Transcript for CNLP 646 | Prof G (Scott Galloway) on A Generation of Young Men Filled With Rage and Shame, The Biggest Threat AI Poses, and An Atheist's View on Rethinking How to Be the Church

Of all the people I hear from on this topic, the ones I hear from the most in the most supportive, are mothers. And it goes something like this. I have three kids, two daughters, one son, one daughter's a pen, the other daughters, and a PR and Chicago, and my son's in the basement vaping and playing video games. On any metric, on any metric, young men are doing worse than a fallen further faster than anyone. But there's just no grading around it. We're creating in a generation of millions of young men who are lonely and not economically or emotionally viable. And there is nothing more dangerous than a lonely broke young man.

That's good to be here, Carrie. Thanks for having me.

That's a generous question. Yeah, so raised by a single immigrant mother who lived in Diet of Secretary. Very, you know, best decision I ever made was being born in America in the 60s. It gave me access to free state sponsored education. I not only got to go to UCLA for $1,200 a year. I got to go. The admissions rate was 76% when I applied. And now it's 9%. And then I've rewarded UCLA, I wrote it, rewarded the generosity and vision of California taxpayers and the regions of UC with a 2.27 GPA. And then with that mediocre GPA, Berkeley let me undergraduate school. So it's not only about affordability, it's about accessibility. And I think like a lot of young men, or young people in general, I just didn't have my act together until I was in my late 20s. And I got my act together. I spent a couple years of Morgan Stanley. Um, light about my grades. It's not proud of that, but I did live on my grades. I got a job that we're going to standly. Uh, fixed income. No, I wasn't going to meet investment banker. I wasn't good at it. And I didn't like it. I went back to business school. Yeah, for a really odd reason. I found love with someone. I was planning to go to UT Austin ended up at Berkeley because I basically followed a woman. And, you know, life, life's little decisions have, I ended up going into technology. And if I gone to UT Austin, my guess is I would have gone into energy. You're a function of your environment. I got out of school, started a strategy firm, called profit, sold that to Densu, started a kind of go red envelope and you commerce companies thought I was going to be wealthy. We've evolved to the IPL said, I want to change my life. And I left San Francisco. I got divorced and just kind of reset the hit the restart button on my life. And I decided what I really wanted to do with my life was teach. And I joined the faculty of NYU about 23, 24 years ago now, moved to New York. And focused on how technology disrupts traditional industries. And then slowly but surely the media stuff just kind of fell in the the books, the podcasting. And in teachings with my main platform, but my kind of home base, I think is writing. I really love to write. And I have just really in sort of a rounding third right now, really enjoying myself. And I've benefited from these incredible wins, who scale-force wins of prosperity as I was coming into my income earning years. Yes, better to be lucky than good. And now I'm just focused on using this platform to try and, you know, for hopefully some positive change. And now I live in London, moved here with my family because we could. We want our kids to experience something different. I have 13 and 16 year old boys. And super into primarily games because they are. And you know, that's about it. And here we are.

