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The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway: Episode Summary
Episode Title
The Economy is Leaving Young Men Behind (A Lost Boys Special)
Overview In this episode, Scott Galloway and co-host Anthony Scaramucci discuss the challenges facing young men in today's economy. They explore themes of financial stress, the impact of wealth inequality, and the cultural obsession with money, while also offering a roadmap for reclaiming human capital.
Key Themes and Discussions
- Economic Disparities and Generational Comparison
- Historical Context: For the first time, young adults (30 and younger) are not achieving the economic success their parents had at the same age.
- Contract with Society: There's a societal expectation that hard work and good character will lead to better outcomes for the next generation, creating feelings of rage and shame when this expectation is unmet.
- Factors Contributing to Young Men's Struggles
- Comparison Culture: Young men are constantly bombarded by social media showcasing the wealth and lifestyles of the ultra-rich, leading to feelings of inadequacy.
- Mental Health: The pressure to succeed financially and socially leads to increased anxiety, depression, and rage among young men.
- The Role of Meritocracy
- Meritocracy's Dark Side: While the belief in meritocracy suggests that anyone can succeed, it leads to a blame culture for those who do not succeed, exacerbating feelings of personal failure.
- Strategies for Young Men to Reclaim Their Human Capital
- Forgiveness and Self-Acceptance: Young men are encouraged to forgive themselves for not meeting societal expectations and to recognize that success is often influenced by factors beyond their control.
- Physical Fitness: Emphasis on the importance of physical fitness for mental well-being and confidence.
- Financial Agency: Encouragement to engage in small financial ventures to gain experience and build confidence (e.g., gig economy jobs).
- Social Engagement: The necessity of developing social skills and building networks to improve career opportunities and personal relationships.
Statistics and Facts
- Living Arrangements: One in three young men are living with their parents until age 25; one in five until 30.
- Job Market Challenges: 50% of young men (ages 18-24) have never asked a woman out in person, indicating a significant drop in social skills and interaction.
Conclusion The episode underscores the multitude of challenges facing young men today—from economic pressures and social expectations to the impact of modern technology on relationships. Galloway and Scaramucci offer a frank dialogue on the necessity of self-forgiveness, effort, and social engagement as pathways for young men to succeed in a rapidly changing economy.
Next Episode Teaser The next episode will feature a discussion with Andrew Yang about the neglect of young men in contemporary society and strategies for addressing these issues.
--- > This summary captures the essence of the episode while providing insights into the discussions and key themes addressed by Scott Galloway and Anthony Scaramucci.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
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1:37Hey everyone, Scott Galloway here. In this episode of the Lost Boys series, Anthony Scaramucci and I explore how today's economy is leaving many young men behind. We get into the financial and professional pressures this generation is facing, the role of wealth inequality, and how the obsession with money is shaping young minds. Plus, some thoughts on how to rebuild and reinvest in your human capital. Let's bust right into it.
2:28You'll hear about what Scott learned from running for student body president in high school and what we can all learn from the insecurity of billionaires. Here's my conversation with Scott Galloway. I'm being joined by my good friend, Professor Scott Galloway. And Scott, the topic today is about money and employment. And the topic, I think, is creating a lot of stress for many people in this generation that you and I are talking about. And I'm taking this generation demographically to be ages, you know, 12 to 30, 12 too young for employment. But really, as you're getting into the 22 to 30 year old zone, there's a tremendous amount of stress that young people are experiencing today.
3:19frankly, versus you and I? I mean, because I think you and I had limited choices. And so you got up in the morning and said, I got to go to work to make money. I did the same thing. But I think the world has changed. How has the world changed, Scott? And why do you think there's so much stress related to the concepts around money and employment? I think it's a combination of a bunch of things, but two or three primary things. And that is, I think if you were to reverse engineer everything that ails us, polarization, anxiety, obesity, depression, extremism, I think you could reverse. And you had to pick one chart and say, this is the epicenter of where all these externalities are bubbling up.
4:04It would be the following. And that is for the first time in our nation's history, first time about this had started. We breached this point six years ago. a 30-year-old man or woman isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. That has never happened before. If you think about a nation as a construct or an agreement between its citizenship and a set of laws and a construct and government and taxes and exchange, you enter into this contract. The contract is the following. And I'm curious if you agree with this. I think you do. That if I play by the rules and I pay taxes and I'm a good person, I got a little to luck.
