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someone dies in the UK every 90 minutes 76% of these are male what is going
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wrong if you were to point to a single point of failure it would be the Scott Galloway entrepreneur bestselling author
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Professor one of the most desired Minds when it comes to business and life he is about the obsession of how to be better
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as individuals and as a society Society tells you especially I think as a man that your worth is highly correlated to
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your economic success but for the first time a 30-year-old isn't doing as well as his or her parents men under the age
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of 40 are 24% less wealthy the average age of a firsttime home buyer is 47 now
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it's an online dating you have to swipe right a thousand times to get a single coffee it's one in seven men doesn't have a single friend we're going to have
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men having relationships with machines the most dangerous person in the world a lonely young broke male and we're
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producing millions of them and that can lead to very ugly places for the economy and Society what is the impact this is
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having on women women have become better educated and they're making more money it means that the quote unquote pool of
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viable mates for women is going down every year and a lot of these men are finding Role Models online yeah this is
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a real issue that this is a group that's struggling on the far right people like Trump a criminal Putin murderer on the
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far left as far as I can tell their vision of masculinity is to act more like a woman I don't think that's right either we need a new vision for modern
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masculinity do we need individual Solutions or do we need societal Solutions my Solutions are pretty straightforward and this is the one I'm
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working through and will definitely get me in the most trouble
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[Music]
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Scott it's quite clear that there is a
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crisis in society in different areas I called a
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friend of mine who is called Simon gunning before this conversation literally 10 minutes ago he heads up one
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of the largest mental health charities in the UK and they specifically focus on
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suicide they do a lot of work with men and I said to him can you tell me the latest stats on suicidality amongst men
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and purposeless and those kind kinds of things and he said to me someone dies by suicide in the UK every 90 minutes 76%
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of these are male for there's 25 attempts for every death it's the single biggest cause of death for men under 45
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and it's the single biggest cause of death for 15 to 49 year olds and the category of 19 to 35 year olds is twice
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as likely to report being in a crisis personally than any other group and lastly 16 to 24 year olds are currently
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the fastest growing group in history to exhibit suicidality MH what is going
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wrong in the way we've designed and the way that we're executing upon this vision of society I think even the way we frame
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the problem is incorrect and that is when we talk about if you were to
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say um that women women are three times as likely as men to kill themselves I
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think we would talk about the problem through the lens of it being a societal issue and we would immediately move to
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what investments and changeing behavior and education would address that problem
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when we say young men are killing themselves at three times the rate as young women we use terms like
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accountability or say things well if they just opened up more about their emotions or they need to get their act
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together and that is we've decided when it comes to men compassion is a zero sum
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game and that if you feel bad for men it immediately kind of outs you as someone
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who might be anti-women or who's gone red pill because the
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void the the statistics are just staggering four times more likely to be addicted 12 times more likely to be
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incarcerated and because nobody was talking openly and honestly about those
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very real issues that void created opportunity for what I think are some unproductive voices to fill that void
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and start speaking to these men and naturally a lot of people now have a gag reflex when I hear people talking about
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the problems around men so the first is we need to frame the problem as this is a real issue that requires and deserves
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compassion and our sympathy you know it's not a zero some game civil rights
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didn't hurt white people uh gay marriage didn't in any way diminish heteronormative marriage and so the
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first is to have a conversation that this is a group that's struggling and to stop using terms like accountability and
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somehow blaming them for their own problems here a 19-year-old male should not pay for the sins of his father or
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grandfather now and my yoda on this is Richard Reeves uh but basically it comes
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down to kind of three things the first is biological our prefrontal cortex does not mature as fast as a woman's an
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18-year-old woman from an executive function standpoint is like a 20-year-old male so or put in another
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way uh two seniors in high school applying to a college the woman is essentially competing against a
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16-year-old and that is her prefrontal cortex had that executive function that he has uh she had it at 16 so we're
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seeing uh double the number of women graduating from us colleges as men because it's 60/40 ratio when they start
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and then the ratio only gets worse because more men drop out that still is an incredible on-ramp to influence in
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Economic Security these men are getting on that on-ramp so there's biological reasons there's also I think the
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education system is just biased against men uh boys are five excuse me a boy is
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twice as likely on a risk adjusted basis or behavior adjusted basis to be suspended for the exact same activity as
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a girl who's brought into the principal's office for the exact same infraction you're sitting in front of me
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as a as a guy you're twice as likely to be suspended for cheating on your chemistry test as if you as a girl
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coming in a black boy is five times as likely to be suspended as a girl so we
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still have we have a real bias now part of that is that 90% of primary school
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teachers are women there are more Fe there are more female fighter pilots per
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capita than there are male kindergarten teachers men are not going into early stage
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education and this is really important because you have an entire Cort of boys
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who grow up the single if you were to point to a single a sing single point of failure where all of this starts if you
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said where did this young man come off the tracks if you tried to identify one
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signal through all the noise it would be the following when the boy no longer has a male role model and with incarceration
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with male abandonment and with a lack of teachers in Primary School you have an entire generation of young men who grow
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up having never had a male role model and so a lack of male role models and
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education system that is biased against them and then I think um economic policies whether it's the Outsourcing of
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manufacturing jobs the transfer of wealth from young to old people and you think well the fact that someone over
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the age of 70 is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago and someone under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy that
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affects men and women I think it's especially hard on men because I think men are
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still uh primarily evaluated in terms uh through the length of economic uh Vitality so they're
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biologically behind women have an education system biased against them and we have economic policies that have
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created a great deal of Shame and rage and the last point I would just say is for the first time in Europe and
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America's history a 30-year-old is not doing as well as his or her parents were at 30 and that creates just tremendous
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shame and rage I mean look at the housing market the average age of a firsttime home buyer is 47 now in 1980
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the average age of a first-time home buyer was 29 young people have been sequestered from whatever you call you
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know Loosely speaking the American dream or the or you know the the UK dream so
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the odds are just the the the forces in the face of young men have just become
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uh greater and greater and it's manifesting in a lot of different ways lower marriage rates lower birth rates
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and uh uh skyrocketing and suicide should also add that suicide is way up among teen girls because of social media
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so different challenges at different ages you're committing a lot of your time to both talking about this but
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writing about this subject matter why why does it matter so much to you personally of all the things because
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you're one of those individuals and I spoke to your team and they kind of echoed this that is very diverse in
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their ability to speak about subject matter you could talk about investing or money or um business or
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happiness but for some reason you've honed in it seems in part to solve this
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challenge that young men specifically are facing why why
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you well did you have two parents yes okay so I had a single mother I was
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installing sh because I'm that guy I'm that guy that that as a kid like lost
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didn't have didn't have a male role model um we were in what I affectionally call an
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upper lower middle class household my mother lived and died a secretary um I just could have easily
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come off the tracks and almost did a few times and because government stepped in
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and because because of things like pel grants which are um financial aid for
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kids in the lower I think cortile of income earning houses because the University of California uh saw themselves as public
00:09:56
servants not as luxury Brands and they let in 76% of applicants you know and I got rejected
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the first time so I was one of the 24% that didn't get in and then I got in again but the big hand of government
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Lifted Me Up and also I had men a lot of strange men step in a stock broker a
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baseball coach a neighbor I had all these wonderful men kind of step in and
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between the warm embrace of government in America that used to love unremarkable people um men who step in
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you know this is nothing but for me I relate to these young men and I see an
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opportunity there aren't a lot of people I think I just think the problem
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is so much greater than the emotion and the bandwidth and the resources being allocated to it and it's just simply you
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know kind of a nod to the the institutions and the men that help me um
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so and also be blunt it's a commercial opportunity it's a chance to talk about
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something that's it's a white space it's so obvious if you think of yourself as a
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Tha leader you want to be fearless and you want to move the needle on stuff so this for me was just you know slowly but
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surely you just look at the data and It All Leads to one place and that is um
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young men have fallen further faster than any cohort in America in Europe and
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and it needs to be addressed and talked about this idea that it all comes back
