A Bit of Optimism - The Confidence Conversation We Need to Have with Scott Galloway

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Scott Galloway and I don’t always see the world the same way, but our friendly debates almost always lead us back to common ground. It’s probably why we enjoy talking to each other as much as we do. If you haven’t heard my friend Scott’s name before, he’s known for being brilliant, provocative, and unapologetically himself. He’s a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and larger-than-life social commentator. In recent years, his work, which includes his new book Notes on Being a Man, has explored the challenges facing men today, from loneliness and dating to purpose and identity. Scott and I have different views on what “healthy masculinity” looks like. He’s not afraid to say things during this podcast that might ruffle some feathers. But inevitably, the conclusions we get to are introspective, vulnerable, and often universal. That’s certainly true for one revelation we share: confidence matters. Not the loud, performative kind. The real kind. The kind that helps people risk rejection, build meaningful relationships, and show up more generously in the world. In this episode, Scott and I talk about the “masculinity crisis,” why young people are struggling to connect, how purpose outlasts happiness, and why masculine and feminine traits are complementary rather than competing. We explore the need for good social risks like leaving the house, meeting people, pursuing relationships, and hearing “no,” and why confidence is less about ego and more about security, kindness, and connection. This is a conversation between two opposites who challenge each other, listen deeply, and ultimately agree that building real confidence may be one of the most important skills we can teach the next generation. This… is A Bit of Optimism. --------------------------- If you want to read Scott’s new book Notes on Being a Man, head to: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Notes-on-Being-a-Man Check out Scott’s podcast “The Prof G Pod”: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheProfGShow-ScottGalloway You can also watch his podcast “Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway”: https://www.youtube.com/@pivot To stay up to date with all of Scott’s work, head over to: https://www.profgalloway.com/ ---------------------------

I had some fucked up sense of masculinity when I was younger. I never showed my emotions. Didn't cry between the ages of 29 and 44. Didn't laugh out loud. Now I purposely try to train myself into laughing out loud because 50% of having a good sense of humor is appreciating other people's cleverness. I think learning to laugh,

that's an expression of something you're feeling on the inside, I would argue, is vulnerability. I think when you're a younger man, sometimes you have this belief that Recognizing someone else is funny, acknowledging someone else's success, somehow takes away from your success. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That it's a zero-sum game. And what you realize is you get older is the guy who says to another guy, wow, you're so impressive or laughs at his joke and says, wow, that was really funny.

That's confidence. Yes, you're describing confidence. It's 100%. That's all it is. Most of us have at least one friend who's got a total opposite personality to us. On paper, it shouldn't work. But for some reason, it just does. That's me and Scott Galloway.

Let's cause some trouble. If you don't know Scott, he's a force of nature, a professor, entrepreneur, podcaster, best-selling author, who's built a reputation as a provocative social commentator, unafraid of triggering his audience, or me, or anyone listening to this podcast. And I'll get shit for this. Recently, the masculinity crisis has been one of Scott's,

main focuses, which inspired his new book notes on being a man. This also served as the starting point for our debate. I mean conversation. Yes, we have very different ideas about healthy masculinity, but we agree on one thing. Confidence is the thing. And the question is, how do we help people build their confidence? Real men can listen, grow, disagree with respect, and still find common ground, just like me and my masculine friend Scott. This is a bit of optimism. You were a business guy. Right. Then you were a teacher. Right. And now you've sort of taken on a larger than life presence as a podcaster, but also social commentator. What's happening in your head? Are you growing up? Are you maturing? What philosophies have you completely abandoned? Is it age? Is it wisdom?

like what's the thing that took you from there to hear? It's a generous question. I think a couple things are driving me. One, I'm an atheist, and I think that really soon nobody we know or love is going to remember us or be remembered. And so why wouldn't you try and live your life to the fullest and speak your mind and say things you're thinking, but you're worried about being shamed, but you think that they're right?

So I'm trying to live my life fearlessly. I would say that my goal is to live my life like I'm dancing with no one watching. I think it's important to reverse engineer your success to things that weren't your fault. I'm not a humble person. We've talked about this. I think I'm a fucking monster. I think I'm in the top 1% of grit and hardworking and creative. But that puts you in a room the size of Germany.

That puts you in a room of 75 million people. When I look back on the things that have resulted in a lifestyle my parents couldn't have dreamt of in terms of economics or influence or interesting friends and peers. It's one of the irrational passion for my well-being and my mother, so I try to think about mentoring young men and finding programs that support and show young people value. To the University of California, I got Pell Grants. I got to go to UCLA when the admissions rate was 76%.

This year will be 9%. I got to go to graduate school at Berkeley with a 2.27 GPA from UCLA for basically no money. so I'm very involved. I spent a lot of money, for me at least, on access or broadening access to state-supported education. Yeah. People say, what's the secret of your success?

For me, it's pretty straightforward. And that is, I have been less afraid of public failure than most people. When you put out a podcast and you start a business, you're risking public failure. Yeah. When you express, I want to be better friends with Simon Sinek,

that's a certain amount of public failure and exposure. Yeah. When you approach a strange woman and express romantic interest, you're setting yourself up for public failure. Most of my businesses have failed, but what I've been good at is risking public failure. And I want to do more of that, because if you think about the real obstacle between most people in a democratic society with the prosperity Americans enjoy and success or a better life, it's their fear of public failure. And what I've learned is the fear of public failure is a curb that is two inches high and really doesn't fucking matter.

