The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Why We’re Having Less Sex — and Why It Matters (ft. Dr. Debra Soh)

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Scott Galloway speaks with neuroscientist and author Debra Soh about why young people are having less sex, and what that decline reveals about intimacy, loneliness, and human connection. They also discuss how dating apps have turned romance into a winner-take-all market, how pornography and AI offer frictionless substitutes for relationships, and why growing resentment between men and women is making it harder to find lasting love. Follow Dr. Soh, @DrDebraSoh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and I've lined up some incredible guest host to join me. Mark Cuban, Chelsea Handler, Caitlin Collins, and a lot more you won't want to miss. Already out my conversation with Hillary Clinton. Among many other things, we get into redistricting fights, reshaping state politics, and what Trump's golden makeover of the presidency actually means. and it's not good. Trust me, you don't want to skip this one. Find Pivot on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts. Summer vacation has gotten very expensive.

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New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Episode 409. 409 is the air code serving southeastern Texas. In 2009, Uber was founded. True story. I was going on a date. And the girl asked me to pick her up in an Uber. And I said, well, it's pretty expensive.

It's okay if my wife gives us a ride. Welcome to the 409th episode of the Prop G-Pod. In today's episode, we'd speak with Dr. Deborah So, a neuroscientist who's specializes in human sexuality and biological explanations for behavior. We discuss her latest book, Sex Stinction, the decline of sex and the future of intimacy, and the forces reshaping sex, relationship, and human connection. So we think about this a lot in the context of struggling young men who are having a difficult time forming relationships, and obviously sex is a part of that. I think Dr. So was having a great moment. It's like, what's with all these amazing neuroscientists?

Anyways, super smart, another young voice. We love to try and find, and I don't want to say discover, but bring some sunlight and elevate young voices who are just incredibly impressive. And Dr. So fits that bill. Really impressive woman. Just super, we really enjoyed this conversation. Anyways, with that, we hope you also enjoy our conversation with Dr. Deborah So. Dr. So, where does this podcast find you?

I'm in Toronto. It really is a wonderful city. I think of it as sort of a clean New York. By the way, congratulations. You're blowing up, for lack of a better term, and I immediately forwarded to our producers and said we have to get Deborah Soe on the podcast. I love the work you're doing.

The first line of your book, Sex Stinction, reads, society has never been more sexualized, yet we are having less sex than ever before. And one piece of data you cite is that in the United States, one in three men and one of five women across all adults, regardless of marital status, report not having had sex in last year. according to the general societal survey,

can you give us a rundown as to why this is happening? What is the sex extinction and what's causing it? Yes, well, thank you for your kind words too. So I had noticed this trend, starting in 2016, because that was the first time data had been published showing that there is this decline in sex that was happening across America. And so in that study, it showed,

it was based on, as you said, that sample of data that is nationally representative of Americans showing that millennials were the first generation to be showing this very pronounced decline in sexual activity. And this was expected to continue on for Gen Z. And since then, more data has come out consistently showing that there is this trend across the globe. It doesn't matter, as you said, marital status, age cohorts of people having less sex than ever before. And it is most pronounced in millennials and Gen Z. And among those generations, among young men in particular. So sex extinction, my book is about trying to understand why is this

trend happening, what is taking the place of sex. And my interest in sexual inactivity is partially because I used to study human sexuality scientifically, but also because it to me is a reflection of emotional intimacy and connection more widely. So if people are less interested in having sex, what is taking its place? Why are people less interested? And if this is even happening among married people and people who are partnered up, I don't think that's necessarily a good sign of where we're headed in society. But also I wrote the book as a guide for parents because we know so much more now about social media and screens and how technology has the potential to really derail young people's development. And in sex extinction, I talk a lot about how I think Gen Z has unfortunately been,

to some extent, a guinea pig generation because many of these technologies, they grew up not knowing a world without them. And I don't think parents should be blamed for that. But now that we do know more, hopefully being able to prevent further harm potentially to future generations and to adults as well, because I do think we're also being affected. Just because our brains are more developed, doesn't mean we're completely immune to these changes. So I want you to, I'm going to put forward a number of theses. I think about this a lot because, you know, I believe the most rewarding thing in life is relationships. And sex, which has, you know, you hear the word sex and your brain just starts firing in a lot of different ways. And I think in a lot of ways, people connotes sex with something

sort of nefarious or not wholesome. But the reality is sex is a fantastic bridge or on ramp into a relationship. And if we have less sex, I think it's going to mean we have less connection, less relationships, lower birth rates, and just generally less anxiety. I'm less anxious and less depressed when I'm in a relationship. And not even, not just sex and companionship, but even things like touch. I wonder if we're just touching less. So I want to put forward a number of D.C. around why this is happening and have you tell me where I'm right and wrong. Technology consolidates a market. It consolidates commerce, Amazon, social media, search, you know, 50 and 93% shares respectively, and mating has become digitized, and as a result, it's become a bit of a winner-take-all

economy. And the thesis is there's a small number of people having a lot of sex and the rest having a lot less sex. Where do I have that right and wrong? I think that's very much true. I mean, I have an entire chapter in sex extinction about dating apps and social media and how that alone has really warped our perceptions. And I can only imagine what it's like to grow up with this technology and not really know what it's like to meet someone and not be able to look them up online and creep them and find out all these things about them. And at the same time, you as a potential single person trying to find somebody, you know that anyone who's interested in you is going to do that to you. So what is the image that you feel you need to project online? So that's a

lot of pressure for young kids. The other part of that is, as you mentioned, because it is, I'm not sure if you said this explicitly, but it is a commercial enterprise. So these platforms are incentivized to want to keep you on there. So something like dating apps, it's not really in their best interest to have everyone find someone and end up happily married and never. ever need to use that technology again. So, I mean, I understand that and I respect it. It's, you know, it's a product like anything else. But I think when we outsource our personal lives and especially things like emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy to these platforms that are not necessarily looking out for our best interests or treating us as individuals who have

dreams and the desire to fall in love, that can be potentially very unhelpful and frustrating to people. And I think nowadays a lot of people are experiencing dating out burnout. So social media, too, that's really affected. I would say how, not even I mean, there's a huge body of research literature about the effects on how it has detrimentally affected their self-esteem, their body image, both the boys and girls in terms of body dysmorphia, muscle dysmorphia, and young boys, plastic surgery in young girls. You know, even in Toronto, I see young women all the time walking around. They're teenagers and they have injectables, which is crazy to me. But then the other thing is, so you feel this pressure in terms of your body, but then also, I think adults also are similarly affected by the types of partners they think that they should be pursuing, what they think they need to look like to attract other people, what they think they deserve. The whole trend of looks maxing is based on this erroneous idea that young boys need to look like super hyper alpha masculine gigacad guy when most women don't really care that much about what a guy that looks like. Yes, you want someone you're attracted too.

