The Boyscast with Ryan Long - The Man Who Coined the Term Luxury Beliefs on The Gender War, Simps, & The Worlds Huge Problems

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

Author Rob Henderson joins the boys to discuss Luxury Beliefs, simps & pick me's, and many other topics. SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS HIMS - Go to https://hims.com/boyscast for personalized E.D. treatments AG1 - Go to http://drinkag1.com/boyscast for $20 off your order plus a free 1-year supply of vitamin D and 5 AG1 travel packs SUPPORT THE BOYS PATREON.COM/THEBOYSCAST  RYAN ON TOUR: Tulsa: Appleton: Sept 19/20 Columbus: Sept 26, Cincinnati: Sept 27, Cleveland: Sept 28, Baltimore: oct 3-5 ryanlongcomedy.com dannycomedy.com SUPPORT THE BOYSCAST:  https://www.patreon.com/theboyscast http://ryanlongcomedy.com Ryan @ryanlongcomedy To advertise on this podcast please email: [e-mail]    Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/BOYSCAST   00:00 - Intro 00:23 - Welcome Rob Henderson to the show 03:28 - Would you call yourself an author? 04:46 - Leo DiCaprio and the women who love to hate him 10:41 - Race relates to you coalition 14:54 - What makes a man? 22:21 - Defund the police is a luxury belief 29:47 - Women become more conservative after marriage 35:37 - Gender equality paradox 38:54 - AD - HIMS - Go to https://hims.com/boyscast for personalized E.D. treatments 40:23 - DATES - Go to https://ryanlongcomedy.com and https://dannycomedy.com for tickets! 40:51 - Gender Paradox cont’d 47:10 - Everything new is just a combination of something old repackaged 48:27 - Simps & Pick me’s 50:21 - Sydney Sweeney 57:19 - Pick Me is the PC version of sl*t 58:49 - How will the future affect Gen Z and Millenials? 1:02:29 - AD - AG1 - Go to http://drinkag1.com/boyscast for $20 off your order plus a free 1-year supply of vitamin D and 5 AG1 travel packs 1:04:04 - UBI 1:09:48 - Progress 1:11:53 - San Francisco 1:14:37 - What are the biggest issues? 1:22:06 - What are the new Luxury Beliefs? 1:36:52 - Background / Q&A

The boys, the boys cast, the lads, the dudes, prepare yourselves for boys' cast, the pros, just the boys' cast, the homie, the dudes, experience, the always cast, the boys, guys. In the studio with Rob Henderson, let's go. What's happening? Hey, how's it going, guys? Very good. So you're in New York, okay? I'm in New York.

I moved here about eight and a half, nine months ago. We actually said, because we knew you're in the Army, we were like, this guy's going to be on time. Yeah, yeah. Because we have some guests who are. Oh, did I turn yours up? No, I was like four or five minutes late. But no, you text, you text to me saying I'm going to be five minutes late,

which is like, that's such an Army move. Oh, right, right, yeah. Well, so a lot of my military friends, I was in the Air Force, so they would be upset if I just went along with Army, you know, there was that intra-service rivalry. three thing army navy air force marine so i was in the air force to be clear but you know i've been out long enough that i'm kind of used to people just oh army whatever sort of a catch-all phrase catch-all term could you fly a private plan no no no no so this is a uh something that that is

widely misunderstood so the air force only four percent of the air force are actually pilots and the other 96 percent of uh steward says yeah yeah there's a few though but then you know you got mechanics technicians, radar operators, people serving food in the dining halls. It's a whole operation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, you got the pilots doing that, but then you got, I mean,

there are way more people who are repairing the airplanes than actually flying them. So what you do? Yeah, I was one of the guys repairing radars, missile warning systems, that kind of thing. I was like the Air Force

kind of glorified version of a cable guy. You know, I'd have my little tools and a crew. You're just like, like, when you see the planes, you're just like, couldn't have done it without me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't for us. They wouldn't even be up there. I thought that every day.

And you were like 17, right? Didn't you say you were like actually kind of, you had to get a waiver to go in because it was so early? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is, so I was 17 years old, and you can enlist when you're 17, but you need to get a document, special document signed by a parent or guardian. And I was 17 when I graduated from high school. And so I had to talk to my adoptive mom about letting me enlist.

And she hemmed and odd. But, you know, as I explained in the book, there weren't many options for me after high school. And she understood that this was probably the best. path for me. And so, yeah, I shipped off for basic training. This was August of 2007. And I don't, so this was at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. I don't recommend going through boot camp in Texas. It was so hot. Yeah, it was brutally hot. And I was 17. I knew nothing about Texas. I knew nothing about anything. And so I was 17. I get on a Greyhound bus, you know,

from California, where I grew up off to Texas. And yeah, I was like, oh, my God, it's like, California is hot, you know, some parts of California. Texas is like, another level. I mean, both of you guys have been to Austin. I sure you guys understand. It's different, yeah. I don't know if I have been there in the summer, to be honest. No, I've been there. I can barely breathe. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I feel like I have a higher opinion of it because I haven't done that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it colored my impression of Austin, at least. I visited there July, a few years ago thinking like, oh, Austin's this great up-and-coming city. And as soon as I get there, it's so hot, and it brought back those memories of basic travel. I don't want to, I don't think I can live here. Dude, I feel like it's interesting, like, I guess you'd call, would you call yourself an author or, like, intellectual, sociologist? What would, yeah, everyone's sort of everything now? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I mean, I guess, you know, I did a PhD in social psychology, so I'm comfortable with social psychologists, but author's okay to. Intellectual feels like, like, like, immodest. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The moment you refer to yourself as an intellectual is my brass gay race. Modern philosopher, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's, I mean, modern philosophy, even that feels a little. But in a lot of ways, it feels like you're thinking about a lot of the same stuff as comedians are thinking of.

It's just a longer form version of it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I've always loved stand-of-comedy. And, yeah, it's the kind of penetrating insights and the ability to tell the truth from a different perspective in ways that maybe people have thought about but haven't put words to. Yeah. And to get an emotional response from people. And comedians are, yeah, excellent at that.

Yeah. I mean, I definitely first came across you with your, it was with the Leonardo DiCaprio when you were talking about, like, how women. don't like when men are dating younger women just because it's kind of like their own defense mechanism, I guess, kind of like that's how they compete is by shaming men who date younger women. Yes. Yeah, there's kind of, there are kind of two different things going on there. So I spent a good deal of time reading about evolutionary psychology, and I still write about

it a lot on my substack and elsewhere. And you see these kinds of competitions, this kind of sense of rivalry, and this fear that both sexes have and expresses itself in different ways. So when you see Leonardo DiCaprio, you know, was he 40 something, is he 50 now? It's like 50. Yeah. And he keeps, you know, dating a different supermodel, trading them in when they hit 25. And a lot of the anger you see online is from women saying, why can't he settle down? Why can't he choose someone? Why can't he pick someone his own age? And, you know, a lot of, a lot of like red pill guys and stuff will, we'll kind of laugh at this and say, oh, these women are bitter, these women are whatever. And they don't understand that men evolved or

or adapted to be attracted to younger women. And so why don't they understand this? So that's the, and they're right on some level. That is true that men, men have evolved to some extent to be attracted to younger women because they tend to be more likely to become pregnant. And there are all kinds of Darwinian reasons for that. But then on the other side, there is an evolutionary reason for why women would want to shame high status men for liking younger women.

Because it's in their interest for, if they were to partner with a high status male, they don't want that guy wandering off and trading them in and getting a younger girl. So you gotta put a social cost on it. Exactly. So they're penalizing DiCaprio and trying to sort of make an example of him of saying, hey, man, you shouldn't do this. Not that they think they're ever going to get

with someone like Leonardo DiCaprio, but if they get with any guy who has options, they want to say you should not exercise that option, especially not to the same extent that Decaver does. Yeah, you're the scarlet letter of shame for dating some hot 25-year-old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sort of works to some degree,

because in normal life, there is, if you're like a 50-year-old guy showing up with like a 22-year-old, and you're not like having some crazy alternative lifestyle. It is people being like, are you doing buddy sure yeah yeah you get some dirty looks yeah even even guys who uh who who may be sort of envious of that on some level they enter there's a social norm there's a decorum you shouldn't be doing this so yeah it is well there's an incentive for dudes to not like it too or if you're a 25 year old there's an incentive to be like okay rich 45 year old stay away from our

checks yeah yeah i hadn't considered that um yeah there's a little bit of that too uh we're in this era of you shouldn't shame people you shouldn't stigmatize and and no matter how much we want to believe this it'll still reemerge in different ways right we're still willing to shame people maybe for different behaviors than we would have in the past but now it's perfectly okay to shame you know an older celebrity for dating younger women right it's almost like the natural instinct is the shame they just changed around what they do it for they're like women are like addicted to shaming and they're just like listen you can't do that shame anymore you're like i got to get the fix though yeah i mean i guess it's effective way to like level the playing field a little bit

for them. Yeah, yeah. But probably is there, there's got to be like an evolutionary thing where it is sort of a balancing mechanism for society a little bit too, where it's like, okay, if someone's in the family is like a drug addict and stealing from everyone, like shit, you should, they should be, it should be stigmatized. Yeah. Well, yeah.

I mean, that's, that's why shame and stigma arose. You know, these are tools that, that societies have come up with, sort of social instruments in order to get people to behave. And, you know, thousands of years ago before the rise of, you know, modern societies and prisons and formal legal systems. How did you regulate people's behaviors? You shame them and you stigmatize them and you cause them to lose status and respect in the eyes of others.

And it's still effective today. And like banish, essentially banish them from your small community where kind of like everybody lived. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you could ostracize them like, oh, you keep sleeping with other men's wives, or you're taking more food than belongs to you or you're being selfish or whatever. And then, yeah, you could ostracize them. And in some cases, in, you know, ancestral environment,

in hunter-gatherer societies, you know, people would form these whisper networks and actually kill people, you know, it's sort of a whisper network? Like, basically like, hey, did you notice that like so-and-so keeps, you know, taking, taking food that isn't his? Seems like gatherer behavior right there. Yeah, yeah. Less hunters, more gatherers, doing that kind of stuff. Exactly. behaving in a selfish way or try to sleep with other guys' wives. And then other guys will say, like, we've got to take this guy out, they'll wait for him to sleep. They'll sharpen their spears and take him out. There's a really funny story in, there's this book, Hierarchy in the Forest. by this anthropologist Christopher Bohm,

and he describes how the Anoama, this is a remote Amazonian tribe in South America, there was one guy who was a bully, he would harass people, he would try to take other guys' wives, this kind of thing, and then they were out for a hunt one day, and they passed this tree,

and this tree had a beehive full of honey, and hunter-gatherers love honey, because that's like the only time you actually encounter sugar in that sort of concentrated form, high-energy food. And so the other guys told this bully, like, hey,

we bet you can't get that that beehive up there but you know but you can't do it and of course he's this arrogant bullying he's like i'll show you he drops all of his weapons he climbs the top of the tree and he retrieves the beehive and when he comes back down the other guys lifted his weapons and just stabbed him to death and took the took the honey from him so you know these are the dangers sort of like the original brocode yeah yeah exactly now i feel like the a lot of the over the last maybe i don't know you probably uh everyone goes through like different versions of what they're talking about online and stuff like that but i feel like in the last six months i've seen you talk a lot about the men-women stuff, which is like super in line with the kind of

stuff I think about in comedy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's, it's endlessly fascinating. You know, there's this, there's this move and some factions of politics to attempt to like flatten sex differences, eliminate sex altogether, or say we're all the same or say anyone can be anyone else. But I just think the differences are, you know, right for comedy, right for for sort of research interest, uh, intellectual curiosities. So I've been writing a lot about it. It's relatable to a hundred percent of people. Well, they're the most ever green thing. Yeah, it's just like, exactly. I think Louis C.K. had a kind of a bit at some point where he was like racism like can be like that you can get rid of that where you have a scenario where it's like a bunch of people. It's like you just have different color of skin. That doesn't matter in a group of friends or whatever. But like sexism is going like girls being like fucking men and men being like fucking women. Like that will exist for the ever in history. Yeah. Well, there's something interesting here. So so some evolutionary psychologists, they have found that there are three categories that we encode or notice about someone when we first meet them. So. we immediately try to determine their age and their sex, and then their race.

Those are the three things we noticed right away when we meet someone new. And so about 20 years ago, this is Rob Kurzban and some other psychologists. They thought, like, okay, age and sex makes sense. Sort of evolutionarily speaking, you know, you want to know what sex someone is because you want to know, like reproductive purposes, you know, are they a viable partner for you, that kind of thing. And then age, also related to reproduction, but also, you know, every society, there have been gender roles, sex roles, like how you treat someone based on whether they're a man or a woman. But race is unique in the fact that if you go back, like race, as we understand it today, is relatively recent.

And if you go back 50,000, 100,000 years in the environment that we evolved in, you would never have actually encountered someone of a different race than you. Like if you're traveling by foot, before the invention of the wheel, before horses, before all of those things, like if you're just walking, you couldn't get very far, you're never going to encounter someone who looks dramatically different from you. And so these researchers thought, okay, well, what is it about race? Why are we encoding it in this way? and they basically say that race is this kind of proxy for what coalition or tribe you belong to. So if you look at hunter-gatherer societies, people will identify people based on, you know, hair color or hairstyle, rather, a hairstyle, the way that they style their hair, the way that they disfigure their bodies, piercings, tattoos, all of those kinds of things. And people, like, there's something in the brain that sort of uses that part of the mind to determine coalition and instead thinks, okay, well, this is race. and the way that they figured out that race is actually, like what you're saying here,

that race is actually not that important. Was it Louis C.K.? Yeah, it was a Louis CK bit, yeah. We actually don't think that race is as important as those other two categories. Yeah, I think his version of, in the joke, his version was like that one of them's wrong and one of them is like not going anywhere.

It's actually natural. Well, so there have been multiple studies on this. The original study was, the title of it was, was Can Race Be Erased? And they set up what they call a memory confusion paradigm for these research participants. And they basically show videos of people. So they might show a video of a young man wearing a green basketball jersey, and he'll say a few words, and then they'll see some other people, and then they'll see a woman wearing the exact same green jersey, and then you'll say the same words, and then you ask the participant, is this the same person who was wearing that green jersey before, or is it different? And people always say, well, that was different? That other person was man, this is a woman? And then they did this with age. They'll have an old person with the green jersey, say something. They'll have an old person with the green jersey, say, was that the same person? They'll say, no, that other person was way older.

but when they do this with race people forget so they'll show a black guy in a green jersey distract them for a while then a white guy in a green jersey and say was that the same person people sometimes about half the time they'll say I don't know I don't think so maybe no I think it's different maybe it's the same and so the researchers are just that they're looking at the green jersey

as a marker for coalition and people more than the skin yeah exactly that's right could be the potential that they're like think they're getting set up in some way you know like that's like those studies where it's actually a different study you go I don't know I don't really see race. Sometimes they do.

They do kind of confuse people in order to study something else. But in this case, that is what they were looking at. And that study's been replicated. It's really interesting to me. So they're basically saying, like, this is why when you see sports teams, for example, they're not organized along racial lines. When you see someone at the same color jersey as you, you see the jersey first, not the skin color.

Same with militaries, right? You're all wearing the same uniform. So sports teams and militaries and, and, you know, they attempt to sort of remove how much you notice the race and look solely on the coalition. The outfit does mean more. Like if I think, you know, just the same as if you, if you see two guys that look like rappers versus two guys that, you know, look like soccer players, that I'd be more likely to classify them that way. Yeah. I've always say, like, the, anyone that was, like, kind of around my sort of age that came from, like, the Toronto area, I identify 10 times more with anyone that's like, you know, looks like me, looks way more like me from somewhere else.

Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, like, when you watch, like, UFC fights or boxing matches, I think there is maybe this, this, this. sort of archaic impulsive, like, oh, well, that guy kind of looks like me, but then if the other guy is from the same hometown as you or something like that, like, there are other things that supersede it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the one thing, I know, I felt like it was interesting, even, I wrote down, like, a few, like, quotes that were kind of cool, but even just the idea of, like, what makes a man? You go, what, what determines, like, okay, this person's a man, and you were like, there's always, like, markers where it would be, like, for example,

this person produces more than they consume. Whereas what makes a woman a woman, it's always biological things. It's interesting. I guess that kind of goes to that thing that people say on the internet where you go, men or what they can provide, women are accepted regardless or something like that. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, I wrote in that piece, you know, this sort of deep dive into sex differences, personality, psychological differences, and, you know, drawing from psychology and anthropology

And right, with women, at least in sort of non-industrialized small-scale hunter-gatherer type of societies, it was, you know, women, there was a very clear biological marker with menstruation, with the ability to get pregnant. And, I mean, those were kind of burdens on their own, where you don't necessarily have to force women to go through additional rituals to prove that you're a woman. Whereas for young boys, in order to become men, a lot of traditional societies have had them go through sort of brutal hazing rituals, disfigurement, scarring, leaving them out in the, in the force and the, middle of the night, bringing back an animal. I mean, there are all kinds of these different... I heard one where they put their hand in ants. You've heard that? Yeah, it's like what was it? Bullet ants, yeah.

