Why Following Your Passion Might Be Holding You Back with Scott Galloway

25:22Now it's one-third. And especially all of these factors really hit hard young men. We all knew that guy in high school who was just never going to go to college. The education system is incredibly biased against young men. Who do we want in school? What behaviors do we incentivize? Sit still, be organized, Be a pleaser. Raise your hand. You just described a girl. But we used to have on ramps into the middle class for that guy who was never going to go to college. But we did away with wood shop. We did away with metal shop. We did away with auto shop. And a lot of the industries that supported that middle and upper middle class lifestyle have been outsourced.

26:05And in addition, even worse, parents shame their kids if they decide not to go to college. Have you been at those cocktail parties where hush, hush, oh, so-and-so dropped out of Rutgers, they came home? Well, guess what? Two-thirds of American children don't end up with a traditional college degree, and that's okay. There's actually been a surge in demand amongst the trade jobs. So what do we have? We have a group of young people who can't afford a home, can't afford the upward lubricant of mobility in our society unless they're the freakishly remarkable or the child of a rich kid. You're 77 times more likely to get into an elite university if you come from a top 1 % income earning household.

26:45because my generation has weaponized housing, weaponized the stock market. COVID,$7 trillion into the economy, 85 % of it wasn't needed. It was saved. Why? Because you never miss an opportunity to make my generation cheaper. So what happened to that$5 trillion that wasn't needed for food, wasn't needed for rent? It went into the market, housing, stocks. So what happened? Stocks went on a tear. Housing prices went insane, which is awesome for you and me, Ed, because we already own stocks and houses. But what about the kid who's trying to get into the market? The reason why I am at the Beverly Hills Hotel right now and I have economic security is in 2008, we bailed out the banks, but we didn't bail out the economy.

27:31And Apple fell to$8 a share. Netflix fell to$12 a share. Amazon to$9 a share. I was coming into my prime income earning years. So I put all of my money in those three stocks and they're up between 30 and 60 X. Where does a young person find value when you bail out the baby boomer owner of a restaurant? All you're doing is robbing opportunity from the 26 year old recent graduate of a culinary academy that wants her chance at disruption, wants to swoop in and buy a cheap home. When we have churn, there are exogenous events. We need turnover. The key to capitalism is you let shit get real and you let assets fall.

28:14But what we've decided is a million people dying from a virus would be tragic. But what would be a disaster is if we let my generation get less wealthy. So here's an idea. While I'm in the club doing rails of cocaine and parting with champagne, the only way the young person participates is they get to lend me their credit card so I can run up all this debt on their back so I can stay rich. We have literally lost the script. My generation has been stealing from a younger generation and people want to claim they're entitled. They're entitled to be enraged. We are not making the same types of forward-leaning investments.

28:54Old people keep voting themselves more money. 40 % of all government spending is now on people over the age of 65. It's going to go over 50 % in the next 20 years, meaning we can't make forward-leaning investments in education and R &D and technology and infrastructure, the things that show an actual return on investment and create jobs for young people. This needs to stop. We need a forward lane. There used to be 12 people supporting every senior. Now there's three people. We don't have the money. We are robbing more and more prosperity and opportunity from young people. And I'll return to where I started.

29:27What's the point if we have depressed kids? What is the actual point of any of this if our kids aren't doing as well as us. And you know what it feels like. You and I are blessed. A disproportionate amount of opportunity was sequestered to white heterosexual males through the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. We took advantage of it. And now young kids don't have nearly, nearly the amount of opportunity we had. I'll wrap up my word salad here just about tax policy. You're absolutely right. The thing that gets in the way of a progressive tax structure is when they need to start this populist Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren bullshit of the billionaires walk over people.

30:08Here's the bottom line. The people who get most screwed in our tax code are what I affectionately refer to as the workhorses. Mom's a baller at a law firm making a million and a half bucks a year. Dad is a chiropractor with four people working for him. He makes 500 grand a year, 1.9 million in income. If they're living in an urban center in a blue state where you usually need to be to have that kind of job, they're paying 52 % in taxes. They're paying way too much, but something happens on the way to being a billionaire. Once you make the jump to light speed and become an owner instead of an earner, which happened to me about 10 years ago, I make all of my money buying and selling investments, starting and selling companies.