But for women especially, that handsomeness and that attractiveness is based on many other factors as opposed to just purely how tall you are, how strong is your jaw line, how muscular you are. If anything, most women don't want to date a really jacked guy because they find that scary. So social media dating apps, I think, and now we have things like AI chatbots, which I talk about in sex extinction, also pornography, creates this entire ecosystem that I think is a hall of mirrors and then also offers these potential replacements for in-person sex or in-person connection, that doesn't really fulfill us, but they do give this perception of fulfillment. So I think that's also a way for some people, especially they are struggling in their mental health to avoid having to go through the trouble of actually getting dressed, going out,

working on themselves, having social skills, interacting with people, dealing with rejection, not necessarily getting what they want. And then I have another chapter in Sex-Nation that talks about biological influences, so things like the birth control pill, potentially low testosterone, own environmental toxins that may also be affecting us on a level that we're not fully aware of, and until those things are addressed as well, I don't think we're going to be able to fully fix the issues that we're facing right now with this crisis. My dad always used to say that men get turned on with their eyes and women with their ears, and he said, you need to develop yourself and your rap and be funny.

It's like, be in reasonable shape, be a reasonable dresser, but it's more about your voice and what you say for men. Let's talk a little bit about venues. And that is, generally speaking again, I want you to pushback where I have this wrong. But if you talk to couples who have been married longer 30 or 40 years, 70 or 80 percent of them will say that one was much more interested in the other in the beginning. There's very rare there's that kind of romantic moment where someone drops the scarf and they look at each other and they're both in love. That typically is not how relationships play out. And usually it was the man that was much more interested in the woman because, just to be frank, men are less choosy.

Men feel like they have an obligation to spread their seed to the four corners of the earth. Women have an obligation to put up a much finer filter and pick the strongest, smartest and fastest seed, and it's the reason why our kids are taller and smarter than we are. But the venues to demonstrate excellence, or a man can demonstrate excellence in valor, and go through the courting ritual which mammals have, where the male tries to impress the female, there's fewer venues to demonstrate excellence. People have remote work. People aren't going to church or religious institutions.

40% of the bars and pubs have been closed in the UK since COVID. So is some or a lot of it just a fact there are fewer places, quite frankly, for men to break through and demonstrate excellence and establish that kind of overtime excellence? He was kind to his parents at Temple. He was great at work. He had great friends. He was really funny. I like the way he danced. Isn't a lot of this that were just not mixed?

as much? Yeah, and I would agree with that. And I think I tried to be as fair across the board in terms of pointing out what both sexers are doing right and what they could be doing better. So I would say in terms of, there's definitely a novel dynamic between the sexes. There's this, partially this hostility that I see fomented by online content, but also I think post-Me-2, that's made things a lot more complicated for both sexes. And I don't blame men for this because I think most young men are,

understandly terrified to approach a woman in public because they don't want to be labeled a creep. They don't want to potentially be filmed and put on social media or on the internet, have their life ruined forever. And then I also think, like you said, with the, it's not as just more generally can't date at work. It's not as socially normal to talk to strangers anymore. People feel very much like everyone's always on their phone. So those things combined. I think men need to be the pursuers. And like you said, I've found the same thing with couples that are happily married. Usually the man was more interested in the woman and he probably is a little bit more in love with her than she is with him, which is probably not a popular thing to say. But that's generally

what I found. And I've talked to lawyers who work in family courts and they say similar things. So I think that is because men naturally need to feel like they're invested in their partner and they need to know that they put the effort in. So if you have a whole generation of young men who are disincentivized from pursuing women because society tells them you don't want to be creepy, you don't want to be a harasser. They're also, if they're struggling with low testosterone, and they're lacking not just in terms of their libido, but also their motivation more broadly in life.

So one of the, I would say, main reasons why young men do strive to be successful is because those markers of success help to attract women because women, on average, tend to prefer partners who have resources, who are as successful or more successful than they are. So if young men are feeling lethargic, they don't have the energy, they don't have motivation or focus, interested in pursuing goals, that's a turn off to women. And then, and again, if they're struggling biologically, that's not their fault. But then I also think there's in our culture and systemically,

there's a real push to support young women in their success, almost at the expense of young men. So you have initiatives like diversity that explicitly penalize young men, or men more generally, especially white and Asian men, for no reason other than the fact that they are men. And I've had colleagues, former colleagues in academia, tell me that they have come across job postings. I've seen them myself where they explicitly say this person needs to be a minority, either a woman or some other minority status, to apply. So basically, men are excluded from these job applications, which is nothing more than discrimination. It's wrong. So that, I think, there's a sense that if we care about men or we are sympathetic toward them, that is somehow

a cost to women. That's a threat to women. Women are going to be sent back to the kitchen. not have equal rights, not be allowed to pursue their careers. But then you also have with this online discourse, because it's become so polarized and young men today are saying, well, what did I do to deserve this? I have no issue with women. I just don't like being discriminated against. So then you have these influencers come in and say,

okay, you guys want someone who tells you you're not toxic and that masculinity is great. We're going to tell you how to be really dominant and really, say, discriminate against women, tell them that they have no rights, they just don't deserve equal rights anymore. And then you have the opposite side of that of female influencers saying to young women, see, this is why you can't trust men. This is why men are all sexist and misogynistic. So it keeps going on back and forth and back and forth. So going back to your earlier point, I do think, yeah, it's more important that your partner is kind to you, compassionate, supports you. Both of you care about each other, put each other first. Those things like agreeableness and personality factors are much more predictive of success in a marriage. But I also think because people spend so much time online and the young. younger generations do. And that's their primary way of meeting people interacting now.

