The Confidence Conversation We Need to Have with Scott Galloway

0:00 I had some f**ked up sense of masculinity when I was young where I never showed my emotions. Didn't cry between the ages of 29 and 44, didn't laugh out loud. Now I purposely try to train myself into laughing out loud. Because 50% of having a good sense of humor is appreciating other people's cleverness.

0:15 I think learning to laugh, that's an expression of something you're feeling on the inside. I would argue is vulnerability. I think when you're a younger man, sometimes you have this belief that recognizing someone else is funny, acknowledging someone else's success, somehow takes away from your success.

0:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That it's a zero-sum game. And what you realize as you get older is the guy who says to another guy, wow, you're so impressive or laughs at his joke and says, wow, that was really funny. That's confidence. Yes, you're describing confidence. It's 100%. That's all it is. Most of us have at least one friend who's got a total opposite personality to us.

0:56 On paper, it shouldn't work. But for some reason, it just does. That's me and Scott Galloway. Let's cause some trouble. If you don't know Scott, he's a force of nature, a professor, entrepreneur, a podcaster, a best-selling author who's built a reputation as a provocative social commentator, unafraid of triggering his audience, or me, or anyone listening to this podcast.

1:21 And I'll get shit for this. Recently, the masculinity crisis has been one of Scott's main focuses, which inspired his new book Notes on Being a Man. This also served as the starting point for our debate. I mean conversation. Yes, we have very different ideas about healthy masculinity, but we agree on one thing.

1:41 Confidence is the thing. And the question is, how do we help people build their confidence? Real men can listen, grow, disagree with respect, and still find common ground, just like me and my masculine friend, Scott. This is a bit of optimism. You were a business guy, then you were a teacher, and now you've sort of taken on a larger than life presence as a podcaster, but also some social commentator.

2:20 What's happening in your head? Are you growing up or you maturing? What philosophies have you completely abandoned? Is it age? Is it wisdom? Like, what's the thing that took you from there to here? It's a generous question. I think a couple of things are driving me. One, I'm an atheist, and I think that really soon nobody we know or love is gonna remember us or be remembered.

2:43 And so why wouldn't you try and live your life to the fullest and speak your mind and say things you're thinking but you're worried about being shamed but you think that they're right? So I'm trying to live my life fearlessly. I would say that my goal is to live my life like I'm dancing with no one watching.

3:00 Yeah. I think it's important to reverse engineer your success to things that weren't your fault. I'm not a humble person we've talked about this. I think I'm a fucking monster. I think I'm in the top one percent of grit and hardworking and creative, but that puts you in a room the size of Germany. That puts you in a room of 75 million people.

3:19 When I look back on the things that have resulted in a lifestyle my parents couldn't have dreamt of in terms of economics or influence or interesting friends and peers. It's one of the irrational passions for my well-being and my mother. So I try to think about mentoring young men and finding programs that support and show young people value to the University of California.

3:44 I got pilgrims, I got to go to UCLA when the admissions rate was 76%. This year will be 9%. I got to go to graduate school at Berkeley with a 2.27 GPA from UCLA for basically no money. So I'm very involved. I spent a lot of money for me at least on access or broadening access to state-supported education.

4:03 Yeah. People say, what's the secret of your success for me? It's pretty straightforward. And that is I have been less afraid of public failure than most people. When you put out a podcast and you start a business you're risking public failure. Yeah. I want to be better friends with Simon Sinek. That's a certain amount of public failure and exposure.

4:21 When you approach a strange woman and express romantic interest, you're setting yourself up for public failure. Most of my businesses have failed. But what I've been good at is risking public failure. And I want to do more of that because if you think about the real obstacle between most people in a democratic society with the prosperity Americans enjoy and success or a better life, it's their fear of public failure.

4:48 And what I've learned is the fear of public failure is a curve that is too inches high and really doesn't fucking matter. If you start a business and it doesn't work, people go, oh, it didn't work. And then they go back to thinking about themselves. If you approach a woman and express interest and she's not interested in you and you're respectful you're both gonna be just fine.

5:07 Yeah. So I'm trying to be fearless and I'm trying to also think about how I help or contribute to the things that gave me an irrational amount of success. I have a friend, she's a female entrepreneur who believes and there's a caveat at the end, but she believes that men make better entrepreneurs than women.

5:29 And she came to this belief because she said, when we're young, traditional roles still apply where men have to be the social initiators for the most part. So the boy has to ask the girl to the prom those conventions still exist. And so men from an early age, boys from an early age have to build up the courage to ask, get shut down, ask again, get shut down, ask get shut down.

5:53 And so when they grow up and they join the business world they become more comfortable trying, get shut down, sales pitch, get shut down. And her attitude is that muscle, that grit, that fearlessness is cultivated young. And the caveat now is now in a world where everybody seems to have retracted from taking social risk or too many people have.

6:16 And you can sit in your room and swipe right and you never feel rejected. You can just assume they didn't see your picture or whatever it is that that muscle isn't building for anybody. There's a lot there. So I'm glad that she said that because if I say and I've said both of these things, women are more observant.

6:39 They get more reward from relationships. They have better IQ because they've been charged with being more thoughtful. Humans and elephants, I think are the only two mammals where the female lives beyond menopause because our species is recognized that female concern and observance and wisdom is still really important to the progress of the species.

7:02 So if I say women are their prefrontal cortex matures earlier at the more observant, they have better bedside manner. One of the results is more women in medical school and in general women will make better doctors. Everyone politely applauds and nods their head. I think women make generally speaking better managers.