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to do you have a male role model in your life links interestingly to a lot of the data that says we're less likely to be
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married than ever before we're less likely even I was reading some stats around when our first kiss happens and a
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man's first kiss used to happen I think it was around 18 it's now on average into their early 20s everything seems to
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be moving further and further and back so from that I deduce that the chance that a young man would have a male role
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model in their life is probably deteriorating as as well because there's less marriages there seems to be um the
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prospects of dating seem to have dropped as well so is there correlation between these two things in some in some
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respect yeah there's what's strange is so you don't have kids right no what's weird about
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raising kids now is that my mom was worried about me getting into too much trouble I think what's fairly common now
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among parents is we're worried our kids aren't going to get into enough trouble and that is we see the the power
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of unsupervised play we see the power of maybe sneaking into a movie and getting
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caught you know we see just uh the the that it's important that at some point
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kids are going to experiment with alcohol and drugs and kind of better they ease into it as opposed to never do
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anything and then end up at College their freshman year and just can't you know can't handle the the onslaught of
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it so you know I think that there's something about the concierge and
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bulldozer parenting that where we use so many sanitary wipes on a kid's life that they don't develop their own
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immunities um 40% of Harvard's incoming freshman class are
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virgins and uh I worry that I mean this
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is going to sound strange we have two little teen pregnancy what do I mean by that um unplanned teen pregnancy is a
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bad thing but we have we have had such dramatic Falls in that and uh drunk
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driving accidents which is great but what it signals quite frankly is that kids are so over programmed and have
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such a lack of um socialization now the number of high school teenagers that
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sees their friends every day has been cut in half that were slowly but surely sequestering from each other and when we
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do that we become less mamalia we're mammals were literally if you have dogs dogs are happiest when they're lying on
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top of you the worst thing you can do to a dog is leave it alone all day and what we're doing to young people is we're kind of they are leaving others and
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themselves alone all day we're separating from each other we're becoming less social and there's a group of men who um aren't received well at
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school don't find a source of Pride auto shop metal shop wood Shop's gone away
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they they go online to date they the majority of them get rejected if you're
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average attractiveness in online dating you have to swipe right 2 200 times to get a single coffee if you set up five
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coffees you'll get one will actually show up four or the five will ghost you and decide later on they don't actually
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want to meet up so a young man of attractive of average attractiveness and online dating has to swipe right a
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thousand times so he gets validation for one coffee he gets validation that he has no Worth to the other sex he loses
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confidence he starts engaging with people because he has less opportunities for Random Encounters where he has to develop those skills and slowly but
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surely he sequesters from society and at some point he just is not not really savable
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he just never develops those skills those skills around friendship or romantic relationships in the United
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States one in seven men doesn't have a single friend one and four uh one and four can't name a best friend in
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addition marriage has become now a luxury item if you're in the upper cortile of income earning households
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there's a three and four chance you're going to get married if you're in the lower quti the lowest cortile there's
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only a one and there's a three and four chance you will never get married so we have a group of the most d ous person in
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the world we're producing millions of them and that is a lonely young broke male and just bridging into AI I think
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the biggest danger in AI that people are worried about it becoming sentient I don't buy any of
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that or super weapons I think that's a problem but we've managed through those things bioweapons Etc before I think the
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biggest problem that AI presents is that big Tech presents a series of low calorie lowrisk entry points into what
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feels like a reasonable fact assimil of a relationship I I think I'm making friends online no but you're not really
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experiencing friendship I think I'm in a relationship with somebody well are you are you really I'm learning no you're
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not you're gambling on coinbase or Robin Hood and rather than endure the
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rejection and trying and develop the skills and make the effort and it is an effort and involves rejection of going
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out into the physical world and revealing yourself as someone who would like to be friends with another man
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Express romantic interest take those risks we're developing these digital analoges of life that create low entry
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lowrisk relationships and you think well that's not necessarily a bad thing but it is
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because it leads to depression because the reason why romantic comedies are two hours and not 20 minutes is that life is
00:16:47
about the victory of taking risks enduring rejection and having a small business
00:16:53
that works about about um approaching someone and getting the interview cold
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emailing someone and getting getting a coffee and quite frankly pursuing someone and developing the skills in
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deciding to put on a clean shirt and maybe shower more often and maybe hit the gym every once in a while and maybe
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text when you're not sure how this person feels about you and figure out a way to interact with someone around the
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Nuance nuance and develop the skills around human sexuality such that you can develop a relationship that is the
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victory that's the payoff after the two hours and fewer and fewer men are
00:17:30
engaging in those risks and that Victory and I think that AI in combination with
00:17:36
sex bots is going to create an industry where Men start having relationships with algorithms and Dolls supposedly the
00:17:43
sexbot industry is going to be bigger than the domestic box office receipts of all movie theaters in the US within 5 to
00:17:49
six years so we're going to have men having relationships with machines and
00:17:55
Dolls as opposed to as opposed to other other uh humans and I think it's just it
00:18:01
creates a a level of depression I think her should be required watching for
00:18:08
every teen male and I think every every teenager in in high school should have a
00:18:14
course as part of Health on mating Dynamics where they teach especially young men that approaching a woman and
00:18:20
expressing romatic interest while making her feel safe is a skill and there's nothing wrong with that and that the end
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game of relationship a partner a romantic uh partner is one of the keys
00:18:33
to a happy life and I think most studies bear that out and we are sequestering
00:18:38
for a variety of reasons men from the opportunities to have those relationships and it also impacts women
00:18:44
but what we're seeing with women is two and three under the age of 30 have a boyfriend only one in three men have a
00:18:50
girlfriend because women are dating older they want more economically and emotionally viable
00:18:56
men on the point of sex box it's almost it's almost impossible for me to
00:19:02
see how that doesn't become a huge part of male dating you know I was speaking
00:19:07
to Mustafa Solomon who was the one of the co-founders of and Mustafa yeah yeah
00:19:12
yeah one of the co-founders of m Deep Mind which sold to Google and in his new book The Coming wave he talks about how
00:19:18
all of these breakthroughs in technology one of which is AI one of which is robotics is going to sort of intersect
00:19:26
with the ability to have literally some someone in your house who can not only clean you know clean your house and do
00:19:32
the dishes and make your lunch but also can love you MH in whatever artificial
00:19:38
form that love comes they can agree with everything you say they can encourage you and they can have sex with you MH
00:19:44
and dare I say and I'm sure this might be clipped by somebody there is a certain cohort of men who would rather
00:19:51
choose that than nothing and when they're faced increasingly with that choice it feels really inevitable to me
00:19:57
to see how they would choose um some of them would choose a sex spot or something to that effect to fill that
00:20:04
void we can all relate to that we all we all make that type of decision in
00:20:10
different increments a lot of times it's easier to say I'm just going to stay home and watch Netflix and take an
00:20:15
edible and por order in and maybe maybe watch porn instead of go out and engage
00:20:22
in the expense the emotional trauma the effort the skills I have to provide
00:20:29
to try and establish something resembling a real world relationship and rejection is
00:20:36
enormously painful and you know I think teaching young people rejection and my
00:20:44
son didn't make the football team uh last week and he's 13 years old and it
00:20:50
was a big deal he was really upset he thought this was the way he integrated into the UK he loves football tried out
00:20:57
trouts are going really really well came home threw his back down tears didn't make the football team and of course his
00:21:04
mother's totally freaked out what do we do and I'm like this is a awful day for all of us and it's a great day for him
00:21:10
because this is what's going to happen he's going to wake up tomorrow and he's going to realize he's fine and he's going to develop a little bit of callous
00:21:16
over that that emotion and I think you're an entrepreneur and and I've been an
00:21:22
entrepreneur my whole life I was single most of my adult life I don't know I don't know your relationship status but if you're an entrepr
00:21:29
and you're single you're used to enduring rejection and that is the key to success that's the absolute key
00:21:36
because the only thing you know that that has happened in someone who's very successful professionally and personally
00:21:42
is they have developed the skills to endure rejection that that's just it no one bats a thousand you approach strange
00:21:49
women in a strange Place most of the time it's going to be awkward and sometimes it's going to be humiliating
00:21:55
because you're going to get rejected you wna start a business you keep asking
00:22:00
people for money you keep asking employees to join you you keep asking for customers and clients and the only thing I can guarantee you is a [ __ ] ton
00:22:06
of rejection the ability to endure that rejection is absolutely the key to
00:22:13
success more so than Talent more so than I even I wouldn't say hard work I'd say
00:22:18
grid is right up there but your ability to endure rejection is the you you know if you want to punch above your weight
00:22:24
class economically or romantically then get out of spoon and get ready to eat [ __ ] that is a prerequisite to that kind
00:22:31
of success and technology is enabling people to say well why subject yourself
00:22:38
to that risk you can you can engage in something that feels sort of similar
00:22:43
without any risk at all and over the long term it's just such a bad trade I I
00:22:50
mean you were talking about porn porn is the largest unsupervised experiment on young men that we've ever had and it's
00:22:56
largely unsupervised because there isn't a lot of academic research on it because most academics don't want to be known as
00:23:01
the porn Professor so there really is a lack of research around it and when I coach young men the first thing I do
00:23:07
kind of my go-to is I get their phone I look at screen time I'm like okay let's think of your what do you have as a
00:23:12
young person you have a lack of financial Capital but you have a lot of human capital and that's really important time so we're going to think
00:23:18
about your time as money and we're going to decide how we're going to invest it let's look at your current portfolio of
00:23:23
Investments and I ask them to unlock their phone and I say I won't be judgmental and between Twitter Tik Tock
00:23:31
porn coinbase it's so easy to find a minimum of 10 and sometimes up to 50
00:23:37
hours a week and we're going to reallocate it and we're going to reallocate it to other things and one of
00:23:44
the things we're going to reallocate it to is like first we got to make some money are you making any money you got to make some I don't care if it's
00:23:49
flipping on an Uber app I don't care if it's becoming an instacart a Dasher the best way to make a lot of money is to
00:23:54
start making a little bit because you start developing the skills and the Hunger for More Money Right the second
00:24:00
is we're going to take some time and we're going to try and invest in uh organizations or activities that put us
00:24:07
in the company of random strangers not just potential romantic interests but friends mentors you that's that's super
00:24:15
you know that's super important and one of the keys to developing what I'll call the
00:24:21
Mojo to take those risks around romantic relationships is to Moder your
00:24:28
consumption of porn one of the only reasons I graduated from UCLA was because one of my
00:24:34
