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0:00:20 What do you think about when you think about AI?
0:00:25 Maybe chatbots giving you new lasagna recipes,
0:00:29 research assistants helping you finish that paper.
0:00:33 Do you think about machines taking your job?
0:00:37 Maybe you think of something even more ominous,
0:00:41 like Skynet robots wiping out humanity.
0:00:46 If you’re like me, you probably think of all those things,
0:00:47 depending on the day.
0:00:50 And that’s sort of the point.
0:00:55 AI is not well understood, even by the people creating it.
0:00:58 And even though we all know it’s a technology
0:01:00 that’s going to change our lives,
0:01:03 that’s really all we know at this point.
0:01:10 So how do we confront this uncertainty?
0:01:13 How do we navigate the current moment?
0:01:17 And how do we, the people who have been told
0:01:19 that we will be impacted by AI,
0:01:21 but don’t seem to have much of a say
0:01:23 in how the AI is being built,
0:01:26 engage in the conversation?
0:01:31 I’m Sean Elling, and this is The Gray Area.
0:01:45 Today’s guest is Jaron Lanier.
0:01:48 He’s a virtual reality pioneer,
0:01:50 a digital philosopher,
0:01:54 and the author of several best-selling books on technology.
0:01:57 He’s also one of the most profound critics
0:02:01 of Silicon Valley and the business model driving it.
0:02:04 I wanted to bring Jaron on the show
0:02:07 for the first episode of this special series on AI
0:02:10 because I think he’s uniquely positioned
0:02:14 to speak both to the technological side of AI,
0:02:16 what’s happening, where it’s going,
0:02:20 and also to the human side.
0:02:24 Jaron’s a computer scientist who loves technology.
0:02:29 But at his core, he’s a humanist
0:02:32 who’s always thinking about what technologies are doing to us
0:02:36 and how our understanding of these tools
0:02:39 will inevitably determine how they’re used.
0:02:43 Maybe what Jaron does the best, though,
0:02:45 is offer a different lens
0:02:47 through which to view these technologies.
0:02:51 We’re encouraged to treat these machines
0:02:54 as though they’re godlike,
0:02:56 as though they’re thinking for themselves.
0:03:01 Indeed, they’re designed to make you feel that way
0:03:04 because it adds to the mystique around them
0:03:07 and obscures the truth about how they really work.
0:03:12 But Jaron’s plea is to be careful
0:03:15 about thoughtlessly adopting the language
0:03:17 that the AI creators give us
0:03:18 to describe their creation
0:03:21 because that language structures
0:03:25 not only how we think about these technologies,
0:03:27 but what we do with them.
0:03:35 Jaron Lanier, welcome to the show.
0:03:36 That’s me. Hey.
0:03:39 So look, I have heard
0:03:43 so many of these big picture conversations about AI
0:03:48 and they often begin with a question
0:03:52 about how or whether AI is going to take over the world.
0:03:55 But I discovered very quickly
0:03:57 that you don’t accept the terms of that question,
0:03:59 which is why I’m not going to ask it.
0:04:01 but I thought it would be useful
0:04:03 as a beginning to ask you
0:04:05 why you find questions like that
0:04:07 or claims like that ridiculous.
0:04:10 Oh, well, you know,
0:04:12 when it comes to AI,
0:04:15 the whole technical field
0:04:16 is kind of defined
0:04:19 by an almost metaphysical assertion,
0:04:22 which is we are creating intelligence.
0:04:23 Well, what is intelligence?
0:04:26 Something human.
0:04:28 The whole field was founded
0:04:31 by Alan Turing’s thought experiment
0:04:32 called the Turing test,
0:04:37 where if you can fool a human
0:04:38 into thinking you’ve made a human,
0:04:40 then you might as well have made a human
0:04:42 because what other tests could there be?
0:04:45 Which in a way is fair enough.
0:04:45 On the other hand,
0:04:47 what other scientific field
0:04:50 other than maybe supporting stage magicians
0:04:53 is entirely based on being able to fool people?
0:04:53 I mean, it’s stupid.
0:04:56 Fooling people in itself accomplishes nothing.
0:04:58 There’s no productivity.
0:04:59 There’s no insight
0:05:01 unless you’re studying
0:05:03 the cognition of being fooled, of course.
0:05:06 So there’s an alternative way
0:05:07 to think about what we do
0:05:09 with what we call AI,
0:05:12 which is that there’s no new entity.
0:05:14 There’s nothing intelligent there.
0:05:16 What there is is a new
0:05:17 and in my opinion,
0:05:18 sometimes quite useful
0:05:21 form of collaboration between people.
0:05:23 If you look at something like the Wikipedia,
0:05:25 where people mash up
0:05:27 a lot of their communications into one thing,
0:05:30 you can think of that as a step on the way
0:05:32 to what we call large model AI,
0:05:34 where we take all the data that we have
0:05:35 and we put it together
0:05:39 in a way that allows more interpolation
0:05:43 and more commingling than previous methods.
0:05:47 And I think that can be of great use,
0:05:49 but I don’t think there’s any requirement
0:05:52 that we perceive that as a new entity.
0:05:53 Now, you might say,
0:05:54 well, what’s the harm if we do?
0:05:56 That’s a fair question.
0:05:57 Like, who cares?
0:05:58 If somebody wants to think of it
0:06:00 as a new type of person
0:06:02 or even a new type of God or whatever,
0:06:03 what’s wrong with that?
0:06:06 Potentially nothing.
0:06:08 People believe all kinds of things all the time.
0:06:12 But, in the case of our technology,
0:06:15 let me put it this way.
0:06:19 If you’re a mathematician or a scientist,
0:06:25 you can do what you do
0:06:27 in a kind of an abstract way.
0:06:28 Like, you can say,
0:06:30 I’m furthering math.
0:06:33 And, in a way, that’ll be true
0:06:35 even if nobody else ever even perceives
0:06:36 that I’ve done it.
0:06:37 I’ve written down this proof.
0:06:40 But that’s not true for technologists.
0:06:43 Technologists only make sense
0:06:46 if there’s a designated beneficiary.
0:06:49 Like, you have to make technology for someone.
0:06:52 And, as soon as you say
0:06:56 the technology itself is a new someone,
0:07:00 you stop making sense as a technologist.
0:07:01 Right?
0:07:03 Let me actually take up that question
0:07:04 that you just posed a second ago
0:07:05 with a thought,
0:07:07 I’ve heard from you,
0:07:09 which is something to the effect of,
0:07:11 I think the way you put it is
0:07:13 the easiest way to mismanage a technology
0:07:15 is to misunderstand it.
0:07:17 So, to answer your question…
0:07:18 Sounds like me, I guess.
0:07:19 Yeah. Okay.
0:07:22 If we make the mistake,
0:07:23 which is now common,
0:07:26 to insist that AI is, in fact,
0:07:28 some kind of god or creature
0:07:30 or entity or oracle,
0:07:31 whatever term you prefer,
0:07:33 instead of a tool as you define it,
0:07:34 the implication is that
0:07:37 that would be a consequential mistake, right?
0:07:39 That we will mismanage the technology
0:07:40 by misunderstanding it.
0:07:41 So, is that not quite right?
0:07:42 Am I not quite understanding?
0:07:43 No, I think that’s right.
0:07:46 I think when you treat the technology
0:07:47 as its own beneficiary,
0:07:49 you miss a lot of opportunities
0:07:50 to make it better.
0:07:52 Like, I see this in AI all the time.
0:07:53 I see people saying,
0:07:55 well, if we did this,
0:07:56 it would pass the Turing test better,
0:07:57 and if we did that,
0:07:58 it would seem more like
0:07:59 it was an independent mind.
0:08:01 But those are all goals
0:08:01 that are different
0:08:04 from it being economically useful.
0:08:05 They’re different from it
0:08:08 being useful to any particular user.
0:08:09 They’re just these weird,
0:08:12 to me, almost religious ritual goals
0:08:13 or something.
0:08:15 like they, and so every time
0:08:16 you’re devoting yourself to that,
0:08:18 it means you’re not devoting yourself
0:08:20 to making it better.
0:08:22 Like, an example is,
0:08:25 we have, in my view,
0:08:28 deliberately designed large model AI
0:08:32 to obscure the original human sources
0:08:34 of the data that the AI is trained on
0:08:36 to help create this illusion
0:08:37 of the new entity.
0:08:38 But when we do that,
0:08:41 we make it harder to do quality control.
0:08:43 We make it harder to do authentication
0:08:48 and to detect malicious uses of the model
0:08:52 because we can’t tell what the intent is,
0:08:54 what data it’s drawing upon.
0:08:56 We’re sort of willfully making ourselves
0:08:58 kind of blind in a way
0:09:00 that we probably don’t really need to.
0:09:01 And I really want to emphasize
0:09:03 from a metaphysical point of view,
0:09:05 I can’t prove,
0:09:06 and neither can anyone else,
0:09:08 that a computer is alive or not
0:09:09 or conscious or not or whatever.
0:09:11 I mean, all that stuff
0:09:13 is always going to be a matter of faith.
0:09:15 That’s just the way it is.
0:09:17 That’s what we got around here.
0:09:19 But what I can say
0:09:21 is that this emphasis
0:09:22 on trying to make the models
0:09:25 seem like they’re freestanding new entities
0:09:27 does blind us
0:09:29 to some ways we could make them better.
0:09:30 And so I think, like, why bother?
0:09:32 What do we get out of that?
0:09:32 Not a lot.
0:09:34 So do you think maybe
0:09:35 the cardinal mistake
0:09:37 with a lot of this kind of thinking
0:09:38 is to assume
0:09:42 that artificial intelligence
0:09:43 is something that’s in competition
0:09:45 with human intelligence
0:09:46 and human abilities,
0:09:47 that that kind of misunderstanding
0:09:48 sets us off on a course
0:09:50 for a lot of other kinds
0:09:51 of misunderstandings?
0:09:53 I wouldn’t choose that language
0:09:54 because then the natural thing
0:09:55 somebody’s going to say
0:09:56 who’s a true believer
0:09:57 that the AI is coming alive,
0:09:58 they’re going to say,
0:09:59 yeah, you’re right.
0:10:00 It’s not competition.
0:10:01 We’re going to align them
0:10:02 and they’re going to be
0:10:03 our collaborators
0:10:05 or whatever.
0:10:06 So that, to me,
0:10:07 doesn’t go far enough.
0:10:09 My own way of thinking
0:10:11 is that I’m able
0:10:12 to improve the models
0:10:13 when I say
0:10:14 there’s no new entity there.
0:10:15 I just say they don’t,
0:10:15 they’re not there.
0:10:16 They don’t exist
0:10:17 as separate entities.
0:10:18 They’re just collaborations
0:10:19 of people.
0:10:20 I have to go that far
0:10:22 to get the clarity
0:10:23 to improve them.
0:10:26 It might be a little late
0:10:27 in the language game
0:10:29 to replace a term
0:10:30 like artificial intelligence,
0:10:30 but if you could,
0:10:31 do you have a better one?
0:10:34 I have had the experience
0:10:35 of coming up with terms
0:10:37 that were widely adopted
0:10:37 in society.
0:10:38 I came up with
0:10:39 virtual reality
0:10:40 and some other things
0:10:41 when I was young
0:10:44 and I have seen that
0:10:45 even when you get
0:10:46 to coin the term,
0:10:47 you don’t get to define it
0:10:50 and I don’t love
0:10:51 the way people think
0:10:52 of virtual reality
0:10:53 typically today.
0:10:54 It’s lost a little bit
0:10:55 of its old humanism,
0:10:56 I would say.
0:10:59 So that experience
0:11:00 has led me to feel
0:11:01 that it’s really
0:11:02 younger generations
0:11:03 who should come up
0:11:03 with their own terms.
0:11:04 So what I would prefer
0:11:06 to see is younger people
0:11:07 reject our terms
0:11:09 and come up
0:11:09 with their own.
0:11:11 Fair enough.
0:11:14 I’ve read a lot
0:11:14 of your work
0:11:15 on AI
0:11:17 and I’ve listened
0:11:19 to a lot of your interviews
0:11:21 and I take your point
0:11:22 that AI
0:11:25 is a distillation
0:11:26 of all these human inputs
0:11:27 fundamentally.
0:11:30 but for you at what point
0:11:32 does or can complexity
0:11:35 start looking like autonomy
0:11:37 and what would autonomy
0:11:38 even mean
0:11:39 that the thing starts
0:11:40 making its own decisions
0:11:41 and is that the simple
0:11:42 definition of that?
0:11:43 This is an obsession
0:11:44 that people have
0:11:45 but you have to understand
0:11:46 it’s a religious
0:11:48 and entirely subjective
0:11:50 or sort of cultural obsession
0:11:51 not a scientific one.
0:11:52 It’s your judgment
0:11:54 of how you want to see
0:11:55 the start of autonomy.
0:11:58 So I love complex systems
0:11:59 and I love different levels
0:12:00 of description
0:12:01 and I love the independence
0:12:03 of different levels
0:12:03 of grantedness
0:12:04 in physics
0:12:06 so I’m utterly
0:12:07 as obsessed
0:12:07 as anyone
0:12:08 with that
0:12:10 but it’s important
0:12:10 to distinguish
0:12:12 that fascination
0:12:12 which is a scientific
0:12:13 fascination
0:12:14 with the question
0:12:16 of does crossing
0:12:17 some threshold
0:12:18 make something
0:12:19 human or not?
0:12:21 because the question
0:12:22 of humanness
0:12:24 or of becoming
0:12:24 an entity
0:12:26 that we care about
0:12:27 in our planning
0:12:27 becoming
0:12:28 creating something
0:12:29 that itself
0:12:30 is a beneficiary
0:12:31 of our technology
0:12:32 that question
0:12:33 has to be
0:12:34 a matter of faith
0:12:36 we just have
0:12:36 to accept
0:12:38 that our culture
0:12:39 our law
0:12:40 our ability
0:12:41 to be technologists
0:12:42 ultimately rests
0:12:43 on values
0:12:45 that in a sense
0:12:45 we pull out
0:12:46 of our asses
0:12:47 or if you like
0:12:48 we have to be
0:12:49 a little bit mystical
0:12:50 in order to create
0:12:51 the ground layer
0:12:52 in order to be
0:12:52 then rational
0:12:53 as technologists
0:12:54 in a way
0:12:55 I wish it wasn’t so
0:12:56 it sort of sucks
0:12:57 but it’s just the truth
0:12:57 and the sooner
0:12:58 we accept that
0:12:59 the better off
0:13:00 we’ll be
0:13:00 and the more honest
0:13:01 we’ll be
0:13:02 and I’m okay with it
0:13:03 why?
0:13:05 because
0:13:06 if I’m designing
0:13:07 AI for AI’s sake
0:13:08 I’m talking nonsense
0:13:09 you know
0:13:10 like
0:13:11 right now
0:13:13 it’s very expensive
0:13:13 to compute AI
0:13:14 so what percentage
0:13:16 of that expense
0:13:17 it goes into
0:13:18 creating the illusion
0:13:19 so that you can believe
0:13:20 it’s sort of
0:13:21 another person
0:13:22 when you use chat
0:13:23 how much electricity
0:13:24 is being spent
0:13:25 so that the way
0:13:26 it talks to you
0:13:27 feels like it’s a person
0:13:28 a lot
0:13:28 you know
0:13:29 and it’s a waste
0:13:30 like why are we doing that
0:13:31 why are we doing
0:13:32 why are we creating
0:13:34 a carbon footprint
0:13:36 for the benefit
0:13:38 of some non-entity
0:13:39 in order to fool humans
0:13:40 like it’s
0:13:40 it’s ridiculous
0:13:42 but we don’t see that
0:13:43 because we have this
0:13:45 religious imperative
0:13:46 in the tech
0:13:48 cultural world
0:13:49 to create
0:13:50 this new life
0:13:52 but it’s entirely
0:13:53 a matter of
0:13:54 our own perception
0:13:55 there’s no test
0:13:55 for it
0:13:56 other than the
0:13:56 Turing test
0:13:57 which is no test
0:13:57 at all
0:13:58 I mean
0:13:59 we still don’t even
0:14:01 have a real
0:14:01 definition
0:14:03 of consciousness
0:14:05 and I hear all
0:14:05 these discussions
0:14:07 about machine learning
0:14:09 and human intelligence
0:14:09 and the differences
0:14:11 and I continue
0:14:12 to have no idea
0:14:13 when something
0:14:14 stops being a
0:14:15 simulacrum of intelligence
0:14:16 and becomes the real thing
0:14:17 I still don’t quite know
0:14:18 when something can
0:14:19 reasonably be called
0:14:20 sentient
0:14:21 or intelligent
0:14:22 but maybe the question
0:14:22 doesn’t even matter
0:14:24 maybe it’s enough
0:14:25 for us to think it does
0:14:26 right
0:14:27 so the problem
0:14:28 in what you just
0:14:29 said is the word
0:14:29 still
0:14:32 like it’s a
0:14:33 this
0:14:35 lack of knowledge
0:14:36 is structural
0:14:37 you’re not going
0:14:38 to overcome it
0:14:39 you can pretend
0:14:40 you have
0:14:40 but you’re not going
0:14:41 to
0:14:42 this is genuinely
0:14:43 a matter of faith
0:14:43 you know
0:14:44 and
0:14:46 it’s a very
0:14:46 old discussion
0:14:47 when it comes
0:14:48 to God
0:14:49 but
0:14:50 it’s a new
0:14:50 discussion
0:14:51 when it comes
0:14:52 to each other
0:14:53 or to AIs
0:14:54 and
0:14:54 you know
0:14:55 like
0:14:56 faith is okay
0:14:56 we can live
0:14:57 with faith
0:14:57 we just have
0:14:58 to be honest
0:14:59 about it
0:14:59 and I think
0:15:01 being dishonest
0:15:01 and saying
0:15:02 oh
0:15:03 it’s not faith
0:15:04 I have this
0:15:04 rational proof
0:15:05 of something
0:15:07 it’s not
0:15:08 dishonesty
0:15:08 is probably
0:15:09 not good
0:15:10 especially
0:15:10 if you’re
0:15:10 trying to do
0:15:11 science or technology
0:15:15 maybe we just
0:15:17 maybe we just
0:15:18 hold on
0:15:19 maybe
0:15:20 I’m going to
0:15:21 say this
0:15:23 we probably
0:15:23 just have to
0:15:24 hold on to
0:15:24 some notion
0:15:25 that there’s
0:15:26 something
0:15:26 fundamentally
0:15:27 special
0:15:28 about human
0:15:29 consciousness
0:15:30 and that even
0:15:30 if on some
0:15:31 purely empirical
0:15:31 level
0:15:32 that’s not
0:15:32 even true
0:15:33 maybe believing
0:15:34 that it is
0:15:34 is essential
0:15:36 to our
0:15:36 survival
0:15:37 I don’t
0:15:37 think you
0:15:38 can rationally
0:15:40 proceed
0:15:41 as an
0:15:41 as an
0:15:42 acting
0:15:42 technologist
0:15:44 without
0:15:45 an
0:15:46 irrational
0:15:47 belief
0:15:48 that people
0:15:49 are special
0:15:50 because once again
0:15:50 then you have
0:15:51 no recipient
0:15:52 and if you
0:15:53 say well
0:15:53 there’s going
0:15:54 to be
0:15:54 no belief
0:15:55 all the way
0:15:55 to the bottom
0:15:56 it’s just
0:15:56 going to be
0:15:57 rationality
0:15:57 forever
0:15:58 I mean
0:15:59 it doesn’t
0:15:59 work
0:16:00 rationality
0:16:01 never creates
0:16:01 a total
0:16:02 enclosed
0:16:02 system
0:16:04 we kind
0:16:05 of float
0:16:05 in a sea
0:16:05 of mystery
0:16:06 and we
0:16:06 have like
0:16:07 this belief
0:16:07 that lets
0:16:08 us have
0:16:08 a footing
0:16:09 and it’s
0:16:10 our job
0:16:11 to acknowledge
0:16:11 that even
0:16:12 if we’re
0:16:12 uncomfortable
0:16:13 with it
0:16:15 can I try
0:16:15 another angle
0:16:16 on you
0:16:16 yeah
0:16:17 do you know
0:16:17 my
0:16:17 okay
0:16:18 so there’s
0:16:18 another
0:16:19 argument
0:16:19 about the
0:16:20 turing test
0:16:20 right
0:16:21 turing test
0:16:22 you have a
0:16:23 person on a
0:16:23 computer
0:16:23 they’re each
0:16:24 trying to fool
0:16:24 a judge
0:16:25 and at the
0:16:26 moment the
0:16:26 judge can’t
0:16:26 tell them
0:16:27 apart
0:16:27 you say
0:16:28 well we
0:16:28 might as
0:16:29 well call
0:16:30 the computer
0:16:31 human because
0:16:31 what other
0:16:31 tests can
0:16:32 there be
0:16:32 that’s the
0:16:32 best we’ll
0:16:33 get
0:16:33 okay
0:16:35 so the
0:16:36 problem with
0:16:36 the test
0:16:37 is that it
0:16:38 measures whether
0:16:38 there’s a
0:16:38 differential
0:16:39 but it
0:16:40 doesn’t tell
0:16:40 you whether
0:16:41 the computer
0:16:42 got smarter
0:16:42 or the
0:16:42 human got
0:16:43 stupider
0:16:44 it doesn’t
0:16:45 tell you if
0:16:45 the computer
0:16:46 became more
0:16:47 human or if
0:16:47 the human
0:16:48 became less
0:16:48 human in
0:16:49 any sense
0:16:49 whatever that
0:16:50 might be
0:16:51 so there’s
0:16:52 two humans
0:16:52 the contestant
0:16:53 and the judge
0:16:53 and one
0:16:54 computer
0:16:54 therefore
0:16:56 and this is
0:16:56 meant to be
0:16:57 funny but it’s
0:16:57 also kind of
0:16:57 real
0:16:58 there’s a
0:16:58 two-thirds
0:16:59 chance that
0:16:59 it was a
0:17:00 human that
0:17:00 got stupider
0:17:01 rather than
0:17:01 a computer
0:17:01 that got
0:17:02 smarter
0:17:04 and I
0:17:04 see that
0:17:05 borne out
0:17:05 like when I
0:17:06 look at
0:17:06 social media
0:17:07 and I see
0:17:08 people interacting
0:17:08 with the AI
0:17:09 algorithms that
0:17:10 are supposed to
0:17:10 guide their
0:17:11 attention
0:17:12 I see them
0:17:13 getting stupider
0:17:13 two-thirds
0:17:14 of the time
0:17:14 but then you
0:17:15 know sometimes
0:17:16 really good
0:17:16 stuff happens
0:17:17 so I think
0:17:18 this general
0:17:19 spread of most
0:17:20 of the time
0:17:20 things get
0:17:21 worse but then
0:17:21 there’s some
0:17:22 stuff that’s
0:17:22 really cool
0:17:24 tends to be
0:17:24 true when you
0:17:25 believe in AI
0:17:26 and so
0:17:27 I would
0:17:28 say don’t
0:17:28 believe in
0:17:28 it and
0:17:30 some people
0:17:30 are still
0:17:31 getting it
0:17:31 stupider
0:17:31 because that’s
0:17:32 how we are
0:17:33 but I think
0:17:33 we can get to
0:17:34 the point where
0:17:34 the majority
0:17:35 gets better
0:17:36 instead of
0:17:37 stupider but
0:17:37 right now I
0:17:37 think we’re
0:17:38 at two-thirds
0:17:39 get stupider
0:17:40 yeah that
0:17:41 math checks out
0:17:41 to me
0:17:42 great I
0:17:43 think that’s
0:17:43 a rigorous
0:17:44 argument that’s
0:17:44 what you call
0:17:45 a rigorous
0:17:46 quantitative
0:17:47 theoretically and
0:17:48 empirically supported
0:17:49 argument right
0:17:49 there
0:17:50 so do you
0:17:51 think all
0:17:53 the anxieties
0:17:54 including from
0:17:55 serious people
0:17:56 in in the
0:17:57 world of AI
0:17:58 all the worries
0:18:00 about human
0:18:01 extinction and
0:18:01 mitigating the
0:18:02 risks thereof
0:18:04 does that is
0:18:04 that religious
0:18:06 hysteria to
0:18:06 you or does
0:18:07 that feel
0:18:09 what drives me
0:18:09 crazy about
0:18:10 this I this
0:18:11 is my world
0:18:11 you know so I
0:18:12 talk to the
0:18:12 people who
0:18:13 believe that
0:18:14 stuff all the
0:18:15 time and
0:18:16 increasingly a
0:18:16 lot of them
0:18:17 believe that it
0:18:17 would be good to
0:18:18 wipe out people
0:18:19 and that the AI
0:18:19 future would be a
0:18:20 better one and
0:18:21 that we should
0:18:22 wear a disposable
0:18:24 temporary container
0:18:25 for the birth of
0:18:26 AI I hear that
0:18:27 opinion quite a lot
0:18:27 that’s a real
0:18:28 opinion held by
0:18:29 real people
0:18:32 many many I
0:18:33 mean like the
0:18:34 other day I was
0:18:35 at a lunch in
0:18:36 Palo Alto and
0:18:36 there were some
0:18:37 young AI
0:18:38 scientists there
0:18:39 who were saying
0:18:41 that they would
0:18:42 never have a
0:18:43 bio baby because
0:18:43 as soon as you
0:18:44 have a bio baby
0:18:44 you get the
0:18:46 mind virus of
0:18:48 the bio world
0:18:48 and that when
0:18:49 you have the
0:18:50 bio mind virus
0:18:50 you become
0:18:51 committed to
0:18:52 your human baby
0:18:52 but it’s much
0:18:53 more important to
0:18:54 be committed to
0:18:54 the AI of the
0:18:56 future and so
0:18:57 to have human
0:18:58 babies is
0:18:58 fundamentally
0:18:59 unethical
0:19:01 now okay in
0:19:01 this particular
0:19:03 case this was
0:19:03 a young man
0:19:04 with a female
0:19:05 partner who
0:19:06 wanted a kid
0:19:06 and what I’m
0:19:07 thinking is this
0:19:07 is just another
0:19:08 variation of the
0:19:09 very very old
0:19:10 story of young
0:19:11 men attempting to
0:19:12 put off the baby
0:19:13 thing with their
0:19:14 sexual partner as
0:19:15 long as possible
0:19:16 because I’ve been
0:19:16 there and many of
0:19:16 us have been
0:19:17 there so in a
0:19:18 way I think it’s
0:19:19 not anything new
0:19:19 and it’s just the
0:19:20 old thing but
0:19:21 it’s a very
0:19:23 common attitude
0:19:25 not the dominant
0:19:25 one I would say
0:19:26 the dominant one
0:19:27 is that the
0:19:28 super AI will
0:19:29 turn into this
0:19:30 god thing that’ll
0:19:31 save us and
0:19:32 will either upload
0:19:33 us to be immortal
0:19:34 or solve all our
0:19:34 problems at the
0:19:35 very least or
0:19:36 something create
0:19:37 super abundance at
0:19:38 the very very very
0:19:41 least and I
0:19:45 I have to say
0:19:45 there’s a bit of
0:19:46 an inverse
0:19:47 proportion here
0:19:48 between the people
0:19:49 who directly work
0:19:50 in making AI
0:19:51 systems and then
0:19:51 the people who
0:19:52 are adjacent to
0:19:54 them who have
0:19:54 these various
0:19:57 beliefs my own
0:19:58 opinion is that
0:19:59 the people
0:20:00 how can I put
0:20:02 this the people
0:20:03 who are able to
0:20:04 be skeptical and
0:20:05 a little bored and
0:20:06 dismissive of the
0:20:07 technology they’re
0:20:08 working on tend to
0:20:09 improve it more than
0:20:09 the people kind of
0:20:10 worship it too much
0:20:13 like I’ve seen that
0:20:14 a lot in a lot of
0:20:15 different things not
0:20:16 not just computer
0:20:17 science and I think
0:20:18 I think you have to
0:20:19 have a kind of
0:20:20 like you can’t drink
0:20:21 your own whiskey too
0:20:22 much when you’re a
0:20:24 technologist you have
0:20:25 to kind of be ready
0:20:26 to say oh maybe
0:20:27 this thing’s a bit
0:20:28 overhyped I’m not
0:20:29 going to tell that
0:20:30 to the people buying
0:20:31 shares in my company
0:20:31 but you know what
0:20:32 like just between us
0:20:35 you know and but
0:20:35 that attitude is
0:20:37 exactly the one that
0:20:38 puts you over the
0:20:38 threshold to then
0:20:39 start improving it
0:20:40 more and that’s one
0:20:41 of the dangers of
0:20:42 this kind of
0:20:43 mythologizing of it
0:20:44 oh it’s about to
0:20:45 become this god
0:20:45 that’ll take over
0:20:46 everything but
0:20:48 that what follows
0:20:49 from that is this
0:20:50 very curious thing
0:20:51 which is that the
0:20:52 way of thinking
0:20:53 about it where it’s
0:20:54 about to turn into
0:20:55 this god that’ll
0:20:56 run everything and
0:20:57 either kill us all
0:20:57 or fix all our
0:20:58 problems that
0:21:00 attitude in itself
0:21:02 makes you not
0:21:04 only a little bit
0:21:05 of a lesser
0:21:06 improver of the
0:21:07 technology by any
0:21:08 like real measurable
0:21:10 metric but it
0:21:11 also makes you a
0:21:12 bad steward of it
0:21:15 part of part of
0:21:15 what makes this
0:21:16 very confusing
0:21:17 especially to you
0:21:19 know non-technical
0:21:20 normie outsiders
0:21:21 like me and like
0:21:22 most people frankly
0:21:24 is that it is it’s
0:21:25 just moving and
0:21:26 changing and evolving
0:21:27 really quickly and
0:21:28 the terms and
0:21:29 concepts are very
0:21:30 slippery if you’re
0:21:32 not deep in it and
0:21:32 you know you’re
0:21:33 talking about super
0:21:34 super AI and godlike
0:21:36 powers one example
0:21:37 is and you’ll bear
0:21:38 with me for a second
0:21:39 so I can bring people
0:21:41 along we have this
0:21:42 dichotomy between
0:21:44 AI versus AGI
0:21:45 artificial intelligence
0:21:46 versus artificial
0:21:47 general intelligence and
0:21:48 my understanding is
0:21:50 that AI is a term for
0:21:51 the general set of
0:21:52 tools that people
0:21:53 are building chat
0:21:54 bots and that sort
0:21:54 of thing and that
0:21:56 AGI is still sort of
0:21:57 a theoretical thing
0:21:58 where this tech is
0:22:00 basically as good at
0:22:01 everything as a
0:22:03 normal regular person
0:22:03 is and it can also
0:22:04 learn and grow and
0:22:05 apply that knowledge
0:22:07 just like we can and
0:22:08 we’ve got AI now
0:22:09 clearly but we don’t
0:22:11 have AGI yet and if
0:22:13 we get it and there
0:22:13 are people who think
0:22:14 we’re maybe closer
0:22:15 than we thought
0:22:16 recently that it’ll be
0:22:18 a real Rubicon
0:22:20 crossing moment for
0:22:21 us what’s your
0:22:22 feeling on that do
0:22:23 you think AGI is
0:22:24 even possible in the
0:22:25 way most people
0:22:26 have you not
0:22:26 listened to a word
0:22:28 I said that’s a
0:22:28 religious question
0:22:30 that’s like asking
0:22:30 if I think the
0:22:31 rapture is coming
0:22:33 soon I mean it’s
0:22:33 yeah but you can
0:22:34 have an opinion
0:22:34 about religious
0:22:35 questions I guess
0:22:38 that’s true I mean
0:22:40 there are those who
0:22:41 say we have AGI
0:22:42 already and their
0:22:43 opinion is as
0:22:44 legitimate as
0:22:45 anybody else’s I
0:22:46 mean I just think
0:22:47 the moment you’ve
0:22:48 put the question
0:22:48 that way you’ve
0:22:49 already confused
0:22:50 yourself and made
0:22:50 yourself kind of
0:22:51 useless in talking
0:22:52 about what to do
0:22:53 with the technology
0:22:54 so I have to reject
0:22:55 your question as
0:22:56 being like poorly
0:22:56 framed and
0:22:57 ill-informed I’m
0:22:59 sorry I was hoping
0:22:59 to get through this
0:23:00 fucking conversation
0:23:01 without you having
0:23:02 to beat back at
0:23:03 one of my ill-informed
0:23:04 questions and I
0:23:05 did make it I made
0:23:06 it almost 20 minutes
0:23:07 in yeah good luck
0:23:08 with that my friend
0:23:12 all right sir
0:23:13 it was a valiant
0:23:14 effort you win that
0:23:17 you really I mean
0:23:19 look I mean this
0:23:20 is silly this is
0:23:21 like I’m also
0:23:21 trying to speak for
0:23:22 concerns that I
0:23:23 know a lot of
0:23:24 people I know
0:23:25 because we broadcast
0:23:26 that way of thinking
0:23:27 about it so yeah
0:23:31 look there’s a
0:23:31 thing all right
0:23:33 look I’m I
0:23:35 benefit from people
0:23:36 believing in AI
0:23:37 professionally and
0:23:39 there’s a way that
0:23:39 the whole economy
0:23:40 runs on attention
0:23:42 getting and in a
0:23:44 funny way the way
0:23:45 digital attention
0:23:46 economy works
0:23:51 is it rewards
0:23:52 anxieties and
0:23:54 terror as much
0:23:54 or maybe a
0:23:56 little more than
0:23:59 optimism or you
0:24:01 know goodwill and
0:24:02 so you have this
0:24:03 weird situation where
0:24:05 somebody can play
0:24:06 the villain on
0:24:06 social media and
0:24:08 do very well and
0:24:09 similar things
0:24:10 happening in the
0:24:11 rhetoric of computer
0:24:12 science so when we
0:24:13 say oh our stuff
0:24:14 might be about to
0:24:15 come alive and
0:24:16 it’s about to get
0:24:17 smarter than you
0:24:18 it generates this
0:24:19 little anxiety in
0:24:20 people and then that
0:24:21 actually benefits us
0:24:22 because it keeps it
0:24:24 keeps the attention
0:24:27 on us and so
0:24:28 there’s a funny way
0:24:29 that we’re