They're being fed this ideology of what they need in terms of how their partner needs to look and the status that person brings to the table as opposed to, like you said, is this person, what are they like just on a day-to-day basis? Do you like being around them? Do they make you laugh? Are they nice to people? Can they have a conversation with a stranger? Things like that. So it feels as if the gulf between connection is getting wider and wider. And so, And this is a wonderful thing. Women are ascending. Women no longer, I think, are not nearly as many women feel the economic need to partner.

They can take care of themselves, and that's great. And naturally speaking, in a marketplace, as one party increases its game, their expectation should naturally increase. I think that's fair. And men, simply put, need to level up in terms of their own plan, their own economic viability, their own emotional viability, their physique, their dressing, making an effort, being creative, you know, showing up, making an effort, leveling up. And I think a lot of people would agree men aren't leveling up at the same pace that women are leveling up.

So it's understandable to think that women might complain there aren't enough economically and emotionally viable men out there. At the same time, and I want you to critique both of these assertions, women's expectations because of online. What I keep seeing online when you have these women talking about is I keep hearing six feet, six figures. like that is the bare minimum. Like they're being reasonable. Of course, six feet, six figures. And if you take out married men, obese men, men over the age of 50, it's like 8% of the population.

So do you agree that, one, men aren't leveling up at the same rate that women are leveling up, creating just a golfing qualifications or quality? And two, at the same time, women's expectations have become somewhat unreasonable, therefore just creating a gulf of expectations that is not breached or crossed. I write about the three-sixes rule in sex station, which you mentioned. You mentioned two of the three-sixes. I think you maybe are trying to be polite and not mention the third one, which has to do with size down below. So yeah, women, there is this essentially this lore, I guess, or perspective that women should seek out a man who is a top tier.

male specimen in terms of his height, how much money he makes, his supposed ability to fulfill you sexually, although I will say that it's not necessarily length. Other factors matter. This has been documented by the scientific research. But I do think women should be allowed to what they want, want to what they want. And there is an evolutionary or historical reason why women have these preferences somewhat ingrained in them in that, yes, someone who is taller than you, a partner who is taller than you can physically protect you. He probably is going to be a more successful provider as well. So the six figures annual income speaks to that.

And I guess the sexual fulfillment has to do with you being happy in the relationship. But at the same time, it's gone a little bit off course because those are not really metrics, as I mentioned earlier, that are going to point to relationship or marital success long term. And there are surely plenty of men. out there who do meet these three-sixes who are still jerks and who are not going to necessarily be husband material. So you take this issue. And what I want to say too is that when you have the influencers, right, these say manistri type influencers who are pointing to hypergamy and saying, see, this is why all women cheat. This is why women can't be trusted. This is why women have,

quote, delusional standards. I'm thinking, but it's no different from men having their standards in terms of men tend to want to date women who are younger and who are attractive and who are symmetrical, because these are all indicators of fertility and reproductive health. So I think both sexes should be allowed to want what they want. I'm just trying to, you ask me for criticism, so I'm trying to push back on these ideas from whatever angle I can. But I do think it's gone to the point where it's so unrealistic now for both sexes. But combine that with the fact that women are excelling in terms of their same-age peers. So women are doing better in terms of education and occupation. So there is a smaller pool of viable men, viable successful men for these women to choose from. So all women are

basically fighting over the smaller pool of men because men don't tend to care as much about a woman's success. It doesn't matter how successful woman is. She's going to be fighting after the same pool of men. And then the vast majority of men who are not as successful have basically been shut out of the dating market. And so now they're going down the route of these other replacements like the chatbots, the sex robots and sex dolls pornography. And instead of society recognizing that there's a problem here and that we should stop discriminating against men, we should try to tone down this animosity between the sexes. It's saying, okay, we're just going to give you guys, quote, solutions. So we're going to tell women, okay, if you want to,

say have a family. You want to get married and have a family. Not to say that everyone has to do this, but if you do choose to, for women, our biological window is much more unforgiving than men's. So if you get to a certain age and you don't have a man with whom you'd like to have a child, now society is saying, let's normalize this idea of women having children on their own, like basically electively having children on their own, which I can imagine for many women, if you get to a certain age and you'd like to have a child and you don't have a partner, it's not my place to judge someone who decides to do that. But I also think ideally, I think it would be preferable for anyone would say it's easier to have two parents.

I'm the child with a single mother. Let me just be clear. It's harder. I experience it. It's harder to raise a kid on your own. And I think also for the children, like they ideally would have both parents in their life as well, as opposed to being brought into a situation where it's, you know, by design, single motherhood. And society's saying, almost encouraging women, free.

raise your eggs at a young age so that you have all the time in the world. This is the narrative, that you have more time, say, so you can focus on your career, which is great. But they don't, my sense is the messaging is not so much. This really should be a last resort and you should still prioritize trying to find somebody because, again, this is not a sure bet that it's going to work. So I think reproductive tech, you know, I have a chapter on that. Again, I think if people find it helpful for them, that's their right. I'm not judging anyone. But it's more that these are Band-Aid solutions and they're not addressing the real problem. And unless we address the root problem,

it's only going to get worse. And also with the men to basically say, okay, well, let's just let you guys have your sex robots and your sex dolls. And you can go off. And as long as you're having your orgasm and you're not bothering anyone and you're not lighting anything on fire

or destroying things, then we'll just ignore you and let women continue succeeding. I don't think that's good for society either. And also, women want, as I said, to date men who are successful. So I would ask for ask women in this audience. I've got a lot of pushback about sex extinction from young women saying,

why should we care about young men or why should we care about men? You know, men have done us dirty for so long. That's time that they get a taste of their own medicine. But that's really not a very one positive outlook, but also it's going in the end, do you in because don't you want to eventually find someone and fall in love? And if you can't find someone, it doesn't help anyone to sit there and just keep, you know, digging your heels in and saying we're not giving the other side. any room. We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for the show comes from Nutrifle.