Oh, it, it absolutely isn't. As a matter of fact, I would argue that we have a lot of issues in the US. But relatively speaking, the U.S. comparatively, I would argue it's never been stronger. Our GDP growth is incredibly strong, strongest among the G7. Our inflation is the lowest. We created more jobs last year than in any year in history. We're energy independent. We produce more oil than Saudi Arabia and Russia. I would have guessed it. I would have guessed it. We're the latest technological innovation that's created the GDP of Germany in the last seven weeks. We entirely own AI. I mean, we're just we're in striking distance of becoming the first really multi-cultural democracy of this prosperity. And yet we don't like each other. We're seem to be raising a generation of Americans that don't like America. They don't feel good about America. We're the younger generation is the most anxious and depressed on record. And it comes down to what I would call this fairly significant selfishness as evidence by a Congress that's the oldest in history, average age 63, that has slowly but surely transferred wealth from young people to old people. The average kind of, you know, silent generation when they were 25 was making on inflation adjusted basis of $2,500,000. We were making about 80 and 25 builds right now are making 50. So they have, and then if you look at the things they really need as a younger person, they're saving for education, And housing, those things have exploded in cost. So their purchasing power is gone down. And the things they are saving for need to get ahead of this world have exploded in cost. And this is in the face, not only even credible prosperity, but platforms that remind them every day that they're failing. Oh, you don't have a six back. Oh, you did make $3 million trading dose of coin. Oh, you're not staying at the, you know, the almond resort in Utah. You failed. You're not, you can't afford an $11,000 brick and back. So, you have this incredibly anxious generation, and you have the average 70-year-old, a 72 percent wealthier than they were 40 years ago. The average 20, the average person in the age of 40 is 24 percent less wealthy. And the incumbents will claim it will plead complexity. It's not these are conscious decisions. 9 percent cost of living adjustment and social security last year of the child tax got stripped out of the infrastructure bill. So, I think young people have every right. to be upset and it all leads to the same place for the first time in our nation's history. A 30 year old isn't doing as well as his or her parents at 30. That's never happened in our history. And I think it creates rage and shame. And then when you have these shocks, whether it's COVID, whether it's Black Lives Matter or the MeToo movement, which are all what I'll call righteous movements or the COVID was, you know, a real shock to the system. Everything's worse because our most important asset are young people. feel disenfranchised and quite frankly abused, and like they don't have the opportunity that parents had. And I just think it creates rage and shame. And that rage and shame is to be involved by these platforms that remind them of their failure every day.

There is no group in our society that is falling further faster than young men. Three times more likely to be addicted. four times more likely to kill themselves, 12 times more likely to be incarcerated, two and a half times as likely to be homeless. I mean, if you think about, we have a homeless opioid suicide problem. Yeah, but what we really have is a male homeless, a male opioid and a male suicide problem. And unfortunately, because of the advantage that men have had for so long and it's been such a huge advantage, there really is a lack of empathy for them. And Young men are just struggling. They're confused in the dating market. They're graduating. It used to be 40 60 female to male college graduation. It's flipped. It's about to go to one because men drop out of the greater rate and it has real impact because on our society because Women mate horizontally and up, economically, men horizontally and down. And so when the pool of viable mates and the eyes of women get smaller and sub-smaller, you have less household formation, and now you have women dating much older, because they want to date an economically and emotionally viable male. And so what do you have? You have a young man that doesn't have the same economic prospects as dad has. He has a series of algorithms and companies trying to segregate him from society to convince him that he doesn't need a relationship. He just needs porn. He doesn't need work. He just needs coinbase and Robinhood. He doesn't need friends. He just needs Reddit and Discord. And you, I would say of all the people I hear from on this topic, the ones I hear from the most in the most supportive are mothers. And it goes something like this. I have three kids, two daughters, one son, one daughter's a pen, the other daughters, and P.R. and Chicago, and my son's in the basement vaping and playing video games. On any metric, on any metric, young men are doing worse than a fallen further faster than anyone. And I want to be clear, empathy is not a zeal, some game. Women still face a lot of struggles. Their progress is fantastic. And we should do nothing to get in the way of that progress. More single women own homes now than single men. It's great that there in home ownership. It's great that there's college attendance. So my solutions always go to more. Not zero. Some game where we in any way slow down the remarkable progress. But there's just no grading around it. We're creating in a generation of millions of young men who are lonely. And not economically or emotionally viable. And there is nothing more dangerous than a lonely broke young man. The most violent unstable societies in the world all have one thing in common. too many young men with no prospects. And that's what's happening here in the US.