0:24:30 incentivized to put
0:24:31 things in the most
0:24:33 alarming way what I
0:24:34 what I will say is
0:24:36 that I like the
0:24:37 idea of models being
0:24:38 useful so I think
0:24:40 of the models that
0:24:41 we’re building as
0:24:42 being wonderful
0:24:43 mashup models so
0:24:44 like for instance
0:24:46 I love being able
0:24:47 to use large models
0:24:48 to go through the
0:24:48 scientific literature
0:24:51 and find correlations
0:24:51 between different
0:24:52 papers that might not
0:24:53 use the same
0:24:54 terminology that would
0:24:54 have been a pain in
0:24:55 the butt to detect
0:24:57 before that’s great
0:24:58 if you present that
0:24:59 with a chat
0:25:00 interface it seems
0:25:01 like a smart
0:25:02 scientist if people
0:25:03 like that I mean I
0:25:04 guess whatever it’s
0:25:05 not my job to judge
0:25:06 everybody but the
0:25:08 thing is you don’t
0:25:09 need to present it
0:25:09 that way you’d
0:25:10 still get the
0:25:11 same value but
0:25:11 that’s the way we
0:25:13 do it we we add
0:25:14 in personhood
0:25:16 fooling to what
0:25:17 would otherwise be
0:25:19 really in a way
0:25:20 more clear
0:25:21 freestanding value I
0:25:23 think but we like
0:25:24 to present the
0:25:24 fantasy
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0:26:16 all right let me try to
0:26:17 pull away a little bit
0:26:18 from religious questions
0:26:22 okay so look i i’m i’m
0:26:23 not worried about the
0:26:23 matrix and the
0:26:25 terminator um i am
0:26:27 worried about a much
0:26:28 more boring and
0:26:30 unsexy scenario but i
0:26:31 think equally bad
0:26:34 possibility is that these
0:26:37 emergent technologies will
0:26:39 accelerate a trend that
0:26:41 i think digital tech in
0:26:42 general and social media
0:26:43 in particular has already
0:26:47 started which is to pull
0:26:49 us away more and more
0:26:50 from the physical world
0:26:52 and encourage us to
0:26:54 perform versions of
0:26:55 ourselves in the virtual
0:26:56 world and because of how
0:26:58 it’s designed it has this
0:27:00 habit of reducing other
0:27:02 people to crude avatars
0:27:03 which is why it’s so easy
0:27:05 to be cruel and vicious
0:27:07 online and why people who
0:27:08 are on social media too
0:27:10 much start to become
0:27:12 mutually unintelligible
0:27:13 to each other and i
0:27:16 worry about ai super
0:27:17 charging some of this
0:27:18 stuff i mean do you even
0:27:19 accept that framing am i
0:27:20 right to be thinking of ai
0:27:23 as a potential accelerant of
0:27:26 these trends yeah i mean i
0:27:29 i think you are correct
0:27:36 so it’s arguable and
0:27:37 actually consistent with the
0:27:38 way the community speaks
0:27:41 internally to say that the
0:27:43 algorithms that have been
0:27:44 driving social media up to
0:27:49 now are a form of ai if you
0:27:52 if you unlike me wish to use
0:27:55 the term ai and what the
0:27:59 algorithms do is they
0:28:01 attempt to predict human
0:28:03 behavior based on the
0:28:05 stimulus given to the
0:28:07 human and by putting that
0:28:08 in an adaptive loop they
0:28:11 hope to drive attention and
0:28:13 sort of an obsessive
0:28:15 attachment to a platform
0:28:18 because these algorithms
0:28:21 can’t tell whether
0:28:23 something’s being driven
0:28:25 because of things that we
0:28:25 might think are positive
0:28:26 or things that we might
0:28:28 think are negative so i
0:28:29 call this the life of the
0:28:30 parody the this notion
0:28:32 that you can’t tell like
0:28:33 if a bid is one or zero
0:28:34 doesn’t matter because it’s
0:28:36 an arbitrary designation in
0:28:38 a digital system so if
0:28:39 somebody’s getting
0:28:40 attention by being a dick
0:28:42 that works just as well as
0:28:43 if they’re offering
0:28:44 life-saving information or
0:28:45 helping people improve
0:28:46 themselves but then the
0:28:47 peaks that are good are
0:28:48 really good and i don’t
0:28:49 want to deny that i love
0:28:50 dance culture on tiktok
0:28:53 science bloggers on on
0:28:54 youtube have achieved a
0:28:55 level that’s like
0:28:57 astonishingly good and so
0:28:58 on like there’s all these
0:29:00 really really positive good
0:29:01 spots but then overall
0:29:03 there’s this loss of truth
0:29:06 and political paranoia and
0:29:09 unnecessary confrontation
0:29:11 between arbitrarily created
0:29:13 cultural groups and so on
0:29:15 that’s really doing damage
0:29:18 um and as is often pointed
0:29:20 out especially to young
0:29:21 girls and so on and so
0:29:22 forth uh not not great
0:29:25 and so uh yeah could
0:29:27 better ai algorithms make
0:29:27 that worse
0:29:31 plausibly i mean it’s
0:29:32 possible that it’s already
0:29:34 bottomed out that it’s kind
0:29:37 of the the badness just
0:29:37 comes from the overall
0:29:38 structure and if the
0:29:39 algorithms themselves get
0:29:41 more sophisticated it won’t
0:29:42 really push it that much
0:29:43 further but i think
0:29:45 actually kind of can i’m
0:29:46 i’m worried about it i
0:29:48 because we so much want to
0:29:49 pass the turing test and
0:29:50 make people think our
0:29:51 programs are people
0:29:55 we’re moving to this um
0:29:56 so-called agentic era where
0:29:59 it’s not just that you have a
0:30:00 chat interface with with the
0:30:01 thing but the chat interface
0:30:04 gets to know you for years at
0:30:06 a time and gets a so-called
0:30:08 personality and but and all
0:30:09 this and then the idea is that
0:30:10 people then fall in love with
0:30:11 these and we’re already
0:30:13 seeing examples of this
0:30:15 here and there um and this
0:30:16 notion of a whole generation
0:30:17 of young people falling in
0:30:20 love with fake avatars i mean
0:30:24 people people talk about ai as
0:30:25 if it’s just like this yeast in
0:30:26 the air it’s like oh ai will
0:30:27 appear and people will fall in
0:30:29 love with ai avatars but it’s
0:30:30 not ai is always run by
0:30:32 companies so like they’re going
0:30:33 to be falling in love with
0:30:35 something from google or meta or
0:30:39 whatever and like that notion
0:30:41 that your love life becomes
0:30:44 owned by some company or even
0:30:45 worse tiktok or a chinese thing
0:30:49 eek eek eek eek i think that’ll
0:30:51 create a a a new centralization
0:30:56 or or or xai eek eek eek eek i’ll
0:30:57 add some more eeks to that and so
0:30:59 this centralization of power and
0:31:02 influence could be even worse and
0:31:04 that might be a breaking point
0:31:06 event and so that kind of thing
0:31:07 ending civilization or ending up
0:31:09 killing all the people does seem
0:31:11 plausible to me and some of my
0:31:12 colleagues would interpret that as
0:31:15 ai become coming alive and killing
0:31:16 everybody but i would just
0:31:17 interpret it as people being
0:31:20 making terrible choices it all
0:31:21 amounts to the same thing in the
0:31:23 end anyway it does at the end of
0:31:25 the day in terms of actual events
0:31:27 the same so jaron from your point
0:31:29 of view is it even possible to have
0:31:33 good algorithms nudging us around
0:31:35 online or are all algorithms bad yes
0:31:37 of course it is okay what does that
0:31:39 look like course it is of course it
0:31:41 is yes yes yes yes give me the good
0:31:42 stuff here give me the good
0:31:44 algorithms well i mean look in the
0:31:49 scientific community we do it like i
0:31:51 mean like okay here’s an example um
0:31:55 deep research from open ai is a great
0:31:57 tool it does a literature search on some
0:31:59 topic and assembles a little report
0:32:03 it has unnecessary chatbot elements
0:32:05 to try to make it seem like there’s
0:32:07 somebody there i view that as a waste
0:32:10 of time and a waste of energy and i i
0:32:11 would be happy without it but but
0:32:13 whatever okay it’s it’s not terrible
0:32:16 though what it does is it saves
0:32:18 scientists a ton of time it makes a lot
0:32:20 of sense i get a lot out of it it’s
0:32:21 great and now there’s some new
0:32:25 competitors to it great that stuff’s
0:32:27 fabulous i really really really it’s
0:32:28 good because the scientific literature
0:32:30 has become impossible to use without
0:32:33 it i do a lot of work that’s pretty
0:32:35 mathematical and the problem is that
0:32:37 every time somebody comes across
0:32:38 similar math they don’t realize
0:32:39 somebody else has done it so they come
0:32:41 up with their own terms for things and
0:32:43 then you have the same ideas or
0:32:45 similar ones with different terms and
0:32:46 all these scattered papers in totally
0:32:47 different communities at different
0:32:48 conferences and different journals
0:32:53 yeah but with a tool like this you
0:32:55 can capture all that and get it into
0:32:59 place it’s like what what what ai is is
0:33:01 it’s a way of improving collaboration
0:33:03 between people it’s a way of gathering
0:33:06 what people have done in a more unified
0:33:09 way that can notice multiple hops of
0:33:12 different terms and similar structures it’s
0:33:15 it’s a better way of using statistics to
0:33:17 connect what we’ve all done together to
0:33:21 get more use out of it it’s great i love
0:33:25 it and the amount of avatar illusion
0:33:27 nonsense is kept to a minimum because
0:33:29 our job is not to fall in love with our
0:33:31 research our fake research assistant our
0:33:35 job is to make progress efficiently on
0:33:37 whatever we’re doing right and so that
0:33:39 that’s great what is wrong with that
0:33:41 nothing it’s fabulous so yeah there’s
0:33:43 wonderful uses if i didn’t think those
0:33:46 things existed i’d quit what i do
0:33:49 professionally in the industry of course
0:33:51 there’s wonderful uses and i think we
0:33:52 need those things i think they really
0:33:53 matter
0:33:56 i guess what i’m hovering around is the
0:33:58 business model right i mean uh the
0:34:00 advertising model was sort of the
0:34:02 original sin of the internet yeah yeah i
0:34:02 think it is
0:34:06 um how do we not fuck this up how do we
0:34:07 not repeat those mistakes what’s a better
0:34:09 model i mean you talk a lot about data
0:34:11 dignity so you’re saying we can say fuck
0:34:13 on this podcast oh you can say whatever
0:34:15 you want if i had known that there would
0:34:17 be a lot of fuckery up to now in my in my
0:34:18 speech it’s not too late anyway it’s not
0:34:23 too late we got plenty of time okay but no
0:34:25 but seriously what how do we get it right
0:34:26 this time how do we not make the same
0:34:29 mistakes what is a better model yeah well
0:34:32 um this is actually more important this
0:34:34 question is the central question of our
0:34:36 time in my view like the central
0:34:39 question of our time isn’t um being able
0:34:42 to scale ai more is is an important
0:34:45 question and i get that and most people
0:34:47 are focused on that and dealing with the
0:34:49 climate is an important question but in
0:34:51 terms of our own survival coming up with
0:34:53 a business model for civilization that
0:34:56 isn’t self-destructive is in a way our
0:34:59 most primary problem and challenge right
0:35:01 now because the way we’re doing it what
0:35:04 we kind of we went through this thing in
0:35:06 the earlier phase of the internet like
0:35:08 information should be free and then the
0:35:09 only business model that’s left is paying
0:35:12 for influence uh and so then all the
0:35:16 platforms look free or very cheap to the
0:35:17 user but then actually the real customer
0:35:19 trying to influence the user and you end
0:35:23 up with what’s essentially a stealthy form
0:35:26 of um manipulation being the central
0:35:30 project of civilization and we can only
0:35:31 get away with that for so long at some
0:35:33 point that bites us and we become too
0:35:36 crazy to survive so we must change the
0:35:38 business model of civilization and so
0:35:41 exactly how to get from here to there is
0:35:44 a bit of a mystery but i continue to work
0:35:46 on it like i think we should incentivize
0:35:48 people to put great data into the ai
0:35:51 programs of the future uh and i’d like
0:35:53 people to be paid for data used
0:35:55 ai models and also to be celebrated and
0:35:56 made visible and known because i think
0:35:58 it’s just a big collaboration and our
0:36:01 collaborators should be valued how easy
0:36:02 would it be to do that do you think we
0:36:05 can or will there’s still some unsolved
0:36:07 technical questions about how to do it
0:36:09 i’m very very actively working on those
0:36:10 and i believe it’s doable and there’s a
0:36:12 whole you know research community devoted
0:36:14 to exactly that distributed around the
0:36:16 world and i think it’ll make better
0:36:18 models i mean better data makes better
0:36:20 models and there’s a lot of people who
0:36:21 dispute that and they say no it’s just
0:36:22 better algorithms and we already have
0:36:25 enough data for the rest of all time but
0:36:28 i disagree with that i think i don’t
0:36:29 think we’re the smartest people who will
0:36:31 ever live and there might be new creative
0:36:33 things that happen in the future that we
0:36:35 don’t foresee and the models we’ve
0:36:37 currently built might not extend into
0:36:39 those things and having some open system
0:36:41 where people can contribute to new models
0:36:44 in new ways is a more expansive and
0:36:47 creative and you know open-minded and
0:36:51 and just you know kind of spiritually
0:36:53 optimistic way of thinking about the deep
0:36:53 future
0:37:15 today explained here with eric levitt senior
0:37:17 correspondent at vox.com to talk about the
0:37:21 2024 election that can’t be right eric i thought
0:37:22 we were done with that i feel like i’m pacino
0:37:24 in three just when i thought i was out
0:37:28 they pull me back in why are we talking about
0:37:30 the 2024 election again the reason why we’re
0:37:33 still looking back is that it takes a while
0:37:36 after an election to get all of the most high
0:37:40 quality data on what exactly happened so the
0:37:42 full picture is starting to just come into view
0:37:45 now and you wrote a piece about the full
0:37:49 picture for vox recently and it did bonkers business
0:37:53 on the internet what did it say what struck a
0:37:56 chord yeah so this was my interview with
0:38:00 david shore of blue rose research he’s one of
0:38:04 the biggest sort of democratic data gurus in
0:38:08 the party and basically the big picture headline
0:38:12 takeaways are on today explained you’ll have to go listen
0:38:15 to them there find the show wherever you listen to shows bro
0:38:35 i think i’m a humanist like you in the end and what i want fundamentally is just the
0:38:39 elevation of human agency not the diminishment of it and part of what that means to borrow your
0:38:45 language is creating more creative classes and less dependent classes yep uh you’ve convinced me
0:38:50 that that’s at least possible i don’t know if it’s likely but i hope it is and and maybe some
0:38:55 some kind of data dignity type model is the most promising thing i’ve heard
0:39:06 no i sort of feel like the human project our our survival is simultaneously both certain and
0:39:11 unlikely if you know what i mean like i i feel like if we just follow the immediate trend lines
0:39:13 and what we see we’re probably gonna
0:39:16 buck ourselves up to use the word i’m
0:39:22 encouraged to say here there you go but i also just have this feeling we’ve made it through a lot of
0:39:26 stuff in the past and i just have this feeling we’re gonna rise to the occasion and figure this
0:39:32 one out really i don’t know exactly how we will but i think we will i don’t know what the
0:39:40 alternative is the alternative is in 200 million years there’ll be smart cephalopods to take over
0:39:45 the planet uh and maybe they’ll do that i mean that’s the alternative but i think we can do it i
0:39:56 really do i really i we just we just have to be a little less full of ourselves and not believe we’re
0:40:02 making a new god no more golden calves that’s really our problem still yeah good luck with
0:40:09 that i mean i i i like i’m constantly thinking more about the the social and political and cultural
0:40:14 dynamics because that’s just my background um and you know i mean i i guess speaking of dependent
0:40:23 classes i a very common concern is is this fear that ai is going to create a lot of social instability by
0:40:29 taking all of our jobs it’s a widespread fear it’s scary as hell and it feels like
0:40:35 the latest iteration of a very old story about new technologies like automation displacing workers
0:40:39 i mean how do you speak to these sorts of fears when you hear them because surely you hear them a lot
0:40:41 yeah and they concern me i mean
0:40:54 look um there’s not a perfect solution to that problem uh there i’ll give you an example of one
0:41:00 that i find tricky to think about uh my mom died in a car accident and i’ve always believed from when
0:41:05 i was very young that cars should drive themselves that it was manifestly obvious that we could create
0:41:13 a digital system that would save many many lives so we have tens of thousands of people killed by cars
0:41:16 every year still in the us and i think it’s over a million worldwide or something like that i mean
0:41:24 it’s like crazy it’s like and so um there are a lot of reasons for it and a self-driving car is never
0:41:28 going to be perfect because it’s not a task that can be done perfectly there’ll be circumstances where
0:41:34 there’s no optimal solution you know in the instant but overall we ought to be able to save a lot of
0:41:42 life so i’m really supportive of that project at the same time an incredibly large number of blue collar
0:41:49 people around the world get by behind a wheel whether it’s truck drivers or rideshare drivers these days
0:42:00 or etc you know and so like how do you reconcile those two things uh and i i don’t think there’s any way to do it perfectly i think there’s
0:42:10 there’s two things that should be true one is that we need to find an intermediate way to love
0:42:15 a social safety net that isn’t all the way to universal basic income because the universal basic
0:42:21 income idea gives people this idea that they’re not worth anything and they’re just being supported by
0:42:27 the tech titans as a hobby and it doesn’t feel very secure or very dignified and or stable there’s like
0:42:33 just a lot of reasons why i’m skeptical of that uh in the long term and i don’t think people like it
0:42:40 or want it but on the other hand um just telling people well you’re thrown out into the mix and in
0:42:45 the u.s you have no health insurance and just figure something out that’s also just too cruel and not viable
0:42:51 if it’s a lot of people at once so we have to find our way to a very unfashionable intermediate
0:43:00 sense of social safety network or uh to help people through transitions and right now the accounting for
0:43:04 that is very very difficult to sort out and especially in the united states there’s a deep
0:43:13 hostility to it and i just don’t see logically any other way but then beyond that um i do think new roles
0:43:18 will appear like the the story that well new things will happen and new new things will be possible
0:43:25 i do believe that like there’s a kind of a vague and uncomfortable sense that surely new things will
0:43:31 come along and i i actually think that’s true i don’t feel comfortable making that claim for all
0:43:35 those drivers like we’re not going to retrain them to be programmers because low-level programming
0:43:43 itself is also getting automated right i don’t know exactly how that’ll work um i have thought a great
0:43:49 great deal about it but that’s who i am for the moment i believe that there could be all kinds of
0:43:57 things we don’t foresee and that within that explosion of new sectors of creativity there will be enough new
0:44:04 needs for people to do things if only to train ai’s that it’ll keep up with human needs and support
0:44:08 some kind of a world of economics that’s more distributed than just a central authority
0:44:13 distributing income to everybody which i think would be corrupted yeah yeah i agree with that
0:44:20 do you think we’re being sufficiently intentional about the development of this technology do you
0:44:27 think we’re asking the right questions as a society now well i mean the questions are dominated by
0:44:33 a certain internal technical culture which is and the mainstream of technical culture is very
0:44:39 obsessed with ai as a new god or some kind of new entity and so i think that that does make the
0:44:47 whole conversation go askew and that said we’re almost like if you go to ai conferences
0:44:54 there might there’s usually more talk where somebody is saying we’re going to talk about how to talk the
0:45:01 ai into not killing us you know and that kind of conversation which to me is not well grounded and
0:45:09 i think it kind of loses itself in loops but that kind of conversation can take up as much time and space
0:45:14 as like a serious conversation of like how can we optimize this algorithm or how can we you know like the
0:45:20 the actual work that we should be doing as technologists um i was at one conference i was
0:45:25 kind of funny where i forget what there were these different factions there’s the artificial general
0:45:30 intelligence and there’s the super intelligence and there’s all these different people who have
0:45:34 slightly different ideas about how awesome ai will be and help might kill us all in different ways
0:45:42 and they were so conflicted that they got into a fist fight um a not very competent fist fight it must be
0:45:48 said but i’m shocked it’s kind of funny anyway i sort of wish i had a film of that that was really funny but
0:45:54 i don’t know i mean i love my world i love the people i do kind of make fun of us a little bit
0:46:00 sometimes because i just think it’s important too you know okay so if we just let’s just set aside for
0:46:06 the moment that the more common fears about ai the alignment problem and taking our jobs and
0:46:12 flattening human creativity all that stuff all that is there all of that um is there is there a fear of
0:46:18 yours something you think we could get terribly wrong that’s not currently something we hear much about
0:46:26 uh god i don’t even know where to start yeah there’s like a lot lot lot lot lot lot lot
0:46:38 lot i’m i mean one of the things i worry about is we’re gradually moving education into an ai model
0:46:46 and the motivations for that are often very good because in a lot of places on earth it’s just been
0:46:50 impossible to come up with an economics of supporting and training enough human teachers
0:46:58 and a lot of cultural issues in changing societies make it very very hard to make schools that work
0:47:06 and so on like there’s a lot of issues and in theory a sort of uh client self-adapting ai tutor
0:47:13 could solve a lot of problems at a low cost in a lot of situations but then the issue with that is
0:47:19 once again creativity how do you keep people who learn in a system like that
0:47:24 how do you train them so that they’re able to step outside of what the system was trained on
0:47:29 you know like there’s this funny way that you’re always retreading and recombining the training data
0:47:35 in any ai system and you can address that to a degree with constant fresh input and this and that but
0:47:40 i am a little worried about people being trained in a closed system that makes them a little less than
0:47:46 they might otherwise have been and have a little less faith in themselves i’m a little concerned about
0:47:53 sort of defining the nature of life and education downward you know and the thing is the history
0:47:59 of education is filled with doing exactly that thing like education has been filled with overly
0:48:08 reductive ideas or overly idealistic and and um biased ideas of different kinds i mean so it’s not like
0:48:14 we’re entering this perfect system messing it up we’re entering a messed up system and trying to figure out
0:48:22 how to not perpetuate it it’s messed up itness i think in the case of education um challenging really
0:48:28 challenging i think i just ask just because i’m just curious what you would say i i have a five-year-old
0:48:37 son and he’s already started asking questions about you know like what kind of skills should he learn what
0:48:42 what should he what should he aspire to do in the world oh man that’s a hard one right and i don’t know
0:48:49 what to tell him because i have no idea what the world is going to look like by the time he’s 18 or 20 or 15
0:48:54 hell you know i what would you what would you tell him if uncle jaron came over oh yeah and he asked
0:48:59 you that what would you say well i have a teen daughter now and when she was younger uh she went
0:49:07 to coding camp you know and loved it and then when uh copilot for github came out and now some of the
0:49:12 other ones that are out she was like well you know the kinds of programs i’d write i can just ask for now
0:49:17 so why did you send me to all this thing why did i waste all my time at these things and i said uh remember
0:49:24 you loved coding camp remember you liked it you liked it it’s like well yeah but i would have
0:49:30 i could have liked spelunking camp or something too like why coding camp and um i i mean
0:49:36 i don’t have a perfect answer for all that right now i really don’t i do
0:49:44 i do think there are new things that will emerge i have a feeling there’ll be a lot of new professions
0:49:51 related to adaptive biology and modifications and helping people deal with weird changes to their
0:49:56 bodies that will become possible i think that’ll become a big thing i don’t know exactly how it’s
0:50:04 too early to say like i there’s a subtle point here i want to make which is um i am very far from being
0:50:12 anti-futuristic or disliking extreme change in the future but what i what i have to insist upon
0:50:18 is continuity so in this idea there’s a term called the singularity uh applied to ai sometimes that
0:50:23 there’ll be this rush of change so fast that nobody can learn anything nobody can know anything and it
0:50:29 just is beyond us beyond us beyond us the problem with the singularity whether it’s in a black hole or in
0:50:35 the big bang or in technology is that it’s very hard to have you know like by definition even if
0:50:41 you don’t technically lose information you lose the ability to access the information in the in the
0:50:46 original context or with any kind of structure so it’s essentially a form of massive forgetting and
0:50:54 massive loss of context and massive loss of meaning therefore and so however radical we get if in the future
0:51:00 we’re all going to evolve into massive distributed colonies of space bacteria flying around
0:51:07 and intergalactically or something whatever we turn into i’m all for it i’m in i’m in i’m in but
0:51:12 the line from here to there has to have memory it has to be continuous enough that we’re learning
0:51:19 lessons and we we remember if we break that because we want the thrill of polpot’s year zero where from
0:51:24 now on we’re the smartest people and everybody else was wrong and we start over if we want that break
0:51:29 we must resist it we must oppose people who want that break year zero never works out well it’s a
0:51:38 really really bad idea and so that to me i’m like pro extreme futures but anti discontinuity into the
0:51:43 future and and so that’s a an in-between place to be that’s a little subtle and hard to get across but
0:51:48 i think that that’s the right place to be well i always try to end these conversations with as much
0:51:55 optimism as possible so do you have any other good news or uh rosy scenarios you can you can paint for
0:52:01 us uh before we get out of here about how things are going to be awesome in the future right now we’re
0:52:09 in a very hard to parse moment things are strange things are scary and what i keep on telling myself
0:52:16 there’s always hope in chaos as much as someone might someone driving chaos might be certain that
0:52:25 it’s under their command but it never is and those of us who watch unfolding chaos looking for signs of
0:52:33 hope looking for optimism looking for little openings in which to do something good we will find them if we
0:52:40 stay alert and so i’d urge everybody to do that during this period jaron lanier i’m a fan of your
0:52:45 work i’m a fan of you as a human being as well i appreciate you coming in oh well that’s very kind
0:52:52 of you thank you so much and i really appreciate all the effort and also just the goodwill and warmth
0:53:03 you put into this interview i really do appreciate it so much
0:53:12 all right i hope you enjoyed this episode there was a lot going on in this one jaron is a unique mind
0:53:22 and i appreciate the way he thinks about all of this this conversation did force me to reflect on the
0:53:31 language i use to make sense of ai and all the assumptions buried in that language so i hope you
0:53:39 found his insights useful but either way as always we want to know what you think so drop us a line
0:53:52 at the gray area at vox.com or leave us a message on our new voicemail line at 1-800-214-5749
0:53:58 and once you’re finished with that if you have a second please go ahead and rate and review and
0:54:09 subscribe to the podcast this episode was produced by beth morrissey edited by jorge just engineered by erica
0:54:17 wong fact check by melissa hirsch and alex overington wrote our theme music new episodes of the gray area
0:54:25 drop on mondays listen and subscribe the show is part of vox support vox’s journalism by joining our
0:54:33 membership program today go to vox.com slash members to sign up and if you decide to sign up because of this show
0:54:51 let us know you

0:00:03 This is a critical conversation around truly the future of humanity.