If you start a business and it doesn't work, people go, oh, it didn't work. And then they go back to thinking about themselves. If you approach a woman and express interest and she's not interested in you and you're respectful, you're both going to be just fine. So I'm trying to be fearless and I'm trying to also think about how I help or contribute to the things that gave me an irrational amount of success. I have a friend, she's a female entrepreneur, who believes, and there's a caveat at the end, but she believes that men make better entrepreneurs than women. And she came to this belief because she said when we're young, traditional roles still apply where men have to be the social initiators for the most part.

So, you know, the boy has to ask the girl to the prom. Those conventions still exist. And so men from an early age, boys from an early age, have to build up the courage to ask, get shot down, ask again, get shot down, ask, get shot down. And so when they grow up and they join the business world, they become more comfortable trying, get shot down, sales pitch, get shot down. And her attitude is that that muscle, that grit, that fearlessness is cultivated young. And the caveat now is now in a world where everybody seems to have retracted from taking social risk. or too many people have, and you can sit in your room and swipe right, and you never feel rejected. You can just assume they didn't see your picture or whatever it is, that that muscle isn't building

for anybody. There's a lot there. So I'm glad that she said that because if I say, and I've said both of these things, women are more observant, they get more reward from relationships, they have better IQ because they've been charged with being more thoughtful. Humans and elephants, I think, are the only two mammals where the female lives beyond menopause because our species has recognized

that female concern and observance and wisdom is still really important to the progress of the species. So if I say women are, their prefrontal cortex matures earlier, the more observant, they have better bedside manner. One of the results is more women in medical school and in general, women will make better doctors. everyone politely applauds and nods their head. I think women make generally speaking better managers.

I think they observe stuff and they're better IQ and can kind of zero in on stuff, more focused on getting shit done as opposed to putting up with office politics because a lot of times they had to get home and take care of their kids. People lightly applaud. Men on average make better entrepreneurs. They're more aggressive, the more risk aggressive. Throughout history, they've been taught, oh no, pick up a sword and go battle that enemy and risk your own life. Oh, no. You see something moving in the bushes, pick up a spear,

and run after the thing and risk your own life. If there's a fire and you have to rush in and grab people, don't be thoughtful about it, rush and grab people. The male brain is more risk aggressive. Now, some people see that as toxic. It can also result in valor. And some of that aggression and risk-taking is one of the reasons we put a man on the moon and have vaccines. But if you say that, it's, oh, I don't feel safe around him. So you're allowed to acknowledge a different in the sexes, as long as it positions women as saints and men as predators. So we can't even have an adult conversation. And by the way, the key land acknowledgement here is that doesn't mean we shouldn't be encouraging more men to go into nursing. That doesn't mean that women shouldn't have

the same access to venture capital as men, because there are fantastic masculine attributes that come up in a lot of women, and there's a lot of feminine attributes that come up in men. I'm more drawn to feminine men as my close friends. I think the majority of my friends are gay. People say, well, you're associating gay people with feminism, and I get into another culture war. I am drawn to feminine attributes to my friends. I like to be taken care of, and there's nothing wrong with that. And a lot of men represent wonderful femininity.

Most of the 95% of us who are born binary have an easier time leaning into certain attributes than others. And we should celebrate that. And I think we celebrate finally many of the wonderful things about femininity in the workplace. There's no reason why we can't celebrate masculinity while recognizing equality of opportunity might not necessarily foot to a quality of outcome. I think if you gave women the exact same opportunities to be CEOs, there would be more than 17%, which there is now, but I don't ever think it's going to be 50-50. The key is are they provided with the same opportunities. And right now they're not. I think you're 100% right. I spoke at a women's entrepreneur conference. And this is what I said, obviously, for shock value. We don't need

more women's CEOs. And then I went on and explain. I said, traditional male characteristics are things like aggression and decisiveness. Traditional female characteristics are things like patience, thoughtfulness, caring, maternal instinct. I said, it's not that we need more female CEOs, it's that we need more CEOs who act like females, and women just happen to be better at that. And this whole idea of bringing sort of more balance, because I think that if you look at our business world, that we've over-indexed on aggression and decisiveness, and we've underappreciated things like caring, patience, listening. And if you look at the great cultures where people love coming to work and the stuff that I've sort of bet my career on, you find a lot of

lot more of those female attributes in the male or female leaders. And I think this is the point you're trying to make, which is we have to appreciate that there are differences and that one, quote, unquote, is not better than the other, but you want to align those attributes for the task at hand, and ultimately, you need both. You ultimately need both. And you might appreciate this. I visited the officer candidate school for the Marine Corps at Quantico, Virginia. And when they run the training for the officers, they separate the men and the women. And they've learned a few things, when they've done this. So they have something called the LRC, which is the leadership reaction course. It's a timed problem solving course, basically, where you have to get, like,

all your Marines and material across the water hazard and, you know, a set amount of time, whatever. And they've noticed stark differences between the all-male teams and the all-female teams. The all-male teams generally fail because they don't think enough about how to solve the problem. their bias is for action and execution, and they usually pick the wrong solution. The women spend all the time discussing the right solution. They often come to the right solution, but they don't leave enough time to execute.

So this idea that you talk about, which is that sort of aggression and go and decisiveness, the Marine Corps sees that, and they also see the thoughtfulness and the higher order thinking from the women. And so the question is, how do you get both? Well, diverse teams. Yeah, diverse teams.

make better teams. Vers teams make better, yeah. I mean, in general, men make better combat soldiers. You're not supposed to say that. Men are physically stronger. They're more prone to rush out in the line of fire and try and save a comrade. Women are more, let's not be stupid. We need to think this through.

