The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1250: Scott Galloway | Notes on Being a Man

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Young men are in freefall — and society's paying the price. Scott Galloway is here to explain the data behind the collapse and offer potential solutions.Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1250What We Discuss with Scott Galloway:Young men are experiencing an unprecedented decline, with higher rates of suicide, addiction, homelessness, and incarceration than any other demographic. Yet discussing this crisis triggers reflexive pushback, even though addressing it doesn't diminish the legitimate struggles women and minorities continue to face.When boys lose male role models through death, divorce, or abandonment, the outcomes are devastating. They become more likely to be incarcerated than graduate college, unlike girls, who maintain consistent outcomes in single-parent homes. Boys are neurologically and emotionally more fragile than we've been willing to admit.Elite universities have abandoned their mission as public servants and repositioned themselves as luxury brands, creating artificial scarcity that's pulling up the ladders of opportunity. America's ethos should be watering as many acorns as possible, not sorting teenagers into winners and losers at 18.The three drivers of romantic attraction for men are signaling resources, intellect (best communicated through humor), and kindness — and kindness is the most underleveraged. Women instinctively seek mates who'll protect them during vulnerability — being kind to strangers signals good character far more than being nice to her.Put away the scorecard in your relationships. Stop tracking who gave more and instead ask: what kind of friend, partner, or son do I want to be? The happiest people aren't those who are loved most, but those who find others who let them give the most love.And much more...And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors:Chime: Open an account in two minutes: chime.com/jhsFunction Health: $100 credit: functionhealth.com/jordan, code JORDAN100BetterHelp: 10% off first month: betterhelp.com/jordanAirbnb: Turn your house into a host: airbnb.com/hostQuiltmind: Email [e-mail] to get started or visit quiltmind.com for more infoSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. For me, has been a goal around not a transaction where I'm on the right side of it. But how do I find relationships where I can really leverage my skills, my generosity, whatever is my character,

to just give a lot and be that guy, be the guy, be the friend, be the boss I want to be, and just put away the scorecard. But I would have been much happier in my 20s and 30s had I just put the score card away and just tried to be the man I want to be. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the story of secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people

and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with the variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers, even the occasional organized crime figure, four-star general, arms trafficker, Russian chess grandmaster. and if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation,

psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, we're diving into a topic that somehow manages to be controversial, uncomfortable, and way too easy to meme, the collapse of young men. You've heard the tropes, failure to launch, man-child, toxic masculinity, neats, doom-scrolling themselves into oblivion, but under all that snark is something real,

because seldom has there been a cohort that has fallen further, faster than young men today. We're talking loneliness, role-model vacuums, brain development gaps, skyrocketing housing and education costs, and a generation that's somehow less wealthy than the one before it. And while women are rightfully making incredible advancements, a whole bunch of young men are quietly sinking, or loudly sinking. Today's conversation is not about playing whose life is harder. This is about what happens when half the population gets written off, and what it means for society, families, relationships, and the dudes out there trying their best not to get crushed by student loans, loneliness, or an algorithm designed to

replace a functional life with 90-second dopamine hits. This is a big one, it's important, and if the idea of talking about men makes you uncomfortable, well, maybe that's a good thing. Let's get into it here with Scott Galloway. I love the book, man. I read it, as I usually do. I had done shows before on a similar topic, like with Richard Reeves. And I didn't think it'd be controversial, but for some reason, that was one of my most controversial episodes. I got a lot of email from people that was like, there's no such thing as the male loneliness epidemic. It's fake. Or men deserve it

because they're a bunch of losers living in their mom's basement now. So it's either fake or men deserve it. And I thought your book took an interesting, different take on that. The gag reflex is understandable, especially because to people on, I may be the wrong messenger for the message because, why? Well, if you look at, from 1945 to 2000, America registered a third of the world's economic growth with just 5% of the population. So we had literally six-ax the amount of prosperity crammed into our populace. And then within that populace, all of that prosperity was crammed into the third of the

population that was white, male, and heterosexual. So I have had so much unfair advantage, unearned advantage. I think anyone who argues against that, it's just not looking at data. But now what we're doing is we're holding a 19-year-old male accountable for my privilege. And that is the same things that benefited me are just not there for a 19-year-old male. And I would argue, even there's some things now that put them at a disadvantage. Some of the feedback I've gotten, and I've got a lot of pushback here, and I see that a certain amount of pushback is a sign of your success.

If everyone agrees with you, you're not saying anything. And I've always said, I want to inspire a dialogue. I don't necessarily want to be right. I don't want to try and inspire dialogue to craft better solutions. But when you're just called like, this book is so misogynistic, it's like, they haven't read it then. I mean, there's just no way. There's just no way. Yeah.

Or his answer is he's blaming women for men's fault. No, I'm not. Having read it, you're very clear that the book is not here to crap on the progress that women have made. Female advancement has been stunning. I think that's a quote from your book. So it's not about tearing down the amazing strides that women have made. It's about focusing on the fact that a lot of young guys, especially, have fallen behind, and it's not getting better.

And even if we steal Manit and we say my cousin Lindsay was like, oh, guys, they're undatable. And I'm like, well, I feel for you. And I get it. And I sympathize with that a little bit. But that doesn't really help our situation here in the United States. If a huge cohort of men has fallen so far, so fast that they've become undatable, unweditable, whatever it is, that's bad even if we assume. that the argument is correct. Oh, they all deserve it. They haven't done anything to earn anything

to get ahead in life. Okay, let's steal man that. Fine. It doesn't improve our situation, so we still have to address it. Yeah, and also, it's not a zero-sum game. We can still recognize the huge challenges that non-whites and women face. Women go to 73 cents on the dollar when they have kids versus men. There's average household wealth of a black or Latino family is about 23 grand, 160 for white families. There's still huge issues facing these groups, but we can still recognize the problems they face while recognizing that no group has fallen further faster than young men. If you go into a morgue and there's five people who died by suicide for men. Really?

Yeah, three times as likely to be addicted, three times as likely to be homeless, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated. So we can walk and chew gum at the same time. And also, women aren't going to continue to flourish as long as men are flailing. Generally, what I'm finding is who wants more economically and emotionally viable men? Women. Yeah. Something, Jordan, that each of the genders have done a great job of is convincing themselves

that it's the other gender's fault. And I don't like the framing of men versus women. I think a better framing is liberal versus illiberal. So a lot of feminists will push back and say, where were you when we were struggling? And I would argue that a lot of us, men, were there for them. And that is, if you look at the big thing that kind of inspired the increase in female attendance in college, it used to be 4060 in 1973 when Title IX was passed. Now, by the way, it's 6040. And in terms of graduation, it's probably closer to 66 or 2 to 1. There's no discussion of a Title IX for men. And actually, nor should there be. But if you look at when Title IX was passed, 97% of our elected officials were men. So clearly, there are a lot of men who recognize the struggles of women. And also, there's a lot of women, especially mothers who recognize the struggles men are on right now. So I think a better framing is kind of liberal versus illiberal thought because there's a lot of men who do celebrate the progress and want women to continue to make that progress. And again, a lot of men who are very supportive of this type of work. Look, I don't have the data that you have, but it does seem like from my inbox, some of the people that are the most concerned about this are mothers of young men because they're going, what did I do?

