#716 - Scott Galloway - How Can Men Take Charge Of Their Lives?

27:23And there's layers and layers to this that I've realized, especially maybe people that listen to podcasts like mine or yours who are interested in psychology and human nature and can rationalize or explain away what they're feeling. Oh, that's the negativity bias. So that's the Aberlin paradox. So that's, you know, I understand that this is because of my, it's the bystander effect or some other bullshit, right? Like they've got some mental model that allows them to explain what's going on inside of the room. Yeah, James Clea talks about something similar and whatever, whatever. And I realized that for a good chunk of people way more than might like to admit it, that's a protection mechanism.

28:01their ability to rationalize and explain away what's happening inside of their minds gives them an excuse to not have to feel their feelings fully. I thought of you this last week and did you see what happened with Caleb Williams the quarterback for USC? No. So this kid is probably going to I think he's probably going to be the highest metrophy winner and is probably going to go number one in the draft. and he's playing against Washington and he blows it and they're going to lose. The guy breaks down and begins sobbing and immediately runs over to the stands and jumps up and embraces his mother and his mother puts this notebook over his helmet so that the crowd can't see him crying and His father comes over and consoles him and I thought oh my god.

28:51This kid doesn't even realize He has moved masculinity so far forward and the ability to give into that sort of emotion and do it publicly, you know, so much of this fucked up sense of what it means to be a man is around bearing your emotions and when you look at suicide rates and how they're now they used to be three to one male to female and it's approaching four to one One of the key components of that is men do never learn how to express their struggling. And because they're taught from a very early age that real men don't express that sort of upset. So when you see this guy who's probably the premier quarterback in college football, it's really like big, handsome, ridiculously strong guy.

29:41In front of national TV, jump up into his mother's arms. I mean, it sends such a good signal to young men that it's okay to be emotional. It's okay to be disappointed. I also think that's such a gift to, I mean, you're not a parent yet. You really as a parent, all you really want. You want two things. You want your kids to be happy and successful, but you also want to comfort them. Any chance you would get as a parent to comfort your child, it's just so rewarding. It's like, okay, I have purpose. And I remember seeing that literally the whole nation saw that moment and I thought that kid unknowingly just moved masculinity forward and just reduced the likelihood or increased the likelihood that a young man is going to have an easier time expressing to a family member, a non -family member, I am really upset.

30:34And that is key to solving. That is key to getting out of a really, really dark place. And I thought, oh my God, it's such a moving moment. So anyways, Google, Caleb Williams, and you'll see the video. It's really, it's very raw, it's very, very moving. And I was just, I thought it was, oh God, I think this kid doesn't realize what a positive role model is. I love that story. That's awesome. I, a lot of people on the internet, especially guys, will talk about not showing vulnerability in front of a female partner, because it's going to lower her perception of you. And, you know, the absolutely armb women out there who will see vulnerability as a weakness.

31:17Now, I think if your female partner is unable to see you show bare your emotions without thinking that you're less of a man, I think that's a sufficient red flag in the relationship to be good that you're getting out of it in any case. But when I talked about this a little bit recently, guys took it one step further, and when I said, okay, So let's say that you have a concern about showing emotions to your partner. What about showing emotions to your friends? And there were a whole bunch of people in the comments that were like, no, no, no, no, like even doing that even doing that is too far. And you go, oh, okay, this is just your way of rationalizing and coping with not wanting to show your feelings.

31:57This isn't to do with it. You can say it's because of the outcome, the negative outcome that you're going to get in some relationship and she's going to leave you for Chad who's actually a stoic giga, like giga turbo, like Andrew Tate, but no, it's not. It's just that you don't want to feel your feelings. Now, I had Chris Bumstead on the show who just won his fifth Mr. Olympia Physic, classic Physique title this weekend. And I think he, if he doesn't cry on stage, he's kind of welling up as, you know, fifth time that he wins, you know, the hottest man on the planet award, like the most jacked Greek God -man on the Planet Award.