7:19 I think they observe stuff and they're better IQ and can kind of zero in on stuff. More focused on getting shit done as opposed to putting up with office politics because a lot of times they had to get home and take care of their kids. People lightly applaud. Men on average make better entrepreneurs.

7:37 They're more aggressive, they're more risk aggressive. Throughout history they've been taught, oh no. Pick up a sword and go battle that enemy and risk your own life. Oh no, you see something moving in the bushes, pick up a spear and run after the thing and risk your own life. If there's a fire and you have to rush in and grab people, don't be thoughtful about it, rush in and grab people.

7:58 The male brain is more risk aggressive. Now some people see that as toxic, it can also result in valor and some of that aggression and risk taking one of the reasons we put a man on the moon and have vaccines. But if you say that, it's, oh, I don't feel safe around him. So you're allowed to acknowledge a different in the sexes as long as it positions women of saints and men as predators.

8:19 So we can't even have an adult conversation. And by the way, the key land acknowledgement here is that doesn't mean we shouldn't be encouraging more men to go into nursing. That doesn't mean that women shouldn't have the same access to venture capital is men. Because there are fantastic masculine attributes that come up in a lot of women and there's a lot of feminine attributes that come up in men.

8:40 I'm more drawn to feminine men as my close friends. I think the majority of my friends are gay. People say we are associated gay people with feminism and I get into another culture war. I am drawn to feminine attributes in my friends. I like to be taken care of. And there's nothing wrong with that. And a lot of men represent wonderful femininity.

8:59 Most of the 95% of us who are born binary have an easier time leaning into certain attributes than others. And we should celebrate that. And I think we celebrate finally many of the wonderful things about femininity in the workplace. There's no reason why we can't celebrate masculinity while recognizing a quality of opportunity might not necessarily foot to a quality of outcome.

9:23 I think if you gave women the exact same opportunities to BCOs, there would be more than 17% which there is now. But I don't think everything is going to be 50-50. The key is either provided with the same opportunities. And right now they're not. I think you're 100% right. I spoke at a women's entrepreneur conference.

9:42 And this is what I said, obviously, for shock value. We don't need more women's CEOs. And then I went on and explained. I said, traditional male characteristics are things like aggression and decisiveness. Traditional female characteristics are things like patience, thoughtfulness, caring, maternal instinct.

10:00 I said, it's not that we need more female CEOs. It's that we need more CEOs who act like females. And women just happen to be better at that. And this whole idea of bringing more balance. Because I think that if you look at our business world, that we've over-indexed on aggression and decisiveness and we've under-appreciated things like caring, patience, listening.

10:25 And if you look at the great cultures where people love coming to work and the stuff that I've sort of bet my career on, you find a lot more of those female attributes in the male or female leaders. And I think this is the point you're trying to make, which is we have to appreciate that there are differences and that one, quote unquote, is not better than the other, but you want to align those attributes for the task at hand and ultimately, you need both.

10:49 You ultimately need both. And you might appreciate this. I visited the officer candidate school for the Marine Corps at Quantico, Virginia. And when they run the training for the officers, they separate the men and the women. And they've learned a few things when they've done this. So they have something called the LRC, which is the Leadership Reaction Course.

11:07 It's a timed problem-solving course, basically, where you have to get like all your Marines of material across the water hazard and a set amount of time, whatever. And they've noticed stark differences between the all-male teams and the all-female teams. The all-male teams generally fail because they don't think enough about how to solve the problem.

11:28 Their bias is for action and execution and they usually pick the wrong solution. The women spend all the time discussing the right solution. They often come to the right solution, but they don't leave enough time to execute. So this idea that you talk about, which is that sort of aggression and go in decisiveness, the Marine Corps sees that and they also see the thoughtfulness and the higher order of thinking from the women.

11:53 And so the question is, how do you get both? All-diverse teams, yeah, diverse teams make better teams. Diverse teams make better, yeah. I mean, in general, men make better combat soldiers. You're not supposed to say that. Men are physically stronger. They're more prone to rush out in the line of fire and try and save a comrade.

12:11 Women are more, let's not be stupid. We need to think this through. You need a little bit of that both. And what, unfortunately, what I believe is that aggressiveness or risk-taking a men has been pathologized as toxic while not appreciating that whatever it was, the 223 firemen that were killed in 9-11 who rushed into the building without thinking, they were all men.

12:34 And so I don't think there's any reason why we can't celebrate masculine attributes. My book has gotten a lot of pushback online from a lot of, I don't even call them feminists, I call them ring light therapists. There's this whole thing on TikTok, I don't even see this. Why would you ever risk going on a date when you can be unalived with a man?

12:52 And they've couched it as the men basically that women who go on dates with other young men are literally taking their life into their hands. And here's the date of the actual numbers. 2,500 women a year are murdered by men. That is way too many, it's still a problem. Sexual assault is actually a bigger problem.

13:09 Let's just stick to murder or unaliving. 70% of those are people they know, right? People don't have a relationship with. So there's actually very few random male on female murders. So let's call it 2,500. 10,000 men kill another man. 40,000 men kill themselves. So if you go on a date with a man, just be clear, he's 16 times more likely to go home after the date and hurt himself, then hurt you.

13:39 You are four times more likely to die on the car ride to the date. You are four times more likely to choke and die during dinner. So let's stop pathologizing young men as these violent predators looking to hurt women. They have become increasingly violent, but they've become increasingly violent towards themselves.

14:02 So I find that we're quick to pathologize masculine attributes without recognizing that some of these masculine attributes have literally built the world. Does that mean we're done? Does that mean it's not a new time and that we shouldn't train our young men to be more protective of their mothers and their sisters and to celebrate their success and realize their ascent has not come at our cost?

