Rubin Report - Dave Rubin - Dave Rubin Can’t Believe These Dark Stats of Men in Crisis

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Nov. 22, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin

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Dave Rubin Can’t Believe These Dark Stats of Men in Crisis | Scott Galloway

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scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Men aged 20 to 30 are spending less time outdoors in prison inmates.
		45% of men ages 18 to 25 have never approached a woman in person to ask her out.
		The place people used to meet mates was school, work, and friends.
		Now it's online.
		And when you digitize the marketplace, everyone has access to everybody.
		And the reality is if there's 50 men on Tinder and 50 women, 46 of the women will show all their attention to just four of the men, which leaves 46 men fighting over four women.
		And it destroys a man's self-esteem.
		And the most powerful companies in the world are slowly but surely sequestering people, especially young people, especially young men, from spending time at work, school, church, or other relationships.
		They literally add 20 to 60 billion dollars in market cap.
		And now the DOPA is on institutional supply.
		The most profitable companies in the world, unfortunately, are tapping into this basic thing where our instincts have not caught up to institutional production.
		It used to be the industrial food complex.
		Now it's tech companies tapping into rage, affirmations, mating opportunities.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that there was any way to not get to the point with technology that we are at right now?
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		So while boys are physically stronger, they're mentally and emotionally much weaker.
		The decline in wealth of people under the age of 40 is striking.
		They're 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago.
		People my age are 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago.
		I don't give a what anyone says.
		A dude who's not making money is not attractive to the opposite sex and is shamed by society.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, I'm Dave Rubin, and joining me today is the host of the Prof G podcast and author of the new book, Notes on Being a Man, Scott Galloway.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Welcome back to the Rubin Report.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Dave, it's good to see you.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's good to see you.
		I've seen a bunch of you this morning because as we are taping this right now, we just played a whole bunch of your clips from Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher.
		And you had a couple things that I just want to dive right into that are obviously directly related to the book and some of the things you've been talking about sort of economically, but also on the social side of things.
		One of the lines you were talking, you said that I really liked as it relates to what's going on with young men right now is basically that they've become asocial and asexual.
		Can you elaborate that for just a bit?
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		So again, it's great to be with you again.
		So if you think about the most powerful, deepest pocketed companies in the world, most resources, most human capital, godlike technology, it's the 10 companies in the SP now that are responsible for 40% of the value of the SP.
		And 20% of global market cap is just in 10 companies.
		And those 10 companies do a lot of things, but primarily their job is every incremental minute from your day, they can get you from doing something else, whether it's time with family, exercising, driving your kids to school, whatever it might be.
		They literally add $20 to $60 billion in market cap, probably more than that.
		Every incremental minute, these firms can use, can leverage AI, incendiary content, cute dogs, basically tapping into your need or the desire to have constant DOPA hits, and especially amongst young men whose less mature prefrontal cortex is very susceptible to that type of temptation.
		They make tens of billions.
		And so unwittingly, what they're effectively doing, the most powerful companies in the world are slowly but surely sequestering people, especially young people, especially young men, from spending time at work, school, church, or other relationships.
		And I think, as I said on the show, we effectively have this huge economic incentive to evolve a new species of asocial, asexual male.
		And I took that line from Esther Perel, but I think we're going to start seeing fewer and fewer young men out in the wild.
		Right now, SKSTAT, men aged 20 to 30 are spending less time outdoors in prison inmates.
		So it's already happening.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So the question that I posed when I heard you say that on the show this morning was, how much of this do you think is purely intentional and business driven by those companies that you mentioned, that dozen or so companies, versus that all of this is just a reflection of our habits.
		This is actually some sense what we want, whether we know it or not, that the algorithm in some sense knows what we're demanding more than what we say we actually want.
		Maybe those two things are combined also in some sense.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's yeah, it is.
		So I want to acknowledge the point, but what I think happens is, so when we came off the savannah thousands of years ago, there was an absence of mating opportunities, an absence of salty, sugary, fatty food, an absence of free play that wasn't dangerous because it was a dangerous place to exist.
		And because our instincts haven't caught up to institutional production, when we can now produce calories faster than we, you know, more than we'd ever need, we gorge.
		And now 70% of Americans are overweight or obese.
		We are addicted or easily addicted to porn because a reasonable facsimile of a sexual experience is very exciting for men because only, well, 80% of women have reproduced throughout history, only 40% of men.
		So when you have institutional production of what feels like a procreation opportunity, it's hard or it takes them discipline to modulate.
		And so wanting DOPA, which it purposely goes into your brain for good reasons, when you start to eat food, you get a DOPA hit.
		When someone touches you, when you're about to have sex, when you're thinking about something interesting or exciting, or you have visual stimulation, dopa, dopa, dopa.
		Now the dopa is on institutional supply.
		We have problems, especially a less mature male brain.
		We have problems regulating.
		And so you're right.
		It's what we've been trained to want.
		But at some point, wanting to, you know, salty, sugary, and fatty foods, those wants vastly exceed the needs.
		And so the most profitable companies in the world, unfortunately, are tapping into this basic thing where our instincts have not caught up to institutional production.
		It used to be the industrial food complex, shitty food that's high margin.
		Now it's tech companies tapping into rage, affirmation, mating opportunities, but the constant DOPA of fun, gaming.
