The Canceling of the American Mind — with Greg Lukianoff

26:57And the first thing I say is if you think there's a nonzero probability, something I say is going to trigger you, I curse. I have certain unconscious biases I'm still working on. But if you think something's really going to emotionally trigger you, you should call your parents and tell them to come get you because you're not ready for college. So there's a certain expectation that I'm going to be a little bit out there. And no one ever has, I've never gotten run over by this. I have some colleagues who are much more thoughtful and considerate than me, 99.9 % of the time. and then they make an error.

27:33They're inarticulate around something and it's shocking because they're known as these nice, benign people and then they get taken out and shot because it's almost like those of us who are a little bit more aggressive and provocative regularly are not subject to the same scrutiny as someone who makes one false move. And then the second observation I would make, and this is identity politics, but I'm going to do it anyways, The people I have observed in class who get really upset, I mean, physically upset, they're not faking it. It tend to be women tend to be white women. Upper class white women.

28:14Yes. What's the data there? The data on women, particularly white women, and particularly upper class white women being more free speech skeptical is just very apparent. And that's one of those things that, you know, it makes me a little uncomfortable to say it, but it's a consistent finding. And it's something that we found among the professorate, among students as well. And of course, I think the free speech skepticism comes from a comes from a good place. But so does all of censorship, you know, so I don't think that that's a strange observation. The observation that the professors who start out more sympathetic tend to be more vulnerable definitely accords with my professional experience, that it certainly seems that way.

29:04But then there's also a category of sort of outspoken conservative or outspoken, you know, iconoclastic professors that I've definitely seen get targeted quite aggressively over the years. So in some ways, I will say that some of your observations come a little bit from luck because like you get one student or one administrator who decides I'm getting Scott Galloway and the whole dynamic changes. We'll be right back after a quick break.

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31:12What are your thoughts on how the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn handled that situation and generally assess their response, Congress's or the Congressional Committee's viewpoint on this? And this is a difficult one. And what is the line between free speech and hate speech from people in masks that creates an environment that's unhealthy for the community? Your thoughts? Now, there have been critics who have been really critical of those professors when they went to the anti-Semitism hearing in December of 2023. There have been people who have been primarily critical of the fact that when asked if calling for genocide was protected or not on their campus, they said it depends on context.

32:02Now, here's the truth. It does depend on context. And First Amendment law, if you're if you're saying something and particularly in academically, if you're saying something theoretically, if you're saying something in the course of a philosophical discussion, that is different than being like, I'm going to kill you. So context is right. But the reason why I nonetheless have zero sympathy, actually, to be fair, I have sympathy for the president of MIT because MIT has not been the best, but it sure as hell has not been the worst. um penn and harvard claudine gay i had no sympathy for them at all because the reason why i have no sympathy for them is they'd been utterly terrible on freedom of speech prior to that point um and definitely your critics including people like barry weiss have a good point that saying these people who claim to be exquisitely sensitive uh about fat phobia you know is the example that she usually uses um were suddenly not caring if someone said something that sounded an awful lot Like you, your country should be wiped off the map.

33:02So what is the line? The line, as far as a fire is concerned, and we think to a large degree, the law is, is something that actually crosses the line into anti-Semitic or racial or sexual harassment. And that's not as simple as just saying something offensive. Actually, it can't just be saying something offensive, which, by the way, I think is absolutely the right rule. I think the situation for free speech would be even worse than it currently is if we didn't have that bedrock principle, which is called in the law. It has to be a pattern of discriminatory behavior directed at somebody for it to be harassment.

33:37But a lot of what we saw on campus after October 7th, you don't even have to get to that question. A lot of what we saw was, you know, violent attempts to intimidate actual threats, in some cases, physical assault, taking over buildings, all of these things that are just not protected, nor should they be. And particularly, this is something that I just did a TED talk. And the thing that I and I probably angered some people by opening up with this example, but I want to be really clear here. There was a speech, for example, at Berkeley. There was an Israeli Defense Force speaker there and students organized to.

34:13And it's nice to have this actually like in a like in a screenshot of a tweet of a of a text message to everybody. Shut it down. And 200 students stormed where the guy was supposed to speak, you know, broke down a door, broke broke down a window and chased chased the guy off. And it's and I always have to explain, OK, that's mob censorship. Like that is an attempt by people to say, 200 people to say to anybody who would want to hear this person, you're not allowed to hear this person because I don't approve of them. That's not OK. That's the kind of thing that, in my opinion, should get you kicked out of a university because it means you're not actually understanding the point of a university.