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sophy.com slash profchegee home. Sofi Bank, N.MLS 6968-9191. Member FDIC offer loans directly or through Spring EQ, a state licensed lender. NMLS 1464945, Terms and Conditions applies so if I receives a fee for loans broker to spring EQ. Yeah, you bring so much grace and, like, data and, you know, you're so articulate around issues I think we're all feeling. It feels as if the genders have done a great job convincing themselves that it's the other gender's fault. And a couple things. One, I'm curious what your thoughts are. So I think for the first time since they started tracking it, more, the majority of young people, don't drink. And what I've said, and I've got a lot of pushback for this,

because alcohol ruins a lot of lives. If you have addiction, you should be very careful. But I have found, generally speaking, that alcohol can play a productive role in overcoming inhibition in establishing initial contact, establishing initial physical contact, and that leads to physical intimacy and relationships. And I'm not suggesting everyone go out and start doing tequila shots. I'm suggesting that the anti-alcohol movement has a knock-on effect of less connection, initiation, and less sex. Your thoughts on the anti-alcohol movement? I see what you're saying. I personally don't drink, but I don't think that everyone has to abide by those rules. I think what matters is that, like you said, people have insight into their own

behavior. And I've heard you say before that when your mood is low or you're feeling depressed, you avoid alcohol and cannabis, which I think is very smart because, yeah, I used to work with patients with addiction. And for sure, there's a high propensity, especially if you have a biological predisposition for addiction in the family that I don't know if you do or you don't, but just speaking more generally that it's a potential risk that someone might lean on those substances a little bit too much if they are going through a difficult time. So I think for the average person, say, who isn't as affected or isn't at risk, I could see that because generationally, Gen Z tends to be more risk-averse. I think that is a symptom.

of the widespread anxiety that they experience. Roughly half of Gen Z has anxiety or a diagnosed anxiety disorder. So very many of them are on medication for it also. Very many of them are on antidepressants as well. So I think anything that could help them be a little bit less inhibited would be a good thing. But I guess my concern would be for some of them, especially if they are struggling with underlying mental health issues, if they were to start using substances as a way to help. make them feel a little bit more socially lubricated,

would that potentially bring other issues to the fore in terms of, okay, now you're struggling with dependence on these substances. And so the issue may not be that you're too scared or uptight in social situations, but that you need to take it before, yeah, before you go. I think ideally just for people struggling with anxiety to know, especially young people to know, because I talk to so many Zoomers and they're so sweet, they're so smart, and they're aware, They're aware that they struggle socially and with anxiety.

And it's just to let them know it's very normal to feel that way, especially when you're young and you're still figuring yourself out. And that doesn't mean that you, now don't go off your medication just because I say this, but talk to your care team. But I do think the solution isn't necessary to medicate people or to tell them that they have something severely wrong with them or that they need to, I don't know, that they don't fit in or whatever,

that it's something particular to them. But it's just this is a normal part of human life. And just because other people seem to be, like they have their act together, doesn't mean that they necessarily do. Where we're headed, isn't this in many ways, if we take the aperture back, aren't we returning to the laws of the jungle or quite frankly the way that the world has been through most of history, that I think the greatest innovation in history is in vaccines or the iPhone, I think it's the American middle class. And only 40% of men throughout history, I understand, have reproduced

and 80% of women. The majority of men throughout history have not had the opportunity to reproduce because the majority of the spoils have gone to a small group of people, and they can engage in what I would loosely refer as Porsche polygamy. And then after World War II, we created this amazing thing called the middle class where we had a bunch of seven million men

returned from overseas. They were handsome, they were fit, they looked good in a uniform, National Highway Transportation Act, a GI Bill, and we made them economically viable and, quite frankly, attractive, and they started mating a lot.

And now it appears, with income inequality, we're moving back to the way the world has been throughout most of history, and that is a small number of men have a disproportionate amount of mating opportunities, and the rest have almost none. Isn't where we're headed back to, quite frankly, the way the world has been through 99% of history, and we're moving away from what was an anomaly, a wonderful, a wondrous anomaly, where someone of perfectly average attractiveness as a male could expect a find a mate and enjoy that. But aren't we headed to something that has been more normal than not throughout history? Yeah. So the thing is with this smaller pool of men who are succeeding

in society, they have their pick of the lot in terms of potential partners. So they will set the terms in their relationship with regard to how soon they expect to have sex, whether they're allowed to have sex with other partners, whether their partner is allowed to have sex with other people or not, because what you'll commonly see with some very high status men. And I don't necessarily agree with this, just to be clear, but they will say, I'm allowed to sleep with whomever I want. You can only have sex with me to their female partner. And if she's not okay with that, he says, fine, I'll just go find someone else who will be okay with that. So the other thing is, what you will see is that some men will, say, start a family with one woman and then go on and

have multiple marriages and multiple families. So it's not as though, it's not necessarily, I guess, polygamy, but it's somewhat in succession as opposed to simultaneously. And so you know, I don't think there really any winners. Suppose you could argue that the men in these positions are the winners, but it's not really great for the women who are involved or the men who are not able to access any sexual partners. But I would say the thing that's different in the modern or contemporary environment is that now we have this animosity between the sexes where men and women who can't find anyone say, actually, I'm better off like this. Actually, I don't need the opposite sex. Women are doing so well, they just make their money. They say, okay, if I want a family,

I can do it on my own. Nowadays, having a boyfriend is, quote, embarrassing anyway, right? That's what mainstream news is saying. And then the men are saying, well, I've got my replacements, my sex robot, she doesn't talk back to me, she doesn't nag me, she doesn't talk about things I don't want to talk about. So there's that difference. And I think also if at a biological level, we are being disincentivized to essentially mate, you know, young women who are, say, on the birth control pill, that's affecting their sexual psychology and then young men if they're not motivated to want to go out and pursue partners, those are factors that are going to suppress sexual inclination, even if, say, in the past people, we're not experiencing these things, so they're more inclined to say, I don't like my

situation, I want to make things better, I do want to find someone, and so I'm going to work on myself, I'm going to do what I need, or maybe we'll overthrow the current ruler so that we can get what we want, as opposed to now, it's very much this, almost this indifference. to a person's situation or a preference for it. So I coach young men and I want you to coach me and make me a better coach. And I find the first thing when we start outlining, give me your goals, one, three, and five years

and let's reverse engineer a series of actions to get you to that goal starting with today. Let's work all the way back to today, what you do you need to do to get there. And the first thing, often done the most cited goal is I want to move out of my parents' place. I want to get my own apartment. So that's a money thing, right?