How come my son still lives in my house? Do I kick him out? I don't want to do that because then he's going to go live with one of his friends who's doing even worse than he is. Or, you know, he at least has a job doing this and doesn't smoke pot and play Xbox all day, but that's what his friends are doing. If I kick him out, he's going to go to them and then what? It's pretty dark. To your point, I think you're right. I think many of the people who are most worried about this and most want men to succeed are women. And probably also not just their moms. It's probably also women their age who would love to marry somebody who is not getting an allowance from their mom when they're 30. So even saying this five years ago was triggering him now, because of the work

of Richard Rees who you've mentioned, it's become much more palatable. If you were to reverse engineer to the single point of failure for when a boy comes off the tracks and has trouble as a man, it's the following. It's when a boy loses a male role model through death, divorce, or man, man, and what's interesting, and we have the second most single family parent homes in the world behind Sweden. Sweden. Who would have known? The Swedes. I would not have, that would have been like my last guess. If you'd let me guess all, most of the countries in the world, somewhere in Scandinavia, would never have occurred to me. A lot of divorce energy in Sweden. And generally speaking,

divorce rates go up when women become more economically independent because, quite frankly, they do the math and say, I'm no longer economically indentured to this dude. I'm out. So it's actually a sign of progress in some ways. But what's interesting is in single parent homes, girls have the same outcome, same rates of college attendance, same rates of income, same rates of self-harm. Whereas men or boys, the moment they lose a male role model, at that moment they become more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college. What it ends up is that the research reflects that while boys are physically stronger, they're emotionally and neurologically much weaker than girls. I read a study that said two 15-year-olds, boy and a girl, both sexually molested. Neither crime is any more or less heinous than the other.

But the boy is 10 times more likely to kill himself later in life than the girl. It ends up that girls are much more resilient and much stronger than men. And they don't know if it's because throughout history, women have had to figure out a way to endure menstruation or childbirth, or quite frankly, they just have had to endure more hardship. There's just not down to get around it. Girls are stronger than boys. I mean, I can see that. I can see that.

I think women probably throughout their lives, have to put up with so much more, especially when it comes to, unfortunately, sexual violence and things like that, that maybe there's just a stronger support network around them that has that skill set, if you can even call it that, or that knowledge base to help them deal with that. I'd love to dive into this, I think, because you have some personal experience with this. What happens to men when male role models leave? Yes, they're at higher risk for a lot of mental health issues, but are you comfortable sharing your personal experience with this?

Sure, I don't. And I got very lucky. So my dad left when I was nine. And it wasn't even though my mom was really good about getting male role models involved in my life. And my life was a little bit different or untraditional. And that is, you know, in media, there's oftentimes a reference. There's a character. And it ends up he has a second family. He has his main family, his kids, his life, that he goes to church with everybody. And then you find out that he has an entire second. family that he spends, you know, like dollar bill in billions, it ends up had a second family. So I was that second family. My primary male role model after my dad left was a guy who lived in Arizona, had a wife and a son and a thriving business and a strong family. And then every other weekend, he spent time with me and my mom. My mom was the other woman and I was the son of the other woman. So that was my primary male role model. And the initial kind of needs to be a woman. And the initial kind of jerk reaction is, wow, this is a bad man. And that's not true. He was actually a good man. He was very good to me. And a lot of men entered my life, mostly through sports. I had coaches who took an

interest in my life. I had a stock broker. My mom's boyfriend, I asked about stocks. I was about 13, and he said, here's $200. If you haven't bought stock by the time I get back next weekend, I want the $200 back. So I marched into Westwood to a broker's called Dean Winter Reynolds and said, I'm here to buy stock. And this guy with this Jew fro came walking out, guy named Siserro, and said, hi, I'm Siserro, and said, hi, I'm Sisero. And he gave me my first lesson in stocks. He said, you know, when there's more buyers and sellers, the sellers raise the price until there's fewer sellers and it makes a market. And he said, what are you interested in? And I'm like, movies, I just saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I thought it was amazing. I was like, well, Columbia Pictures is the company behind that

movie. And their stocks at $16.00. So we bought 12 shares of Columbia Pictures. And for the next two years every day. At lunch, I'd go to the phone booth, I'd put in two dimes in the middle of Emerson Junior High School, and I'd call aside and we'd talk about my stock. And once or twice a week, I'd go into his office in his cubicle, and he'd teach me about stocks, and he'd call my mom and say nice things about me. And, you know, there was no money there, and we didn't have any money. But not only was that male mentorship really important for me, but I've made really good money starting and selling companies, but where I've become very economically secure is I've been buying stocks since the age of 13. And the last 45 years have been a really good time to own stocks.

And then there was a guy across the neighborhood. He used to come over with his girlfriend, just randomly knocked on the door. You don't do this anymore. Knocked on the door. My mom answered, hey, I've seen Scott around the neighborhood. Me and Lisa, my girlfriend are going to go horseback riding, does he want to come with us? And this guy and his wife or his girlfriend took me horse bike writing every weekend. So the thing we need in our society is more of a gestalt of apprenticeship, mentorship, and immediately getting men involved in the life of a boy when he doesn't have a lot of male role models. And unfortunately, a lot of men aren't stepping up. In New York, there are three times as many women applying to be big sisters as are men applying to be big brothers.

And a lot of it is there's a taboo, unfortunately, and that as say your guy in your 30s and you're single, maybe don't have a wife or kids of your own, you're worried people are going to suspect something of you if you express a desire to get involved in a 15-year-old's life. That's the same with Boy Scouts. 100%. By the way, there are no more Boy Scouts. Just to give me an example. Yeah, it's just Scouts, which honestly, as an Eagle Scout, I feel like it actually is probably

good that there's co-ed scouts because I've got a boy and a girl. It's going to be different than it was with a bunch of smelly little boys running around with a bunch of adult men having conversations where you go, I've never heard my dad say those words. I've never heard my dad talk to another adult guy uncensored while I'm there next to a campfire when they're not really concerned about getting in trouble with their wives for sharing something, for example. I don't know if that's still going to be there, Scott. You know what I mean? It's just a little bit different. You're an Eagle, Scott, Jordan? Yeah. That's super impressive. So I would argue, I think the scouts are an

interesting example of how with the right understandable intentions, things have gone a little bit too far. And that is, there's Scouts of America, boys and girls. And I, you know, I don't disagree or agree with you that it's probably good to have co-ed. But girls get their own single-sex scouting. They get Girl Scouts, but boys don't. I think there is an environment and it's productive to probably have single-sex Girl Scouts. But why wouldn't we also have single-sex Boy Scouts? I thought they just merged them.