motivations for going to class was not only that I wanted to learn not only that I needed to learn to
00:24:40
graduate I was a terrible student but the prospect of potentially meeting a
00:24:45
woman who I could take to one of my fraternity parties or that ultimately might be interested in me romantically
00:24:51
and sexually and if I'd had the access to porn that young men have now I'm not
00:24:57
not sure that Mojo would have been as great to get out of the house as often so just to tell young men not to engage
00:25:04
in porn I think is sort of ridiculous but look at it analytically and think okay would you be more
00:25:10
inclined to get out of the house take those risk engage in the victory engage in what it is to be a man and be a
00:25:17
mammal um if you had reallocated some capital and ensure that that fire was
00:25:23
still there uh so modulating I think modulating porn and more generally spending less time online every digital
00:25:32
version of your life is a shittier vision of the analog version that could
00:25:37
happen but everyone said I'd rather have I'd rather have shitty shitty kind of
00:25:43
okay TV that's just mind-numbing as opposed to putting in the effort to to to do something great but um I think
00:25:50
it's more than just porn I think it's all of it why leave the house why endure
00:25:56
that sort of reject rejection effort expense it's not just so expensive to go
00:26:01
out right so but I think porn is one of those things that young men need to modulate and find and you know such that
00:26:08
they get their Mojo this all has KnockOn effects for women and I think the data is also suggesting that the crisis
00:26:15
amongst men is causing in many situations a crisis for women as well
00:26:21
because we both you know men and women exist in an ecosystem that needs to be somewhat balanced um so I'd like to talk
00:26:28
about the impact this is having on women one of the things I I found interesting it's actually because of a young young
00:26:34
woman came up to me in a book shop I was just there looking for my own book as you do just cuz it just come out and she said something to me that a lot of women
00:26:41
that have approached me or dm'd me have said quite frequently which is she's over the age of 30 now mhm she's
00:26:47
committed much of her life to her career she's single she's tried dating apps and
00:26:54
she doesn't enjoy it and I part of me started to think about the fact she might be caught in a sort of
00:27:00
generational Gap where they used to meet in person but now the the generation below her meet online um and she
00:27:06
concluded what she was saying to me with the fact that she believes or she's starting to believe that maybe there's
00:27:11
something wrong with her because she's over the age of 30 she's single she can't find a partner she told me she's
00:27:18
never had a boyfriend MH she's killing it in her career mhm and she was in that Bookshop looking for advice from a book
00:27:26
mhm and I feel compelled because I know she listens to this podcast to ask as
00:27:32
many people as I can the question to find an answer for her because there's someone very close to me in my life who
00:27:37
I literally text when I left the Bookshop and I said I've just met you in the book shop every sentence that that
00:27:43
woman said to me in the Bookshop is the exact word for word even like I've tried going to the gym and that's not working mhm is the same as a close friend in my
00:27:50
my life one of my best friends has said to me as well and there's not just one in my personal life there's three or
00:27:55
four well we all know know women I'm sure this happens to you all the time really interesting High
00:28:03
character successful attractive women usually in their 30s sometimes in their 40s who will say I can't find anyone to
00:28:10
date and it's not that they can't find anyone to date it's that they can't find anyone they want to date and there's
00:28:16
some Dynamics here the first is can I just interject validate your point there she also said to me I'm not willing to
00:28:22
drop my standards well and and and it's like Warren Buffett said the key to a health marriage is low
00:28:28
expectations the what's happening is and I think his name is Chris Williams he kind of reminds me of you he's this
00:28:34
handsome young podcaster he was blown by all this old guys do you know Chris yeah I know Chris anyways he does he does a
00:28:39
fantastic job and I've learned a lot from him um but he calls it the high heels effect and that is every year for
00:28:45
the last 50 years women have become better educated and they're making more money in urban centers they've now under
00:28:51
the age of 30 blown by they're now making more money more single women in the US own houses than single men
00:28:57
they're getting taller every year and the reason he uses height is that 50% of
00:29:02
women say they want date a guy shorter than them it's probably more like 80% and even if they're not cognizant of it
00:29:07
just anthropologically subconsciously they're just usually not attracted to men shorter than them because they have
00:29:13
something telling them that this uh individual is less likely to be able to physically protect you so you're just at
00:29:20
a disadvantage from a height standpoint now metaphorically women are getting taller every year and men are getting
00:29:26
shorter right men mate socioeconomically horizontally and down women horizontally and up but
00:29:32
when the pool of men who are socioeconomically uh uh senior to women
00:29:38
it just means that the quote unquote pool of viable mates for women is going
00:29:43
down every year and women have been told they can have it all and what I found is you can't have it all um or let me put
00:29:50
this way you can have it all you just can't have it all at once and that uh to focus on their careers which by the way
00:29:56
I think is a good thing I think economic viability is just super important for everyone including women um but the
00:30:01
reality is as they have gotten taller men have gotten shorter so there's just less pairing Society has a tendency to
00:30:07
evaluate a woman's Success Through the lens of her romantic success not as much for men people look at you and think and
00:30:14
I don't know your relationship s but people look you like guy who's killing it he's killing it and he's single oh my
00:30:20
God it's good to be Steven Barlett a woman in her 30s who's killing a professional is alone it's like super
00:30:26
success ful but your your single status is a feature for women it's seen as a
00:30:33
bug and you both might be just as lonely but it's it's or you might be engaging
00:30:39
in and I'm projecting here I have no idea what your situation is here but there's this Dynamic where the men who
00:30:45
are in the top 10% can engage in Porsche polygamy and that is women um with online dating now believe
00:30:54
there's something wrong with this that and I'm going to be this this is going to get me in trouble but let's raate
00:30:59
everybody most people will acknowledge that some people are more attractive than others and they find certain people
00:31:05
less and more attractive a woman of average attractiveness can have a relationship
00:31:10
and when I say relationship that's code for sex with someone who's in the top 10% but that individual is probably not
00:31:17
going to establish a long-term relationship and because of the lack of friction and connection and meeting
00:31:22
people via text message or online dating the top 10% of men are getting 80 to 880
00:31:29
plus per of the opportunities for short-term relationships or sex so they
00:31:34
can engage in what's called Porsche polygamy and that there's not a lot of motivation for them to establish long-term relationships which leads to
00:31:41
bad behavior and a lack of household formation so the guys that most women
00:31:46
want and believe that they should be in a relationship with are the least likely to establish a long-term relationship
00:31:53
and then the bottom 90 either have little or absolutely no interest from
00:31:58
women so I want to be clear no woman is responsible for servicing a man but what
00:32:05
I think has happened is this Dynamic where because online has given everyone access to everyone the majority of women
00:32:12
are all interested in the same group and this group is now much less likely to
00:32:18
engage in a long-term relationship and the result is that just there's a disproportionate number of men and women
00:32:25
who quite frankly are just lonely uh but men have a tendency when
00:32:30
they don't have a romantic relationship to not only not have that romantic relationship but then they have fewer
00:32:36
friends they go out less they're less professionally successful you know if I
00:32:42
didn't have a mate who told me we need to save for a house I'm not sure I wouldn't have been smoking pot and drinking every night you know she was
00:32:48
like if you want to continue to have a relationship and have sex with me you've got to get your [ __ ] together that's a
00:32:55
men young men need that they need the guard rail of a romantic
00:33:00
interest the cocktail or the the peanut butter and chocolate of a household
00:33:05
where one person is more risk aggressive you know that's really important and
00:33:11
pushing the boundaries of what can be done and then another person who's more practical and that often times goes into
00:33:18
gender roles not always and sometimes it's flipped but that's a powerful combination 1 plus one really does equal
00:33:24
three and across every species you see that the majority of really wonderful things including Offspring but other
00:33:31
things in terms of building a society are a mix of different attributes and so we have just fewer and fewer of that
00:33:38
peanut butter and chocolate in households there are now more people not only living alone but living with their
00:33:44
parents than ever before because they're not establishing this relationship so it has it's absolutely bad for women but
00:33:51
typically typically women still are economically successful still find place places to put that love and quite
00:33:59
frankly don't start killing themselves or killing others so it's not that it's any any any any less bad but the knock
00:34:06
on effects tend to be less bad for society and I went through the research
00:34:12
from the Pew research but also from the sort of centers of Disease Control just to clarify some of these numbers for
00:34:18
women as well and they they cement everything you've said um only 133% of
00:34:23
women over 30 were married in 1970 that number has now risen to almost half the
00:34:29
divorce rate for women over 30 has doubled in the past 50 years in 1970 only 10% of women over 30 were childless
00:34:36
today that number is risen to almost 30% in 1970 only 28% of women over 30 were
00:34:41
earning more than their husbands today that number has risen to almost 50% and in 1970 only 12% of women over 30 were
00:34:49
living alone today that number has Ren risen to 35% and on the point of loneliness I was looking at how many men
00:34:56
versus how many women have a best friend and it's it's multiples more so multiple
00:35:01
more women I find still have relationships regardless of this state of affairs because they they're better
00:35:06
at as you say forming social Connections in non-romantic relationships with other women than men are so it's a pretty it's
00:35:14
a pretty um Bleak picture and maybe most importantly of all there's a clear
00:35:19
direction of travel here and if you extrapolate out that direction of travel we don't get to a good place population
00:35:25
decline you spoke of and how that lops side Society depression mental health suicide so the question becomes for me
00:35:32
what would you advise young men you talked about money I thought that was really interesting so maybe we we start there personal finance and establishing
00:35:39
that I'm a young man so say 21 years old um what do what have I got to do with my
00:35:46
money where should I be putting it how should I be earning it MH
00:35:52
so I think the three legs of the stool we're going back to it re reallocating capital as a Young Man one start making
00:35:58
some money two put yourself in r in environments where you might have a
00:36:03
random encounter with a stranger also and I know you engage in this we're going to reallocate four to six hours a
00:36:09
week to physical fitness um feeling strong feeling um um
00:36:17
in shape is one there's studies coming out now that it's supposedly 50% better than Pharmaceuticals and talk therapy
00:36:24
two you'll be more attractive to mates you'll feel better about yourself you'll be more kind uh I think that is
00:36:30
incredibly uh powerful but in terms of economic success and I'm I have a book
00:36:36
coming out in March on this I think there's a basic algorithm to Financial Security or Economic Security the first
00:36:42
is focus and that is focus find something I don't I hate the term Follow
00:36:47
Your Passion because typically people mistake passion for a hobby and they think oh I should be a DJ or I should be
00:36:53
an athlete or I should open a restaurant and they choose into Industries with the unemployment rate is 90 plus per. you
00:37:00
know the Riders are on strike in Hollywood the number there's 180,000 uh people in the uh actors unit
00:37:06
Sager Afra and the percentage of them that uh don't or that make more than
00:37:12
$24,000 a year to qualify for health insurance is um 12.5% so I would argue
00:37:19
that there's under or unemployment for nine and 10 actors so find something
00:37:25
you're good at that that where there's an employment rate of more than 90% And I want to be clear some people follow
00:37:31
their passion and it pays off hugely Jay-Z followed his passion is now a billionaire but I tell young man assume you're are not Jay-Z find something
00:37:38
you're good at that has more than a 90 plus percent employment rate which is 99% of professions and then in invest
00:37:47
requisite 10,000 hours perseverance grit willingness to break through hard things willingness to suffer Injustice which is
00:37:52
a guaranteed attribute of the workplace and get really really good at something
00:37:57
or at least having have a path to being great to something also in terms of being attractive to potential mates
00:38:03
there's very few things that are more attractive if you're not already economically successful than a plan this
00:38:08
is my plan right that's what I think romantic potential rantic Partners want you don't need to be a baller you don't
00:38:14
need to be driving a Porsche you need to have a plan and that plan might change that plan may not work out we got to
00:38:20
have a plan so the first is we're going to focus and we're going to find something we're good at and not only
00:38:25
something we're good at but something people will pay us for um that's the first thing you got to
00:38:31
make money but the second component the key to wealth isn't isn't as much how
00:38:36
much money you make it's your ability to live a little bit like a stoic and live below your means and that's one thing I
00:38:42
always did I always live below my means I never had debt I never use credit cards for stuff and that is incredibly
00:38:48
hard in our society where um every talented person and now ai and
00:38:55
algorithms are finding you at a moment of vulnerability and convincing you that you need a new set of on trainers that
00:39:02
oh wait it's worth it to upgrade from economy to economy Comfort to economy plus to business class I mean it's just
00:39:10
the the Market's ability in a capitalist Market to find you a product you must have when you have any disposable income
00:39:17
is just remarkable there are so many amazing ways to spend money in London
00:39:23
and New York that to not spend all and or not spend more than all is real
00:39:32
discipline that is in that shows incredible character at a young age you
00:39:37
need to live like a stoic your your advantage as a young person is quite
00:39:42
frankly to live in a [ __ ] shoe box and spend no money on rent spend no money I used to make it a game one
00:39:49
summer at UCA and this was more out of survival or need but if I didn't make
