Notes on Being a Man — a Live Conversation with Ben Stiller

0:00:06 Support for this show comes from the Audible original, The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine.
0:00:15 Quantum computers, the next great frontier of technology, offering endless possibilities that stretch the human mind.
0:00:23 But for Roscoe Cadulian and the Phoenix Colony, quantum computing uploads the human mind with life-altering consequences.
0:00:34 Audible’s hit sci-fi thriller, The Downloaded, returns with Oscar winner Brendan Fraser, reprising his role as Roscoe Cadulian in The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine.
0:00:41 This thought-provoking sequel from Robert J. Sawyer takes listeners on a captivating sci-fi journey.
0:00:47 A mind-bending must-listen that asks, what are you willing to lose to save the ones you love?
0:00:53 The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible.
0:01:06 Support for this show comes from the Audible original, The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine.
0:01:09 The Earth only has a few days left.
0:01:15 Roscoe Cadulian and the rest of the Phoenix Colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer.
0:01:20 But a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever.
0:01:29 Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprise his role as Roscoe Cadulian in this follow-up to the Audible original blockbuster, The Downloaded.
0:01:35 It’s a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide.
0:01:40 Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking,
0:01:44 What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love?
0:01:50 The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible.
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0:03:00 Welcome to the 373rd episode of the Prop T Pod.
0:03:02 So, what’s happening?
0:03:03 Today, we’re going to do something a little different.
0:03:12 We’re sharing the live recording of a recent event we did at the 92nd Street Y here in Manhattan with our friend Ben Stiller.
0:03:19 We talk about modern masculinity, friendship, fatherhood, purpose, and how men can build lives filled with meaning and connection.
0:03:21 It was an interview on my book, Notes on Being a Man.
0:03:26 You’re probably sick of me talking about it, but this was a good one.
0:03:33 Ben is a really thoughtful guy and funny and, you know, kind of just what you would imagine.
0:03:41 And also, just a quick plug for Ben’s documentary that was just released on Apple TV, Stiller and Mira, Nothing is Lost.
0:03:47 It’s a documentary directed by Ben about his parents, the comedic duo, Jerry Stiller and Ann Mira.
0:03:55 The film explores or the documentary explores the professional partnership, marriage, and the impact it had on Ben.
0:03:58 It is surprisingly—is it surprising?
0:03:59 I won’t say surprising.
0:04:01 It’s just very thoughtful and moving.
0:04:05 So, anyways, Stiller and Mira, Nothing is Lost.
0:04:06 Check it out.
0:04:09 So, with that, here’s our conversation.
0:04:17 All right.
0:04:18 Hi, everybody.
0:04:20 Hi, Scott.
0:04:21 How are you?
0:04:26 So, if you’re looking for the ultimate sell signal, it’s when Ben Stiller is interviewing me.
0:04:28 Literally sell everything.
0:04:30 Cats living with dogs.
0:04:33 The earth is rotated off its axis.
0:04:36 Like this—quite frankly, this shit just doesn’t make sense.
0:04:37 You asked me and I said yes.
0:04:38 I appreciate that.
0:04:40 I’m a fan.
0:04:44 So, I’ve written a little preamble that went longer than I thought.
0:04:48 I promised we’re going to talk a lot with Scott, but I just had to get this out, and I thought this is going to be my introduction.
0:04:49 Okay?
0:05:00 I’ve been a fan of Scott’s ever since I saw him going off on a rant on Bill Maher’s real time about four or five years ago about Twitter and the internet and the future of technology and, I think, crypto.
0:05:08 And I understood about 30% of the words he was saying, but he said them so fast and so assertively and with such confidence that I thought I understood all of it.
0:05:14 And what I did understand was so crystal clear and his analogies were so clever that it made me think I could actually understand Bitcoin.
0:05:17 Turns out I don’t.
0:05:20 But I did realize that I love listening to you.
0:05:20 Thank you.
0:05:40 And then I started listening to his podcast with the great Kara Swisher, who I also became obsessed with, and their hilarious banter back and forth like an old married couple talking about super sophisticated ideas made me feel like I could be a part of a world I always was intimidated by, tech and finance.
0:05:53 And at one point, before I even met Scott, I was so taken by his turn of phrase, this is true, that I literally started a file in my notes app of Scott Galloway quotes, which I pulled up.
0:05:56 This is from, like, late in 2023 or early 2024.
0:06:02 And these are just random quotes that I had that I wrote down that I thought were worth writing down.
0:06:03 Here are a few.
0:06:03 Okay.
0:06:07 Tesla is a drunken tourist with a Hublot watch.
0:06:11 No idea what that means, but I love it.
0:06:15 You can’t read the label from inside the bottle.
0:06:16 Oh, my God.
0:06:20 You just said mendacious algorithms.
0:06:21 And I was like, yes.
0:06:23 I don’t even know what.
0:06:24 I mean, I guess I know what that means.
0:06:27 You have to let your inner child develop an outer man.
0:06:29 That’s great.
0:06:33 Three things I hate most in life are shoelaces, keys, and passwords.
0:06:34 Do you remember saying that?
0:06:34 I do.
0:06:35 Yeah.
0:06:38 Eight percent of elected officials don’t understand technology.
0:06:40 We’ll get into the statistics in a second.
0:06:43 Vertical content.
0:06:44 Own the hardware.
0:06:45 Own the rails.
0:06:48 I had no idea what vertical content was when you said that.
0:06:49 But then I heard it.
0:06:50 It made me want to get some.
0:06:55 I started to look him up on Twitter, on YouTube.
0:06:58 I would watch his rants about technology and the Internet and being a male person.
0:07:00 And I started to hear him talk about mentoring young men.
0:07:05 And then the somewhat controversial sounding idea that young men in our society were at risk
0:07:08 and needed older male father figures to guide them.
0:07:10 So then I’m like, is that what he’s all about?
0:07:12 Is he like, is that like his full-time job?
0:07:14 He’s like into Boy Scouts and things.
0:07:17 And, you know, I just wanted to know what, who is Scott Galloway?
0:07:19 What does he do actually?
0:07:21 Besides memorize statistics.
0:07:25 The man knows more statistics at the top of his head than any human being I’ve ever met.
0:07:28 Quick, Scott, just give me a statistic right now.
0:07:32 Forty-five percent of men, 18 to 24, have never asked a woman out in person.
0:07:33 Thank you.
0:07:33 Okay.
0:07:37 Then I learned that he was really wealthy and he had a plane.
0:07:40 And I really wanted to know, like, what does this guy do?
0:07:47 And the more I watched him, the more fascinated I was with how he could just distill down the ideas of this very complicated culture that we’re living in
0:07:55 that goes a million miles an hour and make things seem clear and simple and also had a point of view about what it was to be a person, more specifically, a man.
0:08:00 This is when I realized, even though I don’t know what he actually does, I want to be Scott Galloway.
0:08:01 Just made up.
0:08:06 He actually embodied all the traits that I wish I had had except being bald, though he pulls that off.
0:08:15 But he’s tall, articulate, smart, funny, has a plane, and is tall.
0:08:24 And I never in a million years would want to go as a pundit on Bill Maher or MSNBC, yet everything he says I agree with.
0:08:26 And I’m like, yeah, that’s the guy who I want to be.
0:08:30 And then I realized that we actually do have a lot in common because we both went to UCLA.
0:08:31 Started the same day.
0:08:32 Same time, right?
0:08:33 We’re basically the same age.
0:08:39 We were weaned on the same beautiful 70s TV, Brady Bunch, Partridge family, I Dream of Jeannie, $6 million man.
0:08:43 And that’s actually all we really have in common, I realized.
0:08:50 I quit school and went back to New York, and so we never probably crossed paths because I was only there for like nine months.
0:08:51 Well, there’s a lesson there.
0:08:52 Kids, drop out of school.
0:08:52 Yeah.
0:09:00 I could have probably met you if I rushed the Jewish fraternity, but instead I stayed in my apartment on Hill Guard and learned to juggle.
0:09:03 Um, and not meet girls.
0:09:12 Uh, now Scott, you’ve written a book that I think is part autobiographical, part handbook, part manifesto, and completely engrossing.
0:09:17 I found it incredibly honest and revealing and at the end very emotional.
0:09:27 Um, I think you were willing to be vulnerable and real about your feelings of ego, anger, insecurity, and it just makes this book very personal and relatable.