		I don't know if your kids are on video games yet, but their brain literally gets rewired, Dave.
		So this is, you know, we have, essentially, we have this dopa machine that is unfortunately tied our economy to sequestering us from our relationships.
		And you're right, we want it, but we're not able to modulate it.
		And you're up against an indomitable foe.
		I don't know.
		Even AI, those little prompts at the end, you know, you just say, what did Scott Sam Bill Maher?
		Dave, would you like, would you, okay, and they'll tell you and I'll say, Dave, can I write it up in a series of questions for your podcast?
		Dave, would you like some data?
		I mean, before you know it, you're two hours in with these prompts that have been tested a million times to just keep you glued to your goddamn phone.
unidentified		Right.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's like the guy who created endless scrolling who now regrets it.
		You know, in our day, the internet ended.
		You go to CNN.com and scroll down enough and they'd say, that's all the news we got.
		Now, of course, it endlessly scrolls and just feeds us more and more.
		You know, interestingly, you asked me about my kids.
		So my kids are only three, so they're not on any of that yet.
		And we're quite good about TV.
		But I notice even if they're watching Bluey, which is pretty low stimulation, if I ask them something while they're watching Bluey, they pretty much don't respond.
		And I have to stand right in front of them and get that attention back.
		So if you hand, Forget a three-year-old.
		You hand a nine-year-old this thing and then say, okay, you're going to also have to interact with the real world.
		You can see why it's a failure.
		So do you think that there was any way to not get to the point with technology that we are at right now?
		Is there anything we could have done or was this inevitably going to happen?
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		So typically it takes us about 20 years to figure out when a fond instincts is resulting in a profit motive is creating externalities or damage in the public comments.
		So it took us 30 years with tobacco.
		That is a physical addiction.
		You can get physically addicted to nicotine.
		And because there was a profit motive, people were willing to stand up in front of Congress and lie and say, I do not believe that nicotine is addictive.
		But we figured it out, started regulating it, taxing it.
		And I don't want to say I figured it out.
		It's caused huge damage, but we've addressed it.
		It took us about 20 years with opiates to realize that wanting to be out of pain and then that was addictive.
		And it took us about 20 years.
		I think it's taken us about 20 years with a smartphone.
		And that is, there is hope.
		My colleague at NYU, Jonathan Hyde, who I think is the most consequential scholar in the world, my guess is phones will not be allowed in your kids' school by the time they start school.
		So we are slowly but surely figuring out.
		What I think we need to do next is be more proactive.
		I don't think we should have, I think we should make it illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to be in a synthetic relationship.
		And that is develop a relationship with a character AI that starts advising them.
		Supposedly one in three kids under the age of 18 are in something, some form of a synthetic relationship online with someone who's a friend, a potential erotic partner.
		And I worry, Dave, that it reduces, especially young men's mojo to take the risks to approach people and express platonic and romantic interests while making them feel safe.
		And those skills, that rejection.
		See, you're a good looking guy.
		So you've endured less rejection than most of us, but you have endured rejection.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm on Twitter.
		People say terrible things about me.
		It's okay.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		But that's a little bit different.
		It's approaching someone you're attracted to and shooting your shot.
		It's sending in a resume or pitching an advertiser who, quite frankly, is out of your economic weight class.
		And those skills, that willingness to endure rejection as opposed to deferring to a frictionless relationship is sequestering people, especially young men, and not giving them the life skills they need.
		Perseverance, how to open, how to talk to people, how to sell.
		And most importantly, the key skill in success, I believe, is the ability to endure rejection, to mourn and to move on, to develop those calluses.
		45% of men ages 18 to 25 have never approached a woman in person to ask her out.
		I think that's really unhealthy.
		And a lot of these men, young men, have gotten mixed messages.
		No man wants to be the creep.
unidentified		Right.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		You know, I've read a story about a guy who approached a woman at a bar, didn't go well.
		He was inartful and elegant.
		And then he finds out she works at JP Morgan and she complains about him.
		And so guys have gotten mixed messages.
		They have a competitor to life that makes us less mammalia.
		And I think ultimately over time, these people become very anxious and depressed.
		If you want to see an orca go crazy, stick it in a tank alone.
		The worst thing you can do to a human is solitary confinement.
		I don't know if you have pets, but leave your dog alone and see what happens.
		So I really worry that we've created, we've attached our economy and trillions of dollars in market cap to, again, sequestering young men from what they need most, and that is other relationships.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, the mixed message part sort of reminds me of, you know, they always say, if you see something, say something.
		And then the very people who say that will be the first ones to call you racist if you see something they don't want you to see.
		So that sort of confusion seems to be baked in to how we behave with everything.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		And there's this notion or this fear, a hint in the godfather of AI has said, look, at some point, you've never had a species smarter than another species not control it.
		We're the smartest species.
		We're the apex predator we've won, right?
		There are more birds in captivity now than in the wild.
		Humans and their pets weigh more in terms of mass than every other mammal combined.
		We've won because of intelligence.
		We're not faster.
		We're not stronger.
		We don't have claws.
		Or teeth aren't that sharp.
		So his view is at some point, if AI gets smarter than us, it will control us.
		I'm not sure I buy that, but what I do buy is it's mostly controlling us now because you can't help when you say something you believe.