I didn't realize there were still single-sex Girl Scouts, and Boy Scouts is now Co-A. Girls get their own thing. And then there's Scouts of America. There's no more single-sex Boy Scouts. Geez. I have mixed feelings about that, as I've just stated. I think that's going to probably exacerbate. There's so much I learned from Scouts.

And I know it sounds nerdy to a lot of people, especially because the Eagle Scout, you're like 18. And people are like, don't you have anything better to do? And the answer was no, actually. Yeah, I didn't either. Were you a wee-below? I remember the transition year where you go from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts and you have to wear a different scarf? Yes. Yeah.

I remember, I got the fire safety badge. And every time I check into a hotel, I look for an escape route. I'm like, okay. Of course. Yeah, and you'll be, one day you might actually be glad that you did that. I still know how to tie knots. I don't think I can say the same. I probably, I don't even remember learning that.

I know I did because it was part of many tests, but, yeah, man, those merit badges were a trip, dude. I definitely remember learning how to, like, raise rabbits. Weird things. Weird things. That's super impressive, though. I didn't know that about you. Yeah, look, it's a ton of work. I was thinking about it yesterday because one thing in your book that sort of triggered this in me was back then, in Eagle Scouts, you have to, and bear in mind you're 17 years old.

Your Eagle Project is a community service thing. And at the time, it was 100 man hours of work. Doesn't mean you have to do the 100 hours of work. It means you have to organize people, get them to show up. I remember painting fences and redoing a playground at my elementary school. And it's like, you're calling the school, you're doing the paperwork, you get the permission, you make sure the insurance is in place, you go. and buy the supplies. You get the scouts and your friends together to come over and spread wood chips and and paint fences and stuff like that. And looking back as an adult now, I'm like, I can't believe

I was able to get my shit together enough at that age to do this. I honestly think it would be difficult for me to do now without, I'd probably be like, I'd call my assistant and be like, can you get all this stuff working? I couldn't do it now without a degree of difficulty. So to be, having done that at 17, I remember when I had to do other things that were a lighter lift, it just didn't seem like a big deal anymore. And that's kind of the point. It's like trial by fire that you just didn't have. And also, as you referenced, I think a lot of us in the Boy Scouts, let me just say, I'm not sure we had a lot of social capital, but it was nice to be around other boys that sometimes are a little bit more academically oriented or maybe just didn't, quite frankly, we just weren't the cool kids. Yeah. But I went camping. I

don't know what your troop did. I went camping every month. And we used to, you developed a reverence for nature. You carried a heavy pack. You carried everything you needed in, you know, several miles. into the forest. And then I remember we would kind of go side by side and go through the entire camp and make sure that there were no signs of humans being there, even our footprints. Give your reverence for nature. And just planning from the age of 13 how to get towards Eagle Scout, there's a lot of life skills involved in that. Disciplined achievements, testing, the whole is greater than some of its parts. I only got several Merrill badges, whereas you got enough to qualify for Eagle Scott. And then the rewards, I don't know if they still did it when you got your

Eagle Scout, but you get a letter from the president and the whole troop. Oh, yeah, I got a letter for Bill Clinton. Yeah, and the whole troop gets together and honors you. And I'm a big fan of that stuff. As a matter of fact, a couple of my proposed solutions for public policy, just literally two hours ago, I was on with the Democratic Caucus for Fathers. It's representatives, it's mostly family focus, but it's about 50 Congress people. And they asked, they said, if there was one public policy, you could initiate what would it be, and I would have said, mandatory national service. I agree. I think it wouldn't just be military.

You could volunteer at a no-kill shelter, senior care, be a smoke jumper, work at our parks. But I think there's so many young people who would benefit from meeting other great Americans from different, I think, income and sexual orientation backgrounds. And if you look at Israel and Singapore, they have the lowest levels of young adult depression. And I think a lot of that is because of their mandatory national service. but it was along the same lines of Boy Scouts, I think a structured place that shrinks the world down to a group of young people doing something in the agency of something bigger than yourself. When I was an exchange student in Germany, my friends all had to go do national service after high school. And I don't know if it's still that way, but it's definitely super uncool or almost like gauche to go into the army. So everyone worked at a hospital or a university or something like that.

And I remember going to visit them after this year. and they were all kind of grown up because they had been in a hospital doing hospice care or something like that for older people or bathing the elderly in a nursing home or like you said working at some sort of animal shelter and they just said you grow up like three

years during that year because you're with a bunch of other students and you're having a good time but you're also given real responsibility in a way that you've never had before and you usually don't live well I think a lot of people don't live at home it depends where they are and we just don't we don't have that here so we don't

build this sort of, like you said, with Israel, which is always rough to talk about, because it always gets me a thousand emails just from mentioning the word. But in Israel, they have a different sense of national identity because they all have to go in the army. And it creates this sort of cohesive, hey, we're all in this together kind of feeling that we don't have as Americans, I think. Yeah, they see themselves as Israelis before they see themselves by their identity. And I think a big part of the reason that we passed so much great legislation in the 60s and 70s was our elected representatives that all served in the same uniform, and they saw themselves as Americans before they saw themselves as Democrats, Republicans. One out of two people my age feel good about America,

it's one out of ten young people. And as difficult as it is for young people, and I've written a lot about it, it's less difficult here than it is in most places in the U.S. And I just don't think a lot of kids recognize how many great Americans are out there, how fortunate they are, how wonderful America is, that they still have more agency here than in most And Singapore has the most religiously diverse population in the world. And they recognize that if they weren't careful, those differences could be weaponized by a strong man and get them to dislike each other. And I think the biggest threat to America is not Russia or the CCP or it's us. And that is we believe the call is coming from inside of the house.

And that is, oh, my enemy is my neighbor with a Trump sign or, you know, or it's the squad. No, Americans have a lot more in common than we think. And I like what David Frum said. We're actually not that divided, but unfortunately, the most talented, deepest pocketed companies in the world are in the business of dividing us. So I do think we need more and more programs, third places, more community. I'd like to see more religious institution attendance, even though I'm an atheist. We definitely need to restore some connective tissue among Americans. I'd love to see that. I don't have a plan for it, but I like the national service idea. I want to get back to the topic of men falling behind. There's this whole cohort of men that the abbreviation is neat. And I'm going to get this wrong, but it's like not in education, employment, or training. Is that right? That's right.

