Why We’re Having Less Sex — and Why It Matters (ft. Dr. Debra Soh)

22:36So I think reproductive tech, you know, I have a chapter on that. But again, I think if people find it helpful for them, that's their right. I'm not judging anyone. But it's more that these are band-aid solutions and they're not addressing the real problem. And unless we address the root problem, it's only going to get worse. And so also with the men to basically say, okay, well, let's just let you guys have your sex robots and your sex dolls. And you can go off. And as long as you're having your orgasm and you're not bothering anyone and you're not lighting anything on fire or destroying things, then we'll just ignore you and let women continue you succeeding.

23:09I don't think that's good for society either. And also women want, as I said, to date men who are successful. So I would ask for, ask women in this audience, I've got a lot of pushback about sex extinction from young women saying, why should we care about young men? Or why should we care about men? You know, men, men have done us dirty for so long. It's time that they get a taste of their own medicine, but that's really not a very one positive outlook, but also it's going in the end, do you in, because don't you want to eventually find someone and fall in love? And if you can't find someone, it doesn't help anyone to sit there and just keep, you know, digging your heels in and saying we're not giving the other side any room.

23:47Scott Galloway:We'll be right back after a quick break.

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27:35Scott Galloway:You bring so much grace and data and you're so articulate around issues I think we're all feeling. It feels as if the genders have done a great job convincing themselves that it's the other genders' fault. And a couple of things. One, I'm curious what your thoughts are. So I think for the first time since they started tracking it, more the majority of young people don't drink. And what I've said, and I've got a lot of pushback for this because alcohol ruins a lot of lives. If you have addiction, you should be very careful. But I have found, generally speaking, that alcohol can play a productive role in overcoming inhibition, in establishing initial contact, establishing initial physical contact.

28:19Scott Galloway:and that leads to physical intimacy and relationships. And I'm not suggesting everyone go out and start doing tequila shots. I'm suggesting that the anti-alcohol movement has a knock-on effect of less connection, initiation, and less sex. Your thoughts on the anti-alcohol movement? I see what you're saying. I personally don't drink, but I don't think that everyone has to abide by those rules. I think what matters is that, like you said, people have insight into their own behavior. And I've heard you say before that when your mood is low or you're feeling depressed, you avoid alcohol and cannabis, which I think is very smart.

28:53Because, yeah, I used to work with patients with addiction. And for sure, there's a high propensity, especially if you have a biological predisposition for addiction in the family. I don't know if you do or you don't, but just speaking more generally, that it's a potential risk that someone might lean on those substances a little bit too much if they are going through a difficult time. So I think for the average person, say, who isn't as affected or isn't at risk, I could see that because, generationally, Gen Z tends to be more risk-averse. I think that is a symptom of the widespread anxiety that they experience.

29:29Roughly half of Gen Z has anxiety or a diagnosed anxiety disorder. So very many of them are on medication for it also. Very many of them are on antidepressants as well. so I think anything that could help them be a little bit less inhibited would be a good thing but I guess my concern would be for some of them especially if they are struggling with underlying mental health issues if they were to start using substances as a way to help make them feel a little bit more socially lubricated would that potentially bring other issues to the fore in terms of okay now you know you're you're struggling with a dependence on these substances.

30:07And so the issue may not be that you're too scared or uptight in social situations, but that you need to take it before you go. I think ideally just for people struggling with anxiety to know, especially young people to know, because I talked to so many Zoomers and they're so sweet and they're so smart, and they're aware. They're aware that they struggle socially and with anxiety. And it's just to let them know it's very normal to feel that way, especially when you're young and you're still figuring yourself out. And that doesn't mean that you, now don't go off your medication just because I say this, but talk to your care team, but I do think the solution isn't necessary to medicate people or to tell them that they have something severely wrong with them or that they need to, I don't know, that they don't fit in or whatever, that it's something particular to them, but it's just, this is a normal part of human life.

30:53And just because other people seem like they have their act together doesn't mean that they necessarily do.