And they have to just put their hand there and let the ants just like bite them and sting them, yeah, yeah. Without showing pain, right? Yeah, you have to pretend you didn't get, it's okay, you get beaten to a gang kind of thing, like you'd just get jumped in. Yeah, a lot of these places used to get jumped into being a man. Well, there is this logic with hazing where, you know,

a lot of studies show this that if you're you're hazed into a group, you value your membership in that group even more. Yeah. And so this is why sports teams will do. Like fraternities will do this. Well, they'll make you, especially if you suffer together with your comrades, with your brothers, if you're all going through the same shit together. By the time you get out of it, you're like, wow, we're that much closer.

We've bonded. We've suffered this misfortune together. Basic training is like this. Like, yeah, there is a logic to this. And we're kind of lacking that I think in modern society. A lot of young guys are drift. There's no like, oh, well, I guess I'm 18 or I guess I'm 21 or whatever it is. but there's no sort of clear-cut marker.

Like, you survived. It's a very difficult thing. Now you're a man. Yeah. It's kind of like after 9-11, how everybody was so like, just like we're all Americans kind of thing. There's kind of always a, like a dichotomy or whatever,

between the things where you're like, this is biology, this is how it is versus like, well, this is modern society. We don't have to do that anymore. And you're just like, well, which ones do you have to do and which ones do not have to do? And I think probably people got too flippant with like, oh, that's just prehistoric.

And you're like, no, that's like in you. Yeah. Well, you see this with, you know, this is an example I used in the beginning with the war in Ukraine that they would allow the refugees, you know, women and children could leave, but if you're a male of military age, they forced all of them to stay. So in times of crisis, suddenly, we all understand what a man is and what's required of men when you need to step up. But when you live in a very comfortable, affluent, prosperous society, we sort of forget, you know, what the purpose of the sex differences are, what being a man is. And, you know, it takes often crises for those. ideas to remerge. I think that kind of happens in like a company or in a house too a little bit where it's like when things are going good everyone's you know everyone has a lot to say sometimes you have to kill a spider yeah I have a theory and okay tell me anything of this I've been saying this theory but I feel like men need women need men so they could feel nice and men need women so we could not feel gay because those are okay that does not feel gay okay but wait women have a need to be well okay here would be I'll give you like uh okay

Ryan does a lot of gay shit when he's just on boys' trips I can tell from that comment It would be Okay Here would be an example For not feeling gay

Like watching a TV show That's really gay That you don't want to be You're like I have to watch it My girl wants to watch it You know what I mean For Guilty Pleasures

Ryan watching Love Island They could be guilty pleasures But it could be something You know Like decorating or something like that You might actually like Decorating for Christmas Or like whatever

Maybe not Christmas Is more manly in a way But there could be parts where you're like, I kind of like interior design. I like fashion, but I could never admit that, so you kind of have to involve, like, oh, it's because of my chick. Like, obviously, I have to care about my hair. She wants me to...

Yeah, yeah. And then girls, it's the, like, the kill and the spiders, anything like that. Here would be an example. Like, you could see a family where it's like a man and a woman, and the girl's like, we should give all our money to this charity. And the guy's like, dude, we can't give away all our money, we'd be poor. And she's like, well, I tried. He doesn't let me do it.

And it's like, you're saving her from herself of, like, nicing herself into homelessness. And she's saving you from yourself of gang Gang yourself in a homeless place. And she's saving you from just living at a glory hole. The spider example is like she wants to feel nice and if she kills the spider she won't feel nice. So she can sort of outsource that cruelty or whatever to you.

It's kind of a luxury belief. It's a female luxury belief. That is true actually. Because her luxury belief is I would never kill a living creature even though she put the hit out and she's going on her. Literally my wife is just like there'll be something and she's like go kill it. And she's very much like, she's like, you killed it? I'm like, what did you think was going to happen?

Don't hurt it. Can you just put it outside? But, you know, she really wants you to kill it. Wait, you think I'm going to take this thing out through the lobby down the elevator outside? Like, no. It's like, I'm flushing this thing. Yeah, we had it.

There was a mouse issue and there's like this elaborate traps just to set the thing up. None of it works, you know? Just like, and then finally you just hire a guy to come and kill them. The shovel walks in and just. So maybe there's like a luxury female male beliefs, too. Oh, I don't know if I would call. I think those are just, that's like basic sort of sex differences where we need each other for different reasons. I, but I'd never thought, so I've thought of versions of what you just said

about, like, women needing men, and, you know, they want to feel nice, and so they'll kind of outsource it to, to their male partner. But the other one of, like, not wanting to feel gay, that's, I've never heard that before, of like men having this desire to do something feminine, you know, watching, yeah, Love Island or something. And I'm thinking, have I ever, I don't think I've ever had that, but, I don't mean to, I don't mean to brag, but like, I don't think I've ever have that. Like, oh, I'm glad I have my girl here because otherwise I would feel gay for doing it. Yeah, me too.

Well, maybe you don't even want to do it. You just have to do it as you know, certain things, you might have to take this tiny dog for a walk. And you need to be able to blame it on her. Yeah, yeah, like, when someone's like, oh, cute dog, is that yours? That's not my dog. Or you might be at a bar and it was

like, everyone wants to keep going and you're just like, you want to go home, but you don't want to act gay when you're leaving. So you're like, the girl wants me to leave. That would be example. That's a really nice excuse actually to get out of things. Like, oh, I wish I could. The whole ball and chain wants me to go home. I've heard this from parents that they say like, you know, there's a lot of burdens that come with being a parent, but one is like

you can always say my kid's sick and that'll get you out of everything. Yeah. Yeah. But there was well, maybe to go back to the like more luxury beliefs component, there's like, there's all these like chat groups in New York for areas, you know, like Facebook groups and stuff like that. And it'll just always be people being like, there's this

guy on the loose that's punching women, right? And it was just every woman trying every solution other than arresting him. Being like, you'll see him. He's like, what if we all agree that Wednesdays is his punching day? And then Thursdays and Fridays, we can use the park. And then finally someone will, like, there'll be a dude that's just like, okay, can we call the cops on this guy? I remember I was at a comedy show and this girl, when that guy was punching women in New York, and she got punched. And she was like literally saying everything, but like, we need to arrest this guy.

Yeah, yeah, they can't. Yeah, yeah. You're like, she just wouldn't say it. funding social programs or raising taxes. Yeah, it's like all like, it was all just like, yeah, you know, yeah, like we need like the Zoron, like the social workers. If it was, if we had social workers on call, then he wouldn't have just randomly punched me in the head outside of him.

Right. Yeah. But do you think there is something inherently about, you know, the men, women differences, why women kind of like empathic have to be like that? Yeah, there's an empathetic component here. I read this joke years ago, kind of mocking clinical psychologists, you know, the mental health experts and the joke was something like two psychologists walk out of a bar. and they see a guy broken bones bleeding in the street,

and one psychologist looks at the other and says, oh my God, we have to find out who did this and get him help. But I think there is this kind of empathizing component here. So you look at the big five personality traits, the trade of agreeableness, which basically captures how empathic, how compassionate, how concerned you are for other people. And that personality trait shows a very large difference

between men and women, where men tend to be more disagreeable, a bit less polite, a bit less empathic and compassionate. whereas women, you know, they have more regard for other people and they want to, you know, be nice and be kind and be, you know, all those kinds of men. And I think that this, one thing that I didn't look at much during, because I was, I was obsessed with the whole, like, weird, crazy defund the police thing in 2020 and 2021. And, you know, I wrote about luxury beliefs. I read about sort of these class divides. And so I was unsurprised to see that there was a difference in income where the highest income Americans were always the most in support of defunding the police and the lowest income Americans were always the least in support.

And then, you know, if you just looked at Democrats, it was always white Democrats, white progressives who were the most enthusiastic. You live in low crime areas. Exactly. This doesn't even come to your door. College educated, upper middle class, yeah, gated areas. I did not look at differences between men and women. that would be interesting because it seems like women would be more likely to be victims of crime right so there's something interesting not not more likely but they're the ones who they perceive a higher risk

yes they're more risk like right well they're more like i'm more likely to get mugged because i'm a smaller woman versus like like you know if whenever you're with a girl she's always like yeah i'm i'm in more danger than you are danny do you know a real man yeah i can see that going either way because women could think, well, I'm small and I'm vulnerable and I could be a target. But then on the other hand, they have that other kind of empathic component, this agreeable component of like, well, I don't want, you know, poor vulnerable criminals to be rounded up or harassed or abused by the police. So I could see that going either way, honestly. But my suspicion is that men were probably less in favor of defunding the police and women were probably more in favor. Do you have? Yeah, that's probably

the social component. Because, you know, I've said this before, because, you know, women are considered more agreeable, but I said this how like, but when you're one-on-one with them, they're more disagreeable. Yeah, they're like, as a, as a, like a cohort, they're more agreeable, but then like individually, they're definitely more disagreeable. Is that, is that true, though? Well, do you mean, maybe just the women I've been with? Well, like, are they more disagreeable with you?

But that same woman would be, uh, uh, uh, more agreeable with other people. Sure. Yeah, yeah. Like in like a group, they're more agreeable. Individually, they're more disagreeable. It seems behind closed doors. Yeah. Yeah, they're more disagreeable.

But that being said, There's something to be said about, okay, if you take a company and you say, who's the most agreeable, that might be like the factory worker is more agreeable, and then the guy's wife would be, but you're like, you know, second in command is the least agreeable in this scenario. Yeah. You know what I mean? So maybe they're kind of like, like backseat driver is the most disagreeable position. Absolutely. Because you're kind of a professional critique. Yeah.

And the guy in the cock chair is the most agreeable. It's always a guy. Did they ever catch that guy who was punching people in New York? It was, Yeah, but they let him go again. Oh, really? He's back out. Every six months, he's back out.

Yeah, we see him just around here. He's just walking around. Probably, I don't know. He was only punching women. He was only punching women. That was his man shit, yeah. That was crazy. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, he was just a serial puncher on the loose. Yeah, well, I mean, if Mom Donnie gets elected, maybe we'll get, you know, we'll get a few more of these guys, and maybe they'll just start punching each other. Do you think he's, yeah, he fits in. That would be the ultimate solution. Yeah.

But it would take some effort to be like, this is the punching area. Donnie gets in, and then he forces all the people who are the punchers to dress up as women, and so then they're all just punching each other. Well, yeah, every Wednesday, one of them has to just as a woman and takes all the punches. Yeah. Yeah, kind of like, bait car kind of videos. That's what I was trying to think of, yeah.

We dress up as women just to get punched. Actually, a pretty good YouTube prank. Walking around going undercover as a woman to try to get punched with a Brooklyn punter. We deep cut here. There was a scene for Mrs. Doubtfire that was like this. Do you guys remember this? Robin Williams, he dresses like a woman and he's walking the streets of San Francisco

and some, you know, biker-looking guy comes up and tries to mug him and he just says in a very deep masculine voice, like, get out of here, motherfucker, beat it. Yeah. And the guy's like, oh, shit. Right. Yeah.

Do you think it's more about empathy or more about the fact that the empathy can get hacked? I think Jordan Peterson's talked about that a bit where it's like they can, it's almost like the fact that there's this extreme empathy, but then also it's like very easy to like hack. So it's like dudes can hack it

that we're trying to sleep. with them, like, on aggregate, you know, people with political goals can hack that empathy. Like, it's almost like, if you're trying to get a group of men to do something, uh, maybe you do it by force, whereas you're trying to get a group of women to do something, you do it by kind of like convincing them that this is the nice thing to do. Yeah, sort of crystallizing consensus. So this is what nice people do, that kind of thing. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, it is, it is interesting that the, like, how, how empathy can scale in that way. I think one-on-one individually, empathy is great. You know, you want to have

and empathy for your loved ones, for your spouse, for your family, for your friends. But then when you scale that up to the level of politics, I wonder if that can go astray where you end up expressing too much empathy for people who actually wish you harm or who do not have your best intentions in mind. And so I find it interesting, like oftentimes people will express more empathy for criminals than for their victims, for example, like this guy who's punching people. I think in this case it was different because he was punching women. But in a lot of cases, like when there's a criminal and there's this trial and you learn all about

the backster. It's like, oh, this poor guy without really thinking about, you know, the people that he was harming and sort of the chaos that he was inflicting on the environment around him and other people and that kind of thing. One of, one of Jordan's spicier suggestions was that when women don't have children, they still have that sort of impulse to express empathy for vulnerable entity or person or whatever. And now that the birth rate is declining, you know, where's this empathy being channeled? And so maybe it's being channeled and weaponized, exploited in some way in politics of looking at historically mistreated groups,

marginalized individuals, criminals or what have you. And then that allows them to express that sort of agreeable empathic impulse. Where you kind of like mother people on the internet. I mean, it kind of tracks because, you know, the whole like empathizing with criminals,

that's a fairly recent thing. Or like, you know, like that seems kind of recent and probably somewhat over. overlaps with like the birth rates and just like women pushing out having kids later and later so probably like there's more women who just don't have kids yeah yeah that would be interesting to sort of track that like like overlay them somehow yeah like the sentiment for criminals sort of positive regard for criminals has that tracked along with declining family formation and that kind of thing yeah that would that would make sense i mean one of the things that this is this is a sort of consistent finding in sociology is that uh uh generally everyone becomes a little bit more conservative after they get married but but women especially so You know, women generally, like single women now are like extremely progressive, especially women under 30. But historically, when women get married, they tend to be more conservative in their outlook and their temperament.

And now that marriage is declining. Well, I think you start to look inward more because you care more, you know, you want to focus more on your spouse, on your children, on your protecting that sort of family unit and less so on what's going out in the world. How can we protect, you know, these other groups? There's almost maybe something that's like a problem with the amount of people and the amount of people and the, amount of networks and the amount of people you're aware of where you're kind of like where you're saying the empathy is like almost like misplaced but you're just like well there's too many places to places so you just have to sort of pick groups so you with you it's like impossible for it to be on all the right places you almost just have to pick a certain

amount of ones that here's my spots yeah yeah and I think that there's probably this unconscious desire on both the parts of men and women where you want to signal certain positive qualities about yourself and again this is sort of unconscious I don't think people are sort of deliberately thinking, like, I want to signal this about myself. It's more so women generally do want to come across as caring and compassionate, nice, empathic, and so on. And then it'll express itself politically in all kinds of ways. And then men, generally, you want to signal that you're tough, you're strong, you're sturdy. And then that'll express itself politically in different ways, too. And I think one reason why we're seeing the sort of gender divide in

politics, while we're polarizing more and more where you see young women drifting more left and men drifting more right is because relationship formation is in decline. I think basically men and women have this effect when you get into a relationship of sort of depolarizing one another a little bit where if you're a man, you become a little bit more soft, more feminine in some ways. Maybe like what you were describing earlier, like, oh, I'm more open to watching, you know, different shows and participating in these more feminine activities. And then the same for women, too, that, you know, maybe you come to understand that, like sometimes you have to kill the spider and it hardens you up a little bit. So you both kind of converge a bit more. But if you're only spending time with yourself or

with the same sex as you, you don't ever learn that much about the opposite sex and you sort of hardened in your political views. Yeah, especially as you're saying that for women, because I think for the women version, you're like your most, you know, your most influenced by the people around you. And if that's like a bunch of other single chicks, it's going to be one way. And if you're a dude, I think it's like you're, I think they said your testosterone. As soon as you start being in a relationship, your testosterone naturally just goes down a bit. Yeah. Which sucks. I would imagine probably increases slightly if you spend a lot of time with other men

like in a military or something. Yeah, yeah. There's a really funny study years ago which found that when men are driving by themselves, they wear their seatbelt, something like 78% of the time. And then when there's a woman with them, it's slightly increases, I think, to like 82%.