0:09:37 And even though it’s kind of in ways a self-help book and you include a lot of charts and graphs on economics and employment, it’s really written as a no-holds-barred, honest memoir, too.
0:09:48 And I think what you’re writing about here is both personal exploration and also a sort of call to arms on how to help raise young men based on your own experience.
0:09:51 And, you know, I think in this day and time, it’s always strange.
0:09:57 It’s a strange thing to talk about, uh, when you talk about mentoring young men, because I think a lot of people sort of misinterpret it.
0:10:05 And I was watching you on the Today Show the other day and you said, you know, even they said it at first, like, oh, this is like seemed controversial at first what you were talking about.
0:10:09 But, you know, really, what, why is it so controversial?
0:10:10 Now I’m going to start asking you a question.
0:10:15 Why is it so controversial to talk about mentoring young men?
0:10:20 Well, if you think, if you agree with that idea.
0:10:25 So first off, to set the groundwork, the statistics are pretty stark, right?
0:10:29 Um, if you go into a morgue and there’s five people who died by suicide, four are men.
0:10:34 We have a homeless and an opiate problem, but what we really have is a male homeless and a male opiate problem.
0:10:41 A third time, three times as likely to be addicted, three times as likely to be homeless, 12 times, uh, to be incarcerated.
0:10:56 And if, uh, so the, the, the problem is pretty present and to the rights credit, the right or the far right really recognize the problem and started talking about, um, needing to lift young men up.
0:11:08 And if, uh, the problem is the remedy from the far right and the voices that filled that void, their suggestion was that we return to the fifties where women and non-whites had less opportunity.
0:11:09 That’s not the answer.
0:11:13 And they began conflating masculinity with coarseness and cruelty.
0:11:26 At the same time, the left hasn’t been that helpful because their advice when talking about the struggles of young men is to say, well, if you’re only more in touch with your feelings, you don’t have problems.
0:11:30 And they’re basically, you are the problem and they’re basically their advice is to act more like a woman.
0:11:32 And I don’t think that’s helpful either.
0:11:43 And so there’s an opportunity, the, the gag reflex is understandable because let’s be honest, we’ve had a 3000 year headstart.
0:11:53 And since 1945 to 2000, the U S registered a third of all economic prosperity globally, which is 5% of the population.
0:11:58 So essentially Americans registered six times the prosperity of the rest of the world.
0:12:08 And then you take that 5% and all of that prosperity was largely crammed into the third of the population that was white, male and heterosexual.
0:12:19 So when they hear a white dude talking about, Oh, poor men, they immediately have a gag reflex like, Oh shit, it’s that Andrew Tate weirdness again, trying to set me back.
0:12:25 That feels that there’s an inverse correlation between women’s ascent and men’s descent.
0:12:33 And the reality is the reason we won world war two and men got to come home heroes is because we embraced women in the factories.
0:12:35 Hitler wanted women to stay at home.
0:12:39 And we said, fuck that women can make P 51s.
0:12:40 Let’s get them in the workplace.
0:12:49 Had women not entered the workplace, had we not had the advancement of non-whites and women through the sixties, seventies and eighties, America’s economy, just on a very,
0:12:53 you know, economic, economic, a joy level would have crashed.
0:13:00 So the left, I think, does not recognize that empathy is not a zero sum game.
0:13:06 Civil rights didn’t hurt white people, hetero or gay marriage didn’t hurt heteronormative marriage.
0:13:27 But when you started talking about men, there was a gag reflex from the left that, wait, you’re one of those guys, that your discussion of men is thinly veiled misogyny, that the answers are always going to be setting back the wonderful rights that we’ve acquired for non-whites and for women.
0:13:32 And so I get it that there’s a bit of a gag reflex.
0:13:40 And effectively, what’s happening is young men are being held responsible for our unearned privilege.
0:13:45 We got more opportunities than we deserved.
0:13:47 A lot of our success is not our fault.
0:13:51 When I applied to UCLA, the admissions rate was 74%.
0:13:53 When we applied, now it’s 9%.
0:13:59 Homes are now six times as expensive as they were when we were buying homes.
0:14:02 Incomes have gone up twice as much, right?
0:14:06 The cost of education has gone up sevenfold.
0:14:15 And a young man is now, only one in three men are in a relationship under the age of 30, two in three women.
0:14:17 You think, well, that’s mathematically impossible.
0:14:23 It’s because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men.
0:14:28 And a lot of the jobs that were on ramps for men into a middle-class lifestyle have disappeared.
0:14:40 And then you talk about the ultimate enemy, which is big tech, trying to convince men and attaching a profit motive, trying to convince young people that they can have a reasonable facsimile of a life on a screen.
0:14:53 And so the result is a young generation of men who don’t have nearly the opportunities that we had, but are being held liable and accountable for the opportunities we had.
0:15:02 And the result is you just would never have a special interest group killing themselves at four times the rate of the control group and not weigh in with programs.
0:15:10 And so when you go to the Democratic National Convention, as I did, you see this parade of people talking about the very real challenges facing special interest groups.
0:15:18 But there’s not one mention of the special interest group that’s fallen further faster than any group in America, and that’s young men.
0:15:22 So I think the gag reflex is understandable.
0:15:24 I get it.
0:15:30 But if you really start looking at the data, you recognize that we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
0:15:32 We can still address the problems facing women.
0:15:36 A woman, once she has kids, goes to 73 cents on the dollar versus men.
0:15:37 That’s a problem.
0:15:43 Social media is unfortunately attacking the self-esteem of young girls,
0:15:47 and the rates of self-harm and cutting have doubled since social and unmovable.
0:15:47 That’s a problem.
0:15:48 We can address it.
0:15:55 But we can also recognize that young men are really struggling and that our country isn’t going to continue to flourish
0:15:59 and women aren’t going to continue to ascend if men are flailing.
0:16:03 And what I would offer up, and this is, the conversation has become so much more productive
0:16:08 than when I started talking about it five years ago and immediately got this wild pushback.
0:16:15 or you’re Andrew Tate with an MBA, you know, the pushback, the dialogue has gotten so much more productive.
0:16:22 Governor Moore, State of the State Address, said he’s going to focus his administration this year on the struggles of young men and boys.
0:16:28 And the cohort that has advanced the conversation and made it much more productive is simple.
0:16:29 It’s mothers.
0:16:38 And what’s happened is mothers, I get a lot, my fans are young men, but my supporters are women, mothers.
0:16:40 And they say something like this.
0:16:47 I have three kids, two daughters, one son, one daughter’s in PR in Chicago, one is at grad school in Penn,
0:16:50 and my son is in the basement playing video games and vaping.
0:16:52 Mothers see what’s going on.
0:17:01 There is a lack of economic opportunity, a lack of romantic opportunities, and the deepest pocketed firms in the world have connected profit and revenues
0:17:08 to sequestering young people from relationships and anything else in their life and then taking them online and enraging them.
0:17:14 And unfortunately, men with a much less mature prefrontal cortex are much more susceptible to this.
0:17:19 So I think the dialogue, the good news is the dialogue has become much more productive.
0:17:25 This would have been out of the gates five years ago, seen as two old white dudes trying to keep women down.
0:17:25 Speak for yourself.
0:17:33 But this was, hey, I, college graduate.
0:17:40 Yeah, I’m sorry things haven’t worked out for you.
0:17:45 By the way, he just said, he was just saying, he was just saying to me off the, off, offline.
0:17:46 I’m like, what are you working on?
0:17:47 It’s like, meet the parents for him.
0:17:49 I’m like, it’s good to see you’re finally making some money from that shit.
0:17:50 Anyways.
0:17:55 But look, why was it so controversial?
0:17:57 Why was it so controversial?
0:17:59 No, the art world, the art world needs that.
0:18:00 The art world needs that, Ben.
0:18:03 Sorry.
0:18:06 The gag reflex is understandable, is what I’m trying to say.
0:18:08 So what do you actually do?
0:18:14 I’m totally serious, though.
0:18:16 What do I do?
0:18:18 Yeah, because like, I know you’re a professor.
0:18:19 Right.
0:18:22 But you’re also like super rich and you are super successful.
0:18:25 I know because I got a ride on your plane once.
0:18:27 That was exciting.
0:18:28 Just because you’re famous.
0:18:29 I’m a total starfighter.
0:18:30 Okay, yeah.
0:18:36 But seriously, though, like, what is this combination that you put together being a professor who also
0:18:38 is like very good at business?
