could elaborate on that, and maybe I'll just toss

1:19:43out cannabis as another one because cannabis has problems.

1:19:47And I'll acknowledge benefits of its own.

1:19:50So I want to go to the first thing first is I want to just

1:19:53touch on Navy. I went to Annapolis when I was 17.

1:19:56It was because my dad was looking to get out of paying for college and

1:19:59decided I should go to Annapolis.

1:20:01And he took me and we did a tour.

1:20:04And, you know, we were very sophisticated.

1:20:06And it became so clear so fast that I was totally unqualified for Annapolis.

1:20:11Like the kids, the average SAT, these are the finest young men and women in

1:20:16the world. And also, you have to get a recommendation from a senator.

1:20:21And it was just so ridiculous that we were even there.

1:20:23I was just not of that quality and that standard.

1:20:26But my dad was in the Royal Navy and decided go to Annapolis because we

1:20:29don't have to pay for it.

1:20:31Anyways, but that was the last time I was at Annapolis.

1:20:33But if I could have one policy.

1:20:35So I'm advising a lot of Democrats running for president, which is like 40 of

1:20:39them right now, who all claim they're not running.

1:20:41They're all running. If you call me and say you're really interested in my viewpoint,

1:20:45it means you want my money and you're running for president.

1:20:47And I just say, look, that's fine.

1:20:48Come on the podcast and I'll write you a check.

1:20:51If I could have one policy, one blanket, if I had a magic one, one

1:20:55policy, it'd be mandatory national service.

1:20:58If you look at the lowest levels of young adult depression in the West, it's

1:21:02two countries. It's Israel and Singapore.

1:21:05And despite all the existential threats facing Israel, what does mandatory national service do?

1:21:12It gives you the sense that you're serving the agency of something bigger than yourself.

1:21:16It gives you purpose. You're handling dangerous equipment.

1:21:18It's the great equalizer. You don't care that this gay kid is totally different than

1:21:22you. You respond to his or her character and competence.

1:21:26Because if you're getting fired on, you don't give a shit how rich their father

1:21:29is. All you want to know is, is this person good at what they do?

1:21:32And you put people's lives in your hands and they put their life in your

1:21:36hands. And you're serving in the agency of something bigger than yourself.

1:21:40I spent time with an IDF battalion in Israel and I had the same kind

1:21:45of experience it sounds like you had at Annapolis.

1:21:48These are young, beautiful, fit people out.

1:21:51outside all day, meeting friends, mentors, and mates.

1:21:54In Singapore, the president there, who's arguably one of the greatest leaders of the last

1:21:58century, said this is the most religiously diverse society in the world.

1:22:02We're going to have ethnic violence.

1:22:03There'll be a strong man who will weaponize this diversity and get people to turn

1:22:07against each other. So we need a different religion, and it's going to be the

1:22:10flag. And we need to get people praying to the flag again.

1:22:14And if you look at the great legislation in America in the 60s and 70s,

1:22:17which was probably the most productive, unified time in America, it's because many of our

1:22:22elected leaders had all served in the same uniform.

1:22:25And they saw themselves as Americans before they saw themselves as Republicans or Democrats.

1:22:29And I'm not just saying military service, senior care, donating time at a no -kill

1:22:34animal shelter, being a smokejumper.

1:22:36There's a lot of ways to serve.

1:22:38But I think young Americans would benefit so enormously from getting outside of their own

1:22:44circle and seeing just how wonderful America and Americans are.

1:22:48And having a chance, and not only that, people say, well, it's easy for you

1:22:51to say you've aged out.

1:22:52I can tell you as a father of boys, if we set it up well

1:22:55and invested in it, I think they would really enjoy a rotation through different parts

1:22:59of America and different opportunities to serve.

1:23:02So the one thing I would do, going back to Annapolis and the IDF and

1:23:06what they do in Singapore, is mandatory national service on drinking.

1:23:11First, my acknowledgement, as it relates to the intake of any substance, if it's Andrew

1:23:16Huberman or Scott Galloway, defer to Andrew Huberman's advice.

1:23:20I just want to say that up front.

1:23:21You just have the qualifications and the domain expertise here.

1:23:24I think, personally, the risks to a 25 -year -old liver are dwarfed by the

1:23:29risks of social isolation. And I worry that with 40 % fewer pubs now post

1:23:35-COVID in Britain, and a lack of mating, and a lack of connection, that the

1:23:40data I've seen, and correct me if I'm wrong, that 95 % of people are

1:23:44able to integrate alcohol and drugs into their life without serious consequences.

1:23:48If you have a history of addiction, if you, for whatever reason, don't enjoy it,

1:23:55then by all means, avoid it.

1:23:56If people are telling you that you're having an issue or a problem, or it's

1:24:00getting in the way of your work life, or you're one of those people that

1:24:03gets violent or mean under the influence, then for God's sakes, tone it down.

1:24:07But what I ask people is to look back on their younger days and say,

1:24:11what is the most important thing in your life?

1:24:14Relationships, friendships, finding someone to mate with.

1:24:16And I ask them, did alcohol play a role?

1:24:19You know, it's not easy to come in and lean in for a kiss without

1:24:21a glass of wine. Or let me put it this way, it is easier with

1:24:24a glass of wine. It's a lot of fun.

1:24:26I smoked a lot of pot, and I drank a lot of alcohol in my

1:24:2920s and in college. And it created a lot of wonderful bonding moments.

1:24:33And so what I'm saying, there's a balance and a trade -off.

1:24:36And what I would suggest is that everyone needs to make their own decision.

1:24:39But what scares me is the anti -alcohol movement in remote work has led to

1:24:43a level of isolation and fewer moments where people can bond, where people are willing

1:24:48to take a risk and go up to a strange person and say, hey, what's

1:24:52going on? So I worry that the anti -alcohol movement, what I see among young

1:24:56people, is that while they've demonized alcohol, it's not that they're not getting high.

1:25:01They're just doing a shit ton of drugs.

1:25:03And the thing I don't like about many of these drugs is that they're more

1:25:07solo activity or small group activity.

1:25:09I think alcohol is a group of people, I like to think, meeting new strangers.

1:25:14Whereas when I was in college, all the dudes who were doing cocaine, it was

1:25:18because they had no sexual currency and they would sequester a woman who liked cocaine

1:25:22and go into a bathroom.

1:25:23That's creepy as fuck. Totally creepy as fuck.

1:25:25And eventually everyone's like, if a dude's into cocaine, it means he has no game.

1:25:29I find with people when they do drugs, it's a small group of people and

1:25:33they sequester and it's isolating.

1:25:35Whereas with alcohol and to a certain extent with marijuana, I found it's more social

1:25:39and more bonding. So absolutely be cognizant of your addiction history.

1:25:43Absolutely be mindful of that or any other substance you're addicted to.

1:25:48But I believe, and I've said this, I've said this on Bill Maher a bunch

1:25:52and I've gotten some shit, but I think there's some truth here.

1:25:54I think young people need to drink more, go out and make a series of

1:25:57bad decisions that might pay off.

1:25:59I don't think there's anything wrong with some alcohol.

1:26:03I worry that the risks of loneliness far outweigh the risks of alcohol and that

1:26:09alcohol has been demonized as something that if you take one drink of alcohol, you're

1:26:13going to get cancer or you're going to become an addict.

1:26:16And I don't think the data is there to support that.

1:26:19I really appreciate the candid expression of where you stand.

1:26:23I agree that isolation is worse than alcohol and it's compounded by alcohol.

1:26:28So to make that point clear, I went to UC Santa Barbara.

1:26:32We majored in drinking. Speaking of alcohol.

1:26:34It was like, it was part of the general education.

1:26:35I remember they had sand in the dorms.

1:26:37I'm like, why didn't I go to school here?

1:26:38Well, you know, it did select for alcoholism if people had that predisposition and you

1:26:43had to be disciplined to get your work done.

1:26:45You know, my messaging around alcohol was, um, it was intended to land in three

1:26:53places. One, people who don't like drinking, but felt that they had to got a

1:26:57great reason to not drink.

1:26:59Many, many people wrote to me and said, thank you.

1:27:01I always feel like garbage after drinking.

1:27:02I don't want to drink.

1:27:03Now I understand why I feel like garbage.

1:27:07It's not that I was casting it toward a particular age group, but there are

1:27:10many people who hit their forties or fifties and they're like, God, I'm aging fast.

1:27:14And I look like shit and I sleep like shit.

1:27:16And my workouts are no good.

1:27:18And you might be. drinking too much, right?

1:27:20And then there are the optimizers.

1:27:22There are people that are really just going for maximum vitality, not just longevity, but

1:27:27maximum vitality, which is to me, one of the most important things.

1:27:31In any case, people should do as they wish, but know what they're doing, provided

1:27:35they're not harming anyone else.

1:27:36There's one thing that I want to kind of, you know, lump in with this

1:27:41discussion about alcohol and your statement, which on the top contour, I totally agree with,

1:27:45go out, drink and make a few bad decisions and probably some good ones, but

1:27:48- Bad -ish. Bad -ish, right.

1:27:50So this is the thing, phones.

1:27:52Yeah. Somebody says the wrong thing, they loosen up too much.

1:27:56Now it's not a problem.

1:27:58Three years ago, you might be sitting in front of HR, right?

1:28:02Your classmates might isolate you, right?

1:28:05You were in a fraternity.

1:28:06I wasn't a fraternity. I grew up in the fraternity of skateboarding, punk rock music,

1:28:09and just the fraternity of Y chromosomes.

1:28:12Guys drink, they start saying stupid shit.

1:28:14With phones around, stupid shit is recorded.

1:28:16When stupid shit is recorded, it can be very harmful.

1:28:20And when you're drinking, you make less filtered decisions about what to say than when

1:28:26you're not drinking. So I'm not pushing back in that sense, but I could understand

1:28:30why a guy in his twenties or thirties would be afraid.

1:28:33A guy that would never, ever, ever push himself on a woman, let alone something

1:28:39far worse, would never, ever drug somebody or anything.