		Like I think of you, you and I have different politics, but I would describe us both as moderate and reasonable people.
		And the reason I come on your show is I don't think you're fucking crazy.
		I think you're reasonable.
		And when you say sometimes the algorithms say, okay, Dave's a conservative, we're going to take him further and further right and we're going to put his stuff in front of very conservative people who sometimes are like people on the left, extremists, right?
		And then if you say something that is kind of off narrative, outside the orthodoxy, outside the script, you're treated like an apostate and your comments fill up with, Dave, we thought we could trust you.
		And they try to shame you.
		And because shaming is very powerful, because pre-kind of modern, kind of modern economy, to be shamed threatened being expunged or expelled from the community.
		And if you were kicked out of the community walking around foraging the forest, you were dead.
		That was a death sentence.
		You were gone.
		So the fear of shaming is really, really powerful.
		And so I physically try to overcome the following fear.
		I know when I say, I'm not a fan of Mom Donnie, if I had lived in New York, I wouldn't vote for him.
		I know I'm going to get so much shit from my progressive followers.
		Oh, you don't get when I talk about the defense of Israel.
		I know I'm about to get hundreds of comments calling me, you know, names and everything.
		But you become where you are.
		And I worry that the algorithms now are taking us further and further to the extremes because we're worried about being shamed.
		I actually think the comments and the like button are incredibly damaging and they start shaping our narrative and we become what the algorithms want us to be based on how many likes we get by saying what we think is going to tickle the sensors of the bots and the people who follow us.
		So to a certain extent, I feel like AI is already controlling us.
		And I think we all have an obligation to say, okay, be critical thinkers, say what you think, and comments be damned, right?
		It's just because we all start barking up the same tree.
		We get stupid.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's interesting.
		I put up a tweet maybe you saw it a couple of days ago about exactly what you're describing right now.
		That, you know, if you put up a tweet about anything, it doesn't matter who you are or what you do, but you put up a tweet and you get 50,000 likes, whether it's you, Scott, or me, Dave, or whoever, you go 50,000 likes.
		My God, that was pretty good.
		And it seems like it's important.
		We have no idea how many bots.
		We have no idea whether they were in America or anything else.
		But we're in a country of 350 million people.
		You get 50,000 likes.
		You think it's huge.
		And it actually is not even a drop in the bucket in terms of actual importance or relevance.
		It's also potentially, it's not even necessarily a human, but at the best, it's a human that just went like this for one second.
		And we think it's something.
		So it seems to me we're just, we are so deep in the machines right now to get out of this will almost be impossible.
		So do you see that as the future divide of humanity?
		That there'll be some people that can kind of escape the machines to some extent.
		You know, I'm kind of giving you a matrix version of this.
		And then a huge bulk of the people that will just be unable to escape.
		And in some sense, it won't even be their own fault.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		I think it's really important that on a regular basis, you do an audit of your addictions.
		And what is, I think everybody has a certain level of addiction.
		And addictions are there for, again, for good reasons.
		It's just when they kind of outpace again, institutional production.
		So an addiction, loosely speaking, something you continue to engage in despite it having negative ramifications on other parts of your life.
		I'm addicted to two things.
		One, I'm addicted to money.
		I got very lucky, sold a bunch of companies in the 10s.
		I'm done economically.
		But I just signed up to go speak in Jackson Hole because I got my full speaking fee and it's a lot of money.
		Now, going from London to Jackson Hole is not an easy, there are no direct flights.
		That's going to take me away from my kids who I only have another three holidays with.
		You know, one's applying to college this year.
		I don't need the money.
		It's going to have no impact to my life.
		But it's so much money and I'm so used to a scarcity mindset because I didn't grow up with money.
		I'm addicted to it.
		I continue to engage in this hamster wheel of trying to make more money despite the fact it's having negative impacts on other parts of my life.
		The second thing I'm addicted to is the affirmation of strangers.
		And that is the comments.
		I'd like to say, oh, I don't listen to comments.
		I've got to be honest, Dave, sometimes they rattle me.
		Sometimes they really upset me.
		And when I think of, I hate the term mental health episodes because some people have real mental health episodes, but I've had a few weekends ruined the last 10 years because of shit people have said about me on social media.
		And I decided the place that was really toxic was Twitter, X.
		It has become so vile and angry and incendiary.
		And the algorithms have been told, elevate controversial content.
		I believe in free speech, but the question is, should content that's really incendiary and vile be elevated beyond its organic reach?
		What do we get on its own?
		That's the problem I have some of these platforms, especially Twitter.
		I stopped going on Twitter.
		I've been on Twitter in four or five years, and I can say it's probably one of the most beneficial things I've ever done to my mental health because I find the vibe there is so like find the soft tissue in their argument, cartoon of their comments, and then press on it and try and make them look stupid.
		That's like their industrial logic.
		And the other ones are guilty of it.
		LinkedIn's the least bad because I think everybody there is thinking at some point I might get a job from this guy, so I'm not going to call him a Nazi.
		But I found getting off of Twitter was really accretive to my mental health because I'm still, unfortunately, too addicted to the affirmation of strangers and it'll take me away from the people I really care about and care about me, which is technically an addiction.
		But the algorithms, where I was headed with, if you were to get off Twitter, the first thing I realized or the most illuminating thing is how small that world is.