0:18:42 Like, what is it that you actually spend your days doing besides memorizing statistics?
0:18:44 Because how do you know all these statistics?
0:18:46 I did a lot of…
0:18:48 Because it’s insane how many statistics you know.
0:18:51 I did a lot of drugs in college, stay in school.
0:18:54 But like, what’s your, like…
0:18:55 What do I do?
0:18:56 When you’re not doing a book tour.
0:18:57 How do I make money?
0:18:57 What do I do?
0:18:58 What do you want to know?
0:18:58 What do you…
0:18:59 How do you spend your time?
0:19:01 Just…
0:19:01 So let me…
0:19:06 How much time do you spend thinking about this stuff versus teaching versus running your
0:19:06 company?
0:19:07 So kind of three buckets.
0:19:09 I spend about a third of my time writing.
0:19:10 I write a newsletter.
0:19:11 I enjoy writing books.
0:19:15 About a third of my time on media, podcasts, and television.
0:19:21 And about a third of my time, quite frankly, on investments where I go on boards.
0:19:26 And because I’ve lived in Europe the last three years, I’m on leave from NYU, so I’m not teaching.
0:19:30 But typically, one of those things, a third of the time would be teaching.
0:19:34 But I consider myself at the end of the day, a teacher.
0:19:39 And my superpower, or my core competence, is communicating.
0:19:43 I make a lot of money and get more relevance than I deserve and can have an impact because
0:19:44 I’m a good storyteller.
0:19:46 As you can tell, I’m not a modest person.
0:19:53 But my superpower, my superpower is that people such as you think I work harder than I do.
0:19:54 I don’t work…
0:19:55 I used to work very hard.
0:19:56 I don’t work nearly that hard anymore.
0:20:02 And the secret to scaling and making money and having more relevance and impact than you
0:20:03 deserve is my superpower.
0:20:04 And I’m great at this.
0:20:07 I’m great at attracting and retaining really talented people.
0:20:08 Prop G Media…
0:20:12 People think it’s amazing that you can draw these graphs and all this…
0:20:15 I got 25 people at Prop G Media.
0:20:17 And Catherine Dillon is here.
0:20:18 Drew Burrows is here.
0:20:24 New employees, Billy Bennett.
0:20:25 I don’t know if anyone else…
0:20:27 Anyone else from Prop G here?
0:20:30 Mary Jean, my assistant, is here.
0:20:31 My chief of staff.
0:20:33 My point is, and this is…
0:20:34 I always try to reverse stuff to a learning.
0:20:37 Greatness is in the agency of others.
0:20:40 And I’m not saying that to be politically correct.
0:20:47 If you want to have outsized opportunities economically or from a relevant standpoint, you do this.
0:20:48 I mean, I can…
0:20:50 Perseverance must have taken at least three or four people, right?
0:20:52 Three, four, five people?
0:20:53 No.
0:20:55 I did it all by myself.
0:20:55 400?
0:21:01 I mean, my point is, um, I’m a…
0:21:05 No, you’re saying delegating in a certain way, uh, or what is it?
0:21:06 Is it choosing?
0:21:16 This is an interesting thing to me, like choosing the people who work with you and making those choices that someone that is so good at what they do that you can then relax and go, I know this person is going to handle this for me.
0:21:17 Is that…
0:21:18 It’s everything.
0:21:28 The only thing, the reason I get to live the life I lead is because I was always able to find really good people, give them a bunch of ownership.
0:21:41 I’ve, so the way I’ve made money is I’ve started and sold companies, but when I sell the company, I typically never own more than 30 or 40% of it because I’d rather have 30 or 40% of something that gets sold for a lot of money.
0:21:44 And the way, the only way to get people to act like owners is to make them owners.
0:21:47 And so I’ve always given away more than half my company to the employees.
0:21:50 And as soon as I find someone good, I hold onto them.
0:21:53 I’ve been working, I’ve known Mary Jean for 25 years.
0:21:56 I’ve been working with Catherine Dillon for 15 years.
0:21:59 Drew, our tech guy, who I think is here tonight, I’ve been working with 12 years.
0:22:04 So it sounds, it sounds passe, but greatness is in the agency of others.
0:22:05 So what do I do?
0:22:18 I teach, I communicate, and I’m very fortunate to have people, great people around me who scale my efforts and create a lot of economic opportunity and relevance that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
0:22:22 We’ll be right back after a quick break.
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0:24:46 We say this all the time on our show, but it bears repeating.
0:24:49 Running a small business isn’t just a full-time job.
0:24:54 It’s about a dozen full-time jobs that you rarely, if ever, get to clock out of, at least
0:24:56 until you get to the point where you can start hiring the dream team.
0:24:59 And if you’ve made it that far, you already know there’s no time to mess around.
0:25:02 That’s where LinkedIn Jobs comes in.
0:25:06 LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network, and get qualified
0:25:08 candidates that you can manage all in one place.
0:25:12 And LinkedIn’s new AI feature can even help you write job descriptions and then quickly get
0:25:15 it in front of the right people with deep candidate insights.
0:25:18 Yeah, and if you decide you want to go the extra mile to find the perfect candidate, LinkedIn
0:25:21 says that promoted jobs get three times the number of qualified applicants.
0:25:26 It’s all these little things that let you find help fast without compromising on quality, which
0:25:30 add up to you finally having extra time in the day for, I don’t know, relaxing.
0:25:36 Or, knowing my listeners, you’ll probably use that extra time to expand your empire even further.
0:25:57 Just to get back to what you were talking about before I interrupted you about it, I was, it’s
0:26:04 interesting to me when you say these role models for young men and you talk about mothers, can
0:26:10 you talk a little bit, because in the book you talk about your childhood a lot and your parents.
0:26:18 And can you talk a little bit about how they influenced you growing up, being, you know, having
0:26:24 divorced parents, what role your mom and your dad, but really how your mom affected you?
0:26:28 So, I’ve cried twice this week on national TV.
0:26:33 First on The View and about two hours ago on, oh no, it’s not cool.
0:26:36 I was just on The Daily Show, and I’m not exaggerating.
0:26:41 Jordan Klepper literally moved his hands across and held my hands and looked around like, oh
0:26:43 fuck, I don’t know how to deal with that.
0:26:48 Look, raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died as secretary, lied to my life.
0:26:56 And the basic takeaway is the following, and I try and do this, and Beata’s here, we do this I think
0:27:02 really well. If you say to a kid, regardless of, my mom worked very hard, we didn’t have a lot of
0:27:08 money, it was just us, me and her against the world. But if somebody tells you every day in small and big
0:27:13 ways, implicit and explicit, that they just think you’re wonderful, you know, I was, by the time I
0:27:20 was 16, I was six feet with bad acne and 120 pounds. I wasn’t like, I didn’t have huge social capital, let’s
0:27:25 just put it that way. But when someone’s telling you every day that you’re wonderful, you can’t help
0:27:31 but start to believe it. And I think that confidence has always been resident inside of me, you know, and
0:27:39 she, um, I was just really blessed when I reverse engineer all of my, you know, what’s happened to me,
0:27:46 the base of it is someone who just was just, you know, every day convinced me I was a good person or
0:27:53 that I was worthwhile. My dad wasn’t around, my dad left. My dad, um, was a handsome man with a
0:27:56 Scottish accent, which meant in seventies, California, you could not only think with your dick, you could
0:28:09 use it. Um, married and divorced four times as far as we know. And, uh, so he left when I was eight
0:28:17 and he wasn’t, you know, he tried, I forgive, gave him later in life because I think the primary box you
0:28:23 have to check as a, as a dad is to be better to your son than your father was to you. And my
0:28:28 dad was a much better father than his son. Uh, dad was to him. His dad was an alcoholic and
0:28:34 physically abusive to him. And he was pulled out of school at the age of 13, lied and joined the Royal
0:28:39 Navy where he was jumping into freezing water and a wetsuit at the age of 18 to come home after two
0:28:43 years, sending all his money home. Cause he wanted to come to America where his mother informed him
0:28:48 she’d spent all his money on whiskey and cigarettes. And it was angry at him when he was upset. Cause she
0:28:54 said, what was I supposed to do? I’m bored. So my dad didn’t have a lot of great role models in his
0:29:03 life, but you know, he tried, uh, checked a box. I inherited the gift of storytelling and he, he,
0:29:09 he made the smartest decision that had the most impact on my life. And that is he and my mother
0:29:15 decided to immigrate to America. A lot of my success is not my fault. So their decision to get on a
0:29:23 steamship at the ages of 20 and 21 and come to America, I’m just very grateful. And in divorce,
0:29:28 you have a tendency, I think, to sanctify one person and demonize the other. And I did that.