4:40My kids are going to do better than me. My sons are the only people I've ever wanted to be more successful than me. And so when they're not, when I've played by the rules and my kids are good kids and they're less successful than me than I was at 30, and this has never happened before, it creates rage and shame across the household, the neighborhood, the nation. And I think this election was essentially a referendum on, I don't care about trans rights. I don't care about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine. If my kid's not doing well, I want chaos. I want change. I want whatever represents the most change, whether it's unethical, ethical, insurrectionist, I just don't care.
5:21I'm going to vote for what is the most disruptive thing possible. So there is rage and shame across tens of millions of U.S. households because your kids aren't doing as well as you. That's where it all starts. And then you speedball it with 210 times a day. You're notified on your phone that there are people seemingly everywhere who are on Gulf Streams and partying in St. Barts, and you're not one of them. So when I was a kid, there was also, and also there's this idolatry of money where when I was a kid, my dad's boss had a slightly bigger car, a slightly bigger house, but we all, we were at the same country club in the summer.
6:08We kind of, he got to fly business class. Occasionally my dad got to fly business class. I flew coach with my, with my, my mom, but it was a similar life. Now the life, the 0.1 % lead is a different life entirely. So the importance of money has taken over. You used to have game. My elementary class principal in Orange County had game. He was handsome. He wore aqua velvet. He drove a 240Z. He was cool. He wore a jacket with elbow patches. He had game. No principal has game now because he's not a fucking billionaire. Everything is about money. It appears like everyone has more money than you on your phone.
6:57And the reality is you're not doing as well as your parents were. So your roommates, who you're probably living with, one in three men are living with their parents up until the age of 25, one in five at 30. And they're reminded by their roommates every day, implicitly and explicitly, that they're failing. So there is more rage and shame in America because we continue to transfer wealth from the young to the old, but I'll stop there. I'd love to get you. Well, first of all, I agree with all that. I want you to react to this. And this is apropos to what you're saying. And I'm going to give you the facts that 41-year-old centimillionaire, ready?
7:3541-year-old centimillionaire venture capitalist. I'm meeting him for coffee. And he says, you know, I really feel like I'm underachieving. I said, you feel like you're underachieving? Tell me why. He says, well, J.D. Vance is my age. He's the vice president of the United States. and I feel like I've missed the boat. And I'm capturing for you in a real life story that somebody said to me, what is going on in terms of Instagram comparison, life comparison? Here's a guy that by you, you're in my imagination growing up, I would say he's arguably one of the most successful people in the world. But we've lost our anchor, I guess, is what I'm getting at.
8:19I guess, how do you get the kid to feel better about themselves? Yes, certainly, you know, you and I grew up and we've talked about this. My parents, I guess, set a low bar, if I'm being brutally honest. My dad was a construction worker. So if I did better than him, I was okay in my mind. But how do you get these kids that are comparing themselves to different people to stop doing that and to get the affirmation or the pat on the back that they need to feel good about where they are. There's a philosopher here, Alon de Bouton, a British guy, and he said that the downside of a meritocracy, the downside of believing that anyone can make it, and that's the belief we foment in the U.S., that it's a true meritocracy, that if you're hardworking and you're talented, you can make it.
9:11That's a wonderful thing, except there's a really ugly dark side to that. It means if you don't, it's your fault. It means if you aren't providing, if you haven't been able to attract a mate, if you haven't been able to save a million bucks by the time you're 30, if you can't go to Coachella and get backstage passes, it means it's your fault. You screwed up. And the reality is, and this goes to advice, a lot of my success is not my fault. And what I mean by that, and a lot of kids' failure is not their fault. It took me until I was probably 45 to realize that up until the age of 40 in America, if you really are honest about it, I raised money.
9:55I was starting internet businesses in the 90s. And it never dawned on me that everyone raising tens of millions of dollars had pale skin and outdoor plumbing and was heterosexual, at least claimed to be heterosexual. So that was 30 % of the population. So you had the most robust economy and history, crowding all of the prosperity into one-third of the population. So if you were in that one-third of the population, a lot of your success wasn't your fault. At the same time, what I say to young men is, you do your best. Success is a series of small, disciplined efforts every day. Whatever it might be, working out, making a few calls, dusting off your LinkedIn resume, approaching someone about just a series of small efforts every day, like compound investments.