You need a little bit of that both. And unfortunately, what I believe is that that aggressiveness or risk-taking of men has been pathologized as toxic while not appreciating that whatever it was, the two, 223 firemen that were killed in 9-11 who rushed into the building without thinking. They were all men. And so I don't think there's any reason why we can't celebrate masculine attributes. My book has gotten a lot of pushback online from a lot of, I don't even call them feminists. I call them ringlight therapists.

There's this whole thing on TikTok. I don't even seen this. Why would you have a risk going on a date when you can be unalived with a man? And they've couched as to men basically that women who go on dates with other young men are literally taking their life into their hands. And here's the data, the actual numbers. 2,500 women a year are murdered by men. That is way too many. It's still a problem. Sexual assault is actually a bigger problem. Let's just stick to murder or unaliving. 70% of those are people they know, right, people don't have a relationship with. So there's actually very few random male-on-female

murders. So let's call it 2,500. 10,000 men kill another man. 40,000 men kill themselves. So if you go on a date with a man, just be clear, he's 16 times more likely to go home after the date and hurt himself than hurt you. You are four times more likely to die on the car ride to the date. You are four times more likely to choke and die during dinner. So let's stop pathologizing young men is these violent predators looking to hurt women. They have become increasingly violent, but they become increasingly violent towards themselves. So I find that we're quick to pathologize masculine attributes without recognizing that some of these masculine attributes have literally built the world. Does that mean we're done? Does that mean it's not a new time and that we shouldn't

train our young men to be more protective of their mothers and their sisters and to celebrate their success and realize their assent has not come at our cost? Yeah, there needs to be an updated frame of masculinity. But the statistics don't eliminate somebody's fear, right? I mean, Tucker Max used to talk about this if you remember Tucker Max. You know, he said, if they serve beers in hell, that guy. Yeah, exactly. That Tucker Max, yeah. That's a cultural reference. Yeah. Let's go listen to some Cisco. You got an English beat? We can get that. Anyway, I'm sorry, go ahead. He said, if you understand the dynamics in male and female dating, you have to appreciate that men fear being humiliated and women fear being raped.

murdered. If a girl goes home with a guy on a first or second date, almost every girl will text their friend and say, this is the name of the guy, this is the address I'm going to in case anything happens. I don't think a guy has ever texted a friend and said, here's the address in case something happens to me, right? And so there are fears on both sides, as I said, men fear being humiliated and women fear being raped or murdered. And so simply us giving the statistic of the fear is not what a is the fear. The question is, is, why do those fears exist? And then what do we have to do culturally, societally, for those fears to diminish? And this goes back to the 80s, you know, where we've sort of over-indexed on rugged individualism. We've over-indexed on sort of,

sort of aggressive masculinity as an attribute in business. We've seen the results, more short-termism, less caring at work, where we use human beings to balance the books on an annualized basis. where we prioritize our quote-unquote, you know, fiduciary duty, and when we think that the fiduciary duty to our shareholder means sacrificing employees or customers, failing to recognize that taking care of employees and customers is actually good for the shareholder, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and we find ourselves here today. And so I think the work that you talk about, the work that I do, which is sort of two sides of the same coin,

even though I think we're coming at it from a different angle, which is one of the reasons I think we get along, which is we both favor, and we're using sort of traditional binary gender terms sort of more feminine men. The men that we prefer, they tend to be more adept at listening, have patience, have a little more care in them, maybe a little less of that outward aggression because they've got something to prove, maybe because they fear being humiliated. I don't know or emasculated. I don't know what it is. And I think being okay with oneself is the thing that leads to being open to being softer.

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

And I believe that a decent code for young men is an aspirational code of masculinity. And I think every young man needs to think about being a provider. How am I eventually, if I want to have a family, going to take an economic lead here? That's not to say I'm going to get in the way of my wife's economic progress. Sometimes that is being a man saying, all right, I'm going to be supportive of my partner, who's better at this whole money thing. But I think it's a decent, healthy position to start from that I need to have a plan, gain skills, certification such that I can be economically viable. Young men are still disproportionately evaluated based on their economic viability.

Is that fair or not? I don't know. It just is. Yeah. But the second leg of the stool is protection. And to recognize that if you've never been a victim, it's hard to empathize with victims. I've almost never in my life felt unsafe. I'm 6-2190.

I remember walking down the street with my sister during COVID, a homeless guy kind of stirred, and she jumped out of her skin, and I said, that was a bit of an overreaction. And she said, easy for you to say. And it's like Dave Chappelle said, when he got paid in cash $30,000, and it was in his backpack, and he said for the first time he felt like what it's like to be a woman, that everyone is ready to attack you. And I recognize now, and I think part of the problem with Big Tech, is it's led by people who've never really understood poverty.

They've never really understood what it's like to be on the wrong end of racism or homophobia or the dangers that women face every day. I hadn't thought about Waymo's taking off. I'm fascinated by Autonomous. And one of the groups fueling Waymo is women because they don't feel safe with the driver. And someone did a study. Uber drivers never talked to me. The majority of Uber drivers try to strike up a conversation with the woman in the backseat.