32:33And he told me the story about when he broke down and cried in his girlfriend's arms six weeks before one of his Olympia competitions. And he told me that because that's actually what happened and that's how he felt. And you're talking about the most hyper masculine looking, lifting heavy weights, sweating, doing the full thing. Like he's the he's the sigma male meme. And yet for him, he was fine to do it. So yeah, I think a lot of what the modern culture of masculinity is doing is kind of repurposing the male denial of emotions into some more rationalized approach of, oh yeah, but you don't your friends to see you weak because then they're gonna move on and find a different friend.

33:19Oh yeah, you don't your girlfriend or your wife to see you weak, because she's gonna leave you and sleep with the guy next door. So, it's like, all right, well, so you just never go into failure emotions at all. That doesn't seem very adaptive. That doesn't seem like a very good solution. So, I think a lot about this because from the age of 29 to 44, I didn't cry. I forgot how to cry. Like if someone said, in the next week, you got to cry once or if you cry once, you're going to get a million dollars, I would have to have to learn to do it again. I forgot how to cry. I didn't cry when my mother died and I got divorced.

33:50Didn't cry when my business has failed. just forgot how to cry. And now I probably well up and downright cry once to twice a week. And it's a real gift to me. And I have noticed though, I have registered different responses from different parties. I cry on my podcast if I get a question from a listener and I start talking about it and I get upset, I will get emotional. And I find that people really respond well because it helps them put them in touch with their emotions. That yeah, I was really upset when I had to put my dog down. I get tremendous positive support from strangers whenever I'm emotional.

34:32Amongst my friends, we all, especially at this age, when one of us isn't doing well and shares. I mean, men are just so good at sharing, just how fucking awesome they are all the time. Oh yeah, I just made a million dollars on this trade. I'm selling my company here. And we put up this Instagram facade, this Instagram meets Arnold Schwarzenegger meets, you know, David back in facade to each other or meets Carl Lyck on whatever the And then when you really get behind it and you find out, I'm really struggling. You know, I'm My dad sick and I just had my business is not doing well and I'm worried about money or I have a friend whose child just had a real mental health breakdown and what I find though is when, especially as men get older, they are really, I find really supportive and receptive to one another, as I think women are incredibly receptive to each other's emotions and vulnerabilities.

35:30Across your parents, your parents wanna come for you. It's a feature not a bug for them, they wanna come for you. I've had mixed reactions from my romantic partners And that is, and maybe I've chosen the wrong women, I don't know. But oftentimes I feel like when I have express vulnerability and emotion and weakness, that they don't like it and are less attracted to me, that they feel like I'm not going to be as viable or as robust a protector and provider when I am depressed and down. And that if I talk about it, there's some lip service to how are you doing? But at the end of the day, they don't have, at least in this might be my flaw, they don't have a lot of patience for weak men.

36:20And I sense this is weakness. Yeah, I wonder how much of that is a selection effect for the kind of women that you're going for, the kind of place that you visit yourself in. Let me give you one of my spiciest new ideas. I've got this idea of surplus mate value, which is when you have a relationship in which there is a disparity in mate value between the man and the woman, you can basically look at that disparity kind of like a bank account that you can withdraw from. So, for one of a better word, the man can mistreat the woman. Like, you're not replied to text or come home late or, you know, like break promises or do whatever.

36:56And the girl will stick about because there is this disparity. Now a girl that's healthy with a good sense of self -esteem may not do that regardless of how much disparity and mate value there is, but as a good example, at Chris Bumstead, this dude, his wife's like a 10. She's a fitness model and super smart and like was a doctor and stuff as well, but he's like number one in the world. It's impossible to be like as have as high mate value as he does, so one of the things that actually came out of the comments was, Well, of course, Chris Bumstead can grind his girlfriend's arms. Look at who he is.

37:31It's like the hottest thing on the planet. Like, of course he can do that. Brad Pitt, of course he can grind his girlfriend's arms. He's Brad Pitt. So this idea of surplus mate value, I think, is interesting. But another one is, if you are going after girls and women who are looking for that hardcore protector provider, And you then start to crack that facade a little bit or crack the veneer. Yeah, maybe they are going to respond to that in a slightly interesting way. I just, it's what I've seen. I look at, you know, my dad, I just like the moment my dad lost his job and he kind of deserved this because he was never really engaged or showed up for his marriages.