1:28:41So I'm not talking about the Bill Cosby examples of this.

1:28:43I'm talking about the fear that exists in a lot of young guys and probably

1:28:49should exist in a lot of young women too nowadays, based on what we've observed

1:28:53in cancel culture. In particular, I'm just going to say a lot of white women

1:28:56are afraid of the Karen movement, right?

1:28:59That if they say anything, I think even beloved Billie Eilish, whose music I love,

1:29:04was called out for something.

1:29:06She did a sort of impersonation of an Asian person at some point.

1:29:09Always going to happen to famous people.

1:29:10Right? Okay. Always going to happen, right?

1:29:11But people see famous people get into these situations.

1:29:14They go, oh my gosh.

1:29:16So do I think Billie Eilish is a race?

1:29:18No. And I love her music.

1:29:19And she was mortified and she apologized.

1:29:23But it's enough to make people go - A hundred percent.

1:29:27And like, maybe I just stay in my room and like scroll on Instagram, you

1:29:32know? So you can kind of get why the fear of drinking might also compound

1:29:37some of this, you know, social media stuff that we're talking about.

1:29:40Yeah. So I want to acknowledge the point.

1:29:42I would like to say, or I hope that at some point, I'm really glad

1:29:46a camera wasn't following me around 24 by 7 when I was 18.

1:29:49I can't imagine - That one time you said that one dumb thing, right?

1:29:52I just can't imagine. What I do think we are headed to though, I'd like

1:29:55to think, is that in an era of social media and phones, that slowly but

1:30:00surely we're heading to a point of more grace where we forgive people, especially young

1:30:03people. So, and there's been a bunch of movements where a lot of young people

1:30:07did things I really disagreed with on campus after October the 7th.

1:30:11I was less angry at them than some of the faculty because I'm like, I

1:30:15cut an 18 -year -old a lot of grace, right?

1:30:17Or I try to. The thing I would push back on is that I think

1:30:20there's certain looking glasses into people's soul and how they treat their pets and how

1:30:26they behave when they're drunk.

1:30:28And what I find is for people who, for every person who would say something

1:30:31stupid, there's more people when they get drunk who say, you know, I just think

1:30:35you're wonderful. I'm so impressed by you.

1:30:37Or walk up to a woman and say, I just love your dress.

1:30:40Or God, you have such a beautiful smile.

1:30:42Or just walk up to her to begin with and say, and express interest.

1:30:46Expressing interest to someone is a wonderful thing.

1:30:49Or do you want to dance?

1:30:50Yeah. It says, it says, I saw you.

1:30:53And by the way you move and the way you smile, I want you.

1:30:58I'm interested in you. That's a wonderful fucking thing.

1:31:01And so my sense is that for every negative thing, it may, of course, increase

1:31:09someone's, if someone's bad judgment is revealed in an awful way, they got bigger problems

1:31:15than alcohol. What it also does is lower inhibitions.

1:31:18And I generally think the majority of people are good people.

1:31:21And I have found that the majority of my friends and the majority of people

1:31:25I'm with, when they have a little bit of alcohol, it lowers their inhibitions.

1:31:30And they're more likely to hug you.

1:31:32And they're more likely to say how much they appreciate the friendship.

1:31:35You know, when I was younger, I don't know if you ever did this.

1:31:40When I had a few drinks, I used to call my mom, you know, and

1:31:43tell her how much she meant to me.

1:31:44Don't let my mom hear that, please.

1:31:47But I think that alcohol, to a certain extent, without getting into issues of abuse,

1:31:51which are much bigger, lowers your inhibitions.

1:31:54But you get to see, to a certain extent, that real person.

1:31:57And I know a lot of people will say, well, that's pathetic that you have

1:31:59to be the real you under the influence.

1:32:01But I think a lot of people reveal some wonderful things about themselves and also

1:32:06have the courage to reveal those things to other people.

1:32:09And I worry that there's so many barriers now that people, young people just aren't

1:32:13connecting. So I just want to acknowledge the point.

1:32:16I think you have to be really cognizant.

1:32:18It's not a great idea unless you know you can handle alcohol to drink at

1:32:21work, at a professional function.

1:32:23It can fuck up your whole career.

1:32:25Oh, I mean, one thing that I observed coming up through the academic ranks, and

1:32:29that just, I could not believe it, that at every gathering where you have graduate

1:32:33students and faculty members and postdocs, it was like the happy hour was like sort

1:32:38of the highlight of the meeting for many people.

1:32:40And it became the place where, in theory, everyone meets at the bar to talk

1:32:45about the data from the day, right?

1:32:47of these beings. In reality, 90 % of the problems that existed between faculty and

1:32:53students and postdocs and faculty and faculty that were independently married and all that stuff,

1:33:00alcohol facilitated that. I really believe that.

1:33:02I saw it over and over and over again.

1:33:05It caused an immense number of problems.

1:33:06And it was funded by grants.

1:33:08I mean, I'm not like, I'm a big proponent of trying to, and I have

1:33:12worked very, very hard on the phone to try and keep NIH funding at least

1:33:15from, to not getting cut.

1:33:16And it looks like it hasn't to not get the indirects cut.

1:33:19This is a kind of academic, you know, inside ball stuff, but it looks like,

1:33:22you know, it could be far better, but you know, at least the cuts that

1:33:24were going to happen didn't happen.

1:33:25So I, I, the NIH funded my career.

1:33:29I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the NIH.

1:33:31I had grants, reviewed grants, et cetera.

1:33:33But the idea that you could spend money on alcohol, right back way back when,

1:33:38and then people were gathering around alcohol, it created a lot of problems.

1:33:41Now, students drinking with other students, less of an issue.

1:33:45Well, let me, let me propose something to get your reaction.

1:33:47I think they should study and, and thoughtfully consider lowering the drinking age back to

1:33:5118. I live in the UK and see by your face where this is going.

1:33:56I live in the UK.

1:33:57Military drinking age 18. I mean, I like some of the things.

1:33:59Well, if you're in the military, you can drink under the age of 21.

1:34:01Cause the idea is that if you're going to die for your country, you should

1:34:03be able, you're adult enough to order a drink.

1:34:05So at least the logic is there.

1:34:07That makes sense. Right. But in the UK, if you're with an adult at a

1:34:11meal, you can order a beer at 17.

1:34:13And even without an adult at the age of 18 in a pub, you can

1:34:16order a beer. And when my son comes home, he doesn't do it as often

1:34:19as I would like. But when my son comes home on the weekends from boarding

1:34:21school, I like to take him to a local pub and we have a beer.

1:34:24And I found out that after one beer, he's more inclined to tell me a

1:34:28little bit about what's going on with him.

1:34:30And as a father, all you really want, you just really want conversation with your

1:34:35kids. You want to know what's going on with them.

1:34:37And so he doesn't get drunk.

1:34:39He, he's not into alcohol.

1:34:40He listens to you. He listens to other people.

1:34:41He's very wary of it.

1:34:43But I find that easing young men and young women into alcohol as opposed to

1:34:4921. And then they kind of go, I don't know.

1:34:52I wonder if, I wonder if we should be lowering the drinking age.

1:34:54And the reason we raised it was mothers against drunk driving were very effective and

1:34:58very on point because of all the young people who were dying in automobile accidents.

1:35:03I think it's gone way down because of Uber and because of airbags.

1:35:06So I'm proposing, would it make sense to do a study on whether you'd have

1:35:10more social connection and perhaps less alcoholism later in life if you let kids ease

1:35:17into it at the age of 18?

1:35:18And if they can be drafted, we're now trying to get, you know, the administration

1:35:22is proposing they'd be drafted.

1:35:23So if a kid can be drafted, shouldn't he or she have the judgment to

1:35:27know when they can order a beer or not?

1:35:29All great arguments. I didn't know we were going to end up.

1:35:31Well, I mean, you talk about cannabis.

1:35:33I want to get your view.

1:35:34Yeah. I smoked a shit ton of pot in college.

1:35:37I can make a bong out of any household item.

1:35:39I learned every line from Planet of the Apes.

1:35:41You know how to make a pipe out of an apple.

1:35:42That's a very nice, that's like a 90s trick.

1:35:45See, that's, that's sophomore. I can, I can, I can go much better than that

1:35:48anyways. But then 22, got a job at Morgan Stanley, got very focused on getting

1:35:54my shit together. And I basically didn't smoke for 20 or 25 years.

1:35:58Now I have trouble sleeping.

1:35:59I have trouble winding my brain down and I take edibles.

1:36:01I do edibles probably twice a week.

1:36:03If I'm amped or think I'm going to have a tough time sleeping, I'll take

1:36:08a five milligram edible, the stuff that takes you down.

1:36:10I forget which one that is.

1:36:12And it's been an enhancement to my life, but I'm reading a lot of stuff

1:36:15about potential psychosis or whatever.

1:36:17Not for you. You're like the psychosis predisposition doesn't apply.

1:36:20You would already know you'd be psychotic by now.

1:36:22There you go. Yeah. Or I just haven't acknowledged it, but it's been accretive to

1:36:26my life. I really enjoy THC.

1:36:28And I, I do a package so I know where it's come, come from.

1:36:32I like edibles cause I like the dosing of it.

1:36:35But I would argue that THC is something when my mom had stomach cancer, I

1:36:42was living with her. And the only thing that worked for her nausea was marijuana.

1:36:48And I, I found myself literally Andrew on the streets of downtown Las Vegas, trying

1:36:52to score marijuana cause I was too scared to travel with it.

1:36:56And this was 20 July of 2004.

1:37:00And I thought, Jesus Christ, here I am on a street corner in this weird

1:37:03place in Vegas, trying to score marijuana for my mom who has stomach cancer.

1:37:07So, you know, I, I think there's some benefits to, well, I'll stop there.

1:37:13The THC usage I enjoy.

1:37:15I think it's been added into my life.

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1:38:38Yeah, I think with THC, it's highly individual.

1:38:40Young males in particular who have a predisposition, genetic predisposition to psychosis or bipolar disorder

1:38:47need to be really careful, especially with high concentration THC, not just the edibles, but

1:38:52they do need to be careful.

