Mick Unplugged - Candid Conversations with Scott Galloway

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Scott Galloway is a serial entrepreneur, NYU Stern professor, and best-selling author known for his candid takes on business, masculinity, and modern leadership. Raised by a single immigrant mother, Scott Galloway built and sold companies worth hundreds of millions and has dedicated his career to unpacking the realities of success and manhood in today's society. His latest book, "Notes on Being a Man," challenges conventional wisdom while offering a blueprint for personal growth, fatherhood, and meaningful dialogue about what it means to be a man. Key Takeaways: The crisis of masculinity today isn't just about men feeling lost—it's reflected in statistics surrounding addiction, homelessness, suicide, and economic viability. Empathy and honest conversations are needed to help young men find purpose and direction. Social isolation and lack of social capital are major issues facing young men, fueled by screen-addiction and technology that keeps them disengaged from real relationships and experiences. True parental impact comes from presence—whatScott Galloway calls "garbage time"—consistent, non-scripted moments where children feel valued and loved. Hard conversations and genuine involvement from male role models are essential for building resilient, confident adults. Sound Bites: "If you walk into a morgue and there's five people who've died by suicide, four of them are men." "Young men age 20 to 30 are now spending less time outside than prison inmates." "Garbage time, having the tough conversations and always ensuring that every day they know... that's the thing, it's most important to me in my life is seeing them and talking to them." Connect & Discover Scott: Book: Notes on Being a Man Instagram: @profgalloway LinkedIn: @profgalloway YouTube: TheProfGShow 🔥 Ready to Unleash Your Inner Game-Changer? 🔥   Mick Hunt’s BEST SELLING book, How to Be a Good Leader When You’ve Never Had One: The Blueprint for Modern Leadership, is here to light a fire under your ambition and arm you with the real-talk strategies that only Mick delivers.  👉 Grab your copy now and level up your life → Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million    FOLLOW MICK ON: Spotify: MickUnplugged Instagram: @mickunplugged  Facebook: @mickunplugged YouTube:  @MickUnpluggedPodcast  LinkedIn: @mickhunt  Website:  MickHuntOfficial.com Apple: MickUnplugged Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get no frills delivered. Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PC Express Pass. Get your first year for $2.50 a month. Learn more at pceexpress.ca. Beyonce could be working at McDonald and still pull Jay-Z, but Jay-Z couldn't do the same thing working with Donald. Shout out to Chris Rock for that note. And shout out to today's guest, Scott Galloway, for referencing that.

But more importantly, giving us an amazing masterclass. where we go through his new book, Notes on Being a Man. So if you are the parent of a man, if you're a young man under the age of 30, promise you this episode, it's going to change your life. Ladies and gentlemen, I present my good friend, Mr. Scott Galloway. You're listening to Mick Unplugged, hosted by the one and only Mick Hunt. This is where purpose meets power and stories spark transformation. Mick takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning, helping you just discuss.

of your because and becoming unstoppable. I'm Rudy Rush and trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get unplugged. Scott, how are you doing today, brother? I'm good and I'm enjoying this podcast so far. Thanks for the kind of words, Beck. Hey, man, I'm honored to have

you on. I know how busy you are and it just means the world that you're here with me, Scott. And there's so much I want to get into with the book. But I want to start by asking you, brother, like, what is your because? that thing that's deeper than your why, that passion, that purpose that's driving you forward every day to day.

It's a generous question. So trying to not put as much polish on it, it's changed. I would say it's kind of pre-45 and then post-45. I didn't grow up with a lot of money. Mick, did you grow up with money? Not at all. So that scarcity, some of that anxiety that I was raised by single immigrant. great mother who lived and died of secretary money was a thing for us uh a lack of money was a thing for us

and i don't want to say it traumatized me but it made me very aware aware or self-conscious about not having money and so to be blunt my objective or purpose as a younger man into my 20s 30s and even in my 40s wasn't to be a good person wasn't to save the whales it wasn't to restore social justice quite frankly it was just to have economic security. That was my, that was my purpose and my goal and everything I was focused on. I was never a bad person. I, you know, I voted. I think I was a good, good to my employees, but I was very focused on money, quite

frankly, and the accoutrements of money, relevance, people find you interesting, access to things and experiences. I think as I, when I hit economic security and I had the luxury of thinking, what is my purpose, My purpose now I see is I want to raise, you know, I want to raise generous, loving, patriotic men. I have two boys. That's my purpose. It's, and I'm still learning. I'm not sure I'm good at it.