14:23 Yeah, there needs to be an updated frame of masculinity. But the statistics don't eliminate somebody's fear, right? I mean, Tucker Maxx used to talk about this if you remember Tucker Maxx. You know, he said he wasn't. I hope they serve beers and hell. Exactly, that Tucker Maxx, yeah. That's a cultural reference.

14:40 Yeah, let's go listen to some Cisco. You got an English beat. We can get to anyone, sorry, go ahead. He said, if you want to stand the dynamics and male and female dating, you have to appreciate that men fear being humiliated and women fear being raped or murdered. If a girl goes home with a guy on a first or second date, almost every girl will text their friend and say, this is the name of the guy, this is the address I'm going to incase anything happens.

15:08 I don't think a guy has ever texted a friend and said, here's the address in case something happens to me, right? And so there are fears on both sides, as I said, men fear being humiliated and women fear being raped or murdered. And so simply us giving the statistic of the fear is not what a lay is the fear.

15:26 The question is, is why do those fears exist and then what do we have to do culturally societally for those fears to diminish? And this goes back to the 80s, you know, where we've sort of over-indexed on rugged individualism, we've over-indexed on sort of aggressive masculinity as an attribute in business.

15:47 We've seen the results, more short-termism, less caring at work, where we use human beings to balance the books on an annualized basis, where we prioritize our quote unquote, you know, fiduciary duty, and when we think that the fiduciary duty to our shareholder means sacrificing employees or customers, failing to recognize that taking care of employees and customers is actually good for the shareholder, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and we find ourselves here today.

16:10 And so I think the work that you talk about and the work that I do, which is sort of two sides of the same coin, even though I think we're coming at it from a different angle, which is one of the reasons I think we get along, which is we both favor and we're using sort of traditional binary gender terms sort of more feminine men.

16:27 The men that we prefer, they tend to be more adept at listening, have patience, have a little more care in them, maybe a little less of that outward aggression because they've got something to prove, maybe because they fear being humiliated, I don't know or immasculated, I don't know what it is. And I think being okay with oneself is the thing that leads to being open to being softer.

16:54 And you studied this more than I have, what is the connection between insecurity and some of that aggression that does come out as excessive or toxic masculinity? A lot there. So I think every father has an obligation to teach his son about, not necessarily about masculinity but give your son a code.

17:23 And I believe that a decent code for young men is an aspirational code of masculinity. And I think every young man needs to think about being a provider, how am I eventually if I want to have a family going to take an economic lead here? That's not to say I'm going to get in the way of my wife's economic progress.

17:42 Sometimes that is being a man saying, all right, I'm going to be supportive of my partner who's better at this whole money thing. But I think it's a decent, healthy position to start from that I need to have a plan, gain skills, certification, such that I can be economically viable. Young men are still disproportionately evaluated based on their economic viability.

18:00 Is that fair or not? I don't know, it just is. But the second leg of the stool is protection. And to recognize that if you've never been a victim, it's hard to empathize with victims. I've almost never in my life felt unsafe. I'm 6'2", 190. I remember walking down the street with my sister during COVID, a homeless guy kind of stirred and she jumped out of her skin.

18:23 I said, that was a bit of an overreaction and she said, easy for you to say. And it's like Dave Chappelle said, when he got paid and cashed $30,000 and was in his backpack and he said, for the first time, he felt like what it's like to be a woman that everyone is ready to attack you. And I recognize now, and I think part of the problem with big tech is it's led by people who've never really understood poverty.

18:44 They've never really understood what it's like to be on the wrong end of racism or homophobia or the dangers the women face every day. I hadn't thought about Waymo's taking off and passmated by autonomous. And one of the groups fueling Waymo is women, because they don't feel safe with the driver. And someone did a study like Uber drivers never talked to me.

19:08 The majority of Uber drivers try to strike up a conversation with the woman in the back seat. Because I never experienced that, I don't think it exists. So it's important that young boys, women should cross the street when they see men on that side of the street, not cross to the other side. Men have to, and especially boys have to recognize that masculinity is breaking up fights at bars, not starting them, that you always air on the side of protection with people who are more vulnerable or smaller than you and women are physically smaller than men.

19:40 What was the second part? Oh, the softness? So let me be clear. Let me, I just want to trigger some of your listeners. Yeah, there's no ocean of the sensitive man. I think it's total bullshit. I don't think that's what women want. I think two sensitive people in the car leaves the parallel parking spot empty and two people in the car crying.

19:59 I think there's a ton of evidence showing that women want a man who notices their life, who find stages fit to a plot on them, who registers what's important to them, becomes important to them. But I don't think women are looking for a sensitive man. And the majority of the information shows that women while claiming they want a sensitive man want to dude with a beard who's strong and is a little bit rough around the edges.

20:23 Their sensitive man is called their gay best friend, the jerk and the aggressive guys who they want to fuck. We're speaking in extremes here. You're creating this caricature of this sensitive man. What we're saying is somebody who's more sensitive. Yes, I understand. Notice is their life. I understand that, listen, men who are bold and have beards are extremely more attractive to women.

20:44 You being bold with a beard, me being haired with no beard, the biggest habit has nothing to do with men on day. Nothing to do with seeing a woman or acknowledging her and all those things which you said are 100% true that has nothing to do with being a sensitive man or not sensitive men. I think we're arguing semantics here.