30:57Scott Galloway:Where we're headed. Isn't this in many ways, if we take the aperture back, Aren't we returning to the laws of the jungle or, quite frankly, the way that the world has been through most of history? That I think the greatest innovation in history is in vaccines or the iPhone. I think it's the American middle class. And only 40 percent of men throughout history, I understand, have reproduced and 80 percent of women. The majority of men throughout history have not had the opportunity to reproduce because the majority of the spoils have gone to a small group of people. And they can engage in what I would loosely refer as Porsche polygamy.

31:29Scott Galloway:And then after World War II, we created this amazing thing called the middle class, where we had a bunch of 7 million men return from overseas. They were handsome. They were fit. They looked good in a uniform. National Highway Transportation Act, GI Bill. And we made them economically viable and, quite frankly, attractive. And they started mating a lot. And now it appears with income inequality, we're moving back to the way the world has been throughout most of history. and that is a small number of men, have a disproportionate amount of mating opportunities, and the rest have almost none. Isn't where we're headed back to, quite frankly, the way the world has been through 99 % of history, and we're moving away from what was an anomaly, a wonderful, a wondrous anomaly, where someone of perfectly average attractiveness as a male could expect to find a mate and enjoy that.

32:23Scott Galloway:But aren't we headed to something that has been more normal than not throughout history? Yeah. So the thing is with this smaller pool of men who are succeeding in society, they have their pick of the lot in terms of potential partners. So they will set the terms in their relationship with regard to how soon they expect to have sex, whether they're allowed to have sex with other partners, whether their partner is allowed to have sex with other people or not, because what you'll commonly see with some very high status men, and I don't necessarily agree with this, just to be clear, but they will say, I'm allowed to sleep with whomever I want.

32:54You can only have sex with me to their female partner. And if she's not okay with that, he says, fine, I'll just go find someone else who will be okay with that. So the other thing is what you will see is that some men will, say, start a family with one woman and then go on and have multiple marriages and multiple families. So it's not as though, it's not necessarily, I guess, polygamy, but it's somewhat in succession as opposed to simultaneously. And so, you know, I don't think there are really any winners. I suppose you could argue that the men in these positions are the winners, but it's not really great for the women who are involved or the men who are not able to access any sexual partners.

33:32But I would say the thing that's different in the modern or contemporary environment is that now we have this animosity between the sexes where men and women who can't find anyone say, actually, I'm better off like this. Actually, I don't need the opposite sex. Women are doing so well, they just make their money and they say, okay, if I want a family, I can do it on my own. Nowadays, having a boyfriend is, quote, embarrassing anyway, right? That's what mainstream news is saying. And then the men are saying, well, I've got my replacements, my sex robot, she doesn't talk back to me. She doesn't nag me.

34:05She doesn't talk about things I don't want to talk about. so there's that difference and I think also if at a biological level we are being disincentivized to essentially mate you know young women who are say on the birth control pill that's affecting their sexual psychology and then young men if they're not motivated to want to go out and pursue partners that's those are factors that are going to suppress sexual inclination even if let's say in the past people were not experiencing these things so they're more inclined to say I don't like my situation. I want to make things better. I do want to find someone.

34:37And so I'm going to work on myself. I'm going to do what I need, or maybe we'll overthrow the current ruler so that we can get what we want, as opposed to now. It's very much this almost this indifference to a person's situation or a preference for it.

34:51Scott Galloway:So I coach young men and I want you to coach me and make me a better coach. And I find the first thing when we start outlining, I'm like, give me your goals one, three and five years, and let's reverse engineer a series of actions to get you to that goal starting with today. Let's work all the way back to today. What do you need to do to get there? And the first thing, often the most cited goal is I want to move out of my parents' place. I want to get my own apartment. So that's a money thing, right? And we can figure that out. And that's mostly about starting. Don't be a snob about what job you deserve to start making some money.