And we can figure that out. And that's mostly about starting. don't be a snob about what job you deserve to start making some money. The second thing is if you get to know them and they start to trust you, it's always the same thing. I'd really like a girlfriend, right?

I can tell the moment they sort of trust me and they say, they look around, and they're embarrassed to say it, I'd really like a girlfriend. And in addition to some of the things around, all right, let's talk about why women are attracted to men, and we need to work on those things. But I find a lot of it is

a willingness to endure rejection, what I call your mojo, and to get out there. And I sit here, I'm in Los Angeles, and I can see UCLA from my hotel. And when I was at UCLA, the only way to get a reasonable facsimile of sex was to either go to your parents' house

and watch Cinemax or to find an old playboy in your dad's garage. There was just a lot of friction, and it wasn't that good of fun. facsimile of sex. And if I had 24 by 7 life-like porn available to me on every screen, I think I probably would have been less likely to go on campus and take risks and try and initiate contact with strange women that might ultimately result in a dialogue, a relationship, you know, going out together and someday maybe sex in a relationship. And so I talk about

modulating porn. And that is, I think it's unfair to tell a young woman. man to go cold turkey. I don't know if that's realistic, but just keep, you know, anything that reduces that fire is going to reduce your ability to get out. Talk about, and I found there's just a total lack of peer-reviewed research around porn because I don't think many academics you might have a view that want to be known as a porn professor. But talk about the role that adult content plays in reducing young men's fire, if you will, to get out there and take those sorts of risks. Right. So when you, you're... you have an orgasm, it floods you with feel-good hormones that help to deal with stress,

help to put you in a better mood, but it also sedates you to some extent. And like you said, it can diminish someone's motivation. And so historically speaking, it benefited men to be sexually frustrated because that would drive them to want to go out and do things, build things, have show productivity, because that is what women found attractive. So in order to get an orgasm, I mean, there's always masturbation, but the thing is porn provides this very remarkably realistic depiction of sex, especially online pornography today, is pretty much like you're watching other people in real time. It's not like magazines back in the day. And I used to write for a very well-known men's magazine that features nude women.

So my views on porn have changed a lot since the start of my journalism career. But when you have an orgasm looking at porn, it activates the same brain. network that is activated during sexual activity. So it is basically like having sex to some extent or you are being tricked into feeling as though you're having sex, even though you're not, you're watching something on a screen. So the resulting orgasm is to some extent rewarding a person for not doing the things they would have previously had to do to get that orgasm. And so that can become reinforcing so that the next time a young man, although I think young women are probably experiencing problems with porn as well nowadays because porn exposure has been so ubiquitous among young children.

But say for young men in particular, because it is so terrifying to walk up to a woman you don't know and start talking to her and ask her out on a date. And then to go through the hassle of setting up the date, meeting her, talking to her, seeing if you have anything in common, potentially being rejected by her having to follow up after, ask her out for a second date and do this a bunch of times before she actually greased out sex with you, and not knowing exactly when that's going to happen or if that's going to happen, if you have porn in your pocket available at any point in time, and there's an unlimited number of partners on there, and you can find exactly what you're looking for in terms of what the partner looks like, how she behaves.

Now you, if you have AI pornography becoming so popular, where you can just basically tell the AI what you wanted to do, and I've tested these platforms out myself, and it is insanely realistic. It scared me how realistic it is. So you don't have to go through that process. And so the next time, a man is sexually frustrated, he can simply say, why am I not just going to go take up my phone

and take care of it that way instead of going through this long process and then on top of it because it's so hyper-competitive nowadays, unless he is one of those super successful men. It's so hyper-competitive for him to get a chance. And he doesn't know if the woman he approaches if she's going to be disgusted and angry at him and potentially he's going to have a really bad reaction from her. Although I don't think most women are like that. I think that that's a small segment of women who are just very, we'll say, disregulated. But I would say for young men, I mean, I've said previously to try to cut it out entirely.

I think it depends on how old you are and how much it's detrimentally affected your life, because I do think porn is probably affecting more people negatively than we are talking about in society. I think porn has become such a common socially acceptable vice. It's so, I mean, in sex attention, I talk about how softcore pornography imagery is basically everywhere. You know, it's an ad campaign, it's music videos, it's... Euphoria. Entertainment shows, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's everywhere. It's not really shocking. But the strange thing is that young people are seemingly disinterested in it. And so when you can just, I think that's also because, again, being exposed at such a young age, it's not really, it's not really something that's taboo or sexy even anymore. So if you can, let me just try it for 30 days for young men. If you sense that it may be affecting you negatively, it's worth trying. And again, it's probably going to be very difficult, especially if it's something that

you've become so used to relying on for sexual gratification. But I can also say from conversations I've had with many young women that they can usually tell if a guy they're with has watched a lot of porn based on how he interacts with them. And to be honest, how he performs in bed. And he may not be aware. So that's just another thing to mention. And I'm not trying to shame men for this or shame women for this, but just to say, be aware that what you consume on a daily basis or regular basis is probably influencing you in some way. We'll be right back.