Exactly right. That is terrifying. Because back in when I was a kid, there were like two kids in my high school that didn't go to college and weren't doing a job training program. And you were like, yeah, that makes sense. Right. It was like, of course it's going to be these two guys. and I don't know how they turned out, but I expect not great. This was not the huge percentage of people that it is now.

This was like the minority. It was very predictable kind of from the jump from the way that they were brought up. Now it seems like that cohort is quite large, and that is terrifying. It's at an all-time high. One out of three men under the age of 25 is living at home. One out of five men at the age of 30 is living at home. Only one out of three men under the age of 30 is in a relationship, whereas it's two and three women under the age of 30 in a relationship. And you think, well, that's mathematically

impossible. It's not because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. So young men are not moving out of the house. They're not attaching to work. They're not attaching to school. They're not attaching to relationships. If a guy hasn't cohabitated with someone else or been married by the time he's 30, there's a one in three chance he's going to be a substance abuser. And so what's really interesting or one of the things I didn't realize, and I found researching the book, is there's this cartoon of a woman in her 30s, let's call her Lisa, and Lisa never found romantic love. And she's in, you know, it's the commercial or the movie of her in the window sill with a big, a big plush sweater, looking out at a rainy day, maybe she's

got a cat, and what a tragedy she never found romantic love. The reality is she's fine. She pours that energy, that romantic energy, into her friend network and her professional life, and would she be happier, married, maybe, but who really comes off the, tracks is a dude that doesn't have a relationship. It ends up that men need relationships more than women. A woman in a relationship does live longer two to four years, but a man lives four to seven years longer. So men actually benefit more from relationships than women. Widows are happier after their husband dies. Widowers are less happy. So this myth or this cartoon of the tragic spinster, the woman who didn't find romantic love, and one of the things I say in the book that's triggered some people,

I think men should always pay. On dates, you mean? Yeah. And my youngest son is like, Dad, that's just so boomer, da-da-da. And I'm like, well, okay. First off, men benefit more from relationships than women. A woman's fertility window is much shorter than a man's. The downside of sex is much greater for a woman than it is for a man.

So there's an asymmetry of value. When you're sitting across the table trying to establish a romantic relationship with a woman, you're asking her to enter into a construct where on average you will benefit more than her. And also all mammals have some form of courtship. And I think one way you engage in that courtship and recognize the asymmetry of value is you pay. And also just instinctively, and we don't like to say this out loud, what I tell my son is, okay, but just be clear, any woman you ever split the check with is never going to kiss you. Because deep down instinctively, for thousands of years, she has been taught that you can't protect her. Strength in a capitalist society is economic

viability. And women because they believe deep down that they'll be vulnerable because at some point they might gestate, want to feel safe around a man. And one way you demonstrate that valor is by paying. And I'm not saying that's, you know, in some case, some people say fairly, well, it should be whoever asked the other person out. If you're both making good money or if your partner's making more money than you, I'm not suggesting that five dates in. You don't do stuff because it's only you paying. But I think in the beginning, I think the default should be that the dude pays. Yeah, I don't hate that idea. I mean, maybe I'm too dated in the dating culture as well. Maybe I'm outdated here. I don't know. It does seem easier and you kind of can't go wrong doing it. As long as you're not a doormat and

letting people walk all over you and use you for money, which I think is a different conversation. But it's quite easy, I think, for most people to realize when that's happening. If porn is keeping you indoors, unmotivated and spiritually and physically dehydrated, here's something healthier to occupy your hands, the fine products and services that support this show. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how to be I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week. It is because of my network, the circle of people I know like and trust. And look, today we're talking about loneliness.

It is a big topic. It is a big deal. You can use six minute networking.com to manage your network for business, but even more importantly, perhaps, your social life and relationships. The course really is all about improving your relationship building skills and developing and maintaining relationships and a super easy, non-cringy, down-to-earthway that's not going to make you look like a jagoff. Six minutes a day is all it takes.

And many of the guests on the show, subscribe and control. tribute to this course. Come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course free of shenanigans of all kinds at six-minute networking.com. Now, back to Scott Galloway. You mentioned in the book that there's nothing more dangerous than a lonely, broke young man, and you mentioned a higher risk of suicide, substance abuse. What else gets added to this dangerous mixture when a guy is lonely and broke? Throughout society, the most unstable, violent nations and periods in history have all had one thing in common, and that is a disrepresenting. fortunate number of young men without economic or romantic opportunity. I mean, whether it was Hitler

weaponizing them or the Islamic Republic, when you have a lot of young men who don't have access to economic or mating opportunities, they get frustrated, they get violent, and they're very prone to nationalist content or misogynistic content telling them it's not your fault and we need to go after the enemy. I think that's why Trump is president. Jordan, I think that essentially, if you look at the three groups that pivoted hardest from blue to red, 20 to 20 to 24. It was Latinos. I think it's hard to make any assumptions about them because Mexican Americans in Southern California are just much different than Cuban Americans in Southern Florida. But the number two group was young people. People under the age of 30 or 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago, whereas my generation

is 72% wealthier. They can do math. They've had it. They realize they're not doing well. They just want change. Anything associated with the incumbent, which Harris was, was not going to win. The third biggest pivot among groups was women aged 45 to 64, and I believe that that's their mothers, because there's still a lot of women in the U.S. who will vote for who they perceive as in the best interest of their husbands and their sons. And when your son is in the basement vaping and playing video games, you don't care about territorial sovereignty and Ukraine or transgender rights. You just want change. And so I think that young men, weaponizing young men who have a lack of opportunities, whether it's promising them sex and the afterlife, ISIS was actually taking

sex slaves and then using that as bait to get people to enlist in their fight. Or put another way, I think the greatest innovation in history was not the iPhone or the semiconductor or vaccines. It was the American middle class. And how did the American middle class happen? The middle class is an accident. I think the far right will try and convince us that the middle class is a naturally occurring organism. And if we just let the market take over, it'll hail. It doesn't. It requires a redistribution of income from our most fortunate and our most talented to the middle class. But we had seven million men return from war. They were in uniform. They demonstrated heroism. And then we shoved a bunch of money in their pockets through VHA loans, National Transportation Act. We basically

made them, gave them money. They were thin. They were heroic in uniform. And quite frankly, very attractive to women, and it spawned the baby boom. And then there were enough loving, secure households where they thought, okay, wouldn't it be great to bring women and non-whites into this prosperity? But if you don't have a preponderance of young men who feel good about themselves and, quite frankly, are viable economically and emotionally viable, you end up with an unstable society. And I always have to do a land acknowledgement here. I don't think it's women's fault. I don't think women have an obligation to save or serve men. But there is no denying when there are young men who are alone and broke,