34:52And one of the reasons why this angered some people is because I also tend to point out that from October 7th on, all but about three and the two worst years for deplatforming involving violence and involving and involving shout downs, as they're called, all but three were pro-Palestinian activists. So, like, it was one of these things. We're spending plenty of time defending the free speech rights of pro-Palestinian students, pro-Palestinian professors. But nonetheless, we were also seeing these same students who expected to be protected by freedom of speech showing no respect whatsoever for the free speech of others.

35:28So a lot of these issues are actually not that hard. The hardest issue you get into is essentially if it's not a threat, if it's not blocking someone from getting from point A to point B, it's just really, really offensive. At what point does that actually become anti-Semitic or racial or ethnic harassment? And the answer is essentially that Davis test that we always refer to at FIRE, which is, is it severe, persistent, and pervasive such that it causes a reasonable person to be denied effectively in education? So that's a high standard, but it should be if you're dealing with something that has an offense aspect in it.

36:09But again, for a lot of these situations, you didn't even have to get to that analysis because what the students were doing wasn't protected in the first place. So I'm asking us to learn not to make a statement, but I struggle with, I feel like anonymity has been conflated with free speech to our detriment. That some of the really vile things you see online, you know, I understand how important it is for individuals to have First Amendment and free speech rights, but I don't think that applies to bots. And I think that an understandable protection for anonymity has morphed into a total lack of accountability and a real coarsening of our discourse online.

36:48And I think it extends into letting government agencies wear masks and things like that. But I'm curious, I'd love to just get your thoughts on the fulcrum between the importance of people having the right to say things anonymously because what they're saying could trigger danger or self-harm or harm for them. And at the same time, how this reverence for anonymity may have gone too far and resulted in a lack of accountability and some really ugly shit spreading online. Your thoughts, Greg? Well, in terms of First Amendment law, anonymous speech is protected, but I don't think that's sufficient enough of an answer.

37:24And I tend to think of the justification for anonymity as like a seesaw. that essentially if we lived in a free and enlightened society in which people welcomed dissent and welcome disagreement and there was no imaginable idea that you'd be punished for it then the justification for anonymity would kind of fall on a ring hollow to people they'd be like who cares but we don't live in that world and we live less in that world than we used to because even I'd say 10 years ago before 12 years ago before cancel culture, the idea of saying something that was your genuinely held opinion had a much lower likelihood of ruining your career.

38:07Add to it the possibility of being actually punished in some way. Now that certainly applies to now to a much larger degree than I ever thought I'd see to say a lot of countries in Western Europe at this point, a lot of countries in the Anglosphere. I mean, you know, by different estimates, they're arresting something like 30 people a day for offense speech in Britain. I've heard different accounts, but generally they go between 7 and 40 people being arrested a day for that. Germany, you know, like that will brag about the fact that they did morning raid. They did this on 60 Minutes as well, brag about doing morning raids on someone who called a politician a penis.

38:46Under that situation, the justification for having an out-of-a-speech goes way up. Can it and is it abused? Absolutely. But, you know, I think, actually, I'm going to quote Milton Friedman here, but it's just a really good quote. Something isn't a right unless it can be abused. I like that. What about, so Section 230, the idea that these nascent platforms aren't subject to the same kind of libel, slander, disparagement laws that traditional media platforms. What are your thoughts on that? I think we toy with Section 30 to our great peril. I think that it's, you know, like democracy, it's the worst of any system except all the others.

39:33Now, to be clear, there might be some other system that I haven't thought of that could be better. But when it comes to things, But I do find it particularly almost amusing that conservatives are going after 230 or were going after 230 with such gusto. Because if you actually, even let's just take it to the defamation protections that 230 gives to ISPs, to Internet service providers. Um, if suddenly that were to vanish, it would lead to internet service providers censoring a lot more, like a lot, lot more, because they can be held liable for, for, for liable, for defamation. And I think that given, um, the biases in a lot of social media companies, um, that would wildly disproportionately affect what conservatives say.

40:23So I think that 230 is probably, I think that overall we benefit so much from 230. Of course, it's going to have downsides, but I'm more afraid of monkeying with it. But you don't see an issue that traditional media platforms, which are struggling to stay viable and raise the funds to do fact-checking and put out, I don't want to say the truth, but a greater attempt to do the good work of journalism and fact-check and do their research. You don't see that a problem with holding traditional media to an entirely different standard, a higher standard than these online platforms? Yeah, and that's generally the way they're held.