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It's Megan Rapino. I've been thinking a lot about this one question I've been asked over and over. A question about the choices I've made, the colors of my hair, the things in the world I've spoken about, and the things that I haven't. I've heard this question asked so many different ways, but it always came down to, why are you like this? And as you know, there's no simple answer because people are not simple. We're messy and complicated and contradictory and layered. So on my new show, I'm sitting down with the ultimate disruptors,

the athletes, the artists, the activists, and the architects of our culture who looked at the way things were and asked, why do we do it like this? and can we do it differently? My hope is to give us a little more space to that question and to the person on the other side of the mic, not to tell us their answer or read from their script, but to take us on their journey. Check out my new show, Why Are You Like This,

on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app. New episodes drop every Thursday. We're back with more from Dr. Deborah So. So if you were to, I want you to, I'm going to go very micro and then macro, I want to talk about advice for young men and women and then policy. If you were to speak to men or coach young men and women as far as I know you may do this and say, all right, let's just talk more broadly, that you're interested in having a relationship and some sort of physical intimacy

might be a step to a relationship. What advice, general advice, would you give to men who say, I am interested in figuring out a way to establish a relationship? What are they doing wrong? What do they need to do less of? of and then do the same thing for women you would coach. All right. So I would say with, I'll start with a young women.

I would say if you are looking for a man to have a positive mindset, I think this applies to both, but just to have a very open approach or perspective of the opposite sex, there was a poll that came out recently. I wrote about this for the Globe and Mail, and I wrote about online radicalization in young women and how actually among young women. So they looked at gen's years between the age of 18 and 30, and they found that more young women actually have a negative view of the opposite sex than do young men. And this is especially pronounced in young women age 25 and younger. It was only, I believe, a third of women under the age of 25 had a positive view of men, whereas with men it was closer to something like 70%. So I think there is a huge chunk of young women out there who hate men. And that's going to make dating very difficult. Just like if you're a man who hates women, it's and it's going to be very difficult. But so that alone, having a positive outset about the opposite sex is going to do wonders for you.

I would say also to just in terms of your body language, your facial expressions, be very friendly when you're out in public. Smile if you see a man whom you find attractive, smile very widely. I love to cite the study showing that a part of the brain called the medial orbital frontal cortex activates when someone sees an attractive face. And it activates even more strongly when that face is smiling. So men will feel compelled to come and approach you. hopefully he'll be single. Yeah, they'll feel, even if they're a little bit scared, that is usually the green light that men need to know this is okay.

This woman is not going to banish me into oblivion if I come and talk to her. And then I would also say, and just, you know, be very, same theme, be very obvious. From the men I've talked to in my audience, they say they just need to know that a woman is interested and that they're getting all the signs. So just basically make a lot of eye contact, touch your hair, touch your clothes, adjust yourself, and hopefully that will give him the courage to come over. The other thing I would say, so for young men, I think it's a combination of working on your physical health as well as your mental health.

And again, I think this applies to both sexes to some extent too, but because young men are struggling a little bit more in this way, diet is very important. So trying to eat clean food, unprocessed food. There's a study that showed that after 12 weeks of cutting out ultra-processed foods, a third of the depressed sample, their depression remit. So diet alone can have such a powerful effect on improving a person's mood. Physical activity is also very important. So if you don't have the energy or maybe you're too depressed to work out, even just going out for a walk, getting some physical activity, be out in the sun, try to get enough sleep. And then I would say, you know, the pornography,

try to avoid being on screens at all the time. And just don't let, I would say, the overall negativity, because my sense is there's a lot of nihilism among Gen Z and especially Gen Z men. And it's easy for me as a boomer to say this. I'm a millennial, but I guess I could be considered old-fashioned for thinking this way. But at the same time, I think it's worth just trying to move in a direction as much as you can. Even if you fall backwards and you make mistakes and missteps, that's okay. Just as long as you keep moving in the right direction. And don't listen to these outside voices who try to tell you how to be.

or how to attract women because they are generally trying to, one, make themselves more popular, make it more difficult for other men to succeed so that they can continue making all the money, making money off of you, getting all of the women because they're giving other men bad advice. And the same thing with, I'd say, female influencers who tell women to use men for their money and withhold sex and things like that. And just to be, I would say, charitable in your interactions with the opposite sex and to know that women can read hostility from a mile away. so if you do have animosity for them, most women are not going to find that to turn on.

I think there's a sentiment in society that women like bad boys or women like guys who mistreat them, but that's only a subset of women. And if you behave that way, yeah, if you behave that way, you're going to only attract a certain type of woman. And then these men, unfortunately, don't understand why they keep attracting the same type of women.

But I would also say just to think more broadly in terms of your past relationships and not to blame or hold the opposite sex accountable for things that your exes may have done to you. Because that's another theme I see. People tend to get really down on themselves about relationships that didn't work out, and they assume that that's going to be the continued pattern going forward. Yeah, I see just so much, I don't like to use the words misogyny and misandry,

because that's hate. But I'll call it a bias. And I find the in-cell movement is men just giving up and leaning into really unfortunate biases against women and these myths that women's success has been inversely correlated to their decline and that it's women's fault. I find it's basically men just giving up and trying to find an excuse for putting on the work that every man has had to put in to try and find a mate.

And at the same time, I also say on the other side, I feel like a decent number of female-centered podcasts have this underlying theme of men are irredeemable, you know, toxic. Like, the notion that men are somewhat worthless is become normalized, that, oh, Oh, of course, you know, men, you know. And then even in media, the best we can hope for is that a man who's kind of a dope and an idiot, very few redeeming qualities, overcomes it, and maybe at the end of the day, is an okay guy. That's sort of the aspirational male in media right now. And that podcasting, especially I find, especially the manist for everybody talks about it,

that's just straight up misogyny. I think a lot of men repel on that. say, no, that's just not true. I have enough sisters and women in my life to know that that's just not, that, that, that dog won't hunt, that's shit, that's a bunch of angry men looking for a community. But what doesn't get talked about a lot, and I'm curious if you witness it, is that it's a mainstream podcast hosted by women, they just generally assume, or there's a notion that men are just vastly inferior, and that they're cursed to like them. It's a curse that they have to put up with them or maybe try and find them

because the majority of them are just not good people or that they're borderline toxic. Am I being paranoid or am I, do you think that what I'll call anti-female bias that people talk about justifiably, but that same bias against men

exists in the podcast medium? I do think it goes both ways. And I've heard some female people in media I use the term heterophatality, something to that extent, which basically means we're attracted to men. We're straight, so we can't help it that we're attracted to men, but it's not good for us and essentially it's going to do us in at the end. So I think there are two sides of the same coin. And unfortunately, what I find is there's a bias in terms of not just what's acceptable in mainstream discourse. So you can rag all day about how much you hate men and men are trash and men are terrible and unalive all men say, hashtag unalive all men.