		It hasn't hurt my career.
		I still get all the information I need.
		I make as much or more money than I used to.
		Just as many people know me.
		What you realize when you get off where I got off of Twitter, just how small it is.
		There's a group of people who've decided that's the world and they're the chattering class and bots and they don't realize they're like, they're in the pool house thinking they're living in a mansion.
		No, you're in a tiny little room screaming at each other.
		And if you leave that room, what you're going to realize is, quite frankly, it just doesn't matter.
		That world does not, it's had no impact on my life not being in there, none whatsoever.
		And yet I thought that was a, I thought that was the world when I was on it.
		I thought, this is what the world thinks of me and everything else.
		No, it isn't.
		It's a small group of people all, you know, yelling at each other.
		So I have found it very beneficial to my mental health to get off of X. Where do you think?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, first off, I think, I mean, I'm obviously in agreement with you.
		I think you know I take every August off the grid completely with no phone and no TV and no nothing.
		And I've nine years in a row, I've done that.
		And I really think that's one of the things that's kept me sane while doing the political stuff that can be very much in that cave of craziness.
		But relating this back to masculinity and responsibility and some of the things that the book's about, you know, it's easy to look at the 15-year-old or the 22-year-old and say, okay, here's all the reasons you're screwed up.
		What do you think happened to the man that's say over 30, maybe Gen X or somewhere between 35 and 65 that was supposed to take the reins and offer more to these young people?
		Where did they all go?
		I mean, there's a couple of them out there.
		I include you in that.
		I obviously include Jordan Peterson and a few others, but it seems like there just aren't enough of those guys, like just at a pure numbers level.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Look, I think that, well, first off, the content area is sort of dangerous because men who look smell and feel like me have had a 3,000-year head start.
		From 1945 to 2000, America registered a third of the world's economic growth with 5% of the population.
		So loosely speaking, we had 6X the prosperity of the rest of the world.
		And then crammed into that 6X that took it to 12 or 18X was the third of the population in America that was white, male, and heterosexual.
		I just had unfair advantage.
		When I was raising money in the 90s, it never dawned on me, why are there no gay people raising money or no outwardly gay people?
		Why are there no non-whites raising money in Silicon Valley?
		It just never even dawned on me that I was raising tens of millions of dollars and had access to cheap capital that these other groups did not have access to.
		So when people hear someone of my generation and my identity complaining about men, they go, boss, are you kidding?
		Are you kidding?
		And so I have to immediately hope that they listen and say, I'm not talking about men of my generation.
		As a matter of fact, one of the reasons that people have so little empathy for young men is because men of my generation had so much unearned advantage that unfortunately they're holding a 19-year-old accountable.
		And be clear, it's a much different world.
		Education is seven times more expensive.
		When I applied to UCLA, which is two miles where I'm now, the admissions rate was 74%.
		This year it'll be 9%.
		Homes were X percent of your income.
		Now they're 2.3%.
		I mean, everything has gotten more expensive for these kids and harder.
		And many of the on-ramps to a middle-class life for men in the manufacturing base have gone away.
		There's been a lot of mixed messages that have pathologized young men, that have made them feel insecure and weak.
		Women's rise economically is an amazing thing.
		We don't want to get in the way of it.
		But men are still disproportionately evaluated based on their economic valuability and their economic viability relative to their partner.
		So when the female in the relationship starts making more money than the man, divorce becomes twice as likely and the use of ED drugs triples because the guy has a lack of self-esteem.
		The point, the single, to your point, the single point of failure, if you reverse engineer when a boy comes off the tracks is when he loses a male role model, divorce, disease, or abandonment.
		What's interesting is a girl in a single parent home has the same outcomes.
		A boy at that moment, when he loses a male role model, becomes more likely to be incarcerated and graduate from college.
		So while boys are physically stronger, they're mentally and emotionally much weaker.
		And I think a lot of men of my generation have not stepped up to, one, ensure there are policies, government policies that provide the same access to a middle-class life for all young people, not just men, that lift them up.
		The decline in wealth of people under the age of 40 is striking.
		They're 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago.
		People my age are 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago.
		And that decline in economic viability amongst young people has had a disproportionately negative impact on young men who are still expected to be the economic provider.
		I don't give a shit what anyone at The Atlantic or the New York Times says, a dude who's not making money is not attractive to the opposite sex and is shamed by society.
		So it's been disproportionately tough, this transfer of wealth from young to old on young men, meaning that if we lift up all young people, I don't think you want affirmative action for men, it'll be disproportionately beneficial for young men.
		But men of my generation are not stepping up in terms of policies to lift young people up.
		And also they're not getting physically and emotionally involved in their lives.
		There are three times as many people applying to be big sister, big sisters in New York women as there are men applying to be big brothers because of some of the, I mean, if you're a 35-year-old dude, say you don't have your own family, say you're gay, say you're not a baller, you're self-conscious about raising your hand and saying, I think I could add value to the 15-year-old son of a single mother.
		And it's such a tragedy because there's so many men out there that can add so much value.
		Someone who mentors young men, it's the easiest thing in the world.
		They're such dopes.
		They make such bad decisions.
		You just ask them a few questions and you add value or a few statements.
		No, you can't survive on pineapple juice and creatine.