1:38:53I think that young, again, mostly young men who are challenged with apathy, obesity, self

1:39:03-loathing, porn, masturbation addiction shouldn't be using THC.

1:39:08I think high agency, that seems to be the term nowadays, right?

1:39:13The guys that you mentor a year in who are working out three times a

1:39:18week and they have a goal and they're hopefully seeking or in a relationship, they

1:39:23have a different self -view of themselves.

1:39:25And yeah, I don't see why that couldn't be a part of their week.

1:39:29It'll nuke their REM sleep, you know, to be specific.

1:39:33If they come off, their dreams are going to be wild because they'll get more

1:39:35REM sleep. But creatives, there are a number of creatives who can use it appropriately

1:39:40to increase focus, get them out of anxiety or get them to cope with anxiety.

1:39:44And then there's just as many people that take it and it makes them incredibly

1:39:46anxious. So I think it's sort of on what backdrop?

1:39:50And I think the alcohol thing also is on what backdrop?

1:39:53If somebody's overweight, not working out, you know, a guy in their 20s or 30s

1:39:58that's dealing with, let's just paint a picture here.

1:40:00He's like playing video games.

1:40:02He's not like morbidly obese or anything, but he's like kind of overweight and he's

1:40:06not, feels like shit. He shouldn't be drinking and smoking weed.

1:40:09He should be going to the gym and get himself in shape and then maybe

1:40:11have a couple of beers a week with his buddy.

1:40:14So that context really matters.

1:40:15Well, I would argue never do substances alone.

1:40:18And, and during the week, try not to do substances.

1:40:21If you got to be on point the next day, that it's something to be,

1:40:24you know, it's a recreation.

1:40:25The thing I'm curious to get your take on is one of the things I'm

1:40:29working with some young men on is I think the most under -researched addiction is

1:40:34porn. And my fear is that, I mean, if you look at what, again, I

1:40:40go back to big tech, big tech's trying to convince young men, why go through

1:40:44the pecking order and the effort of trying to develop a friend group when you

1:40:48have Reddit and Discord? Why go through the bullshit of putting on a tie and

1:40:52trying to go into the office and make a good living and navigate the corporate

1:40:56world when you think you can make money trading stocks or crypto on Robinhood or

1:41:02Coinbase? And why would you go through the effort, the expense, the potential rejection of

1:41:07trying to have a kindness practice, look good, work out, endure rejection, all the expenditures

1:41:13of going out and trying to get a date when you have life like porn?

1:41:18And I'll use myself as an example.

1:41:20When I was at UCLA, I graduated from UCLA with a 2 .27 GPA, which

1:41:25isn't easy because it means you almost, I failed nine classes, right?

1:41:29And I still graduated. And by the way, talk about a different age.

1:41:32We're both children of the University of California, UC San Diego.

1:41:35Talk about how blessed we are.

1:41:36Talk about how just what winds, hurricane like winds we had in our sales of

1:41:41prosperity. When I applied to UCLA, admissions rate was 74%.

1:41:44Now it's nine. Graduated with a 2 .27.

1:41:46You know what happened? Berkeley let me into graduate school with a 2 .27 GPA.

1:41:51But anyways, back to UCLA.

1:41:53One of my motivators for going on campus was that there was a non -zero

1:41:58probability that I might meet a woman, establish contact with her, see my buddies, maybe

1:42:03get her to a fraternity party or get her to go on a date with

1:42:06me and maybe at some point be physical with her.

1:42:08That was an enormous motivator for me.

1:42:10If I had life like porn on my phone, on my computer screen, 24 by

1:42:157, I don't know if I would have been as motivated to go on campus

1:42:18as much. And there was little margin for error in terms of going on campus

1:42:23a few less times. And I worry that that mojo, that desire to quite frankly

1:42:29go out and make your own bad porn is being reduced so much with life

1:42:32like porn. Then men aren't evolving into risk -taking, aggressive in a positive way men

1:42:39who are motivated to dress well, to work out, to approach strange women, to go

1:42:44through. I mean, it is hard.

1:42:46It is hard to find a partner.

1:42:48And what I say to these men is welcome to the fucking work week.

1:42:51It's been hard forever. That's the whole point.

1:42:53Women are choosier than men and there's a reason, right?

1:42:55We're trying to spread our seed to the four corners of the earth.

1:42:57They put up a much finer screen to pick the smartest, fastest, and strongest seed.

1:43:01And that's the reason why our kids are going to be smarter and taller than

1:43:03us. That's the way of the world.

1:43:05But when you reduce that desire, it's going to get in the way of not

1:43:09only you finding a mate, but developing the skills to be successful in all other

1:43:13parts of your life. So back to the basic premise, I wonder and worry if

1:43:18porn is the most under -researched addiction and the damage it's having on young men.

1:43:23Because what I see amongst my colleagues, and I'd be curious if, I actually spoke

1:43:28to a really thoughtful woman about this who's an addiction professor at Stanford.

1:43:32I'm sure you know her.

1:43:33I forget her name. Anna Lemke.

1:43:34Anna Lemke. Yeah, she runs our dual diagnosis addiction.

1:43:37Fantastic. Amazing woman, amazing human being.

1:43:39Immediately when we got off the podcast, said to me, if you're - If marijuana

1:43:42ever becomes a problem, just call me.

1:43:44And she was sincere. That's totally Anna.

1:43:47Do you sense it? She's the real deal.

1:43:49I'm like, do you sense it's a problem?

1:43:51I'm like, hold me, Anna.

1:43:53Anyways, but I don't think there's enough really good research out there on porn because

1:43:58I don't think people want to be known as the porn professor.

1:44:01And so I worry that we really don't know the impact.

1:44:05And what I see anecdotally is that I see a lot of young men who

1:44:09don't have that healthy fire because they think that they can just, they think, oh,

1:44:13it's like in the last 20 years, the guys who didn't have their own game

1:44:17or didn't want to be that successful, they would go to some low -income country

1:44:21and basically become sexpats. This has become, I think, a much broader version of that,

1:44:26that rather than level up, you'd rather just sit home and get a reasonable facsimile

1:44:31of a relationship or sex with porn.

1:44:33I wonder if that is more damaging than people estimate right now.

1:44:40Yeah, it's a really important topic.

1:44:42And it's one that people contact me about all the time.

1:44:45Your analogy of what's happening with porn to sexpats, we should probably explain what's, expats

1:44:50are people that leave the United States.

1:44:51I'm not sure everyone's going to follow that one.

1:44:53And then sexpats are the, it's this community of people that I think they go

1:44:56to Southeast Asia or something and where they can, or South America, where they can

1:45:01essentially buy whatever experience they want.

1:45:03Right. In general, I have to assume, I've truly never done this, nor do I

1:45:07have any interest, but I have to assume that these are men who just basically

1:45:11figure, well, that's low effort once they have the money.

1:45:16And real dating, real, real sex, if I may, you know, is it takes some

1:45:21work and it takes some learning.

1:45:23And, you know, especially if you want to be told genuinely good job and, and,

1:45:27and know that it's true.

1:45:28It's going to take, you're going to, you have to get some reps in there.

1:45:31So put your ego on the line, learn to communicate, learn to listen, all that

1:45:36stuff. The idea that porn is, is the much broader and more destructive analogous thing,

1:45:43I think is, is bullseye at the moment.

1:45:45So I'm like, I think people need to hear that.

1:45:47Do you want to be that guy?

1:45:49I think, I think with any behavioral change, you know, the neuroscientist in me says,

1:45:53okay, we have circuits for kind of like things that are aversive to us.

1:45:57Like you have to engage the aversion and you have to engage the, the appetitive

1:46:02aspect, right? Like, so that there's a win and then there's something to avoid.

1:46:05I really think in order to get any real behavioral change, you need to push

1:46:08away from something and towards something else.

1:46:09Okay. So I think that porn, I mean, it's our most fundamental wiring.

1:46:15The two, the two circuits in the brain that really crank out dopamine.

1:46:19Okay. Circuits for reproduction, sex and anger.

1:46:24There's this incredible study by a very controversial guy named Robert Heath in the 1960s.

1:46:29He was a neurosurgeon who would stimulate different areas of the brain.

1:46:33And unfortunately he was into conversion therapy.

1:46:36So, you know, he appropriately got run out of science for trying to make gay

1:46:39people straight by stimulating certain areas of the brain.

1:46:41Good luck with that. Yeah.

1:46:42He was kind of a piece of shit person.

1:46:43But again, let's look at what he did separate from that.

1:46:46Immediately people were like, I don't care about his data.

1:46:47But he gave people with electrodes in their brain, in certain studies, the option to

1:46:52stimulate anywhere they wanted. They could stimulate and get sexual arousal.

1:46:56They could get laughter. They could feel drunk.

1:46:58All the things we're talking about really.

1:46:59They could feel soothing of the sort that their mother was holding them.

1:47:03The area that they chose to stimulate the most is in the central midline nucleus

1:47:08of the thalamus, an area that my lab has spent a lot of time on

1:47:10in other situations. And they would just lever press and lever press and lever press

1:47:14for the feeling of mild frustration and anger.

1:47:18Because the arousal associated with it is its own reinforcement.

1:47:22As a student of mine who's now hopefully soon to be a faculty member, I

1:47:25won't name the university, but she has an offer from a phenomenal university.

1:47:28Her name is Lindsay Soleil.

1:47:29And she's worked on this in a very, very mechanistic way.

1:47:34When we're angry, when we're frustrated, the link to the dopamine circuitry is just pounded

1:47:41out. We just all day long.

1:47:43And what's amazing is it doesn't attenuate.

1:47:45There's no threshold for anger.

1:47:47The more angry you get, the more frustrated you get, the more arousal you feel

1:47:51from that, you never satiate.

1:47:53There's no post -coital bliss.

1:47:55There's no, my belly is so full I feel like I'm going to explode.

1:47:59And so this gets to the social media thing too.

1:48:02That's the circuit that I worry about.