00:39:55
$3,300 between my Junior and Senior year at UCLA I wasn't going back to college I owed the fraternity a ton of money I
00:40:02
wasn't going to be able to pay my tuition so I had 11 weeks to make $3,300 and I figured out if I just lived in the
00:40:08
fraternity in a shitty little room that I was paying no money for and I only ate Top Ramen bananas and milk I could save
00:40:15
I could I could live on $110 a week that was my total budget and I could do it
00:40:21
and when you're a young man and not only that it was still a fun summer I would still go we would
00:40:26
money and go buy a case of Schmitty beer and then on Sunday uh Sunday nights we'd
00:40:32
go to Sizzler this tacky restaurant in La for a brewing special Malibu chicken
00:40:38
and all you can eat salad bar and I used to go with the other members of the crew team and just clear them out and spend three hours gorging but we still had a
00:40:44
good time but when you're young I think you want to lean into this great thing where you don't have to spend money it
00:40:50
is impossible not to spend money when you get a little bit older and you start collecting dogs and kids you can't sleep
00:40:57
on someone's couch you can't sleep in a shitty apartment you can't walk to work you can't live on Top Ramen and bananas
00:41:03
so the ability to gamify and really try and live below your means and then that
00:41:08
creates an army of capital and that army of capital goes out for you and starts making money for you when you're in your
00:41:14
sleep and that goes to specific investment advice the first is and people don't like to hear this do away
00:41:20
with the notion that you are brighter than anyone else and going to be able to figure out individual stocks or Investments that allow perform the
00:41:27
market I can't convince you of that 100% and some of it is fun and if you want to learn about a stock and you want to buy
00:41:33
Nvidia or you want to buy DOA coin fine but try not to do it with more than 30%
00:41:41
of your saved money try to take 2third plus of your saved money and put it in
00:41:46
lowcost ETFs and index funds because here's the thing our flaw as a species
00:41:52
is we don't realize how fast time goes because the majority of us for the majority of history have died before the
00:41:57
age of 35 we can't process how fast time is actually going to go when you go past
00:42:03
35 at the age of 39 we stop we have no longer have the ability to process the
00:42:09
way we change in terms of our own physical appearance so from the age of 39 on and I can validate this every time
00:42:15
you look in the mirror you're like [ __ ] what is that because you can't process what is happening to you because for the
00:42:21
majority of your species history you weren't around post 39 you and I hopefully will be sitting
00:42:28
here in 20 years or over a beer and I'm going to look at you and I'm like how fast did it go and you're gonna like
00:42:33
Jesus like a blink and so if I said to you Stephen give me 20 give me find out
00:42:40
a way to save a th000 bucks 1,000 bucks and in a blink it's going to be worth
00:42:45
6,000 because I have this magic box how hard would you try to get as many as
00:42:51
much of that Capital to put in that box the power the power of diversification
00:42:57
and time because if you diversify I can get you 68% a year right every day 51%
00:43:04
of stocks go up 49% go down but if you invest in any five S&P stocks over 10
00:43:09
years and don't trade them no one has ever lost money 85% of day Traders lose
00:43:14
money if you buy five stocks put them away and never look at them again 10
00:43:20
years later no one has ever lost money so diversification and this is where I really screwed up I didn't understand the power diversification
00:43:26
successful people fall into the Trap of thinking I'm a baller I'm smarter than everyone I'm going all in on Cisco cuz
00:43:34
everybody wants internet infrastructure I'm going all in on Amazon if you went all in on Amazon in 99 in 24 months you
00:43:41
had lost 90% of your principle even Amazon the best companies in the world if you look back the majority of them
00:43:48
have had 24mon periods where they went down 90% but if you'd held on if you'd
00:43:53
held on and you didn't day trade and you didn't look at your stock you'd be up 30 or 50x now so the power of
00:43:59
diversification and also a recognition that time is just going to go so much faster than you think so Focus find
00:44:06
something you're good at that people will pay you for live like a stoic save you know spend less than you save so you
00:44:13
can develop an army of people who are killing it or killing people and invading the Earth while you're in your
00:44:19
sleep recognizing the power of diversification and then appreciating how fast time will go and not tra stocks
00:44:27
just let time take over if we give every baby and this is a potential solution to
00:44:32
what I think is going to be an oncoming crisis among seniors or too many of them that we can't take care of if we gave
00:44:38
for $40 billion from the US budget we could give every baby $7,000 and I think we treat them like INF infants and we
00:44:44
put it in a savings account ETFs Diversified by the time they're 65 just with that $7,000 if you didn't let them
00:44:51
touch it or trade it it'd be worth a million bucks so the fastest way to get every senior a million bucks and granted
00:44:57
it's 65 years from now would be to give every baby $7,000 and that just shows you the power
00:45:04
of compound interest and time and diversification I think it's fairly simple those four things but they're not
00:45:11
easy to do easy to do but everyone can do them almost everyone can do them and
00:45:16
for anybody who really is you know they've got I don't know $3,000 in their savings account they have never invested
00:45:23
a penny before in their life they don't know any of the time techology we just used they don't know what Vanguard means they don't know what low fees mean what
00:45:30
is the simple way of getting them on the right track from that point of I I drive
00:45:36
taxis I got $3,000 in my bank account or $500 what do I do go to Charles Schwab
00:45:42
or public.com open an account and first off find out um the equivalents in the
00:45:48
UK are like hard grief lands down um you can do a lot of this stuff on a lot of different apps where you're picking a
00:45:54
fund right go into spy or go into an index or an ETF that buys a bunch of
00:46:01
stocks for you make sure it's low fees and find out and I wish I knew more
00:46:06
about the tax law here find out if your employer or the government offers you some sort of tax advantage vehicle in
00:46:13
the US it's it's Roth and 401ks we have ice we have a retirement um system where
00:46:19
you can invest in your retirement and you have to understand that [ __ ] and if you don't understand it find your
00:46:24
daughter or or someone who can explain it to you and then the key is just start
00:46:31
and put it in an ETF or an index fund that tracks the entire Market low costs
00:46:37
low fees and find out if you have access to anything that's tax advantage but the key the key is to start but I only have
00:46:45
$100 well Christ that again that 100 bucks in 20 or 30 years will be a
00:46:51
thousand or more and not only that it gets you it gets you to a taste for
00:46:56
flesh you know like I remember I went on my first Safari and they said the line
00:47:02
you know unfortunately we had one Lon attack a human and now all of them appear to have a taste for human flesh
00:47:07
they never used to go after humans before but once they get a taste for human flesh like oh this tastes pretty
00:47:13
good let's start killing people killing and eating people just a hundred bucks
00:47:18
and then you wake up and you're like oh it's worth 108 it's worth 112 you get a taste for the Flesh of how powerful
00:47:25
money and time and investing is and just start I also think it starts to make you
00:47:33
feel in a weird way I think it makes you feel and and and I'm just saying this because I can relate to it as a man I
00:47:38
think it makes you feel masculine to feel like I'm taking care of myself I'm strong enough to live below my means
00:47:44
discipline isn't it yeah I I'm it's like working out you just feel better about yourself and I think living below your
00:47:51
means and creating an army of capital everyone talks about starting a business at skills so that can make money in their sleep that's their goal you can
00:47:58
make money in your sleep by saving it and investing it but the key is just a start quick one this is really really
00:48:04
fascinating to me on the back end of our YouTube channel it says that 69.9% of you that watch this channel
00:48:11
frequently over the lifetime of this channel haven't yet hit the Subscribe button I just wanted to ask you a favor
00:48:16
it helps this channel so much if you choose to just subscribe helps us scale the guest helps us scale the production
00:48:22
and it makes the show bigger so if I could ask you for one favor if you've watched this show before and you've enjoyed it and you like this episode
00:48:28
that you're currently watching could you please hit the Subscribe button thank you so much and I will repay that
00:48:33
gesture by making sure that everything we do here gets better and better and better and better that is a promise I'm willing to make you do we have a deal
00:48:40
Scott every time you mention male role models your demeanor changes a little bit same more and I I see the emotion
00:48:49
and passion in your face yeah the I mean I like I said I could have easily come off the tracks and all these
00:48:56
wonderful men from different parts of my life I mean this is um one of my one of
00:49:04
my uh books the algebra of Happiness was optioned to be turned into a series and the series was going to be like an R-rated version of Modern Family because
00:49:11
this was the reality of my life I lived with my mother and her boyfriend for seven years who was a male role model
00:49:17
for me we were that family that they don't talk about in movies or dramas and that is we were the second family Terry
00:49:25
was married with kids and every other weekend he used to come spend with me and my mom and you immediately think
00:49:31
this is a bad person he was wonderful to me he was a great role model he was generous he was kind he taught me a lot
00:49:38
about what it meant to be successful and a good person and after him and my mom
00:49:43
broke up he reached out and kind of tried to stay involved in my life you know I had I had men like that I
00:49:51
remember meeting men I met a cam counselor who would just stay in touch with me and he he was in technology and
00:49:58
he taught me a little bit about programming and here's the thing here's the thing Stephen and this is I mean the
00:50:03
bottom line is when we go to Solutions the number one solution for what ails
00:50:09
young men is other men and that is uh if we want better men we have to be better
00:50:15
men and I think the ultimate expression of masculinity where it shows your powerful you're strong you're smart is
00:50:21
when you get involved and irrationally passionate about the well-being of another child out that is that shows you
00:50:28
have hit a certain level of success and unfortunately I was on Bill Maher I'm doing a lot of name dropping right now
00:50:34
and I said that and Bill Maher immediately went well I'm not going to get involved in any 15 year-old boy's
00:50:39
life they're going to think I'm a pervert and the reality is the Catholic church and Michael Jackson have [ __ ] it up for all of us and that is
00:50:48
99.999% of paternal and fraternal love that men want to display and get
00:50:53
involved in a young man's 's life is positive and Society has taught us to be
00:51:01
suspect of those men and it's a real shame because those random generous men
00:51:08
who came into my life were were were instrumental instrumental in in my
00:51:15
development and turning into a productive citizen I think a lot of men have
00:51:21
those the inclinations and that desire to get involved and and and the good
00:51:27
news is these young men in need of guidance are everywhere sometimes it's just your friend's kids because
00:51:33
biologically uh kids start pulling away from their parents because they need to to get out you know leave the nest so
00:51:39
they start thinking anything your dad says is just wrong and stupid but your Dad's friend when he says the exact same
00:51:47
thing you kind of Nod your head and it makes sense and young men who need guidance are everywhere everywhere you
00:51:55
know my Nanny's kid is struggling your friend's kids are struggling young boys
00:52:00
are struggling I get emails every day from dozens of young men who are clearly
00:52:05
just like good kids trying to figure it out they're just trying to figure it out
00:52:10
and they want a little bit of reassurance and a little bit of guidance in someone just to tell them that they
00:52:16
matter right but yeah that that the number of men just randomly with no
00:52:22
self-interest who got involved in my life was just I mean literally a gift several of them and a lot of these men
00:52:29
are finding Role Models online like Andrew Tate who is many people describe as a symptom of this of this
00:52:37
crisis um is there anything that Andrew Tate
00:52:43
says that you fundamentally agree with I I I understand there's there's a lot that you have a different opinion on
00:52:49
but what is what is it that he says that you think has holds Merit uh I'll go for than that I think
00:52:56
the majority of what Andrew Tate says is probably positive it starts from a really good place take accountability
00:53:02
for your actions be in great shape be action oriented but it then kind of comes off
00:53:08
the rails and the one of the ways you kind of take accountability or take action is to try start treating women as
00:53:15
property is to sign up for my class on how to trade crypto which makes Trump
00:53:22
University look like Harvard I mean it's just it's a bit of a grift and I also think
00:53:29
that it what starts off as positive and that's most the mo quite frankly that's the most dangerous thing about it
00:53:34
because you can imagine a young boy a young man just agreeing with most of it and so then they adopt the last 10
00:53:41
or 20% Which quite FR is is really ugly it's just misogyny what do you think about the Bugatti in the Lamborghini and
00:53:48
hey look a young man wanting to acquire items that signal power and strength such that I'm wearing a panai watch that
00:53:54
I haven't wound in 10 10 years okay how's that any different right cuz I want to Signal my attractiveness and and
00:54:01
and and success to strangers right so yeah that's I I get it I get it but you
00:54:08
know the baller the guy who ends up with more what I'll call lasting opportunities and quite frankly more
00:54:14
mating opportunities is the guy who buys a Toyota and a saving money and is the first guy in his coort to buy a house I
00:54:21
think the majority of people are less impressed by your things than you think they're thinking about your [ __ ] less
00:54:27
than you're thinking about it I think people are really impressed with discipline and a
00:54:33
plan I used to believe I think up until maybe two years ago that I no longer was
00:54:39
in search of stat status to some degree well maybe like 70% I believe this
00:54:44
because I no longer have lots of material possessions you won't catch me and I mean you other than the car that you arrived here in that's the nicest
00:54:51
possession I own I don't have sports cars I don't have luxury item items or watches or anything and then I read a
00:54:58
book by a guy called will stall who's been on this podcast I'm sure the book's behind me somewhere who told me that we
00:55:03
just are the the status games that we play just change over time so instead of logos we care about the size of the boat
00:55:10
or even Jack in his profession as the Director of this podcast is playing a status game of cameras and production
00:55:18
quality and that really changed my perception I used to be quite judgmental once I'd lost all my Louis Vuitton and