41:02Essentially, traditional media that's responsible for the content that they produce, I think it makes more sense to hold them liable for not doing the sufficient fact checking for defamation as opposed to something that hosts everything. I mean, something that hosts the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and YouTube and everything else under the sun, you know, is something that's quite distinct than just, you know, just the New York Times by itself. Do you think there's opportunity for nuance or gray area? And I'll propose a solution or what I think we should think about. I think about 230 a lot.

41:35The idea that people can break through and say things and post something and that a company that creates a lot of economic value, lets a lot of interesting opinions, sometimes the conspiracy view ends up being actually more true than you think. There's been some just wonderful things about these platforms and the ability for viewpoints and consumers or content producers to kind of go direct to consumer and kind of have at it. At the same time, I worry that the protection is not consistent in the sense that, well, let me propose a solution. So if my co-host on one of my podcasts, Raging Moderates, and she's kind of the sole Democrat on this show, which is actually the most watched show on cable news called The Five, with someone got upset that she called out Ken Paxson or something and mocked up a picture of her with her previous boyfriend and has, you know, has gone into this tried and true misogynistic, slut-shaming, misinformation, having an affair from her first husband, hasn't been married to, I mean, just total nonsense, right?

42:43And the algorithm on Twitter loves that because it creates a lot of comments, a lot of engagement, people weighing in, conspiracy theorists, and also people protecting her, creates more Nissan ads because, and the algorithm itself from Twitter is trained to elevate that content and give it broader and further reach than it would organically because it creates Nissan ads. In other words, there's an economic incentive to spread this information. Do you think there's a solution or some gray area where maybe we say, okay, you're a bulletin board and you can't be responsible. It's unrealistic suppression of speech, economic impairment, if you were responsible for policing everything someone pins up on the board.

43:25But if you as a social media company decide to elevate algorithmically content and give it more spread than it might organically, at that point, are you really different than an editor at CNBC or MSNBC or at Fox who's subject to a different set of standards? Shouldn't they be subject to the same standards if they make the conscious decision to algorithmically elevate content? I'm always worried about the distortative impact of government, also regulation sometimes, and liability. um and so i'm very hesitant to change anything um without uh and my job is to make the argument for you know err on the side of free speech as much as possible and err on the side of as little um as few things being uh banned and as few things being government regulated as possible um so my fear uh is that essentially if you started having government entanglement with algorithmic choices um you know you really got to decide one you know which government do you trust do you trust biden to do that do you trust trump to do that um but also particularly when it's a liability um standpoint uh how distortative that actually can be to what gets reported in the first place because this is in a sense kind of like why uh everybody sues for libel in britain um it's very that they still even though they're um even though they've made slight improvements around the edges it's still much easier to find people guilty of uh committing libel um in britain than it is the united states we actually have a shield um uh for the country basically saying for you know providing some modicum of protection for people in the U.S.

45:21from libel tourism that takes place in the U.K. So, you know, I'm always going to be fairly skeptical of that kind of stuff, but it's also my societal role to be skeptical of that kind of stuff. We'll be right back.

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48:16We're back with more from Greg Lukianoff. So I want to throw kind of the most difficult stuff at you and get your thoughts.

48:27So if I were Putin and I had lost a million men to a war and spending, you know,$70 to$100 billion a year on a losing war, and at some point, if this war continued to wreak the kind of economic and human damage, if it were to continue to do that, at some point, I might find myself falling out of a window. So I think he would be stupid not to weaponize and spin up troll farms in Albania and then create a list of the 10 ,000 most influential people online who are pro-Ukraine and start attacking their reputation with millions of bots in a very thoughtful way. Is he already doing that, though? Well, yeah, I think he is.

49:10And that's my question. And that is, do bots have First Amendment rights? And do these platforms have some sort of obligation, which I think would only be registered or adhered to through some sort of regulation, to protect us against bad actors that might be, quite frankly, raising a generation of military, civic, and nonprofit leaders who don't like America or begin to have their views shaped and ultimately are votes and are military decisions shaped. on outside forces that are taking advantage of the very porous and lightly regulated tech ecosystem and platforms. Your thoughts? The question of whether or not bots have First Amendment rights, of course they don't.