I think you see a lot of nationally, and some when these men go down this rabbit hole, where they feel rejected by society, by the economy, by potential mating opportunities. They become really poor citizens. They're more prone to conspiracy theory. They start blaming immigrants. They start blaming women. They start to question from society and never really develop the skills to be successful professionally. There are three million working-age men under the age of, I think, 40 who've just given up on working. Half of millennial men aren't dating. They're not even trying. because they find it so humiliating and hard. And so you have a situation, and, you know, I relate to this. When I was young, I was, when I was young, and I was unremarkable. I mean, I'm not saying that as a humble brag. I just, I wasn't especially hardworking, especially smart, especially focus, especially good luck. I was, I just, I felt like I was invisible, living with my mom. And the thing is, the thing that kind of saved me was America loved us. Like when my mom needed money, there was welfare. When I needed money to go to college, there was pelgrance. If I'd had to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to college, I wouldn't have gone. I just wouldn't have the confidence to borrow that kind of money. And everyone assumes we have all these stories of these remarkable young people from low-income households that are geniuses. Well, most I can prove to every one of us, the 99% of our kids are not in the top one percent. And the real test of America, is what do we do with the 99? The 1% are fine. There's never been a better time to be remarkable. If you're a genius in math and the 11th grade literally Microsoft's gonna find you, at least if you're at a public school in Washington State, you said your son's a coder, he's gonna be fine. But most of us aren't, most of us don't have our act together. And America used to be about letting a kid into graduate school of Berkeley with a 2.27 GPA. and making it free. And then I got my act together. And, you know, this is the good and this is the brag. Last year I paid $14 million in taxes. So, it's paying off. So, I think America is not about identifying the top 1% in terms of the children of rich people or freakishly remarkable kids and making them billionaires. It's about giving the bottom 99 a shot of being a millionaire someday. And I think we've just lost the script. I don't think we're, I think we have this optimism to the point of weakness where we have this lottery ticket mentality where we all assume our kids are remarkable on. We all assume that our stocks are one that's going to go up tenfold. We all assume that, you know, it's like playing the lottery. I know it's stupid, but my ticket, baby, it's a winner. And so I think we need to be more focused on what I call the unremarkables and make staggering investment or reinvestment in the middle class, the greatest innovation in history is in the iPhone and semiconductor. It's the middle class. And people think it's some sort of self-sustaining organism. It's not. It requires massive investment that the middle class was an accident in history. It's not a natural occurring thing. In 1945, 7 million men returning from war. They showed heroics. They were in uniforms. They were strong. They were attractive. And we gave them money. We gave them the GI Bill. We have the National Highway Act to so they could have jobs. And quite frankly, we had a group of very attractive males that made it, created a ton of household wealth, created loving secure households that brought civil rights into the discussion. We're confident enough to say it's time to share this prosperity with non-whites. It's time to bring women into the labor force and give them some of the same opportunities and then have enjoyed. Kind of invented liberalism, an incredible amount of empathy. We created so much innovation and so much prosperity that we had the tax revenue to start having influence all over the world and protect our borders and spend more on the military than anyone else in the world. And, you know, we get it wrong all the time, but our hearts in the right place. And this is still, I think, still the best place to be born. But less so. You know, there's never been an America. There's never been a better time to be remarkable or it's never been easy to be a billionaire. I think it's never been harder to be a millionaire.