35:22Scott Galloway:The second thing is if you get to know them and they start to trust you, it's always the same thing. I'd really like a girlfriend, right? I can tell the moment they sort of trust me and they say, They look around and they're embarrassed to say it. I'd really like a girlfriend. And in addition to some of the things around, all right, let's talk about why women are attracted to men. We need to work on those things. But I find a lot of it is a willingness to endure rejection, what I call your mojo, and to get out there. And I sit here, I'm in Los Angeles, and I can see UCLA from my hotel. And when I was at UCLA, the only way to get a reasonable facsimile of sex was to either go to your parents' house and watch Cinemax or to find an old Playboy in your dad's garage.

36:14Scott Galloway:There was just a lot of friction and it wasn't that good a facsimile of sex. And if I had 24 by 7 lifelike porn available to me on every screen, I think I probably would have been less likely to go on campus and take risks and try and initiate contact with strange women that might ultimately result in a dialogue, a relationship, you know, going out together and someday maybe sex in a relationship. And so I talk about modulating porn. and that is, I think it's unfair to tell a young man to like go cold turkey. I don't know if that's realistic, but just keep, you know, anything that reduces that fire is gonna reduce your ability to get out.

36:58Scott Galloway:Talk about, and I found there's just a total lack of peer-reviewed research around porn because I don't think many academics you might have of either wanna be known as a porn professor, but talk about the role that adult content plays in reducing young men's fire, if you will, to get out there and take those sorts of risks. Right, so when you have an orgasm, it floods you with feel-good hormones that help to deal with stress, help to put you in a better mood, but it also sedates you to some extent. And like you said, it can diminish someone's motivation. And so historically speaking, it benefited men to be sexually frustrated because that would drive them to want to go out and do things, build things, show productivity because that is what women found attractive.

37:45So in order to get an orgasm, I mean, there's always masturbation, but the thing is porn provides this very remarkably realistic depiction of sex, especially online pornography today is pretty much like you're watching other people in real time. It's not like magazines back in the day. And I used to write for a very well-known men's magazine that features nude women. So my views on porn have changed a lot since the start of my journalism career. But when you have an orgasm looking at porn, it activates the same brain network that is activated during sexual activity. So it is basically like having sex to some extent, or you are being tricked into feeling as though you're having sex, even though you're not, you're watching something on a screen.

38:30so the resulting orgasm is to some extent rewarding a person for not doing the things they would have previously had to do to get that orgasm and so that can become reinforcing so that the next time a young man although i think young women are probably experiencing problems with porn as well nowadays because porn exposure has been so ubiquitous among young children but say for young men in particular because it is so terrifying to walk up to a woman you don't know and start talking to her and ask her out on a date. And then to go through the hassle of setting up the date, meeting her, talking to her, seeing if you have anything in common, potentially being rejected by her, having to follow up after, ask her out for a second date and do this a bunch of times before she actually agrees to have sex with you, which may, and not knowing exactly when that's going to happen or if that's going to happen.

39:20If you have porn in your pocket available at any point in time and there's an unlimited number of partners on there and you can find exactly what you're looking for in terms of what the partner looks like, how she behaves. Now, if you have AI pornography becoming so popular, where you can just basically tell the AI what you want it to do. And I've tested these platforms out myself, and it is insanely realistic. It scared me how realistic it is. So you don't have to go through that process. And so the next time a man is sexually frustrated, he can simply say, why am I not just going to go take out my phone and take care of it that way, instead of going through this long process?

39:55And then on top of it, because it's so hyper-competitive nowadays, unless he is one of those super successful men. It's so hyper-competitive for him to get a chance. And he doesn't know if the woman he approaches, if she's going to be disgusted and angry at him and potentially he's going to have a really bad reaction from her. Although I don't think most women are like that. I think that that's a small segment of women who are just, you know, very, we'll say, dysregulated. But I would say for young men, I mean, I've said previously to try to cut it out entirely. I think it depends on how old you are and how much it's detrimentally affected your life.