38:16But I generally found, I'm choosing my words carefully, because this sounds really judgmental. I generally found, and maybe it was my dad's been marrying divorce four times, but the moment my dad stopped being a great provider, the women were out. And I think it's because, like you said, they were getting so little on every other dimension that if he wasn't at least kind of be at a minimum, a bare minimum be a good provider, like when he got fired and when he was 52 and couldn't get another job within six months, she was gone. And quite frankly, he kind of had a comment because what you're basically saying is he got to bring something to the table, right?

38:57But it's still, I think we have a tendency to sort of what's the term bag of ants to assume that all men are naturally have a predisposition to it being the bad guy and all women are these incredibly high character good people. And the reality is, and I think there's statistics that show this on a balanced scorecard that there's mostly, most women are really good people, most men are really good people. But it's not like, it's not like women aren't, you know, don't have their own needs and have a scorecard out in terms of when they exit a relationship. And unfortunately society has stigmatized mental health at the point that there's so little of it still.

39:39I think it's been destigmatized across every demographic except straight men. I think if straight men express a certain level of mental health vulnerability, they're not going to be CEO of this company. I mean, I just, I've seen it. I've been on boards. A male CEO who takes a break, and if he were to say, I'm struggling with my mental health. That guy's not gonna be CEO. And maybe that's not - It's a male equivalent of being early 30s engaged and as yet childless as a woman when you're going for the job interview. And the boss is like, I mean, she's gonna be, she's gonna be for 18 months and then she's gonna be full of children.

40:24Yeah, we're gonna lose her. Yeah, there's I mean everyone has to deal you're right everyone has to deal with their stereotypes in the workplace and how it sets them back but again it just results in um, I don't know results in bad behaviors that makes it I mean There's definitely something around All right, and I don't know if we should be teaching at a schools But we're getting to the point now where we're or, you know, mental health is becoming such a big issue for men as it relates to suicide. I mean, what we're finding is essentially is that, well, men are physically stronger, women are emotionally and mentally stronger.

41:03I mean, that's, if you were to distill it down. And so I think, I don't want to call it additional focus, but at least more focus on men's mental health is so critical to a healthy society. There's this really moving ad on mental health in the UK, where it's two guys, two friends, They look like kind of 50 or 60s and it shows them a different football matches and one guy's really enthusiastic and happy all the time and the other guys is much more sedate and kind of calm and a little you know a little kind of I don't know just sort of melancholy and then it shows up and it says it says you know mental health or struggles Aren't always what they appear to be and then it shows a game where the guy one guy shows up and puts his friends and it's capped out in the seat and it's clear, you know, as friends gone.

41:52And it was the guy who was really effusive and happy. And the whole point is, unless you're willing to open up about what's really going on with you, and unless you invite your friends to open up about what's really going on with them, you just don't know. And they might be the guy rooting and it seems really happy. You don't know. And so I don't know the approach, I don't know the mechanisms, problems, but this every year, the ratio of people committing suicide goes up from in. It's now, it's now going to four to one. I got this from Rob Henderson's blog, among 15 to 24 year olds, 80 % of the suicides a male.

42:35A boy who is sexually molested and a girl who is sexually molested. Later in life, and by the way, they're both equally heinous crimes. No one is a lesser crime against humanity. The boys 10 times more likely to kill himself later in life. And again, that's not in any way to say one crime is less hideous than the other, but we're just finding out, and I never thought this boys are just emotionally and mentally weaker. I heard you say a really interesting take, which was the overcompensation and the kind of extreme aversion that every single person has to pedophilia to an older man spending time with a younger boy that isn't his son or some member of his family has created a massive death of role models of men that will take young boys under their wing.