So, sure. First off, I just wanted to know, I think we've got the hard part figured out. There are programs all over the world that embrace people who are disadvantaged, whether it's homeless veterans, suicide prevention of my teens, food stamps, their programs work all over the world. I'm not saying that's easy, but we can look to a bunch of different cases where it works. Nvidia adds $240 billion in market cap to five minutes in post trading after it's earnings release. We've created the value of the entire auto market within seven miles of SFO International Airport in the last 11 weeks. So if you'd rather, if you thought we can't come up with ideas for how to to help young men or We need trillions of dollars. We have trillions of dollars in prosperity. Which would you rather have? We've got the hard part figured out. So some of the programs around young men, red shirt them, start them a year late in kindergarten. A lot of this is from Richard Reeves' work. Men just mature more slowly, the prefrontal cortex doesn't develop as fast. Make them a year older than the girls in their grade. More vocational class, let's bring back which shop, metal shop, auto shop. Let's do a grand bargain with our great public universities. We're instead of bailing out people with student loans. Let's take 500 billion dollars, 500 biggest universities on average size adjusted to billion each and exchange for the following things. You grow your freshman class, 6% a year. You would just cost 3% a year and 20% of your certification goes to vocational programs, especially nursing, piping, plumbing, whatever it might be. Auto repair, EV, age-fac energy-efficient installation repair. There's a ton of those jobs out there. That in 10 years doubles the size of freshman classes and cuts the cost in half. Let's flip our tax system. 37% top for capital gains. 22% top for current income. Who makes their living from buying and selling assets and stocks? People might age. Who makes it from current income? Our kids age. There's no reason money is more noble than sweat. It just makes no sense to tax money at a lower rate than to tax sweat. Let's do away with mortgage tax interest. Why do who owns homes, older people who rent younger people? Let's have a negative income tax. You make less than $50,000 we give you money. Let's have a child tax credit. It's just absolutely no excuse that the world's wealthiest nation should have one in five households with children or food insecure. I think we need to educate social media, no phones and schools. We need to attack the problems of depression and anxiety. And then finally, if I were to pick one thing, I'd want to implement a right away would be mandatory national service. In Israel, they don't have nearly the level of teen depression. Kids feel kids in the populous feels much better about their nation. And I think that's because they've all served in the agency of something greater than themselves. And they've had the chance to make friends, mentors, meet mates, co-founders and businesses all serving in uniform together. And they get along. They respect each other. They don't, you know, if you look at the great legislation of the 60s and 70s, the great society in America, a lot of it was because Democrats and Republicans had both served in the same uniform together. And so, and then if you really wanted to get deep, you know, final five voting, D Jerry Mander, I'm ranked choice voting. We need to stop sending the extremists from both sides to Washington. We need to send more moderates to represent America.

Well people love it. It must be an amazing job to be a senator or a congressperson because they have basically weaponized our elections and what they've done is they've made every district deep and condescending blue or bright bright fire engine red by creating a map that just ridiculous. It just looks like a Jenga on steroids or you know, your brain on drugs. It starts that we don't have general elections anymore. At the criminal level, we have just primaries. So a hardware district that with who turns out a primaries, the most extreme on each poll. So the every congressional race is basically, okay, who's crazier? who's essentially wildly left or wildly right. Because there is no general election, there's just a primary. And the people that show up in the primaries are the ones who are kind of hardened extremists. So we also need, I think, final five, a ranked choice voting, such that we have ranked choice voting in Alaska. What do we have? We have a moderate Republican, Lisa Murkowski. Like, most people would look at her and say, she kind of feels and smells like Alaska. Reasonable people. And the only reason we have that is because they have ranked choice voting.

Yeah, you pick you might pick you rank people and that if no one gets more than 50% basically they take the top two or three and start the voting process over such that a moderate say the number two can get can get elected it basically kicks out the extremists and and it's more representative of where people are because I mean, the way, you know, you just end up with more moderates. But I would start with D-Gerrymandering. I would also, I mean, just some untraditional ideas. I would pay Congress people a million bucks a year, Senator's three million here, and the President 10 million bucks here, but they have to put all their money in a blind trust, and they can't go to work for any pack or donor for five years post their service. They don't make a lot of money, so they spend their time in Congress just end up painting their fence for after they leave. And I think it creates, I think as a result, money has just totally washed over Washington because everyone's looking for a big job after they get out of office.