10:40But if you wake up and you're 28 and shit's hard and you aren't killing it and you haven't bought a meme coin, you don't have millions of dollars, the first thing I tell young men is forgive yourself. As long as you're trying, as long as you're being a good person, a lot of it is out of your control. If I'd been born in 1920, I would have died on a Russian field as a Nazi. I would have thought, oh, I'm fighting for the fatherland. I would have been sent to Russia and I would have died. So a lot of where you end up in life, you have no control over success and failure. Be humble when you're successful.
11:11Forgive yourself when you fail, as long as you're trying every day and you're a good person. So the first thing I tell kids or young men is you got to forgive yourself. You got to get past this notion that you have fucked up and you're a failure. Just stop it. Stop it. The next thing, you know, what I do with young men is my, when I coach young men, is I say, all right, we're going to find eight to 12 hours on your phone. Super easy. Unlock your phone. I'm not going to judge you. And the first thing I tell them to put them at ease is I say, I watch porn. So if I find something on your phone, I'm not going to judge you.
11:42I gamble. I don't gamble in Vegas, but I basically have a gambling bug. I buy. I do covered calls, options, which is just crazy. That's gambling, right? But I do it because I enjoy it. I know it's stupid. I know over the long term I'll lose money, but I like to gamble. So I tell them this to put them at ease. They unlock their phone. And I say, we're going to find eight to 12 hours in your phone. Every young man, every person has an advantage. They just may not know it yet. Most young people have an advantage. And that is it's their human capital. They have more time than money. They have human capital.
12:13And in many ways, that's very, very powerful capital. And I say, we're going to find eight to 12 hours in your phone between TikTok, X, Coinbase, YouTube. We're going to find eight to 12 hours. I'm going to put screen limits on it. And then we're going to take that eight to 12 hours. We're going to do three things. one, we're going to get really strong. We're going to work out three to four times a week, and we're going to get really fit. I want you to be able to walk in any room and believe that if shit got real, you could kill and eat everybody or outrun them. I'm at the age now where it's about outrunning everybody.
12:41And I'm not suggesting you do that, but if you look at men who break up fights at bars, they're generally big, strong men. If you look at men who are patriotic and defend their country and speak well of other people behind their back, they're usually strong men. So we're going to get fit. You're going to feel better about yourself. You're going to look better naked. You're going to be more confident. You're going to be more kind. You're going to be less prone to depression. First thing we're going to do is we're going to start working out three to four times a week. Second thing, you have to start making some money.
13:13In this economy with a smartphone, you can make some money. I don't care if it's a TaskRabbit, a Lyft driver. There are ways to start hustling. Walk into a Panera Bread. You can start at 18 bucks an hour, whatever it is. I'm not saying that's your career. I'm not saying we're not going to keep workshopping something better, but you're going to start. The way to make a lot of money, and I know this is your story, is you start making a little bit of money because you get a taste of the flesh. And it's exciting to be able to take your parents out to dinner. It's exciting to be able to buy that first suit.
13:41It's exciting to be able to go on a date and have the money. And it gets those grieving lands going and you start thinking about the intersection of your human capital and money. And you start making a little bit of money. And then the third thing we're going to do is three to five times a week, we're going to put ourselves in a group setting with strangers working on something bigger than ourselves. Church group, education, writing class, nonprofit, and you are going to approach strangers. You are going to learn how to open. Hey, what are you doing? Do you want to hang out this week? Do you want to go to a ball game?
14:13Hey, do you want to have coffee with me? Hey, can we get together? Can you tell me more about your business? Hey, I heard your family does this. I'd love to learn more about it. Hey, you have to figure out a way to learn how to open because by the time you're 30, if you have not engaged, here's the scariest stat. Men who have not had lived with somebody or have not been married by the time they're 30, a third of them are gonna have a substance abuse problem. You need to be around people. I'm not talking just romantically. Friends, contacts. The last stat here, Google puts out a job requisition or a job opening.
14:51They get 100 resumes literally within like minutes and they take it down. They bring in 20 people. 80 % of the time, the person they give the offer to was recommended and advocated for by someone internally. So if you don't have people inside of companies advocating for you, it's really difficult to get a good job. So what you want to do is you want to get out there, you want to be social, and you want to figure out a way to be so kind, so interesting, so much fun, quite frankly, that people put you in a room of opportunities even when you're not there. One of the keys to success is being really social.
15:28You gotta learn how to be social. You gotta get out of your house three to four times a week. Those are the three things I coach young men around. We're gonna take human capital out of your phone, and we're gonna reinvest it in fitness, a little bit of money, and being social. We'll be right back after a quick break.