it is a recipe for an unstable society. And no amount of therapy is going to change that. I keep hearing on TikTok, men can find love from within. Yeah, good luck with that. I'm not suggesting that a man can't be happy without kids or a relationship. I'm suggesting that all of history says one thing. A disproportionate number of men with no economic or romantic opportunities leads to a violent, unstable society. You have a almost like a throwaway line in the book, but I think it's an interesting idea of America, if you would explain it. You said America is about watering as many seeds as possible, not picking and sorting and figuring out which will become Redwoods. This is personal for me because as you get older, you know, the good news is you get more thoughtful, the bad news

to get more thoughtful. And I want to reverse engineer my success to the reasons for my success and then try and invest in those things and more people have access to it. And I go all the way back to kind of the irrational passion for my well-being of my mother. I just think that built a basic confidence. But I look at, okay, I got into UCLA when it had a 74% admissions rate. This year, it'll have 9%. I got into UCLA with 3.1 GPA and 1130 on the SAT. That is not exactly remarkable. I got assisted lunch. You know, I didn't get free lunch, but I got assisted lunch. I got Pell Grants. I got, despite being an unremarkable student, I got into UCLA and I got Pell Grants. And then this is the kicker. I graduated from UCLA with a 2.27 GPA. And what happened, Jordan?

The Hoss School of Business, a top 10 MBA program, let me in. Yeah, I don't get it. No offense. How did that happen? How did that happen, right? Yeah. And then I got my shit together. And about the age of 25, all that education and opportunity inspired an upward spiral. And this is a flex, but I'm going to make it. I think I've paid $30 to $50 million in taxes in the last decade. So I think America works best, and the idea of America is to love as many unremarkable kids as possible and try and create as many millionaires and loving households as possible, not to identify a superclass of frequently remarkable kids or the children of rich people and turn them into billionaires. I think we've gone from what America was supposed to be, and that is watering, as you said, as many acorns as possible and seeing what happens.

Because here's the thing. No organization, institution, or person can be the arbiter of greatness when a kid's 18. I just didn't have my act together. I don't know if you did. I've talked to you a little bit. You were a little scrappy or more technically sophisticated than me. I think people would have seen more potential in you. Oh, I don't know about that, man.

I think I was more school shooter, except they didn't exist back then. so teachers were kind of like, eh, it's fine. I mean, I got in trouble with the FBI when I was telling me that. I love that story. Quite frankly, though, you were demonstrating excellence in its own weird way. I heard the story, and I'm sure you've told it. The thing that summarized what America's about for me is UCLA, Amazing University, my total tuition seven years undergrad and grad was $7,000,

74% admissions rate, and I didn't get in. It was one of the 26% that didn't get in. I was installing shelving. I was living my mother. I came home and I broke down. I was just really upset. I'm like, this is my life and there's nothing wrong with vocational work, but I want to be a doctor. I want to do big things. I've always been told I was smart and creative and my mom said, well, it serves anything we can do. And we found out there was an appeal process. And so I appealed and I said, I'm installing shelving and I'd like to someday be a doctor. By the way, freshman chemistry disavowed me of that notion. Yeah, or go or whatever it's called. That'll do. Yeah, no. Okay, maybe I'm not going to be a doctor. Anyways, what's economics like? So I appealed, and the admissions, the person in the admissions office called me and said, you're not qualified, but you're a native son of

California, so we're going to give you a shot. That to me defines what America's supposed to be. You're not remarkable that this is America, so we're going to give you a shot. And I worry now that a lot of the ladders that I was able to climb up and then fell down and there was another ladder for me, have been pulled up and said, nope, unless you're a rich kid, or unless you're building wells in the head of the lacrosse team by the time you're, you know, 15, we're not interested. It feels like it's become very much a Hunger Games economy where the winners lead this remarkable life and everybody else meets kind of an unfortunate end. By the way, appealing your decision to get into or the decision for letting you into a school,

that worked for me too. That's how I got into law school. I didn't get in. I got waitlisted at Michigan. I was on the wait list all the way until, the last cut or whatever, I got the letter that said, thanks for playing, have a good life. And my friend said, why don't you write a letter asking them to let you in for the next year and just take a year off? And I said, that's probably a waste of time, but I'll do it. I got nothing else to do, just sitting here, you know, feeling sorry for myself. And I did that, and I got into Michigan law. And I think that's worth a shot. I don't know if that still works. But if it worked for you and then it worked for me, I don't know, whatever N years later,

maybe it still happens. Maybe it's so rare that they would love to see the initiative from somebody to do that. So I don't know, give it a shot, folks, see if he can pull it off. Well, just on that moment, because it moves to solutions. Unfortunately, my industry, there's a certain veneer of nobility that because we have cardigans and watch PBS and are petting a Labrador, people think academics more noble than they are. I think my industry is responsible for a lot of what ails us, and that is we have embraced this luxury LVMH rejectionist positioning, where the lower the acceptance rate, the higher we go in the rankings, the more margin power we have, the more money we make. And we've lost the script in the sense that we no longer believe we're

public servants, we believe we're luxury brands. And when my dean announces that they've rejected 90% of the applicants, what does the faculty do? They applaud. And the people who already have degrees have vested interest in the admissions rates going down because it makes the asset they have their diploma more and more valuable. The same thing's happening in housing. Once people own a home, they become very concerned with traffic and get in the way of new housing permits. But the result is, we have these unbelievable institutions with infrastructure that are creating artificial scarcity. Dartmouth has an $8 billion endowment, and they let in 1,100 kids a year. They're in the middle of fucking nowhere.

They could let in 11,000 kids a year. And by the way, they have about 15 people working at Dartmouth for everyone that actually teaches, because they've decided their luxury brands, no longer public servants. So I think we have to change our mindset, and that is these institutions, and Michigan's actually better than most. they're pretty true to their mission, they've been growing their freshman class. But most elite universities have decided that they're in the business of rejectionism. And the way I would, the analogy I would use is that's tantamount to a homeless shelter rejecting 90% of the people

who showed up last night. You know, we're in the business of giving as many people a shot as possible. And instead, we've decided no, the tighter and the more artificial scarcity we can create, the higher our margins, the more administrators, the higher the salaries, the less the accountability, and the better the alumni feel because the value of their degree goes up. And it's just, it couldn't be more un-American. So in my view, if you're not growing your freshman class faster than population growth and you have an endowment over a billion dollars, I think you should lose your tax-free status. Because one of the things that's really ailing young men is that fewer and fewer are getting accepted to and going to college. In the next five years, we're going to have nearly

two to one female to male college grads. And you think, well, okay, we level the playing field. Women are blowing by men. Yeah, I get it. And I don't want to do, I want to expand freshman class. I don't want to do anything to get in the way of more and more women going to college. But there are some real knock on effects here. And that is when a man does not graduate from college, it's not economically viable, he has real trouble finding a mate. And that is men mate socioeconomically horizontally and down, women horizontal and up. And when the pool of horizontal and up keep shrinking, there's a lack of household formation and a lack of relationships.