40:30Because I do think porn is probably affecting more people negatively than we are talking about in society. I think porn has become such a common, socially acceptable vice. It's so, I mean, it's like, I talk about how softcore pornography imagery is basically everywhere. You know, it's an ad campaign. It's music videos. It's -

40:50Scott Galloway:Euphoria. Entertainment shows. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's everywhere. It's not really shocking. But the strange thing is that young people are seemingly disinterested in it. And so when you can just, I think that's also because, again, being exposed at such a young age, it's not really something that's taboo or sexy even anymore. So if you can, I mean, just try it for 30 days for young men. If you sense that it may be affecting you negatively, it's worth trying. And again, it's probably going to be very difficult, especially if it's something that you've become so used to relying on for sexual gratification.

41:23But I can also say from conversations I've had with many young women that they can usually tell if a guy they're with has watched a lot of porn based on how he interacts with them and to be honest, how he performs in bed. And he may not be aware. So that's just another thing to mention. And I'm not trying to shame men for this or shame women for this, but just to say, be aware that what you consume on a daily basis or regular basis is probably influencing you in some way.

41:49Scott Galloway:We'll be right back.

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44:37Scott Galloway:We're back with more from Dr. Deborah So. So if you were to, I want you to, I'm going to go very micro and then macro. I want to talk about advice for young men and women and then policy. If you were to speak to men or coach young men and women, as far as I know, you may do this and say, all right, let's just talk more broadly that you're interested in having a relationship and some sort of physical intimacy might be a step to a relationship. What advice, general advice, would you give to men who say, I am interested in figuring out a way to establish a relationship? What are they doing wrong?

45:12Scott Galloway:What do they need to do less of, more of? And then do the same thing for women you would coach? All right. So I would say with, I'll start with the young women. I would say if you are looking for a man to have a positive mindset, I think this applies to both, but just to have a very open approach or perspective of the opposite sex. There was a poll that came out recently. I wrote about this for the Globe and Mail and I wrote about online radicalization in young women and how actually among young women, so they looked at Gen Zers between the age of 18 and 30. And they found that more young women actually have a negative view of the opposite sex than do young men.

45:53And this is especially pronounced in young women age 25 and younger. It was only, I believe, a third of women under the age of 25 had a positive view of men, whereas with men, it was closer to something like 70%. So I think there is a huge chunk of young women out there who hate men, and that's going to make dating very difficult. Just like if you're a man who hates women, it's going to be very difficult. But so that alone, having a positive outset about the opposite sex is going to do wonders for you. I would say also to just, in terms of your body language, your facial expressions, be very friendly when you're out in public, smile.

46:26If you see a man whom you find attractive, smile very widely. I love to cite the study showing that a part of the brain called the medial orbital frontal cortex activates when someone sees an attractive face and it activates even more strongly when that face is smiling. So men will feel compelled to come and approach you. Hopefully he'll be single. They will feel, even if they're a little bit scared, that is usually the green light that men need to know this is okay. This woman is not going to, you know, banish me into oblivion if I come and talk to her. And then I would also say, and just, you know, be very, same theme, be very obvious.

47:01From the men I've talked to in my audience, they say they just need to know that a woman is interested and that they're getting all the signs. So just basically make a lot of eye contact, touch your hair, touch your clothing, adjust yourself, and hopefully that will give him the courage to come over. The other thing I would say, so for young men, I think it's a combination of working on your physical health as well as your mental health. And again, I think this applies to both sexes to some extent too, but because young men are struggling a little bit more in this way, diet is very important. So trying to eat clean food, unprocessed food.