I've been having a dialogue with the Department of Homeland Security around AI and they said go through the threats, you know, super weapons. It goes sentient misinformation. And I thought they were missing the biggest threat. I think the biggest threat of AI is loneliness. And I think these tech firms want to convince you there's a reasonable facsimile of life that can be had on a screen with algorithms. AI girlfriends. The number of high school kids that see their friends every day. It's been cut in half in the last 10 years. So we are in a lot of this trauma types. We've over protected kids offline and under protected them online. More free play, get them out of the house, let them get into a little trouble. And also, and I think that's something you're listening. I think we need more religious institutions. And I'm an atheist. But I grew up going, my dad was married in divorce four times. So I went to Presbyterian, Unitarian, I went to Temple. I never bought into the lineage and that there was someone in the room with us or something, but I was enjoyed it. I made good friends. I went to the dances, I played on the softball and basketball teams of the Mormon Church of the latter-day Saints in Westwood. And they were lovely people. They were really nice to me. And so I think institutions in third space were young people can get together in person. We got to get him off the screen, so we got to get him out of the house. We've got to be less protective of the more free play, more room, bunches play. You know, when I was a kid, my mom was worried, I used to leave my house at 10 a.m. on a Saturday with a swim bike, 35 cents in an Abbas Ababa bar. And I wouldn't come up till 10 p.m. My mom had no idea where I was. None. And I think her fear, biggest fear was that I was going to get into trouble. And my biggest fear carries, and my kids aren't going to get into enough trouble. They're just at home on these low risk, low entry, low cost friend groups or things that are masking a socialization. So I think we need more places for people to meet up. I think we need more respect for institutions. And I'd more nonprofit participation, more after school programs, more athletics. But we got to get kids bumping up against each other again.

It wasn't an disconnect. It was just, I never made the connection. Okay. And I think I grew up a little bit thinking of myself as a scientist. And that for me for an odd reason meant that I couldn't believe in a superman. And I also think I was very judgemental about religious people. And I do often times, maybe I got exposed to the right of the wrong literature, but good people do good things in general, bad people do bad things, but when good people do bad things, oftentimes religion is at the center. And so I think I grew up with a little bit of a bias against religion. But it's interesting. I always had a wonderful time when I engaged with religious institutions. You know, as I get older, I would like that comfort. But I also say that in a weird way, my atheism is a source of strength for me. I do believe that at some point I will look into my kids eyes and our relationship is coming to an end. And I'm very cognizant of the finite nature of life. And it emboldens me to be more emotive. It emboldens me to take more risk, emboldens me to be more forthcoming with my emotions. But also I think I would have benefited more from more time with the religious institution because I think I lacked a lot of grace as a young man. And I stopped going to church a religious institution when I was I mean, it still has a big impact on me. You know, love the poor. That's a pretty good place to start. So this was all about that.

That's right. So Jesus is a role model of mine. I just don't buy his lineage. So I think you can, I think you can lean on religious institutions. You can Take what you want from it. It's really strange. And this is a non-sequitable, but I did catch them in there for a few weeks ago.

And it was a religious experience for you, wasn't it? Well, sort of, but the medical director came in before she injected me and she grabbed our hands and said, let's pray. And I remember thinking that 10 or 20 years ago that would have bothered me, that she immediately assumed that I would that I was religious or down in Texas. And for in this time, I thought this is really nice. Just being in the company of people holding hands. I'm like, there's just no downside to this. I mean, I buy it. I mean, I believe it, anything positive is going to come from it, but just being in the company other people wishing each other the best. It was nice. So I don't, you know, I feel a little bit of a, I feel a little bit of a, a calling, if you will, but my kind of, I just never made the connection with religion. It wasn't a falling from the church or the temple where I got disillusioned. It was nothing like that. I always had good experiences with religious institutions. I just never bought into the stories, I guess. You would say.