So who wants more economically and emotionally viable men, women? And we're just not producing enough of them. Yeah, I think this jibes well with your quite humorous recounting of your mom helping you, trying to help you get laid back in the day. I thought this was so funny. Most parents are afraid their kids are going to get into a lot of trouble. Your mom was afraid you weren't getting into enough trouble from the sound. By the time I was 16, I was almost six feet, 120 pounds, 130 pounds with bad acne.

Like, I wasn't exactly Brad Pitt. And occasionally, the only way I could get a woman to go on a day with me was I was funny. That was the skill I developed. And I think there's a certain advantage to not being physically attracted when you're younger. I think it forces you develop different skills and different sources of confidence. But what I wrote about in the book is if I ever had one of those rare dates, I would come home. and my mom would have a bottle of wine uncorked. And she would have put firewood in the fireplace with all the kindling setup and a match.

So all I literally needed to do was strike the match to get a fire going. My mom was trying so hard to get me some action because she realized it was not going to be easy for me. She realized if the pads weren't greased, it just wasn't going to happen. And meanwhile, you know, people ask me for dating advice, and I always say, just keep in mind, you're taking dating advice from a guy who lost his virginity at 19. I look at the research, and I think the research is really interesting. There's three reasons women are sexually attracted to men. The first is the ability to signal resources.

So there's just not getting around it. If you have a Ranger Rover in a Panorai, that's attractive. The good news is that it's signaling future resources, and that is if you have your act together and you're smart, You're not the idiot ordering drinks at 2 a.m. You're like, you got to go home because you have shit to do the next day. You're working on stuff. You're going to vocational school. You have a plan to get your GED and then go start an apprenticeship. You just need to have a plan. Because regardless of what the Atlantic of the New York Times tells you, 75% of women say economic viability is important in a mate. It's only 25% of men say that about a woman. Beyonce could work at McDonald's and Mary JZ. The opposite is not true. So signaling resources is number one. Two is intellect. and that's somewhat instinctual. If you make good decisions, your family is more likely to survive. The fastest way to communicate intellect is humor. And I jokingly say this, and it's a joke, but my impersonation of a woman is, I'm laughing, I'm laughing, I'm naked. I think if you can make a woman laugh, there's a good chance she'll grab a coffee with you. And by the way, you can't tell

someone to be funny. Some people just innately don't have those skills. But one way to have a great sense of humor is to laugh a lot. She says something funny, you laugh a lot. Other people say something funny, you laugh out loud. You encourage an environment of humor. And then the third thing, and I think this is the secret weapon, because it's the most under-leverage and underappreciated skill for men, is kindness. I wasn't born a kind person, but what I started doing was developing a kindness practice, and that is I, every day, starting with good manners, tried to do something kind for a stranger with no reciprocal expectation. And after a while, it becomes like, you know, playing golf or tennis,

you get some muscle memory and you get kinder. Women instinctively believe at some point they'll go through gestation, they'll be vulnerable, and they need someone who's a kind man. It's not being nice. If you're being really nice to a woman, she figures out it's because you want to have sex with her. Right. But when she sees you inadvertently out of the corner of her eye,

being kind to strangers, that is sexy. Dad is like, this is a good man. And over the long term, I want to mate with someone who is a good man. But those three things are, you know, when I talk to young men, I'm like, I can't give you dating advice. I'm so out of the game, you know, look at me for God's sake. But these generally speaking are the three reasons that women are drawn to men romantically and sexually. Men are getting physically and mentally softer, but here's something that'll make you hard. The deals and discounts on the fine products and services that support this show.

We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment, support our amazing sponsors, those who make the show possible. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, please email me, Jordan atjordanharbinger.com. We're happy to surface codes for you.

It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Scott Galloway. What do you think people should be doing in their 20s to set the stage for future success? You got some dating advice in there, but I'm curious what you think are the, let's say, the top three things that people, not even just men, but people in general should be doing in their 20s to set the stage. And I would love it if you could do that for the 30s as well. Because I think a lot of times we speak to young men and we don't get that middle 30 to 40

cohort very often. So there's a lie that parents are telling themselves right now and they say, whenever I hear someone say, oh, college doesn't matter. you don't need college, it means they're devastated, their kids not going to get into a good college. And they're trying to make excuses so they don't feel shame themselves. Because the ultimate failure right now in a capitalist society is if you're, it's like we shame parents whose kids don't get into a good school. And the reality is parents are shepherds, they're not engineers.

The kid comes to you. Some kids just are not, two-thirds of kids aren't going to graduate from a traditional liberal arts degree. But if you have access and the discipline to some certification in your 20s, go forward. it. And it can be a class three driver's license. It can be a scuba certification. It can be a degree, a two-year degree in nursing, apprenticeship and vocations, or a Bachelor of Arts, but a CFA, anything that separates you into a smaller pool of people because of certification is really valuable. And the reason I say in your 20 is because as you get older, you start collecting

dogs and kids and you start getting used to money. And it gets hard. harder to go get certification, which usually means an environment where you're not going to spend a lot of money, right? Every year you don't go to college, the harder it is to go back any sort of schooling. So one's certification. I think your 20s are about workshopping. And one of my things I talk a lot about is don't mistake your passion for your hobbies. And your job isn't to find your passion. Your job is to find something you're really good at. Because if you're really good at something, the accoutrements of being great at it, if you spend enough time. getting great at it, camaraderie, relevance, economic security, prestige, self-esteem will make you

passionate about whatever that thing is. And don't write off the boring shit, because it's the boring things that make a lot of money. I had soapstone installed in my house here in London. The guy who does it is like the soapstone whisperer. He's an Iraqi immigrant. He can tell you everything about it. He knows the quarries. He makes two million pounds a year. He clears 600,000 pounds. And I can tell you he is passionate about Soapstone because it's given them a really good life. So try and workshop. Also try and be as social as possible. When Google puts out a job opening, they get 200 CVs within something like 14 minutes and they shut it down. They'll invite the 20 most qualified people in. 70% of the time, Jordan, the person who gets the offer had an internal advocate.