Because I never experienced. that? I don't think it exists. So it's important that young boys, the boys, women should cross the street when they see men on that side of the street, not cross to the other side. Men have to, and especially boys, have to recognize that masculinity is breaking up fights at bars, not starting them, that you always err on the side of protection with people who are more vulnerable or smaller than you, and women are physically smaller than men. What was the second part? Oh, the softness? So let me be clear. Let me, I just want to trigger some of your listeners.

Yeah. This notion of the sensitive man, I think it's total bullshit. I don't think that's what women want. I think two sensitive people in the car leaves the parallel parking spot empty and two people in the car crying. I think there's a ton of evidence showing that women want a man who notices their life, who finds stages fit to a plot on them, who registers what's important to them becomes important to them.

but I don't think women are looking for a sensitive man. And the majority of the information shows that women, while claiming they want a sensitive man, want a dude with a beard who's strong and is a little bit rough around the edges. Their sensitive man is called their gay best friend, the jerk and the aggressive guys who they want to fuck. We're speaking in extremes here.

You're creating this caricature of this sensitive man. What we're saying is somebody who's more sensitive. Yes, I understand... Notice is their life. I understand that men who are bold and have beards The ultimate are strangely more attractive to women. You being bald with a beard, me being haired with no beard. The biggest aspect has nothing to do with, I coach young men on dating.

It has nothing to do with seeing a woman or acknowledging her and all those things which you said are 100% true. That has nothing to do with being a sensitive man or not sensitive man. I think we're arguing semantics here. I tell, and we're going to agree on this. I tell men, young men, the ultimate aphrodisiac on a date is not money. It's not big muscles. It's follow-up questions. True.

Listen and ask. True. Follow-up questions. True. I think there's some common ground here, but I think there's a cognitive dissonance, what we call in marketing, where people say, oh, I would pay $300 for that, and then they wouldn't pay $30 for it. Of course. What women say they want in a man, oftentimes to foot to who they decide to partner with and who they're drawn to sexually.

and I'm not suggesting that man need to man up or demonstrate talk. There needs to be a reframing of what it means to be masculine, but one, figure out a way to be economically viable. Two, figure out a way to be strong physically. Three, you initiate contact. They just did this big survey on dating. They asked women, what bothers you most about being at a bar or in a single setting? The number two thing was that creeps approached me, right?

The number five biggest complaint, nobody approaches me. You have to teach your boys how to make what I call the open. I used to do this with my boys. I wouldn't allow them back in the house unless they talk to a stranger. You have to be able to go up to a strange dude at your boarding school and say, hey, do you want to grab the game this weekend? Yeah. And be willing to get to know.

You might get rejected. You have to be willing to go up to, I don't want to say, like, co-worker, or everyone gets their harmful to one or three relationships begin at work. And if you don't know the difference between expressing interest and harassing someone, you have much bigger problems. And I think above a certain senior level, your flies up and locked and you take that shit up campus. I deal with a lot of that shit on boards. Agreed. But I think the ability to get your kids to practice, especially young men, how to express platonic and romantic interest while making the other person feel safe is a skill we have.

Because here's the bottom line, 80% of women still expect men to make the approach. And unfortunately, sometimes the difference between a situation that's creepy and romantic as the perceived attractiveness of the person initiating. So there's got to be some overlap here where we acknowledge that some of that, I won't call it aggression, you taught me this, but initiation, some of that raw energy, some of that aggressiveness, some of that, I want to make a shit ton of money. I want to be really fucking strong. I want to wrong long distances and lift heavy weights in my mind in the gym. I think that's a pretty good way to go. And there's nothing toxic about it. And then the moment you have that type of strength

of that economic viability, you move to protection. I think we're talking about a complete picture here, which is to make someone feel safe and protected is all of those things. There's the sort of the very caveman physical protection, as you said, sort of the feeling of walking down the street and somebody's there and the muscles and the money that you can provide for a family.

But it's also the psychological safety at home that I feel I can express my feet. feelings and not get gas lit or you can share your feelings so that this can be a functional relationship and I feel psychologically safe in the relationship. And I think we're saying both things and it goes back to that Marine Corps example, which is it's blended and they may play different roles at different times. So maybe the initiation is one thing, but being in the relationship, you know, those things might shift a little bit, that you want that person who's bearded and muscular and bald to actually have the skills of listening and the ability to repair conflict, et cetera,

in the relationship. So I think we're saying the same thing, but you don't necessarily need all those skills at every time, but at some point throughout the relationship, you've got to have it all. Yeah, I think the far right has completed masculinity with coarseness and cruelty and blames women for men's problems.

And I just think that's when a man's lost the script, when he blames an immigrant for his economic problems or a woman for his romantic problems. We should be celebrating our sisters and our mother's assent. This is a wonderful thing. It saved our economy in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, It's the reason we won World War II, as we said, oh, women can build P-51s as well as men can, and we put them in the factories, Hitler did not. What I think we have now, there, with some mixed messaging that is confusing to young men, and that is say, well, okay, what's a good form of masculinity?

I hear the word vulnerability a lot. What is vulnerability? We'll express your emotions. Be more sensitive. You're describing the attributes we admire on women. There has to be something in between the toxic or the weird masculinity performing. of masculinity on the right and telling people to just act more like women. There has to be something that men can own that's aspirational.

I tell my boys this. Whenever you're around a woman, you pay for everything. And they're like, dad, that's so boomer. I'm like, okay, no woman's ever going to kiss you if you don't pay for her. And all the surveys show women expect, I'm fine, paying half, he doesn't own me. No, you pay. There's no expectation of anything. She's not a prostitute.