43:35Even now for me as a guy who's got an audience of many of whom are in their teenage years and stuff like that, even if I was to think about, like, fucking even sending a message to somebody like that, there's something in me that triggers almost like an allergic response that I'm so averse to that dynamic has been given such a very particular type of brand, which is older men, younger boys should not be interacting really unless you're the caregiver because so many of the stories that reach the press are about people that have taken advantage of young boys in that way has left an awful lot of potentially super valuable, caring, nurturing relationships just left by the wayside.

44:28When I heard you say that, I thought it was a very interesting idea. I think this is a huge problem because we know we can diagnose when the single point of failure for when men come off the rails and that is they lose a male role model. And I was talking to Rick Wilson, the political strategist of the Lincoln Project, and he got a motion. I was on his podcast, the enemies list. And he talked about his father was in a terrible car accident and was in a coma for two years. And his father's business partners, neighbors, all these men stepped in, taught him how to fly, took him to games. And he said to kind of to save me kind of kept me on track.

45:11And so when you're dealing with a society where we have the second most single parent family homes and we say single parent family homes, we mean a household led by a mother, you know, you know the same data. The girls have the same outcomes, college depression, you know, same income. Boys have dramatically worse outcomes when they lose a male role model. So the question is, all right, we could fill that void with other men that aren't necessarily biologically rated related to the boy, but here's the problem. People suspect any man that wants to be involved in a younger man's life. I mean, the Catholic Church and Michael Jackson have fucked it up for all of us.

45:49When I was on Bill Maher, I said, if we, if we want better men, we need to be better men. We need to get involved. We need to seek out and find boys and young men who are struggling and need some help because they're everywhere. They're literally everywhere. Your nanny's kid. My nanny's kid is sticking at home, doesn't want to do, doesn't know where they should join the Navy is gambling on crypto. Like needs a small amount of advice, right? They're everywhere. My friend's son, who will not listen to his father and is making bad decisions, but will listen to his father's friends. You've pointed this out, right?

46:23The father's friends, the family's friends can have more impact than the actual parents because you have a healthy gag reflex to what your parents say. Yeah, your dad sucks, but Scott's cool. He plays guitar. Yeah, that's right. He has a podcast. He lets his play on PS4 until three in the morning. He's a podcast. And the same is true of my friends. My sons, my sons are now having a healthy gag reflex. Everything I say, but they find a lot of my friends really interesting. And my friends will say the exact same thing and they'll listen and nod their head. To get involved in a young man's life is so rewarding.

46:57There's this wonderful movie, I think it's Wes Anderson, you know, actually I'm gonna Tom Cruz's best films called Magnolia. And the guy, there's a bartender in it and he says, I have love to give, I just don't know where to put it. And I think there are so many men. Men your age did feel fraternal love, would really feel like they could help a young man or a boy in his life. When I, I stayed in touch, I made really good friends with my stockbroker. When I was 13, my mom's boyfriend who stayed involved in my life after they broke up. Gave me 200 bucks. I marched into Westwood Village. I went into Dean Witter and I met this broker, this 30 -something -year -old broker named Sci -Sero.

47:35And we bought six. He gave me a lesson in the markets. We bought 16 shares of Columbia Pictures. And every day for two years, no joke. In Emerson, Jr., I'd go to the phone booth. I'd put in two dimes and I'd call Si. And he'd spend 10 minutes on the phone talking about my stock that day. Closing counters of the third kind is a hit so the stock was up a dollar. Kacey Shatto was a bomb. It's down. And he gave me a lesson in the markets and he was really nice and like a good man. My camp counselor taught me how to program. He stayed in touch with me and taught me how to program. I had all these random men in my life.

48:13None of them ever. And anyway did anything inappropriate. it. Also, we categorize a stereotype gay men who may want to get involved in a young man's life. Pedophilia does not over index a gay man anymore than it does amongst straight men. Granted, should a mother or parents be thoughtful about who's getting involved in their son's life? Yes, but the vast majority of men, the vast majority of men who want to get involved in a young man's life do it for the right reasons. And it's hugely important. And when I was on Bill Marre, I said, we need to get involved in men's lives. And Bill Maher immediately said, what you just said, he said, no way.