47:37There's a study that showed that after 12 weeks of cutting out ultra-processed foods, a third of the depressed sample, their depression remit. So diet alone can have such a powerful effect on improving a person's mood. Physical activity is also very important. So if you don't have the energy or maybe you're too depressed to work out, even just going out for a walk, getting some physical activity, be out in the sun, try to get enough sleep. and then I would say you know the pornography try to avoid being on screens at all the time and just don't let I would say the overall negativity because my sense is there's a lot of nihilism along among Gen Z and especially Gen Z men and it's easy for me as a boomer to say this I'm a millennial but you know I guess I could be considered old-fashioned for thinking this way but at the same time I think it's worth just trying to move in a direction as much as you can even if you fall, you know, backwards and you make mistakes and missteps, that's okay.

48:34Just as long as you keep moving in the right direction. And don't listen to these outside voices who try to tell you how to be or how to attract women because they are generally trying to, one, make themselves more popular, make it more difficult for other men to succeed so that they can continue making all the money, making money off of you, getting all of the women because they're giving other men bad advice. And the same thing with, I'd say, female influencers who tell women to use men for their money and, you know, withhold sex and things like that. And just to be, I would say, charitable in your interactions with the opposite sex and to know that women can read hostility from a mile away.

49:10So if you do have animosity for them, most women are not going to find that a turn on. I think there's a sentiment in society that women like bad boys or women like guys who mistreat them, but that's only a subset of women. And if you behave that way, yeah, if you behave that way, you're going to only attract a certain type of woman. And then these men, unfortunately, don't understand why they keep attracting the same type of women. But I would also say just to think more broadly in terms of your past relationships and not to blame or hold the opposite sex accountable for things that your exes may have done to you.

49:40Because that's another theme I see. People tend to get really down on themselves about relationships that didn't work out. And they assume that that's going to be the continued pattern going forward.

49:49Scott Galloway:Yeah, I see just so much. I don't like to use the words misogyny, misandry, because that's hate. But I'll call it a bias. And I find the incel movement is men just giving up and leaning into really unfortunate biases against women and these myths that women's success has been inversely correlated to their decline and that it's women's fault. And I find it's basically men just giving up and trying to find an excuse for putting in the work that every man has had to put in to try and find a mate. And at the same time, I also see on the other side, I feel like a decent number of female-centered podcasts have this underlying theme of men are irredeemable, you know, toxic.

50:31Scott Galloway:Like, it's just, the notion that men are somewhat worthless has become normalized. That, oh, of course, you know, men, you know, and that, and then even in media, the best we can hope for is that a man who's kind of a dope and an idiot, very few redeeming qualities, overcomes it, and maybe at the end of the day is an okay guy. That's sort of the aspirational male in media right now. And that podcasting, especially, I find, especially the manosphere, everybody talks about it. That's just straight up misogyny. I think a lot of men repel on that and just say, no, that's just not true. I have enough sisters and women in my life to know that that's just not, that dog won't hunt.

51:16Scott Galloway:That's shit. That's a bunch of angry men looking for a community. But what doesn't get talked about a lot, and I'm curious if you witness it, is it's a mainstream podcast hosted by women. They've just generally assumed, or there's a notion that men are just vastly inferior and that they're cursed to like them. It's a curse that they have to put up with them or maybe try and find them because the majority of them are just not good people or that they're borderline toxic. Am I being paranoid or am I, do you think that what I'll call anti, just as there's an anti-female bias that people talk about justifiably, but that same bias against men exists in the podcast medium?

52:01them? I do think it goes both ways. And I've heard some female people in media use the term hetero fatality, something to that extent, which basically means we're attracted to men. We're straight, so we can't help it that we're attracted to men, but it's not good for us. And essentially it's going to do us in at the end, in the end. So I think there are two sides of the same coin. And unfortunately, what I find is there's a bias in terms of not just what's acceptable in mainstream discourse so you can rag all day about how much you hate men and men are trash and men are terrible and uh unalive all men say hashtag unalive all men and then uh if you say anything like that about women understandably that's not allowed you know you'll get banned from social media or people call you out or call you a misogynist i think it should not be allowed across the board that's like hey that's hateful across the board you should not be able to one generalize an entire class of people well the future is female can you imagine saying the future

52:56Scott Galloway:as male. It's just entirely different. The other thing I was going to say is with feminism, I do think at the core of feminism did a lot for women, and I'll always be grateful for that. But at the same time, contemporary feminism has gone so far that it basically advocates for discriminating against men, hating men. And so I really feel for young women who have been indoctrinated in this way, especially I'd say with the education system, mainstream media. There's one very popular pop star who her music videos revolve around her killing men. And she has said publicly that in her universe, only men die, women never die.