Like basically, I thought you were going to say decreases. No, no, no, probably because the woman is like, why aren't you wearing a seatbelt? But when a man is riding or is driving a car with a man in the passenger seat, it drops to something like 58%. Nice. Because you're like,

I need to look tough to my bro here. Like, I don't need to see-belt man. It's like you're playing chicken with who's going to put the seatbelt on first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't want to be the first guy to put the seatbelt on.

I don't want to be, yeah, I don't want to show that I'm weak, something like that, right? What do you think, well, okay, so there's, there's like, one of the, when I'm talking about, like,

the gender differences, one of the ones I think a lot about and one of the points I've been kind of thing a lot about is the idea that, when you're talking about like crying for example right and women in like these societies are kind of like there's a big push for like women to be more effeminate or whatever right but you're like the biggest part they're missing is like if they want guys to cry more you go yeah but it doesn't help there's no like benefit to it like when a guy cries it's like you don't that never gets

you anything yeah yeah you don't get your way by just turning it on the taps yeah so it's like it's almost like they're just like it works trust me and you're like yeah well i there probably is some, I don't know, some kind of cathartic component to crying where you do feel this emotional release, but there is a really interesting body of research on the psychology of crying, and basically some researchers suggest

that tears function as social signals, like you're in distress, and when you're a woman and you're crying, people want to come to your aid, like women will ask you what's wrong, men will try to come to your help, that kind of thing, whereas a man, you know, it's much less likely that you'll think of a man who's in distress and want to rush to their aid.

And so it would make sense. I'm going the opposite direction. Literally opposite direction of a man that's crying. Yeah. You're gone. And so it would make sense. Like a strange man who's crying. I'm just like,

I'm out of here. That we would be less likely to cry now. Like, we're less susceptible to crying. Like, we're less likely to do so because at some point, uh, you know,

that tendency to cry got weeded out and were the, the descendants of the ones who, you know, didn't, didn't cry because it wasn't advantage of them. That's so funny. Bloodlines died because they cried too much. I mean,

like if what you're saying, like, yeah, I mean, I have that same impulse of like, I don't necessarily want to run, but I'm definitely not going to help. I'm just like, a little repelled by it, you know. He might as well just be eating a bunch of bugs like I have the same round. Just like, ugh. What are some of the other, like, big differences in how they kind of like manifest in politics and everything that you've been looking at?

Well, the most interesting thing that, because since I wrote that essay, people have come out to me and they've said that, you know, the thing that struck them the most. And it's the thing that struck me the most when I was in my graduate program at the union. University of Cambridge is what's called the gender equality paradox. And the gender equality paradox is essentially this finding that the more prosperous and sociopolitically equal. Sorry, dude. Is that a text notification? I have no idea what that was, dude. I've never heard that same. Either of I. Is the gender equality warning. We're talking about it too much. Yeah, that's GPT-5. I don't know what just happened, man. I didn't like it though. Oh, yeah, so gender equality paradox, like, basically richer and more sociopolitically equal

societies show greater differences between men and women. So if you want to find a society that shows the largest differences between the sexes, you'll find it in places like Denmark and Sweden and Norway. And if you want to find relatively small sex differences, differences that aren't very large between men and women, you would go to more traditional societies like Vietnam or Botswerex. or Brazil, something like that. And this is a shocking finding because if you believe that sex differences are entirely environmental and that once you start to treat men and women equally and you start to build

sort of legal structures to ensure that men and women have equal rights, the expectation might be, oh, well, they're going to become more similar to one another. They're going to behave similar. They can have the same preferences, same personality, that kind of thing. But it's actually the opposite, where the more developed as society becomes, the greater those differences are. And the explanation that's been suggested for this is essentially that, you know, men and women are naturally different. And when you give them the freedom to behave however they want and they have the wealth to pursue their interest and preferences, those initial relatively small differences are going to become magnified, right?

So if you live in a like an industrial or a pre-industrial small-scale society without that much in the way of wealth, not that much in the way of freedom or options, there's only so many different ways you can behave, right? But if you live in a free society with a lot of wealth and resources and people treat each other relatively fairly, you can do anything you want. And so you're going to behave in a way that's more sort of stereotypical of your gender or your sex. And this is interesting for a variety of reasons because you find this pattern not just for personality and psychological differences, but also for physical differences. So everyone knows that on average men are taller than women, but in richer and wealthier societies, that gap is larger, where men actually, grow even taller than the otherwise would. The fuck? Yeah.

And the same thing for BMI and the same for things like blood pressure. So men tend to have higher BMI, higher blood pressure. They tend to be taller. But that gap becomes especially pronounced in wealthier and more equal societies. And this seems to be an effect of wealth, where men have the potential to grow taller. And once you have enough money and enough wealth and enough nutrition and food, that genetic ceiling for height expresses itself. Whereas if you're in a poor, uh, uh, you know, sort of undeveloped society, you're, there's going to be a ceiling or a limit on how tall you can

become. So, I mean, it's absolutely fascinating. I mean, it is true. Yeah, like I've been to places like that and you're like, yeah, the men and the women are very close in, yeah, in height. It does seem like that way. Yeah. You see this for, uh, for jobs as well, where, uh, it's actually in relatively undeveloped impoverished societies that you see women more likely to work in, stem-related fields. And the explanation here is that if you grow up in a poor area and you have limited options to

escape and build some wealth for yourself, you know, you want to study engineering, you want to study math, you want to study something that'll pay. But if you grow up in a place like America, where you're probably not going to starve, you can study communications, you can study psychology,

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And you can catch me in Appleton, September 19, 20th, boys, I just added Milwaukee after that, Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Baltimore, Eugene, New York tickets are flying off the shelf. Fort Worth, Dallas, going to be bangers, Ryan Longcomedy.com for tickets. Like third world countries, for example, just like women can't just, like, go shopping for leisure. Yeah, yeah, right? And just like, think about it. It's like, that's like a, they're probably doing specifically girly. things they're not like whereas I'm sure in some like you know nations just like yeah just like someone has to go get water from a well and it's like you can do it or I can do it but it's just the scope of available things that you can do is just like someone has to clean up someone

has to cook and it's just probably just like there's like an option of like I mean this is vastly oversimplifying but in those societies you might have like like 12 things you can do like there's a spa days right exactly go get your nails done or whatever you're just like and there are only so many like occupations available to you as So, yeah, you can, you could hunt, you could gather, you can, you know, basket weave, you know, make some medicine, child rearing, that kind of thing. But in our society, there's so many options available. Would you not say, I guess this is what's part of it where I'm thinking, like, in our society, you would think that the men are somewhat more feminine than, like, in a Muslim society or something like that, right? So, would that not be true?

Like, if you think of, like, I don't know, like, let's say places where it's very equal. like, uh, maybe like Australia, maybe, you know, New Zealand, Western, Western countries, right? Yeah. Um, would the men not kind of be operating in more feminized ways than they are in places like, I don't know, yeah, like, uh, Africa or, or Muslim places? Yeah. So, so, so this finding, it doesn't track, um, it doesn't compare men across societies. Like, it's not going to take like a guy from Denmark and a guy from Vietnam and say, like, oh, this guy is more masculine than this guy. compares within those societies the men and the women, right?

And so the women, yeah, so the gap. Yes, the gap changes, but they're not necessarily comparing the same sex across different societies. So you're, like, say you're right that, like, men in Muslim countries are more masculine than men in Denmark or something like that. Assuming that's true, then what you would find is that the women in those Muslim societies are also probably relatively masculine because the gap would be smaller in those societies, right?

Whereas in a place like Denmark, even if the gap is larger, if the men are less, masculine and the women are much more feminine. What are some of the way the when you say it's the women are more masculine? What would be like examples of that? Because if you think of like a poor place where the woman doesn't work or she works in like a you know sweatshop essentially. And it's probably just like the guys also work in the sweatshop. Yeah. Well something like like agreeableness is probably lower right. So so they have to be more disagreeable in that kind of society. Probably do have to be sort of sturdier in some ways if you're in a society that probably mistreats you and and that you don't have that many options in your life and you have to learn how to suck it up.

and maybe have to negotiate a little bit better, be a little bit more strategic with how you allocate resources. Whereas, you know, if you're in a rich society, you can, you know, be friendly or you can be nicer. You're probably less likely to get exploited and that kind of thing. Yeah, you could almost think about maybe like a woman that was poor and someone tried to mug her versus a woman that was rich and someone tried to mug her. The poor woman might be likely to like, yo, get the fuck off.

You know what I man? Yeah, that would be interesting to see like socioeconomic status within a society. Like in America, like our poorer women, you know, more or less disagreeable versus richer women. Yeah. I mean, for men, it seems like, more obvious that guys who grow up poor seem to be a bit sort of sturdier in some ways versus, you know, Richard. Yeah, there's kind of that concept of like honor culture, too, where there's certain, there's like, when you're, when you grew up in like sort of a poor area, it was like letting someone disrespect you is like the worst thing ever. But I feel like the more you, like with the higher levels of society, there's a lot more of like, dude, a guy just bumped you. You need to go fight him now.

What are you? Like, it's crazy. Yeah, and probably the cost-benefit of that is way different. You're just like, this could get my ass kick in America, get sued. Yeah. Like, it just doesn't make any sense to go do it. When you look at, you know, recently I've seen like a ton of articles in the last like six months being like, you know, red pill stuff out of control and all this shit. But like a part of me, it was like, the news is always so behind what's actually happened.

Because I've seen like lately all these articles being like, this is becoming a problem. You're like, it already came and went. you're like it's already every guy that was talking about that stuff has already like moved on to doing different things like the whole thing's kind of like they're all in Israel now they're all into Palestine

like the whole the whole moment is sort of over and they're just like there's this thing you know it just feels like it always moves Have you guys noticed and it's like we noticed that three years ago yeah and it's like over

yeah there's this like I don't know what it is it's like a social media to like podcast to substack pipeline and then by the time you see it in legacy media it's like oh yeah that was like yeah that was three years ago

yeah so down true like legacy media just so downstream, like, even, like, you know, the whole Sydney Sweeney thing. Oh, yeah. Like, it's like, it literally just started with some women on TikTok, just being like, I don't like this. And then, you know, it filters all the way down through social media before the news is like, oh, this might be a story. Yeah.

But it used to be, like, the news made the story. And then it was, like, the opposite. It was like social media would pick up on, like, in the early days, probably it's like, social media would pick up on a news report and then start discussing it. And now it's flipped. Yeah, more bottom up now than top down. Yeah, that seems right. And yeah, I read, you know, a couple of pieces on, like, the Wall Street Journal,

the New York Times about Sydney. And I'm like, these are like, these are like so milk toast, like, neutered. It's literally nothing. Versus like the TikToks. Like, even if I disagreed with them, they were at least entertaining and crazy. You know, kept your attention. Yeah. And it's like, it wasn't even, you know, it's, you see how they like choose what to, I guess

make a newsworthy item because it was, you know, it's a TikTok with 200,000 views. You're like, there's a million of those. Yeah. Right. And they just pick this one. They go, I guess this could be something. Yeah. I guess they kind of just throw it.

ton of stuff at the wall and they go, oh, this is getting a lot of traction. Let's just keep hammering this thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I see this with, like, you know, because obviously TikTok is always going to be more entertaining than text, but even comparing something like a substack, a blog or like a long, like, Twitter post versus what you're going to see in legacy media outlets. It's just so much more entertaining when you see it raw and, and from like a personal perspective with all the hot takes and like, even like the grammatical errors and that kind of thing, right? Like, even Trump, when he posted on truth social, he, he misspelled Sidney's name, S-I-D, did you guys see this?

Yeah. Like, that's hilarious. Like, you know, and he misspells it twice, so it didn't seem to be a mistake, twice of the same post. And it's just, you know, the, sort of the cultural chatter. It's more, it's more interesting online. There's kind of a, there was like an old saying that everything is just like packaging and unpackaging again, you know, you know what I mean?

In tech, every, like, new invention is just kind of like unpackaging and repackaging. Like, you know, I think their famous example was like CDs where, you know, first there was, you know, the singles. Then there was CDs that had a bunch of CDs. And then there was the Black House or whatever it was called where you could get like eight CDs at once. And then it was MVP3 players. And then it goes. So, but I feel like sometimes the same with that, um, content wise where it gets like polished versus like really raw. Where it's like everyone is like, oh yeah, it's like what you just said. Like it's so raw. It's just them. And then eventually you kind of get sick of that and people want polished stuff again. Yeah. I'm seeing this now, uh,

with YouTube. Like I talked to some podcasters and YouTubers and stuff and they're telling me now that there was this period maybe five years ago where people wanted polished content on YouTube they wanted you know like like like really like like Hollywood level production quality it looks so cinematic because that's how you stand out but now that so many podcasts are like that there's this reversion back to sort of in your garage more gritty yeah just like literally walking down the street yeah with your iPhone you go this is my podcast yeah yeah and that's how you stand out so yeah there's sort of like fashionable cycles yeah yeah I said every every new fashion is just things going from baggy to tight again

Actually, yeah, yeah, that is interesting. What was it when he brought up Sidney-Sweeney, didn't you have a theory on like Simps and Pickme's? Yeah, yeah, I was like, well, I wanted to stay out of like, do I have anything interesting to contribute to this? Because I feel like every take possible was supplied during the whole Sydney-Sweeney thing last week or the week before. Agreed. And then I thought, okay, well, I have a little bit of expertise in evolutionary psychology. And I kept seeing, I was surprised, actually, because, you know, I was not really shocked to see women, especially on the left, saying, oh, Sidney Sweeney is trafficking and fascism and these outdated

racist tropes of a blonde-haired blue-eyed woman as the epitome of beauty. This is offensive. And I'm like, eh, that's kind of like what you would expect. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But from the right, I saw a lot of guys saying things like, I don't see what the big deal is about Sidney Sweeney anyway. She's mid. She's a six. Like, why are people making such a big deal out of her? And it was literally, you guys remember this meme of like the fat guy in his garage and it's like, and he's looking at like supermodel of his computer, pointy elbows, two out of ten would not bang. Like, that's what that was. It was like, you know, some guy on Twitter, it was like

a, like, a Greek statue as an avatar, wouldn't even show his face, like, critiquing, like, a very attractive woman. And what I was, and, you know, they were calling guy simps, like, why are you sims like, why are you simping for Sydney, Sweening, this kind of thing? And so my, my hypothesis here is, like, both of those terms are, um, kind of instruments of what's called intracosexual competition. So, like a competition with rivals within your own sex. And so for men, um, you know, they, they, they, you, you seldom see a woman call a man a simp. Now, I've seen it on occasion, but men are much more likely to use that phrase against

each other. And simp is basically, uh, you should not be so generous with your time, with your attention, with your resources. You're ruining it for the rest of us. Yeah, exactly. Right. It's like your body who buys flowers every day and she starts telling all your girlfriends. You're like, oh, you're doing, buddy. You're like a, you're like a, you're crossing the picket line. I haven't, I haven't heard scabbing so long. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, kind of like that. And so they're trying to, like, regulate in police male behavior of, like, if you're behaving that way, then you're going to ruin it for the rest of us.

And then on the other side, you see this with this phrase, pick me of, you know, and so no one actually called Sidney's when they pick me, but a lot of the accusations were similar of like, oh, you're pandering to the male gaze, you know, you're sexualizing yourself to be attractive to men. And this is basically the idea of the pick me. And the pick me is, like, why are you giving men what they want? You know, you're going to ruin it for the rest of us. Like, why are you behaving in such a sexually seductive way?

We made a deal. We're going to be gross. No makeup, all just totally gross. Yeah. So it's a way to regulate female behavior because you never see a man call a woman a pick me, right? Sometimes you'll see a woman call a man a sim. You'll never see a woman call a picmy.

And so both of those terms, kind of, they're mirror images of each other. And they're sort of sexual cartels to basically police your own sex. And, yeah, the Sydney, I mean, there was just so many interesting things going on here where the men who were calling her a six or calling her a mid, what they were really saying, in my view, they were trying to sub-communicate to women who looked like Sydney-Sweeney, hey, you're not that attractive. Like, you're mid. If you look like Sydney-Sweeney, you're a six, so don't think so highly of yourself. And the unspoken next sentences, so therefore you should date someone like me. Yeah. Was it all from the right calling her?

Yeah, yeah, like mid or a six or whatever. Is there, do you think that there's maybe like a political component of it where because they were essentially saying like this is like a Nazi thing and so then that's essentially getting ascribed to people on the right. So then they're just being like, no, she's a mid like we don't do that. Oh, I see. You know what I mean? Like we're not because essentially they're being like, oh, you're right when people are Nazis like look at this thing. And then they're being like, no, no, she's like not even hot. That's interesting.