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17:25Oh, I mean, I love everything you're saying, which is why I'm sitting here listening rapidly. I guess the thing that you said that really made me laugh is the Aqua Velva. So I was an Aqua Velva person, okay? I could see that. I was not an Allspice person. I still... Not hard to believe. I can still see that plastic and that blue stuff. And by the way, I put it directly on my face to burn the face, Scott. I meant it was working. Yeah, after scraping the face, okay? And so it's just a brutal thing, actually, to be an aqua-velva person. But the thing I want to ask you about, and I want to get your ethos on this, is the forgiveness part.
18:06Because we are, and I want people to know they're listening to this, that we have all felt it. Scott, I wrote about it in my first book. I called it Davos Envy. I walked into a cocktail party. I was 44 years old. I met Mark Zuckerberg. He was 24. I was worth no million dollars, maybe a few. He was worth multiple billion dollars. And I remember the feeling of insecurity or inadequacy and what did I do wrong with my life? And so even me, I'm a happy camper, I've accomplished a lot, but I want people to know, I want to be vulnerable with you for a moment, and I want people to know that we've all felt what you've described.
18:57Have you not felt that? Because I have felt it. Maybe you're more enlightened than me, but I guess the point that I'm making is it's okay to feel it, and it's okay to get through it. And I want you to address, because this is tied back to money, by the way, I want you to address the concept of forgiving yourself. Because you have to do that if you're an entrepreneur. You have to do that if you make a mistake at work. You have to do that if you made a bad decision. People get depressed, Scott, when they think about their past and they think about their decision-making. And they say, oh, I made this bad decision.
19:34You know, I don't walk around with the millstone on my neck of regret, thinking about the mistakes I made joining the White House or the mistakes I made during my period in the White House got me fired. I don't do that. I put that millstone of regret behind me. I have forgiven myself. How do you forgive yourself, Scott? And how do you deal with this vulnerability that I'm describing? We're going to need a bigger boat. I mean, you're talking about, you mentioned, And how old were you when you met Zuckerberg? 44, 42? I was 44. He was 24. We're 20 years apart. And we were, at that point, we were separated by, I don't know.
20:12I think we're separated by several hundred billion now. But at that point, we were only separated by five or 10 billion. Okay. So I'll put myself, I have so many examples to draw on here. And I'll put myself in the same age. I was 42 when I had my first kid. And when my youngest or my oldest came rotating out of my girlfriend, I was expecting bright angelic lights and opera singers and that I'd immediately be in love with this thing. I was so nauseous. I've never felt that bad. I have never felt that bad without throwing up and passing out. The doctors had to turn to me and say, if you go down, we're not doing anything.
20:53We're focused on the kid and its mother because they looked at me and they thought, this guy is not doing very well. And they thought it was because that I was squeamish. And I want to be clear, I think childbirth is disgusting. I want to go back to the 60s where you're smoking a cigarette and bring the baby out. But that wasn't it. I was so incredibly nauseous because I felt the overwhelming emotion I had when my first son was born was not joy. It was shame. and that is I had always found a way to make a lot of money. I'd always had a ton of blessings, privilege, and I was very talented. I'm not a modest person.
21:33I think I'm a monster. I'm talented. I work hard, but I'd also had a lot of privilege. I had made millions of dollars. At some point, I'd been worth tens of millions. But because I always kept doubling down, always thought I could overcome anything, always went all in. And that was the gestalt in 90s and 2000s internet. Are you win it to win it, the stories of Mark Zuckerberg pushing back the offer for 30 billion. So I was all in on my e-commerce startup red envelope. When chapter 11, three weeks before my first kid was born, I walked into that delivery room worth negative$2 million, having had been worth 10 or 20 or 30 million at some point, several points before that.
22:15And all of a sudden I felt not only personal failure, but for the first time, my first emotion as a father was that I was failing my son. That was the first feeling I had. I had failed this kid. My only job on this earth, all of a sudden I had this new sensation I had never felt before. And you can't explain to anybody until you have a kid. My purpose in life is to protect this thing. And the first emotion I have is failure. If I'd just been a little less arrogant, if I'd just been a little smarter, if I'd just been a little less fucking stupid and put a couple million bucks aside, sold some stock, not reinvested, not doubled down, not beaten my chest and said, no, I'm going large, go home or, you know, go big or go large.