53:36And women have, female journalists have taken this as a point of celebration to say, you know, this is, this is a wonderful world and we're all living in it. And can you imagine if it were the other way around and there was a male musician who's walking around say in every video depicting homicide against women and being celebrated for that, that would not happen today. And so this double standard, I feel for men as well, because I can understand why they feel so resentful and why they say, if you are going to say that it's okay that people harm us, we are going to have the exact same lack of empathy for you.

54:07So in terms of potential solutions, I know you're asking about like policy. I think we need to allow men to succeed and not see male success as something that is a threat to women or a threat to women's success. I think I've said before, I think we need to do away with diversity initiatives, which makes me very unpopular. But I do think that's the only way you can be fair. I, you know, even though systemically or we'll say on paper, many institutions have said that they will not do this, but they still do behind closed doors. They just are not as flagrant about it.

54:40Scott Galloway:I know this firsthand. I know there's informal affirmative action for men now at universities because they're having trouble finding men to apply. I just want to, I agree with you around DEI, but I do think there's room for affirmative action. I think it should just be based on income, not gender or ethnicity. I think there are some people that deserve a hand up. But you're right, it is a sensitive topic. But look, in college, it's 60-40 female to male. And anyways, I agree with you, but I think a lot of universities, University of California did away with DEI in 1997, they have what's called an adversity index.

55:15Scott Galloway:They say, look, if you grew up in Appalachia and your dad's in prison and your mom's a meth head, we're going to take that into account. But just being non-white or, you know, of a different sexual orientation, there are more gay people. The strongest over-indexing relative to the side of the population in college now is gay men. So I do think, I agree with you, I think it's caused more problems than it is. Anyways, I'm sorry, I apologize. I interrupted. That's okay. Or I was going to say in the case of Asians, you know, we are not white, but because Asians tend to succeed academically, they stick us in the non, there's a term they use that is specific to Asians to say that we are not white, but we are also not considered a minority either, which is ridiculous.

55:57So, and I want to be clear also, I'm not saying that women are, the only reason women are successful is because they've been given handouts, because obviously I think female success is a wonderful thing also. So I'm not saying we should go back to discriminating against women either, but just to give everyone a fair chance. And I would say to be more fair about the rhetoric in society in terms of holding institutions and say opportunities like mentorship and mainstream journalism, how these issues are reported on as opposed to saying we don't care about men. Men can cry in a pillow. That's their problem.

56:28They've been oppressing us for decades, centuries. So too bad for them. I think there needs to be more compassion across the board for both.

56:37Scott Galloway:And you were in academia and you left academia to do your own research and write your own books. I'm curious why you left academia. I would think that universities would be such a great platform for you. I'm just curious, like, your career path and why you've chosen to kind of go your own way, if you will. I loved when I was in academia. I loved my research. So my PhD is in neuroscience, and I was doing brain imaging of human sexuality at the time. So I used four different types of brain scans to look at the structure and function of the human brain as it relates to human sexual arousal. And it was fascinating research.

57:13I still to this day, when I was just looking at MRI scans the other day and I got goosebumps because I remember how much fun it was. But I saw that the climate in academia has been changing. And I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this as much as you'd be comfortable talking about it. But I could tell what was coming down the line. And I felt that in designing my studies and decided the questions I wanted to pursue, I had to reverse engineer and figure out what it was we were supposed to find as researchers. And then we could only pursue certain topics that would be deemed acceptable to certain groups or to certain narratives.