I didn't, I hadn't thought of that maybe. Because there is this thing where a lot of times like some behavior will happen from some political side. and then people will just, like, you know, disown that thing. They'll just be like, no, we don't do that. Essentially, because we don't want that ascribe to us, so then they reject it, essentially. That's interesting because then you get to do two things at once. On the other hand, you get to communicate, I'm not a Nazi, I'm not a fascist. And you also get to communicate, by the way, if you look like Sidney-Sweeney, you should date me.

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's kind of two birds is going on stone right there. Yeah, exactly. And then on the other side, you saw the Sydney, like women saying Sidney is pandering to the male gays and that she's, you know, trafficking in fascist tropes and that kind of thing. and I think like basically they were trying and they were also saying that that's not the epitome of beauty right like that's an outdated beauty standard that's a racist beauty standard and they were trying to essentially like like take also she didn't write the ad they go here's a check for two million dollars she shows up for three hours he goes what are we doing you go put

this on say this and she's out of there by the end well apparently she agreed to make the ad edgy right like like whoever it was that was helping to create the ad they said like how edgy do you want to go. And she said, like, I'm, you know, let's, let's push it. So she had some, some awareness of, of where they were going with it. But, you know, I, I complained a little bit on Twitter about, um, uh, this is sort of the rhythm and order of her sentence where she said, genes affect many things. Like, like, like, what did you say? Like, uh, hair, personality and even eye color. And I thought, why are you saying even eye color? Because that implies you should be surprised that it's eye color. Like, oh, and even eye color. I'm like, everyone knows

eye color is influenced by genetic. She should have said, uh, hair, eye color. and even personality. Now I know there were reasons because of the commercial the way that it was. They had to phrase that sentence that way. But I think it would have been more interesting if she ended it with personality because that is actually for a lot of people surprising that personality is influenced by genetics. And then, you know, and I wrote a little bit about that in that piece of men and women and that there's a sort of a genetic component to how our personalities are expressed. But, you know, the eye color thing, it just, it was just amazing to me just how much people were outraged by, you know, like that ad, I think, could have ran 20 years.

ago and no one would have cared if it would be i mean i were saying american eagles like ads into that someone was posted like american eagles ad in 2003 like they put out like some book and it was literally they were all naked like it was like six people it's like three men three women at like a pool yeah and there was no clothes in it at all yeah and i don't recall that being controversial whatsoever and they're like just like six naked models it was such a different time like because i i was seeing people post like ads from from the you know 20 years ago the mid 2000s and there was one i don't remember was Paris Hilton or some famous blonde woman literally on her hands and knees eating a Carl's Jr's cheeseburger. Yeah, like that's the shit Carl's Jr. was up to. It's even,

oh, Jessica Simpson. Oh, right. Yeah, I forgot about Jessica. Yeah, yeah. And, no, yeah, it had completely unrelated to clothing. It was, it was a, it was a fast food burger. And they, like, made this, like, wildly, like, way more sexual than the Sydney Sweeney ad, where she just, she was, she was, she was buttoning upper clothes. And in the Carl's Jr. ad, she was, like, wearing like a onesy like bikini thing and um yeah that whole era was was so different you know yeah i think like sometimes i when i talk about i feel like uh you know it's like some old guy in like the 70s reminiscing about the 50s or something of just like man those days were so different you know because it's literally 20 years ago yeah but it did come back like i think that was

that what everyone was saying was just like things gonna keep going like forward and that's what happens and you're like well not really it kind of switched and now it's going back the other way so that that they were wrong yeah but in terms of the like the Simps and Pick Me thing. I feel like sometimes that tell me what you think of this, that it's almost like it works better for men than women and here's why I think

because women, the pick me thing where women kind of say like hey this is what we want men to like. For example, hey men, like we think this is what you should like, not that. It doesn't ever work because men don't really listen to women when they say that. But

I think on the other side who men decide is cool is a bigger factor for women when they're picking a guy. So for women, if a guy, if a guy's a simp, he's a loser, that actually does, to some degree, make, turn women off of him. But if women decide, like, oh, that girl's a pick me, guys aren't even like, yeah, they don't care. It has no effect. So it does work when men police better than when women police, in my opinion. That is interesting. Yeah, I think that, I think that's, well, well, they're policing. Well, because that's a status thing, right? They're essentially saying, like, this is who has status,

at least in this. Yes, yes, yes, yes, because it affects the status. And you, like, you, Like, a girl can be like, yeah, that chick's whatever, a slut. And you go, yeah, she's still hot. No, that's true. Slot, but they don't say that. But you're like, I've never, like, there's not too many guys. Like, maybe if you're, like, looking to get married. But, like, if some girls, like, really smoking hot and people, women are like, the chicks

a slut, you're like, awesome. I'm not saying awesome. Like, post, like, 2010, like, he just remember, like, like, basically slut shaming went underground where you couldn't really, you know, even, even use that phrase in a derogatory way. I think Pick Me is basically slut, right? but it's it's packaged in a nicer framing and instead of condemning the woman you're sort of blaming men like you shouldn't be doing something for them there's more than a sexually correct slut yeah it's like well it's like a mentality as well it's like you know it's like she she brings you your packs your lunch yeah to when you go to work every day kind of yeah like kind of like it's like all encompassing she does all these other things yeah well well the pick me thing it works maybe not like like i agree with what you're saying but it does influence women's behavior in a way so that if you call a woman a pick me other women will pick

up on that message of like okay well i shouldn't behave that way and they'll behave in a less attractive way yeah they'll wear clothing that's less revealing or or or uh behave like yeah they're they're less willing to make lunches or whatever it is so it does sort of they cross the picket line yeah right but again there's like probably uh biologically like to their detriment right like if they're because you're essentially like they're all competing and then these women are essentially choosing not to compete, like almost to a degree, right? Yeah, so you're taking them out in a way, like sort of, but they're taking themselves out. Yeah, from like a moral thing, like these women are like, oh, I'm not a pick me.

And you go, okay, well, you've made yourself less competitive. Yeah. Well, you're, you're sort of torn, right? Like, I think generally we're torn in this way where, like, on the one hand, you want the respect and the acceptance of your peers, of your boys or of your girls or whatever, but then on the other hand, you want a partner, you want to remit. And so we can be like, there's this conflicting impulses. And I think that the Simpin pick me thing, it's sort of sort of exploiting.

that, you know, like, like, uh, weaponizing that, that making you choose horn of that internal conflict. Yeah. What do you think, um, I mean, you mentioned that with Gen Z and like, uh, obviously with millennials too, but like there's just a bigger divide. And also the idea that, you know, millennials kind of got a bad deal and whereas Gen Z, they sort of, to some degree got a bad deal, but like planned for it and they're sort of equipped in the way. Like, what do you think about with AI coming, the differences between, you know, millennials, Gen Z and, like, are millennials in, like, as bad of a situation as people say, like, did they get a bad deal? Is it, like, a bad scenario moving forward with people can't buy houses? Well, I mean, they just released

there was, like, a graph the other day. I don't know if you saw it, but it was, like, 30-year-olds, 30-year-olds who own homes, and it was in 1950 to 1970, it was like 52% roughly, and now it's, like, 14% now granted people are getting married later so it's hard to say exactly interest rates went well they not since like it was still I think in that I think in 1980 it was still like 40 something percent but it's like really dropped off a cliff after like 1990 to 2025 it like completely just dropped off a cliff like I still think in 1990 was like 40% really well do you remember the age range like is it the same age 30 year olds it was 30 year it was a 30 year old okay uh who are married and own homes. And it's like 14% down from 50 something percent in like 1970. Yeah. Well, in

1970, I think only 12% of Americans went to college. So I think like sort of the delayed education also plays a role here where you sort of four years, you know, getting an additional degree, maybe you're going to law school. So that takes you out of the labor force for a while and maybe going into the dead in the meantime. So that probably has something to do with it. And there's just like this general prolonged adolescence now where in 1970, if you were 25, I think you were generally considered like an adult. Whereas today if you're 25, you're, you're kind of like, what do they use this phrase like emerging adult or, you know, you're sort of in this interim stage of not quite a young adult, which is used to be what books for 12 year olds were. Yeah. And

you see, see people like referring to people in their 20s as kids now. And I think that's relatively recent. So there's this like extended adolescence thing going on here. But do we have it hard? I mean, I remember, you know, 2008. It was like people were saying that the sky was following this the financial crisis, millennials aren't going to be able to get jobs, and they're doing okay now, at least like the metrics that I've seen. Like, yes, less homeownership, but in terms of like net worth and career success and even marriage rates, they're not as bad as a lot of people predicted. So, but AI may be like something completely different. Like, no one even knows, right? Like, we've had perception before. That sounds to me like you're saying a lot of

it's overblown. Well, you talk, yeah. Well, is it over? I think it's just so hard to say because we've, you know, like we've had recessions, we've had depression, like everyone knows what happens in an economic downturn, but with AI, we've had these incredible leaps in technology in the past that have changed society, but we don't yet exactly know what AI is or how it's going to change things, but And it used to be more gradual, like where you could retrain people and it didn't happen so fast. Like, now it's, you know, I think, I think they're saying by, like Microsoft just came out with this, I don't know if you saw that list of all the jobs affected by AI and it's like, you know, it's 10 million jobs that likely potentially could not exist in five years yeah yeah well i wonder though they yeah

it may take a while but we if we'll adapt if we'll adjust if the problem is how fast it is because it used to be like you know industrial revolution and like that was like a you know a decades long period of people like kind of move into different jobs and retraining and all that but you're like this is going to happen like boys AG1 is the first thing i do every single morning and just like people like to declutter their homes it's also a great time to refresh your new nutrition daily habits. Feeling refreshed, starts with your gut, and the pre-end probiotics in AG1 helps to support your digestion. Oh, yeah. We've been partnering with AG1 for a long time right now. Doing it every day for years. I actually have been doing it every day. And not even

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and get that offer at drinkag1.com slash boyscast. Start the new year off on a healthier note. Snap of a finger. You talked about UBI, right? Like, do you think that's actually viable if AI? Because I know it's like really disincentivizes people, but like, is it really viable if this does happen? Yeah, well, so if we have, you know, the robots are doing the jobs, we don't need to work anymore, and then we're receiving a paycheck. So we will have a fully automated luxury communism, right, where people can just.

But the problem is like the job, they release the jobs of like what won't be eliminated. And, you know, it's things like dishwashers. Yeah, you're like, blue collar jobs. Yeah, but you're like, why the fuck would someone want to be a dishwasher? If the guy who used to be like an accountant is getting a living wage and you're like, why am I washing dishes? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So then you're like, so it has to then be low enough that it doesn't disincentivize

the person who's like a housekeeper or a dishwasher because those jobs aren't going anywhere, right? So then, like, obviously those people would be like this unfair, but then. It's going to be white collar welfare. Kind of, it is. It's like, it's kind of like flipped. It used to be like the white collar people that was like, you know, a factory closes down. and it's generally like the blue collar people were more affected and now it's flipping but then you would think like white collar people probably have a higher standard of living and so how do you

kind of like square that in a ubi setting because people will revolt if that's the case where they're like wait that person gets to maintain their quality of life and I'm washing dishes for 15 bucks an hour or do dishwasher positions become more lucrative I don't know yeah well yeah if they if they pay the dishwashers more so that yeah so they'll still get the ubi but then on top of that they'll get some kind of compensation or some kind of incentive to continue in those kinds of jobs. But yeah, I do want, like if we have this UBI where millions of jobs are wiped out where we don't have to go into work anymore, how people will find fulfillment, what society is going to look like in this scenario. And one possibly optimistic outcome, I don't know how confident I am in this,

is that this will actually help to resolve the birth rate decline because if you don't work anymore, if you don't find your sense of fulfillment in going to work, what else do you do? You can have some kids and do you have, I don't know, if we get to the point where you have like an android nanny to change diapers and to do all the boring stuff

and so all you do is have fun with your kid and that could be a way that people will see You're living like a grandpa at $2.30. Yeah, assuming UBI is, you know, enough. Yeah. I guess it depends on that level of actual money is that you're getting. Yeah, and it's so in flux right now. Like my understanding is like the people who work in Washington

who are interested in AI policy like a lot of the, because a lot of the political leaders, they're like boomers, they have no idea what's going on. Like they're, you know, they're using chat GPT to write their emails and like, that's what they think AI is. They have no idea what it's actually capable of and, you know, how quickly it's evolving. So, yeah, it's very early. I'm not quite a doom. I think, I think maybe short term I could see dumer outcomes, but I think in the long run, we'll figure it out. I'm kind of more like that. Yeah. Yeah. We'll figure out a way over this. But you have like, okay, so when you're talking about like Mondami, for example, and people like

that that, but you have a lot of, you know, Gen Z and millennials that are just like, yo, this sucks, we have a bad deal, we're more depressed, this and that. I do understand why it feels like the other side, just being like, it's fine. And you're like, well, it doesn't feel fine. You know what I mean? And then you're just like, oh, they try to

show you people's stats where they're like, you're actually doing better and you're like, maybe, but like compared to a different time where it's actually now comparatively, I'm doing worse than my dad, which matters. And I have $200,000 in a student dad. Yeah. I can never get out of it. I feel like the metrics, you can juke statistics to make any picture you want, but the reality is that's how people feel, and I don't think it's crazy.

So you go, well, what should happen? You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. And I think, yeah, statistics, numbers almost never change anyone's mind. It definitely seldom changes anyone's feelings. But I wonder if people actually were told real stories about how life used to be. I mean, it's really interesting that if you look at across societies,

levels of optimism among young people richer societies young people are less optimistic about their futures so if you look at places like the US or Canada less optimism but if you look at places like Brazil or Mexico they report being more optimistic and I wonder if on some level it's not

sort of the objective circumstances of your life but more so is my life going as well as I'd hoped it would and am I going to do as good or better than my parents yeah I think that's the big one I think it's the better than the parents but that's fair that's the same

Ray when someone's like well people in Africa are starving and you go okay well I don't live there so if I was there and I had like a job at McDonald's I'd be like the king of my street and all the girls would like me so that you know what I mean so it's actually it's like ridiculous to not compare to the context yeah and you can see this like especially with you know college educated upper middle class young people recent college grads and if they grew up with upper middle class parents in a nice house you know raised by affluent boomers and then they're looking at their job prospects maybe going to get wiped out by AI, the future looks very uncertain, you know, going through

COVID and all the political upheavals and everything else, that there is this sense of despair. But, no, I think we'll find a way, find a way through it. But, yeah, there's a lot of weird things happening right now with decline in relationship formation, decline in participation in the labor force. You know, like, it used to be spun as a positive that so many young people were going to college. like more people go to college than ever before. Although maybe that's changed since COVID, but generally that's true. But then I think people are also realizing, like,

while you're spending four years, like getting a degree, and now in a lot of cases that degree isn't even necessary for the job that you're doing. And so you've created the situation where you have to get a bachelor's degree to do a job that 30 years ago, you wouldn't have needed to go into debt to get that degree. Yeah. And now it might be done by AI. Yeah. You might get out and you're like, yeah, I was just going to be like some spreadsheet guy.

Yeah. And you're just like, we don't need that anymore. Although I'm skeptical that people go to college. solely for education not yeah yeah for sure they don't yeah they want to party and you know the education part okay so you think about sometimes on a personal level where you're like if you're working really hard for something like let's say you're grinding like not sleep in 70 hour weeks like you know you're just like really want something and it seems to be like moving up it's like fine but i feel like sometimes people feel like they're working that crazy hard to just keep it the same which is

the same way like a girl in a relationship it's like where is this going there's an element of like people I think sometimes people feel like I'm working really hard to just kind of like end up back where I started and you're kind of like fuck I think I think there's an attitude of like well and I don't I'm obviously we're in somewhat of a different scenario but I feel like in general I feel this where maybe then people are just like how about no you know what I mean you kind of just want to like flip the board or something yeah yeah I feel like a lot of people maybe feel like that and um I don't know what uh I mean that that could be explanation for the mom down yeah I was gonna ask like is that is that what's fueling the also a bit of like I think I think so reaction to Trump probably a little fucky to Trump by being like we're gonna put a socialist mayor and but I think what's fueling like some you know millennial gen Z's I'm being you know not happy is they're just like you know I'm like grinding to sort of just like get by yeah and I feel like and I think that people point out like well your get by is better than that what it was normal before and you're just like yeah but it doesn't only what matters is what's around me you know what I mean kind of like you know it doesn't matter what someone else's brother did it matters what

your brother did in terms of your eyes, you know? Yeah. So, I mean, maybe that's, like, a thing where I'm asking, like, what is the other solution, uh, when people are like that and you, and they have options of like, well, try socialism. You're like, what's the, what is the other thing you would say? Yeah. Yeah, I'm shocked.