49:52But do bot creators have First Amendment rights? At least when they're in the United States, absolutely, certainly they do. When you're talking about the kind of propaganda, kind of warfare and targeting that is possible in the age of the Internet, in the age of social media, when you've kind of fall down this rabbit hole of how you actually address it without actually devastating, without having huge government encroachment, which will end in bad places as well, or without creating massive unintended consequences. The best way to do this historically has simply to have authorities that people actually trust.

50:30and we have blown giant holes in the only thing that really can protect you from disinformation and misinformation um and you have to start figuring out ways to get authorities that that people essentially trust because one of the ways we could potentially address some of this stuff is by having institutions um pointing out uh what is troll farms and what isn't um but in under the current environment, there's going to be a lot of like, sure, they are. You just don't like what they're saying is going to be the response there. And in a situation where these institutions had better societal trust, it'd be like, oh, my God, you're right.

51:09So you're a First Amendment attorney. What are we not paying attention to in the courts? Have there been any legal decisions that you think are especially important to the future First Amendment or speech or its regulation or lack thereof? What have you seen come down the pike that you think has not gotten enough attention yeah i mean i think it got good attention but i think people haven't thought through all the ramifications of it and this is and this gets to your your point on um anonymity where we may disagree disagree um but the uh the change in the law um to uh to say that you can actually require um verification for kids uh and actually really for anybody to use porn sites in Texas is a case that could really have some serious bad ramifications unless it stays relatively cabined.

52:06Now, I was definitely among the First Amendment people saying, listen, there's a case called New York v. Ginsburg from the late 1960s that says you can require store owners to put the you know, put the nudie mags, you know, on the back shelves and to make sure that that minors don't get them. But then we had decade after decade of the Supreme Court and other courts basically saying, but online that can't possibly apply for all sorts of, and to be clear, very serious reasons. I knew that wouldn't last forever. And that eventually Texas passed a verification regime that was actually more complex than I originally understood, but was first marketed as something where you had to basically show like a driver's license if you want to see porn.

52:55That would also include that they had to have disclaimers saying that, you know, porn is harmful to your mental health and all this kind of stuff, which has compelled speech issues. I think they made some efforts to sort of improve the law, make it clear that there's other ways to verify. Anyway, so that fight was something that I predicted we were going to lose in the Paxin case. Now, here's the question. Are we then going to, with the best of intentions, create an environment where you essentially can't use the internet without identifying yourself in some way? And that scares me because I do actually think that the situation for free speech, even in the so-called free world, is dodgier than it's ever been in my lifetime.

53:38time. And the idea that at this precise moment, we'd also make it harder for people to hide what they're looking at or what they're reading scares me. So our efforts at FIRE are definitely going to be to make sure that that decision, as much as possible, stays cabined to kids' access to adult materials. Do you think the platforms are already doing that? Do the platforms already know exactly what we're doing, saying, and when. But as long as they use it to monetize advertising, it seems to be there's a tolerance for it. I think the cat's already out of the bag. I think they already know everything we do and what we say.

54:15We don't seem that worried about that. But then we have this, do we have this tremendous fidelity for protecting them when it comes to any, I don't know, forward-facing viewpoints that might result in more, I don't know, just more, It seems like we're just protecting them in the wrong areas and not looking at them in others. I apologize for the word salad there, Greg. Do you see any inconsistency? Yeah, no, I definitely get the concern. But I do think that there are tools that people badly underutilize that can actually protect your privacy. Well, they're purposely made complicated to utilize.

54:51If you tried to regulate your kids' content on Meta, I mean, they are not— I would argue they are not readily accessible purposefully. or they're not easily used. Yeah, no, and I definitely ask for help to make, with my kid's stuff. But now we have, you know, we have Signal, you know, for example. We do DuckDuckGo, you know, like that. I have Custodial installed on my kid's phones. Yeah, there are some basic steps you can do to somewhat protect your privacy. And of course, when it comes to private corporations doing bad things, and this is something that I feel like we have an entire generation of young Americans sort of brainwashed to believe that you should be more afraid of corporations than you should be of governments.

55:36And I just think that's absolute nonsense, particularly foreign governments, but also, frankly, the U.S. government. And that corporations, you know, people talk about that evil profit motive. And I'm kind of like, I prefer the profit motive to a lot of the other motives you can have for finding this stuff out. and profit motive often lends itself to, and by the way, we protect our users' privacy in a way that, you know, the Chinese, the CCP, or Russia, or even our own government, it's like, no, we want this information for other reasons. So just so you know, I'm very good at turning this podcast into, it's really just an excuse for me to talk about me.