57:48And then the other thing was I wrote this op-ed at the time about gender transitioning in children. And so my op-ed was basically the first to say from a research perspective, this is not backed by the science. It's actually these children who have gender dysphoria are more likely to grow up to be gay in adulthood. They're not going to be transgender. And I fully support transgender adults in their decision to transition. I think that's their business. But in terms of children, that's not what the scientific research backed. So I knew in writing this op-ed and publishing it that I would probably be booted out of the system.

58:20So you didn't have tenure when you wrote it? No, no, no. I was very early on in my career at that time. And it was a choice I made, and I don't regret it for one second, because I feel, if anything, the climate has gotten much worse since I left. And so not just around issues on gender. So my first book, The End of Gender, was very much about these issues in terms of how scientific research has to conform to certain narratives around gender and gender ideology. And then sexting Chanel is basically an outgrowth of that to say, here are some myths or misinformation, legitimate misinformation about sexuality or dating and relationships or say differences between men and women or say things based in biology or evolutionary psychology that have been hidden from the public that I think would be helpful for people to know.

59:03And I'm not telling anyone how to live their life, but just that I don't think people can make good decisions without having all of the information or unbiased information available to them. And I also wrote in a way that's very much for a lay audience. So you don't necessarily have to have any background in science or biology or want to read hundreds of pages of really dry academic material to understand what I'm saying or to get something out of it.

59:27Scott Galloway:Yeah, like you have more insight into this than I do because I was never on a tenure track or doing research. I was doing a lot of research, but not peer reviewed research. I was just supposed to teach a mess of kids every year. It was called a clinical professor because when kids are paying as much money as they pay at NYU, they demand somebody or they demand a decent number of the professors have quote unquote real world experience. but I just don't think there's any denying academics have decided they're no longer or academic institutions centers of excellence pursuing truth that they're engineers of a political orthodoxy and that that political orthodoxy sometimes is very fragile and wants to accept a certain truth or pursuit of the truth as long as it aligns with the political orthodoxy that overwhelms 90 plus percent of the views of people who are drawn to academia and there's a serious regurgitation or gag reflex and potentially threatening your career.

1:00:21Scott Galloway:I remember getting a memo from my department chair, and I think this was about 10, 15 years ago, saying microaggressions will not be tolerated. And it was like, well, what is a microaggressions? Isn't that why we're here? Isn't the whole point to say things that intellectually, I mean, everyone wants to feel safe. No one needs to feel offended unnecessarily. But aren't we supposed to be triggering our young people intellectually and giving them some resilience? I do think it's gotten better. I think it kind of troughed maybe five or seven years ago. And I do think now there's a recognition that we need to move back from being centers of excellence and pursuing the truth.

1:00:58Scott Galloway:I would have imagined for someone your age in academia, I think the problem is that, quite frankly, old people won't leave. And so there's a lack of, if you're at a place like Google or OpenAI and it's growing, there's a ton of, there's a sucking sound upwards where someone talented such as yourself gets increasing opportunity. I think the biggest problem in academia right now is that the guy or the gal who is the bomb in Gap 2 accounting in 1988 just won't leave. And as a result, there is not much opportunity for a rock star to kind of build up. And someone with your skills and retail skills, quite frankly, just has more opportunity to just go straight, you know, kind of go direct to consumer, if you will.

1:01:43Scott Galloway:So in addition to, a lot of young people listen to this podcast and probably think, I want to be Dr. So. I mean, it sounds like you have a very cool, I see you on podcasts with Bill Maher. You are everywhere right now. I imagine your book is selling really well. You figured out a way to study something you're interested in and make a good living at it. How did this, give us a little bit of your origin story and how you ended up writing a book called Sextinction. Well, I would say, and I appreciate that. And, you know, I'm such a huge fan of you and I look up to you so much. So to hear you say that means a lot to me.