You're not a John. In every mammal, there is a mating process. Yeah, it's part of the courtship. Her fertility window is shorter than yours, so her time's more valuable than yours. The downside of sex is much greater for her than for you. So her time is more valuable than, also just logistically, let me give you my beauty routine. I splash water on my face. Maybe brush my teeth if I'm super excited.

I don't know what that costs, but it's not a lot. For a woman to get ready for a date, you might be talking our 100 or 200 bucks. in terms of extensions, hair, nails, Sephora, the expectations we place on women in terms of fashion and beauty is not only unrealistic, it's really fucking expensive. So one small means of demonstrating valor that you're committed, the register,

the asymmetry, and the value of her time versus yours, is you pay. And people go apeshit about that. I stand by it. Let me poke the bear a little bit. Your kids say that's so boomer dad, but dating rituals do change. And you and I are older. Yep. And you and I sort of have more traditional ways of dating,

you know, and though statistically it may work well, I would argue that when you're attracted to someone, all bets are off, right? Like when you're not attracted to someone and they hold a door open for you, they're like, what, I can't hold my own door? You know, you think I can't do it. But if you're attracted to them, like, oh, what a gentleman, right? So to your point about the person who approaches you whether they're creepy or not creepy, the attraction does matter, the chemistry, whatever it is. So a lot of it is sort of academic based on those initial things, those sort of hard to put words to things. Are dating rituals changing? Do we know enough about that? Maybe the younger kids do value different things, even though they do value things like safety and protection and those

things that we're talking about, the manner in which they're expressed, maybe they are different. Maybe we are old. And maybe the way we're saying that you provide protection and you and you communicate those things is changing. I want to acknowledge that a guy my age doesn't even know what he doesn't know with respect to younger people. What I look at is the data. As a wise executive once told me, you know, data, data is like a bikini. It hides all the best bits. Well, okay, as Jim Barksdale, the CEO of AT&T and the Netscape said, if we're going to go with opinions, let's go with mine. If we have data, let's look at the data. That's where I try to find my objective truth. Yeah.

and surveys and data. And what I find with respect to money and women being disproportionately evaluated unfairly on their aesthetics and men being disproportionately evaluated on their economic viability, I find it's actually gotten worse that back when I was dating, most men did okay. If you went to UCLA, you had an okay job. I made a little bit more money than my friends because it was an investment banking, but we all did okay. Now with Instagram, people feel like unless they're dating a dude that can take them to the Amangani or take them and have the best, seats in Abitha that he's not doing well. And if I'm not a fucking supermodel with ridiculous, a good job, I mean, women are basically told to be Wonder Woman now. And men are told that if they

don't make millions of dollars in crypto by the time they're 30, they're losers. And I find that it's gotten worse. In terms of men getting their self-esteem from an unrealistic vision of their economic success and a woman being evaluated based on an unrealistic vision of her aesthetics, with all this filters, you know, what we have is your happiness is a function of your prosperity minus your envy. And all we have all day are algorithms meant to ramp up our envy and create unreasonable expectations around ourselves and what we should expect in a partner. And then when you go to the digitization of the mating market, which consolidates it, when Amazon came along, 50% of retail went to e-commerce. When Google came along, 93% to search

or information in query went to one. Now that we've digitized data, and the majority of relationships begin, or that's the number one source of connection as online dating, there's been a consolidation of metrics. And around men, it's essentially your ability to signal economic security and your height. And if you see these surveys with women that say, what are the bare minimum?

Six foot, six figures. That's become a new thing. Six foot, six figures. That doesn't seem unreasonable. If you take out men over 50, men who are obese, men who are married, that's 4% of the population. And then at the same time, the men who are in the top 10% of dating get about somewhere between 60% and 80% of the interest, which means 80% of the men fighting over a small number of women, which kind of, quite frankly, confirms their worst fears, validates their insecurities. So online dating has kind of been a disaster for young people. And this all leads to the same place and where my solutions are the following. I think we need mandatory national service where young people can meet people from different ethnic income. religious backgrounds and realize how wonderful other young Americans are.

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

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

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

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

people not connecting. And when people don't connect, they're much more likely to think ill of each other. They're much more likely, especially men, to start blaming other people for their problems. So I see loneliness and I see a rise of nationalism. I see economic harm around a lack of connection because we don't have third places for people to meet. I mean, a lot of the things that you talked about are social media driven, you know, the expectations of how tall I have to be, how beautiful I have to be, how rich I have to be, et cetera. and the increasing of insecurity and envy.

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

So for example, if you join a tennis club so you'll meet people, it actually doesn't work very well because some people are great tennis players, some people are first time tennis players, and the great ones will hang out with the great ones, and the first time will feel insecure that they don't belong. But if you have a group where it's like new moms, right? So everybody there, regardless of their social class, or whatever it is, their income, they're all new moms and all struggling with the same thing. And this idea of, I understand, you and you, understand me, actually increases the chance of bonding.

And the idea of mandatory service, whether it's Teach for America or the military or something else, everybody's thrown in together. And you're right, there's lots of places in the world that have mandatory conscription. It's the great level pliling field. It's the great leveler because we're all coming in to do the same thing. We're all starting from the bottom. Alcoholics Anonymous is kind of like that, too. Like, you know, when you go to an AA meeting, it's kind of incredible, which is there's rich, there's poor, there's every color, there's every religion, that the bond is so intense because it's a unified single experience.