1:48:04And I think that's the circuit that, yes, I think big tech has tapped into

1:48:07whether they want to or not.

1:48:09And I think that that's the one we really have to be careful of.

1:48:12And I've experienced it myself.

1:48:14I think I actually in this moment I'm experiencing a little bit of it.

1:48:16Like that kind of arousal of like, yes, the forward center of mass that we

1:48:20feel. But when it's fuck them, like fuck the Republicans and, you know, or fuck

1:48:25the left or the extreme.

1:48:27I mean, that's, people are just high all day long on their own anger and

1:48:31frustration. And I think we just see it everywhere.

1:48:33And I raised my hand.

1:48:34I'm sure I'm guilty of this at times too.

1:48:36Yeah, that's illuminating because I correlate my anger to a pathway to feeling depressed.

1:48:43I struggle with anger and depression.

1:48:45And it usually starts as something triggers me.

1:48:48I get really angry. And then I feel like my blood turns to some sort

1:48:52of corrosive acid and it just wears me down.

1:48:54That's adrenaline. And I'm just depleted.

1:48:56I'm just depleted for two or three days.

1:48:58So I was, I have a practice around trying to calm my anger.

1:49:02But just hearing you say that occasionally on one of my podcasts when I see

1:49:06something that's inherently wrong and I point it out or ingest.

1:49:10I do feel like a rush, like I'm being a leader or a baller or

1:49:14pointing something out. You are.

1:49:15I mean, I will say, you know, testosterone, a conversation we've had a little bit

1:49:20before offline, at the level of the brain, it makes effort feel good.

1:49:25Anyway, I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent, but I'd

1:49:28like your thoughts about how testosterone can be leveraged for good versus bad.

1:49:33And maybe even, I don't know that we put everyone on testosterone.

1:49:36I'm not suggesting that it can nuke your fertility if you don't do other things

1:49:39to offset it. So, kids, be careful.

1:49:41But what are your thoughts on testosterone and just sort of proactive male behavior, testosterone

1:49:49in adults, older generations taking testosterone?

1:49:53Well, I'm one of them.

1:49:54I'm on T -therapy. And I do it because I quite frankly want to feel

1:49:57younger. It makes me stronger in the gym, better erections, even weird things like my

1:50:02skin. The way I would describe T -therapy is it just kind of took me

1:50:05back three or five years in the gym.

1:50:08So, I'm an advocate for it.

1:50:10You should do it under the guidance of a doctor, which I'm doing, but I'm

1:50:13a fan of it. And I think you've done really interesting work about hormone replacement

1:50:17theory. I've listened to a lot of your work on it.

1:50:19The argument around testosterone and masculinity I think is a really important one in the

1:50:24political spectrum. Because to the far right's credit, they recognize the problem with young men

1:50:29before anybody else. The problem is they conflate masculinity with coarseness and cruelty, and their

1:50:35solution was to take non -whites and women back to the 50s.

1:50:37Some of them. I'm not trying to protect them, but I would say, you know,

1:50:42I don't know his political leanings, but my friend Jocko Willink has daughters.

1:50:46He's not that guy you just described.

1:50:48No, I'm talking about the far right.

1:50:49Far right. I'm talking about whether it's Donald Trump or, you know, quote unquote, the

1:50:53traditional manosphere. It's about the subordination of women, and it's about demonstrating a certain harshness

1:50:59and coarseness, and I would argue cruelty, and conflating that with masculinity.

1:51:02Whereas the far left, and this isn't helpful either, their advice to young men is

1:51:08to act more like a woman, and that they conflate masculinity with toxicity.

1:51:12And there has to be something in the middle.

1:51:14There has to be an aspirational form of masculinity, and I would argue that we

1:51:18need to celebrate that initiation, aggressiveness.

1:51:22All right, you know, Jimmy Carr, who's one of my idols now, says, all right,

1:51:26you can demonstrate cruelty or you can demonstrate valor.

1:51:30You can be a lover or you can be an addict.

1:51:32And Richard Reeves has this great saying.

1:51:34He's like, you want a man to be invaluable in a shipwreck but acceptable at

1:51:38a dance. So there is a certain needle to be threaded here.

1:51:43But the Carnegie Award, which is given out to people who put their own physical

1:51:47safety in danger to save someone else's physical safety, it's literally the running into a

1:51:52burning house award. You see a car on fire, you put your own safety in

1:51:57harm's way to try and protect someone else's physical well -being.

1:52:01They gave it 83 awards last year.

1:52:0375 of them were men.

1:52:05Men are more prone to take those types of not only bad risks but good

1:52:09risks, and we need to celebrate that.

1:52:11Now, you need both. You need both, by the way, on the combat field because

1:52:15men are more likely to rush out and try and save their comrade, but women

1:52:18are more likely to say, let's not be stupid.

1:52:19Let's think this through. You need both of those.

1:52:21I mean, this is the great thing is that both energy, when they come together,

1:52:25make a better world. But we seem to be very suspicious of that masculine energy

1:52:31right now. And I think it needs to be celebrated.

1:52:34There needs to be someone who sees movement in the tribe and immediately grabs the

1:52:38spear and goes and tries and kill it for the benefit of the community, who

1:52:41wants to put people on Mars and makes these crazy, ridiculous investments that make no

1:52:47sense and is super aggressive around these things.

1:52:50So I think that's a wonderful energy.

1:52:52And when I went to the Democratic National Convention, I saw a parade of special

1:52:56interest groups talking about the very real issues they all face.

1:52:59But I didn't see one mention of the group that has fallen further faster than

1:53:03any group in recent history, and that is young men.

1:53:06Well, I think that's because based on the feedback I've received, for instance, when we

1:53:10had Terry Reel on the podcast, who talks about some balance of masculine and feminine

1:53:15phenotypes and therapy and partner -partner communication and these kinds of things, the pushback that

1:53:21I always get for or I got there, not because of Terry specifically, was as

1:53:26long as we can't talk about toxic femininity, these were clearly men writing to me,

1:53:31then this whole discussion feels imbalanced.

1:53:35That's how they feel. They feel like there's this idea that they're good men and

1:53:40they're bad men and they're really bad men.

1:53:42Totally agree. I, you know, I've got the optics of a, you know, macaque monkey

1:53:48blindfolded on LSD when it comes to certain members of our species.

1:53:52But when it comes to men, I grew up in a big group of boys,

1:53:55et cetera, a big group of men.

1:53:56I get it. That statement is true.

1:53:58There are great ones, there are ones, and then there are like really bad dudes.

1:54:02So when you talk about manosphere, you know, I would say if I had my

1:54:09way, manosphere would apply to just the really bad ones because that name has become

1:54:12synonymous with really bad men.

1:54:14Okay, we can come back to that perhaps.

1:54:15But there is this issue that no one is allowed to say there's wonderful femininity,

1:54:22there's women with issues, right?

1:54:25And then there's bad women.

1:54:26You're not allowed to say it.

1:54:28The only women that I can have that conversation with are lesbians.

1:54:31They were the ones who explained to me there are truly bad women.

1:54:34And I said, well, how come no one talks about that except lesbians?

1:54:37And they said, ah, because we are living in a time now where men talking

1:54:43about women or having things they wish for women to do differently itself is seen

1:54:48as toxic. That they've, that women feel, this is what I was told, so I'm

1:54:52regurgitating, that they've suffered so much at the hands of men that we need like

1:54:56a good 20 or 30 years before we're ready to get to that conversation.

1:54:59Which, of course, for young men growing up, just like makes them feel like, okay,

1:55:04it's all on us. And that's good.

1:55:06Like agency, advocacy for one's own life is important.

1:55:10Stay out of the really bad men category and ideally the not so good men

1:55:13category too. But the polarization, I think, is set by the fact that, sure, we

1:55:19can talk about toxic masculinity, we can talk about the male crisis, but why aren't

1:55:23we talking about the suicide rate?

1:55:25Well, because women's issues, I think in a good way, we're still thinking that we

1:55:30need to protect and provide for the women and the children in our society.

1:55:33We're holding that as, in the highest regard, like those, they get the life rafts

1:55:36on the Titanic, when the Titanic goes down.

1:55:39So, you know, it's, it's, it's complicated.

1:55:41And there's a lot of off -limits terms, and I'm glad that they're coming up

1:55:45today just organically, because those off -limits terms, I think, are the potential bridges between

1:55:51the, where we sit now, where we look at men and we go, oh shit,

1:55:56they're a mess. Some of them are just like downright awful.

1:55:59We look over here and we go, man, they're really dissatisfied.

1:56:02The assumption is if a woman is dissatisfied or somehow not doing well, that a

1:56:06man failed. That's a presumption that a lot of people make.

1:56:10I don't make that presumption.

1:56:11And I can look back to the times in my youth where 90s narrative probably

1:56:15fed that a bit. But now I think we, we need to really like pull

1:56:19back the veil and go like, who are, like take a real hard look at

1:56:22ourselves and try and, you know, do this mesh that we're talking about.

1:56:26Yeah, the only way you get there is with data.

1:56:28So from 1945 to 2000, America registered a third of the world's economic growth, a

1:56:33third of its prosperity with only 5 % of the population.

1:56:35So we had 6x the growth of the rest of the world, right?

1:56:39And within that 6x, the majority of that prosperity was sequestered to the one third

1:56:44of the population that were white, male, and heterosexual.

1:56:47It was just a lot harder to participate in that uplift if you weren't in

1:56:52that group. So men of my generation, born with my sexual orientation, skin color, and

1:56:57gender, arguably had 15 to 18x the wins in their sales.

1:57:02The question is, should a young man now pay the price for my privilege?

1:57:07And I understand the gag reflex when I start talking or advocating for men because

1:57:11they look at me and they said, you had unfair advantage.

1:57:13100 % guilty as charged.

1:57:14But now a young man who is four times as likely to kill himself, three

1:57:19times as likely to be addicted, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated, and men

1:57:22of my generation aren't stepping up and providing the mentorship or voting for the programs

1:57:27that might take a little bit of money away from my generation to support all

1:57:30young people and bring them up.