0:00:05 But we don’t like to talk about this.
0:00:07 This report is absolutely shocking.
0:00:10 This is a crisis and young men are struggling.
0:00:13 So I sat down with two leading voices on societal issues
0:00:16 to discuss the rise of millions of lonely, addicted men.
0:00:19 And the most important question is, how do we fix this?
0:00:21 So let’s start with this graph.
0:00:23 It shows that young women are now out-earning young men.
0:00:24 It is true.
0:00:27 We have given women so many tools to achieve,
0:00:29 but now boys are being left behind.
0:00:32 And that the number of males aged 16 to 24
0:00:35 were not in educational employment has increased by a staggering 40%.
0:00:38 And the data I’ve seen is that when the woman in the relationship
0:00:41 starts making more money, they become twice as likely to get divorced.
0:00:43 Because traditionally, women seek partners
0:00:47 who have more economic or social status than they do.
0:00:50 And emotional intelligence is the new currency in dating.
0:00:53 But these guys were raised not to be emotionally intelligent,
0:00:54 but to be a provider.
0:00:58 That a lack of male involvement in kids’ lives is a big factor leading to this.
0:01:00 And once they lose a male role model,
0:01:02 they become much more likely to engage in criminal activity.
0:01:06 And so we are just creating a lot of these angry, young, single men
0:01:08 who are saying, well, this is rigged against me.
0:01:10 We actually asked some of our audience to write in,
0:01:11 and this guy, Jeffrey, wrote in and said,
0:01:14 my entire life, I have never felt like I was good enough.
0:01:16 Like I could never earn my place in society.
0:01:17 It’s devastating.
0:01:20 But something that’s controversial, I’ve got to push back on.
0:01:24 I think the secret weapon for men that they don’t leverage is to…
0:01:25 I want to hear a woman’s perspective on it.
0:01:27 Honestly, what I would do is…
0:01:35 I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple
0:01:40 and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven’t yet hit the
0:01:43 follow button or the subscribe button, wherever you’re listening to this.
0:01:45 I would like to make a deal with you.
0:01:47 If you could do me a huge favour and hit that subscribe button,
0:01:52 I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better.
0:01:55 I can’t tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button.
0:01:57 The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production,
0:02:01 bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to do in this thing we love.
0:02:03 If you could do me that small favour and hit the follow button,
0:02:06 wherever you’re listening to this, that would mean the world to me.
0:02:08 That is the only favour I will ever ask you.
0:02:09 Thank you so much for your time.
0:02:14 Lost Boys.
0:02:20 In March 2025, the Centre of Social Justice released this report,
0:02:22 which has sent a couple of shockwaves across the UK.
0:02:24 especially across the media.
0:02:29 And just to give you a little bit of a sort of preface and some context on what this report says.
0:02:33 At the start of the report, Andy Cook, who’s the CEO of the report, says,
0:02:37 we listen to those working on the front line, the teachers, the youth workers, the charities,
0:02:41 and the parents who day in, day out, see the struggles of young people.
0:02:44 And in recent years, they’ve been telling us the same thing.
0:02:47 Something is going on with our boys.
0:02:50 And because of this, they wrote this report called The Lost Boys,
0:02:53 which looks at all of the different facets of why young men are struggling.
0:02:56 And in this report, they say, boys are struggling in education.
0:02:58 They’re more likely to take their own lives.
0:03:02 They’re finding it more difficult to find stable work.
0:03:04 And far too often, they’re caught in crime.
0:03:06 The numbers don’t lie.
0:03:08 Something has shifted and we cannot ignore it any longer.
0:03:11 It’s not just about Andrew Tate or online influences.
0:03:14 These are symptoms, not the cause.
0:03:18 The deeper truth is that too many boys are growing up without the guidance, discipline,
0:03:20 and purpose they need to survive.
0:03:24 And there’s some, frankly, horrific graphs, which actually sent the CEO of my company,
0:03:28 a lady called Georgie, into quite an emotional state.
0:03:31 She texted me and told me she was crying looking at some of these graphs,
0:03:32 which we’ll talk about today.
0:03:36 But this is a subject that I know both of you know very, very well.
0:03:39 So I’m keen to get into exactly why this is happening and what we can do about it.
0:03:42 But to preface this discussion, to understand where you both come from
0:03:46 and the perspective you have, Logan, who are you?
0:03:47 Yeah.
0:03:48 And what do you do?
0:03:50 I’m a behavioral scientist turned dating coach.
0:03:54 So that means that I take all the lessons from the field of behavioral science,
0:03:58 how we make decisions, and then I apply them to the field of relationship science,
0:03:59 which is how love works.
0:04:04 And so I’m really passionate about this topic because for a long time,
0:04:07 I’ve found that wherever I go, people say,
0:04:10 oh, I know all these great single women.
0:04:11 Do you know any great single guys?
0:04:14 And I just thought, oh, OK, maybe that’s always been happening.
0:04:19 But when I actually dug into the data, I saw that we are truly in a dating crisis right now.
0:04:23 And there is a huge mating gap between the type of men that women are looking for
0:04:25 and the type of men that are available.
0:04:30 This is a critical conversation around truly the future of humanity
0:04:32 because marriage rates are down.
0:04:33 That means birth rates are down.
0:04:37 And so this conversation is extremely important.
0:04:40 And what sort of reference points do you draw upon?
0:04:42 Because you’ve got some sort of unique access to data, right?
0:04:43 Right.
0:04:45 So I work at Hinge for the last five years.
0:04:49 And so I have access to tons of data there around how daters are dating now,
0:04:52 how daters are dating differently, what sets successful daters apart.
0:04:56 And then I also have conducted my own research for this conversation.
0:05:00 So I sent out a survey to thousands of my newsletter subscribers.
0:05:03 And people were very excited to talk about this.
0:05:07 And I’ve conducted a lot of new research that I’ll be sharing for the first time on this topic.
0:05:11 So I make my living looking at data and trying to come up with insights.
0:05:16 I spend most of my career looking at data to try and add shareholder value.
0:05:18 And then I have the luxury now of focusing on things I’m really interested in.
0:05:27 And I just sort of stumbled upon data about it reflects that the cohort that has ascended fastest globally is women.
0:05:30 And this is a wonderful thing and a huge collective victory.
0:05:35 And the group that has fallen furthest fastest is men in Western markets.
0:05:37 And the data was just so overwhelming.
0:05:41 And also, I was close to being one of these men.
0:05:46 I didn’t have a lot of economic or romantic prospects when I was a young man.
0:05:51 But there were programs and an environment where I could be successful.
0:06:04 And I worry that some of the temptations, the technology, the economic trends, had they been where they are now then, I could have very easily ended up a statistic.
0:06:06 So I just sort of relate to these problems.
0:06:17 I’m keen to understand from your perspectives what you think, like, the first domino that falls in a young man’s life or a young boy’s life that causes the outcomes we’re talking about today.
0:06:19 Like, where is the first place to start?
0:06:33 So the research I’ve looked at, and Richard Reeves from the American Institute of Boys in Medicine, good research here, the point of failure, if you reverse engineered issues too, is when a boy loses a male role model.
0:06:39 And that is, in the U.S., we have the second most single-family parent homes behind Sweden.
0:06:47 And what’s interesting is that in single-parent homes, girls actually have similar outcomes, similar rates of high school attendance, income, rates of self-harm.
0:06:54 Boys, once they lose a male role model, become much more likely to be incarcerated, engage in criminal activity, harm themselves.
0:07:00 It ends up that while being physically stronger, boys are emotionally and mentally much weaker.
0:07:10 So the loss of a male role model is, I would argue, kind of the first point of failure that predicts that a kid, a boy, is going to struggle.
0:07:21 And that has impacts on family court, economic policy, and just general zeitgeist in our society where men need to step up.
0:07:23 If we want better men, we need to be better men.
0:07:24 We need to step into that void.
0:07:29 Another one that Richard Reeves talks about is that there’s not enough men in the education system.
0:07:33 So I believe when Tim Waltz was a teacher, one out of three teachers in his school was a man.
0:07:35 But now it’s like 24%.
0:07:35 Yeah.
0:07:38 And so where do kids spend most of their time in school?
0:07:40 And who’s teaching them?
0:07:41 Mostly not men.
0:07:45 And you think, well, women can be fantastic teachers, and it’s true.
0:07:53 But after-school programs, not as many coaches that typically are male, not as much compensation, so they don’t get rewarded for being coaches.
0:07:56 And if you just think about it logically, who does a teacher champion?
0:08:00 A teacher champion is someone that reminds them of themselves when they were a kid.
0:08:07 So, and also just look at the, there’s incredible bias, I would argue, against males in school.
0:08:14 A boy is twice as likely to be suspended on a behavior-adjusted basis, twice as likely to be suspended for the exact same infraction as a girl.
0:08:16 Five times as likely if it’s a black boy.
0:08:21 And so, and once you’re suspended twice, it probably means you’re not going to college.
0:08:24 In addition, look at the behaviors we promote in school.
0:08:25 Sit still.
0:08:26 Be a pleaser.
0:08:27 Be organized.
0:08:28 Raise your hand.
0:08:29 You basically just described a girl.
0:08:36 And so, and also, quite frankly, a lot of the jobs that require tertiary education attainment,
0:08:38 there’s more women now in law school and medical school.
0:08:40 And quite frankly, good for them.
0:08:41 They’re just better at that.
0:08:42 They’re better students.
0:08:43 They deserve to make more money.
0:08:43 They deserve it.
0:08:49 But the reality is it has huge ramifications when we no longer have wood, auto, or metal shop.
0:08:49 They’ve gone away.
0:08:50 Right.
0:08:52 So those used to be a pass to do some middle-class jobs.
0:08:55 They’ve been replaced by computer science.
0:09:02 So what are the pass for the two-thirds of males that aren’t going to end up with a traditional liberal arts college degree?
0:09:02 Right.
0:09:04 And just to add a few more stats to that.
0:09:11 So we know that 70% of valedictorians in the U.S. are female, and women are much more likely to be in the top 10% of their class.
0:09:16 But then on the SAT, men and women, or young men and women, earn the same scores.
0:09:23 So there’s definitely something happening in schools that is prioritizing the female experience or that women are better at that.
0:09:25 We definitely want to celebrate the success of women.
0:09:29 I think the changes that have happened over the last 50 years are incredible.
0:09:32 And I feel like I’m a beneficiary of that, and so is my daughter.
0:09:38 If you look at all of the books that my daughter was given when she was born, they’re about great women in history.
0:09:39 You can be anything.
0:09:41 Dream big, little one.
0:09:46 And so I feel like we have given women so many tools to achieve, and in many ways those have been manifested.
0:09:49 But now boys are being left behind.
0:09:51 And so this isn’t a zero-sum game.
0:09:56 I was nervous about coming on here because I thought people would say, she’s a male apologist.
0:09:58 She doesn’t see how much women are still struggling.
0:10:00 I think everyone is struggling.
0:10:09 I think life is hard, but what’s happening right now is we need to have empathy for young men, and we need to bring them up because this isn’t just a problem about young men.
0:10:12 And patriarchy doesn’t just hurt women.
0:10:17 A lot of people think about the patriarchy as something that prizes men and hurts women.
0:10:21 But when there’s a very narrow definition of men, everyone is hurt by that.
0:10:36 And that’s all the research that I’ve done is over and over seeing women feel like they are not enough good men to date, and men feel like they’re being held to a ridiculous standard of holding both sides of the coin, being feminine and masculine.
0:10:45 It turns out, as you were speaking, I was looking at the stats around fatherless homes, and it turns out that there has been a significant increase in the amount of young boys being raised without a father present.
0:10:51 About 25% live without a biological step or adoptive father.
0:11:01 According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, the US has the world’s highest rate of children living in a single-parent household, and 92% of the time that’s with the mother alone.
0:11:10 And in 1968, only 11% of children lived with only their mother, compared to 21% in 2020.
0:11:16 So that’s doubled in the last 50-odd years, which is pretty staggering.
0:11:27 And then, obviously, the consequence of that, as Scott described, is that individuals from father-absent homes were 300% more likely to carry drugs, to carry guns, to deal drugs.
0:11:32 And there’s this huge plethora of mental health consequences if you don’t have a father in the home.
0:11:33 I mean, what do we do about that?
0:11:34 And, like, where are the fathers?
0:11:35 Yeah.
0:11:35 Where are the role?
0:11:36 Where are they going?
0:11:39 Well, it’s complicated.
0:11:42 There’s male abandonment.
0:11:43 There’s just no getting around it.
0:11:52 But also, going back to family court, sometimes the courts in our economy make it difficult for a man to stay involved in the kids’ lives.
0:12:00 And also, you know, family court’s getting better at saying, all right, the kids—I mean, just a personal anecdote.
0:12:06 I have a friend who recently has gone through divorce, two daughters, very much wants to be involved in their lives.
0:12:09 They’re 13- and 15-year-old girls.
0:12:13 And, quite frankly, dad’s there on the weekends, and they got their own thing going on.
0:12:15 And they don’t necessarily make dad a priority.
0:12:19 And dad’s not around for what I call the garbage time.
0:12:33 And that is what I found with my boys is the moments of serendipity and connection happen randomly when you’re taking them to school, when you’re out in the back, you know, jumping around or playing, whatever it is, these garbage moments.
0:12:39 And when you’re not in the household, for whatever reason, there’s just—there isn’t that much garbage time.
0:12:43 And I think slowly but surely they lose sometimes connection with their kid.
0:12:46 There’s also—there’s something weird going on.
0:12:48 I’m curious, Logan, if you’ve got data on this.
0:12:51 But you have a one-year-old daughter, right?
0:12:57 You’re going to be amazed when my unfortunate old boy had a Halloween party.
0:13:00 And the boys are like cute, but they’re dopes.
0:13:00 They’re boys.
0:13:04 There are some 14-year-old girls who look like they could be the junior senator from Pennsylvania.
0:13:06 They’re 5’10”.
0:13:07 They’re articulate.
0:13:08 Hello, Mr. Galloway.
0:13:09 How are you?
0:13:09 What a lovely home.
0:13:10 And the boys are like, I don’t know.
0:13:15 And biologically, girls mature faster.
0:13:17 Their prefrontal cortex is 18 months ahead of a boy’s.
0:13:25 An 18-year-old girl or woman is competing against a 16-and-a-half-year-old when she’s competing against an 18-year-old.
0:13:33 And they’re even finding that it’s getting worse, that women or girls are starting to menstruate earlier and boys’ testicles are descending later.
0:13:38 So the gap in maturity, biological gap, they think might even be growing.
0:13:39 And they don’t know if it’s pesticides.
0:13:51 But when I meet my eighth-graders’ colleagues, there’s a huge difference between the boys and the girls.
0:14:01 And one of Richard’s suggestions is that we redshirt boys, that we hold them a year back, that boys start kindergarten at six, whereas girls start at five.
0:14:07 So the research in the UK shows that 70% of girls are ready to start school at age five.
0:14:12 But many fewer boys are capable of starting at that age in terms of readiness.
0:14:24 And so if you were to hold boys back, then they might be on more equal playing field for those critical moments of four to five, of 13 to 14, where the brains really develop at a different stage.
0:14:31 I want to talk about that sort of early education experience and how it can be adapted, but also just like if the environment of the classroom is right for boys.
0:14:35 As we were talking about the point about fathers and listeners as well, I found this graph, which is also pretty shocking.
0:14:38 And it goes into something you said, Scott.
0:14:45 It basically shows that the absence of a father on a boy causes depressive symptoms.
0:14:50 But the absence of a father on a young girl doesn’t cause the same depressive symptoms.
0:14:58 Which means that the absence of a father for a boy drastically increases their chance of being depressed, whereas if for a girl it doesn’t.
0:15:05 There’s a lot of other graphs that look like that in terms of women and young girls are just actually a lot more resilient in childhood.
0:15:10 So if you are in foster care as a young woman, you have less negative outcomes than young men.
0:15:15 And so there’s this theory in parenting of is you’re a child an orchid or a dandelion?
0:15:19 And so the orchid really needs very particular situations to grow.
0:15:20 They need a certain amount of light.
0:15:22 They need to be watered in a particular way.
0:15:24 And they’ll thrive in some situations.
0:15:29 And they will not thrive in others, whereas a dandelion can really survive in many situations.
0:15:33 And so women, young girls, tend to be more dandelions in childhood.
0:15:40 And so that’s why when you have a boy and a girl both in negative situations, the boy is more negatively impacted.
0:15:42 Boys are just weaker.
0:15:49 There’s a crazy stat I read that two 15-year-olds, a boy and a girl, both sexually molested.
0:15:52 And to be clear, they’re equally heinous crimes.
0:15:56 But the boy who’s sexually molested is six to ten times more likely to kill himself later in life.
0:15:59 It ends up that boys are just less resilient.
0:16:04 Do you think there’s somehow more of a stigma there?
0:16:05 Like, I wonder why that’s so dramatic.
0:16:05 Shame.
0:16:07 They can’t talk about it.
0:16:08 Get uncomfortable.
0:16:08 Yeah.
0:16:11 Feel there’s a lack.
0:16:16 I mean, I think just until a few years ago, the social incentives were to never speak about it.
0:16:16 Right.
0:16:22 I was on Lewis Howe’s podcast, and he just openly said, I was sexually abused as a child.
0:16:23 And it was so shocking for me.
0:16:24 Wow.
0:16:25 To hear this big, handsome guy.
0:16:25 Yeah.
0:16:28 I don’t think he would have said it 10 or 20 years ago.
0:16:30 I think people would have assumed that it was his fault.
0:16:31 It made him less of a man.
0:16:35 So I think a lot of that has hopefully gotten better.
0:16:43 But we just have to acknowledge boys mentally and emotionally are weaker than girls.
0:16:47 Lewis Howe’s didn’t admit that until a couple of years ago.
0:16:48 Is that right?
0:16:49 So he’s lived with that his whole life.
0:16:50 Wow.
0:16:57 And it wasn’t until he was, I think, having dysfunction in his relationships and a few other things that happened that he decided he wanted to say it publicly for the first time.
0:16:59 Which, again, feeds into your point.
0:17:06 We actually asked some of our audience to write in, and one of the people that wrote in was a teacher in a primary slash preschool.
0:17:10 And she said to me, she was an anonymous teacher in Germany.
0:17:18 And she says, every year, it seems like more and more children, always boys, have this new energy to destroy the classroom dynamics.
0:17:20 These boys almost always have two things in common.
0:17:27 A lack of boundaries at home, an unsupervised, unlimited access to all kinds of content on the internet, e.g. porn.
0:17:31 Their perception of what is okay and what is right becomes completely distorted.
0:17:35 I have tried so many things, and every year it’s becoming an even bigger challenge.
0:17:40 Young boys in school.
0:17:46 So one proposal is to delay education for boys, put them in education later.
0:17:48 Is the classroom itself a problem?
0:17:52 Like the sitting in school, listening to someone speak at you.
0:17:58 Someone proposed to me on this podcast before that, boys need more sort of practical play, and the classroom isn’t designed for that.
0:17:59 I wasn’t sure if that was…
0:18:04 Well, in single-sex boys school, they end up with double the amount of recess time.
0:18:09 And that is they have, I equate boys to dogs.
0:18:10 A happy dog is a tired dog.
0:18:14 And if it’s not tired, if it doesn’t get to run, it’s going to cause trouble.
0:18:16 And I feel the same way about boys.
0:18:25 So in these schools where they decide what’s best for the boys, there’s usually more exercise and more free play and more roughhousing co-ed schools.
0:18:38 And you’re also seeing, I think, with boys, I mean, there’s just, by even acknowledging that men play a critical role in boys’ lives a few years ago, that was seen as sexist.