It's, you know, it's something I'm trying to figure out every day. But the box I really want to check before I check out, if you will, is I want to know that I've raised two kids that feel good about themselves, invest in other people's well-being, invest in the country. That's my purpose. I'm going to raise loving, generous, patriotic men. I love that, dude. I love that. And Scott, I'm honored to be here with you. And I owe you this right here.

And this is me looking in your eye saying, thank you. Notes on being a man, your latest book, is amazing. And why I'm telling you thank you is this. I have two boys as well, 23 and 25. You've allowed us to have meaningful dialogue, meaning, meaningful dialogue. meaning my boys are reading this book right now. And we're having conversations, and we don't live in the same household, right? Like they're 23, 25 ones in grad school in Miami, the other one's coaching football in Colorado.

But we have a weekly chat where we break down this book and they get to ask me questions. I get to ask them questions. And one of the things in our last conversation two days ago literally was, you say in the book, you know, men used to go from being needed, right? But now it starts with being accountable. And my kids were like, so, dad, talk to us about what it was like, you know, to be needed. And I said, you're the example, right? Like, I felt like as your father, I needed to be needed by you, right?

But now I realize what I need is for you to hold me accountable to be. the example for you. And that kind of sparked some really good conversation. So I owe you thank you for being a blueprint for what is going to be my future fatherhood for grown men. Well, thanks. Those are generous comments. And my first reaction is you're both obviously done something right and you're blessed

because I'm telling you, Mick, I know a lot of men, a lot of dads who when you scratch the surface and they get off Mike, their sons are really struggling. And, I mean, I'll give you some stark statistics here. We have an opiate and a homeless crisis, but what we really have is a male opiate and a male homeless crisis. Men are three times more likely to be addicted, three times more likely to be homeless. If you walk into a morgue and there's five people who've died by suicide, four of them are men, and 12 times more likely to be incarcerated, more single women owned homes now than single men. And I want to be clear, we should do nothing to get in the way of women's ascent. We need to celebrate our mothers and sisters' progress.

It's been important. We won World War II because unlike Hitler, we said women can build P-51 planes and they can be in factories, women entering the workforce, having certain laws passed, Title IX, gender equality laws. This has kind of been the, it hasn't been AI or technology. That's been the fuel of our economy, is tapping into different labor forces. that were underutilized, specifically women and non-whites, such that we could continue to grow our economy and have the kind of prosperity we've registered. But there's just no doubt about it, that the data is striking. There are one in seven men now qualifies what's called a neat, and that is they're physically capable, but they're neither in education, employment, or any

sort of training. They're literally doing nothing. One out of three men under the age of 25 lives at home. One out of five, 30-year-old men lives at home. One, only one in three are in a relationship under the age of 30, whereas two and three women are in a relationship. And you think, well, that's impossible mathematically. It's not because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. And if a man hasn't cohabitated or married by the time he's 30, there's a one in three chance he's going to be a substance abuser. So the question is, all right, if any group was killing themselves at four times the rate of the control group, you'd think we'd weigh in with empathy and programs. But the problem is, I mean, from 1945,

to 2000, America was registered a third of the world's economic growth with 5% of the population. So we got six times of prosperity, right? And then the vast majority of that prosperity was crammed into one third of the population that was white, male, and heterosexual. So people like me with outdoor plumbing and pale skin, born in the 60s, we had hurricane-like winds in our sales. We just had to be good to have a great life. And if we were average, we could have a good life. And that created a justifiable amount of resentment. And unfortunately, because of the unearned privilege and prosperity of I've registered, we're now holding 19-year-old men accountable who don't have the same advantages I had. You have an education system that's actually, I heard you say your kids in

grad school, the education system is biased against boys. 70 to 80% of K through 12 teachers are female. And it's natural and understandable that they're going to champion people who look, they remind them of themselves. Think about the behaviors we encourage in K through 12. Sit still, be organized, be a pleaser, raise your hand. You just described a girl. A boy is twice as likely to be suspended for the exact same behavior as a girl. A black boy, five times as likely to be suspended for the exact same behavior as a girl.

Seven and ten high school valedictorians are girls. The reality is their prefrontal cortex is more mature than a boys. And now over the next five years, we're going to see probably two to one female to male college graduates. And a lot, there's, I understand the gag reflex when I start talking about men. Like, where were you for us, Scott? And what I would argue, actually, is that a lot of men were there for women. When it was 40, 60 female to male college enrollment, we said, if college is going to be the upward lubricant of income mobility, we need to give women a hand up. And we pass Title IX. And when

we pass Title IX, 97% of our elected officials were men. So there are men on your side, so to speak. And now that it's 4060 male to female, it's now 60% women enrollment and probably 2 to 1, 6633 in terms of college graduation because men drop out at a further rate. There's no discussion of affirmative action for men. So I think one of the moving to solutions, one of the things we have to do is the society is realize that empathy is not a zero-sum game. Gay marriage didn't hurt heteronormative marriage. Civil rights didn't hurt white people.