00:55:23
all the stuff that I used to buy of people demonstrating status and I arrived to the conclusion that it's
00:55:28
actually innately human it's it's part of belonging and feeling valuable amongst our tribes is playing these
00:55:34
status games and I guess that's what the Bugatti is a metaphor of its the the wealthiest man in the
00:55:41
world uh Bernard Arno and it's usually either Bernard or musk but the wealthiest man in the world figured out
00:55:47
that you know we want to feel Basic Instincts the most Basic Instinct is
00:55:52
survival but a close second is prop propagation what's that mean sex sex and
00:55:58
so the way you communicate your worth as a mate is by one showing that you have a
00:56:04
Bugatti because what it means is I'm successful and strong and if you have sex with me your kids are more likely to survive than if you have sex with
00:56:11
someone driving a Honda and women spend a great deal of money on ergonomically Impossible shoes and expensive creams
00:56:18
and lotions that elevate the height of their cheekbones because supposedly that means if you m with them their kids are
00:56:24
less likely to be prone to infection so this all comes to propagation and show me any product that has a margin gross
00:56:32
margins of greater than 70 or 80 points I'm going to show you a product that does one of two things makes you feel
00:56:38
closer to God I think the slope on the back of a 911 I think the mesh on a BGA
00:56:43
Vanetta bag I think the you know sometimes great art that can really steal you you look at something and you
00:56:49
think God that just gives me a moment of presence here that's because over time the place we saw really really beautiful
00:56:55
things were sequestered to venues that had a religious overtone to them the MOs
00:57:00
the temples the churches the most beautiful artisans in the world were commissioned to come in and say paint the frescos on the ceilings here because
00:57:07
we want to give people the impression that this is where God lives and people started believing them when they heard
00:57:13
the music and they saw the beautiful robes and the candles and the art so when we are around really beautiful
00:57:19
things we just feel closer to God and then the the other maybe more powerful thing is it's signals are worth as a
00:57:26
mate and the desire to be more desirable as a mate such that the next generation is smarter Stronger Faster just never
00:57:32
goes away and the wealthiest man in the world or it abates as you get older but it doesn't I don't think it really goes
00:57:38
away but the wealthiest man in the world is tapped into our need to feel closer to God or be more um attractive to
00:57:46
potential M so I have a question back to you where do you spend your money H great
00:57:51
question businesses so investing investing starting companies one of my
00:57:57
new chapter of my life where I'm I'm starting companies and appointing CEOs or investing uh investing very early on
00:58:04
in shaping the company I have a lot of my money in the S&P 500 so just in a in
00:58:10
funds um I have some money in ethereum which has been there for six years five
00:58:16
six years now it's done very well for me so you're more evolved than I am
00:58:21
um you know I one of the reasons I bought a home and as I think is so I could tell people I own a home and Aspen
00:58:28
I'm I'm everyone has a certain level of addiction you're either addicted to trans fats THC alcohol codependent
00:58:36
relationship online shopping whatever it is I'm addicted to other people's affirmation and one of the ways I get
00:58:42
that affirmation is I don't want say I don't flaunt my economic success I I don't own a car I don't I don't wear
00:58:48
blingy things or anything like that but I do find myself telling people you know
00:58:55
just obnoxious douchebag things I hear myself talking about stuff that canotes my wealth so I still haven't gotten past
00:59:02
that I mean I still do that I definitely still do that and I still and I and I the minute it comes out of my mouth I
00:59:09
think you're still an [ __ ] oh and I then I do it again I hear myself saying it I'm like God that's just so nobody
00:59:15
needs to know that why is it important to you that these strangers know this and I still can't I still can't get past
00:59:22
it it's still Society tells you especially I think as a man that your worth is highly correlated to your
00:59:27
economic success and so the reason I have an iPhone I think we all have iPhones because we want to communicate
00:59:33
our worth as a mate if you have an Android phone you're kind of signaling to the rest of the world that life hasn't panned out the way you'd hoped
00:59:39
that if you had been just a little bit more successful you'd have an iOS right
00:59:44
seriously it's like carrying a Discover card I have an AMX black card that you want to talk about a douchebag I spend
00:59:51
$7,500 a year for a card I don't even know what the benefits are but I want when I'm out around food and alcohol and
00:59:58
strangers I want to throw down blacks so they think wow the professor is a baller
01:00:04
I like him I want to be his friend or I want to have sex with him and it's ridiculous in the fact that every 12
01:00:11
months I get a $7,500 charge for carrying a card that's a different color
01:00:17
and I mean I hear that and you know what I've done it for 20 years I'm gonna do it for another 20 so I don't it's kind of like do as I
01:00:25
say not as I do what's interesting is to kind of sus out at least become aware of these things and to limit them because I
01:00:32
have a black card modul yeah and I I think when they offered me the black card I have I'm like sponsored by Amex
01:00:37
or something but um You probably get paid to carry a black that's the difference but no I still looked at the
01:00:43
financial decision and there was this one tier where it's like we'll give you a concierge I'm like I have a full-time assistant I have multip you're going to
01:00:49
call some stranger in Dallas and ask where to eat I mean that you just don't do that I think I just went for the
01:00:54
cheap option that comes with no pucks but you get the card I'm still sure I'm paying something for it but um what I'm
01:01:00
saying there is it's for me I thought just get better you you're never going to be perfect I'm still going to have these like insecurities and try and show
01:01:07
off here and there but just try and get better and try and you know have less regrettable moments and just by saying
01:01:15
to myself listen have you gotten better over the last 5 years I go yeah you know you the direction of travel is good mhm
01:01:21
I think that's what matters well that is that's what it is to be an involve person and to be human and to be you
01:01:27
know you think about marketing the key to marketing is AB testing and just trying to get better and better and better and that's we're trying to do as
01:01:33
human so I evaluate your weaknesses and your strengths and say where could I be investing more and divesting and what
01:01:39
types of Behavior Uh do I want do I want to start out I just think that's what it means to
01:01:44
be a good person discipline and purpose and motivation a lot of young people that will come up to you I'm sure and
01:01:49
come up to me often ask this question which seems to be like an invalid question but they they'll say something
01:01:55
like how are you always motivated or how do I find discipline maybe they're on the sofa playing video games they
01:02:01
looking up at a screen at someone they admire and they just think I can't find what that that person seems to have that
01:02:07
sort of consistent tenacity towards a goal I sometimes wonder if in areas of Our Lives where we're lacking the
01:02:13
discipline and the consistency we're searching for do we just need a little bit more pain I've sat here and
01:02:18
interviewed hundreds of people and you you often find these Mo these Rock Bottom moments are the Catalyst for a
01:02:23
change in Direction in someone's life and when they're not there yet when their parents aren't threatening to kick
01:02:29
them out of the house or their their best friends turn against them and tell them listen if you don't change your act you're not going to be a friend with us
01:02:34
anymore it seems like just the correlation I've seen is that there's a moment of rock bottom or pain where the
01:02:42
incentive structure changes and people go [ __ ] I have no choice now the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of making the
01:02:48
change I think that's right I think most success involves sort of it's not just sort of gradual up into the ride there's
01:02:54
some Shock value there I think if George W bush you know talks about his wife
01:03:00
Laura I think the same thing happened to his vice president at some point they were you know alcoholics and basically
01:03:06
their wives their respective wives both of them both case said I'm leaving you unless you stop drinking and kind of once they stopped drinking their lives
01:03:12
they're professionally and personally just took off uh for other people I mean I think
01:03:18
it I think there are moments like that for almost anyone who's been successful or maybe not maybe it's incremental just
01:03:25
High character people keep plugging away alcohol though interesting subject we've not spoken
01:03:30
about yeah so I think a lot about alcohol first so first off I just mean
01:03:35
to acknowledge I love alcohol and I'm really good at it um like Winston Churchill I believe I've gotten more out
01:03:41
of alcohol than it's gotten out of me and I think there's this myth of addiction that everyone who drinks or
01:03:47
does you know engages in THC is probably going end up living under a bridge or be economically ruined I don't think that's
01:03:53
true at all I think that the majority of people who engage with substances do so in maybe not a productive way but in at
01:04:00
least a way that's not going to ruin their lives or their careers and I'd like to think I'm one of
01:04:05
those people having said that if you look at the studies around happiness
01:04:10
especially the largest study the grant study where they segment people into quintiles from the happiest to the least
01:04:16
happiest the most common attribute across the cohort of the least happiest was
01:04:21
alcohol and what I suggest what I advise every person especially young people
01:04:27
especially young men who are more prone to addiction to do is to do an audit of your addictions and to go through everything
01:04:33
and say all right everyone has a certain level of addiction what are things I just do a lot of that I could probably
01:04:38
do a little bit less of and then decide what would happen and the test isn't
01:04:44
well am I living under a bridge or am I addicted that's not the test for addiction the test is would I be just a
01:04:50
little less shitty at things if I did less of it when I got really serious about my career when I got really
01:04:57
serious about trying to develop the economic security to take care of my mother I substantially decreased my
01:05:04
intake of alcohol and I didn't do any drugs and I found that part and parcel
01:05:09
of developing the professional and economic success I wanted at an early age involved a level of just sheer
01:05:16
commitment that alcohol wasn't conducive to it was when I got into businesses
01:05:21
later where they were more about relationships and I had more opportunities to go out where alcohol kind of crept back in but I don't think
01:05:27
it's a bad strategy to decide that you're going to work and work out and
01:05:33
invest in trying to meet people and that alcohol alcohol can serve as a decent lubricant as a young person to helping
01:05:40
meet other people is it's easier to approach strangers after one or two drinks um but I don't think it's a bad
01:05:46
strategy when you're trying when you're on the up curve really trying to make a lot of progress fast I mean if you think
01:05:51
of your professional career it's like a rocket the majority of the fuel is just is is spent trying to get out of the
01:05:57
supy atmosphere and then once if you can get out of the atmosphere into the orbit
01:06:02
that professional momentum will take you a long way but it's really hard and
01:06:08
costly to get out of that atmosphere the inner orbit and when you're really trying to
01:06:15
kill it and you just need to be kind of Allin on your career yeah that's probably a point
01:06:20
where you want to air on the side of doing less rather than more quick one you guys know that for years now my
01:06:26
office has quite literally been everywhere on a plane in the back of my car in a terminal in an airport or on a
01:06:33
train you name it I've probably worked there ever since I started my first business at 19 years old I've been
01:06:38
working on the move all I need is Wi-Fi a desk and my headphones and I'm set and
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living under a rock you might have missed that I've come to learn over time not all of the products they have are for me but the ones that are for me have
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really really changed my life in a profound way all of the products are designed for different use cases and different people for me as you'll
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a lot you're aware that I'm an investor in the company you're aware that I'm on the board of the company and you're not sure where to start I would highly
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recommend starting with the bestseller bundle basically we'll send you a package in the pose containing all of
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link is in the description below to try the best seller bundle one of the things I've always muled with is when we think about the stats we've discussed in the
01:08:30
crisis and the issues in society yeah um the direction of travel and how we're
01:08:36
living Our Lives more digital more alone more lonely um more dependent on
01:08:42
processed foods and sugars and other chemicals to keep ourselves seemingly
01:08:47
balanced there it feels like the solution must be quite deep systemic in the way that we're designing our society
01:08:53
so so I the question I've always wondered is do we have to just like rip up the entirety of the blueprint of how Society is designed to solve for these
01:09:00
problems loneliness depression sexlessness all of those subject matters I don't think so I think the
01:09:07
solutions are simpler uh than than the incumbents want
01:09:12
to admit in corporations a key component of entrenchment is the delusion of
01:09:18
complexity you know um Twitter and Google and meta will say that the hate
01:09:24
speech and the polarization that they've created in the teen depression are kind
01:09:30
of indicative of broader problems in our society and are these really complex problems and they kind of stare thoughtfully into the camera like we got
01:09:37
to solve these problems together yet they kick One account off of Twitter
01:09:42
the real Donald Trump an election and misinformation goes down 40 to 60% in one day if they age gated social media I
01:09:49
think you would see a dramatic decline in teen depression if you remove section 230 protections I think YouTube would
01:09:56
find ways to stop radicalizing young men on YouTube uh I think the solutions are
01:10:02
simpler than they're simpler but they're expensive and specifically they're
01:10:07
expensive against the people in charge and that is rich people in corporations and I'll give you an example if you were
01:10:13
to try and reverse engineer the problems in our society to kind of one Blast Zone
01:10:19
one Ground Zero I think it's what we said before I think it's that for the first time in our societ iy in a democ
01:10:25
in democracies it's happened in the US it's about to happen across the majority of the 28 countries in the EU in the EU
01:10:32
for the first time a 30-year-old isn't doing as well as his or her parents that's a fundamental breakdown in the compact between a family and a society
01:10:40
and they get angry and they blame the government or they start demonizing and then someone fills that void and starts demonizing other groups and says oh it's