23:00And I felt so much shame. And it was just, it was just so emasculating and humiliating. And here's the thing, your ability, I say, forgive yourself like it's this kumbaya thing. It is. It's important just for your own mental well-being. But it's also kind of the key, one of the keys to success. I mean, and I'll, we'll do a contest. I ran for sophomore, junior, and senior class presidents in high school. I lost all three times. And based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president where I went on to, wait for it, lose. I got rejected from the one college I applied to that had a 76 % admissions rate at UCLA.
23:42It was one of the 24 % that didn't get in. And I had to go home to my mom and tell her I got rejected when she said, maybe you should apply to more than one school. I got in on appeal. Eventually, I applied for 28 jobs out of UCLA. I got one offer at Morgan Stanley because they made automatic hires, automatic hires to people who'd rode crew. That's where I got my job. They decided that anyone who rode crew, varsity crew at UCLA, got an automatic offer. Every other job I actually had to interview for, I got rejected. I applied to nine business schools. I got rejected, excuse me, by seven of the nine.
24:14I've started, I've had five businesses fail, including one go chapter 11. My first marriage ended in a divorce. I've had five TV shows. All five were canceled within weeks of launching. I mean, my superpower is the ability, as Winston Churchill said, to move through failure without losing my sense of enthusiasm. And if you don't maintain that ability to mourn and move on, you aren't taking advantage of one of the greatest features about America. And that is in America, we don't embrace failure. That's bullshit. But we tolerate it. I couldn't have had all this failure in Europe and kept raising money.
24:52You know, at some point they would have said, oh, you're uninvestable. But in the U.S., as long as you're a good person, you try hard, occasionally have a win, you'll find people who will back you and come to work with you. Why is that, Scott? Because you and I have both traveled around the world. We know that that's the case in most of these other countries. But why is the ethos about America and entrepreneurship different? I get asked, like, I'm living in London right now. And whenever I speak in the UK, I'd say two-thirds of the time in Q &A, the question is some form of what are the key distinctions between the UK and Europe and the US?
25:26And there's a lot, but I would distill it down to kind of one basic feature, and that is the following. I say to them, you're the people that stayed. My mom got on a steamship about the same time my dad distinctly got on a steamship from Glasgow, her from London. They each had about three or$400 and they crawled across the Atlantic in a steamship over seven or eight days and landed in a place initially in Toronto where there were people with megaphones saying, no jobs here, go home. Enormous risk. And by the way, selfish. My mother did it when her two younger siblings were in an orphanage. Her parents had already passed away.
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26:03selfish, risk-taking. And in the U.S., what you have is a DNA of risk-taking that is unparalleled anywhere in the world, maybe with the exception of China. For every business in the U.S., there are$5 million in venture capital raised, and Europe is$1 million. So there's five times the amount of risk capital available in the U.S. What is the center of risk-taking and innovation even within the U.S.? It's in California. What do those people have in common? They left the East Coast and risk having to eat their niece across the Appalachian Trail or across the Rockies or die of scurvy on their way to the West Coast because they were not only risk takers, they were the riskiest of the risk takers.
26:42And what do you know? The most tectonically valuable companies in history are all on the West Coast. So our DNA of risk taking is just singular. and we people, you can have just a ridiculously fucking crazy idea. And if you can outline a vision and tell a good story and have perseverance and maybe willing to put some of your own capital and work your ass off, you can raise tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in a ridiculously crazy idea. But sometimes those ideas end up being crazy genius. And I'd say other than China, there's nowhere else you can do that. So I think it's a it's a it's a full throated embrace place of risk.
27:27Your thoughts? Well, I agree with that. But before I get to my thoughts, I got to ask one quick follow-up. Why is it so hard for boys then today here if this is the place? And you've aptly described the place. Why is it still so hard? Because a variety of features. Okay, so now we're talking specifically about boys. One, biologically, and they still don't know why, they don't know if it's pesticides or hormones, but boys are maturing later and girls are maturing earlier. Girls are menstruating earlier and earlier. Boys' testicles are descending later and later. It's just a strange phenomena. They haven't figured it out yet.
28:08If you have, how old are your kids, Anthony? I've got them all over the place. As my older kids say, I made my own grandchildren. So I have, I have, I have 32, 29, 24, and then I have a 10 and seven year old at home. So I don't know if you remember this, but my youngest is 14. He had a Halloween party at his whole class over like 22 kids, 11, 11 girls, 11 boys. The boys are dopes. They don't even look you in the eyes. They're, some of them are tiny of the 11 girls, three or four of them could be the junior senator from Pennsylvania. Hello, Mr. Galloway. What a lovely home you have. I love your podcast.