30:48My tax rate has plummeted to somewhere between 17 % and 19 % because of capital gains because of 1202. So while the 1 % pay too much in taxes, the 0.1 % pay too little. The 25 wealthiest Americans in America pay between an average tax rate of 6 % to 8%. Corporations are paying their lowest tax rate since 1939. So the workhorses lower their taxes. The super rich and corporations, I actually think we need to raise their taxes. Well, another conversation the other day, I would argue they paid income on that money already, but that's a whole other conversation. As a double taxation? Yeah. I, yeah, I think I feel pretty strongly about that.

31:27I've been a fan all my life for lower taxes, but there's now no evidence that that money is being returned into the economy to benefit working people every day. Like I thought it would. I thought if you tax the rich guys less, quite frankly, they would dump that into increasing wages and they don't companies don't do that. And so I'm, I'm torn on it. And that's why I asked you the question. I'm really open to the answer. And this thing you said about boys and girls, I just think gender neutral, we build conformists in our education system. I feel very strongly about that. We build robots that conform and follow instructions and contrarians and weird people change the world.

32:04I want more contrarian weird people.

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32:50Wanna keep tabs on that instant offer. With OfferWatch. Wanna have CarMax pick it up from your driveway. You wanna get it done today. You wanna do it. So, wanna drive? CarMax. Pickup not available everywhere. Restrictions and fee may apply. There is something I wanna ask you about that is gender specific. That I've heard you talk about and I've only heard you talk about it. and that is single parent homes as it affects young boys. I'm not a big gender guy like boys versus girls. I really just think most people are humans, but there is a lot of evidence about boys that are raised without a strong male figure in their lives.

33:33And I was with, like I said, I was with my son this weekend and of all the things I am grateful for is he's had multiple strong male figures in his life. He's had myself, he's had two great grandfathers. He's had good coaches. good mentors in his life. And I feel like what, in addition to being a white male, but what a great advantage it is. And there was another young man with us who his dad's been in and out of his life most of the time and has not had a strong male figure. Has an amazing mother who's worked two jobs and just has done everything she could for him. But in observing both of them in the same screen over the same period of time, I did see a confidence and a way about handling himself and a presence, frankly, to my son, who I'm not saying because he's my son, who's had strong male figures and the absence of that in the other.

34:25What do you what do you think is the solution to that? And I'd like you to speak to that topic to so many single mothers listen to my show and have these boys they love so much. What can they do when this boy doesn't have that strong male figure? So it's a generous question. So first, let's talk about the problem. Young men are four times as likely to kill themselves. If you go to a morgue and you have five people who have died by suicide, four of them are men. And if you had any other demographic group killing itself at four times the rate of the control group, three times as likely to be addicted, three times as likely to be homeless, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated.

35:07graduated, 40 % less likely to go to college. I mean, we'd be moving in with programs, but because of the advantages that our generation received, there's a lack of empathy for them. And if you try to reverse engineer to, and I do think we're finally having a productive conversation, the numbers are just so overwhelming that people are finally starting to pay attention. And I track everything. I'm pretty into data. I track everything I do. And the number one email I've received over the last three months is some version of the following. I get about 140 emails from strangers a day and number, and I categorize all of them.

35:42The number one email, is it too late to buy Nvidia? It's hilarious. Everyone's obsessed with Nvidia. The number two email that I've gotten consistently for the last three years is a mom, usually a single mom asking for advice about her son. And it goes something like this. I have three kids, two daughters, one son. My one daughter's in PR in Chicago, the others in graduate school at Penn, and my son, who's 25, is in the basement playing video games and vaping and seems just totally lost. There's a variety of factors that have come together here. One is just biological. Men's prefrontal cortex is 18 to 24 months behind the girls.

36:19They're literally more immature. Have your son and his 10th grade friends come over, and the 15 and 16-year-old boys are boys, and some of the girls look like the junior senator from Pennsylvania in terms of how they acquit themselves. They just, two 17 year olds applying to college, a boy and a girl, the girl's competing against a 15 and a half year old. They're just biologically maturing later. And there's something weird going on. I don't know if it's hormones or pesticides, but girls are beginning to menstruate earlier and boys, their testicles are descending actually later. It's actually headed in the wrong direction.