0:29:34 I didn’t speak to my father for years at a time. Cause I would get very angry when I would think
0:29:40 about, he could have made my mom and my life much easier. And he didn’t. And you, you know,
0:29:45 you hold onto that resentment, right? I don’t know. I’m, I’m, a lot of us have complicated
0:29:49 relationships with our parents, but the learning here are the big unlock for me. And what I would
0:29:57 tell anybody, it’s just made me much happier is that growing up, my approach to relationships was
0:30:05 transactional. Am I getting as much from this friendship as you are, um, uh, with a, a girlfriend?
0:30:09 Oh, my parents, your parents were in town and I hung out with your dad. That means you got to hang out
0:30:15 with my, with my parents. And if you don’t, or, you know, everything was a transaction. I had a
0:30:20 scorecard around every relationship and including my father. All right. I’m not going to be a better
0:30:26 son than you were a father to me. Full stop. I’m just not. And then what the biggest unlock or one of
0:30:31 the biggest unlocks from my life that started my father is I said, okay, what kind of son do I want to
0:30:34 be? What kind of friend do I want to be? What kind of partner do I want to be? What kind of
0:30:38 investor do I want to be? What kind of business partner do I want to be? And then hold yourself
0:30:43 to that standard and just put away the fucking scorecard because you’re always inflate your
0:30:48 own contributions and diminish theirs and you end up unhappy. You always end up. And I decided I
0:30:50 wanted to be a loving, generous son, regardless.
0:30:55 Can I ask what point did you, in your life, did you make that shift?
0:31:01 A few weeks ago. Under the influence of mushroom chocolates, I’m reconsidering it.
0:31:08 No, about, quite frankly, not until I was about 40 or 45. And as soon as I decided I want to be a
0:31:16 generous, loving son and put the bullshit away, our relationship just got much better. And I realized
0:31:24 I forgave him for his flaws, recognizing he did try. And a lot of his DNA, a lot of his risks
0:31:30 have paid, paid huge dividends for me. So there’s no reason I can’t be grateful for those things.
0:31:34 I want to flip it back to you. You had a different relationship. Your parents
0:31:41 married long-term. I get the sense from the things I’ve read about you. It sounded like you grew up
0:31:46 in what I would call a very stable, supportive, loving household, but that’s the exterior image.
0:31:56 I mean, you know, Upper West Side, New York, 70s parents who were a comedy team, relatively stable.
0:32:03 You know, like it was a different time. It was, you know, I just literally, I just made a documentary
0:32:08 about my family and that whole experience. And there’s so much that I can identify with what
0:32:13 you’re saying in terms of getting to a point in your life for me, where it took me to get to a point in
0:32:19 my life where I could appreciate that point of view of looking at what kind of relationship do I want
0:32:24 to have with my dad as opposed to holding on? Because I had a great dad. And for, in a way,
0:32:29 though, the daunting, of course, I always had stuff with him as any son does, but the daunting thing
0:32:36 for me was that he kind of cast a big shadow in terms of the way that people reacted to him because
0:32:43 he was a very generous guy, a very loving guy. So, like, for me, it was hard to, I was sort of in
0:32:47 conflict because I was like, well, yeah, but he’s my dad and you don’t really know, like, and he was
0:32:51 great as a dad, too. It wasn’t any some secret of, like, what he was really like, but it’s still
0:32:56 challenging. But to get to that point for me was when I had kids, and I wanted to kind of get into this
0:33:00 with you a little bit, that point where you kind of matured to a point where you could say,
0:33:04 okay, I want to have this kind of relationship while your dad is still alive. Yeah.
0:33:09 You know, you wrote in the book about, there’s a little section where you talk about your parents’
0:33:15 friends who you grew up with who, you know, were very kind of these larger-than-life characters sort
0:33:21 of when you were a kid. And then they got older. And you talk about how when your mom’s friend
0:33:26 was older and she, you basically, you needed someone to help take care of her and she left
0:33:30 you things. And you just, you wrote, there’s a little mention there where you say, like,
0:33:35 I couldn’t quite be, I couldn’t be there for her the way that maybe you felt you should have at the
0:33:41 time. And I really, it really resonated with me because I felt like, and then you said, you know,
0:33:46 as you matured, you were able to figure that out. But looking back, you said, like, I wish I had
0:33:52 shown up more for that. And it reminded me of a time when my parents’ friends, two of their very
0:33:56 close friends, one of them was very sick when I was in my thirties. Yeah. And I couldn’t deal with
0:34:03 that, of this guy who I remembered as a kid was like, I loved him so much and he was on his deathbed
0:34:09 and I couldn’t go to visit him. Yeah. And I felt awful about it because, and at the time I just
0:34:14 couldn’t deal with it. Yeah. And I feel like you really talk so eloquently in the book about,
0:34:19 you write so eloquently in the book about how you’ve gotten to this place with your kids of really
0:34:24 wanting to be something and have a relationship with them that maybe you couldn’t have when you
0:34:28 were younger. And I think that to me is like one of the themes in the book, the idea of, you know,
0:34:34 of growing and changing as a person. And when you get to these points in your life where you’re able
0:34:40 to appreciate those things. So the backstory is, uh, my mom’s best friends and my godfather were,
0:34:46 uh, or Carson and Charlie Evans. And remember the first time you remember people for the, if they’re,
0:34:52 if you registered in motion for a first time with them. And I remember thinking for the first time,
0:34:58 these people were cool and rich. I’d never met cool, rich people before they lived in the Hollywood
0:35:04 Hills and they’d have parties with live bands and cool music and everyone seemed beautiful.
0:35:10 And Carson was gorgeous. She was literally, and Charlie had a business. They were kind of the toast
0:35:18 of the town. And he took an interest in me. And I remember going to his business and it didn’t look
0:35:21 like I was going to go to college. So when I was a senior, I started spending time at his printing
0:35:26 company in the Valley. And he was trying to get me used to the thought that I might go to work there.
0:35:34 And, um, they were the toast of the town. Anyways, uh, Charlie, um, lost his business,
0:35:38 lost everything. Carson said, I’m leaving you, went into the garage, killed himself.
0:35:47 And my fast forward 20 or 30 years later, um, my mom is sick and I’m living with my mom. I’m doing
0:35:52 a lot of virtue signaling right now, but it’s true. I was living with my mom and Carson calls. And by this
0:35:57 time, Carson was a raging alcoholic addicted to painkillers. And she said, I’m coming. I’m,
0:36:02 I’m coming. I’m like, no, no, we’re fine. We’re fine. And then up rolls from San Diego to Las Vegas,
0:36:08 this canary yellow Corvette with a little Scottish Terrier and 12 bottles of Johnny Walker red.