28:52Well, what are you studying? Well, I'm studying, I'm really interested in physics and I'm interning at this clinic at the NHS. And you think, Jesus Christ. I mean, and physically, literally biologically, the prefrontal cortex of an 18-year-old girl is 12 to 18 months more mature than a boy's. So an 18-year-old who's a senior in high school applying to college is competing against a 16-and-a-half-year-old when she's applying next to an 18-year-old boy. So they're literally biologically boys, they're literally biologically behind, and they don't catch up until they're 25. And then economically, or let's talk educationally, the education system is just biased against boys.
29:33A boy who, a boy in K through 12 is twice as likely to be suspended on a behavior adjusted basis. Same exact infraction, twice as likely to be suspended if he is a boy. Five times as likely to be suspended if he's a black boy. And once a kid is suspended three times, it means they're not going to college. Think about who's in primary school. 70 to 80 % of primary school teachers now female. And who does a female teacher champion? The same people we would champion, people that remind them of themselves. And what are the behaviors we encourage in education? Sit still, be organized, raise your hand, be a pleaser.
30:15You're essentially describing a girl. And when we level the playing field in an education system that in many ways is biased or rewards the behavior that women or females are more, have an easier time embracing, we now have 60-40 female-to-male college attendance. And it may even be higher than that when you look at graduation rates because men are more likely to drop out. And then you combine it with the fact that 40 years ago, one in three jobs required a college degree. Now it's two in three. Medical schools, law schools now overwhelmingly female. And the high-end information, higher-paying jobs are now kind of open or have been sequestered from many of the men who aren't cut out for college.
30:58In addition, we have cauterized those on-ramps to a middle class that used to exist, whether it's manufacturing jobs or even just the zeitgeist in our society. What happened to metal, auto, and wood shop? We got rid of them. We shamed vocational jobs, even though actually those jobs are in huge demand and well-compensated right now. Kids would rather be a barista than go get vocational training and learn how to install HVAC-efficient heaters. So it's biological, it's educational, it's societal, it's economical. And then what you have, you speedball it all with online dating, where effectively, if you have 50 men and 50 women on, say, Tinder, 46 of the women show all of their attention to just four men.
31:43They all want the same dude. It's what I call Porsche polygamy. Now, those four dudes can have a date every night, which does not encourage good behavior does not encourage long-term relationships. And the other 46 men are shut out. A man of average attractiveness on a dating app. So one to a hundred, least attractive, most attractive. Number 50, he has to swipe right a hundred times to get one coffee. And then out of five coffees, four will ghost him. The woman will reconsider and not show up or cancel. So he has to swipe Bright 500 times to get one coffee. So he feels rejected by females. He feels like dating is a humiliating experience.
32:26He doesn't learn the skills to go out, especially with remote work, and establish game in person. Do you realize 50 percent, get this, Anthony, 50 percent of 18 to 24-year-old men have never asked a woman out in person. That's rough. Think about that. They had And what are those skills? Show me a guy who's good in a bar. I'll show you a guy who's good in a boardroom. Those skills are hugely important. Very transferable. And if you don't, and then they don't even have the mojo. I never want it. Approaching a strange woman is setting yourself up rejection. No one likes that. No one likes that unless you get really good at it.
33:06But what you do is you become resilient. And the way you actually get the mojo to do it, and I speak in very graphic terms, If I'd had, when I was at UCLA, there were days during the week where the only reason I went on campus and I went to class was because I thought there was a prospect I might meet a girl, convince her to come to my fraternity party, and at some point have sex with her. I would get so fucking horny, I would say, okay, I am actually going to take these risks. And if I'd had porn at home and on my phone, I don't know whether I ever would have taken those risks because I just would have engaged in porn all goddamn day.
33:43I don't want to sound like these kids have something wrong with them. The low risk, low entry into friendship, Discord and Reddit, trying to make money, Coinbase or Robinhood or relationships with you porn lowers your risk-haking threshold to go on campus and walk up to a strange woman and say, hey, doesn't English suck? what are you doing? Oh, we have, are you going to the basketball game tonight? Would you like to grab coffee? And if you don't establish those skills and specifically the ability to endure rejection, try, the woman's not interested and guess what? You're both going to be fine.