1:02:19My first book was very much about challenging orthodoxy around gender. And I feel as a former scientist and now as someone who works as a journalist, as a science journalist, my job is to ask in questions that need to be asked, no matter how uncomfortable they make me feel. And so with this book, I was saying, okay, what do I think would be useful for readers to know? And, you know, this larger question of disconnection has left me very worried because I don't think this is good for society. So to say, okay, where are the taboo areas in, say, the field of sex research that we're not supposed to talk about?

1:02:55Or the things even I myself, like my views on many aspects of human sexuality have changed from, say, the start of my career or when I left academia to now. And so it was a process of me saying, you have to have that integrity to ask those questions, even if it is going to upset your former colleagues and your friends, even if people in the field are going to come out and say that you are X, Y, Z because you're saying these things. Either you're a bad person or you're lying or you're a bad, quote, scientist or what have you, just because they don't like the conclusions of what you're saying. And so I think that's the key thing is just my advice to young people listening is that listen to your own gut in terms of what's important to you or what you feel is right for you, because people are going to try and pull you in all these different directions.

1:03:39And as long as you're doing what feels right to you and you're very focused, I think the willingness to make sacrifices and delay gratification is huge. That's advice I put in Sex Stinction. I have an entire chapter in Sex Stinction about how to hopefully mend the problems that we have and what people can do to improve their own chances in dating and relationships and marriage. And to not necessarily look at what people to the left or the right are doing, but to say, this is what feels right for me. And even if I get pushed back, as long as I am open to taking that criticism, I always try to take criticism.

1:04:13I give people the benefit of the doubt in terms of why they're saying the things that they say and assume that they are doing it in good faith. Sometimes people learn that's not the case. But just to be open to feedback so that you're always improving. Don't take it personally if people are giving you criticism. That's something I would say if I were mentoring a young person also is to say that if people criticize you, it's not necessarily that they're trying to make you feel badly. If anything, I think it's sometimes people trying to help you because why would they bother giving you that feedback otherwise?

1:04:41So it might hurt, but at the same time, it can potentially help you. So to be open to that as well.

1:04:47Scott Galloway:Do what I do with my mentees. Where do you want to be in five years and how do you reverse engineer that back to what you're doing now? For myself? Yeah. I generally have a five-year plan, but I don't usually like to say it out loud because I don't like to jinx things. What I will say is that I generally also am very open to just seeing where things take me because when I first wrote that first op-ed, I had no idea what was going to happen. I just knew this was going to be the end of my academic career. I got the email saying it was going out, it was going to be published. And I remember thinking, we need to figure out something else now.

1:05:18And I just said, I'm going to be open to what comes my way and just try to be as diligent and as focused as possible to be in the best place I can be to move in the direction I need to go. So I don't want to avoid answering your question, but at the same time, I just feel so fortunate. And I really do believe that even for those who are really struggling right now, you're struggling in your mental health, and maybe you feel really hopeless or down on yourself, just keep going. Because honestly, it takes time, but if you have that will and determination, you can make it happen.

1:05:51Scott Galloway:Dr. Deborah So is a neuroscientist who specializes in human sexuality and biological explanations for behavior. Her latest book, Extinction, The Decline of Sex and Future of Intimacy is out now. I think you are literally the perfect person to be catalyzing this super important conversation because, I mean, just to be blunt, I talk about this stuff a lot. And as a old white dude, without the qualifications, I'm sort of wrong before I open my mouth. You need someone with credentials. You need someone who's done the work. You need someone with domain expertise. And quite frankly, it helps to have a young woman talking about it because people's guard doesn't come up.

1:06:34I think they're quite frankly just a little bit more open to hearing you pursue the truth, even if it might offend some people's sensibilities.

1:06:43Scott Galloway:I think this is going to be really consequential work, and it's exciting to see how much press you're getting. And this must be an exciting moment for you. I trust you appreciate it. Anyways, very much appreciate your time and your good work, Dr. So. Thank you so much.

1:07:02Scott Galloway:This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Genere. Cami Reek is our social producer. Bianca Rosario Ramirez is our video editor. And Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from Prop G Media.

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