36:51So let's move to solutions. One, I think we need to red shirt. And by the way, I'm parroting my Yoda on this, Richard Reeves, who's the president of the American Institute on Boys and Men. We need to redshirt boys. We need to start them at six and girls at five. They're just less mature. Two, more vocational programming. Bring back wood, metal shop. More freshman seats at universities. If you have an endowment greater than a billion dollars and you're not growing your freshman seats faster than population growth, you should lose your tax-free status because you're not a public servant. You're a fucking Chanel bag.

37:21I mean, you've decided that you're basically in the luxury business. I think we need national service. I think men need to find their fraternity. The thing you also mentioned, which is that if you were to reverse engineer to where boys come off the tracks, it's exactly what you reference. It's when they lose a male role model. We have the second most single parent homes. Dan Quayle was right. Kids are better with two parents. Where he was wrong is it doesn't matter if it's two women or two men, but if it's a boy, he absolutely needs male role models. What's interesting is that in single-parent homes, girls have similar outcomes, similar outcomes of college attendance, similar income, similar rates of depression, self-harm.

38:03It doesn't appear to really damage girls when they lose a dual-parent household. With boys, they come off the tracks. What it ends up, the studies show, is that while boys are physically stronger, they're mentally and emotionally much weaker. So what's the advice to moms who are 93 % of single-parent households? And let me be clear. I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died as secretary, lied of my life. But my mom immediately got men in my life. The neighbor down the hall went out of her way to introduce me to him, got the sense he was an empathetic good guy, used to take me horseback riding on weekends.

38:44I had a stock. I walked into a stock beverage when I was 13. I wasn't very popular. I wasn't very good at school. I was into stocks. My mom's boyfriend gave me 200 bucks, said, if you don't go buy stocks by Monday, I want the 200 bucks back. I went down. Cy Saro, when I was 13, used to take two dimes to the phone booth at Emerson Junior High School, call him. I own Columbia Pictures, and he would teach me about the markets. Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a hit. That's why the stock was up 50 cents a day. I'd go by Dean Winter Reynolds on Westwood and Wilshire and hang out with him for an hour.

39:17literally ed 45 years later he and i text each other oh wow male role models if you're a single mom you have to get men involved in your son's life and also just for men i've been thinking a lot about masculinity and what it means to be a man you take care of yourself you're fit you're smart you're kind you take care of your immediate family you take care you start showing love and concern and empathy for your community and your neighbors. But the ultimate expression, in my view, of masculinity is when you take an active role and you become irrationally passionate about the well-being of a kid that isn't yours.

39:56Or put another way, if we want better men, we need to be better men. And unfortunately, because of the Catholic Church and because of Michael Jackson, if a man who has love and care to give wants to get involved in a young man's life, there's suspicion. Oh no, there's something wrong with him. No, there's not. There's a ton of men out there that for whatever reason, maybe they have their own kids, maybe they don't, who have empathy and concern to give. And here's the thing. You don't have to be a baller. You don't have to be a senator. You just have to be a man trying to live a virtuous life. You know what the most important thing to being a male role model is?

40:32Just being there, just spending time with the kid, giving him, there are just certain things a boy is not going to talk to his mom about. So it's a variety of social programs, taxation, vocational programming, redshirting boys, national service, more freshman seats. And we as men, Ed, there are four to one applications for big sisters in the U.S. as for big brothers. Men have to get involved in boys' lives. That's the bottom line. And we're finally having a productive conversation because whenever I think it really bottomed out about two or three years ago, you started talking about the problems with boys.

41:11There was a gag reflex of, oh, that means you don't like women. Empathy is not a zero sum game. Civil rights did not hurt white people. Heteronormative marriage did not hurt gay marriage. Recognizing the problems that young men are facing does not mean you're anti-women. And who wants more economically and emotionally viable men? Women. How many times have we heard from people, I know all these great young women, high character, attractive, professionally on the ball, and they can't find a man? No, they can find a man. They just can't find a man. They just can't find a man they want to date. We are creating millions of lonely, economically, and emotionally unviable men.