1:57:32And most of the programs and policies I advocate for would advocate for all young

1:57:36people. The average 7 -year -old is 72 % wealthier than the 7 -year -old

1:57:4140 years ago. The 25 -year -old is 24 % less wealthy.

1:57:45And then every day it's speedballed with 110 notifications telling them that they're failing.

1:57:49And what do you know?

1:57:50They're the most obese, depressed, and anxious generation we've had in a long time.

1:57:56And there really isn't an honest conversation.

1:57:58And I've said this on stage, and it gets some pushback.

1:58:01In fact, I'll say I think women make better managers.

1:58:04I think that they are more emotionally in touch with other people.

1:58:07They have higher EQ. I think they'll probably make better doctors and lawyers.

1:58:11I think their attention to detail genetically or anthropologically, whatever you want to call it,

1:58:15their bedside manner. And there's more women in both law school and medical school now,

1:58:19especially medical school. If I say that, women are better managers, will make better doctors,

1:58:26nodding, everyone, everyone. The women agree, and the guys will look around and go, nod,

1:58:30right? If I say men, on average, make better entrepreneurs, and that's not to say

1:58:36that women shouldn't be offered the same opportunities, and they haven't been, right?

1:58:3995 % of the capital has been not only allocated to men, but the majority

1:58:43of it has been allocated by men who went to one or two schools, Harvard

1:58:46and Stanford. I don't feel safe around you.

1:58:49Who doesn't feel safe around you?

1:58:50It's fine to say women make better X, Y, and Z.

1:58:54To say men are better at anything.

1:58:56Well, if you said it on X, I mean, let's be honest.

1:58:58If you said it on X, everyone would be like, cool, males make better entrepreneurs.

1:59:03If you said it in a room, I mean, again, I don't want to make

1:59:07this political, but we can't, you know, we can't avoid this.

1:59:10You know, if you said it among a more center to right -leaning crowd, I

1:59:14think you'd probably get less pushback also from women.

1:59:17I think that's fair. I'm not saying it's who you're hanging out with, you know.

1:59:20Yeah, that's a fair point.

1:59:21I barely hang out with anybody, so I've got a very small world.

1:59:24Well, but to your point, if you go to the Democratic national website, dnc .org,

1:59:29and they change this, but I talked about this a lot on CNN, left -leaning

1:59:34website. They said they have a page saying who we serve, and they outline 16

1:59:39special interests groups, veterans, the disabled, black Americans, Native Americans, seniors.

1:59:44And I added it up, and it was 74 % of the population.

1:59:47And when you say you're advocating for 74 % of the population, you're not advocating

1:59:51for 74%. You're discriminating against 26%.

1:59:54And basically, the only people they didn't mention were young men.

1:59:58So I understand the notion that men have had so much disproportionate advantage that there

2:00:04needs to be a catch.

2:00:05period, but I would argue it's gone a little bit overboard.

2:00:09Our school system, K -12, I would argue is biased against boys.

2:00:12A boy is twice as likely to be suspended on a behavior -adjusted basis as

2:00:17a girl. A black boy, five times as likely.

2:00:1970 to 80 percent of K -12 teachers are women.

2:00:22Who do people naturally advocate for?

2:00:24The people that remind them of themselves at that age.

2:00:26Seven to ten high school electorians are girls.

2:00:29It's now 60 -40 female male in college.

2:00:33And so the bottom line is we level the playing field, and there's a little

2:00:35bit of bias, and women have totally blown by men.

2:00:38Fine. More power to them.

2:00:39But what do we do now that young men just quite frankly don't have obvious

2:00:43paths to prosperity, and young people aren't as economically prosperous relative as they used to

2:00:48be, and young men are disproportionately evaluated in society, especially in the mating market, on

2:00:55their economic viability? And I get a ton of pushback saying, no, I'm just looking

2:00:58for emotionally untouched male. I think that is such bullshit.

2:01:01It's total bullshit. There's still economic hypergamy.

2:01:04Educational hypergamy has leveled out.

2:01:06There's a lot of people who, women who will marry a guy who didn't go

2:01:10to college, or educational hypergamy has vastly reduced.

2:01:15But in cities where women make as much as men, so there's an equality, if

2:01:20you find a couple, twice as many couples, the male earns more money than the

2:01:24woman. Economic hypergamy is still an absolutely full, full force.

2:01:30So if we don't figure out a way to level up all young people economically,

2:01:35such that what is more passed for economic viability for young men, I think it's

2:01:39just going to tear at our society.

2:01:40We're going to have lower birth rates, fewer people to support, the very expensive programs,

2:01:44which make up 40 % of our government spending now on people over the age

2:01:47of 65. And we're going to have real issues.

2:01:49And people say, well, that's repackaged violence, that men are more violent.

2:01:53I'm like, no, it's just the reality.

2:01:54If you look at every unstable violent society in history, it always has one thing

2:01:59at the core of it.

2:01:59And that is a group of young men with a lack of economic or romantic

2:02:03opportunities. I don't care if it's Weimar, Germany, or some of the most unstable places

2:02:06in the Middle East, or Africa, when you have the most dangerous person in the

2:02:10world is a young man who is lonely and broke.

2:02:13And we are producing way too many of them.

2:02:15And by the way, I don't think the remedy here is affirmative action for men.

2:02:19I just think that's too politicized.

2:02:20But we have to stop transferring wealth from people their age to people my age.

2:02:25Why the hell are we transferring every year $1 .3 trillion from a generation that

2:02:31is the most anxious, depressed, and obese in American history to the wealthiest generation in

2:02:35the history of the planet called Social Security?

2:02:37That's a third role in politics.

2:02:38I'm not suggesting anyone should die in poverty.

2:02:41Should you and I get Social Security?

2:02:43No. No. No, I don't need it.

2:02:45I mean, probably a third of seniors really don't need Social Security.

2:02:50But you get near that, you can't get elected, right?

2:02:5440 % of all government spending is going to people over the age of 65.

2:02:58It's going to be 50 % within 10 years.

2:03:00We spend more money on ice than we spend on children.

2:03:04I mean, it's just, there's my generation, I don't even think of us, I'm on

2:03:08the edge of Gen X baby boomer.

2:03:10The best way to describe my generation would be the vampire generation.

2:03:13We were never drafted into war.

2:03:16We never really had to serve.

2:03:18And what has my economic complexion been in America?

2:03:21Unprecedented prosperity, but the lowest taxes in modern history.

2:03:25So a lot of these solutions, I just think are common sense.

2:03:28We need to do away.

2:03:30Social Security tax, right? 6 % up to $160 ,000.

2:03:34So a kid working for me making $150 ,000 or $160 ,000, good living.

2:03:37They pay $9 ,000. I make a lot more than that.

2:03:40I pay $9 ,000 because it tops out at $160 ,000.

2:03:43Why does that make any sense?

2:03:45Two biggest tax deductions, mortgage interest rate and capital gains.

2:03:49Who owns homes and stocks?

2:03:50People our age. Who rents and makes their money from current income?

2:03:53All the dudes in this office, the young kids, right?

2:03:56We are literally transferring trillions of dollars from young people to old people.

2:04:00And we wonder why young men feel anxious when they are disprepared.

2:04:0375 % of women say economic viability is key to a mate.

2:04:07It's only 25 % of men.

2:04:08Women still look at men as economic providers.

2:04:11And so you have this entire generation of young men who feel like they have

2:04:15no purpose, no on -ramps to the middle class and are being evaluated on a

2:04:19set of criteria that get harder and harder for them each year.

2:04:22And then there's like unbelievable set of expectations that they're taught they should have because

2:04:28it seems like everyone else is making a million dollars selling ETH or is in

2:04:33amazing shape or has a ridiculously hot boyfriend or girlfriend and as artists passes to

2:04:37Coachella. So it'd be shocking if they weren't depressed and obese.

2:04:44Wow. The analogy that comes to mind is academic science.

2:04:50I used to joke, the advantage of having a dad who was a scientist who

2:04:55was also a little bit irreverent was that I grew up around an understanding of

2:05:00how academics works. And early on, I thought, as much as I love my colleagues,

2:05:05like a lot of them need to retire.

2:05:07They just need to go.

2:05:08A hundred percent. And the reason they need to go is because they were having

2:05:11three, four, two to four NIH grants, like million dollar a year grants.

2:05:15And that itself isn't a problem, except that there was enough money for young investigators.

2:05:19And so fields die and science dies.

2:05:22They don't retire. And so it was very interesting right before the Trump administration came

2:05:27in, I started logging into these NIH hearings.

2:05:29And I think our previous NIH director, and I will go on record and saying,

2:05:32and our - Our current NIH director, Jay Bhattacharya, both very good directors in different

2:05:37ways trying to do important different things.

2:05:39And you'll notice the budget was not cut under Jay and IDC for the academics

2:05:43out there was not cut.

2:05:45But an interesting problem was outed at the kind of end of Carolyn's role at

2:05:49NIH, the former director. And it was the following.

2:05:53Someone said, what is the deal?

2:05:56Why are people living longer and young people are killing themselves?

2:05:59And we have all these mental health issues, mostly among men, but also among young

2:06:03women. And she said, it is true that we've been very successful in medicine at

2:06:08getting people 65 and older to live much, much longer, to treat late stage diabetes,

2:06:15to treat cancer, to treat.

2:06:17We don't have cures for these things, but we've extended life for the older generation

2:06:21and to a large degree, the quality of life, especially if they're willing to get

2:06:25sunlight, exercise, probably not drink alcohol at that age or drink a lot less, not

2:06:30smoke. People are living longer and longer and longer.

2:06:33And tons of research money is being poured into this.

2:06:35There's this enormous gap where many of the problems that are most important to young

2:06:40people to thrive in every way, not just health, but mental health, et cetera, they're

2:06:45just not even being studied.

2:06:46So there's this top weighting of age and of seniority, clearly in what you're describing,

2:06:52but also in the science and that we're funding.