And if confidence is the thing we're grappling with, that confidence allows me to be more relaxed, if confidence allows me to get rid of toxic masculinity, if confidence allows me to be more open to somebody else, if confidence allows me to be more expressive to show my love. for my parents at church and not be all like trying to hide it because I'm trying to be old tough, for example. I think it goes back to a lot of the stuff you're talking about, which is how do we help people, young people, build confidence. Yeah, look, nothing is more attractive and more important than confidence. And, you know, there's been a lot of studies done on it, whether it's sports, you know, finding places that you can succeed, the irrational passion for your well-being or just straightline affection. When I reverse engineer all of my blessings,

it comes down to a small number of things that aren't my fault, the irrational passion of my well-being of my mother, you know, told me in implicit and explicit, small and big ways every day that I had value. Big government, you know, Pell Grants, free education, and then an economy that gave unremarkable people huge opportunities, whether it was massive investments in technology with DARPA, access to capital,

competitive markets where no one big company could put you out of business overnight. Most of my companies were built by immigrants. I feel like everything that gave me what I have now is under attack right now. And also, I think there's just a ton of young men who have seen their economic and cultural standing really collapse. And I don't think that's going to be helpful. I don't think the country nor women are going to continue to flourish of men are flailing. But how do you give your kids confidence? That's a tough one, right? That's a bigger one. The advice I just have or I try and practice, you know, this is little things, right? It's affection. It's expressing how much you care about them. It's setting guardrails. It's having tough

conversations. I love what First Lady Obama said. Basically what you said is we decided to be assholes so they wouldn't be assholes. I have really difficult conversations with my kids every day where it would just be so much easier to let them stay up till 2 a.m. and watch the Super Bowl. And I'm like, no, you're not. You got to go to sleep right now. And by the the way, I'm disappointed. You've got to be on that science test. I know you can do better. I know we're supposed to be. Everyone's a win. No, we have very hard conversations. But every day, first and last thing I say to them is I love them. They know I just, I'm crazy about them, and I think they have huge value. And I think over time that soaks into them. I'll try and get

them playing competitive sports, trying to get my kids to work out like my dad did, trying to get them to be outdoors. I think being around people, others, creates moments of a lack of self-esteem, but over time increases your self-esteem. But I think the greatest self-esteem destroy in history has been when social went on mobile. I think it's created so much envy, so many unrealistic expectations. The high school cafeteria is following around 24 by 7 in a mean way, with the algorithms encourage young girls to sexualize themselves or encourage people to start fights where there don't need to be any or to find the weakest person in the thread and go after them. I can tell when my kid is really upset, I'll say to his mom, like, something happened on social media.

It's not going to tell us about it. Something happened. And people will say, well, you're the parent, just block social media. That means you don't have kids. There's studies showing if a kid doesn't have social media, he's even more depressed because he's ostracized from the community. There's no way to communicate. That's a longer question, Simon. and unfortunately every parenting book I read

contradicts the last one I read. But I know in terms of confidence, there's a few things you can do. I wonder if we're confusing some of the things. Like when you talk about sort of money and strength and muscles and being a provider and being a protector, though those things are true, I wonder if what it is

what we are truly attracted to in each other is confidence. Whether it's projecting how confident we are and how we look and how we feel and how we dress, that's all projection of confidence. confidence, right, or how much money we make or how strong we are, that's all projection of confidence. And if we overcompensate, like we come on too strong and we talk about the money too much, though in the short term it may project confidence, but once we get to know each other, it all collapses. I wonder if that talking too much about money, muscles, and all of that kind

of stuff is the false projection of confidence, where what we really should be talking about is actual self-confidence, which when you have it, even if you're not a 10 and you belong in a magazine, you are, you like who you are and you know you have other attributes. And that comes across. And people are far more attracted to the confident person who may be a five or a six than the horrible person who's a 10 and looks, at least when you get past the first date. So, you know. But there's research here. So the reason why women are drawn. It doesn't mean the research is leading us the right conclusions. Right, but it's the closest thing I can find to an objective truth versus finding your favorite ring-like therapist or gender study. I look at the data,

and I look at peer-reviewed research, and the research around why women find muscles attractive is generally the following. It's not the aesthetic draw of the muscles themselves. It's what it says about the man. It says that he has some discipline. It says he can commit to something. It says he shows up, that he's dependable. You're in good shape, Simon. What does that mean? It means you have your shit together. It means that even if you have a few too many drinks one night or you're not feeling great or you have a lot on your plate, you manage to get to the gym. That says something about your ability to be a good partner, a good provider, a good mate. There's been a lot of studies on what attributes are the sexual currency for men in the eyes of women. And they almost all

distill down to kind of three basic truths. The number one signal, we don't like to talk about this, is the man's ability to signal resources. That's the bad news. The good news, is the word signal. And that is, if you're a guy who's getting your graduate degree and you're the one that doesn't order a bottle of gray goose at two in the morning, you go home, you're thoughtful, you're considerate, you study hard, you have your shit together, you are signaling resources in the future. And by the way, the best relationships in my view are the relationships where you meet someone and you build something together because there's just a feeling of shared accomplishment that is so, that just binds you for the rest of your life, I find.