		Why have you decided to move to Alaska when you don't have a job?
		It's so easy to add value.
		And I think there's so many men out there with fraternal and paternal love to give that are afraid that they'll be suspected of being strange or worse pedophiles, or they don't have the confidence to get involved in a young man's life.
		But there is a social, a legislative, and economic responsibility of men, my generation, and also just an emotional investment obligation of men my age because of the unfair advantage we receive.
		And quite frankly, we're just not stepping up.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So if a young person comes to you and they, let's say they've done some of this right, right?
		So they're not fully addicted to this stuff.
		They're willing to put themselves out there.
		They want to work.
		They've got a little bit of an education.
		They've got some mojo.
		They've really, you know, but they're somewhere in that college age thing.
		But then they come to you and they say, man, Scott, I hear all the stuff that you're telling me about economics and what my prospects are and everything else.
		And I'm really depressed about that.
		What do you think the solutions are for that stuff?
		For the kid that really, that you don't have to fix all the other problems first.
		They've come through and they're okay.
		But now they're looking at the future and going, man, it doesn't look as good as it was for my dad, you know, 20 years ago.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay.
		So you just have to operate in the world that you live in, right?
		So it sucks to be a grown-up.
		You're going to be paralyzed and just bitch and complain.
		Young people in the United States still have more agency, I think, than almost anywhere in the world.
		And I think a lot of the issues they're triggered by, whether it's discrimination or, you know, lack of equity, what I find frustrating about young people is, yeah, we still have work to do, but it's a lot better than it used to be.
		And it's better here than almost anywhere in the world.
		You have agency, full stop.
		And one of the things that universities have done a terrible job about is creating this oppressor, oppressed zeitgeist that makes some people feel guilty and other people like they're less likely to be successful because of their identity.
		And that's just not 55% of Harvard's freshman class is non-white.
		I mean, you know, Tyler Perry and Trevor Noah's kids don't need a leg up.
		There is real, there is, unfortunately, the strongest indicator of your success now, in a good way, it's not identity.
		That's a wonderful thing.
		The bad news is the strongest indicator of your success is how wealthy your parents are.
		That's a bad thing.
		Anyway, what I would say to a young person is, okay, this is the world you operate in.
		So you need to do your best and recognize the world you operate in may not be as good as it was for guys like me 40 years ago, but it's still pretty damn good.
		Now let's just talk about how you punch above your weight class, a series of behaviors, activities, attitudes that will get you kind of as far as you, you know, get you, get you forward.
		We still, 11% of people in the lowest quintile end up in the top quintile.
		That hasn't gone up or down.
		Unfortunately, I think what hurts a lot of young people from an anxiety level is that 210 times a day, someone is vomiting on their phone, their faux wealth.
		So the way the human brain works, a lot of people say, well, actually, you know, Warren Buffett says a middle-class person lives a better life than the richest man on earth 100 years ago.
		That's true.
		They didn't have Netflix or Novocaine, which are both awesome, right?
		But the problem is that's not the way the human brain works.
		The human brain goes, if where I'm spending my time is telling me that because my boyfriend doesn't have ripped abs and I'm not in San Trope or on a Gulfstream, I have screwed up and I should feel bad about myself, you know, then that's why these kids don't feel good.
		And again, detaching them from their relationships.
		But I think, look, when I coach a young man, this is what I do.
		I say, give me your phone, unlock it.
		Everyone has an advantage.
		The advantage of young people is they've got more time than money.
		They have capital.
		It's just human capital.
		So we're going to find eight to 12 hours of that precious capital in your phone.
		It's so easy.
		And I try to put them at ease by saying, I gamble, I buy options.
		I have consumed porn such that they don't feel judged.
		I'm not going to judge you.
		They unlock their phone.
		And in about seven minutes, we can find eight hours.
		TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Coinbase, Robinhood.
		All right.
		I need, I see your screen time.
		I need it to be an hour or less a day.
		We're going to get seven or eight hours a week.
		And we're going to reallocate it into one of three areas.
		First is we're going to get fit.
		I think that young men, and fitness is wonderful, everybody, but especially for a young man who's used to historically being outside, sweating, hunting, being in the agency of others.
		I need you to get strong.
		You're going to look back on your denser bone structure, your double twitch muscle, your testosterone.
		You're going to think, why wasn't I a monster when I was 25?
		I joke that anyone, any man under the age of 30 should be able to walk into any room and know if shit got real, they could kill and eat everybody or out and run them.
		I just think you're going to be happy.
		Who breaks up fights at bars?
		Big, strong guys.
		Who starts fights?
		Guys who don't feel good about themselves.
		You have a broader selection set of mates, less likely to be depressed.
		We're going to get really fit and strong too.
		Need to make some money.
		If you have a smartphone, you can make money.
		I don't care if it's being a lift driver, task rabbiter.
		Panera is desperate for people and they start them at $18 an hour.
		Just show up on time and you immediately separate yourself from the rest of the crowd.
	Got to make some money.
	Got to get a taste for the flesh.
	We live in a capitalist society.
	Money is how the world goes around.
	You need to be economically viable.
	And then the third thing is we're going to put ourselves in the company of strangers, church group, riding class, nonprofit, whatever it is, sports league.
	You have to be in the company of strangers at least twice a week.