21:02 I tell, we're gonna ground this. I tell men, young men, the ultimate aphrodisiac on a date is not money, it's not big muscles. It's follow-up questions. Tristan and ask, follow-up questions. True. I think there's some common ground here, but I think there's a cognitive dissonance what we call in marketing where people say, well, I would pay $300 for that and then they wouldn't pay $30 for it.

21:29 Of course, of course. What women say they want in a man, oftentimes to foot to who they decide to partner with and who they're drawn to sexually. And I'm not suggesting that man need to man up or demonstrate talk, there needs to be a reframing of what it means to be masculine, but one, figure out a way to be economically viable.

21:51 Two, figure out a way to be strong physically. Three, you initiate contact. They distant this big survey on dating. They ask women, what bothers you most about being at a bar or in a single setting. The number two thing was that creeps approach me, right? The number five biggest complaint, nobody approaches me.

22:13 You have to teach your boys how to make what I call the open. I used to do this with my boys. I wouldn't allow them back in the house unless they talked to a stranger. You have to be able to go up to a strange dude at your boarding school and say, hey, do you want to grab the game this weekend? Yeah.

22:28 And be willing to get to know. You might get rejected. You have to be willing to go up to, I don't want to even say, like co-worker, everyone gets their horrified. One in three relationships speaking at work. And if you don't have the difference between expressing interest and harassing someone, you have much bigger problems.

22:43 And I think above a certain senior level, your fly is up and locked and you take that shit up campus. I deal with a lot of that shit on boards. Agreed. But I think the ability to get your kids to practice, especially young men, how to express platonic and romantic interest while making the other person feel safe is a skill we have.

23:02 Because here's the bottom line. 80% of women still expect men to make the approach. And unfortunately, sometimes the difference between a situation that is creepy and romantic is the perceived attractiveness of the person initiating. So there's got to be some overlap here where we acknowledge that some of that, I won't call it aggression, you taught me this, but initiation, some of that raw energy, some of that aggressiveness, some of that, I want to make a shit ton of money.

23:28 I want to be really fucking strong. I want to run long distances and lift heavy weights in my mind in the gym. I think that's a pretty good way to go. And there's nothing toxic about it. And then the moment you have that type of strength of that economic viability, you move to protection. I think we're talking about a complete picture here, which is to make someone feel safe and protected is all of those things.

23:50 There's the sort of the very caveman physical protection, as you said, sort of the feeling of walking down the street and somebody's there and the muscles and the money that you can provide for a family. But it's also the psychological safety at home that I feel I can express my feelings and not get gas lit or you can share your feelings so that this can be a functional relationship.

24:09 And I feel psychologically safe in the relationship. And I think we're saying both things and it goes back to that Marine Corps example, which is it's blended. And they may play different roles at different times. So maybe the initiation is one thing, but being in the relationship, those things might shift a little bit.

24:24 That you want that person who's bearded and muscular and bald to actually have the skills of listening and the ability to repair conflict, et cetera, in the relationship. So I think we're saying the same thing, but you don't necessarily need all those skills at every time, but at some point throughout the relationship, you got to have it all.

24:43 Yeah, I think the far right is completed masculinity with coarseness and cruelty and blames women for men's problems. And I just think that's when a man's loss that's script 20 blames an immigrant for his economic problems or a woman for his romantic problems. We should be celebrating our sisters and our mothers ascent.

24:59 This is a wonderful thing. It saved our economy in the 70s, 80s and 90s. It's the reason we won World War II as we said, oh, women can build P-51s as well as men can and we put them in the factories, Hitler to not. What I think we have now, there was some mixed messaging that is confusing to young men and that is say, well, okay, what's a good form of masculinity?

25:18 I hear the word vulnerability a lot. What is vulnerability? We'll express your emotions, be more sensitive. You're describing the attributes we admire on women. There has to be something in between the toxic or the weird masculinity, performative masculinity on the right and telling people to just act more like women.

25:37 There has to be something that men can own that's aspirational. I tell my boys this, whenever you're around a woman, you pay for everything. And they're like, yeah, that's so boomer. I'm like, okay, no woman's ever gonna kiss you if you don't pay for her. And all the surveys show women expect, I'm fine paying half, he doesn't own me.

25:57 No, you pay, there's no expectation of anything. She's not a prostitute, you're not a John. In every mammal, there's a mating process. Yeah, it's part of the creature. Her fertility window is shorter than yours. So her time's more valuable than yours. The downside of sex is much greater for her than for you.

26:15 So her time is more valuable than also just logistically. Let me give you my beauty routine. I splash water on my face. Maybe brush my teeth if I'm super excited. I don't know what that costs, but it's not a lot. For a woman to get ready for a date, you might be talking our 100 or 200 bucks in terms of extensions, hair, nails, Sephora, the expectations we place on women in terms of fashion and beauty is not only on realistic, it's really fucking expensive.

26:42 So one small means of demonstrating valor that you're committed, the register, the asymmetry and the value of her time versus yours is you pay. And people go ape shit about that. I stand by it. Well, let me poke the bear a little bit. Your kids say that's so boomer, dad. But dating rituals do change.

27:02 And you and I are older. And you and I sort of have more traditional ways of dating, and though statistically it may work well, I would argue that when you're attracted to someone, all bets are off, right? Like when you're not attracted to someone and they hold a door open for you, they're like, what, I can't hold my own door.

27:23 You think I can't do it, but if you're attracted to them, like, oh, what a gentleman, right? So to your point about the person who approaches you whether they're creepy or not creepy, the attraction does matter, the chemistry, whatever it is. So a lot of it is sort of academic based on those initial things, those sort of hard to put words to things.