41:53And it is something we really need to be focused on. And we need to stop this nonsense that somehow that empathy is in any way anti-women or massages. No, it's not. Women are making unbelievable progress. We should do nothing to get in the way of that. It's fantastic. But we need to acknowledge something is not right in Houston right now. We need programs, and we need attention, and we need more men to get involved in the lives of boys. So much you just said is true. My show, it's funny, when it started, first three or four years was about 80 % male. and now it's about 70 % female. And it's the number one message I get as well is moms concerned about their sons, which is why I covered the topic today because you guys all know I'm not a big guy on this gender, that gender.

42:40I'm a big human person. Having said that, a couple of things he said, I want to tell you, I was watching on the flight back last night, I was watching a biography on Mr. Rogers. And same thing he said, just a guy who loved kids as far as I know, right? And all the flack and criticism, just a man who lived a virtuous life who loved kids. We have to not stigmatize these men that would like to get involved in the lives of young men and help them. And the other thing, everybody, you know, ask yourself if you have a son and he doesn't have a male figure, what male figure get in his life? And the other thing to look at that he said that I just want to unpack.

43:12The worst combo that I see is a little boy who does not have a male figure who is also not physically fit. 100%. Look at their body. That young man doesn't have a man in his life. Ladies, that you've got a son. and you're allowing him to get unfit physically, that is a lethal combination for where that young boy is going in his life. At least get him physically fit and active and working out and playing a sport and on a good nutrition program. It's a deadly combination for your young boy if he's got both those things against him. Okay. I want to ask about you. I don't have too much more time, and I love talking with you.

43:48So what do you do to recharge? I mean, you're so reflexively, you know, I don't want to feel like I'm stroking you on every question, but like you're reflexively very smart on every question and you bring an energy and an intensity to everything I've ever seen you do. Is there something you do for your own personal energy routine wise as a habit, any ritual or routine that you do to recharge? It's more like me asking you a question the audience gets to listen to because we're both involved in the same space. And I'm always impressed with you just always seem to be on when you need to be on. you're being okay first off you're being generous i f**k up a lot i make a lot of professional mistakes be clear i've had several companies fail i've had failed relationships i've been married and divorced i've had a lot of self-inflicted wounds that were unnecessary but okay so how do i try to recharge what you said about fitness just resonated and i can tell you're obviously very physically fit i've been working out four times a week for 40 years and i coach a lot of young men and the first thing i do is i say unlock your phone i'm not going to be judgmental.

44:51I'm like, I watch porn. That's okay. I'm not going to be, I'm on TikTok too much. I have the same addictions you do. And I find eight hours in their phone. And I say, okay, between Coinbase, Robinhood, Twitter, porn, we're going to take eight hours, super easy to find. And we're going to reallocate that finite human capital. You want to lean into your advantage. When you're young, you have capital, it's just time. It's not money. And the way you do it is if you reallocate that capital of time, human capital, you'll eventually hopefully get financial capital. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to start working out three to four times a week.

45:22I think any man under the age of 30 should be able to walk into pretty much any room and know that if it got real, he could kill and eat everybody or outrun them. And there is nothing wrong with that. You're going to look back on the incredible male form of that double twitch muscle, that bone structure, and this unbelievably wonderful substance called testosterone that gets poured over it. And you're going to think, why the wasn't I a monster? And if you were, and if you were in good shape, it's going to give you confidence. It's going to increase your selection set of mating. You're going to be much less to be depressed.

45:55There's studies showing that exercise is just as effective as SSRIs in many cases of mild depression. You're going to, you're, you know, the reason why women and employers are attracted to fit people is because not necessarily because like big biceps make you more attractive, but it says something about you. It says you have discipline. It says you can commit to something. It says you like yourself, which probably means you'd be a pretty good employee and a pretty good father. And instead, we've decided, because there's a lot of money in diabetes, because there's a lot of money in obesity, let's say that obese people are finding their truth.