I mean, I, I get all, like, everything that you're saying, but then there are still, like, observable examples of what happens when you elect someone who's, you know, that far left, that far progressive. They just didn't do it right those times. Right. Right. Real socialism's never been tried. Yeah, it's never been tried.

But I mean, you could see, like, the state of San Francisco. Like, so San Francisco has, like, improved. It's not as bad as it was. They elected, like, a moderate Democratic mayor, sensible person, and things aren't as bad. And they're going in the right direction, finally. But we didn't, you know, New York, I just did not expect them to see, oh, well, what happened in San Francisco, what happened in Seattle, what's happening in Portland. And, you know, let's go ahead and vote for this person anyway.

Yeah, definitely combined with, like, a defund the police element of it. Like, there's one thing to be like, this place is unaffordable, which, you know, I fully agree with. it's, I believe it's like one of the most, or if not the most expensive rents in the world. So you're like, you understand that concept, but then you're like, but you want to make this place more dangerous? Like, not that it's particularly dangerous, I'd say, but you're like, you could see how that could get worse easily. Yeah. But was this also, I mean, you know, was it about policy? You know, sometimes it's really just vibes. Yeah. And Mom Donnie ran a very clever and well executed social media campaign. He had great videos, great clips. He was doing all these

ads in different languages, and he's very, you know, he's young, he's social media savvy, you know, grew up in the era of TikTok. So, you know, I wonder if, you know, the things that he was saying, they, it was sort of left-wing economic populism, which, you know, can resonate for people, especially, like, low-information voters who don't actually understand, you know, like the ideology behind those slogans. But, you know, a lot of young people who turned out for him, I think maybe they just saw some things on TikTok, and they're like, yeah, he's a nice-looking guy who's saying things that are helpful and aren't actually looking that deeply or recognizing that he even is a socialist.

Oh, he's a Democrat, like Cuomo, but he's younger and nicer and has better ideas. Yeah, and better. And he has free grocery stores or whatever. Yeah, free grocery stores. And then, yeah, he, uh, yeah, defund the police as a, what did he say?

It was like a queer liberation issue. I mean, if you, as he said, he was on all the stuff back in the day. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, he's like, defunding the police is not going to be like some huge benefit to the queer population.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was, it was out there. If you scroll through his Instagram and is his Twitter from 2020, it was, It was weird. It wasn't just the usual boilerplate, like, woke stuff, like defund the police, that kind of. It was literally, like, defund the police is like a feminist queer issue. Like, he used, like, extra buzzwords.

He's all of that, all of that. Yeah. And it's like, it's like the worst of both worlds. Like, I can handle a bit of wokeness if you're not economically crazy. Like, like corporations who pretend to be woke for, for self-interested economic reasons, right? Like, they'll put the slogans up, whatever, but, like, they're still, like, sensible and they're not going to, whatever, like, promote seizing the means of production and, and completely turning over, uh, uh, uh, uh, the economy and then on the other hand like i i understand and sympathize to some extent with with economic populism of like yeah maybe things are unfair and maybe we need to rethink things

or whatever but then like both of those together you know like like socialism and wokeness combined is like the worst of both yeah it's just yeah one or the other that maybe i can understand yeah what are some of the other things that you think are big problems right now like i know you said that um whatever one you want to talk about but like overmedicating of kids right now seem like something that you've talked about yeah Yeah, well, that was, I mean, you know, this is something that in my own life, you know, I tell the story in the book about how there was this, I'm glad that I grew up in the 90s, because I think if I had had the same set of circumstances today, you know, maybe I would have been medicated as a kid because I was growing up in foster homes and I was changing schools all the time. And when I was in second grade, I was seven years old, I was doing so badly in school that the teacher and my foster mother thought that I might have had a learning disability. and so they send this psychologist to administer this IQ test to me

and I just put in a very half-hearted effort like if the question interested me I would try if it didn't I would just sort of zone out and give you know whatever answer came to mind I think this is something that a lot of people misunderstand about IQ test is that if you score really high on an IQ test it probably means you're a smart person but if you score low on IQ test it could mean a lot of things it could mean that you're not very bright but it could also mean you're tired or you're malnourished or you're living in an unstable

Can't concentrate for that long. Yeah, exactly. Sleep deprived. There could be all kinds of other things going on there. And in my case, like, I had a very chaotic environment, and I was changing schools and teachers and everything. And I was also just kind of this angry kid. And so I scored below average overall,

and I scored well below average on the verbal section of this IQ test because I didn't know how to read. And because no one read to me, and I didn't want to put in the effort to learn how to read. And I think that, you know, this was whatever, like 96, 97, something. But if this happened today, they'd be like, oh, he has learning disability, maybe he has ADHD, maybe he has autism, he has, you know, something, and they would have just

thrown a pill at the problem. And, you know, you see these shocking rise in, like, autism diagnoses, for example. The Cambridge psychologist, Simon Baron Cohen, as pointed out that I think it was in the early 1990s, the rate of autism was, was it something like, like, 10 out of every 30,000, and now it's like, like, I don't know, five out of every hundred. It's just a dramatic increase in autism diagnoses, especially for boys, but also for girls. And, you know, I wonder if, you know, what we think of as mental health conditions, many, you know, many of those are sort of accurate diagnoses, but also just kids increasingly living in, you know, disruptive, chaotic environments of, you know, at home, of course, because there's this, you know,

dramatic rise in single parenthood and in sort of difficult family structures. And then in the school environment, because there's been this concerted effort to no longer discipline kids, because typically kids who are disciplined tend to be from minority or low-income backgrounds. And so there's this idea of like, well, we need to stop disciplining kids because it's unfair to those to kids from those backgrounds who tend to be disproportionately penalized and so a lot of classroom environments especially in like low-income areas

are chaotic and of course it's going to be hard to learn when you're surrounded by chaos in that way I didn't even think of that, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a great book that came out literally I think just just dropped today it's called Hard Lessons from the Hurt Business this guy Ed Latimore writes about growing up in the projects in Pittsburgh

and he writes about you know he's a black guy going to the school you know, and he was a smart guy. He later discovered how smart he was, but he didn't know as a kid because the classrooms were just crazy, like whirlwind tornadoes, and the teachers... It's like daycare, basically. Yeah, the teachers refused to discipline the kids. And so he was like, well, I couldn't concentrate, and so I just joined in on the chaos,

and at least I'm going to have a good time. And so I think, like, all of those things combined between sort of difficulties in family life and then sort of the unwillingness to enforce standards in school is just giving rise to, like, kids who are struggling. And then, of course, on top of that, there's the COVID issue with the school lockdowns. I'm sure both of you were aware, like, you know, there's been this increase in kids being absent from schools. So, ever since COVID, there's been a decline in the number of kids who actually show for class. But that's largely concentrated in sort of kids from low-income families.

Like, they're just not going to class anymore. And then... Do they, like, truancy laws and stuff in this country? Yeah, but, like, those are loosely enforced now. Again, because the kids who are true and tend to be from these backgrounds and you don't want to penalize them and be unfair and mistreat them. And then the decline in test scores too. So there's been a general decline in test scores since the school lockdowns during COVID. But that's also largely concentrated in the kids who were already low performing.

So the kids who weren't doing well even before the lockdowns are doing even worse now, where the other kids are actually aren't doing that different. And the smartest kids, there was almost no drop at all in their test scores. So this is why I sometimes call the school lockdown thing a luxury belief. because the smart kids from upper and upper middle class families who had tutors and resources and all these other things, like, you know, they don't need to go to class if they don't want to. And they'll still be studious and they'll still have all the resources in place for them to learn. But the low-income kids where school is the only place they can learn. And if that's treated as optional, then, of course, they're going to lose out. Seems like luxury beliefs

are all gap wideners. Yes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the gaps always exist, right? Like, there's always going to be some advantage to having rich parents plainly, right? Like if your family has resources, your life's going to be a little easier, the gaps are always going to exist. But there are decisions we can make to attempt to narrow those gaps slightly or to widen them. And I think in a lot of cases, we've decided to widen them. I mean, we saw this with, I mean, we brought up defund the police earlier, that crime rates increased and the victims of crime are largely low-income and minority people. You know, people think about criminals,

and they think, okay, well, criminals are from, you know, marginalized, low-income, impoverished backgrounds, and there's some sympathy for them, but most of their victims are also from the same backgrounds. Mostly people robbed and beat up and harass people and, like, the people who are closest to them. And those people are generally invisible to us. And so, you know, when the defund the police kicked off,

and for about a two, half year period violent crime increased across the country sometimes you would see you know you would open the pages of like the wall street journal or something and you would see statistics that said um you know year over year violent crime increased x percent since 2020 or 2019 and there would be these aggregate statistics they would share um any statistics do they even you know do they matter do they change anyone's mind but then uh there were a couple of high profile occasions in 2023 where uh there was a tech executive who was stabbed in San Francisco. There were a couple of journalists who were shot, I think one in New York and one in Philadelphia. This was late 2023. And these people got like

entire articles written about them in legacy media outlets. And it was like, oh, this tech executive or this journalist who work for this outlet and detailing their background and their lives and the circumstances of their death and everything. And I just remember reading those and thinking, okay, well, if you're, you know, if you're a peasant killed by another peasant, you just get folded into the statistics. But if you're a member of the modern aristocracy, then you get an entire paper you know a article written about you like now it's a problem yeah exactly and then there's like yeah in the articles there are these implic you know perhaps this implies that we should rethink some of our law

force yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i yeah i yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i yeah i yeah i think that there's um you know you know technology probably. So I wrote a little bit about this in the book, but now with AI and large language models, perhaps it's even more true. So with the rise of devices and tablets, for example, Steve Jobs famously wouldn't let his kids use an iPad. You know, a lot of tech executives will say, oh, there's all this incredible technology, and it's going to revolutionize, and it's going to for a while it was like oh it's going to close learning gaps you know this kind of thing it's going to uh we're going to bring education to the masses and it is funny that that since the rise

of all these technologies there there haven't been any any gaps closing in educational outcomes and if anything they may have even even widened i mean you can even make a case that like you know the paid version of something like chat gpt is like there's all these people who are just like yeah i don't have 20 bucks a month for this thing well there's other people do it and yeah it will just widen it. Yeah, yeah. And also like there are, just as there are these, these cases in wealthier families where they will very carefully monitor screen use for their kids. You know, like there are stories out of Silicon Valley where people will hire nannies to like literally like look over their kid at all times, like make sure he's not using his phone or like he,

you know, it's like conclusively bad for them. Yeah, you only get an hour phone time a day. And the statistics for screen use are, are wild. You know, like if you look at kids from families that earn $50,000 or less per year versus kids raised in families that earn $100,000 or more per year. The kids from those poor families spend two to three times, they're on their phones two to three times more than those wealthier kids. So it's like the difference between two or three hours a day versus like six to eight hours a day. I mean, it's shocking.

And I wonder if there's also going to be the case for AI where, you know, if you have adults around you, whether it's a nanny or a tutor or someone who's looking over your shoulder, sure you're using AI wisely, you're using it for your schoolwork, but in a responsible way, and not to cheat, but to learn. And then if you're a kid who maybe your parents don't even understand what AI is, maybe they don't speak English, maybe whatever, and you're using AI to write your essay so you don't have to learn anything, or you're using it to cheat on your math homework, or you're using it to, I don't know, learn how to cook up some drugs. I don't know. And like, you're going to use it for, for, or misuse it for, you know,

things that aren't going to help you. Yeah, that seems like that's an interesting one. So, yeah, I think the technology issue is another one. And then this is, you know, this is something that I also write about in my book sort of defending standardized testing. So there was this big push again in 2020. 2020 just fed me so many, so many of these luxury beliefs, was removing standardized testing requirements from schools. And the logic here was that because there are disparities in test scores based on income, based on class, based on ethnicity, and this, that, the other, that we should just remove them altogether. But then in the aftermath of that, what ended up happening is that a lot of these universities received fewer applications

from these marginalized and low-income groups. And then this ended up backfire. Why do you think that is? Rich kids ended up submitting. So part of it was that a lot of kids don't even know, like, what the score threshold is for, like, what these universities are willing to accept. and the other thing is if you don't have the test score basically test scores reveal your academic aptitude it's an imperfect way to do it but it can help but if you don't have that information

what else are you going to rely on to decide whether you're going to take a student and you're going to rely on things like his personal essay and if you're rich you can hire people to help you with that you're going to rely on things like recommendation letters and if you're rich you're going to know high profile important people who can write oh I see what you're saying it's not going to be you know Mrs. So-and-so from high school

You only leave the parts that you can game. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, seriously. And then, yeah, with GPAs, all this other kind of factors in the application. And, I mean, it's really interesting. Like, every study that I've seen, when it comes to standardized tests, it actually seems to benefit people from these groups. So there was a study out of Chicago in 2016.

It was a school district there, and they had this gifted program. And if you wanted to qualify to enter the gifted program, the only thing you needed was basically a teacher recommendation and a parent recommendation. And so if the teacher thought you're a gifted kid and the parent agreed, then you would go into the gifted program. And they decided to experiment with this policy of just giving everyone a standardized, essentially an IQ test. And what ended up happening is that the number of non-white and low-income kids in this gift, program increased, where basically this test revealed something about these kids that these teachers didn't recognize for whatever reason, you know, stereotyping or because the kids' parents were unaware that the gifted program even existed in the first place. And so they just had

this blanket rule of if you score above this threshold, you get automatically enrolled in gifted program. And so the test reveals something useful about you. And so in my case, you know, I mentioned I got this very low IQ score when I was in the foster homes. Later, when I was in high school, So you have to take this standardized test to enlist in the military for all the branches. It's called the ASVAB, Armed Services, Vocational Abtitude Battery. And it's essentially tests the same skills as the SAT. So basic reading, writing, arithmetic, logic, that kind of thing. And I remember, so I signed up to take this test with the recruiter.

And I was 17. And the night before I was scheduled to take the test, I had to go to this testing center. and the test was scheduled for 10.30 a.m. And I knew I had a valid excuse to skip class, and I was already terrible student. And so the night before, I lived in this house with these two brothers. And I was like, hey, I don't have to go to class tomorrow. So we just decided we got some four loco, back when four loco was still good. And then we played Xbox Live until, I don't know, 5 a.m. or something, fell asleep.

My alarm goes off and, you know, I grab a rock star energy drink and, like, like, speed to the testing center. and get there just in time, you know, I was hung over. I might have still, like, even been a little bit drunk, like, like, sort of sweating out this four loco, but, you know, the caffeine and the adrenaline kicked in, and I took this test and got the results back, and the recruiter, you know, we were reviewing the results together, and he was like, you're actually, like, you're a smart guy, like, you know, these are the jobs you qualify for, and he's walking me through, and he shows me that I could have converted these scores to SAT scores. Basically, there's, like, a way to convert. And I saw that my

score could have it basically would have been the same as one of my classmates who was a straight a student he was off to college and that was the first time i was like oh like i i could have gone to college i barely graduated but in your mind you're like oh i'm dumb yeah yeah i didn't think i was dumb but i just didn't think like the way that i grew up in the environment i was like college was for smart people like you know basically i'm normal yeah like uh yeah i'm normal yeah that's That's a better way to put it. Like, I remember, I worked at this restaurant in high school as a dishwasher. And there was this guy who worked at the pizza station.

It was an Italian restaurant, and he made the pizza dough, and I was, like, next to him washing dishes. And I was 15, 16, and I tried to get him to buy me and my friend some weed. Yeah. And, or, no, no, to, yeah, to sell us some weed, rather, because I knew he was, like, he carried a lot of weed with him, and he was often stoned. and uh he's up and stone yeah and i was like hey uh you could you could you sell me and my friend simpson weed and he was like he was like no no way are you crazy and i was like why not it was

like you shouldn't be smoking weed rob and i was like you're a hypocrite you're always smoking weed and then i see you in the back like i see your eyes like i know what you're doing and he was like look rob i'm a smart guy and when i smoke weed um you know i go from smart to normal and he And he looks at me and says, Rob, you're normal. You smoke weed. You're going to go from normal to retarded. I thought this was going to be more like a Goodwill hunting. No, no, not at all.