2:06:55And that clearly, clearly harms young people because no one's studying porn addiction in a

2:07:00serious way at scale. Nobody's studying social media addiction in a serious way at scale.

2:07:05I think what Jonathan's done is fantastic and others are now getting involved in this.

2:07:09But, you know, it's a problem if you look at the numbers as serious as

2:07:13cancer for people who are, you know, in their 50s and older.

2:07:18And actually cancers and diabetes and deaths of despair, as our previous, you know, Surgeon

2:07:24General pointed out, are among the greatest killers of young people.

2:07:29So we've totally lost perspective in many ways.

2:07:32I don't know what to do about Social Security.

2:07:34That's your domain, not mine.

2:07:35But I vote very strongly for what they do in Japan, force scientists to retire.

2:07:40I'm going to earn some hate from my colleagues, but anyway, force them to retire

2:07:44at 65. They still collect a salary and in many cases a pension if they're

2:07:49state -funded schools. They still have health care.

2:07:52Their kids still probably went to college partially for free, the inside ball of these

2:07:56schools that you and I work at, right, this whole network.

2:07:59And they got in. And they got in.

2:08:01And so let them retire.

2:08:05Let them keep their office.

2:08:06I do believe there's a lot of wisdom in the older generations, but I was

2:08:10quite happy to - There was your land acknowledgement.

2:08:12Let me go one step - Well, I just want to say there were senior

2:08:15faculty members like Lubert Stryer.

2:08:17I'll just call these people out who wrote the book, Biochemistry, ending when they were

2:08:20started. Lubert retired, closed his lab.

2:08:22He made a bunch of money at Affimatrix, the geneship company.

2:08:24And he used to come around to the lab and go, hey, what are you

2:08:27guys working on? He would talk to the students and give them amazing ideas.

2:08:30I think that generational wisdom passed down is great.

2:08:33Guess what he wasn't doing?

2:08:34Consuming grant dollars, consuming square footage on campus.

2:08:37He was shedding knowledge for free because the system is taking care of it.

2:08:39He's a Yoda, but he's an outlier.

2:08:41So you work at Stanford, one of the finest faculties ever assembled.

2:08:46NYU has an outstanding - At the business school, we have an outstanding faculty.

2:08:49I would argue one of the best in the world, not because it's our fault,

2:08:52but because every great faculty member loves the idea of coming and spending four, eight,

2:08:56ten years in New York.

2:08:57And living in Soho. That sounds pretty good.

2:08:59That's our advantage. Hey, come here.

2:09:00We'll give you free housing.

2:09:01You and your wife, your kids are out of the house.

2:09:03Come teach accounting here. We get amazing faculty.

2:09:07A third should be put on a fucking ice floe.

2:09:09They get to a point where they aren't adding as much value.

2:09:13They were the bomb on Gap 1 accounting in 1988.

2:09:15They get tenure, and they won't leave.

2:09:17And they leave feet first.

2:09:19And the result is young people who could bring a certain creativity, a new way

2:09:23of looking at things. There's no room for them to come up.

2:09:25And I want to go back to the notion of vampire generation.

2:09:28We talk about sunlight, being social, eating well, sleeping well, all the keys, right?

2:09:32I would argue the number one predictor of longevity is one thing, money.

2:09:37China's gone from an average life expectancy of 47 to 77 in 60 years as

2:09:42their wealth has gone up.

2:09:43You're in the bottom decile, I believe, of income.

2:09:45You live 12 years less long than someone in the upper decile, right?

2:09:50It's about money. And all we have done is not only suck money from young

2:09:53to old, we have sucked life.

2:09:55Because we are so selfish and so unwilling to pay it forward.

2:09:59Old people elect even older people to vote themselves more money.

2:10:03And what they are doing, maybe unwittingly, but they are doing it, is they are

2:10:06robbing life and happiness from young people and transferring it to old people.

2:10:11There not only needs to be term limits, Washington, D .C., the people allocating capital

2:10:16has become a cross between the golden girls and the land of the walking dead.

2:10:20Enough already. We have totally robbed not only money, we have robbed life and health

2:10:26from young people because money in our society is health.

2:10:31How do we create financial incentives inside of uniqueness?

2:10:35I think that's what makes the United States great because I saw social media that

2:10:39way. But I will say that's because it worked out that way for me.

2:10:42I love learning. I love teaching.

2:10:44I flipped on a camera and I started the podcast with that guy sitting over

2:10:46there and it worked out great.

2:10:48The way I would describe the transition that's been bad for America is that, the

2:10:52way I would describe it is that back when I was growing up, America had

2:10:56a commitment to and even loved the unremarkable.

2:10:59I was remarkably... I was very pleased to be able to do that.

2:11:01unremarkable. And I'm not, that's not a humble brag.

2:11:03I got $1 ,130 on the SAT.

2:11:05I had a 3 .1 GPA.

2:11:06We didn't have any money, but this is what I got.

2:11:09I got assisted lunch, right?

2:11:11And the great state of California used to send coupons to my house that were

2:11:17the same colors the kids would buy in school so I wouldn't be embarrassed, right?

2:11:21I got Pell Grants. I got accepted to UCLA on appeal, 74 % admissions rate.

2:11:26I got, I was one of the 26 % that didn't get in.

2:11:29And I was installed and Chalvin came home really upset one day and said, is

2:11:33this my life? I was always told I was funny.

2:11:35I wanted to be a doctor.

2:11:37And my mom said, well, is there an appeal process?

2:11:39And I remember the day the admissions director called me and said, you're not qualified,

2:11:43but you're a son of California.

2:11:45We're going to give you a shot.

2:11:47Son of California. Son of California.

2:11:48What a great statement. I get, I get emotional just thinking about it.

2:11:52And then I got, as I said, I got into Berkeley and this is a,

2:11:55this is a brag and a flex where I'm going to make it.

2:11:57I've given 20 million bucks back to the university of California in the last five

2:12:00years. Awesome. So it's worked out for all of us.

2:12:04America isn't about identifying a superclass of rich kids and the freakishly remarkable.

2:12:09It's about betting on unremarkable kids.

2:12:12So this is what we need to do.

2:12:13We need, if you're a university and you have more than a billion dollar endowment

2:12:16and you're not growing your freshman class faster than population, you're a hedge fund with

2:12:20classes and you should lose your tax -free status.

2:12:22If a 20 % of your degrees aren't for non -traditional, non -traditional things such

2:12:26as nursing or specialty construction or vocational programming, you don't get access to tax -free

2:12:31money. In my opinion, mandatory national service.

2:12:35I think there's a ton of things we need to do.

2:12:37I think we should tax the shit out of private schools and reinvest that in

2:12:40public schools. We need to disassociate house property taxes from the quality of the schools.

2:12:44Think about the disadvantage. Kids, the average public school spends $15 ,000 a year on

2:12:50a kid. The kid, schools in Portier is $9 ,000.

2:12:53The average private school spends $72 ,000 a year per student.

2:12:57So if you're fortunate enough to go to a private school like my kids, we're

2:13:00spending $850 ,000 on them and some kids were spending $120 ,000.

2:13:04And you want that kid to compete against another kid to get into an elite

2:13:08university. And we all tell ourselves this myth now that, oh, with AI, college doesn't

2:13:13matter. It's never been more important.

2:13:16And if you had a drug that can make it twice as likely that you

2:13:19get married, half as likely that you kill yourself, three times as likely that you

2:13:23become a millionaire, 10 times as likely that you run for office, four times as

2:13:27likely that you become an officer in the military, three times less likely that you

2:13:31become obese, would you hoard that drug?

2:13:34And then when someone gets into the working environment or the economy, would you create

2:13:40a tax policy that just transfers money from you to the wealthiest generation in the

2:13:44world? There's just so many basic common sense solution around higher ed and K through

2:13:4912 that we come up with all these reasons we use terms like network effects

2:13:53or globalization or tech. And it's nothing but thinly veiled bullshit to transfer more money.

2:13:59The bottom 99 % in young people are just nutrition for older people.

2:14:04And it's just, to me, it's fairly obvious.

2:14:06They're just common sense solutions.

2:14:08And higher ed has become, unfortunately, an emblematic of the rejection LVMH -ing of America,

2:14:15where you either at the age of 18 have to be freakishly remarkable, or you're

2:14:20captain of your lacrosse team and building wells in Africa, then fine, come in and

2:14:23we'll put you on a glide path to potentially being a billionaire president.

2:14:27But say you're unremarkable, sorry, you're shit out of luck.

2:14:30Maybe you can build a data center somewhere and maybe get into the middle class.

2:14:34And by the way, we don't even have an apprentice culture in this environment.

2:14:37So many parents feel so shamed when their kid doesn't get into elite university.

2:14:4111 % of LinkedIn profiles in Germany and the UK say apprentice.

2:14:45It's 3 % here because parents feel shamed if their kid doesn't get into an

2:14:49elite university. We need to dramatically expand vocational programming, freshman classes, and stop this insane

2:14:57transfer of wealth and health from young people to old people.

2:15:00And higher ed, unfortunately, our industry is at the tip of the spear of fomenting

2:15:05this rejectionist bullshit culture where we've identified we're the arbiters of success.

2:15:10You know who gets into Stanford and NYU?

2:15:12Two cohorts. The children of rich people, you're 77 times more likely to get into

2:15:16an elite university if you're in a top 1 % household, or the freakishly remarkable.

2:15:21And here's the thing, I can prove to us all mathematically that 99 % of

2:15:25our children are not in the top 1%.

2:15:27America loved the unremarkable when I was a kid.

2:15:31It's fallen out of love with the unremarkable.

2:15:33Is America about identifying a superclass to become billionaires?

2:15:36Or is it about planting as many seeds as possible?

2:15:39Because no one can be the arbiter of greatness at 18.

2:15:41No one was going to see me at 18 and go, someday you might have

2:15:44an impact and you'll be wealthy.

2:15:45No one would have known that.

2:15:46And we've decided, no, we're about the children of rich people and we're about the

2:15:51freakishly remarkable. And everybody else, in my opinion, hopefully, hopefully gets to the middle class.