The data just shows that as the nation becomes wealthier and more educated, reliance on the super being in church attendance goes down. It happens in almost every nation and it's kind of a weird way, a kind of our prosperity. I would argue that some of the actions of the Catholic Church have not draped it in glory. And I mean, to a certain extent, the decline in religious institutions has created a void that's been filled by the new Jesus Christ of our generation, which is tech leaders, which has led to some very bad places where we don't apply any scrutiny to these incredibly wealthy people we assume they're going to say of us. And the reality is there that are making money even if results in teen depression or making our discourse more course. It's interesting to say this, I think it is a branding issue. So just broad broad strokes. I think the two things that have really hurt the brand religion are that some very violent, hottest extremist activity that dominates the headlines internationally tends to be rooted in religion. And some of that spills over to all religions that there's a general distaste. People have trouble discerning between moderates and extremists. And then domestically, just to be honest without getting into details, the Catholic Church has not shaped itself in glory over the last several decades. And I think that has infected most religious institutions. In addition, either America really prided itself and most religious institutions prided themselves on a separation between church and state. And I now think that some Some very, very extremist political factions are disguising themselves or wallpapering over their extremist political views with religion. And it's turned people off of any religion, including modern religions. The best branding, and what's got to the positive, that commercial he washed your feet or washes your feet. Oh, they get us stuff. He gets us, you know, it shows a pre-swashing the feed of what looks to be a trans person and then a cop washing the feed of some, yeah, I thought that was genius branding. I just thought if you wanted to send a message to say give us another chance, we're a loving generous, you know, we want, I thought that was the best branding I've seen of any organization year to day. I thought it was fantastic. And then, you know, I don't know, I don't have a silver bullet because the trends are just against you. People, people opt for more money. They move away from religion as a society becomes wealthier, more educated. It's never, I so far you've never seen it. I don't think you've seen a rebound in any society. So I think you've got your I think you got your work cut out for you.

I would say, I mean, yo, yo is going to your personal book. I have tremendous affinity for Mormons. If missionary show up in my house, I let him and I talked to him, I just have, I would say I love Mormons. And it's not because I buy into the church, you know, their story to me seems as quite frankly as odd as any. And, but here's the thing, when I was a young man, they were just incredibly generous to me. They sports leagues. I think I told you, I played on the Westwood Church's basketball team. And they were generous and loving, and they didn't really even proselytize me. I used to hang out with the Jarvises every Monday night for family night. And it just gave me a very good feeling about religion. So I would say just programs and outreach that help young people right now. I don't have a silver bullet. I don't know. I think it's more programs and actual branding, if you will. But community outreach that addresses some of our problems. And here's the thing. They're doing a lot of it. There's a, you know, when I used to go to soup kitchens in Florida near our house or, you know, there was, there was some sort of religious affiliation or so I don't know. I don't, I think I think it's, when you talk about brand, there's things you can do positively, but sometimes the best thing you can do for your brand is to dial down the negatives. Like South Africa was never going to be a great brand until they figured out AIDS and apartheid. Mexico was always going to struggle until they could convince people if you come here, you're not going to have your head cut off and buried in the desert by a cartel. It's like it didn't matter how great the culture of the wildlife was. I think religion in the US, I think until and I don't know if you're ever going to be able to do it, but there's such a gag reflex from Democrats like myself when they hear about religion because they see politics or religion being weaponized by who are effectively politicians. And yeah, I don't think, I mean, I apologize that you're going to play. I don't think Trump has helped holding up a Bible and he has no idea what's in it. I think it makes people very cynical. And so I don't, you know, these are such complicated questions. I think you are probably going to forget more about this than I'm ever going to know.

No, other than we need leaders like you. So I love you just said about I love the idea and it sounds like your church is this that's a safe place from politics. Yes, we're going to separate the person from the politics. We're going to assume, is this a good person? Are we all here in this, you know, in the agency of something bigger than us? And we're just not going to make snap judgments or maybe even talk about politics here or do we? When I used to go out on dates when I was in my 20s, I remember having girlfriends. I had no idea what their political viewpoint was. And I had no idea what mine was. It didn't dominate my life. Right. And now it's another reason why young people aren't finding They don't date. They immediately, if you're a woman in women are going much more liberal, men are getting slightly more conservative. And that's another reason why young people aren't hanging out together. Oh, I would never hang out with a hardcore. We keep finding reasons not to get together. And so it'd be nice if you will have to church a sort of a safe place from us.

So you're basically frustrated hippie. Can access.

My dad, my dad, my dad, my dad, every year I give my dad something up to the bucket. He's 93, but at least until two years ago in a good travel and every year it was the same thing. I want to go to the opening game. I've didn't lease and I have the Arcana to center every year. We should go to Toronto to city opening game.