And having empathy for young men that are having a really tough time right now should not take away from our focus on the very real challenges that women still face. They go to 77 cents on the dollar when they have a kid. that's a problem. There are still young girls have dramatically increased a level of self-harm since social went on mobile. There are real issues still facing. Latino and black families have an average household net worth of 20,000. White families, 150,000. That's an economic apartheid that still exists in the United States. But we can walk and chew gum at the same time and recognize that we can absolutely have empathy for one group without it being a zero. some game. And the unfortunate thing about this dialogue so far in America is that because some very unproductive voices filled this kind of manosphere void, there's a natural gag reflex because to the far rights credit, they recognize the problem with young men before anybody else, but their solution is the problem. Their solution is to go back to the 50s when women

and non-whites had less opportunity. That's not the solution. At the same time, the far left's answer to the struggles of young men or what you would refer to as a masculinity crisis is to say you don't have problems, you are the problem, or if you only just acted more like a woman, that's not helpful either. So we need to identify, I think, a more aspirational vision of masculinity and celebrate and embrace it and give young men a code where they can be successful in our society, programs that lift all young people up, which I think will disproportionately impact men who have fallen really far behind. And also just to wrap up this word salad, we have to have an honest conversation. Economic viability in men is key to mating. Three quarters of women say

economic viability is key to a mate. It's only a quarter of men. As Chris Rock said, Beyonce could work at McDonald's and marry Jay-Z. The opposite is not true. So when you don't have men who are economically viable, you have an absence of household formation. 60% of people age 30, used to have one child in the house. Now it's 27%. And it's because when you constantly take money from young people and put it into the pockets of my generation through tax policy, you have young people that just have a lack. Fewer of them have economic viability and dramatically fewer men because they're not going to college. And in an information economy, more of them are dependent upon a college degree of many of the honor ramps to middle class lifestyle and more manufacturing-based

jobs are not as available. You have a lot of young people who aren't finding mates. more anxious, more depressed. In addition, men, there's a myth of a woman in her 30s who didn't find romantic love and she's living alone and what a tragedy and listening to, you know, Joan Baez and weeping as she looks out into a rainy landscape. The reality is, yeah, loneliness with women is unfortunate. It's sad. It's a problem.

But they don't come off the tracks the same way young men do when they don't have a relationship. And that is, if a young man hasn't had a relationship by the time he's 30 or cohabitator, as I mentioned, there's a one and three chance it becomes a substance abuser. What it ends up is that men actually need relationships more than women. Widows are happier after their husband dies. Widowers are less happy after their wife dies. Women and relationships do live longer, two to four years, but men live four to seven years longer. I'm not sure I would ever had a colonoscopy if my wife wasn't all over me all the time. I'm not sure. I'd be living on pineapple juice and creatine if it wasn't for my wife, like, slowing me down.

So men, it ends up that relationships, romantic relationships, are actually more important to men than they are to women. Dude, that was a straight master class. And I love, Scott, the fact that you always have statistics that support everything that you say. and it gives it so much clarity when you have data, right? And one of the things that I've heard you talk about recently and you hit on it a little bit in the book is about social isolation and the lack of social capital. The crisis is hitting us today. Could you go in a little bit on that and explain that to the listeners and viewers? We're mammals. The worst thing you can do to a mammal is isolated.

it. Put an orca in a tank alone, see what happens. Leave your dog alone without another dog or another human see what happens. The worst thing you can do with a human is solitary confinement. And young men, age 20 to 30, are now spending less time outside than prison inmates. And they're up against this indomitable superpower of a foe. And that is big tech. And now 40% of the S&P by market value is big tech and AI. And what is their job? They're not, they don't set out to be malicious. But essentially their job is to get you glued to your screen and away from your parents, away from friends, mentors, and mates. The more time you're on a screen, away from other people, other activities, exercise, school, work, the more money they make. And this godlike

technology that when you, have you seen these AI prompts, Mick, where at the end it gives you an irresistible question that you want them to continue to answer? You said, Mick, tell me about Scott Galloway. He said, okay, he's done this. And it says, do you want me to outline a series of Questions in podcast format. Do you want it in your own voice? Can I put it in slot? Before you know it, you're two hours into this damn thing. Right. In addition, once they have you online, they found that the ultimate gangster app or approach to keep you engaged is enragement. Figure out what your political leanings are and then to start feeding you content that cements your feelings, maybe even takes you more extreme, and then show you content that enrages you. I'm pro vaccine. So when I go online, they start showing videos of RFK Jr. saying, vaccines cause autism, which infuriates me. And I comment and other people comment back. And every additional comment is another Nissan ad and more shareholder value. So the incentives to keep us online doing nothing else and to enrage us is creating what I would refer to. We're evolving a new species of asocial, asexual males. The number of young men. who sees their friends every day has been cut in half in the last 20 years. They're also being taught that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life online without other humans. Why go through the pecking order of establishing friendships when you have Reddit and