0:18:42 What, you mean, what, you’re saying moms can’t do this?
0:18:47 And I can just tell you there are certain moments when my partner needs me to weigh in.
0:18:53 I don’t know if it’s the depth of my voice, my physical size, the way they relate to me, the fact that I’m not…
0:18:55 You need dad.
0:18:59 Or that’s what I have found, especially with boys.
0:19:06 They need almost like that, not physical intimidation, but it’s almost like they begin tuning out their mom over time.
0:19:08 I mean, they’re incredibly close to their mother.
0:19:09 They look to her for nurturing.
0:19:11 When they really have a problem, I find they go to mom.
0:19:15 But they will constantly test the boundaries, constantly.
0:19:23 And I think a lot of single mothers, quite frankly with boys, just can’t keep a lid on that kid.
0:19:24 They can’t control the kid.
0:19:35 So, and I think you’re finding at schools when there’s no male kind of, I don’t know, involvement or that, I don’t know, what I’ll call physical presence.
0:19:44 And then you add on this DOPA machine that they get used to squeezing a DOPA bag a hundred times a day as they need it.
0:19:46 And then you take the DOPA bag away.
0:19:49 They’re just more prone to emotional outbursts.
0:19:57 I’m curious if you’ve done any research around why that is that emotional outburst more common among boys than girls.
0:20:03 I haven’t done that research, but I am imagining that there’s moms out there that are raising boys on their own.
0:20:06 And they might be like, yes, it is hard, but what do I do?
0:20:06 Right.
0:20:18 And so for that boy who isn’t taught by a lot of guys in school and isn’t in the Boy Scouts, which doesn’t exist anymore, or doesn’t have big brothers, big sisters, like what does that mom do?
0:20:20 So you brought up Boy Scouts.
0:20:28 In America, there’s Scouts for America, and it can be boys and girls, but Girl Scouts have their own single sex, but Boy Scouts aren’t allowed to have their own single sex.
0:20:32 So the question is, all right, what do you do?
0:20:45 And I think that we need a societal zeitgeist that says immediately if there’s no longer a male involved, we have to get other men involved and acknowledge that that’s not being sexist, that that’s important, that you get men involved.
0:20:52 And I think, so I came from a single-parent household, raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died as secretary, light of my life.
0:20:58 As soon as my dad was gone, and then he had to move away for work, she got other men involved in my life.
0:21:01 And I had wonderful men involved in my life.
0:21:07 I had a stockbroker, a neighbor down the hall came in with his girlfriend and said, do you want to go horseback riding?
0:21:08 He’s taking me horseback riding.
0:21:12 I don’t know if men would be comfortable doing that in today’s age.
0:21:19 So getting men involved in their lives, after-school programs, Boy Scouts, I had a lot of wonderful men.
0:21:24 I used to go camping, you know, and there were men everywhere involved in my life.
0:21:37 And I worry that a lot of those institutions and also there’s a reticence and a hesitance for men to get involved in a boy’s life that isn’t theirs for fear they’re going to be perceived as something’s wrong with them.
0:21:45 I was thinking that, so if we have less men in the home raising their children and then we go to school and the stat says that 72% of teachers in middle school are women as well.
0:21:47 There’s no men at school either.
0:21:59 It’s no wonder that boys are struggling so severely at such a young, early age for so many reasons, because one would assume that they’re being socialized in the same way as girls.
0:22:07 I’m saying I’ve got a mother at home, don’t have a father, I’ve got women at school, don’t have male teachers.
0:22:09 I mean, that’s a controversial thing to say.
0:22:12 I’m sure it used to be, but I think people are waking up a little bit now.
0:22:14 We need more male teachers.
0:22:18 There’s more female fighter pilots per capita than male kindergarten teachers.
0:22:27 There’s just, there’s an absence, there are some boys, not some, there are millions of boys in America whose first male role model is a prison guard.
0:22:29 And there are just no men in their lives.
0:22:34 After school programs being canceled, no women, very few men, K through 12.
0:22:36 Dad’s not around.
0:22:39 There are literally communities.
0:22:41 You read articles about it.
0:22:43 Where it’s like, where are the men?
0:22:44 Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.
0:22:45 Where are they?
0:22:46 Online.
0:22:48 It doesn’t look like they’re in work.
0:22:51 They’re not in college.
0:23:02 The reality is there just aren’t, for a lot of reasons, a host of reasons, male, a lack of male involvement in kids’ lives is a big, big factor leading to this.
0:23:02 There are other factors.
0:23:03 There’s socioeconomic factors.
0:23:05 There’s biological factors.
0:23:08 There’s a lack of vocational training.
0:23:14 There’s outsourcing of many of the jobs that made a man’s path to the middle class viable.
0:23:17 I mean, you want to talk about the UK, a big problem is a lack of growth.
0:23:23 There’s just not, there’s not a lot of income opportunities for a young man who’s not exceptional.
0:23:30 And what we’ve seen in the US is essentially, if you look at our economic policies in college, it’s never been better to be remarkable.
0:23:38 Like, if you’re in the top 10%, if you’re a high school class, you’re going to make more money than the top 10% did 10, 20, 30.
0:23:46 If you end up at Google, you’re going to make, a kid at Google who’s amazing, computer science theory, can make millions of dollars by the time of the 30.
0:23:51 But I can prove to every one of us, mathematically, that 99% of our children are not in the top 1%.
0:24:07 And our economic policies have basically said that school and college is meant to identify a super class of 1%ers that we’re going to try and turn into billionaires instead of figuring out the infrastructure and the programs to ensure the bottom 90 have a shot of being in the top 10.
0:24:11 And one of the stats is just around college acceptance.
0:24:14 When I applied to UCLA, the acceptance rate was 76%.
0:24:15 Now it’s 9%.
0:24:20 I was unremarkable for whatever reason, prefrontal cortex, single mother, whatever you want to call it.
0:24:26 But back then, they had the mission and the charge to let in unremarkable kids.
0:24:31 And that’s no longer the case because America’s superpowers are optimism.
0:24:34 And we all believe our kids in that top 1%.
0:24:36 And the reality is they’re not.
0:24:42 Or people think, I’d like an economy where you can make a billion dollars because that’s going to be me one day.
0:24:49 So they have ignored the fact that we are crowding more and more prosperity and opportunity into the remarkable.
0:24:53 And for me, it comes down to what do we want in America and the UK?
0:25:01 Do we want a superclass of billionaires or do we want a society and an operating system that gives unremarkable people a shot of being in the top 10%?
0:25:04 It’s become winner take all.
0:25:13 And we have purposely created a set of economic and educational policies that crowd a massive amount of prosperity into the top 1%.
0:25:18 And we have opted for it because we believe we have a shot at being in that top 1%.
0:25:23 I love that because I think the winner takes all applies to a lot of different things.
0:25:29 So I bet the top 10% of Americans now are healthier than they’ve ever been, while the rest of the country has never been healthy.
0:25:30 Best health care in the world if you’re in the top 10%.
0:25:31 Yeah.
0:25:38 Or in marriages, the top marriages today are the best marriages of all time, yet we have declining marriage rates.
0:25:41 So we’re nearing the lowest rate of marriage that we’ve ever had in American history.
0:25:52 So most people are, or fewer people are getting married, but if you’re, you know, two college graduates who get married in your 30s, you might have an even stronger bond than people in the past.
0:25:55 But that is a small group at the top.
0:25:57 Marriage has become a luxury, Autumn.
0:25:57 Yeah.
0:26:02 If you’re in the top quintile of income-earning households, you’re 75% get married.
0:26:05 If you’re in the bottom quintile, only 25%.
0:26:10 If you’re in the lower quintile of income-earning men, only one in four chance of getting married.
0:26:18 And this has huge impact on our society because we know that married people are healthier, they’re wealthier, they live longer.
0:26:22 When couples are married, they actually have lower rates of child poverty.
0:26:28 And so this has huge implications for our society if we’re having fewer marriages, especially when you think about having fewer babies.
0:26:33 I am, I want to get into dating and marriage and love and all those things.
0:26:37 I, one of the things that really shocked me as I was preparing for this conversation was this graph.
0:26:39 Because this isn’t the narrative that we hear.
0:26:40 Can you both see this one?
0:26:43 This is the reverse gender gap.
0:26:43 Oh, yeah.
0:26:44 Gender pay gap graph.
0:26:45 Right.
0:26:48 And it shows that young women are now out-earning young men.
0:26:54 That’s not what I heard in terms of, like, if I log on to social media, we’ve been trying to fight the gender pay gap.
0:26:59 But to see that young men are now falling behind, both in education, both in unemployment.
0:27:02 Young men face higher unemployment, nearly twice the rate of women.
0:27:06 Looking at the early developmental stats, this graph was horrifying.
0:27:08 I, like, actually couldn’t believe that was true.
0:27:11 That young boys are struggling so much in education.
0:27:13 But then to see also that it’s reflected in.
0:27:21 So that graph shows that boys age 16 to 24 are making 10% less in full-time employment than women.
0:27:24 And so it is true that we’re seeing a reverse income graph.
0:27:30 But what we do need to talk about is even when women make more in their 20s, that changes around age 30.
0:27:31 When they have kids.
0:27:32 When they have kids, right?
0:27:37 It’s like this meteorite hits and there’s this huge burden placed on women.
0:27:46 And I think that’s a big part of the conversation that we’ll talk about when we talk about dating is women still feel like they have to have, you know, do all the household chores and raise the kids.
0:27:49 But suddenly they have to earn a full-time income too.
0:27:52 And so, so many of the gender roles are changing.
0:27:53 And so, yes, that graph is true.
0:27:56 We have seen since 2020 that there’s a shift.
0:28:00 But I don’t want to just say, oh, women are making more in perpetuity.
0:28:04 Because as soon as there’s kids involved, they pay the price.
0:28:09 You said that women feel the need to then also earn a career and all those things.
0:28:10 Where did that come from?
0:28:12 Well, there’s this idea of hypergamy.
0:28:18 So traditionally women seek partners who have more economic or social status than they do.
0:28:22 And for most of human history, this worked because men had the resources.
0:28:28 And so there was sort of this arrangement where women could often marry someone who is more educated or earned more.
0:28:31 But over the last 50 years, that’s really changed.
0:28:39 And so what I’m seeing in my work, working one-on-one with women, is that when they say that there aren’t enough good guys to go around, that’s actually true.
0:28:47 So we now have this huge mating gap where we have these high-performing, high-earning women that have done the work and gone to therapy and work out.
0:28:54 And they’re ready for their great partner, but they’re not able to find enough guys who are available.
0:29:04 And if this is a problem now with the women I work with in their 30s, we are going to be facing a much more severe crisis 10, 15 years from now.
0:29:11 So currently 60% of college enrollment is women, but soon it’s going to be for every two women that graduate, it’ll be one man.
0:29:16 So that means half of those women will not have a guy who graduated from college.
0:29:25 And so this is a crisis because these women are saying, okay, if you cannot be the provider, then you need to be offering more.
0:29:29 Emotional intelligence is the new currency in dating.
0:29:36 But these guys were raised not to be emotionally intelligent, not to give emotional support, but to be a provider.
0:29:44 And so they’ve been chasing this lion, I’m going to hunt for this lion of being a provider, but suddenly they’re told you need to hunt for a tiger, which is emotional intelligence.
0:29:47 They don’t have the skills to do that.
0:29:54 And so women have raised the bar in terms of what they need from men, while men are continuously falling behind.
0:29:56 Yeah, there’s a lot there.
0:29:58 There’s some nuance around the pay thing.
0:30:03 So the data I’ve seen is that women under the age of 30 in urban areas are now making more money.
0:30:12 But to your point, the moment they have kids, where corporate America has really failed is it hasn’t figured out a way to maintain a woman’s professional trajectory once she decides to deploy her ovaries and have kids.
0:30:19 And there’s some data saying, okay, two-thirds of divorce can be reverse engineered to the man starting to make less money.
0:30:29 When the woman in the relationship starts making more money, they become twice as likely to get divorced, three times as likely to use ED drugs because the guy loses a sense of purpose and self-esteem.
0:30:45 What gets lost in that data is the reality is if a woman is stepping up and stepping into the economic void and being more economically, being a greater economic contributor, then logically it would make sense that men need to step up logistically.
0:30:50 And I think what a lot of women are saying is like, okay, I’m not getting anything.
0:30:52 You’re no longer a provider.
0:30:54 And by the way, you haven’t filled that void.
0:30:55 You haven’t made up the delta.
0:30:58 So there’s some nuance around it.
0:31:10 What also I think is important to say is that if women are better students and showing the discipline and the skills to go to college and an information economy and making more money, then okay, good on them.
0:31:19 Just as for whatever reason, men made more money, maybe it wasn’t fair, but it’s not a crime against humanity if women have the skills to make more money.
0:31:30 What happens, though, is the second order effects that you’re talking about, and that is, and we don’t like to talk about this, 75% of women say that economic viability is hugely important in a mate.
0:31:32 Only 25% of men.
0:31:33 For men, it’s not a criteria.
0:31:35 For women, it is.
0:31:44 And Chris Wimson of the Modern Wisdom podcast, he has this great stat, or he calls it the high heels effect, and that is 50% of women say they won’t date a man shorter than them.
0:31:47 I’m curious what you think, but I think it’s more like 80%.
0:31:54 I think it’s an embarrassing thing to say because just instinctively, women feel like they’ll be vulnerable during gestation, and they want someone they think physically could protect them.
0:31:57 I just think it’s hardwired into them even if they don’t know it.
0:32:01 Women, metaphorically, are getting taller every year.
0:32:04 And women made horizontally and up, and men horizontally and down.
0:32:14 And when the pool of horizontal and up keeps shrinking, they just have – so this notion, a ton of great women, where are the men?
0:32:15 Or there’s no men?
0:32:17 There’s a lot of men, just not men they’d want to date.
0:32:18 Right.
0:32:24 And men, you speedball it with the guys who are in the top 10% can engage in Porsche polygamy.
0:32:30 They can get a date every goddamn night, which does not encourage long-term or very good behavior.
0:32:35 So the guys they all want are not incented to enter into long-term relationships.
0:32:41 And the bottom half of men are literally shut out of the mating market.
0:32:50 And we always kind of – and this goes to your ballywig – kind of portray men as the predators and the idiots, and they just got their act together.
0:33:00 There’s something strange going on in that as online dating, when a woman can go out with a guy, a high-status male, and I’ll put forward this thesis, and I want you to respond to it.
0:33:08 She can have sex with him, which gives her the impression that’s her weight class for a relationship, but he’s not interested in a relationship.
0:33:14 And then she basically decides the bottom 90 are no longer in her weight class.
0:33:27 And you can’t tell a woman to lower her expectations, but the reality is – and what I’ve seen on dating apps – is that all of the women want the same few guys, and they shut out the rest.
0:33:28 Yeah.
0:33:30 Okay, so there’s a few things I’ll respond to there.
0:33:38 So, one, going back to the income graph, I want to just call out that, yes, right now in a few urban markets, women are making more than men.
0:33:48 So women in D.C. and New York under 30 are making more than men on average, but in most situations, men are still making more than women, but we’re talking about a projection.
0:33:51 Going back to the dating research.
0:33:53 So, yes, it’s exactly as you described.
0:33:58 What we have right now is there’s fewer and fewer men that are hypergamous mates for women.
0:34:08 So, if there’s a much smaller pool of guys, then what you have is you have a bunch of women competing for the same men, and then a bunch of guys get ignored.
0:34:12 But what I also see is that those top guys are having a hard time deciding.
0:34:18 So, I feel like in my coaching practice as a dating coach, I’m working with a lot of women who say, what do I do?
0:34:20 I’ve changed my profile the way you said I should.
0:34:24 I took your class, but I still feel like there’s just not enough great guys.
0:34:28 And then I work with these CEO men who are having such a hard time choosing.
0:34:37 And so, I think we really have this exacerbated problem where so many women are competing for the same men, and then a bunch of guys are getting ignored.
0:34:41 And then what ends up happening is where do those guys go?
0:34:42 And they go online.
0:34:43 That’s what you see.
0:34:43 They go to porn.
0:34:45 They go to porn or they go to Reddit.
0:34:50 I mean, I love Reddit, but they’re really going to some of these red-pilled communities.
0:34:53 And so, what you’re seeing now is just men really opting out of society.
0:35:00 So, when you go back to that stat, one in seven young men in the UK is neat, not an employment, education, or training.
0:35:02 They have just opted out.
0:35:08 And as Scott says, there’s nothing scarier than a single man, a young single man.
0:35:15 And so, we are just creating a lot of these angry young single men who are saying, well, this is rigged against me.
0:35:19 And so, that’s why I am worried about the rise of people like Andrew Tate.
0:35:25 And if we wonder where are the dads, where are the men, well, men are finding these father figures, but they’re finding them online.
0:35:30 And they’re not the father figures that I would choose for the majority of men.
0:35:38 And so, I’m really worried about this because I feel like women are saying, guys, you need to step up because I can provide and I don’t need that from you.
0:35:41 And guys are not prepared to rise to the occasion.
0:35:43 What are women looking for?
0:35:44 Scott talked about height.
0:35:45 Yeah.
0:35:55 So, I would say, you know, I work at Hinge, but I do think that apps have perpetuated this issue around height because if you can set your height filter to something, then you might set it higher.
0:36:03 And then it’s as if you have the dating app is a club and you’re literally having bouncers that prevent a bunch of guys from even getting into the club.
0:36:11 So, many women in the U.S. set their height filters at 6 feet, but only 14% of men in the U.S. are 6 feet or taller.
0:36:14 So, what happens to the other 86% of men?
0:36:16 And women are saying, where’s my guy?
0:36:19 It’s like, well, he’s not even showing up on your app.
0:36:30 And so, a huge thing that I push women to do is to change their height filters and just say, there is nothing that proves that you’re going to have a successful long-term relationship if the guy is higher.
0:36:32 I’m married to a short king.
0:36:33 I love it.
0:36:35 I feel like I really found this gem.
0:36:41 And I think that so many women are missing out on great potential partners because of things like height.
0:36:54 Scott’s point as well about they will date one of the men in the top 10%, sleep with him potentially, and then that kind of adjusts their standards and they expect all other men to meet that standard, but there isn’t enough men to meet that standard, is there?
0:36:55 I haven’t specifically heard that.
0:37:04 I mean, there is a lot of evidence around a sort of mating that people sort of have an internal sense of how attractive they are and that they end up with someone similar to that.
0:37:14 But a sort of mating is different than hypergamy, which is really this idea, as Scott said, that women tend to date horizontally and up and men date horizontally and down.
0:37:28 So, if you have two-thirds of women who are college grads and one-third of college grads who are men and some of them are going to date women without college degrees, you truly do have this dating crisis where there’s just not enough men to meet this hypergamous mating.
0:37:33 Again, you can’t tell women to lower their expectations, but this is the reality.
0:37:40 When you ask a man if you could have a woman who had 80% of everything you wanted, 75% say, yeah, I’m on board.
0:37:47 When you say to a woman a man has 80% of what you want, 75% say that’s not enough.
0:37:50 But even look at the media.
0:37:50 Right, right, right.
0:37:52 What does the media tell a woman to do?
0:37:54 He’s out, but he didn’t open your door.
0:37:55 He’s not nice to his parents.
0:37:59 Walk right out on that man.
0:38:02 Like, it’s literally, every piece of media is, you don’t need him.
0:38:03 You’re a strong, independent woman.
0:38:05 Pull the ripcord.
0:38:06 You’re out.
0:38:15 And it is, the basic kind of communication around this is, you are a strong, independent, powerful woman.
0:38:16 That is wonderful.
0:38:20 And quite frankly, you don’t need the imperfect man.
0:38:24 And they’re just not connecting.
0:38:37 I read that on Tinder, a man of average attractiveness has to swipe right 200 times to get one coffee, and then four of those five coffees will ghost him.
0:38:42 They will decide they don’t want to meet him, or they won’t show up.
0:38:49 That means a guy of average attractiveness has to swipe right 1,000 times to get one coffee.
0:38:50 Now, what does that tell that guy?
0:38:52 Women don’t value me.
0:38:54 Women make me feel rejected.
0:38:59 And then they go online, and they meet, they see these misogynists telling them, it’s not your fault.
0:39:09 And these men become much more prone to misogynistic content, much more prone to nationalistic content, blaming other people for the lack of economic opportunity.
0:39:11 They start sequestering from society.
0:39:17 I worry that we are literally evolving a new species of asexual, asocial male.
0:39:25 And if a man by the age of 30 hasn’t either lived with someone or married someone, there’s a one in three chance he’s going to have a substance abuse problem.
0:39:26 Wow.
0:39:36 In addition, it goes so much deeper than that because if they don’t develop the skills, you know, the reason romantic comedies are two hours and not 15 minutes is this shit is hard.
0:39:44 Like finding an attractive, intelligent woman, generally speaking, 75% of people who’ve been married longer than 30 years say, in the beginning, one was much more interested than the other.
0:39:46 And it was almost always the man.
0:39:48 Women are much choosier.
0:39:57 The basis of evolution is seed trying to get everywhere, men, and women deploying a much finer filter to select the strongest, smartest, and fastest speed.
0:40:01 So men need an environment to demonstrate excellence.
0:40:02 And you hear these women talk about it.
0:40:03 He was kind.
0:40:04 He was good at work.
0:40:05 I like the way he smelled.
0:40:06 He was funny.
0:40:11 Where do men demonstrate excellence when they’re not going to college?
0:40:14 They’re not going into an office because of remote work.
0:40:17 Where do they have – they’re not going to church.
0:40:17 They’re not going to temple.
0:40:25 Where does a woman have the opportunity to fall in love other than these baseline metrics?
0:40:30 And you were talking about women say – you’ve seen these TikToks – over $100,000.
0:40:31 That’s not unreasonable.
0:40:36 And over six feet, that’s 2.2% of the male population.
0:40:38 So where do they fall in love?
0:40:41 Where can a man demonstrate excellence?
0:40:46 It used to be go to Temple, seven single women, seven single men, and they kind of paired off and worked it out.
0:40:56 And online dating, similar to online e-commerce, online rentals, it’s created a winner-take-most, if not all, environment.
0:41:03 And it’s basically been amazing for attractive guys, attractive wealthy guys, tall wealthy guys.
0:41:04 It’s been amazing for them.
0:41:07 For all the other guys, it’s been a disaster.
0:41:10 And it’s made it mildly shittier for every woman.
0:41:15 It is – the digitization of mating, I believe, has been a disaster.
0:41:17 It’s been bad for women.
0:41:19 It’s been disastrous for men.
0:41:24 I want to talk about how the genders seem to be separating in a lot of important ways.
0:41:30 We know from research around political affiliation that women are now, on average, 30% more liberal than men.
0:41:32 So they are definitely experiencing political polarization.
0:41:37 Then, for the first time in history, more men are attending church than women.
0:41:45 And when I started this research, I really came at it from this point of, is it just me or there are not as many eligible guys?
0:41:50 But when I dug into this, I found that both genders really feel misunderstood.
0:41:54 And so I asked men and women who has more power in relationships.
0:42:00 So equal amounts, men and women said, oh, we have the same amount of power, 42% of that.
0:42:08 But then what was so interesting is that 46% of men said women have more power, and 46% of women said men have more power.
0:42:12 So there’s this huge feeling of, oh, the other gender has all of this power.
0:42:17 And when I spoke to people, I want to tell you about three dating paradoxes that I saw.
0:42:30 So the first dating paradox for men is this idea that now that women are providers and do not need a man to take care of them financially, they really want guys to step up with emotional support.
0:42:31 But here’s the paradox.
0:42:36 They were not raised, and they don’t know how to give that emotional support or emotional availability.
0:42:42 So we know women, even if they have the same number of friends as guys, the women are talking to their friends much more often.
0:42:46 Women speak to their kids, even starting at a very young age.
0:42:50 They use more emotional language with their daughters and their sons.
0:42:54 So constantly we have this feeling where we’re asking men to do something when they don’t have the skills.
0:43:01 I was talking to my friend David, and he said, women are in graduate school when it comes to emotional conversations, and guys are in third grade.
0:43:09 The other part of the paradox is that women are asking men to be more emotionally open, but then they get shamed when they do that.
0:43:14 So we have this great quote from Brene Brown where she says, we beg guys to open up.
0:43:15 We beg them to let us in.
0:43:18 And then when they do, we can’t stomach it.
0:43:21 And I heard that over and over in my research.
0:43:26 There’s this quote where a guy says, a woman would rather see me die on the white horse than fall off of it.
0:43:29 And so there’s this sense that I have to be perfect.
0:43:32 I have to be the masculine and the feminine.
0:43:34 But I don’t have the skills to do that.
0:43:37 And women say that they want these guys to be emotional.
0:43:41 But as soon as they show emotionality, it can freak those women out.
0:43:46 So one guy that I spoke to for this said, I went on a few dates with this woman.
0:43:49 At some point, I told her that my mom had had a suicide attempt.
0:43:53 And the next day, she texted me and said, I’m sorry, I can’t see you.
0:43:55 I cannot process your emotional trauma for you.
0:43:58 And so guys are getting a lot of mixed messages.
0:43:59 We want you to be feminine.
0:44:01 We want you to support us.
0:44:03 But when you do, it freaks us out.
0:44:04 And so we don’t want that.
0:44:10 And digging into the research, and I want to look into this more, I think it’s that a lot of women want emotional support.
0:44:13 They want you to support them in their emotional journeys.
0:44:17 But they’re not as ready to have you open up in your emotional journey.
0:44:19 Can I put forward a thesis?
0:44:21 And I want you to respond to it because I haven’t done the research.
0:44:29 In marketing, we call it consumer dissonance, what people say they want and then what they actually buy.
0:44:32 And what women say they want is an emotionally untouched man.
0:44:35 And what they want is a masculine man.
0:44:39 And that they will articulate what they want in a man.
0:44:41 And it includes being more emotionally available.
0:44:45 And then they want to have sex with a traditional masculine man.
0:44:51 And what I hear from a lot of women, this is anecdotal evidence, and it’s post-marketing, and you tell me what the data says.
0:44:55 But there’s just so many single women in my age group.
0:44:58 And it feels like there’s literally no men in my age group.
0:45:03 As bad as it is for people in their 20s and 30s, try being a woman in your 50s trying to date, right?
0:45:05 And they tell me the same thing.
0:45:08 These are liberal, progressive, educated women.
0:45:10 And they say, by the way, I like a manly man.
0:45:11 Yeah.
0:45:12 And they say it under their breath.
0:45:19 So there’s what supposedly is stated around I need more emotional availability, someone’s touch with their feelings.
0:45:30 But what the research shows is they want a guy with facial hair who’s still – women are still very attracted to traditional masculine attributes.
0:45:31 Yeah.
0:45:37 I mean, I think we’re just in such a hard moment because you have women who are saying, I don’t want to date a guy who earns less than me.
0:45:42 And you might think, okay, well, the data hasn’t caught up with the dating.