Like I think that at a certain point, I don't see any reason why you should have above a certain amount of wealth. I'm not suggesting we have 100% tax on people of our certain income, but all the studies show is that middle income people are happier than lower income. Upper income people are happier than middle income. That's the bad news. There's a correlation between wealth and happiness. happiness. But what most studies show is that it gets kind of logarithmic and that once you get to a certain point when you can afford nice vacations, college or kids, healthcare, a financial shock, which by the way, is a lot of money in Toronto or New York or all over London. But once you get to that point, anything above it, the amount of happiness is just almost impossible to measure. And so the question would be, well, why would we have much greater tax rates and what I decided I got very lucky and I have more I have economic security and I actually probably have more money than I need but I see it as a scorecard and I can't stop. I'm somewhat addicted to money and the affirmation of strangers and so what I've done is I've imposed a tax on myself where I give away more money every year than I spend. I calculate how much I've spent and I give away I try to give away twice that as it means regulating my spending and also just giving back. And it's virtually signaling, but I don't think there's anything wrong with virtually signaling because it makes me feel, it makes me feel patriotic. It makes me feel masculine. It makes me feel really good about myself. It's something I enjoy. It's, you know, I can buy stuff and I enjoy that. I enjoy travel. I'm at a point where I'm spending most of my money on experiences, but When I give money away, it just makes me feel very strong. And also, I'm very open about money and my taxes, I think that people not talking about their money is essentially a play by the very rich to not be held accountable. And also, very rich people tend to be the senior level people in the organization that know what everyone makes. And there's an asymmetry of information that benefits them. So I'm very open about money, how much I make, what I pantox is my tax rate, effective tax rate for the last 10 years has been 17%. I don't think that makes any sense. I don't think that we're going to get where we need to be when people who make really good money are paying effectively a 17% tax because of loopholes in the tax code. So for me, And I want to be clear up until the age of like 45. I was the most non philanthropic person in the world. I didn't give anything away. I didn't do any. I pretty much didn't do anything for anybody or give money to anybody that didn't. I didn't think wasn't going to meet. The only time I did anything charitable was to go to some party where there'd be interesting people are hot women and we all pretended that we were doing it for the pandas or something. And But when I started when I got to a certain point of economic security, I thought, I'm just going to from this point, any incremental money I make. I'm going to give away because it just makes me really strong and really relevant and very American. And I love those things. So what you see across people who feel like they're giving in the agency of something bigger than themselves, it's consumption, it makes them feel good, makes them feel relevant.

Well, my reaction is that you're a, you know, a man of God and that you start from a place of generosity. I'm a man of capitalism and I start from a place of wanting more and I'm going to disagree with you.