27:40 Are dating rituals changing? Do we know enough about that? That maybe the younger kids do value different things, even though they do value things like safety and protection and those things that we're talking about, the manner in which they're expressed, maybe they are different, maybe we are old. And maybe the way we're saying that you provide protection and you communicate those things is changing.

28:04 I want to acknowledge that a guy in my age doesn't even know what he doesn't know with respect to younger people. What I look at is the data. As a wise executive once told me, you know, data is like a bikini, it hides all the best bits. Well, okay, as Jim Barkstale, the CEO of AT&T and Netscape said, if we're gonna go with opinions, let's go with mine.

28:25 If we have data, let's look at the data. That's where I try to find my objective truth is in surveys and data. And what I find with respect to money and women being disproportionately evaluated and I'm fairly on the aesthetics and men being disproportionately evaluated on their economic viability, I find it's actually gotten worse.

28:42 Did back when I was dating, most men did okay. If you went to UCLA, you had an okay job. I made a little bit more money than my friends because those investment banking, but we all did okay. Now with Instagram, people feel like unless they're dating a dude that can take him to the Aman Ghani or take him and have the best seats in Ibiza that he's not doing well.

29:02 And if I'm not a fucking super model with ridiculous, a good job, I mean, women are basically told to be Wonder Woman now and men are told that if they don't make millions of dollars in crypto by the time they're 30, they're losers. And I find that it's gotten worse in terms of men getting their self-esteem from an unrealistic vision of their economic success and a woman being evaluated based on an unrealistic vision of her aesthetics with all this filters, what we have is your happiness is a function of your prosperity minus your envy.

29:37 And all we have out there are algorithms meant to ramp up our envy and create unreasonable expectations around ourself and what we should expect in a partner. And then when you go to the digitization of the mating market, which consolidates it, when Amazon came along, 50% of retail went to e-commerce.

29:53 When Google came along, 93% to search or information of query went to one, now that we've digitized dating and the majority of relationships begin, or that's the number one source of connection is online dating, there's been a consolidation of metrics. And around men, it's essentially your ability to signal economic security and your height.

30:12 And if you see these surveys with women that say, what are the bare minimum? Six foot, six figures, that's becoming new thing. Six foot, six figures. That doesn't seem unreasonable. If you take a men over 50, men who are obese, men who are married, that's 4% of the population. And then at the same time, the men who are in the top 10% of dating get about somewhere between 16, 80% of the interest, which means 80% of the men fighting over a small number of women, which kind of quite frankly, confirms their worst fears, validates their insecurities.

30:43 So online dating has kind of been a disaster for young people. And this all leads to the same place and where my solutions are the following. I think we need mandatory national service where young people can meet people from different ethnic income, religious backgrounds, and realize how wonderful other young Americans are.

31:00 I just spent time with an IDF battalion, a bunch of young, beautiful men and women handling heavy equipment depending upon each other. That's where they meet friends, mentors, and mates. Singapore, the most religiously diverse nation in the world. The leader there said, we risk ethnic violence, so we need to create one flag that they all pray to, and that's the national flag.

31:18 And so everybody in Singapore does national service. I think we need to put more money on young people's pockets. I think we need massive housing programs. I think we need $25 an hour minimum wage. And also, we need tax credits for third places. Where do young people meet and fall in love? Generally speaking, young men aren't six feet in making a shit ton of money.

31:38 But over time, the way women decide to mate or pair with these individuals is he was really nice to his parents at church, and I fell in love with him. He was great at work. And he was so funny, he has the coolest friends. Women fall in love slowly. But where are the venues for men to demonstrate excellence now?

31:59 They're not going to work. You are going to school. And you have tenants of religious institutions is at all time low. Men are spending less time outdoors, men under the age of 30, and prison inmates. So where are the venues for men to demonstrate excellence to women who have a naturally much finer filter for mating selection?

32:20 And the result is loneliness, a sex recession, people not connecting, and when people don't connect, they're much more likely to think ill of each other. They're much more likely, especially men, to start blaming other people for their problems. So I see loneliness, and I see a rise of nationalism. I see economic harm around a lack of connection because we don't have third places for people to meet.

32:44 I mean, a lot of the things that you talked about or social media driven, you know, the expectations of how tall I have to be, how beautiful I have to be, how rich I have to be, et cetera, and the increasing of insecurity and envy. And we're starting to see amongst young people a rebellion. We're starting to see people choosing to go offline.

33:01 Well, I think we're starting to see, and I hopefully more of it, a rejection of online dating as the primary means of finding a partner. You know, if it's in the mix fine, and I completely agree with you in terms of mandatory service, one of the things that I've been learning as I've been learning about sort of friendship and everything, which is when there is more of a shared experience, people bond a lot quicker.

33:26 So for example, if you join a tennis club, so you'll meet people, it actually doesn't work very well because some people are great tennis players, some people are first time tennis players, and the great ones will hang out with the great ones in the first time, like we'll feel insecure that they don't belong.

33:40 But if you have a group where it's like new moms, right? So everybody there, regardless of their social class or whatever it is, their income, they're all new moms and all struggling with the same thing. And this idea of, I understand you and you understand me, actually increases the chance of bonding.

33:56 And the idea of mandatory service, whether it's teach for America or the military or something else, everybody's thrown in together. And you're right, there's lots of places in the world that have mandatory conscription. It's the great level planning field, it's the great leveler because we're all coming in to do the same thing.

34:14 We're all starting from the bottom. Alcoholics anonymous is kind of like that too. Like, you know, you go to an A meeting, it's kind of incredible, which is there's rich, there's poor, there's every color, there's every religion, but the bond is so intense because it's a unified single experience. And if confidence is the thing we're grappling with, that confidence allows me to be more relaxed.