01:10:46
not your fault it's their fault and that can lead to very ugly places in history so my solution is my Solutions are
01:10:52
pretty straightforward if you have the average 7-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years
01:10:57
ago and the average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy and the percentage of wealth is a percentage of
01:11:03
GDP controlled by people under the age of 40 has been cut in half and a house is 12 times more expensive than it was
01:11:10
40 years ago but their income is only 6X what it used to be we have too much money being crowded
01:11:17
into not only the rich but the old and if you want if you want to solve if you
01:11:23
were to try and have one answer that would address not all of it but really
01:11:29
take a dent out of obesity addiction deaths of Despair uh male abandonment
01:11:36
divorce depression if we raised and I don't know the numbers here but if we rais in the United States the minimum
01:11:42
wage if we triple the minimum wage I think you would go a long way to solving
01:11:49
a lot of those problems I think putting more money in the pockets of young people uh and reducing the rage and the
01:11:56
shame and the deaths of Despair uh and the would go so far to solving loneliness I think it's pretty basic at
01:12:03
the end of World War II the top tax rate was 92% we just decided rich people are
01:12:09
here to reinvest in the middle class when Reagan entered office and when thater entered office the top tax rates
01:12:14
were about 70% by the time Reagan left office it was 27% what we've seen across
01:12:20
studies University of California Riverside and UC Berkeley did studies on minimum wage and in Washington state
01:12:25
California New York where they dramatically raised minimum wage the incumbents will tell you the sky going to fall businesses are going to go out
01:12:31
of business people are going to stop hiring it's going to expedite them trying to figure out a way to buy the
01:12:36
new burger Tron to to make burgers not humans and what they found was the
01:12:41
opposite that when you increase minimum wage even dramatically it grew the economy and jobs because here's the
01:12:47
wonderful thing about lower and middle- inome people when you give them money they spend it and so the multip supplier
01:12:53
effect is more stimulative than when you crowd money into the top 1% so if a
01:12:59
magic wand first thing a dramatic increase in minimum wage and there's very things very few things we could do
01:13:05
that would have this much impact without increasing the deficit and it's time we have employment unemployment at historic
01:13:11
lows so the employment Market could absorb an increase in mandatory minimum wage as a percentage of of GDP wages
01:13:20
have never been lower yet corporate profits have never been greater so yeah corporate profits would be hit
01:13:27
yeah the markets might go down and it would absolutely be worth it this is this is Ground Zero that's where we
01:13:33
start we're going capitalism is about a Dignity of work and because there's such
01:13:39
a demand there's now 1.7 open jobs for every one person seeking a job in the US I think it's 1.3 to one in the U in in
01:13:46
the UK we need to put more money in the hands of lower middle-income households full stop how many kids have you got SC
01:13:53
I've got two 13 and 16-year old boys what is it you the advice you give them about the world they're coming into
01:13:59
their their adolescence and their going to be off dating and all of those things if you if you had to equip them with I'm
01:14:05
sure you do what are the messages you're trying hard to either directly equip them with or
01:14:11
indirectly infect them with in terms of values and principles for life um for your oldest you said 13 m is 16 my is 13
01:14:19
13 okay so 16 years old Jesus that's when it all starts happening mhm so what
01:14:25
I try and do is like I think about all right I want to show the these kids that
01:14:30
I want to be kind to strangers right you know just I want to be I want to work hard I want to I want to have good
01:14:38
manners I want to try and occasionally someone says something service person or
01:14:44
whatever is rude to me and my ego is when I was your age I felt like I always
01:14:49
needed to restore the world's balance and no one could be disrespectful to me or I got got back in their face and now
01:14:54
I realize occasionally just take it occasionally just take it that's what it means to be a man I try to be physically
01:15:00
strong I work out I try to get them working out I'm just trying to show them stuff because I find it's very hard when
01:15:05
they get to a certain age to advise them they don't want to hear it so I'm trying to be that guy um and you know but it's
01:15:14
not I have an easier time advising other 16-year-olds in mine because mine is
01:15:21
healthfully pulling away from me and I'll come back but right now he's pulling away what is what is masculinity
01:15:27
isn't that you're writing a book at the moment right you're writing two books at the moment about various subject matters what can you tell us about what you're
01:15:33
writing about yeah well I'm finished with the algebra of wealth book I'm just starting
01:15:38
the book on masculinity but I think we need for our previous comments I think some unfortunate voices have filled this
01:15:44
void around masculinity and I think we need um a new vision for modern
01:15:49
masculinity on the far right I would argue that those forces have conflated
01:15:54
masculinity with cruelty I think people like Trump and Putin and Elon Musk are
01:15:59
looked to as role models for masculinity for a lot of good reasons but I think
01:16:05
being a murderer Putin a criminal Trump or someone who has 11 kids none of
01:16:12
whom he's living with musk I think that is exactly what it means to not be a man
01:16:18
and when I try and trifate the three legs of the stool masculinity and I'm
01:16:23
still working through this and I'm curious if you have any thoughts but I come up and then so on the far right let me back up the wrong vision of
01:16:30
masculinity on the far left as far as I can tell their vision of masculinity is to act more like a woman I don't think
01:16:37
that's right either it's like what how do men how do men become better men act
01:16:42
more like a woman I I don't think that's not only what men and Society aren looking for I don't think that's what women are looking for I think if there's
01:16:49
a fire or Russian soldiers pour over the eranian border you want some of that big
01:16:55
dick energy and I also think that women are attracted to generally speaking this
01:17:00
isn't true across the Spectrum we're having a really important conversation and everyone deserves respect but I
01:17:06
think demonstrating a certain level of uh unabashed masculinity is really
01:17:13
important in in romantic relationships and for me the pillars or the three legs
01:17:19
of the sto masculinity trying to distill it down to three things are first protector I think that I was in Seattle
01:17:27
at the Weston Hotel and I was checking in and there was an alarm went off and they said they closed the elevators and
01:17:32
said we a smoke alarm has gone off on the 11th floor and these firefighters about 9 minutes later showed up carrying
01:17:40
each of them must have been carrying 80 pounds of equipment and axes and all sorts of [ __ ] and it was nine men and
01:17:47
one woman and they don't look at the cameras to see if there's a raging fire on the 11th floor Flor they just bomb to
01:17:54
the 11th floor they're just there to protect people like yeah we might die fireman is actually more dangerous than
01:17:59
being a cop it's more dangerous than being in the military but they're there to protect you and whether it's the
01:18:05
military or things are cops or people or or a head of household that's providing economically I think being a protector
01:18:12
is a key component of masculinity and I also want to say that masculinity is not isolated to people born as males I think
01:18:19
a lot of women demonstrate masculinity I think it's a wonderful attribute I personally end up being more drawn to
01:18:26
friends who have more feminine characteristics which are also wonderful but generally speaking if we're going to
01:18:32
have an adult conversation around gender and gender roles of masculinity I think we need to acknowledge that 90 95% of us
01:18:39
will have an easier time embracing these types of behaviors more commonly associated with people born as males and
01:18:47
born as females but the modern vision of protection the modern vision of
01:18:52
protection need some nuance and that is the the trans Community I think most
01:18:59
men don't understand at their heart don't really understand the trans Community don't understand the notion
01:19:05
that parents and a doctor might decide that a 15-year-old should have surgery
01:19:10
and go through transition with hormones I think the majority of men don't when that hits them don't understand it and I
01:19:17
think that lack of understanding can lead to um unconscious discrimination and
01:19:23
bias and I think part of being a real protector is to acknowledge that you don't need to understand stuff to um
01:19:31
protect people and that is I think our first inclination should be as men this is a community maybe I understand this
01:19:37
maybe I don't maybe maybe I do know trans people I don't know trans people clear out the politics of it clear out
01:19:44
your misunderstanding this is a community that is taking a lot of [ __ ]
01:19:50
even You could argue being persecuted you're first role as a man in his masculinity is to move to protect them
01:19:57
full stop that's what we do we protect people and we air on the side of protection and I think that is a really
01:20:04
I think that's a really nice attribute to start from a level of protection when you see someone being hurt you don't
01:20:11
need understand the situation you see someone getting beaten up in a Subway if
01:20:16
you see a fight about to break out in a bar you don't need to understand the situation you move to protect to prot
01:20:22
Protection full stop that's what we do as men the second is provider um 70% of divorce violing are
01:20:30
from women and it's usually a function of three things the guy loses his business has a mental breakdown or goes bankrupt
01:20:37
men are still look to to be the economic provider and that's not to say that and
01:20:44
part of that is to embrace this wonderful progress women have made and sometimes acknowledge many times
01:20:50
acknowledge that the woman or your partner is is better at this whole money thing and being supportive and getting
01:20:55
out of her way cuz your job is just to ensure play a role that you can provide for the family um and then getting to a
01:21:03
point where you can take care of yourself take care of your family and then start to expand the circle and
01:21:08
start taking care of extended family start taking care of the community donations philanthropy I think that's a
01:21:14
real to be a provider for people that ultimately you don't know is a form of
01:21:19
masculinity right to plant to plant the seeds of of trees or sh you know that uh
01:21:25
you will never sit under the shade of which you'll never sit under and then the final one is procreator and this is
01:21:31
the one I'm working through and will definitely get me in the most trouble but I do think that part of masculinity
01:21:36
is being the initiator in a romantic relationship and pursuing romantic relationships and there's a difference
01:21:43
between Pursuit and being a predator and if you don't understand the difference you've got much bigger problems and
01:21:49
because of some well publicized and heinous abhorent acts where men um Abus their power um now we can
01:21:57
flate any sort of initiative or or aggression around establishing a romantic relationship is
01:22:04
predatory and I don't think that's true I think men's role in being more
01:22:10
aggressive around romantic relationships and even aggressive is a tough word being the initiator I think that is part
01:22:16
of masculinity I think that's part of success um one of the things you know I
01:22:21
hope my boy I try I think I told you this last time I was here uh when I used to go down I don't do anym because it
01:22:27
just got too much but I used to force my kids whenever we went out to talk to a stranger and we' sit outside our house
01:22:34
with my 13-year-old very upset because he hadn't talked to a stranger I wasn't going to let him back in the house I'm like just go pet the dog just say hi
01:22:40
anything but that ability to initiate contact professionally personally
01:22:46
whatever it is I think it's fundamental to success and so I think guys need to
01:22:53
early on hopefully get comfortable with approaching strangers including including strange
01:22:59
strange potential romantic partners because the stats are showing that about 50% of people who end up in
01:23:04
relationships made their first Contact online and I it's funny I had a podcast that we did about dating I won't go into
01:23:11
too much context I don't want to reveal the guest but a lot of the comments on that podcast were from young men that
01:23:16
were really I think pissed off with me to be honest for not speaking to the person who had created the dating app
01:23:22
and telling them highlighting the plight of men in the dating industry as you've said with the the amount of swipes a man
01:23:29
needs to do to find a m I need to give a message to those men I understand and
01:23:34
let's move to Solutions so the first is if you're in the top 10% of quote unquote attractiveness on a risk
01:23:39
adjusted level around economic success care women are attracted to men for three reasons the first is their ability
01:23:46
to provide um the second is how smart they are and the third is how kind they
01:23:52
are are Personality yeah right and also intellect can come through in personality the fastest way to
01:23:57
communicate intellect is humor is to be clever I've always thought and I've you
01:24:02
know always thought if I can make a woman laugh she'll go out she'll go out with me and here's the problem so if
01:24:08
you're in the top 10% go online it's going to be champagne and cocaine and a mar Gro women for you I mean just you're
01:24:15
going to you're going to kill it if you're in the bottom 90 the reality is the online dating Market is a
01:24:21
humiliating experience for you because the majority of women and their right can have some contact or interest from
01:24:27
the top 10% maybe they're not looking who are looking for a series of short-term relationships and maybe a long-term relationship but for the
01:24:33
bottom 90 of men especially the bottom half have just been shut out they get no
01:24:38
activity online the wonderful thing about human sexuality is there's a ton of X factors the way you smell the way
01:24:45
you move your humor uh your smile right the way your your passion for a specific
01:24:53
topic the depth of intellect whatever it might be there's just the magic and mystery of the soup of human sexuality
01:25:00
is so strange and it's wonderful but there's one ingredient in that soup that comes through online for men it's money
01:25:07
and for women it's looks that's it and so it's great if you are in the top
01:25:13
desile for those things for either sex but if you're with us in the bottom 90
01:25:19
it's about the magic and mystery of SE sexuality that can be expressed in
01:25:25
person and what you find especially with relationships that begin at work one will say I wasn't interested in him and
01:25:30
then I saw him present in a meeting or I saw how smart he is or I saw what an
01:25:36
interesting person she is and how funny she is these things are really hard to get across online and so we need to put
01:25:43
more money in the pockets of young people we need more third spaces and opportunities for them to meet each other the number of high school kids
01:25:50
that see their friends every day has been cut in half we're no longer talking to our neighbors we're no longer going to work so where are people supposed to