I appreciate that a lot of it is a lot of it is a bit of an act. Tell me more. I appreciate your generous appraisal of me. I suffer from imposter syndrome and my goal is to live up to people's impression of me because I write blog posts about generosity and relationships. I don't write blog posts about my failures as a father has been friend in how unkind I've been to some people and how I always put myself first financially until I have financial security. What you're doing is much more generous than what I'm doing now. not in terms of absolute numbers, but until I until I knew I was bulletproof financially, I didn't give anything away. That is not generous. What I'm doing now is not generous. I get big numbers away, but it has no impact on my life. None. What you're doing, I mean, you are giving up real opportunity. You are giving up real financial security. When you give away 10%. I mean, it hurt. It's like, well, shouldn't we have a little bit of a safety cushion? And especially as a man and our society, you're expected to protect your family and the way you protect your family and a capitalist society is not through strength and guns. It's through economic security. So if you're not able to help your kid pay for college, the scariest moment, or I think kind of the most, one of the, where I really got my act together was when my first kid was born, You know, you're supposed to hear angel speaking, and you think there's going to be nice light everywhere, and it's going to be that. I was so nauseous. I thought I was going to faint. And it wasn't because of being in the delivery room, which is a whole other talk show, but I was terrified. I thought I was 42. I had all this curb success, cover magazines, started telling me to have gone public. And because I got divorced, And that was financially ruinous for me because I'd always lived kind of not high on the hog, but never really was disciplined about saving. Also, because I think I didn't have a lot of character. I don't think I built up a lot of allies in my life. I ended up kind of 42 with a kid and kind of not broke. But financially and secure living in New York, where to get a three bedroom is $15,000 a month, where private schools or pre-K is $58,000 a year. And it was so It was so humiliating and amasculating. It's like, Jesus, I've worked so hard. I, and I supposedly had all the success and I feel financially insecure. So I, you know, and that's when I really got focused. But I would argue with anyone who starts at a young age, giving away money like that. I think the good news is it compounds. People, you feel good about yourself. I think people respect you. People want to get back to you. And those could sentiments compound. But I'm, I'm trying to, I love this notion of surplus value that when a boy becomes a man is when he at surplus value and that is most kid thing about kids resources poor and do from school your church invests in you in Sunday school your parents feed you love you you're just taking taking taking so much And I don't think some people ever get to surplus value. There are tax on their government, there are tax on their friends, there are tax on their parents, they don't create a lot of productivity jobs, tax revenue, join other people's lives. They just never get there. But hopefully, I think where a boy becomes a man is what I just call, you know, kind of an experiential profitability. And that is they're giving more than they're taking in. They take in a certain amount of love, a certain amount of generosity, a certain amount of resources, and other people. And they generate more of those things for other people. And, you know, as I can't go back to as an atheist, my job is that before I check out to make sure a damn sure that I am well in the black on that dimension, that, you know, that I, and I think I'm almost there, that I provide more love to my children than my parents provided to me and my mom provided a lot for me. That's the basis of evolution. You know, you do a better job than your, you know, you treat your kids better than your dad treated you. produce a lot more jobs than I've taken. You know, I love this idea of surplus value and I've been thinking a lot over the last 10 years and I'm trying to figure out my purpose and, you know, for so long, my purpose was just to be rich and awesome. That's what I wanted. I wanted to be really rich and really awesome. And I wanted more, more experiences, more stuff, more fame, more interesting experiences with more and more interesting famous people. you know, more physical experiences with women. Just I just more in the thing about that was you never quite get to that period of satisfaction. It no matter how, no matter how much you got any of those things, it was always a bigger, better deal. It just kind of it gave you a taste for that flesh or taste for money, but you could imagine more. You could imagine being at a better party, going on a cooler vacation, having an even hotter car, having a more interesting girl for whatever it is, it was those more. And having kids for me, it was the first time, and it doesn't have an often, but it happens regularly. You know, having to be a few nights ago, we're watching the Chelsea football team here on Premier League on the couch, dogs roll in, we let them come on the couch, both my boys roll in, and just instinctively they throw their legs over mine. Just instinctively. You know, I've got these one guy who's six feet and, you know, just 16-year-old gangly kid, one who's 13, And they both just show their legs on my. And for a moment, I'm like, OK, this is it. I can't imagine. I just can't imagine more kids. I can't imagine more legs, more dogs. This is it. This is it. I permission to leave or whatever the next dimension is. That is the first time I've ever felt that my desires, my wants are stated. And, you know, that's it for me. That's kind of a few time I religion. That is my religion. It's like, OK, how do I add surplus value? And how do I find a way to raise confident young men? And you know, being those moments that I present with them where we're affectionate and just really relax around each other. That's kind of, you know, quote unquote, that is my God.

I appreciate that and I appreciate your good work and You were saying, what is the church need to do? It needs more carries.

The generous question. Programs and outreach to young men. They have trouble asking for help. And they're So much pain and suffering among young men right now.

I have a weekly newsletter with about a half million subscribers called numbers and a balanced bunch of books have a bunch of podcasts to resist this feudal. There's too much of me everywhere carry.

It's like I'm like a well in the 90s you open cereal box and you find a disc that says a well on it, you know, we weren't expecting it.