Discord? Why would you put on a tie and apply for jobs and go door to door and try and contact people who maybe don't want to hear from you when you can make money trading crypto or stocks on Coinbase or on Robin Hood and oh wait you have special insight into the Eagles game well you can bet on the Eagles game and it's frictionless and easy you don't need to go to Vegas you just need a phone boom you got a casino because you and we'll give you your first 20 bucks and free betting is there like you get the free $20 and it's fun and it gives you that dope a hit why would you go through the effort the expense the rejection the hits to yourself self-esteem, developing a plan, demonstrating excellence involved in trying to find a romantic

and a sexual partner when you have lifelike synthetic porn available 24 by 7 on every device. So the result is, in a strange way, I feel as if we're planning our own extinction. One out of three men has not had sex in the last 12 months under the age of 30. we are 40 this is a scary set I've seen recently made 45% of men 18 to 24 have never asked a woman out in person so my anecdotal evidence and this isn't data but when I go out I was like it happened to me last night it has happened to me three times last month when I'm out at a bar and we're talking to strangers and we we were talking to women they'll say something along the lines of I'm out I'm at a bar I'm clearly open.

I'm clearly single and ready to mingle. I look amazing, right? I'm dressed. I look fantastic. Not a single man approaches me. Ever now. Because men have gotten mixed signals around what it means to express romantic interest. They don't want to be that guy, right?

And yet 70 to 80% of women still say they want men to initiate romantic interest. And they're getting mixed signals. they're not developing the skills, the confidence, the game, quite frankly, to approach a woman. And I feel either it's dads or mentors, we have an obligation to try and have open and honest discussions and help our sons figure out what is, I think, one of the key skill sets in life, and that is to express platonic and romantic interests while making the other person feel safe. And these men aren't developing those skills. And so I feel as if we're heading into a situation where we just are producing what is the most dangerous person in the world.

And that is a lonely, broke young man. If you look at the most violent, unstable societies in the world, they all have the same thing in common. Too many young men with a lack of economic or romantic opportunities. And when a woman doesn't have a romantic relationship, she pours that energy oftentimes into her friends, those relationships, and into her work. Oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes when a man doesn't have a romantic relationship, he pours that energy into conspiracy theory, nationalism, porn, online video games. In other words, that additional energy is channeled in negative ways, whereas I don't want to pretend that, oh, women have it easy and they're not lonely. I think the dating crisis or the mating crisis

does impact women. It just ends up that the externalities seem to be worse for men. who need the guardrails of relationships, including romantic relationships. And you have, unfortunately, relationships and marriage have become a luxury item. Only about a quarter of men in the lowest quintile income earning households get to get to marry, whereas 80% of men in the upper quintile have the opportunity to get married. So relationships and marriage are becoming a luxury item based on the income, based on your income. Scott, man, like this is truly a masterclass.

And I know I know how busy you are. And there's so many other things that I want to ask you, but I also want to be very cognizant of your time, man. I was late. So if you want to go another five or ten minutes, I'm cool with that. That's up to you, Mick. Yeah.

So just one quick question. And this is more for me personally. yeah as parents i'm not even going to go as granular and say as fathers i'm just going to say as parents yeah what are a couple of things that we can do to start to turn this trend around because and everybody that's listening and watch i want you to understand like it's going to take actual effort right you can't just throw words out there or have a conversation with your son or send them a text message and think that it's going to happen scott where are some things as parents we can literally start doing.

So I want to be clear. I'm not sure I get this right. You know, I have a lot of doubts about my own parenting. I try to, I know, I know some basics. One of the things I love, it's called garbage time. And that is, I think the term quality time was invented by guys who are working all the time who wanted to feel better about themselves. I have found those real moments of connection.