48:53If I got involved in a 15 year old boy's life, they'd start saying I was a pervert. And that is therein lies the problem. There is so much fraternal and paternal love out there for men who would like to find a young man or a boy to help out. It's hugely rewarding for them. It's profoundly meaningful for the boy. in people are afraid of it and look at us skewed it and it's got to stop. It's got to stop. The majority there are so many good men out there that have love to give but just on a word to put it. Before we got started you were telling me about some lesion or limb that you had lopped off because you're raging and parts of you break.

49:38I've been thinking about this for a while. We talk a good bit between us about the plight of young men and then finding their place in the world and all of the rest of it. But there's an interesting period of life at least that I'm in at the moment, which is starting to realize that I've probably passed the peak of how fit that I'm going to be, how physically attractive that I'm going to be. Now, I can compliment that with status and wisdom and grace and confidence and poison, all of the rest of the stuff, but this is such a weird thing to talk about, aging gracefully as a man, not just in the way that you look, but in the way that you think about yourself, you know, not having the same level of energy that you may be used to and all the rest of it, and with diet and training and things, you can extend it.

50:31But when you get to whatever 35, 40, it is, you sort of hit this top of a hill and then you start to roll down the other side. And you're like, well, it's like the story of the first time that your son beats you at basketball. You realize that you've kind of passed the crown on a little bit. What do you say to young, to guys who are in the 30s and 40s and realizing that age is no longer just a number, but actually a thermodynamic of their life. Yeah, we feel your pain set three and a half billion women. I mean, what you just described, women feel this worse than men. And because reality is, how old are you, Chris?

51:1035. Okay, so this is the bottom line. In terms of the romantic or sexual marketplace, your currency is going to continue to go up because you're going to get wealthier over the next 10 years. And unfortunately, unfortunately, women are disproportionately valued on their physical appearance in terms of sexual currency. And men unfortunately are unfortunately are disproportionately valued on their economic strength and influence. And yours is going to increase. So, you know, in sex and the city, they called it the power flip. And that is your currency in the marketplace is probably going to increase over the next 15 years.

51:48in terms of your own physicality. I mean, you work out a ton. I mean, you're probably not going to feel it. I felt it at 47 when I really felt the slow down. Like, I just couldn't. I was used to be able to row, you know, 2000 meters and whatever was 7 .5 minutes. And no matter how hard I train, I just couldn't any longer. You know, there's just certain things that just start to go away. and your body starts to break down. And then what's weird is the perception of, I used to be the youngest person in every room. I'd walked in, I had a lot of success early. One to kid. Yeah, I was always the youngest person in the room.

52:27I'm like, oh, that's the young guy. That's, he's the young entrepreneur. And then one day I walked in and I was the oldest. And I felt like I was never the same age. Yeah, but in terms of physically, a guy like you, and this is why you really want to establish really strong. I mean, you really, I just, I, I, I, it goes back to that advice for young men. You got to establish physical fitness habits and nutrition habits and sleep hygiene because if you aren't and every guy that's 35 should be able to walk into any room and know if she got real, they could kill and eat everybody or out and run them.

53:03One or the other because if you don't have it by the time you're 35, you're not going 40 if you're not strong or fast or agile by the time you're 35 or 40. Oh my God by the time you're 50 you're just going to be a fucking hot mess. And you're not only going to you may live as long but the call your life from 50 to 80 are just going to be substantially worse. So I don't I don't buy you're going to be fine until you're 50. What happens at 50 is is you get these kind of constant reminders that life is finite and you can't stop time. And that's kind of devastating. And also, or scary, I should say, not devastating.

53:44And also, supposedly because for 98 % of our time on this planet, we didn't live much past 35 or 40, our brain can't literally can't process how we look. So when I see myself in the mirror, it's devastatingly strange to me. It's like, it's horrifying. The uncanny valley of yourself. Yeah, you're like, okay, what is that alien being that should have died 15 years ago from a bone cut hunting a mammoth or something, but it's aging as I'm fascinated by it. It does, you know, the physical part of it is hard, but those habits you said in your 20s and 30s, good or bad will carry or not into your 40s and 50s, but there's just no getting around it.