0:45:49 If more women are in higher education and more women are earning more, then maybe you’re going to be the one who earns more in your relationship.
0:45:55 But what they feel like is projecting out, I’m going to end up doing most of the housework, most of the childcare.
0:45:57 I might as well get a guy that can contribute financially.
0:46:01 So they don’t want to change their expectations around that.
0:46:09 And so I think we truly are in a moment where women are being asked to do more masculine things and men are being asked to do more feminine things.
0:46:15 And I think a lot of that is progress, but it also seems to be creating a lot of confusion in the dating world.
0:46:24 Yeah, it’s sort of – I was just thinking, I coach a lot of young men, and occasionally women ask me for data advice, and you coached, it sounds like, a lot of both.
0:46:28 And what I – first thing I say to men is I ask them, like, would you want to have sex with you?
0:46:30 All right?
0:46:31 Are you in shape?
0:46:32 What do you look like naked?
0:46:34 Are you – do you have a plan?
0:46:36 You don’t have to be rich now, but do you have a plan, right?
0:46:40 Have you found means of being confident?
0:46:43 Can you demonstrate kindness and excellence across anything?
0:46:49 And the only advice I give women is second coffee, and that is maybe it wasn’t great.
0:46:52 I mean, if you don’t like the guy and you’re just, like, turned off, fine.
0:46:57 But if it was just okay, maybe give it a second coffee.
0:47:00 I have a chapter in my book called Make the Second Date the Default.
0:47:00 Yeah.
0:47:06 And it’s really because I feel like I won the lottery with my husband, but he is somebody that takes longer to open up,
0:47:07 and he’s this slow burn.
0:47:08 We met in college.
0:47:10 We met again seven years later.
0:47:11 Then we were friends for a year.
0:47:15 And I feel like he’s this incredible partner, husband, father.
0:47:20 But I don’t know that if we’d met just randomly on the first date that I would have gone on the second date.
0:47:23 And so I think people really do need to train themselves to look for these slow burns.
0:47:29 Logan, Scott said something there about what he thinks women want, which is these sort of traditional masculine features.
0:47:30 Is this what you see in the data?
0:47:37 What’s hard is I think Scott’s right about what people say they want versus, like, so stated versus revealed preferences.
0:47:44 So according to the research that I did, women are saying the number one thing that they’re looking for is kindness and compassion.
0:47:47 That’s also what men are saying that they’re looking for.
0:47:49 So in many ways, this is great.
0:47:50 People are looking for the same things.
0:47:55 But I just feel like there’s these huge disconnects now where people don’t feel like they can get what they want.
0:47:58 Men are saying they want kindness and compassion.
0:48:01 That was, I made them say, what are all the things that you care about?
0:48:03 And then what is the number one thing that you care about?
0:48:05 And kindness and compassion was first for both of them.
0:48:15 The stuff I’ve seen or the stuff I’ve read is that for women, and I’ve talked to men about this, number one is they have to signal resources.
0:48:17 And we don’t like to say it out loud.
0:48:23 And by the way, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have a Range Rover and a Panerai now, but you have a plan, right?
0:48:24 You have your shit together.
0:48:28 You go home at midnight when everyone’s partying because you have to be up for work.
0:48:32 You work out, which shows a level of discipline and that you can commit to something.
0:48:34 You’re in school.
0:48:35 You’ve got a good job.
0:48:37 This person is going to have resources.
0:48:39 And I don’t think that’s changed a whole lot.
0:48:44 I think a man’s ability to signal future resources has gone down.
0:48:46 I’m not sure it’s become any less of a criteria.
0:48:48 Number two is intellect.
0:48:54 And it’s very instinctual because if you make good decisions for the tribe, your kids are more likely to survive.
0:48:59 Someone who’s smart is more likely to take care of your offspring than someone who’s stupid.
0:49:05 What’s interesting, and I love this, is the fastest way to communicate intellect is humor.
0:49:08 And I joke, and this is bad, but I say this is my impression of a woman.
0:49:10 I’m laughing, I’m laughing, I’m naked.
0:49:16 And that is, I’ve always thought if a guy can make a woman laugh, she will date him.
0:49:20 And then the third thing, and this is where guys screw up.
0:49:23 This is what I tell a guy’s secret weapon is.
0:49:24 It’s kindness.
0:49:29 Women want to see that you are a good person.
0:49:31 You treat service staff well.
0:49:32 You’re good to your parents.
0:49:33 You have manners.
0:49:48 You treat people well, even with no reciprocal expectation, because they know that a kind person, if and when she’s vulnerable and needs help, and maybe isn’t bringing as much to the table for certain periods of time, that this is a kind man.
0:49:52 And, you know, sure, you want to do your best to signal resources and have a plan.
0:49:53 Sure.
0:49:54 Maybe you’re smart.
0:49:54 Maybe you aren’t.
0:49:55 There’s not a lot you can do there.
0:50:03 But the secret weapon, I think, for men that they don’t leverage, and I do think it’s a practice, is to demonstrate kindness.
0:50:05 And we don’t talk about that enough as men.
0:50:08 It’s like, well, okay, and it’s little things.
0:50:09 Have good manners.
0:50:11 Be thoughtful.
0:50:12 Follow up with people.
0:50:19 And I think that, anyways, those are the three things that I have read women want in men.
0:50:21 Okay, there’s so much there.
0:50:29 So one is I do think we need a new definition for modern masculinity or mature masculinity or evolved masculinity.
0:50:33 And I think that that’s why this moment feels so painful, is that we don’t have it.
0:50:35 Because I agree with you.
0:50:37 I don’t think women are saying, I want a feminine man.
0:50:40 I think they want a modern masculine man.
0:50:48 And so that means somebody who is decisive and can provide, but also somebody who’s able to communicate with them emotionally.
0:50:54 And so one of the suggestions that I came here today to talk about is this idea of men’s groups.
0:51:02 So about a year ago, my friend David Clavins, who happens to be a world-class magician, came to my husband and said, I’m going to form this men’s group.
0:51:06 And so it’s about six or seven men, and they meet together monthly.
0:51:10 And they have served – they have formed this council of peers.
0:51:16 So every month that they get together, every guy sits down with Post-it notes and says the two issues that are most pressing for him.
0:51:22 So first of all, I think that that’s a great way of doing it because it’s actually that time to say, what am I struggling with?
0:51:27 I think many people in their lives, maybe especially men, don’t sit there and say, what’s top of mind for me?
0:51:29 So guys get the quiet time to do that.
0:51:35 Then they go around in a circle, and whoever has the most pressing issue, they get to take their time.
0:51:39 And some men might say, you know, these are top of mind for me, but it’s not a priority.
0:51:40 I’ll give the time to someone else.
0:51:43 And each month, they talk about what’s going on for them.
0:51:45 They hold each other accountable.
0:51:49 So month three, they might say, hey, David, you’ve been talking about that for the last three months.
0:51:51 Are you going to actually do anything about it?
0:51:57 And I love that these men have a masculine space to actually go through what’s going on for them.
0:52:00 Because maybe they have wives and girlfriends they can go to.
0:52:01 Maybe they don’t.
0:52:06 But I think it’s a different type of advice that you get from a council of trusted peers.
0:52:10 And I really do think that men’s groups could change a lot of these issues.
0:52:13 Because I can sit here and say everybody should be in therapy.
0:52:14 Guess what?
0:52:20 Therapy is really expensive, and many insurance companies will not provide it, or there’s a huge waiting list.
0:52:24 And so if we just sit around for all these guys to go to therapy, that’s not going to happen.
0:52:27 But men’s groups are a way that men can lead each other.
0:52:30 They can provide this tribe of peers.
0:52:33 And I have just seen so many changes in this group.
0:52:38 So David told me his story where he had a lot of anger about his mom’s debilitating illness.
0:52:43 And he wasn’t really experiencing it, and it was coming out as anger at his mom.
0:52:45 But he wasn’t conscious of that.
0:52:51 But by getting the anger out in a safe place with men, the only place where he felt like he could truly be angry,
0:52:55 he was able to get over it and to actually treat his mom with a lot more empathy.
0:53:00 Or my husband has gone to the group and talked about ego stuff at work,
0:53:03 or how hard the transition to becoming a parent has been.
0:53:09 And I feel like the men in this group have grown so much over the 12 months that it’s been happening
0:53:12 that I just paid for my brother-in-law to be in a men’s group.
0:53:17 And I want there to be tons of men’s groups because I really feel like this isn’t an issue that a therapist
0:53:19 or a mom or I can really solve.
0:53:22 I think men need to be solving this problem within themselves.
0:53:27 What you said is really powerful because if you walk down the hallway at Stern, there’s Golden Seeds,
0:53:31 Women in Venture Capital, Black Women’s Consulting Club.
0:53:34 There are women’s supporters.
0:53:36 There’s nothing for men.
0:53:38 And these groups are really wonderful.
0:53:43 Man Talks is one that I’ve been looking at where they’ve said,
0:53:45 let’s get together and just be supportive of each other.
0:53:49 And it’s a fairly new phenomenon.
0:53:53 I think people are afraid of men gathering because traditionally bad things have happened in that.
0:53:54 Gangs.
0:53:54 Right.
0:53:56 I mean, gangs.
0:54:00 I’m just thinking of like many situations in which like if once there’s a tiki torch,
0:54:02 I want there to be some women there, right?
0:54:05 Like so there’s a reason why people have been fearful of this.
0:54:09 Or it’s like when the whole world was a men’s group, a men’s club,
0:54:10 you didn’t need to have men’s clubs.
0:54:17 But I think in this moment, this is a really powerful, organic, grassroots way for men to change.
0:54:22 So I imagine that you have group chats with men that are your peers that you go to for advice.
0:54:25 And I feel like there’s men out there that don’t have that.
0:54:30 And we are meant to make decisions by getting advice from other people.
0:54:35 I personally have a board of directors that in my life when I’m going to make a big decision,
0:54:36 I meet with them.
0:54:41 So when I took my last job, when I decided to move, all of these different things,
0:54:44 I meet with my board of directors and I say, what am I not seeing?
0:54:45 What are my blind spots?
0:54:48 And they’ve given me a lot of good and hard advice.
0:54:51 And I think we all need to be building our own board of directors.
0:54:54 And for men, that might be this men’s group.
0:54:57 Do you mind if I pause this conversation for a moment?
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0:55:55 It is hard as a young man to share how you feel with other young men.
0:55:57 Even if they’re your best friends, it’s so much easier just to roast each other.
0:55:57 Yeah.
0:56:04 Like my group chat with my guys is probably a little bit more advanced in terms of emotional openness.
0:56:06 But most of it is just like a war zone.
0:56:08 We’re like criticizing each other, attacking each other.
0:56:09 But that’s kind of our way of showing love.
0:56:14 And then you’ll have once every two weeks, someone will be going through something.
0:56:19 So like one of my friends now, they’ve just found out that there’s a complication with the pregnancy.
0:56:20 And the tone shifts.
0:56:22 And we all become supportive.
0:56:27 But my girlfriend tells me how rare that is, that we have this space where we’ll talk about our emotions and how we’re feeling.
0:56:33 And we’ll switch from like trying to kill each other in the most like funny way to being really, really emotionally supportive.
0:56:35 A lot of men don’t have that.
0:56:39 Well, it’s so funny that you said that because my husband’s really funny and so are some of the other guys in the group.
0:56:45 And they actually had to talk about how they needed to be less funny because the humor was becoming a distraction.
0:56:52 And somebody brought up, you know, in their own male way, like I think that sometimes we’re about to go deep and then someone makes a joke.
0:56:56 And even though that joke was really good, we don’t go back to where we were and we don’t go as deep.
0:56:59 So they actually work on being less funny in that group.
0:57:01 But look at the work that you do.
0:57:04 You sit for hours a week and you learn and you ask people questions and you’re working on yourself.
0:57:08 I’m not surprised that you have a group of peers that you can go to for that.
0:57:11 But I would wager that the average man doesn’t have that.
0:57:17 And I feel like there are going to be so many women who are listening and watching this and they’re like, I want that for my husband.
0:57:20 What is the evolutionary basis for this?
0:57:21 This is what I was thinking the whole time.
0:57:24 I was like, did we lose the man’s group at some point in our past?
0:57:27 And is that why we’re adding it back into our lives?
0:57:28 Like what was what used to do this job before?
0:57:37 So what I’ve heard, and I think evolutionary biology, you always have to take certain things with a grain of salt because people can kind of explain away anything with it.
0:57:43 But it’s that a lot of times men were sitting next to each other and they were having these conversations on the savannah.
0:57:48 And that’s often why like guys prefer to do activities side by side and not facing each other.
0:57:54 And so you had men who were in conversation with their peers or, you know.
0:57:55 And outside.
0:57:56 And outside.
0:57:57 Yeah.
0:57:58 Hey, heard you getting divorced.
0:57:59 Right.
0:58:00 Right.
0:58:03 Or it’s like, you know, why it’s so good to have conversations in the car.
0:58:07 I feel like you had a lot of men that were in groups at church.
0:58:09 You had men who were in the Elks Club.
0:58:11 You had veterans that were meeting.
0:58:14 We actually feel like this is a time where much fewer men are getting together.
0:58:24 And this is all of the amazing research that’s happening now around loneliness is that the average young guy is spending many fewer hours a week with their peers face to face.
0:58:30 So even though a guy might be catching up with his friend playing video games, I just don’t think that that’s the same thing.
0:58:35 And so I feel like we need this in-person time with our friends to develop these relationships.
0:58:41 And instead we have people on TikTok, people on Twitch, watching other people live their lives.
0:58:44 You brought up two interesting things.
0:58:46 One is your friend group.
0:58:47 I have a similar group.
0:58:50 Same eight guys I live with my freshman year at UCLA.
0:58:55 For 30 or 40 years, we’ve been kind of constant contact, email now on WhatsApp.
0:59:02 When your friend had something bad happen to him, I think for a long time, men have weighed in and showed empathy for each other.
0:59:11 What none of my male friends have ever done, their friend group would say, is I’ve never heard one of my male friends go, I’m depressed.
0:59:14 I’m just super fucking lonely and depressed.
0:59:16 You just don’t hear that from men.
0:59:18 I’m struggling with anger.
0:59:21 All of a sudden, I have erectile dysfunction.
0:59:28 I’ve never heard one of my male friends, when their mom dies or they get divorced, we weigh in with a lot of empathy.
0:59:40 But you never hear them really open up because men are worried that if we display weakness, another man might kill us and take our shit from us, or that women aren’t going to want to have sex with us.
0:59:47 So there’s still, I think, a huge inability for men to proactively talk about how they’re really feeling.
0:59:50 And then you talked about a board of directors.
0:59:56 A great board of directors for a man in his 20s, unfortunately, not unfortunately, is a girlfriend.
0:59:57 Yeah.
0:59:59 And I’ll just use personal experience.
1:00:07 I had a great girlfriend when I was 24, and she basically said to me, if you don’t stop getting high every night, I’m going to stop having sex with you.
1:00:09 That was very motivating for me.
1:00:12 I really liked being with a partner.
1:00:24 Without the guardrails of a romantic relationship, I think men are just, I don’t want to say lost, but women create more social connections outside of a romantic relationship.
1:00:34 And sometimes that absence of a romantic relationship, they pour that energy into friendships and their professional life, whereas men start pouring it into video games and Reddit and porn.
1:00:43 So the fact that only one in three men in America under the age of 30 has a girlfriend and two in three women has a boyfriend, you think, well, that’s mathematically impossible.
1:00:47 It’s not because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men.
1:01:05 If I hadn’t been in relationships that were great guardrails for me in terms of my own behavior, my own ambition, men need, without the prospect or the existence of a romantic relationship, men have worse outcomes than women who don’t have.
1:01:09 And do you agree with what I’m saying?
1:01:11 Does the research bear that out?
1:01:18 You know, it’s interesting because part of me, where my head goes, is like, are you asking women to do the emotional labor of raising men?
1:01:21 And when you phrase it like that, it sounds really negative.
1:01:27 But from anecdotal experience, from my own life, you know, I’ve been with my husband for 10 years, I think we both really shaped each other.
1:01:32 But like even yesterday, he texted me and he’s like, I’m going to get an Uber instead of renting a car at the airport.
1:01:34 You’ve taught me how to be such a savvy traveler.
1:01:38 Like that’s a small example, but it’s like you really do influence each other.
1:01:49 And I think that – I think sometimes about my single friends and how they go to bed at night and they don’t have a person next to them to give them advice and to listen to them talk about their day.
1:01:58 And I think that when we’re in long-term relationships, there’s an element of raising each other and building memories together and making each other better and having that investment.
1:01:59 One plus one equals three.
1:02:11 Right, and that’s why I just – all these women that come to me and all these men that are looking for love, that want relationships, and something is happening right now where the gap just seems to be widening and these relationships aren’t happening.
1:02:14 And this is even true in teenage relationships.
1:02:21 So it used to be that for baby boomers and Gen X, three-quarters of men had had a relationship in their teen years.
1:02:23 And now it’s under 50%.
1:02:30 And so if you start building your relational skills at an early age, then you get better and better at dating over time.
1:02:36 But if, as you said, by the time you’re 30, you haven’t been in a relationship, that’s seen as a red flag to a lot of people.
1:02:41 And so I think we have a problem now, but I’m really projecting that we’re going to have a much greater problem in the future.
1:02:50 I think a real enemy of relationships and mating for people in their 20s that we haven’t talked a lot about.
1:02:57 I had Dr. Anna Lemke from Stanford on my pod talking about addiction and something we’re just starting to come to grips with.
1:03:01 And as I read more about it, I think porn is really –
1:03:01 Let’s talk about porn.
1:03:04 Well, personal experience.
1:03:06 I used to go on camp.
1:03:10 The only reason I graduated from UCLA, I graduated with a 2.27 GPA.
1:03:13 If I graduated with a 1.97, I wouldn’t graduate.
1:03:20 Not the only motivator, but a real motivator for me was the prospect of meeting someone.
1:03:28 I could go onto campus and there might be a chance I’d meet friends, be social, and possibly meet a potential romantic partner.
1:03:29 It was very motivating.
1:03:36 And if I’d had porn on this and on my screen, oh, it’s available, I’m not sure I would have gone on campus.
1:03:40 I just would have spent a lot more time at home.
1:03:50 And unfortunately, the deepest-pocketed, most talented companies in the world are trying to convince young people that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm.
1:03:56 And what I say to young men I coach is that I’m not going to tell you not to consume porn, but try to modulate it.
1:04:10 Because I think that fire of wanting to meet someone and wanting to demonstrate excellence and having perseverance and enduring rejection and getting your shit together and dressing well and smelling nice and showering, for God’s sakes,
1:04:16 that mojo, that desire is incredibly important for society.
1:04:23 And we’re taking young men’s mojo away with frictionless, open-access, on-demand porn.
1:04:26 Have you seen these no-fap communities?
1:04:27 Yeah.
1:04:28 Have you seen this?
1:04:29 Yes.
1:04:37 Okay, so I was listening to this episode of Modern William with Chris Williamson, and he was interviewing Hamza, who was self-identifying as a former red-pilled person.
1:04:41 And he was talking about how much it changed his life to try to enter the no-fap community.
1:04:42 Which means?
1:04:44 No masturbation.
1:04:47 And so I do think that porn is a huge problem.
1:04:52 My first job out of college was running the porn pod for Google.
1:04:57 So what this meant was that we would sell ads for the porn advertisers.
1:04:59 This team does not exist anymore.
1:05:00 This was a long time ago.
1:05:05 My parents were like, I sent you to Harvard, and now you’re selling ads for pornography.
1:05:10 But when I look back, I’m like, what was I perpetuating?
1:05:16 Because I feel like there’s just so many problems with what technology is doing in terms of replacing human connection.
1:05:18 So let’s just project out.
1:05:20 Chat TPT is already amazing.
1:05:23 I’m currently in my Google feed getting ads for Replica.
1:05:27 And the ads say, get your perfect AI boyfriend.
1:05:28 Always there for you.
1:05:32 So you think about the fact that real-life relationships are messy.
1:05:37 I tell my husband on a weekly basis, please throw your contact lens in the garbage.
1:05:40 And every week we have a disagreement about that.
1:05:41 Well, guess what?
1:05:44 Your online girlfriend, she doesn’t nag you.
1:05:46 She doesn’t tell you to pick up your socks.
1:05:52 She only tells you how great you are and always tells you, you know, that you’re doing the right thing and how was your day.
1:05:55 Then you insert sex robots.
1:05:57 Okay, so you have your emotional needs met.
1:05:58 You have your sexual needs met.
1:06:03 Maybe you’re watching porn while engaging with your sex robots.
1:06:09 Why would you want to go through the very challenging potential rejection of real-life relationships?
1:06:19 And I feel like if all these things come to pass, which it seems very likely that they will, we are truly in a crisis moment when it comes to birth rate and future generations.
1:06:20 And it impacts them.
1:06:29 It’ll impact the economy because the skills you have to develop to be successful in the mating market are life skills.
1:06:31 You have to be able to endure rejection.
1:06:33 You have to have a sense of humor.
1:06:34 You have to be able to read the room.
1:06:36 Show me a guy who’s good in a bar.
1:06:38 I’ll show you a guy who’ll probably be good in a boardroom.
1:06:45 And the skills you have to develop as a young man, if you want a romantic and a sexual relationship, pay dividends the rest of your life.
1:06:50 And if you don’t develop those skills, I think it impacts your life across a bunch of dimensions.
1:06:53 This is something I’m worried about for Gen Z in general.
1:06:58 So I did a ton of research with post-pandemic Gen Z daters, men and women in the UK and the United States.
1:07:02 And such a big theme that came out of it was that they don’t have rejection resilience.
1:07:05 And I think that we hear this in many aspects of life.
1:07:09 So someone that I’m close to, he’s the former dean of Brown.
1:07:10 He’s a professor there.
1:07:16 And he was talking about how it used to be that his office hours were empty and that’s when he could do his reading or play solitaire.
1:07:19 But now students come basically saying, tell me exactly what’s going to be on the test.
1:07:23 Tell me exactly what to write in my paper because they are not willing to fail.
1:07:32 I have friends who are managers at Google and they give somebody feedback in a Google Doc and the person is crying because they take that as extreme rejection.
1:07:38 And so if you don’t have the resilience built up to fail, then you are not going to take risks.
1:07:42 And everything in life worth having is worth taking a risk for.
1:07:44 And so I feel that I have my dream job.
1:07:48 Nobody messaged me on LinkedIn and said, hey, Logan, do you want to study dating and relationships?
1:07:52 No, I invented this job and now I get to have it.
1:07:53 And same thing is true with relationships.
1:07:56 It’s not about waiting for the perfect person to show up.
1:08:01 It’s about becoming a great person who somebody else chooses and going after what you want.
1:08:09 I want to talk about all of this and specifically offer some solutions to the young, to the parents, to the boys, to the teens, to the men that are listening.
1:08:14 We had a young man actually write in on this subject and he said, I’ve suffered with crippling loneliness.
1:08:19 And so I’ve spent over a thousand dollars hiring women online just to talk to me and to keep me company.
1:08:24 On top of that, I’ve spent several thousand dollars more engaging in other business with them.
1:08:28 After doing this for nearly a year now, I still feel incredibly unfulfilled.
1:08:38 And on the subject of porn, 30% of internet traffic is now related to porn, with about 80% of that porn traffic coming from men and 20% coming from women.
1:08:41 I actually had a conversation on this podcast before about porn.
1:08:46 And funnily enough, the top comment was, by the way, us women get porn addicted too.
1:08:49 Because it was a bit of a blind spot to me.
1:08:51 But I think that’s something that’s worth acknowledging.
1:08:58 And the stats are staggering in terms of how higher porn consumption correlates to higher probabilities of depression.
1:09:00 What do you do about it?
1:09:02 Like on an individual level, I get it.
1:09:03 Try not to watch porn.
1:09:06 But I mean, that doesn’t seem like incredibly great advice.
1:09:09 Because if you’re lonely, you’re not getting laid.
1:09:12 No one wants to date you for all the reasons we’ve talked about today.
1:09:17 Restraint seems to be a pretty shitty solution.
1:09:19 I’ll give this one just a second.
1:09:19 Okay.
1:09:21 So I coach young men.
1:09:22 I take two to three on at any time.
1:09:25 And I don’t know if this is the right way, but it’s my way.
1:09:27 I’m like, you got to lean into your advantage.
1:09:28 When you’re our age, you have more.
1:09:30 You have capital.
1:09:31 You have more money than time.
1:09:32 They have capital.
1:09:33 They have a lot of time.
1:09:35 And I ask them to unlock their screen.
1:09:39 And I say to them, I gamble with options.
1:09:39 I gamble.
1:09:41 At my age, I still gamble.
1:09:45 I preach about low-cost index funds, and I buy call options.
1:09:46 That makes no fucking sense.
1:09:48 It’s gambling, but I know it.
1:09:49 I watch porn.
1:09:55 I try and modulate my use so I can put the majority of my sexual energy into my partner.
1:09:57 But I watch porn because I want them to not feel like I’m going to judge them.
1:09:58 And they unlock their phone.
1:10:03 And I say, we’re going to find eight to 12 hours a week of time, of capital.
1:10:07 And we’re going to reinvest that capital in higher ROI investments.
1:10:10 It is so easy to find eight to 12 hours.
1:10:13 I can sometimes find seven hours or 15 hours just in TikTok.
1:10:14 You look at screen time.
1:10:15 I look at screen time.
1:10:18 And I say, all right, come through with me.
1:10:20 We’re going to find eight to 12 hours.
1:10:23 And then we’re going to reinvest that capital in three investments.
1:10:27 One, we’re going to start working out and getting fit.
1:10:29 You’re going to work out three times a week with weights.
1:10:34 You should be able – the human male form is spectacular.
1:10:38 You should be able to walk into any room under the age of 30 if you’re a man and know that
1:10:41 if shit got real, you could kill and eat everybody or outrun them.
1:10:42 I need you to be strong.
1:10:45 You’re going to be more mentally healthy.
1:10:46 You’re going to be kinder.
1:10:48 Look at the people who break up fights at bars.
1:10:49 They’re big, strong men.
1:10:51 Look at the people who defend their country.
1:10:54 You want to be strong as a man.
1:10:56 It feels fucking amazing.
1:11:00 Testosterone, your bone structure, your muscle mass, it’s amazing.
1:11:01 Lean into that.
1:11:03 We’re going to get strong.
1:11:05 Two, you’ve got to start making some money.
1:11:10 And to be honest, the kids I’m coaching are really struggling.
1:11:15 These are kids at home at the age of 23 with their mom, not getting along with their mom,
1:11:16 nothing going on.
1:11:19 If you have a phone, you can make money.
1:11:23 I don’t care if it’s Lyft, TaskRocket, because you’ve got to taste for the flesh.
1:11:27 And the way to start making a lot of money is to start making a little bit of money.
1:11:29 Because you start to figure out the economy.
1:11:30 How could I make more money?