2:15:57But if you don't, there's big tech waiting there to addict you.

2:16:00There's a tax policy that might impoverish you.

2:16:02I think that young people, people say about young people, they're entitled.

2:16:07I think they're entitled to be enraged.

2:16:09I can't imagine the rage they must feel right now.

2:16:12They look up, they look sideways, and they see all this prosperity.

2:16:16And they look at my generation and see the benefits we've accrued.

2:16:20And we want to spend $2 trillion a year on their credit card.

2:16:24We spend $7 trillion a year.

2:16:27We've taken $5 trillion. And that two trillion is all going, that incremental two trillion

2:16:30is all going to seniors.

2:16:32I'm in the club doing rails of ketamine and champagne, and the closest a young

2:16:36person gets is they get to throw their credit card in and I'll keep swiping

2:16:39it. I mean, it is literally morally corrupt what we are doing in terms of

2:16:43deficit spending and how we are prioritizing our budget.

2:16:46Our budget reflects our values, and our values are all fucked up.

2:16:50And I've said, let's party, right?

2:16:52The baby boomers, let's party like there's no tomorrow.

2:16:55And the young people, they're going to have to clean up the house.

2:16:57And the garage is on fire and the dogs are going to be pregnant, but

2:17:00that's their problem because I'll be dead by then.

2:17:03This generation, my generation, for some reason, does not feel the same obligation to pay

2:17:08it forward or back and create infrastructure and investments for young people.

2:17:12And to me, it feels fairly obvious, and the solutions are fairly common sense, but

2:17:18we'll have thoughtful conversations, and Social Security will be a third rail, and we'll have

2:17:23thoughtful reasons for why. When I sell my business, the first $10 million should be

2:17:27tax -free. The last business I sold, the first $10 million is tax -free.

2:17:30What the actual fuck? They say, well, Scott, entrepreneurs are more productive.

2:17:35We want to unleash our productivity, our most productive.

2:17:38I have no idea what tax policy.

2:17:39People don't start businesses because of tax policy.

2:17:42Did you know about 1202?

2:17:44If you sell this business, the first $10 million is tax -free if it's a

2:17:48C -Corp. That's not why people start businesses.

2:17:51No. But every day there are new tax policies that do one thing, transfer money

2:17:55from those dudes to us, more me than you because you're 10 years younger than

2:17:59me. It needs to stop.

2:18:00There's basic tax policy, basic health and human services policy, right?

2:18:05Why on earth you're a doctor?

2:18:07For God's sakes, we spend $13 ,000 per individual for more obesity, more anxiety, more

2:18:13depression than every other G6 nation.

2:18:15We should absolutely have nationalized, socialized health care.

2:18:18The bottom 99%, again, are just a fucking body bag of nutrition for the top

2:18:221%. Monetizing health care, I'll put that to you.

2:18:26I absolutely think we need single -payer, socialized medicine right now.

2:18:30I think it is indefensible to health care in this country.

2:18:3240 % – I apologize, I'm going off script here.

2:18:3540 % of households, medical or dental debt.

2:18:38You don't have kids. Do you realize what kind of shame you would feel as

2:18:41a father if your 16 -year -old girl gets a screaming toothache and you have

2:18:44to go into debt to get her a root canal and that hangs over you

2:18:48for the next two or three years?

2:18:49Well, I'm all for robbing it from Social Security because I like that idea.

2:18:53The moment you say, you know, nationalized health care, I think, oh, boy, here we

2:18:56go again. But I like the idea of robbing it from Social Security.

2:19:00I'm not talking about taking old people and turning them out to pastor and letting

2:19:02them go under the streets, you know, mumbling to themselves.

2:19:05I do think that taking care of the older generation is important, but I do

2:19:09think we are a very top -heavy culture.

2:19:11And maybe because I want to, I consider you Gen X as opposed to Boomer.

2:19:15I appreciate that. I really do.

2:19:17And actually, raise a question for me.

2:19:18Feel free to say pass.

2:19:20You don't want to answer.

2:19:21But earlier you said you're somewhat, I don't know, bashful or you have this issue

2:19:25around your age. Like my friend Kelly Starrett, who's a, you know, PhD in physiology,

2:19:30amazing trainer and stuff, he said the best thing about turning 50 when I was

2:19:32turning 50, he's like, you're going to be among the best in shape for your

2:19:36decade. And I think, I mean, look, you look great for a 40 -year -old.

2:19:40Like you're killing it. You know, you're fit, all this stuff.

2:19:43So, but I wonder, is this kind of shame around it because your peer group

2:19:47kind of sucks in the way that you're describing?

2:19:49Or is this actually about age?

2:19:51Because to me, one of the best things is to feel like your friends, your

2:19:58people, the people you associate with are awesome.

2:20:01And your generation, I loved, I think Gen X is an incredible generation.

2:20:05As this conversation continues, I'm thinking more and more about the responsibility and both the

2:20:11failures and the opportunities to remedy things for the next generation.

2:20:14That's how we started this conversation.

2:20:16So, two questions there. First of all, is that what that's about?

2:20:19Like your peers kind of suck and you don't want to be a part of

2:20:21it? Because I consider you Gen X and I'm not just trying to, what do

2:20:24the kids say, glaze you here.

2:20:25Or you're winning on every dimension and you got two healthy, what sounds like healthy,

2:20:29productive boys. Like you got it all, man.

2:20:32I think a lot of it comes down to very just base things and that

2:20:35is a fear of death.

2:20:36I mean, I'm not, I'm afraid of getting old and being unhealthy.

2:20:41I don't mind the death part.

2:20:44Also, just a fear or just wanting to feel young and vigorous and masculine and

2:20:48feel like that's slipping away from me.

2:20:50Biology is undefeated. So, I think I'm a little bit youth obsessed and a little

2:20:54bit ageist. So, I think I have just a fear of aging.

2:20:58But just, just the call out about paying it forward and the call out to

2:21:03your, to your, I know a lot of young men and a lot of successful

2:21:07men listen to this podcast.

2:21:09Like I think my generation on a lot of levels, we're talking about tax policy,

2:21:13but men aren't stepping up with respect to young men.

2:21:15If you look at the single point of failure, if you were to reverse engineer,

2:21:19when a boy comes off the tracks, it's when he loses a male role model

2:21:24through either death, divorce, or abandonment.

2:21:27When a boy loses a male role model, and 90 % of the time a

2:21:32single parent is headed by a woman as mine was, at that moment he becomes

2:21:37more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college.

2:21:41And men aren't stepping up.

2:21:42There are three times as many women applying to be big sisters in New York

2:21:45as there are men applying to be big brothers.

2:21:47And some of it is a taboo that men are concerned or self -conscious about

2:21:52expressing an interest to get involved in a boy's life because of sexual abuse from

2:21:55the cat. And some of it is a taboo that men are concerned or self

2:21:56-conscious about having to be big brothers and sisters in New York as there are

2:21:56men trying to be big brothers and sisters in New York.

2:21:56Church and Michael Jackson and the rest.

2:21:58But there are a ton of men out there in their 30s.

2:22:01I think you have a bunch of them working with you that may or may

2:22:04not have kids of their own.

2:22:05You don't have to be CO Goldman Sachs.

2:22:07You don't have to have a degree in adolescent psychiatry.

2:22:09You just have to be a good man trying to live a virtuous life.

2:22:13And as someone who mentors young men, I can tell you it is so easy

2:22:16to add value. Just showing an interest, answering basic questions.

2:22:23This is a question I literally got now six weeks ago from a young man

2:22:27I'm entering. I'm on this new diet.

2:22:30I'm just drinking pineapple juice and creatine.

2:22:33Okay. I don't have a medical degree and I can tell you that's wrong.

2:22:38Another question I got eight weeks ago.

2:22:40I saw this amazing thing.

2:22:42I'm moving to Alaska, Scott.

2:22:43I saw this amazing thing on National Grave.

2:22:45I've decided I want to move to Alaska.

2:22:47You have a good job and your mom is sick, right?

2:22:49Yeah. Why are you moving to Alaska?

2:22:50You're going to quit your job and move to Alaska?

2:22:51If you just ask basic questions, you add value to these young men's lives.

2:22:56Just real basic stuff. Well, I'm feeling depressed.

2:22:59Did you get outside? Are you working out?

2:23:02There needs to be a societal zeitgeist that a moment a young man doesn't have

2:23:07men in his life, that the tribe moves in and injects young men into their

2:23:11life. And the call out to men is, you know, there's this great quote in

2:23:18one of the Paul Wes Anderson movies, Magnolia, where the guy says, I have love

2:23:22to give. I just don't know where to give it.

2:23:23I just don't know where to put it.

2:23:24It's such a wonderful statement.

2:23:25I think there's so many men out there that have real, like, I think some

2:23:31of the most rewarding types of love is to give fraternal and paternal love.

2:23:35My purpose, my thing in life is to try and prepare my men for others,

2:23:40prepare my boys for others.

2:23:42That's my job. It gives me purpose.

2:23:43I think there's so many men out there that could offer so much fraternal and

2:23:48paternal love to a young man or a boy, and they don't do it, either

2:23:52because they're too lazy or they're not stepping up, or they're worried that people will

2:23:56suspect them of something. And there's so much need.

2:23:59And this is what you do.

2:24:00You find a single mother in your workplace and say, go into a game.

2:24:03Does your son want to join me or join me and my boys?

2:24:05Does your son want to hang out, washing your car, going to a game, whatever

2:24:10it is? That is the, in my opinion, that is the easiest solve that doesn't

2:24:15involve the government right now.

2:24:16But the bottom line is, men of our age aren't stepping up.

2:24:20And I couch it in masculinity.

2:24:22You take care of yourself.

2:24:23That's the first circle. You affix your own oxygen mask.

2:24:25You can't take care of other people unless you're economically and emotionally somewhat viable.

2:24:30You take care of your family.

2:24:31You take care of extended family.

2:24:33You take care of your community.