54:26Men have it so much better than women because when a woman hits her 40s and 50s, It just gets, we can maintain our romantic or sexual currency. It is much harder for a woman. Society, I find that society in terms of the marketplace for mating is really hard on young men. Like guys in their 20s, it's just hard to get arrested because the women, the most attractive women in their 20s, generally speaking are usually dating up age wise. They want men that are more emotionally and economically viable. So, a guy in his 20s just has a really hard time, wants to be in a relationship. I remember thinking in my 20s, I'd be such a great boyfriend and I just couldn't get arrested.

55:13Just couldn't get arrested. And then I think the world becomes increasingly fair to them in their 30s and then disproportionately advantage to them in their 40s in the exact opposite is true of women. Well, this is why the discourse online is dominated by people in their 20s, right? And that means that at the moment, the mating market is very much well -betied young men, men are falling behind, twice as many men are single than women. This is how many men I haven't had sex and can't get a swipe on Tinder and so on and so forth. But I think you're right. I think that the scales are around about balancing your 30s and then they pivot back in your 40s and there's a you know in my in all guys more juvenile moments they there is a very bitter Kind of satisfaction that the women who may be Denied you when you were 22 Potentially going to be chasing after you when you're 42 and it's a incredibly immature Mindset, but it's definitely one that I see on the internet for all of the struggles of young men are having in mating as younger men, the fear is that they never developed those skills and they end up alone their whole lives.

56:26And that lack of a romantic relationship leads to economic insecurity, depression, and they're just unviable mates the rest of their lives. They never dig out of that hole. But Ivo has said New York is the bobsled of a capitalist society and it kind of indicates where the whole world is going. And the reality is New York is optimized for two types of people for 40 -something successful men and 20 something attractive women. And it's a fucking Disneyland for both those groups. And for everybody else, it's a soul crushing experience. Be a nice guy who's got his act together in your 20s or 30s, a good person, but you're not making bank.

57:04You can't get arrested. Be an interesting woman, attractive, single in our late 30s or early 40s in New York. That's not a good place to be either. And I feel like the world is becoming more like New York and less, then less. And what we need is more places and opportunities for men and women to really get to know each other and spend time with each other, such that they can again sort of fall in love instead of this kind of like swipe left or swipe right society or this consumptive culture. But yeah, you're Chris, you're going to be you're going to be just fine. I appreciate that as my non -pidophilic elderly advisor here.

57:46Thanks for that. Thanks for that. I'll get a t -shirt that says that. That could be your epigraph. One of my friends, Alex Homozi has a masculinity and six words, do no harm, take no shit. And I think that that's a nice summary. Dude, I appreciate the hell out of you. Thank you for all of the support and continuing to chill my memes on CNN or wherever else it is that you go, Bill Ma. What's next? You've got two bucks next year, one book at least next year. I got a book coming out on financial literacy called The Algebra of Wealth. I'm starting to think about writing a book on masculinity, although everyone I'm running to is writing a book on masculinity or trying to redefine it.

58:25And you know, just doing the same thing. Got my podcast, got my, you know, I got my sons for another five years. So I'm trying to lean into that a bunch. We just went to the Brentford man. Was Brentford? Yeah. Brent, I'm sorry, Brentford West Ham game on Saturday. we're going to Arsenal, Sevilla tomorrow night. So I'm just really enjoying the shit out of that. Be completely anglicized from your... Totally. I'm treating T right now. Look at this. I'm drinking tea. It's pretty milky. Yeah. That would be considered a builder's brew in certain areas of the UK. But you are down south, so I'll give you that.

59:01I'll give you that. I'm a Rangers. I'm a Texas Rangers fan. They won the World Series. So we've swapped nationalities in terms of our sporting desires. Scott Galloway, ladies and gentlemen, Scott, I appreciate you. I can't wait to have you back on to talk about financial literacy and whatever the hell else you write next. Thanks, Chris. Congrats on your success.