34:38 If confidence allows me to get rid of toxic masculinity, if confidence allows me to be more open to somebody else, if confidence allows me to be more expressive, to show my love for my parents at church and not be all like trying to hide it because I'm trying to be all tough, for example. I think it goes back to a lot of the stuff you're talking about, which is how do we help young people build confidence?

35:00 Yeah, look, nothing is more attractive and more important than confidence. And, you know, there's been a lot of studies done on it, whether it's sports, you know, finding places that you can succeed, the irrational passion for your well-being or just straight line of affection. When I reverse engineer all of my blessings, it comes down to a small number of things that aren't my fault, the irrational passion of my well-being and my mother, but, you know, told me implicit and explicit, small and big ways every day that I add value.

35:28 Big government, you know, Pell grants for education and then an economy that gave unremarkable people huge opportunities, whether it was massive investments in technology with DARPA, access to capital, competitive markets, where no one big company could put you out of business overnight. Most of my companies were built by immigrants.

35:48 I feel like everything that gave me what I have now is under attack right now. Yeah. And also, I think there's just a ton of young men who have seen their economic and cultural standing really collapse. And I don't think that's going to be helpful. I don't think the country nor women are going to continue to flourish if men are flailing.

36:07 But how do you give your kids confidence? That's a tough one, right? That's a bigger one. The advice I just have or I try and practice, you know, this is little things, right? It's affection. It's expressing how much you care about them. It's setting guardrails. It's having tough conversations. I love it with First Lady Obama said, basically she said is we decided to be assholes so they wouldn't be assholes.

36:29 I have really difficult conversations with my kids every day where it would just be so much easier to let them stay up till 2 a.m. and watch the Super Bowl. And I'm like, no, you're not. You gotta go to sleep right now. And by the way, I'm disappointed you got to be on that science test. I know you can do better.

36:44 I know we're supposed to be. Everyone's a win. No, we have very hard conversations. But every day, first and last thing I say to them is I love them. They know I just, I'm crazy about them and I think they have huge value. And I think over time that soaks into them. I'll also try and get them playing competitive sports, trying to get my kids to work out like my dad did, trying to get them to be outdoors.

37:08 I think being around people, others, creates moments of a lack of self-esteem but over time increases your self-esteem. But I think the greatest self-esteem destroy in history has been when social went on mobile. I think it's created so much envy, so many unrealistic expectations. The high school cafeteria is following you around 24 by seven in a mean way with the algorithms encourage young girls to sexualize themselves or encourage people to start fights where they don't need to be any or to find the weakest person in the thread and go after them.

37:38 I can tell when my kid is really upset, I'll say to his mom like something happened on social media. It's not gonna tell us about it, something happened and people will say, well, you're the parent just block social media. That means you don't have kids. There's studies showing, if a kid doesn't have social media, he's even more depressed because he's ostracized from the community.

37:59 There's no way to communicate. That's a longer question Simon and unfortunately every parenting book I read contradicts the last one I read. But I know in terms of confidence, there's a few things you can do. I wonder if we're confusing some of the things like when you talk about sort of money and strength and muscles and being a provider and being a protector.

38:18 Though those things are true, I wonder if what it is is what we are truly attracted to in each other is confidence. Whether it's projecting how confident we are and how we look and how we feel and how we dress, that's all projection of confidence, right? Or how much money we make or how strong we are, that's all projection of confidence.

38:36 And if we overcompensate, like we come on too strong and we talk about the money too much, though in the short term it may project confidence, but once we get to know each other, it all collapses. I wonder if that talking too much about money, muscles and all of that kind of stuff is the false projection of confidence, where what we really should be talking about is actual self-confidence, which when you have it, even if you're not a 10 and you belong in a magazine, you like who you are and you know you have other attributes and that comes across and people are far more attracted to the confident person who may be a five or a six than the horrible person is a 10 and looks, at least when you get past the first date.

39:24 So, you know, but there's research here. So, the reason why women are drawn is- Well, it doesn't mean the research is leading us to the right conclusions. All right, but it's the closest thing I can find to an object of truth, versus finding your favorite ring life therapist or gender study. I look at the data and I look at peer review research and the research around why women find muscles attractive is generally the following.

39:46 It's not the aesthetic draw, the muscles themselves, it's what it says about the man. It says that he has some discipline. It says he can commit to something. It says he shows up that he's dependable. You're a good shapesimmon. What does that mean? It means you have your shit together. It means that even if you have a few too many drinks one night or you're not feeling great or you have a lot on your plate, you manage to get to the gym.

40:07 That says something about your ability to be a good partner, a good provider, a good mate. There's been a lot of studies on what attributes are the sexual currency for men in the eyes of women and they almost all distill down to kind of three basic truths. The number one signal we don't like to talk about this is the man's ability to signal resources.

40:28 That's the bad news. The good news is the word signal. And that is if you're a guy who's getting your graduate degree and you're the one that doesn't order a bottle of gray goods at two in the morning, you go home, you're thoughtful, you're considerate, you study hard, you have your shit together, you are signaling resources in the future.

40:46 And by the way, the best relationships in my view are the relationships where you meet someone and you build something together. Because there's just a feeling of shared accomplishment that is so, that just binds you for the rest of your life, I find. By the way, if you talk to a lot of women, what you'll also find is they actually prefer men with slightly imperfect bodies, like a little bit of punch, you know, good body, but not a perfect body because when they see online, you know, dating app, some guy with a perfectly chiseled, you know, abs and what that also signals is that they care about themselves more than they care about anybody else that they're very self-involved.