Not at all. And so, yeah, that's how I thought it was like, okay, I'm a normal guy. I'm not smart, but I'm not dumb. And colleges for the smart people. I love the guy, like, the stoner pizza dude is like big dog in you, being like, look, smart guys like us, we can smoke a little weed. That's basically what it was. And actually, in my mind, I remember thinking, like, he was a smart guy.

So the logic kind of made sense to me. But then, yeah, I take the test and I go off. And then later, like, once I was, I don't know, mentally prepared and in a position to apply for college, I was like, okay, I can actually do this. So the testing thing is, I think that's, you know, it's critical. It's important. And then this is the one that's like the most personal. And I write about this at length is. And this is in troubled.

Yes, this is in troubled. Is like the issues around the family. You know, I mentioned family breakdown. earlier, where if you go back to 1960, you'll see that 95% of kids in the U.S., regardless of social class, are raised by both of their birth parents, regardless of whether they're rich. Is that divorced or together two parents? Together two parents, 95% of kids. 95% of...

Yeah, 95% of American kids in 1960. Okay. And that was the historical norm, at least, you know, within the last maybe three or four centuries. But there was like an element where it's like divorce was kind of like this dirty thing and people probably like, you know, there were like the social ramifications of divorce. It wasn't like a commonplace thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right. And yeah, there were sort of perhaps two draconian, the norms that were in place against divorce. But then what's interesting is that if you, if you fast forward several decades, so if you go from 1960 to 2005 for kids in

upper and upper middle class family. So this is the top 20% of the income scale. They went from 95% of children being raised by both birth parents in 1960 to 85% by 2005. So there's a slight drop. Not that big though. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. If you go to most like nice neighborhoods, most kids are going to be raised by two married parents. But for poor and working class families, so these are families in the bottom 30% of the income ladder. It goes from 95% of, percent in 1960 to 30 percent by 2005 so what's it now do you know it's lower but I don't know how much lower I've seen I've seen estimates of 25 percent but somewhere probably in the realm of 25 or 30 percent and still 80s oh yeah yeah yeah still the vast majority belief that like

family doesn't matter when it's one of the most thing that matters yeah yeah there's a there's a really nice book the two-parent privilege by the economist Melissa Carney and she points out that the number one predictor of a kid graduating from college is being raised by two married parents. Is that true? Yeah, by far, higher than family income, higher than whether you've had a parent who graduated from college. It's just, were you raised by two married parents yes or no? And that's the number one predictor. And this made sense to me because by the time I read that book, I had gone deep into the statistics and the predictors of academic success. And so, for example, if you just look at what percentage

of people have bachelor's degrees in the U.S., so we talked about this earlier in 1970, it was something like 12% of Americans had bachelor's degrees. Today it's something like 38% of people over the age of 25 have bachelor's degrees in the U.S. And if you look at kids who are raised by families in the bottom income quintile. So these are kids in poor families, basically. Poor kids in the U.S., about 11% of them go on to obtain a bachelor's degree. So 11%, much lower than 38%, the average. And then for foster kids, it's 3%. So kids in foster care, only 3% of them graduate from college. So in other words, a kid in the U.S. raised in a poor family is four times more likely to graduate from college than a kid in foster care. And foster care is kind of like the most extreme and

unstable environment for a kid. And that suppresses there. What were some of the hardest parts of foster care? Like was it like a rough one that were you at? So I was in L.A. I was pretty rough. And I think the, I mean, it was mostly emotional. I mean, there was like some fist fights and I got beat up and that kind of thing. But that was like, you know, it was actually kind of exciting sometimes, like, like fighting. You know, I was a little boy and I was also full of anger and emotional confusion and so on about what, you know, like why I kept having to move. I didn't understand.

I was really young. So I was in the system from three to just before my eighth birth, it was about five years. But the hardest part was, you know, being taken from my mother initially, not really understanding why. So my mom was the reason. What was the reason? So it was, drug, drug issues. And that was not her, I mean, she'd had multiple run-ins with law enforcement by this point. So my mother, she came to the U.S. from Seoul as a young woman, and I never knew my father.

I never knew anything about that side of my family. So I knew my mom was from... Think he's black? No, probably, actually, so a funny story. I knew that side of my family throughout my, oh, my mom was Korean. So I just like, oh, I'm mixed race, Asian, something like that. When I was writing troubled, I took a 23-in-me when I was an ancestry test. And I thought, well, if I'm, like, I've never met this guy, but maybe something interesting will come up that that will give me some material for the book.

And I get the results back and I discovered that my dad was Mexican. Really? Half-Hispanic on my father's side. And you just, you went your whole life thinking I'm like just 100% Asian and I'm half Mexican? Not 100%. Because whenever I would meet, like, actual Asian people, they'd be like, I can. can tell you're mixed but I don't know what's going on yeah and uh it's kind of wow to figure out later in life yeah I was like I was like 31 when I discovered this and I was like oh yeah but then when I got

the results I'm like okay I'm I'm half Mexican I wish I'd known that when I was applying for college didn't your mom ever mention like she just would never talk about him no my my birth mother she so I was taken from her at three and I have no memory of like having those discussions and I never met her again after that oh yeah and so and also when the social workers and police like they asked her like who's this kid's father she said she didn't know like she was that messed up like she was really strung out um and so so yeah so when you like my my dad so he was like Spanish and whatever like indigenous like whatever the the genetic makeup of a Mexican person is but it was also like 0.3% or 0.5% sub-Saharan African sure so I don't know where that comes from but

you know like yeah I'm I'm basically black and then also Jewish too was like 0.2 or 0.5% Sephardic Jewish so like on the Spanish side right because there's a Spanish Jewish community and so um so I get those results and uh you get in any college in the world yeah well now it's too late I you know but then uh but yeah so you're going through foster care system and then you start thinking about uh you know recently like what what's the ramifications of that in terms of you know it seems like it would be a chaotic upbringing oh yeah well that's what it was was being taken for my mother, not really knowing anything about my origin or like what the circumstance, especially as a little kid, I was too unsophisticated. I would have never, even if you

tried to say, oh, drugs, what does that mean? You know what I mean? I was just not developed enough to get it. And then each time I had to change homes, I didn't fully understand what was happening because I was too young. And that was the difficult part. The other part that I think a lot of people maybe don't understand about foster care is not only because a lot of these homes had like 10, 12 plus kids living in them. You know, some families will just take in as many kids as they can, they can. Well, just be, what's the reason? Well, well, first, the system is so overburdened and there are so few homes to begin with,

like, like families who are willing to take in these kids. But then there are some families that you get a stipend, like the government, the state pays you a certain amount of money for each kid you take in. And so some will like, yeah, exactly. And because there are so few homes available, it's like, well, it's better that the kid, you know, double up on a bunk bed in this overcrowded house than sleep on the street. right right and so so I would move into a home and it would be emotionally stressful and upsetting and then I'd adjust a little bit and then and part of that was because I'd start to make friends with my

foster siblings and get along and sort of learn the you know the sort of social scene or whatever who my friends were and you know how kids behaved and then I'd wake up the next day and then one of my foster siblings would be gone and so that was hard too was like oh I mean yeah yeah kind of yeah and so then I'd say oh well like where did Joey go oh like he went back to his mom or, you know, went to another home. And so not only would I not know where I would be from week to week, but also I wouldn't know where my foster siblings would be. And so that kind of extreme uncertainty was really stressful as a kid.

And so, yeah, it's a really messed up system. I mean, part of the reason why I talk about this is we want to get to a point where you have fewer kids in the system in the first place. And so that's why I emphasize this family piece is like, yeah, family is important. And, you know, they're always going to be. be exceptions. You know, I'm not saying like, oh, if you, like, a spouse is abusive or violent or terrible or toxic or something, you should always stay no matter what. But I am saying, like, if you form a relationship and you have kids, like you have a duty to basically be the best

possible person. And so does your spouse, both of you have this duty, I think, like once you bring kids in, that, you know, you don't want your kid to go through that kind of a situation. I read that it wasn't, it will, like a lot of the stats were not as important whether the parents were together as a point as a as a as a as a as much as that they are present so like I'll just say where I grew up like everyone's parents are divorced like it was just so normal but it was like I don't it was you know a lot of most of my friends kind of grew up to be fine and successful but it was like they'll had like a dad he was like you know lived one street over and then he had his own family and you'd spend the weekends there

whatever and it but um is that like fake fake fake news stats I I mean probably like you know the ideal is always going to be like two adults who are committed to one another and who behave well and responsibly and everything. But I have seen similar stats on this about like basically like the number of fathers in the neighborhood. Like that also has a strong predictive power for how those kids turn out. And so, you know, if you look at a lot of neighborhoods where the kids don't actually have positive outcomes in their life, you see that not only did, you know, the kid not have a father, but like the neighborhood had no fathers. Like there were no adult male authority figures

or people around role models or people who could show them some guidance or some mentorship. This is especially true for boys. And girls are affected in different ways too. But, you know, one thing that I discovered was there's a lot of, there's a lot of focus on poverty. You know, like, is poverty really what's going on here? You know, that's, that maybe explains these outcomes. So when researchers will attempt to discover or uncover what predicts outcomes like failure to graduate from high school or college, incarceration rates, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, like all of these undesirable outcomes. They'll see, okay, well, does the family income, the childhood home, family income, does that have any predictive power for those outcomes? And a lot of studies

basically show either no relationship at all between growing up poor and those kind of outcomes or very weak, sort of tenuous correlation. But when researchers look at this other variable, so they call it emotional or childhood unpredictability or childhood instability, and this is measured by things like, you know, the extent to which you sort of rate these statements like, were your parents together when you were growing up,

was there a divorce? Maybe you've heard of like aces. It's kind of like that, like adverse childhood experiences. how many different romantic partners did your primary caregiver have when you were growing up? How frequently did you relocate? How much uncertainty was there in your day-to-day life? And when researchers look at instability, they find that that has a strong and reliable relationship with those unwanted outcomes

later in life incarceration and failure to graduate and so on. What do you think that is? What does it do to you? I mean, most likely it sort of rewires your emotional system and sort of makes you less likely, I think, to put forth an effort in improvement. You just think you're like, what's the point? Yeah.

It's just always, everything's always changing. Like, what's the point of anything? Become, like, reactionary? Yeah, yeah. Well, basically, like, if you, I mean, this was my experience of, like, I did have some academic potential and some aptitude, but the environment around me was so crazy

that I'm like, yeah, what's the point? What am I doing? I had no adults around to sit me down. And then by the time I was in a position to put forth the effort, I didn't really feel the motivation to do so anymore. So, you know, I told this story about how I was a sophomore in high school. And there was this like very brief period where I was doing okay in middle school. And because I, you know, got pretty good grades in middle school, I was placed into these advanced courses in high school. And I got placed into this chemistry class.

And this was the first class where I realized I couldn't bowl. shit my way through it. Yeah. Chemistry. I'm like, oh, this is actually like a hard. I have to study. I have to think. I have to do the homework. And when I realized that, uh, I didn't, I didn't want to, uh, make the effort to do wellness class or even to pass it. And so then I go straight to my high school guidance counselor. And I say like, how do I transfer out of this class and, and, uh, transfer into the lower level science course. And he did what good guidance counselors should do. And he tried to talk me out of it. And he was like, look, Rob, like, I can tell you, you know, pretty bright kid you know i look at your middle school grades you're you know you could you could do well in chemistry

if you applied yourself and i said i really don't want to take this class how do i transfer out so he gives me this form and says you know have your parent or guardian sign it and we can transfer you out so i went home and i forged my mom's signature and went back and then transferred into the lower level science course yeah and i think this is something people misunderstand too is like kids have a little bit of agency you know like you can put the blame on um you know the school systems or or or place the blame entirely on parents, but once a kid has been through enough difficult experiences, like, they will start to purposely make self-defeating decisions to, like, intentionally obstruct their own progress. And that was my case, for sure, was just like, yeah,

why do I, like, why do I need to take this class? I'm not going to go to college, like, what's the point? Like, school is just a place where I can hang out with my friends and have a good time. Yeah. Yeah, I think this, so that instability component, I, I have this line in the book where I say, if a if a kid is let down enough times by the adults in his life eventually he'll learn to let himself down and so in and this can't be entirely explained by by poverty because there have even been these interesting studies where they've looked at kids in poor families raised by married parents and compared to them with kids raised in wealthy families with a lot of instability so it could be addiction it could be domestic violence like rich. rich families have some issues too. And so they've compared those sort of chaotic and unstable rich kids, you know, family lives with the poor kids and stable lives and find that the poor kids have better outcomes. So, you know, it's not just about just about wealth. But then I think even at a more sort of basic level, there was this study that came out in 2017, which

basically attempted to like quantify what is the economic value of two married parents. parents, and they found that if you wanted to equalize the educational and occupational outcomes for kids raised by single parents, and make them equal to kids raised by two married parents, how do we make those kids the same in terms of graduation rates and career success? This would require an income transfer of $59,000 to those single parents. A year? Yeah, $59,000 a year. And, you know, I read that study.

I think, okay, I mean, I'm not even opposed to financial support or anything for single parents. I think that's fine. But I also think like, you know, if you're a little kid and you go to a kid who has, you know, both parents and you're like, hey, I'm going to take one of your parents and, you know, put them somewhere else and maybe you're never going to see them again, but I'm going to give your mom or, you know, I'm going to give you $59,000 a year. I think, you know, not that many little kids would say like, oh, well, also probably a bad incentive for parents to be like, I get $59,000 a year if I kick this person of a curb. Yeah. Well, there were versions.

of that that happened, you know, in the wake of sort of the rise of welfare state and that kind of thing. That there are these stories of, you know, government officials would go to women's homes. And if they had children, if there was a man in the house, they would remove the welfare payment. And this created these perverse incentives of like... You have to pretend you don't live there. Yeah. Or just don't get together at all so you can keep getting paid. So, yeah. Not good. What do you think they should do to reverse that as of now? The family trend, do you mean? Well, yeah, you kind of, because it seems like it's, you know, a pretty aggressive trend.

So, you're like, what do you? It seems like once you get to a point, you're like, you can never, at least with like the birth rate where you're like, once you reach a certain point, it's like, because it takes 60 years or something to reverse it. Yeah. I think, you know, there, there's probably no sort of one like blanket magical policy that that could apply here. That would, that would fix it very quickly. Internet's got to be making it word. I mean, probably, yeah. Well, what's interesting is that, so the divorce rate has declined actually recently,

and most likely what's responsible for that is that... Andrew Tate. Well, what, Andrew Tate, would he cause the divorce rate to decrease or increase? He might cause it to decrease because the guys might wait longer to get married. Oh, okay. So, you know, and then they get five wives. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You might have a few less guys that were like rushing into a 25-year-old marriage

that they get out of in three years because they have a couple. could go either way. Well, what I, yeah, I mean, interesting, like, the, the, the explanation given is that people are waiting longer, and the people who are getting married tend to be wealthier, they tend to be more prepared, whereas in the past it was like, and people just get married because that's what you did, and that this could lead to, more likely to late divorce, especially in a society that, you know, says, like, divorce is perfectly fine. But as far as what to do to fix, I think even, even just talking about it can help.

So, again, I think there are cases where divorce makes sense. but then there are a lot of the divorces are due to you know what some sociologists they call like low level conflict where people are just like not that interested anymore and sort of small scale fights or disagreements and so far uh since troubled came out i've had two different uh guys have approached me um and they've told me they're in their they're in their 30s uh recently married little kid or two and uh you know sort of new new family, young family, and they said, you know, basically, like, Rob, you know, I was kind of getting bored in my marriage, and I was thinking, like, is this really, did I, like, lock myself into really? Was this the right choice? Started to get bored, wandering eye, like, looking at other women. And I was thinking, like, you know, maybe I could broach this idea of, at least a temporary separation or something with my wife, see how it goes. And then they said, you know, I read your book. One of them said, he read my substacks, I was reading about it, and basically said,

like and then I realized like oh like probably not a good idea to do this to my kids um because they said like sure the wife's not going to love it either yeah well yeah that too i mean you know but they were like broaching the subject of temporary separation yeah well they i think they were thinking about the kids because they were reading about you know i wrote right from the perspective of what happens to the kids yeah but but the spouse would also obviously be be hurt too and they both said like you know i decided not to go through with it one of the guys said like he talked to his wife stick with the old wife yeah and uh they enrolled in uh marriage counseling and you know and i'm just a guy who writes things you know i'm not a policy maker i'm not uh uh you know

high profile politician or something i'm just right and i think you're cultural norms like yeah you're affecting cultural norms exactly i mean i had a friend in high school who like literally she she had two sisters and then when the youngest sister turned 18 her parents got divorced and her mom was like, I literally wanted to get divorced 20 years ago, but I just didn't, just because I didn't want to fuck up the family. Yeah. But her mom, like, literally, she was like, I had no interest in your dad for 20 years, but I just did not want to ruin the family.