2:24:34But the ultimate expression of masculinity is to get involved in the life of a

2:24:38child that isn't yours. And not enough men are doing it, even really successful men.

2:24:42They're not stepping up. They're not helping young men.

2:24:45And the easiest thing to do, the most, and it's so rewarding.

2:24:49I can't tell you, it makes me feel, and I don't do enough of it,

2:24:52but I do mentor young men.

2:24:53It's just so easy to add value.

2:24:55They make such stupid fucking decisions.

2:24:57My job with my sons is to be their prefrontal cortex.

2:25:00No, you have to wear shoes to school.

2:25:02I know this is right.

2:25:04Wear shoes to school. So anyways, the call out, if we want better men, we

2:25:10have to be better men.

2:25:11I don't think you can really hit the pinnacle of what it means to be

2:25:14successful in masculinity unless you're involved in the life of a child that isn't yours.

2:25:18We have the most single -parent homes of any nation in the world.

2:25:22We used to be number two to Sweden.

2:25:23We'd passed them two years ago.

2:25:25But that's what I would call, I constantly talk about government fixes because I'm a

2:25:29lefty. The easiest societal fix is, quite frankly, is just male mentorship.

2:25:34Yes, yes, and yes. Totally agree.

2:25:36I was very proactive in going out and seeking them.

2:25:39One feature of that that I just wonder if we can kind of superimpose or

2:25:44superimpose some solutions on top of, would be a better way to put it, is,

2:25:50for instance, that I had no interest in playing football, but kept getting hurt skateboarding.

2:25:55So I learned how to weightlift and make my body stronger from the football coach,

2:25:58who was this amazing guy who wrote the original script for Mr.

2:26:01Mom. He wrote a play, Wait Till Your Mother Gets Home, that became Mr.

2:26:05Mom. He was like a guy's wife.

2:26:07Michael Keaton, Terry Garr. That's right.

2:26:09So people would say he didn't write that, but this guy, Bob Peters, was like

2:26:13a physical specimen. He also played the piano and he raised these kids and his

2:26:17wife dared him. She said, in the early 70s, she said, you couldn't do what

2:26:20I do. And so that was how the whole thing came to, he realized, you're

2:26:23right, it's really, really tough.

2:26:24So I went to him for, for working out advice, but not for other sources

2:26:30of advice. I went to different men for different sources of mentorship.

2:26:36It'll become clear what I'm saying here in a moment.

2:26:37My academic advisor, my PhD advisor was an incredible woman.

2:26:41So I was mentored by women too, but that's characteristic of academia.

2:26:44Was your father very involved in your life?

2:26:45He, he was. I mean, we had, my parents split up at a, at a,

2:26:49you know, at, at an adolescence.

2:26:51And so we had our, you know, our challenges over the years, over time, you

2:26:55know, my dad had been a scientist, first generation immigrant.

2:26:58How old were you and your parents split up?

2:26:5914. And did other men kind of move in or was your father still very

2:27:03involved? I sought out other mentors at that point.

2:27:05I resented science. I resented what he was a part of.

2:27:07We eventually made amends. He's actually been a guest on the podcast.

2:27:10He's a, he's a physicist, really helped me understand his trajectory and, you know, and

2:27:15we've worked out our stuff.

2:27:16But at that time it was, you know, it was skateboarding, it was lifting weights.

2:27:19It was, I want to become a firefighter actually what took fire science courses and

2:27:23did that. And then eventually tripped and fell into science and mentored, menteed myself to

2:27:29a wonderful professor at Santa Barbara, and then the story unfolds.

2:27:34Yeah, and you're going to gag on this, but you're exceptional.

2:27:36Most 14 -year -olds aren't exceptional and go out and find mentors.

2:27:40Mentors have to find them because they don't even know, most 14 -year -olds don't

2:27:43even know they need mentors.

2:27:44They don't even know the concept.

2:27:45And my mom was smart enough to get men involved in my life really quickly,

2:27:49and it was everything for me, everything.

2:27:53My mom's boyfriend gave me $200 and said, I started asking about stocks, and he

2:27:59said, if you haven't spent this or bought stocks by the time I'm here next

2:28:01weekend, I'm taking it back.

2:28:05So I went to Westwood and Wilshire Boulevard and walked into Dean Witter, and this

2:28:10guy with a big jufro came walking out, Cy Saro, and said, hi, I'm Cy

2:28:15Saro. And every day I would call, I didn't have a lot of friends at

2:28:1913, him from the Emerson Junior High pay phone, 20 cents, and he'd give me

2:28:23lessons on the market. I bought 12 shares of Columbia Pictures, and he'd be like,

2:28:27Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a hit.

2:28:30That's why the stock is up.

2:28:31Casey's Shadow is a bomb.

2:28:32When there's more buyers for the stock and fewer sellers, the stock goes up.

2:28:36And he taught me about markets.

2:28:37I've been investing in stocks since I was 13.

2:28:39I've made a lot of money selling my companies.

2:28:41I've made a shit ton of money investing in stocks.

2:28:44And just this guy, and by the way, he came to one of my live

2:28:46podcasts about two years ago.

2:28:48He's now 82. Just this guy's interest in me, like, just meant the world.

2:28:52And also, and this is a weird story, but he recently just passed away.

2:28:57You know how in media there's that second family people talk about?

2:29:01The dude who has a family, and you find out he has a second family?

2:29:05My mom and I were the second family.

2:29:07My mom's boyfriend and my kind of male role model had a family.

2:29:11Unbeknownst to her. No, unbeknownst to her.

2:29:14But we didn't have any money.

2:29:15And I'm not going to judge my mom, but I'm not going to judge him.

2:29:19And he was actually a really good man to me.

2:29:21He was really a good mentor, but he was only around every other weekend.

2:29:24But I had some great, my athletic coaches took a really nice active role in

2:29:29my life. And when I think about what it would have been like, because the

2:29:32reality is you have this healthy instinct as a boy to start rejecting your parents

2:29:36at a certain age. And not only that, I see it with my boys.

2:29:40Their mom's voice literally becomes white noise to them.

2:29:43They like stop hearing it.

2:29:45And they take her seriously or literally, but not seriously.

2:29:50And, but even just saying the boys needed men five years ago, this dialogue has

2:29:55come so far was triggering to some people.

2:29:57What, women can't raise good men?

2:29:59No, my mom raised me a lot of my life.

2:30:01But if I had not had a bunch of men who just naturally stepped in,

2:30:05there was a guy across the hall who noticed that it was just me and

2:30:08my mom. He would come over with his girlfriend to me every other week and

2:30:12say, do you want to come horseback riding with us?

2:30:14Right? Because he knew I was being raised by my mom.

2:30:16It was a natural instinct for him to come over and take me out.

2:30:21And I worry that we've lost that, that we don't have enough male mentors.

2:30:24Wow. We're going to have to do 10 podcasts.

2:30:27You know, I've got so many more questions.

2:30:28I didn't get to a lot of things that Scott, I have to say, it's

2:30:31been amazing to get to just sit with you and learn from you.

2:30:35I'm delighted that we had this conversation.

2:30:37I hope the fact that we had it, I don't know how polarized people view

2:30:41us as, but that alone was important to me.

2:30:44But I'm going to think a lot about many of the things you've said.

2:30:46You've talked about having a code, this, you know, this notion of really being a

2:30:51provider and a protector, having, building a financial, you know, foundation for oneself, you know,

2:30:57putting service over attention to self and just so many things of value.

2:31:02This is one that I know many people are going to come back to over

2:31:05and over again. And I'm just grateful for you doing what you do.

2:31:08You defy all the stereotypes of the groups that people assign you to, which is

2:31:14my favorite kind of people.

2:31:15So I appreciate that. And again, you're killing it on the health front, whatever you're

2:31:19doing, man. It's probably your boys.

2:31:20They're probably like, this is what it's like to have vigor.

2:31:23Well, tonight I'll go through everything I do and I want you to edit it.

2:31:27But just in the mutual fan club here, one of the things I don't like

2:31:30about podcasting is it's emblematic of American politics.

2:31:33And that is the more outrageous you are, the more ratings you get.

2:31:36So the podcasting algorithms encourage people to say outrageous things.

2:31:42And sometimes they're not very informed.

2:31:43And I'm guilty of this sometimes.

2:31:44I've fallen to this Dunning -Kruger where I think I know something about something because

2:31:48I know a decent amount about marketing or business.

2:31:50And I think in our leaders, we need to make intelligence and honesty and science

2:31:56cool again. And you're doing that.

2:31:58And I worry sometimes a lot of our most senior elected officials on the health

2:32:02side are not making intelligence or science cool again.

2:32:06I have friends there and I'll just tell you, like, they're not biologists.

2:32:08They need to talk to the biologists.

2:32:09That's my point. You have real domain expertise.

2:32:11I think you are making science and intelligence cool again.

2:32:14And I think the nation is in desperate need of that.

2:32:16That certification, domain expertise, being measured about your comments, citing data, putting out disclosures, telling

2:32:23me, no, Scott, you don't understand DOPA.

2:32:24This is what actually is going on.

2:32:26I think that's important. And so I think you're a really positive influence for young

2:32:30people who are getting seduced by the algorithms.

2:32:32And there's got to be people like you out there that young men aspire to

2:32:36be more like that say no.

2:32:38Training, domain expertise, being measured, and science matter.

2:32:41You're making that cool again.

2:32:43Thank you. Well, it's a labor of love and a bit of a compulsion, so

2:32:46I plan to continue. But I'm excited for whatever comes next, especially in these.

2:32:51very tense political years, you're a brave one.

2:32:55Go on. You got balls and brains, man.

2:32:57That's how I'll wrap this one.

2:32:59You got balls and brains.

2:33:00I've been thinking the whole time like, and you're willing to take risks and make

2:33:04mistakes. And clearly you're making more better decisions than less good ones on average compared

2:33:10to your peer group and then some.

2:33:12So come back again. Thanks again, Andrew.

2:33:15Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Scott Galloway.

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Male Roles, Obligations and Options for Building a Fulfilling Life | Scott Galloway