0:36:13 And she says, I’m staying here. I’m here to take care of my best friend. And she used to
0:36:17 make hot pockets for us. And unfortunately the image that will always stay in my mind is me walking in,
0:36:23 getting there on a Sunday night from New York and Carson naked on her back with these enormous
0:36:30 enhanced breasts and a maintenance worker. And it said, Carlos, and they were fooling around on my
0:36:35 mom’s couch. And the weird thing is it was such a strange time in my life. I’m like, this fits,
0:36:45 this fits. And wow. And just going back, you know, and then things resolved. My mom passes away and Carson,
0:36:52 um, uh, about three years later, I couldn’t get her meds or, and I guess without opiates,
0:37:00 you’re basically, she died without, cause her, her, her system, it was passed away. And I get a call
0:37:06 saying, uh, you’re the only beneficiary of her will because you’re the sole beneficiary. And quite
0:37:11 frankly, I could have found time. I should have found time. I called her every once in a while,
0:37:15 but I didn’t find time to go see her. And I’m not proud of that. It’s just a lack of character,
0:37:22 right? Uh, to not find time to go, you know, spend time with a woman who took care of your mom at the
0:37:27 end. And there were just certain things I couldn’t do for my mom that Carson did do as fucked up and
0:37:32 drunk as she was all day. She was a huge, huge asset to me at a critical moment. So I got all
0:37:40 excited. I was sad, but then I got excited about potentially a windfall and, and she had a safe
0:37:46 and I’m like, Oh my God, there’s gotta be something good in there. And it was like, uh, some weird
0:37:53 stuff, some photos and this gold belt. And I used to remember her wearing it of these big $5 Indian head
0:37:59 gold coins. And I think the belt was probably worth like, I don’t know, 20 or $30,000. And I thought,
0:38:02 I’ll just hold onto this in case shit really gets real. I need to shove something up my ass and move
0:38:09 to New Zealand or something. And so I put in an addresser. It is never a good idea for me to try
0:38:15 and hide anything. And then a few years later, a friend of mine got divorced and I was moving and I
0:38:21 said, you can have all my furniture. I’m moving to a smaller apartment. And about five years later,
0:38:27 I did, I just like really needed some money. I’m like, Oh, I’ll sell the belt. And gold had spiked to
0:38:31 like, you know, a million dollars an ounce or something. So I go on this frenzy looking for
0:38:38 that goddamn belt. I can’t find it. And then fast forward another 24 months later, my friend Adam goes,
0:38:45 by the way, you know, we have this great costume jewelry, uh, we found in one of the, the dressers you
0:38:49 sent me. And I’m like, that thing’s probably worth like 80 grand by now. And he’s like, Oh,
0:38:52 my 13 year old’s been wearing it to his eighth grade. Cause he thinks it looks,
0:38:58 makes him look like a rapper. And I’m like, does he have it at school right now? Cause if he does,
0:39:05 could you go get it? Like he can’t lose this thing. But these gold coins are a reminder that at the end
0:39:11 of the day, like you can be the toast of the town. You know, these people had everything. One guy sticks a
0:39:19 rifle in his chest, you know, Charlie and the other dies addicted to opiates. And I don’t have any like
0:39:25 hallmark channel lessons here other than relationships or everything. And just to recognize a lot of your
0:39:29 success and a lot of your failure is not your fault. And you don’t know what’s going to happen.
0:39:31 Anyways, you probably, that was probably more than you wanted.
0:39:35 Thank you. And good night, everybody. It’s been a great talking to you, Scott.
0:39:44 Well, I mean, let’s talk about, you want to talk about marriage and relationships?
0:39:54 No, no. Okay. Yeah, sure. Well, I thought was like, really, I love how much you talk about marriage in
0:40:01 the book because, um, you obviously are invested in your marriage and we both have long-term marriages
0:40:09 and, um, you give interesting, I think great advice about what makes a marriage work. Um, you had a bunch
0:40:15 of statistics about how married people, uh, live longer and are happier or they’re happier.
0:40:22 So I’m, I’m just, I know they are. You’re really selling this.
0:40:29 His wife is here. Um, no, no, I’m happier now. I’m like, I’m in, but this actually is about the arc
0:40:33 of happiness that you have in the book is interesting. He has a graph about the arc of happiness, which is
0:40:39 like in across your lifetime. And it kind of goes like a big smile. Wow. Yeah. And I found it to be
0:40:46 very true. So this is, uh, I, I’ll try and bring this back to the book about men. And that is,
0:40:52 so there’s this cartoon of a woman in her thirties who doesn’t have romantic love. It’s like the
0:40:57 greatest tragedy ever, you know, poor Lisa never found romantic love. And now she’s in her forties
0:41:05 and she has cats. What a tragedy. Guess what? Lisa’s just fine. All of the research shows the following
0:41:14 men need and benefit from relationships much more than women. Widows are happier after their husband
0:41:22 dies. True. This is true. Widowers are less happy. Women do live longer relationships. They live two
0:41:28 to four years longer. Men live four to seven years longer. If a man hasn’t cohabitated with a woman
0:41:33 or been married by the time he’s 30, there’s a one in three chance. He’ll be a substance abuser.
0:41:40 When women don’t have a romantic relationship, they oftentimes for a lot of that energy back into their
0:41:47 friend network and their professional lives. When, when men don’t have a relationship, they pour a lot of
0:41:53 that energy back into online content, nationalists, nationalism, misogyny, anti-immigration. They
0:42:00 start blaming other people for their problems. The bottom line is men need, especially young men need
0:42:06 guardrails. And there is nothing like the guardrails of a relationship and especially marriage. And
0:42:14 when I, I’ll flip this back to you, but when I was younger, when I was, you know, in my twenties,
0:42:20 thirties, and even into my forties, everything was about more. I wanted more money, no matter how much
0:42:25 money I want, more money, relevance. I want more relevance, no matter how fabulous my experiences are,
0:42:30 the people I was hanging out. Could I hang out with more interesting people? Well, I’m in St. Bart’s
0:42:36 for new year’s to say, what about F one for new? I just more, I want fucking more, just never quite
0:42:46 sated. And the only time I have ever felt sated is when I’m with my boys and my partner Beata and we
0:42:50 look at each other and we know we’ve done something right. And it’s a hassle and it’s the end of the
0:42:56 night and the kids instinctively throw their legs over ours and we’re all on the couch or I know
0:43:02 they’re safe. I know they’re protected. I know they’re loved. I know they love me immensely. It’s the
0:43:08 only time I’ve ever had a moment where I thought, okay, I get it. I could go now. I don’t want to go
0:43:14 now, but I get it. This is it. This is enough. Only time in my life where I’ve ever felt sated. And
0:43:20 what I would say to, I didn’t want to get married. I didn’t want to have kids. I just didn’t. I thought,
0:43:25 you know, being single and alone in New York is a empty and meaningless experience. But as far as
0:43:32 empty and meaningless experiences go, it was pretty damn good. And then I found someone who wanted to
0:43:37 have kids and said, I’m not interested in a long-term relationship with kids. I’m like, fine.
0:43:43 We’ll have kids. And now hands down, and all the research shows this, the happiest people are
0:43:49 generally part of a family. And I think the part of masculinity is the greatest reward I feel
0:43:55 is making them feel like they’re noticed and they’re loved being a provider for them, making
0:44:01 them hopefully that they feel protected. But it is the most unexpected means of finding purpose and
0:44:08 meaning in my life. And the most wonderful thing, it’s not even making money that’s great. It’s making
0:44:16 it with people. It’s making it with a team. When I met my wife, I had no money. She had no money.
0:44:21 We built a great life together. We had no kids. We have these two boys who get less awful every day.
0:44:29 But doing that with someone else, when you don’t, when my mom passed away, one of the hardest things
0:44:35 about that was every time something good happened to me, I would call my mom. I got my first bonus from
0:44:39 Morgan Stanley, call my mom. And, you know, your mom can just wax on. She just loves hearing about
0:44:43 great things. I just, I met a woman at a coffee line and I got her number. Well, good for you. That’s so
0:44:52 wonderful. You’re so handsome. It’s no surprise, you know? And for a good five, 10 years, every time
0:44:57 something good happened to me, it was as if it didn’t happen because without calling my mom, it
0:45:03 would like, it wasn’t cemented. It was like, it just didn’t happen. And so now with a wife and kids,
0:45:10 it’s like good things happen again. Like we are building something together and hands down the most
0:45:16 rewarding thing in my life. And if I could have any sort of public policy in some, we need to put more
0:45:21 money into the pockets of young people such that they can afford to mate and build loving, secure
0:45:36 families. 60% of 30 year olds used to have at least one child 40 years ago. Now it’s 27%. And it’s not
0:45:41 some cool anti-kid thing. Oh, they’re worried about the climate. They can’t afford to. And also when you
0:45:46 have a lot of young men who aren’t economically viable, we don’t like to have an honest conversation
0:45:52 about mating. Men mate socioeconomically horizontally and down women horizontally and up. Beyonce could
0:46:00 work at McDonald’s and marry Jay-Z. The opposite is not true. 75%. It’s the truth, folks. 75% of women
0:46:08 say economic viability is key to a mate. Only 25% of men. So when men are not doing well economically,
0:46:15 we have an absence of mating. We have an absence of what is the opportunity to do the most rewarding
0:46:20 thing in the world. And that is build a family where you get to that point of building something
0:46:27 with someone else. And without those opportunities, you know, it’s tough on women, but it is absolutely
0:46:35 disastrous for men. Because without the guard posts or the guideposts of a relationship, a man really comes
0:46:42 off the tracks. So the question is, how do we figure out a way to lift up all young people, which I think
0:46:47 will disproportionately benefit men right now, because they’re kind of falling off of the tracks.
0:46:53 And that is, they don’t have the money, the confidence, or the skills to find a partner.