56:20Steve Bannon suggested that the president, that the administration sue me for some of the things I've said about him. I called him a rapist. And do you feel that the president is in different ways trying to suppress free speech? And if and what laws or what do you think should be done about it? What are your views on it feels to me like free speech has been chilled from the administration? And I'm just curious, curious to get your thoughts on. It sounds like you agree with it. But what can and should be done to push back on that? Well, it's tough because the ways in which it's being chilled, just really quickly, there's been attacks on mainstream media.

57:01People can argue that it's deserved, but that doesn't mean you get to violate the First Amendment. There's attacks on higher education. Again, you can feel like it's deserved, but it doesn't mean you get to violate the First Amendment or existing laws. And then there's the attack on the law firms, which probably is the one that I think gets the least attention, but probably scares me the most. When it comes to the media, for example, like were the group defending Ann Selzer? Ann Selzer is the pollster in Iowa who got the poll really wrong right before the election, having Kamala up by two points in Iowa.

57:35And of course, that was way off. She was like 11 points off. But when it came out, she apologized. She explained how she got it wrong, saying that she was using methodology that was really effective maybe 10 years ago, but has gotten increasingly ineffective. As fewer people have landlines and that kind of stuff, because she used to be considered like the gold standard of pollsters. But she was nonetheless sued by the Trump by Trump himself. Actually, this is before Inauguration Day. For under a Consumer Protection Act in Iowa. and the Consumer Protection Act was really designed for preventing false advertising, like as in in commercial speech saying that, you know, these pills will help you lose 40 pounds a day type things, not getting a poll wrong, which is, you know, good faith reporting.

58:25So we're defending her in that case. Then there's also like the 60 Minutes situation, ABC News. The 60 Minutes one, I think of as particularly bad because it really seemed like the The administration was dangling a proposed merger with Skydance in front of CBS saying, kind of implying we're not going to agree to this unless you play ball, which is good. The university stuff, nobody's been a bigger critic of Harvard, for example, than I've been. They have finished dead last in our campus free speech rankings, one of the best and most data intensive things that FIRE does, or the most data intensive thing that FIRE does.

59:07And Harvard was dead last two years in a row. But we're currently defending Harvard because the letter the administration sent to Harvard was basically saying because you're probably in violation of Title VI, which they may be, and Title VII, which when it comes to admissions probably are, that we essentially have to nationalize Harvard. Like basically the government gets to decide all of the key things about what Harvard would decide on its own, which is not a power the government's been granted. And when it comes to the law firms, I mean, like, that's the one that I wrote on this in my substack, the Eternally Radical Idea, about all of these cases.

59:51And it started with them just going after attorneys who had opposed the Trump administration, even like people like Robert Mueller, and where they had law firms and saying that they would be denied their Secret Service protection—not Secret Service. their security details. Repackage violence. If you're someone who ordered a strike on Suleiman, the head of the Iranian security forces, and you take away a general's security detail, you're putting that person in harm's way, in my view. And get rid of their security clearance, and then also deny them access to federal buildings, which of course include courtrooms.

1:00:28And that's, to me, like some of the most chilling stuff. Now, what can be done about it? The thing that's happening consistently is that Trump is losing in court. And so far, he's mostly been abiding by those rulings. I'm a little bit concerned, given how fast and loose sometimes this administration plays with the rules, that that might not hold up when push really comes to shove. but, you know, fingers crossed. In terms of, like, what else people can do about it, I think it really is a question of what happens in the next, in the midterms, and then, of course, in the presidential election. But it's troubling, but not unexpected.

1:01:09Yeah, shocking, but not surprising. Just as we wrap up here, Greg, a lot of young men listen to this podcast based on some of the many challenges, all young people, but especially, I would argue some young men in our society are facing right now, a lot of them are struggling with their own mental health. And I appreciate how transparent and vulnerable you were at the beginning of the podcast talking about your own struggles. And you had said that cognitive behavioral therapy really helped you. Can you share some thoughts on your struggles with your own anxiety and depression and any advice you might have for young people who are facing their own challenges?

1:01:45Sure. And that's, you know, and it's tough because like, you know, everyone struggles kind of differently. And I really understand people's kind of concern about, well, one, of course, the expense of getting a therapist, but also the fear that given that therapy has to some degree become politicized, that they don't want to end up someone with a therapist who's going to judge them, you know, for in some cases just for being a male or for having, and non-conforming political views. So I get all of that. But I did hear from one friend about their kid who basically said he didn't need therapy because he watches a lot of podcasts.