46:32And I want to be clear, we should have empathy for people who struggle with weight. We should try and get rid of food deserts. We should have healthy eating funding or funding that makes sure that people at least have the opportunity to eat healthfully. But for God's sake, stop romanticizing obesity. 88 % of the people who died in COVID had at least one comorbidity and 82 % of them had two. And the vast majority of them were related to obesity. So I love those old Kennedy videos where he said, we're going to build the strongest young generation. And it's also amazing for women. I think it's as important.

47:12Is that true? I think it's actually more important for men, but I think fitness among young women is amazing. but the industrial fitness complex took women to a weird place. I used to do CrossFit. Now I can't, it's too intense for me. But one of the things I loved about it was we celebrated strength for women. These firefighters, mostly gay would come in, these female firefighters, and they had big thighs and huge powerful asses. And we celebrated that strength. We're like, just strength is awesome. You don't need to be real thin and go get your boobs done to conform to this Equinox version of what's aesthetically pleasing.

47:49We're going to celebrate just raw strength. And I absolutely love that. And I think that fitness in your youth is hugely important. If you look at the Fortune 500 CEOs, the one thing that 480 of them do is not that they went to an Ivy League school, not even that they're white males. It's that they work out almost every day. This is where The first place we're going to reallocate your precious human capital. The second is we're going to start making a little bit of money. I don't care if it's an Uber driver, stocking shelves at CVS. The best way to make a lot of money is to start by making a little and you get a taste for the flesh of money.

48:27You start thinking about it and you're out in the public. And then the third thing we're going to do is we're going to surround ourselves three or four times a week, church, temple, nonprofit, riding club, sports league, whatever it is, you are going to put yourself in the company of strangers such that you develop those skills and you increase the likelihood you're going to find mentors, friends, and mates. Fitness, making a little bit of money and putting yourself in the company of strangers, working in the agency of something bigger than yourself. But for me, I agree with you. It starts with fitness.

49:01It is my antidepressant. When I'm on the road and I don't get to work out in two or three days, I can feel myself getting angry. I can hear myself role-playing, being hard on myself. I feel less confident. I think it is hugely important. And I think even more so for men, because we are meant to be protectors and feeling strong. Who breaks up a fight at a bar? I'll tell you who, a big, ridiculously buff guy who's confident, who's like, I don't have a little dick. I'm big. I'm strong. I don't need to get in fights. I break up fights. I bring peace. I bring a sense of calm and security. you want to be that guy.

49:41And I think a lot of that starts with fitness.

50:09You run hot. You're like me. You run pretty hot. You're intense. I am as well. I've done a lot of work on this over the year. Like my, my default emotion is politely called intensity and more truthfully called probably particularly when I was younger anger, a little bit, a lot of that. And I know a lot of people like you and I that have had exits or that are at the Beverly Hills hotel or that have had their success, which is where Scott's, I'm interviewing him from today. But what I mean by this is they've had success, but lack fulfillment and don't live. I mean, if the quality of your life is truly the quality of your emotions, I think poverty makes it very difficult to live in positive emotions because you're it's, there's a scarcity going on.

51:00There's a fear. There's a lack of being able to provide. We both would agree with that. But I don't see necessarily a dramatic correlation between my friends with a lot of abundance and emotional well-being. And I'm wondering if you see that as well, and if in your own life, beyond working out, beyond the things you've described, have you struggled with your emotional regulation? Is there things you do to take an inventory of your emotions? Do you just pay attention to it? Do you recommend people pay attention to it? If we become too sensitive to those things in our culture, just what are your thoughts about fulfillment and especially just, you know, living in the emotions most would seek the desire to have?

51:39So, and I've been open about this. I struggle with anger and depression. I have blessings the size of Saturn and I have a mood the size of a small rock. I'm just, I had sort of this revelatory moment about eight, nine years ago. I call my sister every Sunday or every other Sunday. And I was complaining and complaining. And she just stopped me. And she said, Scott, you have less right to be pissed off and angry than anyone I know. She's like, look at your life. Look at your life. I was on the phone yesterday with a friend of mine. And I was complaining about the room I got at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

52:16It's not as nice as the one they usually give me. But then they upgraded me. And that was like the worst thing happening in my day. And he was talking about what ketamine therapy he should have delivered to his house or should you go to some amazing resort in Montecito? I'm like, these are our biggest problems. We're going to get ketamine therapy. And I didn't get the room I wanted at the Beverly Hills Hotel. And as humans, we're competitive and we're meant to focus on the threats and we're meant to focus on the things that aren't protective as a survival and an innovation, a competition to make the species better.