0:46:59 And when I think about the most, it just makes me very upset and rattled to think that the most
0:47:04 rewarding thing in my life is effectively off limits. Marriage is the new luxury item.
0:47:09 Four-fifths of people in the top quintile of income earning households get married. Only one in five men
0:47:15 in the lowest quintile ever have an opportunity to mate. And unfortunately, that’s more the average or
0:47:21 more typical in history. Only 80% of women have reproduced in our species on the planet, only 40% of men.
0:47:28 Because the natural state of kind of barbarism and a society just left where it doesn’t redistribute
0:47:34 money back to the middle class. The natural order is Porsche polygamy, where the few men who are
0:47:40 anointed money or so talented or lucky they get a lot of money, they have multiple mates. And the
0:47:46 majority of the lower 90 of men don’t have any. And a society collapses on itself because those men get
0:47:51 angry. And the most dangerous person in the world is a lonely, broke young man. If you look at the most
0:47:56 unstable, violent societies in the world, they have a disproportionate number of young men without a lack,
0:48:02 who have a lack of economic and a lack of romantic opportunities. And I think right now, the reason why we have
0:48:09 elected an insurrectionist president is because young men are failing. And young people pivoted hardest from
0:48:17 blue to red, 20 to 24. And the second group that pivoted hardest was 45 to 64 year old women. And my thesis is
0:48:22 that’s their mothers. Because if your son isn’t doing well, you don’t give a shit about territorial sovereignty in
0:48:27 Ukraine or transgender rights. You just know your kid, your son isn’t doing well. So I think we have
0:48:35 all sorts of reasons to make a huge investment in younger people, not just men, all younger people,
0:48:41 right? The $40 billion a year tax credit for children gets stripped out of the infrastructure bill. The
0:48:47 $120 billion cost of living adjustment for Social Security flies right through Congress. Old people have
0:48:51 figured out a way to vote themselves more money. Our elected representatives are a cross between the
0:48:58 Golden Girls and the Land of the Dead. And they keep transferring more money from young people to old
0:49:03 people. A person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy than they were than a person that age 40
0:49:11 years ago. People our age are 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. What does that mean? It means
0:49:16 young people are struggling. The more anxious, the more obese. And it is especially hard on young men because
0:49:20 we don’t like to talk about this, but when a young man has fewer opportunities to be provide, be a
0:49:26 provider, he is harshly judged in society. Women are disproportionately and unfairly evaluated on their
0:49:31 aesthetics. Men are unfairly and disproportionately evaluated on their economic viability. And we are
0:49:38 producing way too many economically unviable men. It is bad for household formation. It robs young men of the
0:49:44 greatest opportunity for happiness to build something with someone else. And it makes a nation unstable and
0:49:58 violent. We’ll be right back.
0:50:19 And the story of Roscoe Cadoulian and the rest of the Phoenix Colony have to re-upload their minds into the
0:50:26 quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar
0:50:33 winner Brendan Fraser reprise his role as Roscoe Cadoulian in this follow-up to the Audible original blockbuster, The
0:50:41 Downloaded. It’s a thought provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer
0:50:47 does it again with this much anticipated sequel that leaves you asking, “What are you willing to lose
0:50:57 to save the ones you love?” The downloaded two ghosts in the machine?” Available now, only from Audible.
0:50:59 Thank you.
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0:52:19 what was yesterday like in the neighborhood? It was terrible. You know, we lost quite a few
0:52:26 people from our neighborhood. Someone mentioned in the chat say, “Hey, they are targeting vans,
0:52:37 working vans and stopping people. They already stop our landscapers.” This week on Criminal, the story
0:52:43 of one day in one neighborhood in Chicago, and the people living there who try to stop ICE agents
0:52:49 from arresting their neighbors. Listen now on Criminal, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:53:02 Talking about masculinity in a marriage, this is just something I was thinking about. Like, how important is it
0:53:11 for men in a marriage, do you think, to maintain, like, that thing of feeling like a masculine man?
0:53:17 Because that’s, you know, do you know what I mean? Well, I mean, just in terms of, like, you talk about
0:53:24 masculinity in young men, but like, as guys get to our age, you know, I feel like guys our age start to try
0:53:35 grasp onto holding onto something as you start to get older. Yeah, look, I don’t think of it—the honest answer is I don’t know. I haven’t
0:53:42 parsed the role masculinity plays in a— What do you think about it in your own marriage?
0:53:48 Okay, so I’ve given a couple of best man toasts, and I’ll give you the exact toast I give. For a successful
0:53:54 marriage, this is my feeling. One, put away the scorecard. We talked about this. Just decide the
0:53:58 kind of husband you want to be, and always try and be in the plus column. By the way, I think that is the
0:54:03 litmus test for when you become a man. I think there are a lot of males that grow really old and never become
0:54:09 men. And I think the ultimate litmus test is the following. It’s the term surplus value. You create
0:54:14 more—every one of us is absorbing $20,000, $30,000, $60,000 a year in tax, other people’s tax revenue. If
0:54:18 you call 911, someone shows up. If you need to go to the hospital, they’ll take care of you. There are
0:54:23 brave men and women handling very expensive equipment to try and defend our shores from people who would like
0:54:30 to kill us, all right? So we have a debt. So do you create more economic value in jobs than you absorb?
0:54:36 Do you notice more people’s lives than notice yours? At some point, do more people complain to you than
0:54:42 you complain? It’s okay that you want to—the moment a man, and some men ever get there, to a point where
0:54:48 they are adding more economic value, adding more love, adding more concern, absorbing more complaints,
0:54:53 making more people feel good about themselves than maybe made you feel good. That’s the whole
0:54:59 fucking shooting match is surplus value. So anyways, keep—put the scorecard away. My first
0:55:07 suggestion in these toasts, the second is the following. Always express, always express physical
0:55:13 desire, sex, and affection. It’s what says, “I choose you.” I think women want to be wanted.
0:55:23 Sorry, that’s my experience. And I think having a really robust, always wanting to express your desire and
0:55:31 express affection. I think that says to your partner, “Our relationship is singular.” I think it’s hugely important.
0:55:36 And finally, and maybe most importantly, never, ever let a woman be cold or hungry.
0:55:50 I was afraid I wasn’t going to have enough questions.
0:55:58 But man, it’s great to listen to you talk. I got one more thing I want to talk about before there are
0:56:02 questions from the audience. And I really want to read a bunch of them because I—
0:56:11 what do you think makes a successful marriage? Oh, shit. I think you have to want it and you have to
0:56:17 appreciate what you have. And for me, it—that’s where I got to. It took me a little bit to get there.
0:56:22 And really, I think that’s the thing in marriages that go on a long time is that you get used to
0:56:27 each other and you take for granted what you have. So to me, it’s like always, every day,
0:56:32 not taking it for granted. I had that ability because I wasn’t together the whole time. The
0:56:35 separation came back together. What was the moment where you realized
0:56:40 this is worth investing and re-upping? What was it? When I didn’t have it.
0:56:46 I mean, when I had time to really sit with, you know, being on my own and think about it.
0:56:50 And was it loneliness or not sharing your life with someone or not being in a family unit?
0:56:57 It was all of those things. And having the space, I guess, I don’t know. Like, I don’t know. Like,
0:57:03 I was just like, I realized, oh, I miss, I miss this. And, and yeah. And then I felt very
0:57:11 fortunate that I actually was able to, you know, come back and that we were able to come back. But like,
0:57:16 the great thing is, is like every single day, that’s never a question for, you know, now at this
0:57:23 point, but I’m here to interview you, Scott. Um, no, I, um, I wanted to, in what you were saying,
0:57:28 before we go to the questions, I wanted to talk about, pick up on what you’re saying about the
0:57:33 surplus value thing. And in the, in the book, you talk about how much you love your family,
0:57:37 which I found really moving. And I’ve got a friend who’s an author, George Saunders,
0:57:46 great author who’s written in his short stories and novels about the idea of loving bigger and outside
0:57:54 of your own family unit. Um, this idea of like, you know, of having that willingness to sacrifice
0:58:01 outside of those in your immediate blood relations. Um, and you wrote, I just wanted to read this,
0:58:09 uh, before, cause I thought it was really moving and it is what you write about your, um, relationship
0:58:16 and how you change in terms of appreciating that when you say, you say, I lost my self absorption for a
0:58:21 moment and thought about the millions, maybe billions of people in a constant state of despair over the
0:58:26 wellbeing of their children. And this is talking about the family unit, which we all feel that
0:58:31 connection with our children, but, um, facing everyday things they can’t control that they,
0:58:36 that aren’t their fault or they’re doing that threaten their kids wellbeing, except it feels like
0:58:40 it’s your fault fault. Our only real job here is to ensure our kids survive and prosper.