1:11:33 Maybe at some point, could I buy a car and hire a driver to be an Uber?
1:11:35 What is the way?
1:11:39 Could I get a certification in plumbing?
1:11:42 You start figuring out, and you start getting your greed glands get going.
1:11:43 Oh, my God, it’s Asnam money.
1:11:44 I can go out.
1:11:45 I can go to a concert.
1:11:47 It gets those greed glands going.
1:11:51 And then the third thing we’re going to do is we’re going to put ourselves in the company
1:11:54 of strangers and the agency of something bigger than ourselves twice a week.
1:11:59 Church group, softball league, nonprofit, whatever it is.
1:12:03 And then 3A, and this is, I’ve just started doing this.
1:12:05 I’ve only done it two times.
1:12:10 And it’s an exercise, and I say, and it goes to your, I think no is the way to success.
1:12:14 Show me someone who’s successful, I’m going to show you a shit ton of no’s.
1:12:19 I’ve been, I ran for sophomore, junior, senior class president, lost all three times, decided
1:12:21 to run for senior class president, lost.
1:12:22 I applied to 38 jobs.
1:12:25 I got one offer, nine schools, rejected by seven.
1:12:28 I mean, I just, my whole life has been about no.
1:12:32 And that’s why I’m successful, is I was always able to endure it.
1:12:33 So I say to them, this is what I want you to do.
1:12:38 I need you to go up to a stranger at wherever we’re doing, church group, writer club, writer’s
1:12:42 club, whatever it might be, online education, not online, excuse me, education, continuing
1:12:43 education.
1:12:45 And you’re going to ask them out for coffee.
1:12:46 It’s a friend.
1:12:47 Hey, what are you doing?
1:12:48 Do you want to watch the game?
1:12:50 Do you want to watch the Liverpool game this weekend?
1:12:51 Let’s go to a bar.
1:12:55 If it’s a woman you might have an attracted to, hey, try and get a rap going.
1:12:56 Would you like to have coffee?
1:12:58 And here’s the goal.
1:12:59 The goal is no.
1:13:00 And we’re going to celebrate no.
1:13:03 Because you’re going to call me and I’m going to say, did you ask someone out for coffee or
1:13:04 to a bar?
1:13:05 And most likely they’ll have said no.
1:13:07 They’ll be polite, but they’ll come with an excuse.
1:13:09 And then I’m going to ask you if you’re okay.
1:13:10 And you’re going to say yes.
1:13:11 And that’s the victory.
1:13:17 It’s interesting because if you go on TikTok or if you go on X, you’ll find a lot of videos
1:13:23 of women filming themselves as a guy inappropriately came and made a gesture to them and then like
1:13:24 publicly shaming them on the internet.
1:13:25 It’s very popular to do in the gym.
1:13:27 They set up a phone.
1:13:27 They’re working out.
1:13:29 A guy comes over and asks if they need help with the weights.
1:13:33 It then goes viral online because that guy was being inappropriate.
1:13:35 Like you shouldn’t.
1:13:40 So like as a guy, it’s quite complicated to know how and where you can roll up without
1:13:41 being filmed and going viral.
1:13:42 I know.
1:13:47 So we talked about the first dating paradox, which is the idea that women now need to
1:13:50 more from men and are raising the bar because they can be providers on their own.
1:13:51 But men weren’t taught how to do that.
1:13:52 And there’s sometimes shame for it.
1:13:58 So I think the second big dating paradox is that men are expected to lead and to approach.
1:14:02 But I truly feel like in a post-MeToo era, it’s much more confusing.
1:14:06 And so so many people say to me, I don’t want to meet on an app that’s not romantic.
1:14:07 I want to meet in real life.
1:14:12 But I’m not finding that people are meeting in real life because people are afraid to approach
1:14:12 each other.
1:14:16 I think one is being afraid of being called creepy.
1:14:21 But the other one, which is what you’re talking about, is that this culture of making TikToks
1:14:25 or going online with this date entertainment to talk about how this person approached you
1:14:27 or how inappropriate that was.
1:14:32 And so I feel like there’s a lot of women waiting for men to approach them, but then shaming the
1:14:32 men who do.
1:14:38 I think one of the solutions there is we should allow people to shoot their shot in a non-creepy
1:14:38 way.
1:14:39 Can I just say something to that?
1:14:46 If the guy rolls up and he’s 6’4 and he’s, you know, gorgeous, it’s fine, it seems.
1:14:49 The difference between creepy and romantic is the perceived attractiveness of the person
1:14:50 making the overture.
1:14:52 I think that that is true.
1:14:55 If you are super hot, it’s less likely to be perceived as creepy.
1:14:59 But you have all these people that are saying, I want to be approached, and they’re not being
1:15:00 approached.
1:15:03 And so there was this rise of run clubs last summer, right?
1:15:05 Everyone said, the new dating app is a run club.
1:15:08 I ask everywhere I go, have you met someone at a run club?
1:15:11 No, people are not really meeting there.
1:15:15 So since 2017, the number one way that people are meeting is online.
1:15:17 Hinge is setting up a date every two seconds.
1:15:19 This is where the dating is happening.
1:15:23 If people want more things to happen offline, they actually have to approach each other.
1:15:25 And I’m just not seeing that happen.
1:15:30 But my understanding is the majority of women still expect the man to take the initiative.
1:15:30 Absolutely.
1:15:34 And this is one of the most frightening stats I’ve seen.
1:15:42 According to Pew, more than 50% of men between the ages of 18 and 24 have never asked a woman
1:15:42 out in person.
1:15:51 And I just find that so upsetting and rattling, because that means they’re either not asking
1:15:55 people out or they’re asking them out online, where, quite frankly, they can’t demonstrate
1:15:56 any sense of excellence.
1:15:59 And I think the beautiful thing about human sexuality is sometimes you don’t even know
1:16:00 why you’re attracted to someone.
1:16:01 You like the way they smell.
1:16:02 You find out they’re funny.
1:16:04 And that happens in person.
1:16:09 But we need one more third spaces, more places people can meet.
1:16:15 And also, I actually think it would be helpful to have, in the senior of high school, a class
1:16:20 called adulting, where, amongst other things, you teach them about the interest rate on a credit
1:16:20 card.
1:16:21 You know, a little thing.
1:16:24 My kid can do integers, and he doesn’t understand the interest rate on his credit card.
1:16:30 And also, quite frankly, I think young men need guidance around how to express romantic
1:16:33 interest while making the other person feel safe.
1:16:39 And also, that if you express romantic interest and ask someone out for coffee, and they say
1:16:41 no, you’re both going to be fine.
1:16:48 You haven’t committed a crime against humanity, as long as you’re respectful and you don’t make
1:16:49 the person feel uncomfortable.
1:16:52 But men aren’t even asking women out.
1:16:54 Everything you’re saying is what I’m seeing.
1:16:59 So I was talking to this incredible 16-year-old girl who built this AI chatbot called Ask Elle.
1:17:04 And she’s taken all the relationship science research that she’s seen, and she’s trained
1:17:08 this chatbot, and she’s trying to help teens get safe and empowered dating advice.
1:17:11 And I asked her, what is the number one question that you’re getting?
1:17:12 And it’s how to ask someone out.
1:17:15 And so I think people are really struggling.
1:17:18 It’s not that teens in all of human history had the secret.
1:17:22 It’s that they were willing to do it and fail, and now we’re just not seeing that.
1:17:25 And so I think that we have glossed over the pandemic.
1:17:28 It was this really traumatic time, really scary stuff happened, and we don’t want to
1:17:29 talk about it.
1:17:34 But people that came of age during the pandemic, their social skills are worse.
1:17:37 They missed out on critical moments of becoming a human.
1:17:39 And we are seeing that in the workplace.
1:17:43 All of these things about Gen Z, Gen Alpha, that came from something.
1:17:44 It came from parenting.
1:17:46 It came from digital addiction.
1:17:49 It came from the pandemic and online learning.
1:17:53 And I think that if you do not have the social skills to approach someone and ask them out,
1:17:55 there just will be literally fewer couples.
1:17:59 I want to throw a Molotov cocktail into this and something that’s controversial.
1:18:00 I’ve got to push back on.
1:18:04 I think one of the enemies of mating is that there’s too little drinking.
1:18:10 If you look at millennials, they spent $30 billion on alcohol.
1:18:12 Gen Z, it’s crashed at $2 billion.
1:18:15 Peter Atia and Andrew Huberman have declared war on drinking.
1:18:19 I think young people need to drink more and go out and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off.
1:18:21 I don’t see drunkenness.
1:18:22 I see togetherness.
1:18:24 And I don’t know how it was for you and your relationship.
1:18:29 When I think of the majority of great friendships I have and the romantic opportunities I’ve had,
1:18:32 not always, but often alcohol played a role.
1:18:38 And I worry that with a lack of going out, being out of the house, and also a lack of drinking,
1:18:42 that we’ve taken away a social lubricant that breaks down some of the walls
1:18:46 and some of the initial awkwardness and entry into a potential romantic relationship.
1:18:52 I think some of the increase in being sober, sober curious, comes from interest in being healthy.
1:18:55 So we hear from Gen Z, I don’t want to have anxiety the next day.
1:18:57 They are much less likely.
1:18:57 And it’s expensive.
1:18:58 Yeah.
1:19:02 They are much less likely to millennials to feel like there’s a two-drink minimum for dates.
1:19:06 But in general, we’re seeing less risk-taking behavior from Gen Z.
1:19:10 They are getting their licenses far later, if at all.
1:19:13 They are losing their virginity much later, if at all.
1:19:20 And so I feel like there’s this rise of, or there’s this decrease in risk-taking behavior,
1:19:21 which in some ways is great.
1:19:25 You know, fewer kids dying in car crashes and people being responsible.
1:19:25 Less team pregnancy.
1:19:31 But I just feel like people are having, people are missing out on the experience to make mistakes
1:19:32 as a young person.
1:19:38 And I think when I think back to my college experience, if there had been cameras that have
1:19:43 high-quality video on them at all times, I would have lived a very different college experience.
1:19:48 I am so grateful that Instagram was not there when I was in college.
1:19:54 And so if you live in a surveillance culture where at any moment somebody is snapping the
1:19:58 room and they could see what you’re doing, you’re going to take fewer risks.
1:20:02 And I just feel like there’s this entire culture of people being very safe.
1:20:07 And part of dating, part of mating, is making mistakes, taking risks, and failing.
1:20:08 So what do we do about it, Logan?
1:20:15 Speaking to, Scott gave a really good sort of advice for the young man or the young person
1:20:18 who’s trying to increase their mating value, their dating value.
1:20:22 If I’m a, what advice would you give to a young man about how to be attractive?
1:20:24 Because there’s going to be a lot of young men listening right now.
1:20:26 I imagine from the stats.
1:20:28 First of all, I love what Scott said in terms of his advice.
1:20:33 And I feel like it’s one of those things where the secret to happiness or the secret to success
1:20:35 is simple but hard.
1:20:38 So it’s not like there’s infinite things you need to do.
1:20:42 It’s actually quite a simple plan, but it’s quite hard to execute on it.
1:20:43 A few things that I would add.
1:20:45 So one is I have this friend, Sam Parr.
1:20:47 He started The Hustle.
1:20:48 He started the podcast, My First Million.
1:20:54 One thing that he did to make himself more attractive as a mate was he would develop these passions
1:20:58 and really talk about them on dates because he found that women were really drawn to the
1:21:01 fact that he was pursuing other activities.
1:21:05 So he got really into denim, and he would talk about these denim meets that he would go to.
1:21:07 And he found that women were really drawn to that.
1:21:10 He’s very into the growth mindset and working on himself.
1:21:15 He felt like that was something that women were so drawn to, how he was growing.
1:21:20 Because if you think about the projections, well, when he met my friend Sarah, he wasn’t making
1:21:21 any money.
1:21:26 She was making a lot more than him, but she could see that he had a great path ahead of
1:21:29 him because he was constantly working and improving himself.
1:21:34 The other thing I would tell men is through my research, I’ve found that men think, I need
1:21:34 to be perfect.
1:21:36 I need to be six feet tall.
1:21:40 Look, women are not expecting you to fly them to the moon.
1:21:41 They want effort.
1:21:44 Remember the name of their best friend.
1:21:48 Text them when they had a hard meeting and say, how did it go?
1:21:49 Plan a thoughtful date.
1:21:54 And so I think that you have men over here saying, if I’m not six feet tall, I don’t have
1:21:56 a chance, so why participate anyway?
1:22:02 And then you have women saying, in some ways, I just want you to be an effortful, nice person,
1:22:03 and I’m not even getting that.
1:22:09 And so I think that for men, they can actually get much farther than they think and be better
1:22:13 than 90% of men by doing some of these bare minimum things that other men aren’t doing.
1:22:18 So I have this question that I ask in my book, which is when you’re deciding if you should
1:22:23 break up with someone, if your partner were a piece of clothing in your closet, what would
1:22:24 they be?
1:22:26 In my, is it my clothes or her clothes?
1:22:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:22:27 Your clothes.
1:22:28 Oh, okay.
1:22:30 And it really has to be gut reaction.
1:22:31 So Scott, if you thought of one, I want to hear it.
1:22:39 I thought of like a black silk shirt, and that’s probably because that’s where we spend quality
1:22:39 time together.
1:22:45 It’s when I’m wearing a black silk shirt, special occasions, date night, restaurant, make an effort.
1:22:47 Do you feel good in it?
1:22:48 Yeah, of course.
1:22:49 I feel my best in it.
1:22:50 Yeah.
1:22:51 And do you have one for your wife?
1:22:56 Brunello Cuccinelli cashmere v-neck sweater makes me look fantastic, makes me better, and
1:22:56 it’s beautiful.
1:22:57 Yes.
1:23:02 And mine for my husband would be this awesome orange robe that I have that represents being
1:23:02 at home.
1:23:06 I love the orange color that’s really bright, and it represents our family time.
1:23:09 So I’ve asked this question to-
1:23:09 I feel shamed.
1:23:11 I feel like mine was so super special.
1:23:11 No, no, no.
1:23:12 Yours was great.
1:23:14 Cashmere v-neck sweater.
1:23:14 No, no, no.
1:23:15 I think your answer-
1:23:16 Family orange.
1:23:18 I feel so shamed.
1:23:18 No, no, no.
1:23:23 I think your answer is wonderful, and I actually, in general, find that outerwear answers are very
1:23:25 strong because it means that you feel warm around them.
1:23:26 It’s you at your best.
1:23:28 I just feel fucking fabulous.
1:23:29 I don’t know if I feel warm.
1:23:30 Yeah, that’s all that matters.
1:23:31 Your answer was great.
1:23:34 The answers that worry me are something like, a wool sweater that feels good, but then it’s
1:23:35 itchy, so I take it off.
1:23:37 The ratty shirt that I wear to the gym.
1:23:38 These are real answers I’ve gotten.
1:23:41 Point is, for years I’ve been asking people this question.
1:23:46 Well, now I want to ask people the question of, if you were a piece of clothing in your closet,
1:23:47 what would you be?
1:23:52 And I feel like we spend so much time saying, I’m looking for this in a partner.
1:23:53 This is the checklist.
1:23:54 Well, look in the mirror.
1:23:56 Do you have those traits?
1:24:02 And so for somebody who says, I’m a ratty sweatshirt, and it’s not the thing that I
1:24:04 would choose to wear, well, then work on yourself.
1:24:09 And so I feel like there’s a lot of feelings of, I’m going to relation shop.
1:24:12 I’m going to look for a partner the way I look for Bluetooth headphones.
1:24:17 Well, a lot of that is about breaking people down into these parts.
1:24:21 And I feel like we should spend less time thinking about the checklist for a partner and more time
1:24:22 thinking about, who am I?
1:24:24 And am I somebody who would be chosen?
1:24:27 We’ve talked a lot about how young men are struggling.
1:24:32 Which demographic of women do you find struggle the most as it relates to mating and dating?
1:24:37 So I work with a lot of very successful women, and that’s also because I’m expensive to work
1:24:39 with, and that’s who my clients are.
1:24:44 But I have a newsletter where I hear from 85,000 people.
1:24:50 And so what I’m hearing is that a lot of women are saying, men are intimidated by the amount
1:24:51 of money that I make.
1:24:56 They say that they’re not going to be, but the more successful I become, the more threatened
1:24:56 they are.
1:24:58 I’m just talking to tons of women, personal friends.
1:25:05 I feel like at my house, on one side of me and then two sides over, are women who are having
1:25:10 babies, they call it like single mother by choice, where they literally were just like, I can’t
1:25:13 find a man, and I want to become a mom, so I’m going to do it by myself.
1:25:17 And so I feel like there are just all these great women who are saying, Logan, I’m following
1:25:18 your advice.
1:25:19 I’m putting myself out there.
1:25:22 I do all these things, but they’re just not finding partners.
1:25:26 Do you find that the more successful a woman becomes, the more difficult it becomes for
1:25:30 her to find a man that will not feel emasculated by her success?
1:25:36 I don’t think that there’s an exact correlation, because it really depends who the guy is.
1:25:39 There are guys out there who are like, let’s be a power couple.
1:25:44 But I feel like there are women who just feel like there is not enough good guys for them.
1:25:47 And I’m curious what you think about this, but I live in the Bay Area.
1:25:49 I’m seeing so much polyamory.
1:25:51 And I think polyamory is interesting.
1:25:52 I’m pro-polyamory.
1:25:56 I like the fact that people are thinking about relationship structures in a new way.
1:25:58 50% of marriages end in divorce.
1:26:01 Obviously, our one-size-fits-all approach to marriage isn’t working.
1:26:06 But I’m also wondering, well, let me tell you this story.
1:26:11 I went to this dating event, and the dating event had five single women who were great,
1:26:13 and their friends were hyping them up.
1:26:17 And then there was two guys, and they were both polyamorous.
1:26:22 And so I wonder, if you’re a guy who feels like there’s not that many good guys, why should
1:26:23 I have to choose?
1:26:25 I feel like that’s a trend that I’m worried about.
1:26:26 Portia polygamy.
1:26:30 It’s never been better to be a very attractive male.
1:26:36 But you have so much opportunity, it does not incent good behavior or long-term relationships.
1:26:38 And I work with these guys.
1:26:40 And you might think that they’re the happiest people in the world.
1:26:41 They are having sex.
1:26:42 They are getting a lot of attention.
1:26:45 But they’re suffering from decision paralysis.
1:26:50 And these are some of the guys that hit 40, 42, and they haven’t gotten married.
1:26:51 They don’t have kids.
1:26:57 And they sort of are like, why would I ever settle down if I don’t have to, or I’m going
1:26:58 to wait as long as possible?
1:27:02 But they don’t understand the opportunity cost, which is building a life with someone, having
1:27:03 kids.
1:27:09 Every year that you wait to have kids is a year that your kids will be alive without you.
1:27:13 And so I really feel like these people in the top percentage, yes, they’re having a
1:27:14 much easier time.
1:27:18 But they also have problems because they’re having decision paralysis and they’re not settling
1:27:19 down.
1:27:27 But I would just say, I think the reality, though, on the ground is that if you’re a high status
1:27:29 male, you think age is on your side.
1:27:30 And it is.
1:27:34 And because the reality is the math is just unfair to women.
1:27:35 It is.
1:27:38 Because if you’re a 30-year-old male making really good money.
1:27:48 And, you know, relative, like just not unattractive, at 40, you’re going to be even sexier.
1:27:49 Your sexual currency goes up.
1:27:52 I do think that there’s a point where it starts to go down.
1:27:54 And I’ve seen that with my coaching clients.
1:27:57 And part of that is just how the dating apps work.
1:28:04 That if you are an attractive woman and you set your age maximum at 40, I do see that those
1:28:06 men see diminishing returns after that age.
1:28:08 Well, especially if they haven’t ever been in a long-term relationship.
1:28:08 Right.
1:28:10 Then that is seen as a clear red flag.
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1:29:18 What role does feminism and the rise of feminism play in all of this?
1:29:22 Because I’ve had people on my podcast, I think actually our last episode we published was
1:29:25 a lady who’s a child psychologist, she’s been that way for three decades.
1:29:30 And she came on and said that the feminist movement has let men and women down in some
1:29:31 ways.
1:29:33 There’s been great upsides, but there’s also been a cost.
1:29:37 And one of the things she was really big on, which I thought would be extremely controversial,
1:29:41 it turns out it wasn’t in the comment section, is that she believes women should be there for
1:29:44 the first two years of a child’s life.
1:29:46 And I was like, I questioned her on that.
1:29:49 I was like, and then I looked at the stats and I looked at the research and she basically
1:29:52 makes the case that because the mother is producing certain hormones.
1:29:54 So I searched and it was true.
1:29:55 We fact checked that episode.
1:30:01 And then beyond there, the man, the father, brings out another set of hormones in the young
1:30:03 child, which are about play and adventure and all these kinds of things.
1:30:07 So she makes the case that we’ve kind of lied to women and we’ve told them that they can
1:30:08 have it all.
1:30:10 They can have an incredible career.
1:30:12 They can also be incredible mothers.
1:30:16 And she says that in her office, she often sees mothers coming in saying that they’re
1:30:17 39 years old.
1:30:17 They’re struggling.
1:30:19 They’re trying to do IVF.
1:30:20 They feel like they were lied to.
1:30:22 Throwing all of that out there.
1:30:27 I’m going to quote Scott to Scott, which is you can have it all, just not at the same time.
1:30:28 Yeah, I don’t.
1:30:33 You know, it’s we can talk about what is the best hormone balance and brings out the best
1:30:34 in kids.
1:30:35 And then there’s the real world.
1:30:40 And my partner was working at Goldman Sachs with two babies and getting up at five in the
1:30:42 morning and it was hell for her.
1:30:48 And at the same time, and I, you know, at the same time, I was struggling with trying
1:30:53 to get economic traction because my whole identity as a man, I’m not proud of this, has been defined
1:30:54 by money.
1:30:55 So is mine.
1:30:57 I don’t think men say this enough.
1:31:01 Like, yeah, I, I thought this was really weird because we’re in Austin right now.
1:31:06 And my team put me up in a hotel and it’s just like a normal hotel.
1:31:08 I’m like, so I don’t give a fuck.
1:31:09 My girlfriend comes to town tonight.
1:31:13 Immediately my brain goes, oh my God, we need to move into a better hotel, Airbnb, because
1:31:15 my girlfriend, I’ve been with her for seven years.
1:31:16 She doesn’t give a fuck.
1:31:16 Yeah.
1:31:18 She doesn’t care about material things.
1:31:19 She doesn’t have a Louis Vuitton anything.
1:31:20 She’s a breathwork.
1:31:21 She’s a yogi.
1:31:22 Right.
1:31:25 But there’s still this part of me, even at this stage where I’m like convinced she’s
1:31:31 not going anywhere, where I constantly think about, I need to be successful.
1:31:32 I need to have money.
1:31:33 I need to demonstrate strength.
1:31:37 Or she won’t like me.
1:31:39 It’s so, it’s so weird because it’s not true.
1:31:41 Like objectively, I know it’s not true, but it’s in me.
1:31:42 I don’t know.
1:31:43 I think it’s mostly true.
1:31:50 I think in a capitalist society, the health care of your children, the opportunities your
1:31:57 children have, your ability to provide, your ability to take care of your parents, unfortunately
1:32:04 in our society, is so tightly correlated to money that I think at the end of the day, masculinity
1:32:08 kind of comes down to provider, protector, and procreator.
1:32:13 And I think every young man should take, at least start with the notion they’re going to
1:32:15 be the economic provider.
1:32:19 And by the way, that might mean getting out of the way and being more supportive of your
1:32:21 partner who happens to be better at the whole money thing.
1:32:22 That’s part of masculinity too.
1:32:29 But a good place to start is to assume in a capitalist society that you’re just, you
1:32:32 have a responsibility to be economically viable.
1:32:39 And every piece of incentive in our society, I remember in the 70s when I was in grade school,
1:32:41 our principal was a cool guy.
1:32:45 He wore cool jackets and he had great hair and he smelled aqua velvet and he drove a 240Z.
1:32:50 You could be a high character, handsome, interesting, cool guy into karate or whatever.
1:32:52 Now I just think it’s all about the Benjamins.
1:33:00 I just, it’s just so much, our society, democracy, your rights, your sexual attractiveness as
1:33:04 a man, I don’t care what, yeah, write me an article about how men just need to be emotionally
1:33:05 available.
1:33:06 Bullshit.
1:33:13 It’s, it’s so disappointingly about money in my view, all the incentives telling young men.
1:33:16 And so they go to these get rich quick schemes.
1:33:19 If they can’t make money, they feel, they feel like losers.
1:33:24 But what you’re feeling, quite frankly, is common sense from every signal that if for
1:33:29 some reason it doesn’t work out with your mate, your selection set of mates, how interesting
1:33:34 you are to other men, your opportunities, your rights, your democracy is going to be based
1:33:37 on your ability to be economically powerful.
1:33:40 It’s not the way the world should be, but it is the way the world is.
1:33:43 And what I say to young men is, there’s just no getting around it.
1:33:46 You have to be economically viable.
1:33:50 Would you say the same thing to women or would you say, there’s no getting around it, you
1:33:50 have to be hot?
1:34:00 No, I think women, I think women, unfortunately, so this is base analysis, women, men get turned
1:34:01 on with their eyes.
1:34:05 It’s more important for a woman to be aesthetically attractive than a man.
1:34:09 We, men, women get turned on with their ears, is the way I would describe it.
1:34:14 I think women, economic liberation and independence is paramount.
1:34:19 You know, the thing that was the hardest thing in my life growing up, you know, whatever trauma
1:34:24 I had, was not having, wasn’t not having a dad in my life, it was that me and my mom didn’t
1:34:25 have any fucking money.
1:34:27 And it was humiliating for us.
1:34:29 It was very hard on her.
1:34:32 It was emotionally very trying on her because she felt like she was failing as a mother.
1:34:41 So I think women, absolutely, women making a lot of money is a collective victory of our
1:34:41 society.
1:34:45 It is hugely important and wonderful.
1:34:46 We should do nothing to get in the way of that.
1:34:53 That doesn’t in any way, though, obviate the fact that a man’s opportunity, sexual currency
1:34:59 and place in our society is almost going to have an R of one, regardless of how many subscriptions
1:35:03 to the Atlantic or the New York Times you have, you have his economic viability.
1:35:06 And I just don’t, I think it’s gotten worse.
1:35:11 I don’t think it’s got, you used to be able to, if you were a high character, kind of cool,
1:35:15 interesting, nice guy who was a principal at a junior high school, you had sexual currency.
1:35:18 Now I think you can be a fucking dipshit.
1:35:22 But if you’ve sold $10 million in Doja coin, you can get laid.
1:35:30 And it’s just getting worse because our capitalist economy is providing so many advantages solely
1:35:31 based on money.
1:35:32 And it sends the wrong signal.
1:35:37 But I just tell dudes, you have to be economically viable.