	And then kind of the next follow-up is we're going to do the approach.
	We're going to express platonic interest.
	Hey, do you want to grab a beer?
	Romantic interest at some point.
	Hey, do you want to grab a coffee?
	And this is the goal.
	The goal is to get to know because I don't want them to be scared to know.
	And then the next day you're going to call me and I'm going to be like, I asked a woman out for coffee and she made excuses.
	I'm like, that's a no.
	I'm like, are you okay?
	Yeah.
	Is she okay?
	Yeah.
	That means you do it again.
	Because the only thing great yes is how like I can't imagine how many no's you've had along the way, right?
	I mean, if you see anybody who has scored above their weight class economically or romantically, this has been the key, no.
	And that is their willingness to endure no to get to a great yes.
	And our young men aren't getting there.
	They're not taking those risks because of the seduction of a frictionless relationship online.
	And also sometimes a no can be dangerous, right?
	One out of three relationships used to begin at work.
	You think a young guy feels confident ever asking a girl out at work?
	It's like, oh no, that could be a career-ending injury.
	And it's like, okay, so where do people meet now?
	They're not going to work.
	They're not going to school.
	There's remote.
	There's Zoom.
	They're not going to church.
	Church attendance is at an all-time low.
	So where do people meet?
	And this is especially damaging for young men because young men need to demonstrate excellence.
	If you talk to people who've been married longer than 30 years, 80% of them say that one was more interested than the other in the beginning.
	It was almost always the man.
	We're just much less choosy than women, right?
	Our job is to spread our seed to the four corners of the earth.
	Women's job is to put up a finer screen and pick the smartest, strongest, fastest seed.
	But typically what happens is the guy gets to demonstrate excellence.
	I liked how he treated his parents at church.
	He was so good at work.
	I hung out with him and his friends, and he was a great dancer.
	I liked the way he smelled.
	Women fall in love, so to speak.
	Where does a young man demonstrate excellence right now?
	What venue does he have?
	So I think that I tell young people, punch above your weight class, every day put together a list, be fit, start making some money, put yourself in the company of strangers, and recognize that as bad as things are, and as much as the world, and Greta Thunberg and all these people want to tell you that the world sucks, it's actually, we're running at about 99% of the best day on earth ever, ever.
	So, you know, buck up, like, do your best to win at this game, regardless of what you think of the inequity of the game, or do your best to win at it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		How much of it do you think is also that we've just kind of removed mystery from everything, that that used to be a part of life?
		If you had to go and approach somebody, it wasn't about just all your own insecurities, but you just didn't know anything about them other than you thought they were good looking at the bar or something.
		Where now it's like because of Hinge and all the apps, we've kind of atomized all the things you might talk about in an initial relationship.
		You already know the 20 most, you know, quote unquote interesting things about somebody because you saw it on the app before you actually sit with them.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've never been on a dating app, so I can't speak to the actual nuance of it.
		But what you typically have is whenever you digitize a market, it becomes winner-take-most.
		So we digitized retail with Amazon.
		50% of all online commerce now is one player.
		We digitized information, and now 93% of all queries and search are through Google.
		We digitize the market for connection and social media and information.
		And now two-thirds of all social media is one player globally outside of China.
		We've digitized mating, and that is now the primary, the place people used to meet mates was school, work, and friends.
		Now it's online.
		And when you digitize the marketplace where everyone has access to everybody, everybody wants to go out with a 10%er because they think, okay, that's my weight class.
		And the reality is if there's 50 men on Tinder and 50 women, 46 of the women will show all their attention to just four of the men, which leaves 46 men fighting over four women.
		And it destroys a man's self-esteem.
		It also, the guy in the top 10% can engage in Porsche polygamy.
		And that is he can have, he has so much opportunity that it doesn't incent good long-term behavior.
		It incents him, quite frankly, sometimes to not be as kind, as thoughtful, or try as hard as he should.
		And Jordan talks about this as kind of hypergamy where because a woman can have sex with a quote-unquote high-quality male, she's under the impression that's her weight class.
		And that's a terrible thing to say.
		But men will have sex with women up and down.
		And then it creates, it just creates an imbalance in the marketplace.
		Whereas if it's seven single women and seven single guys at temple, they see each other, they demonstrate excellence, and they sort of pair off.
		But some of the data I've seen is that it takes 200 swipes right of a man to get one coffee, of a man of average attractiveness, like 50 percentile.
		And if he does five coffees, four will ghost him, four will reconsider.
		So he has to swipe right a thousand times for a coffee.
		And it makes, unfortunately, he gets angry, gets angry at himself.
		I think sometimes it can lead to a certain level of misogyny where he starts blaming women for his problems.
		So the online dating market, I think, has been really amazing for the top 10% of men, awful for the bottom 90, and just generally worse for all women because it incents bad behavior.
		And then men are sort of, you know, men go online and feel rejected.
		And women, I think, are taught to spot yellow flags as red flags.
		The media is, I mean, I hate the fact that we talk about politics and mating now.
		Did you know the politics?
		Well, you're younger than me.
		When I was in my 20s, I gave nobody to think about the politics of people I dated.
		We didn't talk about that shit.
		But now it's another reason to say, oh, he's MAGA, he's out.
		And I think a lot of the media is telling women, walk right out on that man.