34:28And then you try again the next day and you realize, okay, this is what life is. Life is about rejection and then figuring out you're both going to be fine. And then occasionally someone says, Yes. The example I always use my friend, David Frey, Dr. David Frey, dentist, not an attractive guy, strange guy, unusual guy. David would go up to, we would walk into a restaurant. We went to UCLA together. He would walk into any restaurant, any place. He'd look around the room, any attractive woman, he'd go up, whether she was with another guy, friends, and start talking to her. I remember being on the freeway, going to the Rose Bowl to see a UCLA football game.
35:06And he saw an attractive a woman. So he sped up, started honking at her until she rolled down her window and he tried to get her number on the 405 freeway. And guess what? David always had dates because nine out of 10 women would be like mildly horrified. He didn't care and reject them. But the 10th would give him his number or give him her number. If you want to score above your weight class economically or romantically, then get out a big spoon and get ready to eat shit and deal with rejection. And the problem is the smartest, brightest people and well-deepest resource companies in the world are trying to convince people you don't need to take these risks in real life.
35:42You have a low-entry, reasonable facsimile of friendship, mentorship, professional success, and sex on a screen with an algorithm. them. And it's creating a new species of young men that are asexual and asocial and end up depressed, obese, and never develop the skills to interview, never develop the skills to have great friendship, never develop the skills and the resilience to get romantic and sexual relationships. And they end up, and if they don't develop these skills by the time they're 30, it is very hard, very hard to bring them back. And then they become more prone to misogynistic content.
36:23They have people online telling them that it's women's fault. They become very nationalistic. They start blaming immigrants. They start engaging in self-harm. Everyone pathologizes these people as being school shooters. Yes, some of them are, but you know who they're much more likely to hurt? Themselves. So we have this, I worry we're developing a new species of young man that is not connecting to work, not connecting to school, not connecting to women. And once they get to a certain point in their lives, they become very hard to retrain, to train up, to give those skills to them. So we have two-thirds of people who apply for the armed services now are either too obese or too mentally unfit.
37:06So we have a real issue here around how do we level up young men such that they're more attractive to women, they're more confident, they get out more, they're better workers, they're more patriotic, they're stronger, they're more fit. Otherwise, we're gonna end up, we're gonna keep going where we're going. And that is the most violent, unstable societies in the world have all one thing in common. They have a disproportionate number of young men with very little romantic or economic prospects. I would argue, Anthony, that is why Trump got elected. Yeah. Anyways, I'll stop there. No, no, listen, I wanted you to go because I think the stuff is so excellent.
37:46The content is very important for people to hear. And I do think that that's a reason why Trump got elected. It's sort of a backlash. But in our next episode, we're going to talk about a lot of these themes, which is masculinity and family. But I think you're hearing from Scott and myself, it's OK to fail. and the more failure you're comfortable with, the more success you're going to have in life. And I've failed upward, Scott. I have stumbled a lot in my career, but by staying in the game is the number one thing. And I think it's a big message for these people. I almost want to put my arms around them and just like give a hug and say, hey, it's okay to fail.
38:30I failed, Scott has failed. All those people you're looking up to have failed and you got to just stay in the game. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Lost Boys. If you'd like more information, please go to our website, www.lostboys.men. In our next episode, Scott and I talk with Andrew Yang, businessman, author, and politician who has a lot to say about why young men have been neglected and what we can do about it. Be sure to like, follow, and subscribe to Lost Boys wherever you get your podcasts. And please share it with someone who cares about this or should care about this. And let's spread the word.
39:10Lost Boys is a production of Salt Media and the Casablanca Strategy Group. Barbara Fadita and Keith Summa are executive producers. Tanya Salati is our researcher. Holly Duncan Quinn and Stanley Goldberg are editors. Special thanks to Christina Cassese, Mary-Jan Ribas and Drew Barrows.
39:33that's the sound of the fully electric audi q6 e-tron and the quiet confidence of ultra smooth handling the elevated interior reminds you this is more than an ev this is electric performance redefined
From the publisher
We're bringing you another episode from Lost Boys, hosted by Anthony Scaramucci and Scott Galloway. In this conversation, Anthony and Scott ask: Is the economy leaving young men behind? They unpack the financial and professional pressures facing this generation, the surprising impact of wealth inequality and the idolization of money, and a roadmap for young men to reclaim their human capital.
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