1:02:29And he's on YouTube a lot getting advice. And it's just not the same thing. Yeah, that's not the fix. Yeah. So there's people out there like Camilo Ortiz, uh ortiz sorry um who is trying to put together a political therapists you know um who or ones who won't judge you you know who won't let their political opinion interfere with their therapy which is amazing that you have to do that but you do unfortunately um and and within so looking for people who are who are recommended that way for cbt there's also some you know some approaches to CBT that actually lend themselves fairly well to even apps, which is, I don't think it's sufficient, but it can help.

1:03:12But here's the thing. It may be simple, but it's not easy because you have to do it several times a day. You have to actually do it when those self-hating voices come up in your head, those catastrophizing voices. Otherwise, your brain will never get in the habit of talking back to those. And you have to do it every time they come up. And you have to do it for pretty like I would say probably you're not really going to see much change for the first six months even. But I remember about nine months in suddenly being like, wait a second, all these things that used to pop up in my head, they're not they don't sound convincing anymore.

1:03:47And it was really dramatic after that. So I definitely believe looking to CBT. I think that, you know, one thing that I do a lot when I'm having a hard time is I go reread Seneca's letters to a young man. I find the really approachable, uh, meditation is very helpful to people, but don't forget things like things. Exercise is really key. And if you're in it, um, there is something there. My favorite book is upward spiral by Alex Korb. I highly recommend, I have like a whole thing. I have a whole, like a, a sub stack, um, on, on this very issue. Cause it's, I get asked it so much and I give kind of all of my advice.

1:04:24And what's that sub stack called or what's that post called? Well, I don't remember what the post is called, but my sub stack is the eternally radical idea. But also, you know, talk to people about it. Talk to friends. When you're in a really bad way, there's a sense that nobody's going to want to hear your whining about it. But that's just not true in most cases because, you know, as hard as it may be to believe sometimes when you're really deep down and dark, there are people out there who love you. Greg Lukianoff is a free speech advocate, First Amendment attorney, president of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, which has probably had more impact on my parenting than any book I have read.

1:05:08And also The Cancelling of the American Mind, his latest book, War on Words, Ten Arguments Against Free Speech and Why They Fail, is out next week. He joins us from Maine. Greg, I wanted to meet you and speak to you for a couple of years because one of my role models, Jonathan Haidt, whenever he talks about you, he speaks about you in such reverence and with such respect. So I was really excited to have this conversation. Very much appreciate your time. Also, very much appreciate what you said at the end about cognitive behavioral therapy. and the takeaway I have and that I hope people take away from this podcast is when you're really down and you think everyone's sick of you and sick of hearing from you and doesn't have time for you, that that's just not true.

1:05:56So anyways, thank you for sharing that, Greg.

1:06:22My father passed away last week, and it's been a rough few days for me, as it is for anybody who loses a parent. Our species, our competitive advantage is our brain. It's so big that we're expelled from the human body prematurely, and our brain is exactly the wrong size. It's big enough to ask very complicated questions, but not big enough to answer them. And death is something our brain still hasn't come to grips with. And that is, especially with a parent, this is someone who is your first protector. And then when you lose that person, the idea that all of a sudden that protector isn't around is devastating.

1:06:58it's a mirror. You see a lot of yourself in this person, and you immediately think about all the different things in your life that developed good and bad with this person, and you have to deal with those and attempt to come to grips with them, which sometimes can be painful. Our brains are used to continuity and patterns. We're used to having that person in our life, and we assume they're going to be around forever, and it's impossible to believe they're not going to be around forever. So the finality of death is just very shocking and very difficult to wrap your head around. The biggest or most profound moments in my life have involved birth and death.

1:07:33The death of my mother, my mother passed away when I was 39 after what was a pretty ugly battle with a smoking-related illness, specifically cancer, breast cancer twice, and then it metastasized on her stomach. And it was just the finality and the harshness of it and the

1:07:56And it's sort of, you know, these things change you. They really, I think for most people, you're sort of never the same. I was much lighter and funnier before that happened. And I think something kind of died in me. But at the same time, I developed a wonderful sense of the finite nature of life. And then when my kids were born, that changed everything for me. I became much more responsible, much more anxious, but started for the first time in my life thinking about other people, which was an enormous unlock. And I'll come back to that. And then the death of my father is a different sort of feeling, not nearly as close to my father as I was to my mother.