I took my son out to dinner. My son doesn't open up to me. I would kill for my son, my oldest son to open up to me. He doesn't a lot. And we were at dinner the other night, and he just sort of said, he just kind of threw out,

there's this girl I like, and he started talking about her. And he asked me what was the first, you know, woman I had fond feelings for. And if you're a dad, you just assume you're going to have, or I assumed I was going to have

these amazing talks where I would teach them lessons and they would look into my eyes like I was giving them pearls of wisdom. And I find for the most part, your kids watch what you do. They don't really listen to what you say. But the way I've gotten to some connection is randomly and it's through what I call garbage time. I become an Uber driver on the weekends. I call my kids every day. A lot of times they decline my call because they're doing something they think is more important. I check in with them every day. I do my best. I am generous with everything but my time except with my boys. I will take any chance to spend time with them, talk to them because I never know when those moments of connection are going to happen. So for lack of a better term,

just being just being present. Something I also realize, and this is less true of boys your age because they're becoming men. But what I didn't, it took me a while to realize, is that I'm not their friend, I'm their dad. And that is Michelle Obama had this great, I mean, basically what you said is occasionally parents have to be assholes such that your kids aren't assholes later in life. You have to disappoint them. You have to get in their face. You have to tell them they're being jerks or idiots.

You have to, there's a, my house has a lot of yelling in it. I'm not proud of that. My God, it gets ugly sometimes. And I'm like, okay, no. you said you were studying, you said you were done, I just went online, I found out you missed this test and you're upstairs playing Fortnite. This is unacceptable. You're not going to the Halloween party this weekend. It's awful. I want my son to have a great time. I want him to be social. So, like two basics, a ton of presents in what I call garbage time, the willingness

to have hard conversations. And on a very basic level, what I got from my mom, I was raised by a single American mother who lived and died of secretary, is every day, regardless of how angry she was in me or how badly I was behaving, she signaled to me that she loved me immensely and that I was wonderful. And I think that when I look back on why I get to lead the extraordinary life I lead, it's because one smartest thing I did was to be born in America. I just got great opportunities that I don't think anyone else my age got in other nations. tremendous opportunities and prosperity. And two, I think if you have a parent that regardless of the state of your relationship or what you've done, every day says in explicit and implicit ways, I love you and I think you're wonderful and you have a lot of value. You can't help but start to believe that. And I think that confidence is I've carried with that my whole life. So

garbage time, having the tough conversations, and always ensuring that every day they know I mean, my parent, I'm a busy guy and I'm an impressive guy. And my kids hear for me every day and know that that's the thing it's most important to me in my life is seeing them and talking to them. I think they've got to recognize that means I have value. Yeah. Right? And boys will just naturally imply more value, if you will, on their father in some ways. And that is their father is sort of this mythical character to them.

It's our size, the depth of our voice. but presence in a kid's life, when a boy loses a male role model, Mick, at that moment, he becomes more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college. And what's interesting is that girls in single parent homes, when they lose their dad, they have the same outcomes. They have the same levels of college attendance, same income. They sometimes are more promiscuous because they're looking for male attention in the wrong places, but they have the same rates of college attendance and income. What it ends up is that while being physically stronger, boys are emotionally and neurologically much weaker than girls. And so what I'll call at the end of the day, the secret sauce for raising good men is their dad's or a male's involvement. It's really important to boys.

And even just saying that men need to be involved in boys' lives five years ago triggered people. But the evidence is clear that the primary, unfortunately in our nation, The biggest indicator of success is now how wealthy your parents are. We've moved from a meritocracy to a dynastic society. But a close second and maybe even first with respect to boys is the presence and engagement of a male role model. Full stop. So it sounds like you're very engaged with your sons. At the end of the day, that's like the majority of the shooting match.

Bro, I needed that, man. I really did. Scott, I adore you. huge follower of yours, huge fan of who you are. Keep doing the good fight, brother. Keep making us uncomfortable because we need it. I love it, brother. I appreciate that.

Congrats on all your success, Mick. You got it. And for everybody that's watching and listening, notes on being a man. I'm going to have a link to purchasing the book. I'm going to have links to Scott's website to his social. Make sure you're engaging with Scott. Send him a note that said,

hey, you heard this on the podcast. and that's why you purchase the book. Like, we need that feedback, Scott and I, so we know which one of these media forms is actually hitting, right? Scott, we do media. We don't know where people are coming from, man. But just appreciate who you are, dude.

And I mean that from my soul. That means a lot coming from you, Mick. Thanks very much. You got it. And to everybody that's watching or listening, remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it. That's another powerful conversation on Mick Unplugged.

If this episode moved you, and I'm sure it did, follow the show wherever you listen, share it with someone who needs that spark, and leave a review so more people can find there because. I'm Rudy Rush, and until next time, stay driven, stay focused, and stay unplugged.