0:58:46 Any threat to this survival and hopeful prosperity is the ultimate failure. Uh, it cuts to tissue and
0:58:51 emotions you didn’t know existed. So like, you know, that idea of what you feel for your own
0:58:57 kids, how important do you think this idea, the idea of empathy is for those outside your immediate
0:59:01 circle is in terms of how, how we go forward in the world. And I think about it in terms of having
0:59:08 done work with refugees and seeing the, you know, I think the horrible attitude that our government has
0:59:15 towards, uh, you know, people who are vulnerable, um, and how important it is to have that empathy.
0:59:19 And is that something you think about? Yeah, I, I couch it in the, I talk about the three legs
0:59:25 of the stool of masculinity and be a provider. I think it’s important that men at least attempt
0:59:30 from a very early age to be economically viable, but the whole shooting match, the whole reason
0:59:36 why you make money, establish strength, establish skills is you move to the second leg of the stool
0:59:43 and that is protection. And what really worries me about our current leadership. So just naturally,
0:59:48 young men are going to look to the most powerful person in the world and the richest person in the world
0:59:52 for leadership, as an example around masculinity, they’re just going to model those people, whether
0:59:57 we want them to or not, because president’s the most powerful person in the world. And the richest man in
1:00:03 the world has won this game called capitalism. And what I just find so disappointing and so incredibly
1:00:08 damaging, and I think it’s going to haunt our young men for decades, and it’ll take a ton of time to
1:00:14 reprogram them is that these individuals are not taking their prosperity and moving to protection.
1:00:18 If you cut aid, if you have, if you have, if you’re the richest man in the world
1:00:25 and you’re cutting aid to HIV positive mothers, that should be a reputational extinction event.
1:00:41 The whole point I think of masculinity is take care of yourself. Get really fucking strong. A man under
1:00:46 the age of 30 has incredible bone structure, more double twitch muscle, and this amazing substance
1:00:51 called testosterone. I jokingly say, any man under the age of 30 should be able to walk into any room
1:00:56 room and know if shit got real, they could kill and eat everybody or outrun them. And when you get
1:01:00 physically and emotionally and mentally strong, right, you’re going to feel better about yourself.
1:01:04 You’re going to be less prone to mental illness. You’re going to be more attractive to potential
1:01:09 mates. Who breaks up fights at bars? Really strong, confident people. Who starts fights at bars?
1:01:15 People who don’t feel very good about themselves. So you protect yourself. You get strong. You protect
1:01:21 your family. Then you start protecting your community. And the ultimate expression of masculinity, full stop,
1:01:27 is you plant trees the shade of which you’ll never sit under, right? Well, you’re talking about your
1:01:34 work with refugees. That’s the whole shooting match. And I don’t say that to be virtuous. I say that
1:01:39 it took me forever to get there. I was so focused on myself and taking care of myself and making money.
1:01:46 And I’m not naturally a kind or philanthropic person. And I’m embarrassed to say that, but it’s true.
1:01:50 These were things I had to learn and I had to appreciate. But what you realize is that if you
1:01:57 can get to that outer ring of protecting people you’ll never meet, Jesus Christ, that makes you feel like a
1:02:02 man. And I’m not suggesting that that’s not a reward that women can’t get. I think they actually have those
1:02:08 nurturing instincts come more easily. But that’s the whole point of leaning into your manhood. Be really
1:02:15 fucking strong. Be really talented. Make a shit ton of money. Get influence. Be smart. Be generous. Be kind.
1:02:23 And then start, if you can, protecting others. That’s the basis of masculinity. If you think about the
1:02:30 most masculine jobs, military, fireman, cop, at the end of the day, they protect. And I think that
1:02:36 a lot of men, the men we’re supposed to look up to, have totally missed the boat on protection. Like,
1:02:43 why on earth would you make that much money if you didn’t use it to protect people? It just, it makes
1:02:51 absolutely no goddamn sense to me. And these are the worst role models for young men. They conflate
1:02:58 masculinity with coarseness and cruelty. That couldn’t be more any anti-masculine. Being sued
1:03:06 by two women concurrently for sole custody of that child because you’ve never seen that child. Elon Musk.
1:03:15 That couldn’t be any more anti-masculine. Punching down. And our nation, quite frankly, is not very
1:03:22 nurturing or masculine right now. 20% of people, Americans are under the age of 18, but 40% of kids
1:03:26 under the age of 18 are on food stamps. That means we have decided we are no longer in the business of
1:03:32 protecting the most vulnerable. Our nation is losing its roots of protection and masculinity.
1:03:41 I think women heal. I think the most successful families and the most successful alliance in history,
1:03:47 and I’m going to work on hopefully flipping Congress and I want to get involved in politics
1:03:51 in terms of helping someone retake the White House, but restoring.
1:04:05 That, that is so pandering to this audience. But, but I think the theme for the next 10 years in
1:04:09 America has to be restoration of alliances. Alliances with our great trading partners,
1:04:13 alliances between moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats that see themselves as Americans before
1:04:17 their parties first. But also, I think we need to restore the greatest alliance in history,
1:04:24 and that’s the alliance between men and women. And what each gender has done a great job of is
1:04:31 trying to convince themselves that it’s the other gender’s fault. I know, I know when a young man is
1:04:36 unsavable, he starts blaming immigrants for his economic problems and he starts blaming women for his
1:04:40 romantic problems. It’s like, I, there’s nothing I can do, boss. You’ve lost the script.
1:04:47 And at the same time, just to be an equal opportunity criticizer here, a lot of young
1:04:52 women have absolutely no empathy for young men. There’s this movement on TikTok where women are
1:04:56 saying they won’t date. They’ve stopped dating because they’re worried about being unalived.
1:05:00 I don’t know if any of you have seen these things have gone viral, meaning they’re worried they’ll be
1:05:04 murdered by this violent pathological group called young men. And here’s the data.
1:05:10 If a man goes on a date, he’s 16 times more likely to go home and hurt himself
1:05:16 than hurt his date. You’re four times more likely to get hurt on the car ride over or choke during
1:05:20 dinner than to be hurt by a man. Men are dangerous. Young men are not doing well and they’re dangerous,
1:05:26 but they’re dangerous towards themselves. And just saying to young men, you don’t have problems,
1:05:34 you are the problem. We need empathy from women. Women have to lead this dialogue, especially mothers.
1:05:40 And young men need to recognize we need to celebrate the progress of our sisters and mothers. But for God’s
1:05:46 sakes, I have seven and a half billion points of evidence that the greatest alliance in history is the
1:05:51 alliance between men and women. The happiest households in the world bring a combination of
1:05:57 masculine and feminine energy. And by the way, two women can bring masculine and feminine energy.
1:06:04 I’m drawn, my close friends are generally more feminine. I like nurturing, caring men. I’m more
1:06:08 drawn towards feminine attributes than men. None of these qualities are sequestered to people
1:06:14 born as a certain gender. But young men have an easier time leaning into more masculine
1:06:19 attributes. And we need to recast them as something wonderful. There’s no such thing as toxic masculinity.
1:06:25 There’s cruelty. There’s abuse. There’s violence. Those couldn’t be more non-masculine. But for God’s
1:06:32 sakes, let’s lift each other up. This shit, men and women together bringing a mix of that incredible
1:06:38 femininity and masculinity, that’s the whole fucking shooting match. That’s the most rewarding thing ever.
1:06:47 So let’s decide we’re allies again, instead of finding reasons why it’s the other gender’s fault. Let’s get out there.
1:06:56 All right. We’re getting close to the end. So I’m going to just ask a couple of these questions.
1:07:01 Oh, wow. Thank God. Oh, this was your idea. Thank God.
1:07:06 This is not about Stiller’s soda. It’s so good to see you finally making some money.
1:07:11 Okay. Stiller’s soda. Ben doesn’t drink. That’s why we’ll never be close.
1:07:12 Thank you. Okay.
1:07:15 So he started… We can drink chocolate mushrooms.
1:07:18 He started a soda line. What’s mine?