Like, I didn't want to fuck you guys out. I wonder if there's an age for that where you're just like, hey, if it happens at, like, 10, it's a big deal. If it happens at 14 is not that big a deal. Like, I wonder what the... Definitely the older. There obviously is, but I wonder, like, if there's, like, a magic spot where... I'm sure there's a number where you're like, it literally does not affect anything.

I was probably like 12-ish or something like that, and I feel like it had zero effect on me. Well, I've heard that there is certain points. I think the first five to seven years of life are supposedly the most critical. Like, that's when your brain is the most vulnerable and sensitive and still sort of growing and developing. And so...

You don't understand it. Yeah. You probably just don't understand it as much. Well, no, no. So, like, the idea, I think it would be that if you separated during those years, it would be the most difficult for the kids. Yeah.

Yeah. And then, although, like, I could imagine, at least for, for, but like you said, like, it kind of depends on the, like, it depends on a million things, yeah. But, yeah, I think supposedly during those early years, that's, that's when it's the most stressful, like, any kind of dramatic change. Probably there is a point where most kids are probably, like, when you're about 15, 16, that you're just like, I'm, my parents, oh, yeah, they exist, I forgot, you know what I mean, they almost, like are, barely, you barely notice them anymore. Yeah, it's almost a benefit at that point. Sure, yeah, yeah. One less cop around. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I had this, I remember I talked to, who was, I think it was Vivek Ramoswami on his podcast, and he, like, we were talking about like, like, like, if you want to split up, like, when is the optimal age? And I basically said, like, you know, I guess in an ideal world and we don't live in the ideal world, but like, yeah, if the kid turns 18, they're out of the house, like at that point, the kid's an adult, right? Like, you're not directly affecting the kid anymore, so do whatever you want? But what you're saying is like that century, like, 15, right? Like, what age do you actually just sort of pivot away from your parents anyway? There's that age where like, you know, initially, you you love your parents, you want to be around them all the time, and they're the most important. And then, uh, yeah, puberty hits. And suddenly you're like, you know, you want to hang with your friends. Like usually you're a sort of crew of same-sex peers. And then, and then, and then you get a girlfriend. And then you, and then you, you know, I'm divorcing your dad. You go, who? Gary. Yeah. Yeah. But either way. It's, it's, it's interesting that that is the, like, such a bigger predictor. Because you, you almost never hear that one. You mostly hear, you know, you hear wealth. You hear probably area. Like, like,

where they are. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, yeah, money, class, education, yeah, all those things. But the instability factor is, I think people can be uncomfortable talking about these topics, too, where, you know, we want to focus on, on money, uh, because it feels safer, you know, like if you start talking about, uh, marriage and you're blaming people. And yeah, you don't, you want to sort of retreat into like not, not condemning people for their choices and misfortunes and we just, money's easier, more easy to fix. Just retreat into, like, oh, just government, just give you more money and then we fix that maybe but it's not that hard to fix maybe that you're like hey there's not incentives to be getting divorced yeah i mean there are a lot of disincentives to get divorced so

yeah economic ones and yeah although divorce again like divorce isn't even that big of an issue anymore the the the main issue now for for what's happening with single parents is just they're not getting married in the first place right like people just just have kids and they don't even know the or have no relationship with the uh the the other parent of the kid and And they're just sort of completely living separate lives. And so, I mean, I saw a lot of that. I write about how. So I grew up in foster homes, but then I was later adopted into this kind of a dusty working class town in California.

And, you know, I had two friends raised by single moms who didn't talk to the kid's dad anymore, just completely sort of estranged. Another friend raised by a single dad who had been married and divorced five times. Yeah. So there was a divorce. thing there. And then another friend raised by his grandmother because his mom was on drugs and his dad was in prison. And that's like a very common, you know, the pattern or portrait you see of a lot of sort of working class communities across the country. And, and that's very much not what you see for sort of upper middle class neighborhoods where the kids are, you know, raised by responsible

adults and, you know, checking all the boxes and getting into college and all that kind of thing. And I'm not even saying like college is, you know, that's like a very easy, like a way for social scientists to measure, you know, conventional success. Oh, did the kid graduate? Did he go to college? Did he, how much money does he make? Easy way to measure things. But I think even if a kid doesn't go on to achieve astounding success and doesn't follow that kind of conventional pathway, it still matters, like how that kid grows up, how he or she feels, you know, does the kid have adults around and does the kid feel like wanted and loved and that kind of thing. You know, I talked to this kid a couple years ago who raised by a single mom.

He grew up in a rural part of California, not too far from where I grew up. And he was telling me how, you know, his mom, they grew up poor, and he managed to get accepted into Stanford. And he was really excited about this. And his mom was so proud of him. And the kid pauses and he says, you know, Rob, I was thinking about this. that, because you wrote something similar in my book, that I, he's told me, like, I would, I would give up my seat at Stanford to have just known who my father was, because he'd no

memory of him. And I think there are, you know, a lot of us, you know, we want to focus, especially, like, the people that I'm around who go to these kinds of colleges are like, oh, you know, it's, it's important education and so on. I'm like, I'm not saying education is unimportant, but, you know, what happens before the age of 18 and also matters as well as what happens after the age of 18. Yeah. I mean, I imagine there's long-lasting consequences for all that stuff. Yeah. Didn't you say that from a dude perspective,

you're more likely be successful when you're married? Or is that, do you think that's correlation, not causation? Like the biggest predictor of like, or not biggest predictor, but like a huge predictor of success was not having your father, which I feel like goes, I remember he said something about that.

Like there's all these successful people that is like, it's just like, I have to find it. I strongly doubt it. Not like an overall biggest predictor of a success, but he was like something like, because there's something like you're trying to, not overcompensate, but something to that effect. I remember hearing it, I was like, really?

Yeah, there's an interesting book. It's called Greatness, which is a good name for a book, by Dean Keith Simington. So he was a psychologist who studies, like, basically great historical figures. And he did have something in that book about how if you look at, like, extremely accomplished people, you do see that a disproportionate number of them had some kind of hardship, like losing their father at a young age. like a chip on your shoulder or some sort of yeah that's what he was suggesting but that's like a very sort of niche group

I think if you're just looking at success yeah it's not overall it's definitely not just like the entire population like artists and intellectual like off there's like certain people I think like he points out like yeah they had some weird thing happened and then when they were kids and yeah maybe there's a overcompensating thing going on there um but yeah

I heard a lot of people talk about like one thing the necessary component for like a lot of greatness is uh you know like a feeling of like inferiority and and superiority and inferiority like at the same time where you're like I'm the greatest and also you're like I'm not good enough but at the same time that like mix creates a lot of overachievers yeah yeah I've noticed that there's that kind of uh it was vulnerable narcissism of like that you think you're great but you also um uh don't want to be exposed as as uh you know inferior in some way

So there's I could see like that that tension fueling if it's combined with hard Yeah, well probably the inferiority might give you the drive to like work right right right right Right, right and then the other thing is you're like well I do have this like actual Appetude and probably combined that's good. Yeah, I could see that yeah, yeah, but in some cases though like that that very same fuel that leads you to success If you don't address those issues can also lead to your downfall like that's a very sort of classic mythical story of like you know you're you're fueled by rage or you're you're you're you're fueled by rage or you you're filled by something and then you achieve success but then those same sort of demons continue to haunt you and then you sort of undo the success that you had attained and then you start to spiral yeah a lot of those things help you kind of like to get on the ladder and then

you just need to like smooth them out for like long-term success maybe yeah they're like maybe really good tools for short-term success or to like get in the game but then after you're just like well over 20 years you're just going to tear yourself apart with that kind of psychopath behavior Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, there's sort of stages of life, too, that, you know, initially when you're a kid, you're kind of dependent on other people. You know, you need the adults in your life. You need teachers, parents, whatever, authority figures. And then you eventually want to achieve some self-reliance. You know, you want to separate yourself. You want to develop and you want to be self-sustaining. And once you reach a certain point of self-reliance, and then I think at that point, you start to turn outward and try to help other people. Now, you mentioned earlier that the sort of characteristic marker of manhood in a lot of cultures is producing more than you consume. Once you're in a position that you produce more than you consume, you want to take those benefits, whether they're actual like physical material resources or knowledge or wisdom or awareness or whatever to help other people and spread that around. So I think that's kind of like a natural and healthy sequence. Yeah, and there's probably other parts where, for example, if you're at a period where you're like transitory and like certain,

jobs like her careers or whatever there's like a way larger transitory like you know you want to be in a new city making connections versus you're sort of like this is what i'm doing and it's just about like drilling down and doing it great like those need different probably mentalities as well right you know even like talking about being married and having a family like you could see a scenario where like this guy works at a company show up every time and you're like working the hardest you have a stable the stability's better as opposed to you're sort of looking to find new opportunities and you're you're trying to like hone yourself like the more stable you are the more you become might be like missing that because you're you know yeah you can't just like relocate for

something some you can't relocate for them but your head's not also in that mentality so yeah yeah because so it's not as simple it probably depends thing to thing well this is this is reminds me of the like there's uh the explore exploit trade off oh that's good yeah yeah where where initially i suppose like this is often spoken about it's a good like way to put it yeah well this is spoken about about in terms of like like age in your life where if you're a young person you want to explore you want to explore different opportunities live in different cities try different jobs you know if you're in college different majors different classes because you don't know what you like you don't know what your own preferences are you haven't fully learned yourself about yourself

yet and then as you age and grow older and you become more self-aware then you want to exploit meaning like sort of take advantage of the things you already know about yourself and okay well I've lived in 10 cities and that's the city I like so now I'm going to exploit that knowledge that information and stay in that one place. And this explains, I think, like, the sort of the behaviors and the differences between sort of older people versus younger people where young people love trying different restaurants. They're more open-minded.

They're more willing to try new things. And then as you grow older, you're like, you know, I know what I like. Why would I try this new restaurant that I might not like when I, there are 12 other restaurants that I've been to and I know I like those. So let's go to one of those instead. And if you sort of manipulate how much time people think they have, their preferences seem to change too where so if you ask an older person would you rather meet your famous meet your favorite author or or spend dinner time with your grandchildren older people say I'd rather spend time

with my grandchildren than my favorite author whereas if you ask younger people do you want to your favorite author or do you want to have dinner with your grandparents they say like I want to I want to meet the right even though it's a similar thing where they're equal shortness but then when you when you ask younger people to imagine, you only have three months left to live. Do you want to meet your favorite author? Do you want to spend time with your grandparents? Then they choose the grandparents because now they know they have this limited window and they switch from explore to exploit.

And you see this like, it's funny. Like even with babies, I think you see this where like babies put everything in their mouth, right? Like because for them, you don't know when you're going to hit the jackpot. Like you don't know anything about the world. Like that could be candy. I don't know what that. That could be sugar.

And so they're in like full on explorer mode. and then like they become toddlers and then it's just like they become extremely picky eaters right like they have their preferences and they're very rigid yeah I feel like

one of the things that is probably bad about the internet is it forces people back and explore mode too much in a weird way like sometimes you know just like I guess people say

like the paradox of choice but like I see a lot of people feeling that and I feel like I have that as well sometimes where you're just like it's so easy to be like yeah maybe I should live over there Maybe I should do this.

Maybe it's just as opposed to part of the probably necessary component for the exploit function is you're mostly around exploit function. You're not just constantly be inundated about what you should be exploring. The same way that if you want to have like a wife, you probably shouldn't be out of the club every night looking at new girls. You know what I mean? But it's like if you want to have like a life that you're working on, you shouldn't constantly be inundated with other lives you could have.

Like I don't know. So I think the internet. Yeah, like opening up like 40 tabs. you're like, that looks interesting, that video looks interesting, and then suddenly you have like 50 tabs over it, and you're like, I don't even know where to begin here. That could be debilitating. What were, you had some pretty good life advice, too,

where there was two things. The first one, you were just like, for every career, give more than what's expected of you, and that'll be like the number one thing that, you can explain it better than me, but was it? Yeah, well, I think I borrowed that one from Scott Adams. Oh, that's Scott Adams? Yeah, that's, yeah, that was one of his,

in his recent book. So this is one of the things I like to do on social media, because, like, I know, I know people don't like to read as much as, like, I love reading. And so whenever I find something interesting, I'll share it. And, and then, you know, the genius of the peoples whose works I share, you know, some of it rubs off on me.

And that one is, yeah, like, basically over-deliver, right? Like, whenever you say you're going to do something, do it well, do it right, and then gradually. I mean, it takes such little effort, I think, now to stand out. especially in, you know, jobs where the job description is very clear and up front. Like, I mentioned that dishwashing job earlier, and I remember I was, you know, some just like awkward 15-year-old kid, and I just showed up and washed the dishes. That was my job.

And I was a bus boy. Easiest job in the world. And, like, easy in the sense, like, I knew what the tasks were. Like, like, the actual drudgery of it wasn't fun. But then my manager at the restaurant kept giving me raises, and he was like, I just can't believe what a good job you're doing. And I was like, what are you talking about? And then, like, later, I overheard him speaking with, with one of the waitresses. And they would talk about the other dishwashers who had that job before me. He was like, you know, guys who took, like, half-hour

smoke breaks or, like, disappear into the bathroom or, like, call in sick multiple days in a row. And, like, it kind of makes sense because if you think, like, who, who's the typical person who would, you know, apply to be a dishwasher and doesn't have other options, like, that's the option they have is to wash dishes. And it clicked for me, like, oh, like, all I have to do is, is like, show up on time and do the job that they're paying me to do, and I'm, like, standing out. And that, like, that blew my mind. And then later, I kept going with that of just sort of doing the job that's expected. And it gets a little weirder and creative fields, um, because you don't, there's no clear like, oh, as a comedian, this is what you're

supposed to do. Or these are the jokes. Like, here's the format. The more you try to systemize it, the more you, you know, get off track. Yeah. But, uh, but, but generally for most people, I think that's, that's great advice is just to, you have any other good advice for people kind of like in their 20s 30s dudes. Oh man, good advice. Um, yeah. Um, I think, well, this has been a move for a while, like this movement against dating apps. And probably a lot of people are familiar with this by now. But for those who aren't, I think they really are, you know, kind of a losing game. So number one, and this is something that I think a lot of people don't know, is the majority of people on the apps are men.

So something like 70% of the users on Hinge are men. Really? Yeah. So the grinder, essentially. Actually, so it's funny, a friend of mine who he runs a dating app, he showed me because he has all the apps on his phone because he wants to know what the competitors are doing and what updates and features and whatever so he tells his life yeah yeah maybe that's why yeah um but he was telling me uh well i i jokingly i was like so you got grinder on your phone then right and he's like actually yeah he's like i got to know what they're doing too he put and i like i was like shocked i've seen

the other apps but a grinder was just another jj sometimes our buddy will show us his grinder you get to see he doesn't show me i don't let him but i guess danny's been looking at it well you really get to see like like male sexuality and like this very unvarnished like it's unvarnished like once you don't have no varnish like that female kind of uh uh restrictive like tempering component to and it's just like men who like sex trying to appeal to other men who like sex literally like some guys just like showing a photo their asses you're like that's your profile yes yeah it is it's wild um anyway yeah yeah basically like i i think like yeah it's it's definitely time to sort of pivot away from the apps because if you look at the statistics for the apps so so tinder

for example uh women will only like or swipe right on uh five percent of the profiles the male profiles they come across and men will swipe right or like 60 percent of the profiles they come across and you see the same pattern uh on hinge as well where something like 10 percent of the male users on hinge get um 60 percent of the likes and so it's really her pergamy in action Yeah, exactly. And so it's another level where the odds are already stacked against you. Like even if the apps were 50-50 male-female, you're already, as most guys, you're going to have a tough time. But with the added knowledge that like most of the users are men and there's really like a relatively small pool of women you're trying to compete for, like that's also like a bad. You're just playing the worst game at the casino basically. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, basically like pivot away from the apps. I mean, if you're going to be on the apps and you insist on it, they're probably, you know, strategies and ways to do that. at like hiring a professional photographer and all these other kinds of things instead of just taking a selfie in your bathroom. But I think, yeah, getting off of the apps and then going out

into the real world and learning a hobby, learning a skill, like putting yourself in a position to actually meet regular people. And for a lot of guys, especially younger guys, I'm talking like late teens, early 20s for these kind of guys. They have this, they have this like scenario in their mind. Like once they meet the right girl, it's all just going to click. And the conversation is going to flow and the jokes and the banter and the chemistry and I think they misunderstand that like conversation is a skill like anything else where you have to get good at it and before you think about getting a girlfriend or a hookup or whatever like you should just start like building your social circle making friends learning how to communicate with people so that by the time you meet that person

that skill has already developed and you know how to talk and you know how to banter and tell jokes and have the rhythm of the conversation instead of just like I'm going to lock myself in my room all day and then I'm going to go outside and talk to two girls and get rejected and come back into my room like that's not going to work yeah yeah it does seem like that is a you know create a big problem with like young people right now is they're just like you know retracted from women yeah yeah and there's a million reasons that are out of their control like those girls have access to tons other dudes like they're they they can date older guys they you know it's like easier for women and harder for 20 year old guys but maybe the other advice

of the 20 year old guys too is you're like if you're in that scenario it's like okay start dating at 25. Yeah, I mean, it's not terrible. You know, yeah, I mean, if you, if you want, I mean, still, no, but you know your advice is better. I'm kidding. Well, I mean, it's like, it's just hard, you know, as a 20 year old guy. You take as many shots.