For sure. And that is, you want to be put in a room of opportunities even when you're not there. So what do you do? You go out a lot. You say yes a lot. You really make a practice of trying to help other people because they'll remember it. You want to be put in a room full of opportunities even when you're not in that room. You want to workshop careers. When shit gets hard, don't quit after six months. I like to do stuff in two or three year increments to give it a shot, see if you're any good at it. Develop a kitchen cabinet of people who can give you no mercy, no malice advice. You can say, no, you got a good job. Buck up. You're fine. You just hit, yeah, your boss is an asshole. to get used to it, try and find another boss, but you're in a good spot, don't leave. Or you're banging your head against a wall here. This startup isn't working. There's no shame in shutting it down and moving on. You need a group of people who can advise you because it is really hard to read the label from inside of the bottle. So certification, if it's available, be as social as possible, establish a kitchen cabinet, and your job is to workshop. I think in your 30s, the first is to forgive yourself. Because what I find in people,

in their 30s who don't have a fragrance named after aren't senator yet, they're really hard on themselves. And the number one inhibitor to their career is that they get paralyzed and stuck because they start feeling really bad about themselves. Keep in mind, if you're in your 30s now, it probably means you're going to live another 70 or 80 years. So it's not too late to go back to school. It's not too late to start another profession. It's not too late, you know, to try and kind of do what people in their 20s were doing, but you probably have a little bit more a financial commitment. And again, I don't know if it's a lot different if you're starting in your 20s, but also, I mean, the bottom line is in your 30s. You've got to be really honest about what I'll

call a path towards economic viability. So in your 30s, you might want to think about something what I'll call a geographic arbitrage. A lot of people coming out of their 20s who had some certification or some traction think like, well, I would never leave New York or L.A. And the reality is nobody has a birthright to live in New York or L.A. or San Francisco. And when I was living in New York in my light 30s and I just had kids, I came to the realization that I couldn't afford to be there. And it really was upsetting for me. It was like shocking. Wait, I'm so talented. I was making really good money. My partner was working at Goldman. I was starting to finally get some traction as an academic. We were probably making six or 800 grand a year. And with two kids and private schools and a three-bedroom

rent of 12,000 a month, I'm like, we're struggling to pay our credit card bills. So we moved to Florida, and it just made everything so much easy. We went from $12,000 a month at $5,500. We went from $55,000 a month in tuition to 12. We went from 13% incremental taxes to zero. Everything became easier. And just to return it to something very macabre, the zone of suicide when a man is most vulnerable to harming himself is in the year after he gets divorced. He loses his primary relationship. Sometimes he loses access to his kids. And the primary cause of divorce in young people is not a lack of shared values. It's not infidelity.

It's economic strain. So one of the things I ask people in the 30s is, is a geographic arbitrage possible here? And you hear these people say, well, I live in San Jose. Well, why are you here? Well, I had a job here. Well, you got fired. You're laid off. Is this an opportunity to look for a job in Houston where, quite frankly, you won't have the same pressure and expectations economically?

I've been accused in the book of being too obsessed with money, which I think is an accurate criticism, but my self-worth as a man and also just anxiety in my relationships, money specifically a lack of it has been the primary cause of anxiety. And economic security is not only a function of what you make, it's of what you spend or specifically how much you have to spend. So in your 30s, assess your situation, is there an opportunity for geographic arbitrage? If you're at this point where you have a relationship, I just think you need alignment You need that very open and honest conversations.

This is where we are. This is where we want to be. We need alignment around our spending, around our earning. You know, if you haven't got a career yet, workshops and different ones, kitchen cabinet, but more than anything in your 30s, forgive yourself if you're not a baller already. I got out of the gates really fast in my late 20s

and was invited to Davos and been making a shit ton of money. And by the time I was 34, the dot-com thing had busted and I was broke again. And I was just so hard on myself. And I think it cost me, probably cost me less time than most people. I think for a year I was kind of wandering in the desert feeling sorry for myself. But the key to success is your ability to endure rejection and disappointment and move on and just keep, you know, one foot in front of the other.

But I think alignment in a relationship, if you have one by then, and the opportunity for some sort of geographic arbitrage that eases up the anxiety and pressure you might be feeling in your 30s as you start to think about kids or a family or believing like, if I don't have a house, house I'm a failure. What about 40s? Does it change much? I mean, I know this is podcast land and everything has to be geared towards 25 to 35, but selfishly at age 45, I'm like, huh, what should I be thinking about and worrying about right now or focused on? What changes, I think, in your 40s, is it's just the bottom line is you aren't out of time, but you're starting to run out of time. And your ability to adjust your lifestyle, if you haven't saved a decent amount of money, you have to start saving money. You have to figure out a way to spend less than you're making. And I think also the most devastating thing in your 40s economically is typically divorce.

We've been correctly finally sort of acknowledging the emotional labor women put in in the household. They're more empathetic, the more relational. They do a better job of kind of keeping the house running smoothly. I think that we're finally coming to a point where a key component of masculinity or being a good man is also providing some emotional labor and specifically a couple of things. I'm assuming by this time maybe you have a wife and kids and it's hard. Trying to keep the marriage together. I'm not saying you stay in a toxic relationship, but the most devastating thing that'll happen to you economically, if you get divorced in your 20s is kind of a do-over. Like each other, it was wrong. You probably don't have kids.

Divorced in your late 30s or 40s usually means. you have kids in the house, and it's going to take you, it's what took my parents down. It's what took them from upper middle class to lower middle class overnight. And it was like 10 years of rage. You know, my dad was 43, my mom was 38. So I think showing up emotionally and really trying hard to make your marriage work in your 40s. And then it sounds sort of past day, but I think the best thing you can do for your kids is treat their mother really well.

But in terms of professional, I think it's just very situational at that point. you have trajectory and senior level sponsorship at that point, you're in your 20s and 30s, you can press the reset button, move to Madrid, try and find another career and live a happy life. Once you're in your 40s, if you've collected some dogs and kids, the reality is you have to figure out a way to start saving some money. Because if you want real anxiety and depression and stress in a capitalist society, wait to your kids need to go to college, you're getting a little bit older, and you haven't established any sort of economic trajectory, that is scary. That's a scary place to be that will likely put huge strain not only on your relationship with your partner, but your relationship with your kids.

But again, going back to that kitchen cabinet, you need a group of people to advise you because a lot of it's just situational. No, don't leave your job and go start a business. You're doing well. You're at IBM or you're at a company, you know, you're in a union. People romanticize entrepreneurship. I can't get over how many people encourage other people to go start a business. take off in a camper. That's the influencer advice.

Burn the ships. Quit your job so that you can't pay your rent and you have to figure out how to do it next month with your new business flipping couches on Craigslist. I would say anyone who tells you to follow your passion is already rich. Quite frankly, you just don't have the freedom to be as non-pragmatic. And again, it kind of goes back to real alignment with your partner. And then, you know, at that point, it depends.

A lot of people are going through divorce at that age. But it's something, I mean, I can just tell you how I changed in my 40s one. I started thinking more about other people and trying to establish a kindness practice, even if it was just stopping people on the street and saying, you know, an older couple, you look great or whatever it is, being nice to the people you work with. But I think the best thing, other than trying to establish a kindness practice in my 40s, probably the best thing I did was I realized that the best thing I could do for my sons was to be really good to their mother. There's a lot a research showing that with kids, they're very much, they don't listen to what you say, they model

what you do. And the primary relationship, how you treat your partner, really resonates with kids in terms of not only how they approach their relationships, but how they treat other people. So by your 40s, you probably have a partner or hopefully have a partner. And if you have kids, I think a lot of it is for men doing the emotional labor to try and stay married, which I didn't, by the way. I got divorced. The resentment I have for my dad, who recently passed away and resulted in me not having gaps of sometimes months and years so I didn't speak to him. It wasn't even that he wasn't there for me. He just wasn't very nice to my mom. That was the greatest source of anxiety in my life. And not having money was really hard.