1:07:24 I asked for your input on branding. You just wanted access to my social. It’s like when candidates call me for advice.
1:07:28 They just want my money. Cheers, brother. Cheers, man. Cheers. Good to see you.
1:07:29 Good to see you. Thank you.
1:07:37 Okay. Here’s a couple of questions. And going off of what you just talked about, which was pretty profound.
1:07:45 How big of a role does repressed emotion play in this young men, all men issue? And is therapy helpful?
1:07:53 I don’t feel really qualified to comment on that. I’ll just say from a personal standpoint that
1:07:57 I’m not an adolescent psychiatrist. I just don’t have any domain expertise here. And people are constantly
1:08:05 fond of reminding me on Twitter that I have no domain expertise in this area. What I will say is the
1:08:10 following. This is just personal. From the age of 29 to 44, I didn’t cry. Do you cry a lot?
1:08:15 I do more now. I do more now. Now. Yeah. Yeah. Meet the parents for
1:08:20 We really needed that.
1:08:27 Anyways, from the age of 29 to 40, you’re not getting invited to the premiere.
1:08:35 From the age of 29 to 44, I didn’t cry once. Didn’t cry when my mother died. Didn’t when my
1:08:42 company went chapter 11. You know, just didn’t, didn’t cry when I got divorced. Just didn’t,
1:08:48 just lost the, I forgot how, literally forgot how. And then I started again. And what the advice I would
1:08:54 give to any man is that life goes, especially as you get older, life starts falling off a cliff.
1:09:01 Years become quarters, quarters become months, months become, and I’m an atheist. I think at
1:09:04 some point I’ll look into my kids’ eyes and know our relationship is coming to an end.
1:09:10 But it kind of liberates me to be a little bit more fearless with my emotions. And what I started doing,
1:09:16 and it’s been just a gift, is when something moves me, I weep up and I cry. And unfortunately,
1:09:22 it’s gone a little bit overboard. I cried on The View and The Daily Show. But my suggestion or advice to
1:09:29 men is don’t fall into some sort of fucked up sense of masculinity that there’s a good reason why men
1:09:34 don’t want to cry or exhibit weakness. Because for about 99% of our time on this planet, if you exhibited
1:09:38 weakness to another man, there’s a decent chance he might sense that weakness, kill you, have sex with
1:09:46 your wife, and then eat your children. So men have been taught instinctively not to in any way exhibit
1:09:53 weakness. Vulnerability is not something that’s hardwired into our DNA. But if you see something that inspires
1:10:02 you, in my opinion, my advice would be to stop and really bask in it and try and understand why
1:10:09 this thing inspires you, this piece of art, this piece of design, something you’ve read, read it again,
1:10:16 and really try and understand and inform your emotions. Why does this move you? Try and let yourself lean into
1:10:22 crying. When you find something funny, do your best to laugh out loud. Because you need to slow life down,
1:10:30 you need to inform yourself. And I find that I’m much less prone to real anxiety and real anger,
1:10:38 both of which I suffer from, if I’m more in touch and registering emotions. I just think it’s healthy,
1:10:46 informs your life, it slows life down. In terms of at what point that type of repression impacts a kid
1:10:55 the honest answer is I don’t feel like I have the domain expertise. Why are you crying more, Ben?
1:11:04 Because I, I don’t know. I mean, I think, I mean, also like, you know, when you’re an actor too,
1:11:08 like you’re sensitive sometimes, you know, and it’s like kind of like that stuff is actually stuff that
1:11:16 you try to somehow be in touch with. But like in life for me, I think I just value everything that I have.
1:11:22 I’m more self-aware. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe it’s because life, you know, things I’ve gone through
1:11:30 in life, losing my parents, appreciating that, them as people, watching my kids grow up,
1:11:39 seeing how they become people, cats in the cradle is true, you know, on a certain level. It’s life
1:11:43 happening to you. So I, I, I feel like it’s a good thing too. And I think what you’re talking about
1:11:50 also is not just, you’re talking about like stopping and experiencing the moment of what’s happening in
1:11:55 terms of what’s something that moves you. Like actually, because we’re just all going a million
1:12:00 miles an hour with social media and TV and life and everything. If you’re saying like,
1:12:04 stop and actually experience the moment and think about what you’re feeling and feel it
1:12:10 and, and just be, be in the moment. And that I think is a very important thing too.
1:12:15 We’re sentient beings. The fear or the danger is you rip through life, maybe make some money,
1:12:20 maybe had a couple of kids, but did you ever really feel anything? Like at the end of your life,
1:12:26 like, did your life really happen? Right. So my sense is if you’re committed to squeezing as much
1:12:33 juice out of this lime called life as possible, if you aren’t regularly practicing feeling shit,
1:12:37 your life will go like that. And at the end of your life, you’re going to regret not having slowed it down
1:12:43 and being what it is to be human. It’s sentient means feeling. I’m not good at it. I’m getting better
1:12:48 at it, but I think it’s great advice for all men. Live your life, feel shit, lean into it.
1:12:52 Do you feel like when you watch something or listen to music or watch a movie or something,
1:12:57 it like unlock something for you? Or do you find it just happening in real life more?
1:13:00 Oh, I get a lot of it from art. I can’t watch Modern Family without tearing up.
1:13:06 Okay. Um, I do think Meet the Parents 4 might really bring it out.
1:13:14 Okay. All right. I’m going to do one last question.
1:13:23 What is your perspective on the role of a man that is a father of a girl? How do you have that,
1:13:30 how do you have that some impact without a male child to show the way? I’m not, can you, here.
1:13:31 I couldn’t quite.
1:13:39 A doctor wrote this or the person, I think, and my wife’s going to kill me when I say this.
1:13:48 We have two boys and she wanted a third. And I said, no, uh, I was so freaked out
1:13:53 about, I mean, the reality is you have your world of work, you have your world of friends,
1:13:56 you have your world of kids. Something comes off the tracks with one of your kids
1:14:01 and your whole world, you know, that’s it. The whole world just shrinks to that kid.
1:14:07 And like most people, we knew people who’d had issues with their kids. I mean, not huge issues,
1:14:14 whatever, you know, pick your acronym. And my attitude was, we’re good. We know our two kids are
1:14:19 pretty, you know, either going to be good or great. Let’s cash out of the table. We’re pushing our luck,
1:14:28 our odds. And also to be blunt, I wasn’t making a lot of money and the most stressed I’ve ever felt.
1:14:36 When Beata gave birth to our first child, it was right during the teeth of the great financial recession.
1:14:40 And I was basically broke. I basically lost everything. I’ve been rich three times,
1:14:46 which means I’ve lost it all twice. And the great financial recession came along and just wiped me out.
1:14:52 And the first thing I felt when Alec had the poor judgment to come marching out of Beata
1:14:59 at the wrong time, I did, it was not bright lights and Beata will confirm this. It’s not bright lights and angels singing.
1:15:07 I was, the first thing I felt was kind of like shame and anxiety because the, the paternal instinct
1:15:13 kicked in and I’m like, I have had, I’ve made so much fucking money and I’ve just blown it. I was so
1:15:18 narcissistic and egotistical thinking I should double down on my own companies. I was that idiot that
1:15:25 borrowed stock against this company to buy more stock and, you know, never diversified in it to win it.
1:15:31 I’d read these articles about, you know, Bill Gates, putting all of his money into his company and Mark
1:15:36 Zuckerberg turning down a billion dollars, you know, just, and I bought so into that kind of macho
1:15:43 and then we had a kid at exactly the wrong time for me. And I, I would, so quite frankly, I was just
1:15:49 worried I wasn’t gonna have the economic security to handle three kids, especially in New York. So
1:15:56 yeah, I, I don’t, I don’t want to pretend where I was headed with this. One of my biggest regrets
1:16:01 is not having a third and not having a girl because, and now it’s for selfish reasons because girls take
1:16:09 care of their dads. But I don’t know if I have any specific advice on parenting girls versus boys. You
1:16:22 do have a daughter. So yeah, no, wrong person. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, all right. Listen, this has been
1:16:30 great. I, I, I seriously, you are incredible. Scott Galloway is incredible. What a resource. What an
1:16:41 amazingly could talk for another two hours. Um, and, uh, yeah, thanks everybody for, for coming and buy
1:16:46 the book. It’s really, really good. And I hope you do what you said and you’ll get more involved in this
1:17:03 next, uh, election cycle. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Thank you.