41:22 So there is a line. Probably a minute. The number two thing, all right? Intellect, this is anthropological. Yeah. People who make good decisions for the tribe, if you make really good decisions under pressure, your partner and your kids are more likely to survive. Yeah. Women find intellect and it can be storytelling.

41:40 The reason why Mick Jagger gets to procreate with a 34 year old ballerina is he's a great storyteller. Music is storytelling. We respect intellect. We respect creativity. People are really drawn to it. Quick quiz. What is the fastest way to communicate intellect, Simon? Is it through a story that's got?

41:58 Humor. If you can make a woman laugh, she'll have coffee with you. It was the only way I ever got dates when I was in high school in college, was I made women laugh. Humor is an aphrodisiac for women. And then the number three, and this is the most under leverage, unknown currency of sexual attractiveness for men.

42:18 It's their secret weapon, kindness. This notion of the bad boy effect, that might be a turn on the short run. Women want to partner with men they perceive as kind. All of these things that you're talking about sort of humor and kindness, these aren't the masculine traits that you started talking about.

42:35 These are more softer traits. These are different. Sure, softer skills. Yeah. The kindness is at the end of the day, planning trees, the shade of which you'll never sit under. And it's like, what's the difference between being kind and nice? You might be sitting across the table from someone and being really nice to them and telling them how good-looking they are and dead of that.

42:52 All right, she senses that maybe this guy just wants to have sex with me and is boosting me. Are you nice to service staff? Do you go out of your way to be kind? Are you patient when the Uber driver takes the wrong turn to the airport? Do you purposely go out of your way to just do things for people who will never be able to do anything for you back?

43:12 People smell that. And by the way, I have trouble with that. I was born a kind person. I started a kindness practice on purpose when I was about 44. And I said, every day I'm going to start. And it's something you can teach yourself. It starts becoming reflex memory. But men don't realize if you aren't instinctively a kind person, you need to start a kindness product.

43:34 Women notice when you're nice to your mom. Women notice when you hold doors open for other people. And it's not performative. It's not about the evolved man. It's not about the guy who has more subscriptions to the Atlantic or is in touch with himself. It's signaling resources. It's intellect and it's kindness.

43:51 And to your point, you know, anybody can learn to be kind. It's a practice. Anybody can learn what's that? You can't learn to be funny. But this is what you can do. You can't learn to be funny. OK, but there's, it's a double-edged sword. Because I'm not funny. I can be funny, but I'm not funny. You can have a great sense of humor, even if you aren't intuitively funny.

44:13 And how do you do that? You laugh a lot. Someone says something really funny or sort of funny. You laugh out loud. People love to be around people who laugh a lot, right? You know that guy who has that crazy or that woman has that crazy infectious laughter? People love to be around that person. That person's a good time.

44:32 When someone says something funny, it's like leaning into your emotions. I didn't do this. I had some fucked up sense of masculinity when I was young where I never showed my emotions. Didn't cry between the ages of 29 and 44, didn't laugh out loud. Now when something moves me, I try to lean in. I try to get emotional.

44:45 If it makes me feel emotional, I don't hold back. And when someone says something funny, I purposely try to train myself into laughing out loud. Because 50% of having a good sense of humor is appreciating other people's clashes. OK, so you and I are very different personalities. I would dare say opposite.

45:03 And we get along and we like each other because of shared values and shared commitments and those kinds of things. I would argue that you learning to express yourself, and I'm going to take crying off the table. That'll be a gimme, right? I'm going to take crying off the table, but you learning to laugh, I would argue, is you learning to be more sensitive.

45:24 It's you learning to be vulnerable. I think learning to laugh, which is an emotion, that's an expression of something you're feeling on the inside. I would argue, is vulnerability. I hadn't thought of it that way. I think it's more when you're a younger man, sometimes you have this belief that recognizing someone else is funny, acknowledging someone else's success, acknowledging someone else's personal style, acknowledging another man's good looks, somehow takes away from your success.

45:56 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That it's a zero-sum game, that accomplishment and attractiveness and success are a zero-sum game. And what you realize as you get older is the guy who says to another guy, wow, you're so impressive, or like, I love that jacket. Or dude, you're so fucking ripped, good for you, man. Or laughs at his joke and says, wow, that was really funny.

46:17 That's confidence. Yes, you're describing confidence. It's 100%. That's all it is. So Steven Spielberg said that there are more people who win Oscars, who thank him that he didn't help than the people who he actually helped, right? So somebody who he helped, like give him a break, give him a leg up, make him a introduction, whatever it is, that they'll win an Oscar and they don't thank him from the stage.

46:41 But people who he's never met will thank him because of his inspiration and whatever he provided. And the theory being that these people who have this amazing accomplishment, this Oscar, that if they thank Steven Spielberg for the break he gave them, that somehow it devalues. There are accomplishment.

46:58 And to your point, this is a lack of self-confidence. It takes tremendous self-confidence to say thank you or I couldn't have done this alone. You and I both know this, which is the best leaders take accountability when things go wrong and they distribute. Yeah, success, yeah. When things go right, you know, that the best leaders that you and I both know when something goes incredibly right, they take zero credit.

47:23 They're like, no, no, no, it was my team. I have an amazing team. And when shit goes sideways, I'm like, on me, on me, and that is nothing more than an expression of confidence. Nothing. And so it goes right back to where we started, which is, though I agree with you and I can't argue the data that can speak you as display of potential and the ability to provide or good looks or good genetics, you know, signals, you know, we're gonna have a strong healthy kid.