		And I'm not suggesting women lower their standards, but there's generally like a one-strike, he's out attitude.
		You know, you're a queen.
		You don't need that.
		Oh, he didn't do that.
		That's a red flag.
		He's out.
		You're a strong, independent woman.
		So men need to level up.
		Men need to raise their game.
		They need to be in better shape, more economically viable, kinder, more interesting, willing to make the approach.
		80% of women still say they expect men to make the approach.
		They expect a man to approach them.
		So I feel like men need to level up, but I think the media also plays a negative role in that it's constantly telling women, oh, you don't need him.
		He's out.
		He didn't open your door.
unidentified		He's out.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		You know, he's not over six feet and he doesn't make six figures.
		He's out.
		So I think unfortunately we have a lot of trends on both sides of the gender aisle, separating them and resulting in a lack of mating.
		60% of people age 30 used to have a kid in the household.
		Now it's 27%.
		It's been cut in half.
		So I think it's a real shame because, and I don't know you, but I would assume you agree with this.
		I know you sort of.
		The most rewarding thing in your life is going to be relationships.
		And I think not for all people, but for me, the opportunity to raise kids with someone has been the most bonding and most like purposeful thing.
		I won't say it makes you any happier, but it's kind of everything.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I think it makes you way happier.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, my kids are young still, so I haven't had the point when they've told me to go F myself and all that kind of thing.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's coming.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		No, so hopefully I can delay that as long as possible.
		But, you know, even over the weekend, just hanging out with them, we made a fire this week and it was finally a little cool in Miami.
		We made a fire in the backyard.
		And I really had that thought.
		It sounds cliche, but I was like, it does not get better than this, like to show these kids how to make a fire.
		Like, how could anything possibly be better?
		You sort of referenced what my next question was going to be, but I, and I know it's not your specific area of expertise, but on the female side of this, you know, when we talk about all the conditions and data points that are kind of screwing with the male mind, there obviously is a version of this that's happening with females.
		Most people see it as just kind of, oh, they've got a filter on their Instagram, so they look a certain way, or the guys you kind of reference, they feel like they can always get the 10 guy.
		Is there anything else going on over there that is also causing the disconnect between the sexes and how their behaviors are online and everything else?
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		I think, look, I think that one of the things I always feel compelled to say is it's not a zero-sum game.
		You can still acknowledge, I think the far right recognized the problem early with young men.
		The problem is I think some of their solutions are to take non-whites, women, and gay people back to the 50s.
		I think they incorrectly correlate the ascent of women in special interest groups with the decline of men.
		That's not true at all.
		Whether it was World War II, if we hadn't let women into factories to build P51s and Hitler didn't, the war would have taken longer.
		We still would have won.
		If women had not entered the workforce in the 70s and 80s, our economy would not have continued to grow.
		Women's ascent is something we should be celebrating, and men should be the afterburner, promoting it, applauding it.
		The challenges young girls face on social media may be as great or greater.
		The level of self-harm among teen girls with social media has gone up 60% since social went on mobile.
		At the other end of the spectrum, when a woman has kids, she goes to 73 cents on the dollar of her male counterpart when he has kids.
		So, the corporate world has still not figured out a way to maintain a woman's professional trajectory should she want to stay at work as well as it has for men.
		Women still face huge issues.
		I do think, quote unquote, I hate the term patriarchy, but there's still huge sexism out there and they face huge challenges.
		At the same time, we recognize and have empathy for that.
		We've had Title IX.
		The number of C-level executive females has gone from 18% to 27% in the last 10 years.
		We're making really good progress there, but no one wants to acknowledge just how far and fast young men have fallen in the last 20 years.
		Now, women, you know, I don't know.
		I feel like I'm barely starting to understand the dynamics of young men.
		I don't even venture into trying to figure out what's going on with young women, but to acknowledge that they still face their own set of issues, and we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
		Gay marriage didn't hurt heteronormative marriage.
		Civil rights didn't hurt white people.
		We can have empathy for the struggles of young men while still acknowledging women face issues and we need to be thoughtful about bodily autonomy.
		I mean, I'm a big fan.
		I think, you know, the overturn of Rovi-Wade, I think, was terrible.
		You and I might differ on this, but I think that it's the first time we took a right away.
		And the thing I hate about the current state of bodily autonomy in the U.S., people say it's a war on woman.
		I don't think it's a war on women.
		I think it's worse than that.
		I think it's a war on poor women.
		Because if a woman in our lives, Dave, got pregnant and we decided to try and help her end that pregnancy, we'd figure it out.
		If we decided that abortion was illegal across the board, it wouldn't pass because I think people, conservatives, like the idea of having a back door.
		And the reality is living in a blue state, if you have money, you have no problem figuring it out.
		But the 14-year-old black girl who gets pregnant, she doesn't, they don't have the sophistication or the money to figure it out.
		So anyways, I don't know how it got here.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't want to go too far down.
		I think we probably disagree on the reversal, but I completely agree with the economic principle there that absolutely rich people and people with means will always be able to do things, whether legal or not.
		But let's not bother with the state.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		We'll stay with that.
		We want to stay friends.
		We want to date each other.
		Let's not, let's not.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I think it's only our second or third interview.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Let's not blow the whole thing up right now.
unidentified		I got it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I got it.