1:08:33So my dad, George Thomas Galloway, was born in 1930 in Sydney, Australia, to a woman who was a domestic servant for a wealthy family. He was born out of wedlock. And the deal was that the family found out my grandmother was pregnant and they had a daughter who did not have any children of her own. It was in her 30s, which was considered a tragedy. And they agreed to adopt her child, her unborn baby, and would give her enough money. But the deal was she had to leave. And I think they even gave her some money because they didn't want the biological mother around. And my grandmother agreed. And then my grandmother gave birth to my father in Sydney, Australia.

1:09:11and I don't know the full story, but convinced her boyfriend or the father of the child, which is obviously very upset, to meet her at the docks. And they got on a ship for Scotland. I can't even imagine what the ship route was like from Sydney to Glasgow. And so my father always jokingly said, I could have been a McVicker. It was the McVicker family that built battleships or something. And he says that he's pissed off. He would have much rather staying in Sydney, Australia, been the son of a rich family. Anyways, raised in Depression-era Scotland and World War II Scotland, he says his first memory is watching the Clydesbank Raid, I think it's called, where Henkels and Messerschmitts dropped bombs on munitions factories or shipbuilding factories just outside, I believe, of Glasgow.

1:09:58And he jokes that they were obviously very patriotic. He was nine when the war broke out, 15 when it ended. And that anyone with an accent in Glasgow, him and his 10-year-old buddies would follow around and take notes on them because they assumed they were spies. And then after the war ended, he was 15. But at the age of 17, he lied about his age and went to a recruitment office and wanted to be a pilot for the IRF. And the recruiter said, you're too tall to be a pilot. So he went across the street or somewhere to where they were recruiting for the Royal Navy and joined the Navy at a very young age.

1:10:33and before he knew it was on, I believe it was an aircraft carrier and my father could repair, they do an assessment, a skills assessment test and he disclosed that he could repair things, he repaired motorcycles and that he was a good swimmer. And so the next day he was no joke, in a helicopter, in a wetsuit, in the North Atlantic, practicing what he found out later was pilot rescue. They kind of informed him what he was going to do while he was in the helicopter in a poorly fashioned wetsuit. And they said, okay, this is the deal. You're going to jump out into the water. We're going to throw out 150 pound dummy, not in that order.

1:11:09Then we're going to lower a basket. And your job is to get this 150 pound dummy into a basket as if it was a pilot in the North Atlantic. Oh, and by the way, even with your wetsuit, in about 14 minutes, you're going to die of exposure. So there's some motivation. So my dad jumps into the North Atlantic Atlantic when it was dark out and tries to get this dummy into this basket. And then he said the scariest moment was he got the dummy into the basket, most exhausting thing he's ever done. They pull it up. And he said the current started taking him away from the helicopter. And he was worried they were no longer even going to be able to see him and get him out.

1:11:44And they drop a winch. He connects it and they pull him up. His first week, he got his pay. He put it in a locker at the foot of his cot and the entire locker was stolen. I guess this was sort of something that the freshman recruits were stupid and would put money in their locker thinking it would be secure. So there was a service where he could send money home. So he would send all of his money from the Navy, all of his pay home to his mother. And after two years, he calculated he had enough money to get to America. And he came home to find out that his mother had spent his money on whiskey and cigarettes.

1:12:20And in her defense, she claimed that, what did you expect me to do? I was bored. So my father has always had a very unhealthy relationship with money. I mean, it really scarred him growing up in Depression-era Scotland and I think acts like that. But he did get some money together and got to America and led what could arguably be called the American dream. My favorite story about him first arriving in America was he and my mom met in Canada. They got pregnant. They hated the weather. They bought a newspaper. And there was an article saying that the nicest weather in North America was in San Diego.

1:12:56So they loaded up my seven-month pregnant mom into an Austin mini-metro and drove from Toronto to San Diego. My dad's first job interview was to be a salesman for a candle company. And the head of HR there said, you've got to stay here. She asked him how long he'd been in the country. And he said, just two weeks. And she said, that's incredible. She said, just wait right here. And she went and got her boss and said, you need to meet this guy, Tom Galloway. He's only been in the country for two weeks from Scotland, and he can already speak the language. I love that. Anyways, my dad was aggressive, smart, and charming, and got jobs.