By the way, if you talk to a lot of women, what you'll also find is they actually prefer men with slightly imperfect bodies, like a little bit of pudge, you know, good body, but not a perfect buzzet because when they see online in a dating app, some guy with a perfectly chiseled, you know, abs. And what that also signals is they care about themselves more than they care about anybody else that they're very self-involved. So there is a line. Probably, I don't know. The number two thing, all right? intellect. This is anthropological. People who make good decisions for the tribe, if you make really good decisions under pressure, your partner and your kids are more likely to survive.

Women find intellect, and it can be storytelling. The reason why Mick Jagger gets to procreate with a 34-year-old ballerina is he's a great storyteller. Music is storytelling. We respect intellect. We respect creativity. People are really drawn to it. Quick quiz. What is the fastest way to communicate intellect, Simon? Is it through a story, Scott?

Humor. If you can make a woman laugh, she'll have coffee with you. It was the only way I ever got dates when I was in high school and college was I made women laugh. Humor is an aphrodisiac for women. And then the number three, and this is the most under-leverage, unknown currency of sexual attractiveness for men. And it's their secret weapon. Kindness. This notion of the bad boy effect, that might be a turn on the short run.

women want to partner with men they perceive as kind. All of these things that you're talking about sort of humor and kindness, these aren't the masculine traits that you started talking about. These are more softer traits. Sure. These are softer skills.

Yeah. I think of kindness is at the end of the day, planting trees the shade of which you'll never sit under. And it's like, what's the difference for me being kind and nice? You might be sitting across the table from someone of being really nice to them and telling them how good looking they are

and da-da-da. All right, she senses that maybe this guy just wants to have sex with me and is, you know, boosting me. Are you nice to service staff? Do you go out of your way to be kind? Are you patient when the Uber driver takes the wrong turn to the airport? Yeah. Do you purposely go out of your way to just do things for people who will never be able to do anything for you back? People smell that. And by the way, I have trouble with that. I wasn't born a kind person. I started a kindness practice on purpose when I was about 44. And I said every day I'm going to start. And it's something you can teach yourself. It starts becoming reflex memory.

But men don't realize if you aren't instinctively a kind person, you need to start a kindness product. Women notice when you're nice to your mom. Women notice when you hold doors open for other people. And it's not performative. It's not about the evolved man. It's not about the guy who has more subscriptions to the Atlantic or is in touch with themselves. It's signaling resources, its intellect, and it's kindness. And to your point, you know, anybody can learn to be kind that's a practice? Can't learn to be funny. What's that? You can't learn to be funny. But this is what you can do. You can't learn to be funny. Okay, but there's, it's a double ed sort. Because I'm not funny. I can be funny, but I'm not funny. You can have a great

sense of humor, even if you aren't intuitively funny. And how do you do that? You laugh a lot. Someone says something really funny or sort of funny, you laugh out loud. People love to be around people who laugh a lot, right? You know that guy who has that crazy or that woman who has that crazy infectious laughter? People love to be around that person. That person's a good time. When someone says something funny, it's like leaning into your emotions. I didn't do this.

I had some fucked up sense of masculinity when I was young where I never showed my emotions. Didn't cry between the ages of 29 and 44. Didn't laugh out loud. Now when something moves me, I try to lean in. I try to get emotional. if it makes me feel emotional, I don't hold back. And when someone says something funny, I purposely try to train myself into laughing out loud.

Because 50% of having a good sense of humor is appreciating other people's cleverness. Okay, so you and I are very different personalities. I would dare say opposite. And we get along and we like each other because of shared values and shared commitments and those kinds of things. I would argue that you learning to express yourself,

and I'm going to take crying off the table. That'll be a gimmie, right? I'm going to take crying at the table. But you learning to laugh, I would argue is you learning to be more sensitive. It's you learning to be vulnerable. I think learning to laugh and learning, which is an emotion,

that's an expression of something you're feeling on the inside, I would argue, is vulnerability. I hadn't thought of it that way. I think it's more when you're a younger man, sometimes you have this belief that recognizing someone else is funny, acknowledging someone else's success, acknowledging someone else's personal style, acknowledging another man's good looks, somehow takes away from your success. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That it's a zero-sum game, that accomplishment and attractiveness and success are a zero-sum game. And what you realize is you get older is the guy who says to another guy, wow, you're so impressive or like, I love that jacket. or dude, you're so fucking ripped, good for you, man. Or laughs at his joke and says, wow, that was really funny. That's confidence. Yes, you're describing confidence. It's 100%.

That's all it is. So Steven Spielberg said that there are more people who win Oscars who thank him that he didn't help than the people who he actually helped. Right? So somebody who he helped, like, give him a break, give him a leg up, make introduction, whatever it is, that they'll win an Oscar and they don't thank him. from the stage, but people who he's never met will thank him because of his inspiration and whatever he provided. And the theory being that these people who have this amazing

accomplishment, this Oscar, that if they thank Stephen Spielberg for the break he gave them, that somehow it devalues their accomplishment. And to your point, this is a lack of self-confidence. It takes tremendous self-confidence to say, thank you, or I couldn't have done this alone. You and I both know this, which is the best leaders take accountability when things go wrong and they distribute success, yeah, when things go right. You know, the best leaders that you and I both know when something goes incredibly right, they take zero credit. They're like, no, no, no, it was my team. It was my team. I have an amazing team.