01:25:56
meet and find out that yeah maybe he's not rich maybe she's not hot but I'm
01:26:02
into this person I want to go out with them I want to kiss them but I've got so much optionality in both those cases
01:26:09
that it seems that I value that less right we used to just live in you know the options were my village now they are
01:26:14
the internet everybody but when we gave access to everybody everybody's now under the I mean typically you're right
01:26:20
we were sequestered you went to or church and there were kind of eight single people four men and four women and they sort of paired off based on
01:26:27
call it a multiple of reasons where they figured out their weight class now it's like well I don't have access to eight
01:26:34
people I have access to 8,000 so why wouldn't I expect that I'm going to get in the top death sty and
01:26:40
what you find is that the metrics are so crude and base
01:26:45
online that I mean we just end up I would I would task people saying who
01:26:51
have met someone someone online or who have met someone offline do you think you would have been attracted to that
01:26:56
person their online profile like if you saw a picture of them and then say this is what I do would that be like yeah
01:27:02
that's the one and that's the beautiful thing about and it's important we we need more opportunities for people to
01:27:08
bump into each other and and and not decide uh to give them the opportunity
01:27:15
to kind of fall in in lust and in love over time for different reasons that can
01:27:20
only be communicated in person because Us in the lower 90 that's our only
01:27:26
hope and if you just graduated from dmouth and you got a job at Google and your Rolex accidentally slips into your
01:27:32
profile picture on Tinder you're all set 99% of us are not in the top 1% we're
01:27:37
not working for Google can't afford a Rolex so you got to bring something else and it's important to develop those
01:27:43
skills a good rap iron your goddamn shirt blow dry your hair work out a
01:27:49
little bit like you know figure out a way that when you get yet and you have the opportunity to meet someone in
01:27:54
person over and over that they're going to be impressed by you and then slowly B Sure think I'm more than impressed by
01:27:59
this person you know I'd like to have a a relationship with them and we're creating fewer and fewer contexts for
01:28:06
that to happen if we're not if we're not even going into work right if we're not volunteering if we're not going to
01:28:12
church like where on Earth do we we're not going to the movies we're not going to the mall I used to walk around when I was 17 a senior in high school we go
01:28:18
into Westwood Village and we would just walk around we're too young to drink we get ice cream and we'd walk around and
01:28:23
we'd see a group of girls from Palisades High School I went to UNI and about the fourth time we passed them one of us
01:28:29
would take the leap and start talking to them like where does that happen now for young people right so I think it's econ
01:28:37
economic policies and creating more third spaces I would like national service I know a lot of friends from
01:28:42
Israel who met their spouses their business partners their mentors in uh military service I don't think it should
01:28:49
just be military it could be service around Helping Seniors or healthare but we need to give them more money and more
01:28:57
opportunities to bump into each other and fall in love with each other and be attracted to each other for the reasons
01:29:04
that are unique smell can't smell someone online and not only that you
01:29:09
don't even know what smells you're going to be attracted to you don't even know and so unless you bump off a bunch of
01:29:16
people um in person we're just not going to have nearly as many connections and not nearly as many relationship ship but
01:29:23
I think there are pretty straightforward Solutions here don't you think work is the most obvious opportunity I think
01:29:29
when we think about social settings where we bump into people like churches and pubs and you know a lot of the
01:29:34
things that used to live on the High Street that have now found home online don't you think there's a huge opportunity for employers to create that
01:29:42
sense of bonding the oxytocin the relationships that forged in the hallways of the office by bringing
01:29:48
people together because I have to say I have always believed that and even though the world went that way with the
01:29:55
remote working thing my teams including all of the teams the 30 people that work at the Diary of a CEO team we've always
01:30:02
been in office and I've made I wrote a letter to them actually a year ago explaining this idea of freedom within parameters where you're trusted to make
01:30:08
the best decisions for your life but essentially one of our core beliefs is that of course we'll do some of our best work in coffee shops and on beaches but
01:30:14
being together will make the stress less stressful it'll make the work more meaningful it'll make our lives more
01:30:20
fulfilling so I that letter to the team and they're all hit like they're all listening to this either upstairs or in
01:30:25
here or in the office down the road it was the best reaction I've ever had to any letter I've ever sent to my team MH
01:30:30
in terms of fire emojis and clapping because I explained why and the the first principles underneath my belief
01:30:37
made we're about them and it was it wasn't just we're coming in Tuesday and Wednesday cuz I'm the CEO and we'll do what I say it was I understand that
01:30:44
connection and it's why I've always done this podcast in person even through the pandemic is going out of fashion but it
01:30:51
ain't going out of of our sort of maslovian hierarchy yeah yeah look a lot
01:30:56
there so uh I spoke at the Wall Street Journal Europe conference the piece of content
01:31:03
that's gone more viral than almost anything I've ever done I got just a ton of [ __ ] for and push back and I said
01:31:08
they asked me advice to young people and I I started off I said um if you're
01:31:13
young you should never be at home home is for sleep and you should be out and
01:31:19
professional and romantic success is a function of the amount of time you spend outside of your house and so they
01:31:25
clipped a young prison you should never be at home homeless for sleep and
01:31:30
thousands of Tik toks with people doing stitches showing themselves making cupcakes or watching Netflix and
01:31:37
basically and then they chime in and say screw you Scott Galler why do we listen to these idiot Boomers uh because
01:31:42
they're saying look I love home going out is expensive my apartment is so expensive that I want to be at home
01:31:49
anyways that the work Place one in three relationships begin at work it's a
01:31:55
fantastic place to meet and fall in love and because of some abhorent behavior um it's gotten a bad rep and if
01:32:03
you're going to have an organization the number one source of retention for a company comes down to one question do
01:32:08
you have a good friend at work I go to weddings all the time with people who met at work so but there's some Nuance
01:32:15
here the first is around remote work remote work is an unbelievable unlock for caregivers now is people taking care
01:32:21
of kids people taking care of their parents people trying to take care of themselves or quite frankly don't have the money to live near work and so to
01:32:28
give them the opportunity to work from home a few or four or the five days a
01:32:34
week or five is a big unlock and it's something I think we should have a caregiver classification that where we try and invest and afford more
01:32:40
flexibility if you're under the age of 30 or 40 much less 30 the office is a
01:32:46
feature not a bug and where we need though there's some Nuance here here and that is we
01:32:52
need to modulate the kind of tech environment or some of the tech environment where it turned into kind of this Bach nool and people you know
01:32:59
having sex in the you know the coat room and Tequila everywhere that's probably a little too much but in my companies I've
01:33:06
always created on a regular basis of social environment for people to meet and most of it's just socializing with
01:33:12
mentors and colleagues and making friends but sometimes people start the path towards mating and that's wonderful
01:33:20
because if all of a sudden there is no workplace or you're discouraged because HR would just rather nobody ever have
01:33:26
sex at work it just solves a lot of problems you're taking out a third of the mating opportunities a third and so
01:33:34
where are young people supposed to meet if you're if you're into work and you want to have influence you want to do
01:33:40
well and you want to develop Economic Security so you're working all the time and it's remote where on Earth are you
01:33:46
supposed to meet somebody and quite frankly Sometimes some of the most attractive attributes of you to
01:33:51
potential romatic Partners can be best demonstrated professionally now there's some nuance and I'm on a bunch of public
01:33:57
company boards and we deal with this all the time I think above a certain level
01:34:03
of seniority your flies up and locked it's just not
01:34:08
permitted but in terms of young people at a similar uh similar seniority or J
01:34:14
they're all Junior you know my attitude is have at it meet fall in love fall out
01:34:21
of love you know whatever it might be I think that's a I think that's a wonderful thing and I think
01:34:27
community and friendship and meeting people at work I have a rule at my
01:34:32
company at prop G media and we're only 14 people now if any four of them are
01:34:37
ever together they get my credit card and I mean they don't physically have it
01:34:43
but if the four of you are at are out of play uh a football match or you decide
01:34:49
to go to Tulum which they have done on a Thursday night or whatever it's on
01:34:55
me because that investment in community and friendship is worth it it's a great
01:35:02
retention tool and it also is important for culture so I think we I think that
01:35:07
the ability to meet people at work is really important you just have some Nuance there the the 50-year-old CEO is
01:35:14
making millions of bucks a year sorry boss off campus and when we hear that it was you thought it was consent no you
01:35:20
[ __ ] up you're out we told you this right here we told you right from the get-go and I think it's important to
01:35:26
educate people about the Nuance of it but to to tell people young people that
01:35:32
they shouldn't in an intense situation where we tell them to work this hard in a competitive economy to tell them that
01:35:37
they shouldn't form relationships that sometimes lead to romantic relationships that's just naive and and to your point
01:35:44
we've taken away an enormous Arena or venue for making those connections which
01:35:50
were lacking so my sense is workplace relationships in 99% of the time are a
01:35:57
positive they're a feature not a bug I appreciate the Nuance as well that you applied to that situation because I don't have children yet I have a clear
01:36:04
bias that that um I realize is there and I did play forward the scenario where I
01:36:09
have say I had four or five children now how I'd have to adjust or how I'd want the companies that I run to adjust to me
01:36:16
and so I have to kind of reflect that in the companies now because there are people in my my teams even this team that have multiple children and I think
01:36:23
that's where the importance of that freedom part in the freedom of within parameters thing where where okay we
01:36:28
have a set of God sort of guidelines of how we work together that bring us together and for that synchronous collaboration and bonding but also we
01:36:34
appreciate that if we want to retain our best people we need to keep them over all of the seasons of life we need to be
01:36:39
a great place to work through pregnancy fatherhood you name it um yeah I could
01:36:45
tell when you were saying that it's great to be a young company where no one's had kids yet and the majority of people haven't had kids that's not
01:36:51
sustainable and show me a CEO who is mandated back to office I'm going to
01:36:57
show you a guy who has someone else taking care of his kids has the money to live near work right it whereas a lot of
01:37:04
people don't um so the the back to office mandates have usually been dictated by someone who's in a real
01:37:10
position of privilege and I'd like to see a new classification of worker called a care worker where if you're
01:37:17
taking care of people you just are afforded more flexibility also we need to have an adult conversation
01:37:22
if you are working remotely the majority of the time you're going to make less money getting into work is hard it's
01:37:28
expensive CH sacrifice and you get rewarded for it if your job can be if you can move to Boulder Colorado if your
01:37:35
job can be moved to Boulder it can be moved to Bangalore be clear the CEO of a big conglomerate running the the
01:37:41
European unit can be more talented than the person running the Americas but if headquarters is in the Americas the COO
01:37:48
of the Americas is much more likely to get the top job the you know CE of the whole company uh in every in every um
01:37:56
promotion there's two or three people or more who are qualified for that promotion the person who gets it is a
01:38:03
function of the decider and the decider is going to pick the person that have the strongest relationship with and relationships are a function of
01:38:08
proximity so before you collect dogs and kids get into the
01:38:14
office we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving
01:38:20
it for and your question was actually left by Daniel e oh Daniel I've never
01:38:26
told anybody that that before but special occasion um
01:38:35
H the question he's left for you is with AI coming in perhaps replacing many jobs
01:38:43
what parts of humanity will become more important and what will matter less
01:38:54
so first off I'm an AI Optimist I think this catastrophizing around AI is
01:39:01
narcissism technologists like to believe that their technology is the single
01:39:06
point of salvation for Humanity or is going to destroy Humanity it's just
01:39:11
narcissism I don't I don't think AI is going to save or destroy Humanity um the people who are most
01:39:18
valuable are the ones who get out ofe of this technology versus what we did
01:39:24
with big Tech we let weaponization of Elections teen depression polarization
01:39:29
get out ahead of the regulations so I think the most important people uh it's going to sound lame are government
01:39:35
officials that uh are thoughtful and say We Won't Get Fooled Again and we're going to regulate this technology but
01:39:42
when the people that are making the technology are actually it seems to be going to government and saying we need
01:39:47
regulation here they didn't do that in web 2 with social networks and stuff but those people like Sam Alman even Elon
01:39:52
Musk was at the Washington the other day M pushing for legislation that for me
01:39:59
says something yeah what it says Stephen is that they're full of [ __ ] because when Sam Alman calls for regulation in
01:40:05
front of Congress this is their go to I can pull up clips of Cheryl Samberg and Mark Zuckerberg saying we welcome
01:40:12
regulation we need this is their go-to and keep in mind these people are massively overc consulted by some of the
01:40:17
smartest coms people in the world Sam Malton said says I want regular and I believe Sam he's really Earnest he looks
01:40:23
like a young nice man and concurrently he has lobbyists in the in Europe trying to suppress regulation against AI I mean
01:40:32
this is just such [ __ ] this notion that stopped me before I kill again and then they have armies of lawyers and
01:40:38
lobbyists and paint the money paint the towns of DC and Brussels and money to
01:40:43
Stave off any regulation despite their calls for regulation there hasn't been a single point of Regulation and I speak
01:40:50