		So all of this, with all of this that's happening, and with, you know, that we're on this robotics horizon and the AI stuff, and you referenced some of that before.
		Are you feeling hopeful for where the next turn for humanity will take us?
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Well, so I got to be honest.
		Everyone says they're an optimist.
		I struggle with anger and depression.
		I'm not an optimist.
		And the way I try and justify it is, look, you needed optimists for the plane to fly a kitty hawk, but you needed pessimists for seatbelts.
		I'm a seatbelt guy.
		I see the glasses half empty.
		But you have to always, I'm fascinated by the markets.
		That's kind of my background.
		And the reality is the optimists have consistently beaten the pessimists from an investment standpoint.
		And it's really important.
		First off, there's a tendency for guys like me to catastrophize because we sound smarter than we are.
		To say, you know what?
		I think everything's going to get slightly better every day for the next 50 years.
		That doesn't get you in Forbes.
		That does not get retweeted.
		It's, oh, no, AI, America's a giant bet on AI.
		A big company is going to announce they're scaling back their investment in open AI.
		NVIDIA is going to crash and it's going to take the global economy down.
		I can walk you through that argument piece by piece and it sounds really compelling and interesting.
		Catastrophizing is more interesting than saying, yeah, things are just going to get slightly better.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		By the way, I don't have to tell you, that's exactly how it goes for politics, too, right?
		If I just lay out the good positive things that are happening, which I try to do all the time because I want people to see it, we know what the numbers are going to be on that.
		And then there's a certain set of people that want you to think World War III is always coming tomorrow and they're going to reap the rewards for that.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		It draws more attention.
		You sound smarter.
		But I do think there's some real wonderful things taking place.
		I think AI and healthcare is going to be unbelievable.
		I think the pace of discovery, the amount of FDA-approved products that were generated by AI has gone up 10 or 15 fold.
		I think that a mother with a kid who's managing her kid's diabetes has to spend five months a year managing that kid's diabetes and it's always the mom.
		I think AI is going to give her two, three, four of those months back.
		I think that AI could be used just as much for defensive measures as offensive.
		I wonder if AI ends up actually making the world safer in some ways.
		So I do think there's reason for hope.
		We continue to make progress, I think, mostly around mostly around people's rights.
		Some have been taken away.
		There's some things I'm worried about.
		But I'm fairly, I try to be an optimist.
		But what you have to do as an investor and someone, if you're trying to really be honest about history, you have to constantly ask yourself what could go right?
		What could go right?
		Because the people that ask that question have a tendency to be more correct than the people constantly saying what could go wrong.
		The trajectory of the human race has been up and to the right.
		Like our carbon emissions seem to be slowing down in America.
		I mean, things just aren't that, they're not as terrible as if you read the press, they would have you believe because you're just going to get more eyeballs when you say, oh, there's going to be 50 superfires in California in the next 10 years, rather than saying, well, actually, carbon emissions per capita in the U.S. are starting to decline.
		Texas is the largest producer of wind energy because they see the economics in it.
		It's not political.
		They see economic benefits.
		China has brought a half a billion people out of poverty in the last 40 years.
		Their life expectancy has gone from 47 to 67.
		That's an amazing feat, regardless of what you think of the CCP.
		That's just an incredible feat of humanity.
		More people are spending time volunteering for organizations that will help people they will never meet than at any point in history.
		More people are planting trees, the shade of which they will never sit under.
		And in history, there's a lot of good things going on out there.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That seems like the right place to end it.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do we get a fourth date?
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		You know, Dave, you're my favorite.
		You're like what I call crazy light.
		You're like, I think the people on your side of the aisle have gone so bad shit crazy, Dave, as I'm sure you think my people on my side of the aisle have gone so crazy.
		But I find common ground and I think the most important thing about our species is our ability to cooperate.
		And I think alliances, I hope the next decade is a restoration of alliances.
		And I really hope moderates and the non-crazies in each party recommit to getting along and shaping better solutions.
		I think we got to start talking again.
		I think it's, I'm even deciding, I used to go on Fox all the time.
		I would stop going on.
		I'm going to start going on again because I feel like there needs to be, we need to restore our alliances.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, first off, Scott, it goes both ways.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So crazy light, you could be a little to the right in crazy light and you could be a little to the left in crazy light.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		100%.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I think I'm going to put crazy light as my new Twitter bio, but I will tell you this.
		I mean, and this is why I enjoy having you on the show and why we play so many clips of you is because I like when I have a, you know, whatever those little political disagreements are, but someone's making sense on a whole slew of other issues.
		It shows you that politics is not everything.
		And as much as I talk about politics, it is definitely not everything.
		So we will do it again.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		All right, my brother.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Congrats on all your success.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Likewise.
		And maybe skip that, the speaking gig.
		You know, you got three.
		What do you say?
		You got three holidays left?
		Come on.
		That's it.
		You got to know.
		I'll send you some money.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's it.
		The ask answer's coming, Dave.
		Coming for all of us.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, God.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Good place to end.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		That's kind of weird, Terd.
unidentified		All right.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Goodbye.
scott galloway ▲ ● ▼		Take care.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		If you're looking to listen to more brainy and brutally honest conversations about academia, check out our academia playlist.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And if you want to watch full interviews on a wide variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist all right over here.

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