52:43The problem is it can become out of control. And if you're like me, you focus on the 1 % that's not right with your life. I can feel myself going dark. I mean, going to a depressed, angry place. And I have a bit of a, you know, I would say if at some point you recognize your mood does not fit to your blessings, some of that can be motivational. I try and turn my anger into being raw and authentic. I try to take advantage of some of those embers in terms of burning brighter in terms of my content, but it starts to turn on me. When I get upset, I get angry at something, angry at myself. I don't forgive myself.

53:18I'm very hard on myself. And it's like acid running through my, my veins. And then it takes a toll and I got dark and depressed for two or three days. Don't want to talk to anybody become just totally withdrawn. And when I recognize that I'm going dark, I do a few things and I call it scafa S C A F A. The first is the first is S I sweat. I'm not feeling good. I sweat. It's like a reset button on a computer for me. I sweat. The C is clean. I try and cut out trans fats. I try to eat at homes, reduce the salt, the sugar, just eat well. The A is for abstinence. And what I mean by abstinence is I love alcohol.

53:59I love THC. I just take those things out of my life for a little while. Whatever's going on in my brain, I need to give the pleasure receptors a break. And I don't do alcohol or marijuana for a while. uh the the f is family i find that if i'm around my boys they're so wonderful and at the same time so difficult it takes me out of my head because i have to focus on their which is really helpful for an angry depressed person who becomes mildly narcissistic focusing on what they don't like about their life and how they failed themselves and everybody else and goes to a weird place my kids take me out of that and the final a is for affection being around my dogs a lot telling my kids, I'll tell my boys, I'm not feeling great.

54:43And what they'll do is, um, when we sit down on the couch, they'll throw their legs over mine. That's, you know, they're not willing to like hug and kiss me anymore. Cause you know, they're at that age where like dad, no, I'm not going to hug and kiss you in case somebody sees us, but I'll, they'll do stuff like they'll hang out with me. They'll give me a hug. They'll throw my legs out over mine. And that helps take me out. But I'm, I struggle with it. I don't, I still am. I still look at my life. I still look at how angry I am and how cynical I am about the world. And I'm like, and that gets me even more angry at myself.

55:16And then just a gratitude practice talking about on Saturday, I went to some friends, 60th birthday that I've known. I saw guys I've been friends with for 40 years. I met at UCLA in 1982. And all of us get together. A dozen of us get together. It feels like every year and seeing their kids, seeing our blessings, seeing our prosperity, seeing how smart we were to be born in America, best decision I ever made. You just can't help if you have any sense of perspective, feeling really good. And I try to think about that a lot because it helps me. But this is something I struggle with every day. And the fear is, and I'll wrap up here, the fear is you get to the end of your life.

55:58I think about death a lot. It's actually quite liberating for me. I'm a raging atheist. And you think, okay, a life of incredible prosperity, blessings, people that love me, people I loved unconditionally, but I never allowed myself to be happy, never was in the moment. That's the biggest risk I have is that I get to the end and think, Jesus Christ, look at all this. And I still really didn't absorb how blessed I was, or I was never really there for it because I was in the past because I struggled from depression. I was in the future because like you, I'm successful and successful people are in the future a lot.

56:33They're thinking about what they need to do next and they're not listening to their kids. They're not engaging with their spouse. I think about this a lot. Do I have the answer? No. Do I still struggle? Yes, but I'm cognizant of it. And I tried to develop a framework early for identifying when I'm angry and depressed and what practice physical, mental, emotional, what people I need to have around me to try and get out of it. Because it is, Ed, I know you're going to agree with this. Can you get over how fast life is going? I mean, it's flying by. And so when I'm at the end, I at least want to know that mostly I squeezed the out of this lemon called life.

57:13It's going by too fast. And half of that squeeze is just being really grateful and enjoying your blessings. When you were just talking, I went, that's why I like this guy so much. I'm so attracted to him. I, uh, by the way, I'm a devout Christian and you're an atheist. and we both have reached the same conclusions about something. I worry my biggest, I think about death every day. And my biggest concern, I said this this weekend, I've said this many times from stage, is that I'm going to get out of this life having not really enjoyed myself very much. And I stick with it as well. I'm still working on it.