47:51 You know, all of that stuff, I can't argue with that. But though it can be argued that, you know, the generations change in how we relate and how we date and all of the, maybe the way that you and I dated when we were kids is very different now, I think the thing that underlies all of it, that we have to focus on in ourselves and helping our friends and our kids build is confidence.

48:12 And that's the thing that I'm more obsessive about, which is what are the mechanisms to help somebody build confidence over telling them the actions they need to perform or the superficial things they need to achieve in order to superficially communicate confidence. Build the real thing rather than just the communication of that thing.

48:32 It's a fine line, but the thing, look, you want your kids, especially if someone raising kids, you want them to have an innate sense of confidence and self-esteem and boundaries around how they're treated such that I think more confident people will be more likely to be generous, loving people to other people.

48:52 You definitely want that. I think right now, as big a threat, maybe a bigger threat is, I find a lot of the people who control our economy, especially our tech platforms, credit their character and their grit for their success and blame the markets and other people for their failures. Of course, their confidence has turned into arrogance and a lack of appreciation for the struggles that other people face.

49:15 Yeah. So I find, at least the people I think about have almost a pathological ability to believe that they overcame everything, all these obstacles to become billionaires, while not recognizing that, again, a lot of their success is not their fault. Yeah. Scott, I could actually talk to you for a long time.

49:41 Let me ask you a couple more questions here just to close it out. What's the truth about happiness you wish you'd learn 20 years ago? Happiness is a sensation. I can get it from edibles and Netflix. I could be happy in an hour. No problem. Purpose is what you want to pursue. And purpose, I have found, and it's not the right answer for everybody, but I have found purpose in developing the skills, the strength and the wherewithal to establish a relationship with someone and raise who I think are gonna be patriotic loving men.

50:13 That is my purpose. So I can find happiness pretty easily, because it's a sensation, but what I would suggest is try and find purpose. And all the economic aspirations and AI and GDP and salary and negotiating for a salary and all that and stock options, it's all a means. The end is such that you can have an absence of economic security, such that you can have deep and meaningful relationships.

50:39 And I didn't figure that out until I was older, but that's where I find purpose. That's what I pursue. Over the past few years, your work has explored me loneliness. What do you think men, especially young men need right now, but don't have the language to ask for? The term risk is important for young men.

50:57 And that is men are taking way too much risk on gaming and gambling sites. They're taking too many risks with the stride and aggressive things they say online. And they're not taking enough risks offline. They're not applying for jobs they shouldn't get. They're not applying to college. They're not getting out of the house.

51:13 They're not approaching other impressive people and expressing an interest in friendship. They're not approaching potential romantic partners and expressing interest. It risk has a great return in certain venues and other, taking huge risks on Coinbase or on Robinhood or on betting platforms are really bad risks, but you need to take more risks with people outside of the house.

51:37 The only way you get to a great yes, the only way you get to a great job, a great school, a partner who's higher character and better looking in you, is by risking a ton of public failure and a ton of nose. Anyone who's gotten a great yeses has endured dozens if not hundreds of nose. You need to reallocate your risk.

51:54 Amen, social risk. Scott Galloway, you always make me think. You always challenge me. I always appreciate any time I get with you. Thank you very, very, very much. Thanks, Simon. I love spending time with you. Whenever I want to get together with Simon, he blows me off. It's like high school again. Literally.

52:11 Hold on. First of all, the last time you invited me out, let's just back off there. First of all, you never text me ever and invite me out ever. I invite you, number one. Number two, the last time you took the initiative to invite me out, you said, do you want to go out for a drink? I said, I'd love to.

52:27 You go, great. I'll meet you in an hour. I'm like, I can't meet you in an hour. I mean, you're like such an insecure chick right now. You never go out with me. So like, you know, I always find true. You kind of hold on against you. I wanted to be you. And instead, I sent you nude selfies. Everything is tricks up the last part there, folks.

52:46 I saved them, by the way. So let's cause some trouble. Let's find the dark side of Simon Sinek. I don't buy this whole groovy you and me thing. I'm like, I think there's a dark side to you. Of course there is. I don't deny it. All right. Let's find out. Let's go there. You're the bitter angry one. I'm not.

53:04 But I'm transparent about my bitterness in my anger. I'm transparent about my bitterness in my anger. I just have less of it. I don't see it. I don't think that's where you're going. You don't trust people who won't get drunk. I like to drink. That's, it's a flaw. Yeah, no, I don't mind that you like to drink.

53:19 You said to me, point blank. I don't trust people who don't drink or don't get drunk. I wouldn't say I don't trust them. I have a more difficult time bonding with them. That's my problem. But I think young people need to drink more and make a series of bad decisions in my payoff. I've never been drunk and I've made many bad decisions.

53:38 But the anti-alcohol movement and the remote work movement, I think, are actually bad for young people. Six percent of teenagers and young adults are addicted to drugs or alcohol. 24% are addicted to social media. I know why we want people to drink because the chance for social risk goes up. And we're talking about taking social risk.

53:56 And so the social lubricant that is alcohol allows for the increase in social risk. And you will discover when you have a few too many drinks, you get a little tipsy and you ask that person out or you say something charming, God forbid, to a stranger. And you realize nothing happens that the next morning you can be like, it worked and I'm still alive.

54:16 It's that it increases social risk, which is what you're actually talking about. I would simply deposit that some people need the alcohol and not everybody does. I think that's fair. But anyways, I look forward to seeing you and getting fucked up. I look forward to it. All right, brother. A bit of optimism is a production of the optimism company.

54:36 Lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devon Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And if you want even more cool stuff, visit SimonCinic.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.