1:35:41 And some of that is just having discipline around saving money and showing that you have your
1:35:42 active eye.
1:35:44 Maybe you don’t make a lot of money, but I’m responsible.
1:35:46 I’ll be a good mate.
1:35:47 I’ll be a good partner.
1:35:50 Maybe you’re making more money than me, but I’ll bring discipline.
1:35:52 I know how to fix shit.
1:35:55 I can be a good mate.
1:36:00 But one of the things I’m really worried about in America is just everything has become about
1:36:01 the Benjamins.
1:36:06 Character is being squeezed out by money.
1:36:08 God, that sounded awful.
1:36:12 Look, I want to ask you, have you ever felt what Scott describes?
1:36:16 Have you ever felt that your sort of sense of self-worth equates to how much money you
1:36:17 have?
1:36:18 Because I felt that.
1:36:25 I don’t think I as much have money equals identity and self-worth, but I do think for
1:36:28 many people, there’s a sense that money equals security.
1:36:31 And so we’re all chasing that dollar, which is security.
1:36:33 But I think for men, it’s much stronger.
1:36:35 I don’t relate to what you’re talking about.
1:36:36 Yeah.
1:36:41 So this is, I’ve never actually asked a woman this before, but it’s the number one
1:36:47 topic of conversation in my group chat with my boys is how much are we working Saturday
1:36:49 and Sunday to make more money and make ourselves more successful.
1:36:53 And then one of my friends who’s not in my group chat, but one of my extended friends went
1:36:59 through financial hardship and he’s in the lead up to starting a family, et cetera.
1:37:04 And he went through a moment where he was going to be declared bankrupt and he was inconsolably
1:37:06 depressed.
1:37:07 His partner was fine.
1:37:08 She was kind of like, you know, we’ll get through this.
1:37:13 But he, it was like his, he actually said to me, he goes, I’ve never, quote, I’ve never
1:37:13 felt more worthless.
1:37:18 And that’s something that I’ve heard echoed by many men who go, you know, go through sort
1:37:21 of economic financial roller coasters.
1:37:26 That was actually one of the stats in that report, the Lost Boys reporter, Richard Reeves
1:37:26 talks about this.
1:37:28 I think that’s actually where it comes from.
1:37:34 So Richard Reeves says that the number one cause of death for young men under 15 is suicide
1:37:39 and that men in general, the things that they describe in their notes when they commit suicide
1:37:44 are these words, worthless and useless.
1:37:49 And so if men feel like their identity and their value and their worth comes from money,
1:37:54 when they don’t have money or they can’t be a provider and they’re sort of on the edge
1:37:58 of society, then they’re literally opting out sometimes with their lives.
1:37:59 Okay.
1:38:04 I want to take the metaphorical iPad and ask you guys some questions because I feel like I’ve
1:38:09 kind of said what I want to say about this topic, but I’m sure there are just millions
1:38:12 of people that look up to both of you as symbols of masculinity.
1:38:13 Scott, this is true, right?
1:38:16 Moms talk to you all the time and say, how can I help my son?
1:38:21 And so like there’s things that I want to know because this topic is the thing I’m most
1:38:21 passionate about.
1:38:26 I want to spend the next five years really helping with this supply problem and the mating
1:38:30 gap, but I don’t know that men will listen to me, but they will listen to you.
1:38:31 So I want to learn from you.
1:38:38 So if you could teach a dating bootcamp to all guys and even talk about what you would
1:38:41 have them unlearn, what are some of those messages?
1:38:44 I would, a dating bootcamp.
1:38:45 Yeah.
1:38:46 Or being a human bootcamp.
1:38:47 Let’s just extend it.
1:38:49 We would have module one, comedy.
1:38:50 Ooh.
1:38:54 Because the only thing that got me laid when I was broke was I was like slightly funny
1:38:54 sometimes.
1:38:57 I could be broken and funny and I’d have like some sense.
1:39:00 This could be just, yeah, keep going.
1:39:02 Something around confidence, which is just standing.
1:39:06 I noticed that posture correlates to dating success.
1:39:10 So I’d have men learn to stand up straight and to control their posture and take up more
1:39:11 space.
1:39:13 And I mean that in the nicest possible way, which is don’t be shriveled.
1:39:18 So like standing up straight, which is obviously one of the things that going to the gym does.
1:39:19 It kind of pulls you out a little bit as well.
1:39:24 Typical, but going out of fashion, male manners.
1:39:26 Open up the door.
1:39:30 I still open up the door for my girlfriend every single day, even though apparently they
1:39:34 went through a phase where that was seen as like not okay to do, but I’ve always taken
1:39:34 great pride in it.
1:39:37 And funnily enough, opening up the door for my partner makes me feel good.
1:39:39 I’m like doing it for selfish reasons.
1:39:40 It makes me feel like a man.
1:39:41 It makes me feel strong.
1:39:45 Also, like when a bus comes, I love the fact that I put my hand across my girlfriend.
1:39:47 That for me makes me feel like a man.
1:39:50 I love that when we cross a road, I’m the one that’s looking out.
1:39:53 I love that I stand on the roadside of the pavement, et cetera.
1:39:57 So I teach men these kind of behaviors and definitely going to the gym.
1:40:02 And then as Scott said, like entrepreneurship or making some money, that would be central to
1:40:02 my boot camp.
1:40:03 I’ll give you one more.
1:40:07 It would be conflict resolution.
1:40:09 And this goes to like the emotional empathy point.
1:40:13 One thing that I struggle with, or at least I struggled with until my girlfriend coached
1:40:14 me.
1:40:17 And I did this podcast so many times that I learned some lessons.
1:40:21 It’s just how to deal with conflict when the aspiring partner is a woman.
1:40:26 Because men in conflict, we have a certain way typically, but learning the skill of hearing
1:40:30 and understanding your partner, which is very difficult.
1:40:32 And like, listen, this might just be me.
1:40:39 I find it incredibly difficult to sit and to listen to my partner for 90 minutes when
1:40:42 she tells me indirectly all the things I did wrong.
1:40:44 I’ve had to learn the skill of doing that.
1:40:49 And I sat here with someone who’s a psychologist and said, they said to me, if you’re a man,
1:40:54 you have to learn the skill of sitting down for 90 minutes a week and letting your partner
1:40:56 tell you everything that they’re feeling and going through.
1:40:58 With my boys, we don’t do that.
1:40:59 But we go on holiday.
1:41:00 It is total silence.
1:41:03 We’re eating fucking Pringles and watching the game.
1:41:07 But when I’m with my partner, and I’m sure when she’s with her friends, it’s talking.
1:41:11 So I’ve developed the skill now of just like sitting and listening.
1:41:14 And then sometimes I take notes.
1:41:17 And then sometimes I repeat back to what she just said to me.
1:41:18 And this is totally alien to me.
1:41:20 And it hurts when I do it.
1:41:21 It like hurts.
1:41:23 And I find it so uncomfortable.
1:41:26 Like I find it really, really uncomfortable to do that.
1:41:30 Even though this is something you spend hours a week doing for your job.
1:41:30 Yeah, 100%.
1:41:31 It’s so unnatural to me.
1:41:33 But you’ve worked on it.
1:41:34 I’ve worked on it, yeah.
1:41:35 I did it like three days ago.
1:41:37 My girlfriend said, I was traveling around the world.
1:41:39 We were in, I don’t even know what country we were in.
1:41:41 She goes, I’ve got some things I want to talk about.
1:41:43 Can we put some time in the calendar?
1:41:44 Do you have 60 minutes?
1:41:46 I’ve got off stage in Sweden.
1:41:48 I put in 60 minutes into my calendar.
1:41:52 She video calls me and she talks to me for about 45 minutes.
1:41:53 I don’t have anything to say.
1:41:53 I’m so bad.
1:41:55 And I just sit there and listen.
1:41:57 And in between the lines, it’s like things I could do better.
1:42:00 She’s not blaming me or anything, but it’s hard for me.
1:42:02 My boys would never do that.
1:42:05 Our friendship isn’t contingent on those things.
1:42:06 So that’s what I would say.
1:42:07 I love that.
1:42:10 Like, I don’t know if you relate to that, but.
1:42:11 I think about the slob of my boys.
1:42:16 Yeah, and I think kind of the three legs of the stool are provider.
1:42:18 I’m probably over-focused on the economics.
1:42:21 That doesn’t necessarily mean making a lot of money, but at least being disciplined and responsible
1:42:22 about it.
1:42:26 Developing skills, certification, having a plan, right?
1:42:29 Don’t be the guy ordering a bottle of Grey Goose at two in the morning.
1:42:30 Like, I’m going home because I got to get up.
1:42:32 You know, I have a plan.
1:42:37 And, you know, I have a vision for how I’m going to be a good provider.
1:42:41 Protector, good manners.
1:42:44 Your default system is protection.
1:42:48 You constantly speak well of people behind their backs.
1:42:51 You hear someone being critical of someone else.
1:42:54 Your inclination is to defend them.
1:42:57 You don’t demonize special interest groups.
1:43:03 Your default setting, if somebody needs help anywhere or is being threatened.
1:43:08 It just, it’s so heartbreaking to me that women feel unsafe when they see men.
1:43:13 When they see a group of men coming down the street, surveys show women are inclined to cross
1:43:14 the street.
1:43:20 And it just feels like from an early age, men need to be taught anyone smaller, anyone more
1:43:25 vulnerable than you, anyone in a special interest group, your default is protection.
1:43:26 That’s what men do.
1:43:30 Think about masculinity, a soldier, a cop, a fireman.
1:43:31 What do they do?
1:43:33 At the end of the day, they protect.
1:43:36 That is your default operating system is a move to protection.
1:43:38 And then procreator.
1:43:40 I think you should want to have sex.
1:43:42 I think you should be willing to take risks.
1:43:49 I tell my boys, I did this for a while, they can’t get back in the house unless they talk
1:43:49 to a stranger.
1:43:52 And my oldest, no problem.
1:43:53 Hey, what’s going on?
1:43:55 My youngest, not as easy.
1:43:59 Just go up and pet their dog.
1:44:05 I think there are so many men out there that have no willingness or ability to open, to
1:44:10 you know, to just say, hi, where are you from?
1:44:17 To just open and to want a romantic relationship is a wonderful thing.
1:44:18 There’s nothing wrong with that.
1:44:20 Modulate your porn.
1:44:25 Decide, ask yourself, would you want to have sex with you?
1:44:29 Get strong, get fit, get your act together.
1:44:31 Smell nice.
1:44:32 Groom.
1:44:35 If you can’t dress well, find someone who can dress you.
1:44:42 And initiate contact and want to have a relationship with someone.
1:44:43 That’s a wonderful thing.
1:44:51 That mojo is the most purposeful, wonderful thing in my life is that I’m raising two patriotic,
1:44:52 decent men.
1:44:57 And it started with me really wanting to have sex with this woman I saw at the pool at the
1:44:58 Raleigh Hotel.
1:44:59 Right?
1:45:00 And I know that sounds crass.
1:45:03 It’s like, I looked at her and thought, I am really attracted to this woman.
1:45:05 So I’m going to take a risk.
1:45:09 In the middle of the day, without the benefit of alcohol, I’m going to walk up and introduce
1:45:12 myself to her and another guy and a woman she was with.
1:45:13 Hey, where are you guys from?
1:45:18 And then 18 months later, our first son was born, middle name Raleigh, after the hotel.
1:45:19 Take risks.
1:45:24 Be, want to have mating opportunities.
1:45:26 You’re a provider.
1:45:28 Your default system is a protector.
1:45:32 And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a procreator.
1:45:34 I love everything you said.
1:45:38 And then one thing that was going through my head as you said it was, it feels really sad
1:45:42 that in this moment in time, we have to tell people to become procreators.
1:45:47 Don’t you feel like there’s something sick in our society if that has to be taught?
1:45:52 Unfortunately, all of our software is towards procreation.
1:45:54 Like, that is how we are wired.
1:45:59 Yet people are so sick from the food that they eat, from all the medications that people are
1:46:04 on, from all the pornography, from all the technology that you literally have to teach your sons the
1:46:05 importance of procreation.
1:46:07 And that’s why I’m here.
1:46:09 And that’s why I’m really freaked out by all of this stuff.
1:46:16 Because we are at a point in society where in South Korea, of 100 people of childbearing age,
1:46:23 they are going to produce 12 grandchildren based on a 0.7 birth rate.
1:46:30 And the fact that you talk about the P of procreation, like, I’m so worried about our society.
1:46:35 It’s 60% of 30-year-olds 40 years ago used to have a kid.
1:46:36 Now it’s 27%.
1:46:41 So when I was on the plane on the way here, I told this woman who was sitting next to me
1:46:42 what I was going to be talking about.
1:46:45 And her gut reaction was, oh, why do we have to worry about that?
1:46:46 Women are doing better than men?
1:46:47 Like, great.
1:46:49 Let us do that for the first time in history.
1:46:51 Like, her gut reaction was, why is this a problem?
1:46:56 Then I started telling her these stats around lowest marriage rate.
1:47:00 We’re approaching the lowest marriage rate in U.S. history.
1:47:03 The birth rate has gone down 20% in 20 years.
1:47:05 And she didn’t know these numbers.
1:47:09 And I feel like people are afraid to talk about this topic because they think it’s a zero-sum
1:47:13 game where when men lose, women win and vice versa.
1:47:15 But right now we’re all losing.
1:47:20 There’s a huge economic impact, too, because it used to be 12 people working age to support
1:47:20 every senior.
1:47:21 Now it’s three to one.
1:47:25 If we don’t have kids, we’re going to go into economic decline.
1:47:25 Yeah.
1:47:29 South Korea is replacing its nursery schools with its nursing homes.
1:47:31 Like, they are the anti-example for us.
1:47:33 And I think people need to be paying attention.
1:47:36 By 2050, about 40% of the population will be senior citizens.
1:47:39 And the labor force could have halved within the next 40 years.
1:47:44 The Bank of Korea warns that if current trends persist, the Korean economy could begin contracting
1:47:46 in 10 years’ time.
1:47:53 And this presents a national service risk as the country relies on its conscripted military.
1:47:57 And this will fall by hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people by 2025.
1:48:04 Well, half, oh my gosh, could fall from 250,000 troops to 125,000 troops.
1:48:07 Politics is the last thing I wanted to talk about.
1:48:11 And how this sort of intertwines with everything we’ve talked about today.
1:48:13 Obviously, Trump is now in power.
1:48:17 And as we saw in the data, and it was touched on earlier on,
1:48:20 young men have become more right-leaning and more conservative than ever before.
1:48:26 The left hasn’t necessarily offered the best vision of masculinity for young men,
1:48:27 as something Scott’s talked about previously.
1:48:30 I was wondering, I think this morning in the hotel, I was wondering, I was like,
1:48:34 how are, how is the left going to get men back?
1:48:36 Is that possible?
1:48:40 Because the vision of masculinity, this is something Scott’s talked about,
1:48:45 that the left portrays is not, doesn’t seem to be in line with all the things we’ve just described
1:48:46 that we feel intuitively as men.
1:48:51 The things we think are important, like economic viability, being strong, you know.
1:48:53 I’ll let Scott go for it.
1:48:59 Well, on the right, they’ve conflated masculinity with coarseness and cruelty.
1:49:10 The two kind of role models, you know, President Trump, who in my opinion demonstrates a lack
1:49:13 of grace and a lack of empathy and a lack of kindness.
1:49:21 And Elon Musk is concurrently being sued by two women for sole custody of their kid because he
1:49:22 hasn’t seen the kid.
1:49:25 I mean, is that, those are the role models we want for young men?
1:49:30 And on the left, their vision of masculinity is act more like a woman.
1:49:32 I don’t think that’s helpful either.
1:49:37 I went to the Democratic National Convention, and there was a parade of special interest groups.
1:49:42 Everyone was represented, except for the group that needs the most representation right now,
1:49:43 in my view, and that is young men.
1:49:47 If you go to the DNC website, they list 16 special interest groups, and they say,
1:49:48 who we serve.
1:49:50 They call it out, who we serve.
1:49:56 Asian Pacific Islanders, seniors, the disabled, immigrants, black Americans.
1:49:57 And I added it up.
1:50:00 It’s 74% of the U.S. population.
1:50:06 And when you say you’re actively advocating for 74%, you’re not advocating for the 74%.
1:50:08 You’re discriminating against the 26%.
1:50:10 And who are the 26%?
1:50:11 Young men.
1:50:12 Is this a consequence of DEI?
1:50:14 I think that’s part of it.
1:50:18 I think there’s been so many groups that have been discriminated against.
1:50:23 And the way I would just loosely describe the Democratic Party is we have the right ideas,
1:50:24 and then we just take it too far.
1:50:30 You know, there were, women have gotten a raw deal, so they need advantage.
1:50:32 You know, gays have been persecuted.
1:50:39 Non-whites have had, there were 12 black people 60 years ago in Princeton, Harvard, and Yale combined.
1:50:40 That was a problem.
1:50:45 This year, more than 60% of Harvard’s freshman class identify as non-white.
1:50:56 So I think we’ve got to get out of identity politics, but the notion, it largely came from the left, this notion of toxic masculinity.
1:50:58 There’s no such thing.
1:51:01 Because there’s violence.
1:51:02 There’s people who are criminals.
1:51:03 There’s people who are unkind.
1:51:05 That means they’re not masculine.
1:51:09 Masculinity is being a protector, a provider, a procreator.
1:51:18 And the Democratic Party seems to believe that leaning into anything around your advantage of being male in terms of your strength,
1:51:23 your kindness, your wanting to procreate, your initiating sexual contact or romantic interest,
1:51:27 is somehow a threat and somehow toxic.
1:51:30 I just think they’ve sent absolutely the wrong signal.
1:51:39 And into that void has stepped basically thinly veiled misogyny that is just so ugly.
1:51:44 You know, the, the, the, and he, Trump flew right into it.
1:51:55 The reason Trump won this election, in my view, is the groups that pivoted hardest from blue to red 2020 to 2024 were Latinos who were sick of being categorized by their identity.
1:52:02 But numbers two and three were people under the age of 30, especially males, who are not doing very well and feel like Donald Trump feels their pain.
1:52:05 And women age 45 to 64.
1:52:07 And my thesis is that’s their mothers.
1:52:13 Because if your son isn’t doing well, you don’t care about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine or transgender rights.
1:52:14 You just want to change.
1:52:16 My son isn’t doing well.
1:52:19 Those are the people that whisper to me in the streets about these conversations.
1:52:30 It’s the 40 to 55 year old mother who has a son who doesn’t feel like she can speak up, but says to me privately that she’s worried about her, her kids.
1:52:36 And actually we had some, some mothers write in, all of which wanted to stay anonymous, saying this exact same thing.
1:52:38 They’ve got an 18 year old son.
1:52:38 They’re super concerned.
1:52:39 They’ve got a 16 year old son.
1:52:40 The son looks lost.
1:52:49 As the stats show from the report, they’re not leaving home in the same way that women, their daughters leave home, but they don’t know what to do about it.
1:52:53 So for those parents that are listening now, we can’t change society.
1:52:59 What would you recommend a parent of a young boy does?
1:53:01 First thing is forgive yourself.
1:53:17 There’s this natural part of a separation where, and I think this is true of girls, but especially boys, where to make the separation easier, we don’t get along with our parents in our senior year in high school.
1:53:20 And that doesn’t mean your son doesn’t love you.
1:53:22 That doesn’t mean your son’s not going to figure it out.
1:53:32 But to forgive yourself, there’s, but going back to more actionable things, try and get male, try and get men involved in his life.
1:53:38 And then, you know, dumb stuff like my mom made sure I was in Boy Scouts.
1:53:45 My mom, when I got cut from the high school basketball and football team, she enrolled me in city leagues so I could continue to play sports.
1:53:49 But it was mostly, she wasn’t sure that I had men in my life.
1:53:53 And I think that was really, really important for me.
1:53:58 But, you know, I would just say that I feel like I need to coach men more.
1:54:07 What I say to Boy, one of the first things I say to Boy is I had lunch with, I had lunch with someone who’s a fairly famous news anchor and her son.
1:54:10 And I asked the mom to excuse, they started going at it.
1:54:13 And I asked the mom to excuse herself.
1:54:19 And I said to the mom, I’m like, you realize this is the only person in your life ever that wants you to be more successful than you.
1:54:21 You just got to cut this shit out.
1:54:23 This woman is not your enemy.
1:54:31 And I heard that and I was a bit ashamed because I remember it like being such an asshole to my mother, you know.
1:54:38 So I think, but I think I could say that to him because I could look him in the eyes and say, what the fuck are you doing?
1:54:43 So I just think that male involvement for single mothers.
1:54:53 And I think men are really willing to get involved, whether it’s someone down the street, a coach, you know, a sibling, your brother, whatever it is.
1:55:01 But I do think, again, the research shows that the point of failure is when a boy loses a male role model.
1:55:07 And also to forgive yourself, being a single parent with a son, I think that’s hard.
1:55:08 I just think it’s hard.
1:55:11 Logan, you’ve got some questions I can see.
1:55:11 Oh, yeah.
1:55:14 I do have some questions for Scott, but I would love for you to answer them too.
1:55:23 So one of them is, what is something about being a man that you learned growing up that you have had to unlearn?
1:55:28 And I’m wondering specifically in how you’re raising your sons to avoid some of those things.
1:55:37 I think a great proxy for masculinity and manhood is, and Richard Reeves introduced me to this, I think it’s so powerful, and that is surplus value.
1:55:41 It’s not about a religious ceremony.
1:55:42 It’s not about having sex.
1:55:44 It’s not about an age.
1:55:46 It’s about getting to the point of surplus value.
1:55:51 You create more tax revenue than you absorb.
1:55:52 I say to my boys, you’re negative value.
1:55:55 Look at all the resources going into you.
1:55:56 Look at all the love.
1:55:59 We love you so much more than you love us.
1:56:03 Your teachers are spending all this time and energy, and you aren’t giving anything back.
1:56:05 At some point, that needs to pivot.
1:56:14 So creating more tax revenue, noticing people’s life, registering more complaints from other people
1:56:20 than you are complaining, protecting people, adding surplus value.
1:56:29 I wanted more from everyone else than I was giving.
1:56:35 I was the guy that, when someone honked at me, I was the guy that sped up and honked back to restore the universe to its place.
1:56:45 If a Delta, if a ticket counter agent at the airline counter was rude to me, I needed to get back in their face to restore harmony to the universe because I’m a fucking baller.
1:56:50 And what you realize is being a man is occasionally taking a hit, right?
1:56:51 It’s having surplus value.
1:56:53 It’s noticing people’s lives.
1:56:55 It’s listening to complaints.
1:56:59 It’s occasionally thinking, well, maybe this person who’s coming off in traffic, I don’t know what’s going on with them.
1:57:00 Maybe their kid has diabetes.
1:57:01 Maybe they’re going through a divorce.
1:57:05 Maybe they’re adding more value than you’re taking.
1:57:09 And until the age of like 40, I looked at every relationship.
1:57:11 Am I getting more out of this than I’m getting?
1:57:12 And if I’m not, I’m out.
1:57:18 And what you realize is good business partnerships, you add as much or more value than your partners.
1:57:21 Good relationships, you witness the person’s life.
1:57:22 You make them feel fucking awesome.
1:57:27 If you leave this world a little bit in debt, that’s the whole point.
1:57:32 That’s the whole point or a little bit, the world’s in debt to you.
1:57:33 That’s the win.
1:57:38 And I used to think as a young man, that meant I needed to exit the relationship.
1:57:41 I’m not getting more money or services than I’m giving.
1:57:44 I’m not getting more kindness than I’m not giving.
1:57:47 I’m not getting more hot experiences with this romantic partner than they’re giving me.
1:57:48 I’m out.
1:57:50 No, it’s the other way around.
1:57:52 Being a man is surplus value.
1:57:54 Yeah, I’ve never thought about that before.
1:58:00 But it’s so true that like, as a man, you should aspire to be considered generous.
1:58:05 And actually, the first time someone called me generous was like such an unbelievably wonderful
1:58:10 compliment to me because it means that people see you as someone that’s giving things.
1:58:15 But to answer your question, for me, it was just a willingness to express my emotions when
1:58:16 I’m struggling.
1:58:20 That’s like the, that’s always been a difficult thing for me, especially because of everything
1:58:22 I’ve said earlier about wanting to be a strong, wanting to be a provider.
1:58:27 There are going to be moments where regardless of how well you play the game of life, you’re
1:58:27 going to struggle.
1:58:29 And I did not have the tools.
1:58:33 I still really don’t have great tools for this, but to turn to someone and say, I’m really
1:58:35 struggling with this and not to feel emasculated.
1:58:44 And I would say that because as a man, pretty much the only person you have in your life typically
1:58:48 that you can turn to is your romantic partner.
1:58:51 That’s also the last person you want to turn to and say you’re struggling.
1:58:53 Because again, for me, that felt like I was being emasculated.
1:58:59 So I remember the day very vividly when I was like 30 years old, turning to my girlfriend
1:59:04 and like running the experiment of letting her know that I was struggling with something
1:59:07 and how difficult that was.
1:59:10 But the only reason I did it was because I almost felt like I had no fucking choice.
1:59:14 I’d gotten to the point where I was like, I need to tell someone this.
1:59:16 And she was the only person.
1:59:20 And I still don’t think I’d tell my guy friends everything.
1:59:23 I would tell them some things, but I don’t think I’d tell them everything.
1:59:27 And when I look at the stats around mental health and depression, which are absolutely horrific,
1:59:30 and some of these quotes that we had from some of the guys that wrote into the show,
1:59:34 this guy, Liam, said, for me, the biggest challenge that young men face today is I feel
1:59:37 like I’m striving for meaning, but I can’t find it anywhere.
1:59:42 I struggle to even sleep at night with some form of substance because my brain is constantly
1:59:44 firing different scenarios at me that I’m failing in my life.
1:59:49 When I am alone with my thoughts, it’s like having never ending lesson about how useless
1:59:51 I am and how I need to change everything in my life.
1:59:55 And the hardest part is I can’t even tell anybody this because I would feel weak.
2:00:00 And then this guy, Jeffrey, wrote in and said, my entire life, I have never felt like I was
2:00:03 good enough, like I could never earn my place in society.
2:00:09 And even though I think I’ve achieved some things by the age of 18, I still feel like deep
2:00:11 inside I will never be enough and I’m still not enough.
2:00:12 And I can’t tell anybody.
2:00:16 And I think that’s a problem that’s quite unique to men.
2:00:20 It might be a problem unique to my upbringing, but I just don’t have the tools.
2:00:26 So when I look at the stats around depression and men killing themselves, 75% of suicides
2:00:29 in the UK are men and 75% of them worldwide are men.
2:00:33 And suicide, as you said, I think earlier, is the leading cause of death amongst young men
2:00:33 in 50 countries.
2:00:38 Yeah, if you feel that meaningless and you feel that worthless and you don’t have anyone
2:00:41 to console about it, to maybe tell you that you’re wrong, you know.