to a lot of senator senators and elected officials and they just roll their eyes and go senator Amy kashar has been
01:40:56
trying to pass antitrust regulation to break up big Tech that is that would be the easiest way to oxygenate both of our
01:41:01
economies would be to take these incredible companies break them up and you'd see shareholder growth growth in
01:41:07
jobs growth in tax base more startups these things have just gotten way too powerful but when she has antitrust
01:41:14
legislation while Sunder pasai will say thoughtfully we should look at regulation and you know that we defin
01:41:21
are open to regulation we're talking to our partners that's their go-to meanwhile there are more full-time
01:41:26
lobbyists working and living working and living in Washington DC than there are sitting US senators so this is their
01:41:33
go-to stop me before I kill again right I want to be regulated and wouldn't you know not a single pass of Regulation has
01:41:39
passed and it's is it because government can't get their act together maybe or is it because they want to give the public
01:41:46
the impression that they're good people such that there's a lack of public Uprising people love these products and
01:41:53
our elected officials are just outgunned with some of the best and brightest lawyers and
01:41:58
lobbyists who are have literally overrun DC and Brussels so this whole call or
01:42:06
openness to regulation it's jazz hands it's a head fake so I don't um but back
01:42:14
to the original question I really hope that some of the best and brightest and young staffers who understand a
01:42:21
I um get out ahead of this um and the
01:42:28
the you know this is we're going to see the first real externality of AI in q1 and
01:42:37
Q2 of next year and it'll it'll I believe and it'll go something like the following Putin's spending $70 billion
01:42:43
do and losing tens of thousands of lives every year on a failed invasion of Ukraine and he can the fastest way to
01:42:51
victory for him is really simple is the election of Donald Trump he's won if
01:42:57
Donald Trump is inaugurated in January of 2025 uh Putin has won the war in
01:43:04
Ukraine and if I'm Putin I figured that out pretty quickly and instead of
01:43:09
sending 70 billion why wouldn't I just spend 7 billion on troll farms and AI tested information that will create deep
01:43:15
fakes that the deepos Biden and Harris for 2024 and I have an aoral management team
01:43:22
who despite their calls for regulation and their concerns about the Commonwealth will cash these checks and
01:43:28
then post inauguration of a president just feel awful about all the AI
01:43:34
generated misinformation that skewed these elections so we're about to see a
01:43:40
misinformation la la palooza in the first half of next year that takes
01:43:45
AI uh a murderous autocrat that is losing a war in Ukraine and amoral
01:43:51
management I don't think these are bad people but when it's raining money it kind of you decide well oh there's a
01:43:57
problem here there might be election misinformation we can't figure out who's paying for all of this we don't want to
01:44:03
implement the technology to Watermark AI because that would be censorship and
01:44:10
we're definitely not going to agree to remove our protections from 230 based on AI generated content that's been
01:44:15
elevated algorithmically no let's cash their check let's cash their damn check and then we'll revisit what this all
01:44:22
means so I think aggressive regulatory oversight I'm sick of calling on the
01:44:28
better angels of CEOs I'm sick of for them that waiting to show up we live in a capital Society to make more money is
01:44:34
to be more loved broader selection set of mates people like you you can give money away so why wouldn't you want to
01:44:41
be more loved so you will ignore the externalities of your business and to a certain extent that's what a for-profit company is supposed to do it's supposed to make as much money as it can within
01:44:47
the confines of the law so the most important people around a a are are
01:44:52
elected leaders who need to get out ahead of this issue as opposed to you know realizing that one in eight teenage
01:45:00
girls in the UK directly site Instagram as a form of their self-esteem problems that often leads to suicidal ideation
01:45:06
and self harm we need to get we need to get out in front of those on so boring the boring important people here are The
01:45:13
Regulators the 62% of people that say they feel lost in directionless though I reflect on what Sam alman's doing with
01:45:19
this uh Universal basic income program and a few of these very smart AI people
01:45:24
speak to Universal basic income being the outcome I.E we will hand money to people in society because there'll be
01:45:31
such little work for people to do this is what I hear um that we'll need to support them in some way so we'll give
01:45:37
them money and my worry has always been that as you said the pursuit the journey
01:45:43
the victory the rejection all of those things being Central to our sense of like purpose and forward motion and
01:45:49
progress um is does that disappear in a world where we're just giving people Universal basic income the idiocracy
01:45:56
Vision I don't buy into it we're all just going to be on a couch watching Netflix because there's not a need for for labor anymore first off people don't
01:46:04
need work what they need is purpose so a lot of times when people are economically secure and they need purpose they go to work for nonprofits
01:46:09
or they do something that's not economically driving them so you can find purpose without work but having said that there's a Cadence to all
01:46:16
technological innovation and it goes something like this there's catastrophizing that it's going to do away with all middle class jobs
01:46:21
Automation and the Auto industry and in the short term there is some job destruction and then but we couldn't
01:46:27
have envisioned heated seats or car stereos and employment goes up because there's new ways to leverage technology
01:46:34
and I think the same is going to happen with AI there's going to be some Industries and there's going to be some job destruction but the opportunities
01:46:40
for new businesses in Ai and its intersection with healthare education it's going to create a lot of jobs now
01:46:46
there'll be some losers and some reshuffling but I just don't buy I think think I think AI is actually going to over the long term I think it's going to
01:46:52
increase employment it's just going to make them more productive and higher paid and the people who don't adop AI is
01:46:59
not going to take your job someone who understands AI is going to take your job but every technology in history has
01:47:06
ultimately usually been some job destruction on the short end you know one in three people in America used to
01:47:12
make their living at farming and so we were worried about all these Technologies to increase output guess
01:47:17
what now it's only one and 25 but employment has gone up we we make our money now from what we describe is if
01:47:23
you think about both of our careers M like some form of intelligence mhm whether that's you know so that's why I
01:47:29
think none of those revolutions have taken on human intelligence I think they've taken on our muscles yeah I
01:47:35
think about the farming example you gave there but this feels like the first Revolution that's like taken the last thing I have which is my intelligence if
01:47:44
if someone said to me once with some AI expert on this podcast just imagine there's someone through that wall there Steve not only did could they was their
01:47:50
intelligence 10,000% or 10,000 times um broader than
01:47:55
yours but they could think a million times faster than you can think MH who
01:48:01
are you there's a real arrogance to think that you are going to control it or that you will be able to perform better it as a podcast or or as a author
01:48:09
or as a um CEO or as a investor you know and that
01:48:16
frame okay is that going be a reality that there will be a species or a or
01:48:21
whether it exists on a microchip or whatever that is can think a million times faster than me and is 10 thousand
01:48:27
times more intelligent than me yes I go yes in a world of Robotics will that
01:48:33
species be able to move around as well yes okay well it needs to move around not really because everything's connected to the internet anyway I go so
01:48:40
where do I fit in that world like what am I I understand I'll be good at releasing oxytocin by hugging my dog and
01:48:46
my girlfriend but beyond that I go where do I even with driving I think driving is the biggest employer in the world and
01:48:53
mhm it's playing out the scenario where you remove all the drivers from Uber and Lorry drivers and then they pull up at a
01:48:58
gas station and their food is served by speaking to a a large language model and
01:49:03
then it spits out the back end I go where is you know that's that's been my
01:49:09
it's kind of like a black hole in my head I don't really know what comes after that yeah but we've seen it before and so in the US the largest employer or
01:49:17
the most popular or the biggest number of jobs among the non college educated as truck driver autonomous driving just
01:49:23
makes sense for Long Haul Trucking I think that's where it's going to start and what we've been really bad at in the
01:49:28
past is figuring out how to take some of the incremental income created by that increased productivity and reinvest it
01:49:34
back in people in terms of retraining or as you said just giving them money but you can't stop it I mean you can you can
01:49:41
hold it at the gates for a little while but eventually the damn bursts and trying to keep te technology in a bottle
01:49:47
just doesn't just doesn't work but at the same time I think that autonomous driving over the long term it's going to
01:49:52
create a lot of jobs and because people it's going to free up time the people who understand how to program and repair
01:49:58
autonomous vehicles or drive the you know figure out the software or the lobbyist trying to convince San Francisco to I mean there's just going
01:50:05
to be a lot of jobs what it comes right down to is to be more competitive but the people who have those skills are going to make more money and then the
01:50:10
people who make that money are going to want to have nicer things and houses from people who need to show up like you
01:50:16
can make a lot of money as a welder right now and this goes to one of my Solutions only 3% of people in the US on LinkedIn the
01:50:24
title is Apprentice in the UK and Germany it's 11% in Germany 50% of the
01:50:29
population has some vocational certification in the US it's five we need much more not only vocational
01:50:36
training but we need to stop shaming it if you build a house you're going to see that anyone who has these types of skills actually makes a really good
01:50:42
living and I don't know if AI is coming for those jobs so in the information sector the communities that have had
01:50:50
champagne and cocaine and it's been disco for 30 years programmers Services people or lawyers those people are going
01:50:57
to probably get hit disproportionately hard but the incremental productivity gains I mean productivity isn't
01:51:04
everything but in the long run it's almost everything that's a Paul Krugman post this is supposedly going to
01:51:09
increase productivity in the US over the next 10 years 1.2% that's probably going to translate
01:51:15
to trillions of dollars in incremental uh value so I'm just not I think this is I think again I'm looking
01:51:21
forward to the conversation in 20 years I think AI is going to create more jobs and more opportunities than it's going to destroy I'm an AI Optimist I you
01:51:30
definitely inspired my thinking to be a little bit more optimistic there because you're right thinking forward if we were
01:51:35
in I don't know the Industrial Revolution I never would have been able to I could think about the things we'd lose but I couldn't think about the
01:51:42
things that we'd stand to gain through Innovation and disruption and the internet that was to come and all these other things it's really hard for us to
01:51:48
think about what Will exist in the future and the opportunities but it's really easy for us to think about the
01:51:54
things we'll lose within that the coming Revolution cuz I just can just point at them because they're all around me but I
01:51:59
can't point at things that I've never seen before if you see what I'm saying so um thank you Scott thank you again
01:52:05
for returning um the conversation we had last time was so enjoyable for for me but I just I use my friends my like my
01:52:11
five friends in my little WhatsApp group as a barometer for the great conversations I look at the metrics of course the watch time the retention all
01:52:18
those things but so many of my really close friends said he is just brilliant oh thanks for that thanks for saying
01:52:24
that that this just the truth I can name name the friends that said that and um and it's and it's not just the extent
01:52:32
and the depth of knowledge you have it's you're a wonderful Communicator you're hilarious and you're hilarious in the
01:52:38
most almost it seems unintentional but it's a skill that that very few people are blessed with and you're blessed with
01:52:43
that skill of just telling really interesting stories in such a compelling funny way that hold people and you don't
01:52:49
need to shout and scream to do it which I think is a real talent that you have so thank you for coming back here thank you for um moving to the UK means that
01:52:56
we can have these conversations more often and I'm so excited for your book in March about wealth feel like a lot of
01:53:01
people need that and even I'm especially excited for your book about masculinity I've so so passionate about that subject
01:53:07
matter that I almost thought I need to write a book about that so knowing you're writing it means that I definitely won't because you'll do a
01:53:12
wonderful motivation I got to get it out before it out well I know a lot of people I know a lot even like Chris Williamson I know a lot of these people
01:53:18
have told me they're going to write a book about it which speaks to the need and my best friend in my chat actually said to me cuz I was say what I've got
01:53:25
this this two book deal with penguin I need a second book he was like I would love someone to write about what it is
01:53:30
to be a man these days oh there's going to be a ton of them there's going to be a ton of them but just let me thank you for the kind words but just let me say
01:53:35
when I'm on the road for more than two or three weeks first thing I do is I go come home and I go see my kids I usually get home late at night and I can
01:53:42
sometimes and it's sad I'll notice they've grown because I haven't seen them in two or 3 weeks I'm like oh my
01:53:47
God he's actually grown I I haven't seen you in 13 months you have blown up like
01:53:55
I never I didn't know who you were I'm seeing you in airports I'm seeing you across media in America so I can't tell
01:54:02
you like I peek into the room and I look at you sleeping you have grown a foot so congratulations my sense is you've hit
01:54:10
you've hit a Tipping Point so congratulations to you and the team it just feels like you guys are killing it
01:54:16
thank you so much um I am the face this operation
01:54:21
but you probably can understand that I wouldn't be able to function without people that would just like me MH and
01:54:27
that's exactly what I have that's what I have in Jack who was here from the very jump when we had zero podcast and nobody knew who we were that's what I have in
01:54:33
the team jimer and all of the the broader team so thank you so much I um we're doing our very best to make things
01:54:39
better um and you you were actually a huge uh a huge lift in our success because that first conversation we had
01:54:45
did so well with a huge new new audience in the United States and and the momentum has for us continued from there
01:54:52
so thank you Scott thank you for your time very precious I appreciate it thank you [Music]
01:55:18
Steven and