And then if you say anything like that about women, understandably, that's not allowed. You know, you'll get banned from social media or people call you a misogynist. I think it should not be allowed across the board. That's hateful across the board. You should not be able to, one, generalize an entire class of people. Well, the future is female. Can you imagine saying the future is male? It's just entirely different.

The other thing I was going to say is with feminism, I do think at the core of feminism did a lot for women, and I'll always be grateful for that. but at the same time, contemporary feminism has gone so far that it has, it basically advocates for discriminating against men, hating men. And so I really feel for young women who have been indoctrinated in this way, especially I'd say with the education system, mainstream media, there's one very popular pop star who, her music videos revolve around her killing men. And she has said publicly that in her universe, only men die. women never die. And women have female journalists have taken this as a point of celebration to say, you know, this is a wonderful world and we're all living in it. And can you imagine if it were the other way around and there was a male musician who's walking around, say, in every video,

depicting homicide against women and being celebrated for that, that would not happen today. And so this double standard, I feel for men as well because I can understand why they feel so resentful and why they say, if you are going to say that it's okay that people harm us, we are going to have the exact same lack of empathy for you. So in terms of potential solutions, I know you're asking about policy, I think we need to allow men to succeed and not see male success is something that is a threat to women

or a threat to women's success. I think, I've said before, I think we need to do away with diversity initiatives, which makes me very unpopular. But I do think that's the only way you can be fair. I, you know, even though systemically, or we'll say on paper, many institutions have said that they will not do this, but they still do behind closed doors.

They just are not as flagrant about it. I know this firsthand. I know there's informal affirmative action form men now at universities because they're having trouble finding men to apply. I just want to, I agree with you around DEI, but I do think there's room for affirmative action. I think it should just be based on income, non-gender, or ethnicity. I think there are some people that deserve a hand up. But you're right, it is a sensitive topic. But in college, it's 60, 40, female to male. And anyways, I agree with you, but I think a lot of universities, University of California did away with DEI in 1997. They have what's called an adversity index. They say,

look, if you grew up in Appalachia and your dad's in prison and your mom's a meth head, we're going to take that into account. But just being non-white or, you know, of a different sexual orientation, there are more gay people. The strongest over-indexing relative to the side of the population in college now is gay men. So I do think, I agree with you. I think it's caused more problems than it is. Anyways, I'm sorry, I apologize to interrupt. That's okay. Or I was, I was going to say in the case of Asians, you know, we are not white, but because Asians tend to succeed academically, they stick us in the, the non, there's a term they use that is specific to Asians to say that we are not white, but we are also not considered a minority either, which is ridiculous.

So, and I want to be clear also, I'm not saying that women are, the only reason women are successful is because they've been given handouts because obviously I think female success is a wonderful thing also. So I'm not saying we should go back to discriminating against women either, but just to give everyone a fair chance. And I would say to be more fair about the rhetoric in society in terms of holding institutions and say opportunities like mentorship and mainstream journalism, how these issues are reported on as opposed to saying we don't care about men. Men can cry in a pillow. That's their problem. They've been oppressing us for decades. centuries. So too bad for them. I think there needs to be more compassion across the board for both.

And just you were, you were in academia and you left academia to do your own research and write your own books. I'm curious why you left academia. I would think that universities would be such a great platform for you. I'm just curious, like your career path and why you've chosen to kind of go your own way, if you will. I loved when I was in academia. I loved my research. So my PhD is in neuroscience, and I was doing brain imaging of human sexuality at the time. So I used four different types of brain scans to look at the structure and function of the human brain as it relates to human sexual arousal. And it was fascinating research. I still to this day when I was just looking at MRI scans the other day and I got goosebumps because I remember how much fun it was. But I saw that the

climate in academia has been changing and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this as much should you be comfortable talking about it. But it's, it had, I could tell what was coming down the line. I felt that in designing my studies and decided the questions I wanted to pursue, I had to reverse engineer and figure out what it was we were supposed to find as researchers, and then we could only pursue certain topics that would be deemed acceptable to certain groups or to certain narratives. And then the other thing was I wrote this op-ed at the time about gender transitioning and children. And so my op-ed was basically the first to say from a research perspective, this is not backed by the science. It's actually these children who have gender dysphoria are more likely to grow up to be gay in adulthood.

They're not going to be transgender. And I fully support transgender adults in their decision to transition. I think that's their business. But in terms of children, that's not what the scientific research backed. So I knew in writing this op-ed and publishing it that I would probably be booted out of the system. So you didn't have tenure when you wrote it. No, no, no. I was very early on in my career at that time. And it was a choice I made and I don't regret it for one second. because I feel, if anything, the climate has gotten much worse since I left. And so not just around issues on gender. So my first book, The End of Gender, was very much about these issues in terms of how scientific research has to conform to certain narratives around gender and gender ideology. And then sex extinction now is basically an outgrowth of that to say, here are some myths or misinformation, legitimate misinformation about sexuality or dating and relationships

or say differences between men and women or say things based in biology or, I believe, evolutionary psychology that have been hidden from the public that I think would be helpful for people to know. And I'm not telling anyone how to live their life, but just that you, I don't think people can make good decisions without having all of the information or unbiased information available to them. And I also wrote in a way that's very much for a lay audience. So you don't necessarily have to have any background in science or biology or want to read, you know, hundreds of pages of really dry academic material to understand what I'm saying or to get something out of it.