1:13:32And at his peak, we had a home in Laguna Niguel. I was thriving, and they were living what could best be described as an upper-middle-class home. And unfortunately, my dad was not a high-character person. Married and divorced four times, a handsome man with a strong jaw and a Glaswegian accent in 70s California did not only think with his dick, he could listen to it. And my dad rifled through four marriages and four divorces, including his last one where he decided to leave his fourth wife when she had late-stage Parkinson's. So he was never able to really connect with people or ever really develop a sense outside of kind of the survival instinct of investing in other people and other people's in relationships with other people.

1:14:14He was broken that way. And there's just no not acknowledging that. However, what has helped me or some of the learnings here is that what has helped me process this is I love that Dr. Seuss saying, don't cry because it's over, laugh or smile because it happened. I'm thinking about all the things I'm grateful for, being the son of George Galloway, on very basic things. I am tall. I have broad shoulders. I have a good voice. And I have made an exceptional living communicating. None of those things are my fault. I got all of those things from my father. And just because maybe he didn't purposely work to give me those things, there's no reason I can't be grateful for them.

1:14:55I think the ultimate test of evolution in the most basic box you need to check as a man is the following. And that is, are you a better father to your son than your father was to you? And my dad checked that box in indelible ink. His father, I found out later in life, used to physically abuse him. I can't even imagine what that would be like. The person you're supposed to trust most in the world, the person you're supposed to protect you physically abuses you. And he never did that for me. And he did try. After my mom and dad got divorced, he would try and meet me in places and take me to museums.

1:15:31And there's a lot for me to be grateful for. What has helped me in terms of my relationship with my father that has been one of the biggest unlocks in my life, hands down, was I really struggled with my relationship with my father because every time I thought I was being a good son and I remember back to the fact that he kind of left me and my mom and wasn't very kind to us was I would get resentful and angry and kind of cut him out of my life for small periods of time. And then an enormous unlock in my biggest piece of advice, if you've made it this far, is I decided, okay, what kind of son do I want to be?

1:16:08Don't think about the relationship as a transaction and what he owes you or what you owe him or base my behavior on what he did or did not do for me. But just simply put, what kind of son do I want to be? And the reality is I wanted to be a loving, generous son, and I wanted to have a great relationship with my dad. And I had all of the qualities and resources to do that. And from that moment on, I put away the scorecard, I put away the bullshit, and I was a great son. And it was not only wonderful for him, it was wonderful for me. I've loved these last 20 years of just having a great relationship with my father.

1:16:41He's charming, he's funny, he does love me. and it's just been a huge lesson for me in life. You know, not is my partner as good to my parents or is nice and generous to me based on how I should behave around her, but what kind of partner do I want to be? What kind of business person do I want to be? What kind of employer do I want to be? I used to look at every employee as, are they adding as much value as I'm paying them? And if they're not, I'm going to fire them. Now I think, how can I be just an amazing employer? How can I be an amazing friend? How can I be, what kind of investor do I want to be known as?

1:17:17And then live to that standard and put away the scorecard. Don't base your behavior on what you did or didn't get from that person, but on the person you want to be. And that's just been such an enormous unlock for me. So as I sit here and I think about my dad and I try to process his death, you know, I think this guy lived the American dream. He came to America. the biggest gift he gave me was that he took this enormous risk and got to America. And so much of my success, so much of the ability to have a wonderful family is based on something that was not my fault, specifically my dad having the courage and taking the risk to get to America.

1:17:58And I'm very appreciative of that. George Thomas Galloway was 95 when he died. He was very much a man. He was a protector. He wanted to protect his country. He was a provider. He provided for two families. And he was a procreator. He had two kids and four grandkids.

1:18:33His son and his daughter.

1:18:38We'll miss him terribly.

1:19:01This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our assistant producer is Laura Janair. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I love it.

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1:20:06Last lap alert. The Daily Tech Showcase roars into Richmond Raceway. October 14th, and the biggest names in tech are in the driver's seat. Apple, AWS, Meta. It's the main event for education, government, healthcare, manufacturing, and enterprise leaders ready to hit the gas on innovation. Time's running out. Claim one of the last few spots at daily.com slash VA25 before the checkered flag waves. Yo, this is important, man. My favorite Lululemon shorts, the ones you got me back in the day, I think they're called Pace Breakers. The ones with all the pockets. I just got back from vacation and I left them in my hotel room.

1:20:44And dude, I need to replace these shorts. I wear them like three times a week. Could you send me the link to where you got them? Oh, also, my birthday's coming up soon. So anyways, thanks, bro. Talk soon. Looking for your newest go-to's? Lululemon What's New Gear drops on Tuesdays, every Tuesday. Head to lululemon.com to shop what's new gear.