You take enough shots one are going to go in, you know? Yeah. If you're in college, I think, yeah, you should, yeah, you should put yourself out there. If you're not in college, it's a little bit harder to meet people. But, yeah, I think, yeah, developing your skills, social circle, all that kind of stuff, like learning how to be a more attractive person. but I think this connects because you said like there's a lot of reasons why this isn't happening

why people aren't forming partnerships and I think this ties into your earlier point about the internet being sort of like this this explore optimization machine where you know you don't know like you know the best way to spend your time

there's so many options the paradox of choice thing and then I think porn is also like this like it's like the dark matter of relationships right now where like we don't actually know how much it's affecting like the lack of male motivation to approach people. I mean, people will chalk this up to like Me Too, changing gender norms, all this kind of stuff.

But I think like alongside Me Too was also this proliferation of digital porn. And I think that's also undercutting because there's like this novelty component. There's this explore components to pornography because it sort of exploits this feature of male psychology, which is sometimes called the Coolidge effect. You guys might be familiar with this, the Coolidge effect. Jennifer Coolidge? Calvin, yeah, yeah. So, although it would be funnier somehow if we could tie it in with Jennifer Coolidge,

like a White Lotus joke or something. But the story goes that back when Calvin Coolidge was president, his wife was touring a chicken farm, and the tour guide stops and says, Mrs. Coolidge, this is our prize rooster. He mates multiple times a day, sometimes dozens of times a day. And Mrs. Coolidge says, did you say dozens of times a day? And the tour guide says, yes, ma'am.

And she says, well, make sure you tell that to the president. And so then the next day, the tour guide is showing President Coolidge around, and they stop. And the tour guide says, Mr. President, this is our prize rooster. And Mrs. Coolidge wanted me to tell you that this prize rooster can mate dozens of times a day. and the president says dozens of times is it the same hen every time and the tour guide says

no sir and then the president says be sure to tell that to this is coolidge that's great and so you have the coolidge effect on steroids with with porn where you know you can see more naked women

in a single afternoon than your grandfather saw in his entire life and that is also and I have done not my grand my jeans yeah yeah right but but yeah like this is this is also i think messing with with guys so so the other piece of advice would be to not watch porn i don't think i've ever said this on a podcast before so you're

sort of a no-fab advocate yeah i mean i don't know i'm not like i'm not like a i don't know like a finger-wagging model ideological yeah i'm just like yeah it's it's it's not like i'm i think it's like bad in some abstract moral sense but like it's it's going to mess with you in terms of like your um willingness to talk to women it's going to affect your relationships and that kind of thing. And I also think, and this is my, like, uh, it's probably similar to smoking weed a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's, this is my, my most speculative, uh, opinion, uh, that I don't know if I've ever said this aloud, but I, I think like, porn might like, like, condition young men to become cuckolds. Because when you think about what's actually going on,

there's a rise in cuckold. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there seems like, I, well, I, I, I, I, I feel like I'd never heard of it. Like, well, it was this word you heard, but like, you never, like, I, we know people who do this stuff i mean i mean maybe the times well well so so when you think about the actual act of of watching porn like as a straight guy you're basically um just like conditioning sexual arousal you're associating with it with watching another man have sex with a woman what if you watch the ones that's just like a uh jerk off instruction videos no guys in it always a loophole well the lesbian porn though there's no cut me imagine you're you're but you all you watch is cuckold videos then you need like you're watching the guy

watching them. Oh, yeah, you're like, this is getting like a meta. This is getting really busy, right?

You're watching the guy get cocked. Yeah, you're watching the guy get cucked. She goes, a lot going on. Yeah.

You're letting the cock cock cock you by getting cocked. Yeah, so yeah, I think, yeah, no apps, no porn.

And again, like, this is just like, if you want a relationship, if you, if you are happy with that life of, good luck to all not

to a 16-year-old boy, dude, if I was 15 and oh my God. They're just like, yeah, don't crank one out ever. I go, oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Well, you can crank them out. No, no, no, yeah. I think that's fine. Like, I think, like, play, I don't know. Like, you just, like, find other, like, still images. Don't get algorithmed by the hub. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just, um.

And also, like, for dating, too, like, like, now, like, approaching women is probably, like, this crazy untapped market when that was, like, you know, you're at a bar and you're actually competing with all these guys, but now guys don't really approach women anymore. So you're actually, like, the competitions on the internet,

and there's minimal competition in person. I disagree with that because I think if you're at a bar, you watch everyone's on their phone. Yeah. Whereas like... But that's, well, that's another part of the problem is you're not competing with the guys in the bar. There's girls who are like on their phone sitting in a bar and they're like, I want to be approached and you're like, you don't seem approachable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you're not coming off as approachable, but they're like, oh, I'm here to be approached. You're like... Her ex-boyfriends hitting her up as you speak. Yeah. Yeah, well, this is something I think guys misunderstand, too, is like there studies of single women, surveys of single women show that the majority of them want to be approached more often than they're currently being

approached. But then guys will be like, well, okay, I approached a single woman the other day, and she blew me off. So did she want to say by you? Yeah. Well, that's what it is, right? It's like, you know, this is just useful information to keep in your mind is that the odds are always going to be against you. If you approach 10 single women, just because of chemistry and preferences and everything else, like maybe three of them would be open to dating you out of those 10 single women and then of those three perhaps one will you be like fully compatible with and connect with and click with so just understand like up front like 70 percent and of that one a hundred percent of them will still be annoying anyway okay well yeah yeah yeah i mean i think we should do if

you're going to approach women is you walk into a bar and you rank every woman one out of 10 tell them start with tell them and you start with the top numbers and just work your way down yeah eventually you'll hit some pay dirt yeah sometimes i'll post this kind of stuff on on twitter and then like like like surprisingly large in cell accounts will like like reply guy in the thread and they'll be like well if if i'm going to get rejected 70% of the time then why even bother and i'm like well like that's weird sales yeah like that's just life right like if you need a job you got to give him the ted williams analogy what's what's that oh he's just like the greatest hitter of all time and he only hit 400 like you know he hit 400 in a year but you're like it's like the baseball

analogy where like yeah the best hitter fails 70% of the time okay yeah yeah yeah i mean the The analogy I always go to is about job interviews. Like, you have to submit whatever, like 50 resumes to get, whatever, three interviews, to get one offer, and that's just, that's just life. Like, you're just going to get rejected. So you've got to learn how to, like, toughen up and deal with it. So, yeah, I think that's a thing, right? Yeah.

Like, eventually it's like you went ahead on it. Like, I do definitely think of times when you're just, like, in the, in the pocket for women in, like, college or whatever around those times, you're just, like, going up to a woman and, like, talking to her and then they were born interested is just, it was absolutely, absolutely nothing. Yeah, there's this weird thing. You're not me like, oh, damn. You'd be like, yeah, yeah, you're just like sulk at home.

Nice. Be like, I'll find a new one to bother. Yeah. Is it, do you think it's a volume thing? Because, like, if you get rejected twice, like, your whole life, you only approach two girls and they both reject, like, those are seared into your memory for life. But do you think, like, if you approach 200, like, you just start, like, you, you numb yourself to it.

Pickup artists, that's, that's, that's their main thing is they go, you just have to put up you also should be improving. if you're changing nothing like if you're changing nothing then there's not that much you know no but their whole thing is you're like yeah just go like in the middle of the day go walk around Union Square just bother

a hundred women and you're like well it's kind of what it is and you're like you'll probably get a number or two and the same way that if you're trying to walk up to someone and sell them you know tickets to something you're bothering them door to door vacuum sales sales is bothersome yes exactly you're just like you're a door to a salesperson

I don't know if, yeah, this cold approach, like, that style working. I think it's probably like, like, like, I mean, it definitely works. You just have to be really willing to take a ton of. He thinks there's a better method, though, potentially. Yeah. I think, like, like, as maybe, like, an exercise to, like, learn that you can do this and survive it, but then if you really want a day, there's probably, like, better, yeah, better use it. Like, like, either, like, yeah, building hobbies.

Cold calling's not the only way to make sales. Or, like, like, what is it? Like, what do they call, like, warm, warm, approaches or like warm connections or whatever it is of like friends of friends that's probably the best one improve yourself yeah like when you're in a social group and you're like you've already been somewhat vetted as like not some stranger on the street you're number one way to get hot girls is to be around like uh places where women like like okay like the guy who's like the number one like suave dude that girls love is still not going to get half as many girls as a guy who's

Drake's friend just like around where the women are you know what I mean so make friends with a celebrity yeah yeah they don't be a celebrity though it could be like you know might just be like the there's a million people that aren't celebrities that like women are around like you know when when you when you think about um people that are 17 you know like uh or 14 like money doesn't even matter like you know no one in high school is like oh that guy has money like it just is irrelevant you know so no one's a celebrity it was just you know there's places where girls are so and I'm not saying that's the only way but my goal my point was that was that those things matter so much more.

Like being around where women are. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just putting yourself in the right environment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's right. The same is like when I say, you know, how do you get like a guy to buy your company in Silicon Valley? Like, well, first of all, you need to be around those people.

Yeah, put yourself. Well, I think, yeah, that's interesting. Like, that's useful to know, too, is like just geography. So gender ratios matter a lot, too. Like, this is something that every, like, like, doorman at a frat party knows or every bar at nightclub is gender ratios matter. And so you can look up, like, Like, where do you want to live?

Like, actually, New York is great for dating if you're a man, because if you look at, what is it, something like, if you look at the number of people under the age of 30, um, with bachelor's degree. So, so women tend to want to date men who are sort of equally or high or, or, or, uh, more educated than themselves. So for people under 30 with bachelor's degrees, uh, the male to female gender skew, it's something like, like, um, uh, three women for every two men. Wow.

Like that. So, so as a man, the odds are in your favor. whereas in San Francisco, it's literally the opposite. Because it's, yeah, well, it's, you know, it's the tech capital. Yeah. So you're going to, you know, there's going to be a lot of guys and something like, I think, 12% of men in Silicon Valley are millionaires. And so the competition is really, really tough because, you know, there's already a lot of guys. And then, you know, a lot of them are going to be very successful and relatively small pool of women.

Whereas places like New York and D.C. are the opposite where there's a surplus of women relative to men. So this is something else to you mind. And then this is why college is great, too, as a guy, that some psychologists have speculated that right around the time that women broke that 50% mark and became the majority of students on college campuses. Became a pussy fast? Well, that's when hookup culture took off. Because it was right around the late 90s and early 2000s that women surpassed that 50% mark on college campuses.

And then hookup culture skyrocketed because if you are the, what, like the scarcer sex, you get to basically like call the shots right like because you're the scarce resource and uh you know other the opposite segments are going to be competing for you and you see the opposite pattern and the relatively few college campuses where men outnumber women so places like caltech where there are more men than there are women um there's much less hookup culture and more long term relationships is that true interesting that's very super interesting because they're more guys right so they're trying to adjust their behavior to be what the women yeah yeah seller's market for women yeah yeah exactly Yeah, I do feel like one of the reasons why this stuff's even interesting, even if you're, like, older or married or whatever, is because it's like, it's really everything comes down to, like, seduction at the end of the day.

Like, you know, whether your sales, like, you know, you're, like, if you're writing a book, like, you're trying to essentially do, it's your, it's all the same thing at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're getting along with people and, uh, being likable and well regarded. Yeah. kind of thing. So, no, no, I think that's, I think that's right. What, and this is the last thing, what is, um, uh, in today's day and age when, like, everything moves so quick and you're writing, you're tweeting, you're putting stuff on the internet. Do you find it difficult to block yourself off and write a book? Uh, not, not really. Um, I'm, I'm relatively, you know, fortunate or whatever that I, I, I have, like, pretty good attention span if I'm

interested in the thing that I'm doing. Uh, so when I was writing this book, I was also, uh, writing my PhD thesis, and I was building a newsletter, um, which eventually put on substack. And, uh, during that period, so this was basically grad school, you know, 20, 20 to 22-ish when I was doing this. Um, no, I was able to sort of, uh, uh, confined my time. I'm going to do this for these hours, this for that, you know, and whatever. Um, I don't really get that sucked into, um, social media or the algorithm. Did you post it and then not look? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll do that. No, I don't say I won't look, but I'll, I'll, like, wait. you know like oh i have some time from 3 30 to 4 i can you know screw around on social media

for that half hour and so i'll you know do it yeah yeah and then and then i'll check what are the comments what are people saying and then i'll put it away and so it's not that difficult for me do you turn your phone off do you turn like when you're running do you turn everything off uh i'll put it in an airplane mode and put it in another room um but i don't turn it off and is your computer on the internet uh yeah yeah i can i don't need like uh you don't have to do any of that like the cold turkey apps and cutting off from wifi i'm not like that um and yeah i've just never had that much of a difficulty it sort of sometimes helps like also to maybe have like a big project that's like underscoring everything you're doing yeah oh yeah yeah that too so yeah it's um

but but i get like for for some people that they have to you know create all these tricks like like i know uh people who will buy these like lock boxes for their he does that oh you have the cookie box oh is it okay it's it's they call it it's like uh he put he doesn't have porn he just has one photo of a naked girl i have cookies in there actually it's where the sweets go. Yeah. Well, I think, like, yeah, it's great, though. Like, all these methods, like, I put my phone across the room for me when I go to sleep. Like, I try to, like, take steps so that I know, just in case, like, I, back when I used to sleep with my phone next to me, I would check it in the middle of the night. Like, I'd get bored. I'd wake up. I go to the bathroom. Well, let me see what's going on. And then

suddenly four hours goes by. So I have, like, that, that, I understand that. But when I have, like, a big project and I care about it, and I can usually find ways to focus in that way. But, yeah, I think, like, kids now it's just so hard like if you grow up with this technology like what's it even and we have no idea because they're just they're essentially the guinea pigs on what it's like being raised with with all this stuff yeah yeah and this book i submitted the manuscript the final uh draft this was i think october of 2022 and then a month later chat gpt comes out so what i tell people is troubled is the last non-a-i book like no ai whatsoever it wasn't even a thing yet uh and now i talk to authors and there's just you know to your earlier point, like the Dumer perspective,

I know a lot of writers who were like, you know, we're going to be out of a job. I mean, just the college stuff, like, unless he's the ultimate Dumer. I am a Dumer.

But just the college stuff like for them to, you know, if you're a teacher, like, unless they come out with these amazing ways where you can, like you said, where, you know, you can test to see if this is written on AI.

Like when I was in college, like, I would have for sure written some paper I didn't give a shit about on AI. I would have 100% done that. Yeah. Yeah. The professors,

everyone's just like, yeah, what's going to, what's going to happen next. But no, I've always enjoyed writing. And so this is something I've been thinking about is, you know, maybe I'll have to pivot away and, you know, start, start going up to people with my hat in my hand and asking for UBI or whatever.

Hell yeah. Troubled and where do people find it mainly? Yeah, anywhere you get your books. Troubled, a memoir of foster care family and social class. Hell yeah. Do you have anything? No. Okay.

Thanks a lot, brother. Appreciate you. Thanks, John.