Yeah, you have more insight into this than I do because I was never on a tenure track or doing research. I was doing a lot of research for not peer-reviewed research. I was just supposed to teach a mess of kids every year. It was called a clinical professor because when kids are paying as much money as they pay at NYU, they demand somebody or they demand a decent number of the professors have, quote-unquote, real-world experience. But I just don't think there's any denying. Academics have decided they're no longer or academic institution, centers of excellence pursuing truth, that they're engineers. of a political orthodoxy. And that that political orthodoxy sometimes is very fragile

and wants to accept a certain truth or pursuit of the truth as long as it aligns with the political orthodoxy that overwhelms 90 plus percent of the views of people who are drawn to academia. And there's a serious regurgitation or gag reflex and potentially threatening your career. I remember getting a memo from my department chair, and I think this was about 10, 15 years ago,

saying microaggressions will not be tolerated. And it was like, well, what is a micro? Isn't that why we're here? Isn't the whole point to say things that intellectually, I mean, everyone wants to feel safe. No one needs to feel offended unnecessarily. But are we supposed to be triggering our young people intellectually and giving them some resilience? I do think it's gotten better. I think it kind of troughed maybe five or seven years ago. And I do think now there's a recognition that we need to move back from being centers of excellence and pursuing the truth. I would have imagined for someone your age in academia, I think the problem is that, quite frankly, old people won't leave. And so there's a lack of, if you're at a place like Google or Open AI and it's growing, there's a ton of, there's a sucking sound upwards where someone talents such as yourself gets increasing opportunity. I think the biggest problem in academia right now is that the guy or the gal who is the bomb

and Gap 2 accounting in 1988 just won't leave. And as a result, there isn't that much opportunity for a, a rock star to kind of build up. And someone with your skills and retail skills, quite frankly, just has more opportunity to just go straight, you know, kind of go direct to consumer, if you will. So in addition to a lot of young people listen to this podcast and probably think, I want to be doctor so. I mean, it sounds like you have a very cool.

I see you on podcasts with Bill Maher. You are everywhere right now. I imagine a book is selling really well. You figured out a way to study something you're interested in and make a good living at it. How did this, give us a little bit of your origin story and how you ended up writing a book called Sex Stinction. Well, I would say, and I appreciate that,

and I have such a huge fan of you, and I look up to you so much. So to hear you say, that means a lot to me. I, my first book was very much about challenging orthodoxy around gender. And I feel as a former scientist, and now as someone who works as a journalist, as a science journalist, my job is to ask in questions that need to be asked, no matter how uncomfortable they make me feel. And so with this book, I was saying, okay, what do I think would be useful for readers to know? And, you know, this larger

question of disconnection has left me very worried because I don't think this is good for society. So to say, okay, where are the taboo areas in, say, the field of sex research that we're not supposed to talk about or the things even I myself, like my views on many aspects of human sexuality have changed from, say, the start of my career, when I left academia to now. And so it was a process of me saying, you have to have that integrity to ask those questions, even if it is going to upset your former colleagues and your friends, even if people in the field are going to come out and say that you are X, Y, Z, because you're saying these things. Either you're a bad person or you're lying or you're a bad, quote, scientist, or what have you, just because they don't like the conclusions of what

you're saying. And so I think that's the key thing is just my advice to young people listening is that listen to your own gut in terms of what's important to you or what you feel is right for you because people are going to try and pull you in all these different directions. And as long as you're doing what feels right to you and you're very focused, I think the willingness to make sacrifices and delay gratification is huge. That's advice I put in sex extinction. I have an entire chapter in sex extinction about how to hopefully mend the problems that we have. and what people can do to improve their own chances in dating and relationships and marriage. And to not necessarily look at what people to the left or the right are doing,

but to say this is what feels right for me. And even if I get pushed back, as long as I am open to taking that criticism, I always try to take criticism. I give people the benefit of the doubt in terms of why they're saying the things that they say and assume that they are doing it in good faith. Sometimes people are that's not the case. But just to be open to feedback so that you're always improved.

don't take it personally, if people are giving you criticism. That's something I would say if I were mentoring a young young person also is to say that if people criticize you, it's not necessarily that they're trying to make you feel badly. If anything, I think it's sometimes people are trying to help you because why would they bother giving you that feedback otherwise? So it might hurt, but at the same time, it can potentially help you, so to be open to that as well. Do what I do with my mentees.

Where do you want to be in five years and how do you reverse engineer that back to what you're doing now? For myself. I generally have a five-year plan, but I don't usually like to say it out loud because I don't like to jinx things. What I will say is that I generally also am very open to just seeing where things take me because when I first wrote that first op-ed, I had no idea what was going to happen. I just knew this is going to be the end of my academic career. I got the email saying it was going out. It's going to be published. And I remember thinking, we need to figure out something else now.

And I just said, I'm going to be open to what comes my way and just try to be as diligent. and as focused as possible to be in the best place I can be to move in the direction I need to go. So I don't want to avoid answering your question, but at the same time, I just feel so fortunate. And I really do believe that even for those who are really struggling right now, you're struggling in mental health, and maybe you feel really hopeless or down on yourself. Just keep going, because honestly, it takes time, but if you have that will and determination, you can make it happen. Dr. Deborah So is a neuroscientist who specializes in human sexuality and biological explanations for behavior.

Her latest book, Extinction, The Decline of Sex, and Future of Intimacy is out now. I think you are literally the perfect person to be catalyzing this super important conversation because, I mean, just to be blunt, I talk about this stuff a lot. And as a old white dude, I'm kind of, without the question. qualifications, I'm sort of wrong before I open my mouth. You need someone with credentials, you need someone who's done the work, you need someone with domain expertise, and quite frankly, it helps to have a young woman talking about it because people's guard doesn't come up. I think they're quite frankly just a little bit more open to hearing you pursue the truth, even if it might offend some people's sensibilities. I think this is going to be really consequential work,

and it's exciting to see how much pressure you're getting. And it must be an exciting moment for you. I trust you appreciate it. Anyways, very much appreciate your time and your good work, Dr. So. Thank you so much. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Janair. Cammy Rieke is our social producer. Bianca Rosario Ramirez is our video editor. And Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropG pod from PropG Media.