2:00:46 That’s why when Scott said that you don’t necessarily buy the research that women are looking for someone
2:00:48 who’s emotionally intelligent, fine.
2:00:49 Then don’t do it for your partner.
2:00:50 Do it for yourself.
2:00:51 Yeah.
2:00:55 I just saw the stand-up special by Kumail Nanjiani.
2:00:57 I’m sure it’ll, like, come out on streaming soon.
2:01:00 But the last 20 minutes was pretty incredible.
2:01:05 It basically turned from, like, sort of silly stand-up into kind of like his TED Talk.
2:01:10 So he told this amazing story about how one day he was speaking to the press and he said,
2:01:15 I started to go to therapy when there were a bunch of bad reviews about my movie because
2:01:19 I realized so much of my identity was tied up in external factors.
2:01:24 And this turned into headlines around the world that said bad reviews land Kumail Nanjiani
2:01:24 in therapy.
2:01:27 And he was really frustrated by this.
2:01:32 So in the stand-up special, he took the five most popular things that people said criticizing
2:01:34 him and he broke down each one.
2:01:41 So, for example, one of them was, oh, boo-hoo, poor, you know, super rich movie star, feel sad
2:01:41 about bad reviews.
2:01:42 We should all feel sad for him.
2:01:47 And he’s like, no, you don’t have to feel sad for me, but I can feel sad for me.
2:01:48 And he went through all these things.
2:01:52 And he talked about his therapy journey and how before therapy he thought, I just don’t
2:01:53 experience negative emotions.
2:01:55 I don’t experience sadness.
2:02:00 And through therapy, he understood, oh, I experience sadness all the time, but I don’t allow myself
2:02:01 to feel it.
2:02:02 So it just comes out as anger.
2:02:05 So he told a story about talking to his dad on the phone.
2:02:07 His dad had just been in a car accident but was fine.
2:02:10 And then he helped his dad through that experience.
2:02:14 And then a few hours later, he’s like, where the fuck is my Ninja Turtle t-shirt?
2:02:17 And it’s like, he needed therapy to explain to him.
2:02:19 He’s not upset about the t-shirt.
2:02:20 He’s upset about his dad.
2:02:26 But I think that the fact that he, you know, in his 40s or however old he is, had to learn
2:02:27 that.
2:02:30 It makes me feel like everyone needs to learn that.
2:02:32 If it’s not for a romantic partner, then it’s for yourself.
2:02:33 Because life sucks.
2:02:36 If you can’t cry, you can’t express emotions.
2:02:37 You don’t have people to talk to.
2:02:39 And so forget about attracting a mate.
2:02:41 Just not killing yourself.
2:02:42 Just being a happier person.
2:02:45 I think we just need more room for men to express emotions.
2:02:53 The first time I went to a therapist was when I was about 30, 30, 31.
2:02:57 And I put it off for so fucking long for this reason.
2:03:00 Because every part of it made me feel like emasculated.
2:03:04 And as a man, you’re like, I know I can deal with everything myself.
2:03:04 And I’ve got this.
2:03:07 Like I said, when the bus comes, I put my hand in front of my girlfriend.
2:03:08 I’m always the protector.
2:03:11 So when you find yourself in a position like these men who’ve written into the show,
2:03:16 where you feel meaningless or you feel hopeless or there’s some other challenge in your life,
2:03:18 you think it’s your job to fix.
2:03:21 Well, I thought it was like my job to fix.
2:03:24 And also like maybe because I’ve been a CEO since the age of 18,
2:03:27 I’m always like holding forth for everybody.
2:03:30 So you learn to like keep a fucking straight face.
2:03:31 The business is on fire.
2:03:34 We have no money to pay 170 people’s wages.
2:03:35 And it’s Friday and they’re expecting.
2:03:38 Like you learn this skill of like numbness.
2:03:41 And that doesn’t serve you when you’re trying to resolve something.
2:03:46 And this is why I think porn, gambling addiction become the avenue.
2:03:50 Because there’s not another avenue to sort of take pressure off the pressure valve.
2:03:53 So yeah, it’s difficult.
2:03:54 It’s difficult.
2:04:03 The way you, the email you just read from that young man, I’ve stopped and it sounds crass.
2:04:05 I can’t handle the emails I get anymore.
2:04:14 I’m getting so many emails from young men who are just, I mean, you read an email like that
2:04:17 and you just like, it’s devastating.
2:04:20 You know, I haven’t gotten over the death of my father.
2:04:21 I’m living alone.
2:04:26 I’ve become addicted to, I mean, you just hear this shit.
2:04:27 Like, I know I have value to add.
2:04:28 I just can’t figure it out.
2:04:33 Or, I mean, just, there’s just so many of these men out there.
2:04:36 And I think a lot of it is, I always look to economics.
2:04:39 I’m like, we’ve got to figure out vocational programming.
2:04:43 I think we should have national service so people feel a sense of identity and connection
2:04:45 and purpose.
2:04:50 Some of the lowest levels of young adult depression are in Israel, despite all the existential threats
2:04:53 because they all serve in the IDF for two to three years.
2:04:57 I think we need more freshman seats at colleges.
2:05:02 I think we need more third places where people, I think a lot of it comes down to economics and
2:05:03 policy programs.
2:05:08 I think there’s a lot we can do to help young men.
2:05:12 But in the U.S., it’s now 77% moving to 80% suicides.
2:05:13 It’s four to one.
2:05:17 If there was any special interest group, you go into a morgue in America and five people die
2:05:19 by suicide, four are men.
2:05:23 If that was any other special interest group versus the control group, they’d weigh in with
2:05:24 programs.
2:05:29 But because of the enormous advantage I registered, and let’s be honest, it was enormous.
2:05:34 Basically, all prosperity in America, which was unprecedented, was crammed into 30% of the
2:05:36 population, basically white males.
2:05:40 So we just had, we had staggering advantage.
2:05:45 And now 19-year-old males are paying the price for my advantage.
2:05:47 There’s really a lack of empathy for them.
2:05:55 And what I do think is hopeful is that mothers and women in society now realize that the country
2:06:01 and women are not going to continue to flourish if men are flailing.
2:06:03 And it finally feels like we’re having a real program.
2:06:08 The governor of Maryland, Westmore, has said that his focus for his administration, this is
2:06:14 the governor of a state, a liberal state, is going to be on helping the state’s young men.
2:06:18 I mean, that took such fucking balls for him to say that.
2:06:19 And you know what?
2:06:25 The populists received it well because on the ground, people are feeling it.
2:06:28 They’re really feeling how much young men are struggling.
2:06:35 So I’m actually quite hopeful that we’ve turned a corner in terms of the dialogue because when
2:06:41 I started talking about this four or five years ago, right away, oh, your hair wasn’t on fire
2:06:46 when women were, I mean, just, oh, it was such, there was such a gag reflex.
2:06:49 It has changed so dramatically in the last four or five years.
2:06:52 Where do we send these guys?
2:06:55 That’s a great question.
2:07:01 And I wish I had a list of resources and I’m trying to assemble it around, all right.
2:07:09 I mean, I’m involved with it because it’s difficult to discern between ordinary young adult or adolescent
2:07:11 problems and when a kid’s suicidal.
2:07:14 I wish I had some sort of AI filter that would go, this kid needs help right away.
2:07:17 Like, here are some resources.
2:07:18 Here are some men’s groups.
2:07:20 You know, and I do a shitty job.
2:07:21 I can’t talk to all of them.
2:07:22 A couple of them, I dig the lazy way.
2:07:25 I say, here’s 500 bucks to better help online therapy.
2:07:26 I’ll pay for your first four sessions.
2:07:26 Yeah.
2:07:29 Just be, but I gotta be honest.
2:07:29 I don’t know.
2:07:34 I mean, I think we should put together this list of resources and I feel like there are
2:07:35 good guys out there.
2:07:36 I put Chris Williamson in this group.
2:07:37 I put both of you out there.
2:07:42 Podcasts are how a lot of modern wisdom is being expressed right now, right?
2:07:43 You don’t go to church.
2:07:46 You get your sermon through your AirPods.
2:07:49 So like, who are the guys that are saying healthy things?
2:07:54 And I feel like if we can fill their ears with the healthy messages of masculinity, we are
2:08:00 taking away the space and the attention from the people that are really profiting from these
2:08:01 negative messages.
2:08:05 I think you need a place to send the people who email you.
2:08:12 And I appreciate the offer and we should do this, but we should have a list that says, all right, what are you struggling with?
2:08:17 And here’s some resources or things you should think about.
2:08:23 But even what you both said to my answer or to my question around like, what’s the bootcamp or what would you tell guys?
2:08:26 Like, that’s not a crazy list.
2:08:38 I think it’s like for a lot of these guys to have you as sort of a male role model of like, go to the gym, make money, be kind, look out for others.
2:08:43 Like, I just feel like that can be condensed into, and maybe that’s what your new book is.
2:08:48 But like, truly, I think people are looking for a script with the lack of religion, lack of institution.
2:08:51 We’ve lost all these scripts that tell people what to do.
2:08:53 Let’s write a new script.
2:08:55 It’s on you, brother.
2:08:57 You’ve got more tread on here.
2:09:00 You’ve got – look at all these cameras.
2:09:06 I mean, look, somebody is going to watch this and pull it together into all of your advice.
2:09:07 But I’m just saying –
2:09:08 I like the idea of a collective.
2:09:14 It needs to get out there because if you don’t fill the space, somebody else will, and they already are.
2:09:20 And it’s not the messages that you want to have the next population, the next generation having.
2:09:21 I agree.
2:09:23 We’ll talk about this off camera.
2:09:24 One, two, three.
2:09:25 Man.
2:09:27 Man.
2:09:28 Anything else you wanted to ask us?
2:09:32 I know you’ve got to hear of yours, so if you’ve got any other questions you wanted to ask us.
2:09:34 No, I’m just really glad that we’re having this conversation.
2:09:37 I feel like maybe I wouldn’t have had this conversation a year ago.
2:09:38 I do think the tide is turning.
2:09:41 I think the title of the report, As Lost Boys, is very helpful.
2:09:49 And I just want to end with the message that women don’t have to do worse when men do better and vice versa.
2:09:54 And let’s raise up everyone so that we’re all thriving.
2:10:00 And, yeah, let’s help these lost boys and also help women.
2:10:02 Any closing points you wanted to smile, Scott?
2:10:05 Well, just a message to young people in general.
2:10:08 The arc of happiness is a smile.
2:10:16 And that is kind of zero to 18 is prom, football, you know, making out.
2:10:18 It’s generally pretty happy.
2:10:23 The least happy years for people are usually kind of 18 to 45.
2:10:26 Economic stress.
2:10:27 Relationships are hard.
2:10:30 You probably are someone you love a great deal, gets sick and dies.
2:10:37 And if you’re struggling, what I would just say is, you know, don’t be afraid to reach out for help.
2:10:44 But also realize that if you’re not a member of parliament and you don’t have a fragrance named after you, it doesn’t mean you’re failing.
2:10:49 And to forgive yourself and to recognize that those are tough years.
2:10:54 I, you know, when my first kid was born, I tell this story a lot.
2:10:57 It’s supposed to be angels singing and bright lights.
2:10:59 I felt nothing but shame.
2:11:01 I was 42 and I was broke.
2:11:05 I had put everything into my tech company, great financial recession came along.
2:11:08 I think my accountant called me and said, you’re worth a negative $2 million.
2:11:12 If we look at your debts, you’re worth negative $2 million.
2:11:16 And about that time, my oldest son had the poor judgment to come rotating out of my girlfriend.
2:11:19 And all I felt with this kid was shame.
2:11:22 I have failed.
2:11:23 I’ve failed myself.
2:11:28 And now I’ve failed on an entirely new dimension as a provider and a father.
2:11:32 That was the first thing I felt when my son was born.
2:11:34 And I wrote about it.
2:11:37 And I can’t tell you how many men I heard from.
2:11:44 That all I felt when I had my first kid or kids was a sense of embarrassment and that I was already failing.
2:11:50 That energy that you felt at that moment, did you channel it into something or were you tempted?
2:11:50 Nausea.
2:11:51 Nausea.
2:11:56 I was in the delivery room and they were more worried about me and they thought it was because I was grossed out by birthing.
2:11:58 It was because I was so ashamed.
2:12:06 I just immediately felt like, oh my God, how did I put myself in a position where I’m a terrible provider on day one?
2:12:08 I just felt a tremendous amount of shame.
2:12:16 And I think most people, when you talk to them at some point, have felt really down and really embarrassed.
2:12:19 And I just don’t think that’s anything unusual.
2:12:22 And you want to forgive yourself.
2:12:27 You want to say to yourself, I can add value to a company.
2:12:35 I can make someone very happy, you know, and try and surround yourself with people that make you feel good about yourself.
2:12:37 And every day, just little baby steps.
2:12:39 Write some things down.
2:12:40 Try and exercise.
2:12:41 Try and eat well.
2:12:45 I can tell when I’m getting depressed and I have this method of getting out of it.
2:12:47 I call it scafa, S-C-A-F-A, sweat.
2:12:53 It resets my operating system, clean, try and eat really well at home.
2:12:55 Abstinence.
2:12:59 And when I say abstinence, abstinence from pot and alcohol, both of which I love.
2:13:01 And I’m really good at them.
2:13:02 They add value to my life.
2:13:04 But when I’m not feeling good, I take them out of my life.
2:13:07 Because whatever’s going on with my sensors, I just don’t want to mess with them.
2:13:10 F is family.
2:13:13 I find being around my boys is really important.
2:13:14 And then A is affection.
2:13:20 I find affection being around, even if it’s my dogs laying on me or my boys.
2:13:23 I’ll say to my boys, let’s watch TV and my boys instinctively throw their legs on mine.
2:13:26 Not necessarily sex, but affection with my partner.
2:13:29 Those are the things that get me out of a dark place.
2:13:33 So try and figure out, if you can, what things help you get out of a dark place.
2:13:36 But recognize everyone struggles.
2:13:40 And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t reach out and find help.
2:13:46 But everything online is telling you you should be in a Gulfstream and partying in St. Barts.
2:13:50 No, that’s just not the real world.
2:13:56 And try and build a support system and also forgive yourself.
2:13:58 Happiness is a smile.
2:14:02 Kind of 20 to 45 is usually, you know, it’s full of a lot of joy.
2:14:06 But it’s also full of a lot of, you know, oftentimes a lot of anxiety.
2:14:08 Do you go to therapy?
2:14:09 No.
2:14:09 Have you ever been?
2:14:10 I did.
2:14:12 My first marriage, we went to marriage counseling.
2:14:14 And after the first session, we decided to get divorced.
2:14:16 So I’m a little traumatized by therapy.
2:14:17 Yeah.
2:14:19 And he got right to it.
2:14:20 Saved me real money.
2:14:20 Yeah.
2:14:22 Oh, Stephen, I wanted to add one more thing.
2:14:29 I think an underappreciated resource for men for building empathy is reading fiction books.
2:14:31 So I’m in a book club.
2:14:32 I read fiction all the time.
2:14:37 Fiction builds a lot of empathy because you are truly inside the mind of somebody else for
2:14:38 two or three hundred pages.
2:14:42 When I talk to guys, they so rarely read fiction.
2:14:43 Do you read any fiction?
2:14:43 Not at all.
2:14:46 A lot of guys that I talk to, they say, oh, I read nonfiction.
2:14:51 And there’s so many lists online of like the hundred nonfiction books to get your MBA.
2:14:55 And it’s like we’re all reading so much nonfiction on our phone at all times.
2:14:58 Read a book of fiction.
2:15:00 Get inside the head of somebody else.
2:15:01 Get inside the head of a woman.
2:15:06 I think that for zero dollars at the local library, you can actually become a better person.
2:15:07 Do you know what’s interesting, though?
2:15:09 There’s a reason why men read books about how to make money.
2:15:10 Yeah.
2:15:11 Because it goes back to everything we’ve said.
2:15:15 If I said to my boys, boys, we’re going to start reading fiction, that my friends read
2:15:19 stuff that’s going to help them build a business, make money, or gain muscle mass.
2:15:24 Yeah, but can I convince, what if you’re single and I’m going to say, read this fiction
2:15:25 and you’re going to get laid?
2:15:29 Like, why can’t we just reframe and change the narrative on fiction?
2:15:35 I mean, I just feel like there’s so many examples of times that I haven’t really known what’s
2:15:36 going on with the group.
2:15:38 And then I read a book about that group.
2:15:41 And I’m not an expert in them, but I can think about them more.
2:15:45 And I just feel like, look, if you are not having success with women and you don’t have
2:15:48 any women in your life, read a fucking book by a woman.
2:15:49 Just a quick anecdote.
2:15:55 When I was a senior in high school and a freshman in college, I remember thinking, I’m strange.
2:16:01 I remember feeling very insecure about my own psychological makeup, and that didn’t help.
2:16:07 And then I read a bunch of John Irving novels, The World According to Garp, Cider House Rules,
2:16:09 and the people in it were just so fucking strange.
2:16:11 It made me feel better about myself.
2:16:12 I’m like, oh, there’s other weirdos out there.
2:16:14 So what you say really resonates.
2:16:19 It made me feel less self-conscious about how unusual I thought I was.
2:16:24 So it just dawned on me that that was a big help for me.
2:16:26 Wow.
2:16:31 TikTok is not going to give you the empathy that spending 300 pages inside the mind of a
2:16:33 person different from yourself will.
2:16:36 Thank you both for so many reasons.
2:16:40 Scott, you’re actually writing a book at the moment, which is going to be published shortly.
2:16:41 We’ve talked about it a few times.
2:16:42 What is the title of that book?
2:16:43 And what is it about?
2:16:48 Well, I’ve determined, I don’t know how it is for you with books, but basically your publisher
2:16:51 does nothing and then obsesses over the title.
2:16:52 That’s the value of that one.
2:16:53 That is very true.
2:16:56 So I had it work.
2:16:57 It was supposed to be originally about masculinity.
2:17:01 And then I realized that I don’t have the skills or the domain expertise to summarize masculinity.
2:17:05 So I changed it to work in progress, notes on becoming a man.
2:17:08 And I just talk about stories that I’ve written about, about some of the things we’ve talked
2:17:11 about today and trying to use masculinity as a code.
2:17:16 I think everyone needs a code, whether it’s the military, the religion, their family values.
2:17:21 And I think masculinity can serve as a code if defined correctly for young men.
2:17:24 But it’s just a series of like stories about things.
2:17:30 I’ve gone through some of my many ways I’ve failed and what I learned about trying to become
2:17:32 a man, trying to be a good dad, trying to be a good partner.
2:17:33 When is it published?
2:17:34 When is it going to be published?
2:17:35 It’ll be on the fall.
2:17:36 On the fall.
2:17:36 Okay.
2:17:42 And Logan, you have an incredible book, which is, I mean, one of the, I think the book on
2:17:47 this subject matter called How to Not Die Alone, the surprising science that will help you find
2:17:47 love.
2:17:49 And what does someone discover in that book?
2:17:54 Well, it’s really about understanding the blind spots that hold people back from finding
2:17:57 love and then making a plan to overcome them.
2:18:02 I’m going to link all of Scott’s books and all of Logan’s book in the comments below
2:18:02 for anybody to read it.
2:18:06 I also wanted to say a huge thank you to the Centre of Social Justice for making this report
2:18:11 because it’s, again, it’s caused a huge conversation in the UK and now around the world around Lost
2:18:11 Boys.
2:18:15 We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the
2:18:17 next guest, not knowing who they’re leaving it for.
2:18:23 And the question I’m going to ask both of you is, Logan, what are you most scared of?
2:18:32 I’m most scared of losing my husband because he has had a brush with death.
2:18:34 He had very serious bone cancer.
2:18:39 I feel like we’ve just been through such hard stuff with him medically that right now I’m
2:18:40 here today with you.
2:18:42 He’s climbing.
2:18:46 I was just thinking, you know, what happens if something happens to him with climbing?
2:18:47 And we have a one-year-old daughter.
2:18:51 And so maybe the most obvious answer is something that happened to my daughter.
2:18:53 But for me, it’s really something that happened to my husband.
2:18:56 Scott, what are you most scared of?
2:19:00 The way I took that was, what am I most worried about?
2:19:07 I’m really worried about an epidemic of loneliness from a societal standpoint.
2:19:10 People are starting to believe they can disengage from life.
2:19:16 And that leads to anxiety and depression and polarization that makes the world a less safe
2:19:16 place.
2:19:18 Personally, my fear has always been the same.
2:19:25 I’m always worried that my kind of selfish instincts manifest in an ugly way and I end up
2:19:26 alone and old.
2:19:34 You know, that’s my biggest fear, that I end up dying under bright lights, you know, surrounded
2:19:35 by strangers.
2:19:36 That’s my biggest fear.
2:19:38 Because your selfish instincts manifest.
2:19:41 You do something wrong in your relationship or you fuck up your…
2:19:42 Yeah, just always.
2:19:44 My dad is not a very…
2:19:45 My dad ended up…
2:19:49 My dad’s basically alone at 95 and some of his less…
2:19:54 Some of his lower character quality attributes I see in myself.
2:19:55 And that’s a fear.
2:19:59 My fear is that, you know, end up dying surrounded by strangers.
2:20:01 Steve, do yours.
2:20:07 The first thing that comes to mind is something happening to my partner.
2:20:08 I just can’t imagine.
2:20:13 I just see her as this, like, perfect human being that was like this angel.
2:20:18 So thinking, I just can’t imagine ever finding anybody comparable.
2:20:21 So something happening to her, finding out she was sick, I think, is the first thing that
2:20:21 comes to mind.
2:20:24 It comes to mind, but actually above anything in my life.
2:20:31 And then I do have a little bit of Scott’s fear, which he expressed there, which is that
2:20:40 I will make bad decisions based on, I’m going to just say it, just like the temptation of
2:20:41 life.
2:20:46 And that will lead me up, lead me to be a bad father, not be around for my kids, not be able
2:20:53 to be able to be around for my kids and be lonely and old and rich and miserable.
2:20:57 It’s like kind of a fear I’ve always had.
2:20:58 It’s interesting I said the word temptation.
2:20:59 Yeah.
2:21:01 Because in the world, you know, there’s a lot of temptation.
2:21:02 There is.
2:21:03 People don’t talk about it a lot.
2:21:06 Thank you, Scott.
2:21:07 Thank you.
2:21:10 I want to say thank you to you in particular, because you’ve been one of the leading voices
2:21:11 in this fight.
2:21:12 That’s a generous thing to say.
2:21:13 I appreciate that.
2:21:15 No, but it’s absolutely not generous, because it’s absolutely true.
2:21:17 When people think of this subject matter, they think of you now.
2:21:18 Oh, I appreciate that.
2:21:22 And you also stuck your neck out and started speaking about the subject long before it
2:21:23 was okay to speak about the subject.
2:21:24 Thank you.
2:21:30 And you spoke about it in such an eloquent, hilarious, wise way that both sides listened.
2:21:35 And I think you’re one of the key people on this subject matter who’s even allowed these
2:21:41 kind of reports to exist, because I’m actually not sure that if it wasn’t for you, reports
2:21:42 like this would exist.
2:21:44 I think you’re wrong, but I’ll take it.
2:21:45 I think I’m absolutely right.
2:21:48 Like, I actually think I’m right, because the reach you’ve had on this subject matter is
2:21:52 hundreds and hundreds of millions of people across the clips, across the podcasts you’ve
2:21:52 done.
2:21:57 And like I said, listen, there wasn’t a lot of people saying it before you could say it.
2:21:58 You’ve actually given cover to a lot of people.
2:22:05 You’ve even given cover to me, and it’s because of the wonderful science and art that you deploy
2:22:06 as it relates to communication.
2:22:12 And Logan, thank you as well, because you’ve made the decision as well to lend your voice
2:22:16 to this subject matter, which is complicated, and it’s like problematic, and it’s full of
2:22:17 like landmines, it feels like.
2:22:21 But you’re adding an incredibly important perspective when that comes from tremendous research,
2:22:28 lived experience, and you’re a very important, I think, individual in this fight.
2:22:34 To speak and to sort of create a better world for our young and lost boys.
2:22:35 Thank you.
2:22:36 Can I beg, Scott, too?
2:22:37 Knock yourself out.
2:22:39 You know, just to make you uncomfortable.
2:22:40 Go on!
2:22:40 Okay.
2:22:44 Yeah, so as I’ve been talking to people about my interest in this, the first thing they always
2:22:47 say is, oh, the stuff that Scott Galloway is talking about.
2:22:50 And if you weren’t talking about it, I don’t think they would have anyone to point to.
2:22:55 But I just need to, I feel like a plagiarist because the majority of my good data comes
2:22:56 from Richard Reads.
2:23:02 I know that that’s true, but the point is you are the most effective communicator in the world
2:23:02 right now.
2:23:09 Your ability to turn stories and facts into persuasion is something that no one else is
2:23:09 doing.
2:23:14 So you’re taking Richard’s data and combining your lived experience, and you’re getting
2:23:17 this message out there in a way that no one else is doing.
2:23:17 Thank you.
2:23:18 That’s generous.
2:23:18 Thank you.
2:23:24 And no one else could reach both sides in such an effective way, which I think is really important.
2:23:26 So again, thank you, Scott.
2:23:27 Thank you.
2:23:28 Thank you for being so generous with your time.
2:23:29 Really appreciate it.
2:23:32 We launched these conversation cards and they sold out.
2:23:33 And we launched them again and they sold out again.
2:23:35 We launched them again and they sold out again.
2:23:39 Because people love playing these with colleagues at work, with friends at home, and also with
2:23:40 family.
2:23:42 And we’ve also got a big audience that use them as journal prompts.
2:23:47 Every single time a guest comes on the diary of a CEO, they leave a question for the
2:23:49 next guest in the diary.
2:23:52 And I’ve sat here with some of the most incredible people in the world, and they’ve left all of
2:23:54 these questions in the diary.
2:23:58 And I’ve ranked them from one to three in terms of the depth.
2:24:00 One being a starter question.
2:24:05 And level three, if you look on the back here, this is a level three, becomes a much deeper
2:24:07 question that builds even more connection.
2:24:14 If you turn the cards over and you scan that QR code, you can see who answered the card and
2:24:16 watch the video of them answering it in real time.
2:24:21 So if you would like to get your hands on some of these conversation cards, go to thediary.com
2:24:22 or look at the link in the description below.
2:24:28 I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple
2:24:33 and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven’t yet hit the
2:24:35 follow button or the subscribe button, wherever you’re listening to this.
2:24:37 I would like to make a deal with you.
2:24:41 If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from
2:24:44 now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better.
2:24:47 I can’t tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button.
2:24:51 The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you
2:24:53 want to see and continue to doing this thing we love.
2:24:57 If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button, wherever you’re listening
2:24:58 to this, that would mean the world to me.
2:25:00 That is the only favor I will ever ask you.
2:25:01 Thank you so much for your time.
2:25:21 Thank you.