57:44It's still, I think what I like about you is your vulnerability, your transparency, your authenticity. I also just love to surround myself with self-aware people, even if they're aware of their frailties and their weaknesses. And their challenges. And I just think that's magnetic and attractive from you. I really, really enjoyed today. I got one more question for you. I really enjoyed today. Like really, really, this is kind of funny, but I want to know, do you still think Zuckerberg is Putin's bitch?

58:16I think that under the auspices of free speech, under the auspices of shareholder value, 24 % of kids 13 to 17 say they're addicted to Instagram or social psychologists say their use of Instagram qualifies as an addiction. Can you name anything that teens have a 24 % addiction rate to? I mean, the thing we're going to regret the most, we're going to look back on the era of big tech and say, did they, did they make our discourse more coarse? Did we weaponize, did they weaponized elections? Did they income inequality? Yes, yes, yes. But the thing we're really going to regret, Ed, is we're going to think, how did we let this happen to our kids?

59:01And so I think Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg have done more damage to American youth while making more money than arguably anyone in history. And during that time, during that addiction, over the last two or three years, when all those studies were coming up, Metastock is up 90%. So unfortunately, there's a lot of money in addiction. The highest margin products in the world, whether it's alcohol or tobacco products, have a deeply addictive component to them. The difference with social is we've never allowed that type of addictive product to penetrate our youth just as their brain is getting hardwired.

59:35So what do you have with a 13 or a 14-year-old boy or girl who are just going through puberty and their brain is literally getting set for the rest of their life? We're giving them a massive dopa bag called a smartphone and we're teaching them to be addicts. We are setting up a generation of millions of young people who will not be able to function without a constant dope ahead. And they're not just going to find it from social media. They're going to start finding it from other places. So what, in addition to the addiction, I think what we've let happen with social is they will cash anybody's check, including a troll farm in Albania that decides to sow polarization, so discourse misinformation up until an election and i think that these individuals have been weaponized by bad actors whether it's the ccp i think the tiktok should be banned unless it divests to u.s interests i think meta should get huge fines when it comes out that the gru or the ccp are manipulating their platform to sow division and chaos so is he putin's bitch i don't know he He is a vehicle for addiction for teens, and he has purposely delayed and obfuscated obvious evidence that our children, our children are becoming addicted.

1:00:52There is no reason anyone under the age of 16 should have a smartphone or be on any social media. And they say, well, Scott, you're a parent. It's up to you. No, I'm not. I can't. Anyone who says that it's about parenting doesn't have kids because there's something even worse. and my colleague Adam Alter and Jonathan Haidt have done fantastic work on this. There's a cohort effect where if your kid is not on Snap or Instagram, he or she is even more depressed because everyone else is on it and they are isolated. They are ostracized. So here's the deal. We have to get the Kids Online Safety Act or COPA.

1:01:28It's crazy we're letting this happen to our kids. We put a casino, an IMAX, a video game, a constant dopa bag in their pocket. So Mark Zuckerberg has done more harm to children while making more money than any person in history. That's a compelling answer, brother. Compelling answer. Yeah, you and I use Instagram. Oh, I'm addicted. Do as I say, not as I do it. And we're promoting this show today on Instagram, probably. But I am with you 100 % as it relates to our children. My gosh, that 16-year-old part, for sure, I agree with. Wow, what a great answer. Today was awesome. Thank you, Ed. And I enjoyed the conversation.

1:02:11I'd love to have you on. You got something else going on. Come on, please. And we'll do it in person. We'll do it in LA when we're in the studio next time. But thank you for today so much, Scott. Thank you, Ed. And thanks for your good work. And congrats on all your success. Yeah, likewise, my friend. Hey, guys, the book that he's got out now, The Algebra of Wealth, go grab it. He's got a bunch of great books. the algebra of what's the other the algebra of I love that book the algebra of happiness happiness so good so good you guys all right everybody god bless you share today's show I know you will max out this is the Ed Myland Show