And my dad could have made our lives a lot easier if he had just been a little bit more generous with my mom. And I think it was a terrible role model and expectation for how I would approach relationships and women. Anyways, that's my therapy for the day. Do you think he regretted that? Oh, yeah. As he got older, he became very emotive and very generous and even loving. And he used to tell me, he couldn't get out the phone with me when I was in my 40s without saying, I love you. And I didn't say it back. And finally, he said something. He said, you know, you could say it back around so I'm like, dad, I needed to hear that when I was eight. I don't need to hear it now. It's like, really could have used that about 30 years ago. And then one of the big unlocks for me, and this is a piece of

advice I would give to people, is I had this torture relationship with my father because the way I approach relationships, I inadvertently had subconsciously a scorecard. Dad, you just weren't that good to me as a kid. I'm not going to be that good to you. I used to think, I used to like stop myself and say, I'm too good a son. I'm not going to talk to this guy for six months because he wasn't good to me as a dad. And what I decided was I really enjoy my dad. My dad's one of these funny, charming kind of alpha guy,

Scottish accent, handsome, holds a room like no one's business. So you take after him? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I got my mom's looks and my dad's character flaws. But essentially what I decided was, put the scorecard away and just what kind of son do I want to be. Ignore what kind of dad he was.

What kind of son do I want to be? be. I want to be a generous loving son. And putting the bullshit away and just deciding I'm going to be a generous loving son was this huge unlock in the last 20 years of his life. We just had this wonderful relationship that I benefited from hugely because as he got older and was just a better man, quite frankly, we just had this fantastic relationship and the unlock extended the rest of my life. And that is, across all my relationships, Jordan, I took this very capitalist transactional approach. If I'm friends with Jordan, you know, if we're going to dinner, like, I want you to come to my neighborhood for dinner as much as I go to yours. Like, I kind of picked up on, did you pay as much

as I paid for dinner, you know, whatever? It was a transaction. And if I wasn't getting as much back from your friendship as I thought I was giving, I exited the relationship. If I had a girlfriend and her parents came to town and I hung out with her father, I would have this scorecard. Well, I expect you to hang out with my parents when they come to town. And the problem is when you have the scorecard, you always end up unhappy, and it's very hard to sustain relationships because you will naturally inflate your contribution and diminish theirs. And so the big unlock for me with my father and then extended to the rest of my relationships is now I just ask myself, what kind of friend do I want to be, what kind of coworker do I want to be, what kind of son do I want

to be, what kind of boyfriend do I want to be? And I live to that standard, and I'm not a dormant. I exit relationships and shed relationships all the time. But hold yourself to that standard and then just enjoy it. And by the way, if you're adding surplus value to a relationship, that's kind of the point. I've done a lot of work on happiness. And what they find is that people who are loved are happier than people who aren't loved. But the people who are happiest are the ones that find a lot of people that let them love them. It's the people that give the most love that are actually the happiest. And so an enormous unlock for me has been a goal around not a transaction where I'm on the right side of it.

But how do I find relationships where I can really leverage my skills, my generosity, whatever is my character to just give a lot and be that guy, be the guy, be the friend, be the boss I want to be, and just put away the scorecard. And that was really my unlock with my father,

and what I realized is I wasted, but I would have been much happier in my 20s and 30s had I just put the scorecard away and just tried to be the man I want to be. Scott Galloway, thank you very much. you, Jordan. Always enjoy seeing Jordan. What if everything you've been told about building wealth is total BS? Scott Galloway joins me to dismantle the myths and lay out a brutally honest roadmap to financial

security in today's economy. The greatest bump in mortality for men is one when their spouse dies and two, when they stop working. And when they lose their social fabric and their purpose, they get inactive, sometimes depressed. And when you get inactive and depressed, your brain kind of sends out a hormone or a message saying, oh, it's time to die. This person isn't adding any value. Supposedly, for every additional year you work, your life expectancy actually goes up. So what they don't teach you is the smart thing to do is the moment you have assets, start diversifying. And here's a thing. You don't need to be a hero. You don't need to find the needle in the haystack.

Figure out what you're good at. Find a way to save more than you spend. Realize how fast time is going to go and diversify. This is what you're going to. you become passionate about is when you get to our age, you become really passionate about taking care of your kids. You become really passionate about taking care of your parents and being able to take your spouse to really wonderful places. You become passionate about the absence of stress from your relationships that not having economic security injects into every relationship. Success and entrepreneurship is your ability to endure rejection, ability to endure failure. And entrepreneurship is really just a synonym for salespeople. Don't be an idiot. Follow these simple

equations, and you're going to be fine. Develop economic security for you and your family by finding something you're great at. Make some money, save some money, understand how fast time is going to go and diversify. If you've ever wondered why working hard isn't enough, check out episode 1074 with Scott Galloway. Big thanks to Scott Galloway for helping us crack open one of the most awkward, politicized, emotionally radioactive conversations of our time. Look, men are struggling. Not all men, not only men, but enough men that ignoring it is no longer a really good option and shaming it sure as hell is not a solution. If we want a strong society, if we want healthy families, stable communities, and fewer dudes spiraling into conspiracy rabbit holes or porn-induced catatonia, we need real conversations about purpose, connection, risk-taking,

and building surplus value, whether it's through children, craft, career, or community. But the takeaway here is not men are doomed or everyone else has it easy. It's that we can actually do something about this. We can be better role models. We can develop better friendships. We can engage in better parenting, better expectations, better willingness to endure rejection, better willingness to actually leave the house and be uncomfortable. You're not

supposed to go through life alone. You're supposed to assemble a high council, prune your friendships, assertively help others, and find a partner who not only protects you from the world but occasionally protects you from yourself. And hey, if you grew up poor, lonely, confused, or feeling like you were two steps behind everyone else, that doesn't have to define

you. The point is not to become perfect. The point is to become better and ideally to make other people better along the way. All things Scott Galloway in the usual place on the website, advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Also, our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. The idea is to give you something specifical, practical, I said specifical, whatever, you know what I mean, something that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships, in under two minutes. and if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out.

It is a great companion to the show. Jordan Harbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six-minute networking as well over at six-minute networking. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show, it's created an association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace, Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tatas Adlauskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's down on men or maybe is a man or maybe is raising one, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.

This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the

benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting. So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work, itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.