And when shit goes sideways, it's like, on me, on me. And that is nothing more than an expression of confidence. Nothing more. And so it goes right back to where we started, which is, though I agree with you, and I kind of, argue the data that conspicuous display of potential and the ability to provide or good looks or good genetics, you know, signals, you know, we're going to have a strong, healthy kid. You know, all of that stuff, I can't argue with that. But though it can be argued that, you know, the generations change in how we relate and how we date and all of the, maybe the way that

you and I dated when we were kids is very different now, I think the thing that underlies all of it that we have to focus on in ourselves and helping our friends and our kids build is confidence. And that's the thing that I'm more obsessive about, which is what are the mechanisms to help somebody build confidence over telling them the actions they need to perform or the superficial things they need to achieve in order to superficially communicate confidence. Build the real thing rather than just the communication of that thing. I'm just a fine line, but the thing, look, you want your kids, especially if someone raising kids, you want them to have an innate sense of confidence and self-esteem and boundaries around how they're treated such that I think more

confident people will be more likely to be generous, loving people to other people. You definitely want that. I think right now is a bigger threat, maybe a bigger threat, is I find a lot of the people that control our economy, especially our tech platforms, credit them. their character and their grit for their success and blame the markets and other people for their failures. Of course. Their confidence has turned into arrogance and a lack of appreciation for the struggles that other people face. So I find, at least the people I think about, have almost a pathological ability to believe that they overcome everything, all these obstacles to become billionaires while not recognizing that, again, a lot of the people.

their success is not their fault. Yeah. Scott, I could actually talk to you for a long time. Let me ask you a couple more questions here just to close it out. What's the truth about happiness you wish you'd learn 20 years ago? Happiness is a sensation. I can get it from Edibles and Netflix. I could be happy in an hour.

No problem. Purpose is what you want to pursue. And purpose I have found, and it's not the right answer for everybody, but I have found purpose in developing the skills, the strength and the wherewithal to establish a relationship with someone and raise who I think are going to be patriotic loving men. That is my purpose. So I can find happiness pretty easily because it's a sensation, but what I would suggest is try and find purpose. And all the economic aspirations and AI and GDP and salary and negotiating for salary and all that and stock options,

it's all a means. The ends is such that you can have an absence of economic security, such you can have deep and meaningful relationships. And I didn't figure out out until I was older. But that's where I find purpose. That's what I pursue. Amen. Over the past few years, your work has explored male loneliness. What do you think men, especially young men, need right now but don't have the language to ask for? The term risk is important for young men, and that is men are taking way too much risk on gaming and gambling sites. They're taking too many risks with the stride and aggressive things they say online. And they're not taking enough risks offline. They're not applying for jobs they shouldn't get. They're not applying to college.

They're not getting out of the house. They're not approaching other impressive people and expressing an interest in friendship. They're not approaching potential romantic partners and expressing interest. At risk has a greater return in certain venues and other. Taking huge risks on Coinbase or on Robin Hood or on betting platforms are really big. bad risks, but you need to take more risks with people outside of the house. The only way you get to a great yes, the only way you get to a great job, a great school, a partner who's higher character and better looking than you is by risking a ton of public failure and a ton of nose. Anyone who's gotten a great yeses has endured dozens, if not hundreds of nose. You need to

reallocate your risk. Amen. Social risk. Scott Galloway, you always make me think. You always challenge me. I always appreciate any time I get with you. Thank you very, very, very much. Thanks, Simon. I love spending time with you. Whenever I want to get together with Simon, he blows me off. It's like high school again, literally. Hold on. First of all, the last time you invited me out, let's just back off there. First of all, you never text me ever and invite me out, ever. I invite you, number one. Number two, the last time you took the initiative to invite me out, you said, do you want to go out for a drink. I said, I'd love to you. You go, great, I'll meet you in an hour. I'm like, I can't meet you in an hour. Dude, you said like such an insecure chick right now. You never go out with me. So like, you know,

you know, I'll respond to you. You can't hold it against you. That's not true. I wanted to meet you. And instead, I sent you nude selfies. Everything is true except the last part there, folks. I saved them, by the way. So let's cause some trouble. Let's find the dark side of Simon Sinek. I don't buy this whole groovy, you and me thing. I'm like, I think there's a dark side to you. Of course there is. I don't deny it. All right. Let's find it. Let's go there. You're the bitter, angry one. I'm not. But I'm transparent about my bitterness and my anger. I'm transparent about my bitterness and I'm anger. I just have less of it. I don't see it. I don't think that's what you throw out of front. You don't trust people who won't get drunk. I like to drink. That's, it's a flaw. Yeah.

No, no, I don't mind that you like to drink. You've said to me point blank. I don't trust people who don't drink or don't get drunk? I wouldn't say I don't trust them. I have a more difficult time bonding with them. That's my problem. But I think young people need to drink more and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off. I've never been drunk and I've made many bad decisions. But the anti-alcohol movement and the remote work movement, I think are actually bad for young people. Six percent of teenagers and young adults are addicted to drugs or alcohol. 24 percent are addicted to social media. I know why you want people to drink, because the chance for social risk goes up. And we're talking about taking social risk. And so the social lubricant, that is alcohol,

allows for the increase in social risk. And you will discover when you have a few too many drinks, you get a little tipsy and you ask that person out, or you say something charming, God forbid, to a stranger. And you realize nothing happens that the next morning you can be like, it worked and I'm still alive. It's that it increases social risk, which is what you're actually talking about. I would simply posit that some people need the alcohol and not everybody. does. I think that's fair, but anyways, I look forward to seeing you and getting fucked up. I look forward to it. All right, brother. A bit of optimism is a production of the optimism company.

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