The Rich Roll Podcast - Modern Manhood: A Compilation On Redefining Masculinity, True Strength & Igniting Purpose, Community & Vulnerability In Men

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

This Modern Masculinity Compilation features Scott Galloway (ep. 826), Terry Crews (ep. 676), Jonathan Haidt (ep. 827), Arnold Schwarzenegger (ep. 784), John W. Price (ep. 939), John Pearson (ep. 739), and Toby Morse (ep. 816). We explore the friendship recession, boys without fathers facing incarceration, and digital isolation that predated COVID. Men exhausted from cosplaying confidence. The elephant metaphor about young males needing elder presence. Why vulnerability and toughness aren't opposites but partners. These conversations diagnose what's broken and map paths forward through mentorship and connection. Seven voices who showed up and got vulnerable. Pass it on. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Seed: Use RICHROLL25 for 25% OFF your first order👉🏼 https://www.seed.com/RichRoll25 LMNT: Get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any purchase👉🏼https://www.drinklmnt.com/richroll    Pique: Get up to 20% OFF plus a FREE rechargeable frother and glass beaker with your first subscription👉🏼https://www.piquelife.com/richroll Momentous: High-caliber human performance products for sleep, focus, longevity, and more. For listeners of the show, Momentous is offering up to 35% off your first order👉🏼https://www.livemomentous.com/richroll Rivian: Electric vehicles that keep the world adventurous forever👉🏼https://www.rivian.com Squarespace: Use code RichRoll to save 10% off your first order of a website or domain👉🏼http://www.squarespace.com/RichRoll     On: High-performance shoes & apparel crafted for comfort and style👉🏼https://www.on.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

We need to get bossier, we need to get tougher, we got to face adversity. Don't shy away from any of that because it just makes you stronger. If you look at the singular point of failure in a young man's life, it's when he loses a male role model. The thinking about suicide is different in boys and girls, and suicide is especially a plague that is destroying boys. Men right now have 50% less friends than we did 20 years ago. When you build community, and especially of kids,

and especially of men, I think that's a really powerful thing. Where are the mentors? Where are the healthy, masculine men who are helping to guide the next generation? Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. What does it mean to model healthy masculinity? And how do we model a healthy masculinity

for the next generation of young men? Today, we're going to talk about strength, we're going to talk about power, but not the physical kind, the mental and emotional kind. It's a conversation about masculinity, both toxic and healthy. This conversation is pure gold and it's coming right up, but first. We're brought to you today by Seed. I have hosted so much. many microbiome experts on the show over the years, and the more I learn about this very complex aspect of our physiology, more fascinating it becomes to me, but there is one thing that is simple. A happy gut is the foundation for a happy body and a happy life. And to get there requires care, requires intention. It requires a daily gut health-promoting ritual that, for me, begins with seeds DSO-1.

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Beneath countless problems in our society lies a sleeping giant, and that is the crisis of masculinity. To shed light on this critical issue and offer a fresh perspective, we welcome Scott Galloway to the podcast. Scott is a professor, he's an entrepreneur, an influential voice on technology and modern culture, and he really brought his trademark insight and wit to this discussion about the challenges facing young men today. If you have your shit together as a young man and you have the discipline to get the right certification, the graduates of my class at Stern, I teach the MBA, their average salary is $212,000. They go on a dating app, they're going to get a ton of attention. Their opportunities have never been more exceptional. Their vacations, their ability to take care of their parents at a young age, their economic opportunity, their chance to make millions is within reach by the time of the 30.

Those opportunities did not exist for our parents. So it's become sort of a winner-take-most environment. So it's great to be in the top 10%, but I can prove to all of us and 90% of our sons are not in the top 10%. And when you think about, it goes back to me, like what is America supposed to be? And the reason I've got involved here,

I was in that bottom 90. I was probably in that bottom 50. Is America about identifying the remarkable or identifying the children of rich people and turning them into billionaires? Is that what America is supposed to do? my view as America is about identifying or giving everyone in the bottom 90 a shot to be in the top 10%. That's how it was when I grew up. I was unremarkable.

I think that when I look at you, I see somebody, I mean, you're clearly passionate about this. This is a very mission-based, service-oriented kind of endeavor that you found yourself in. And you're somebody who's had many successes in different areas of life. You have economic independence. You could choose to be doing lots of different things. and you've chosen through all of the ways that you show up publicly and Profi Media and the podcasting, et cetera, to really focus your advocacy around this.

And it strikes me as very earnest and heartfelt. Like this really is a mission that you're passionate about. I don't know how much about you, Rich, but I was that guy, you know. I didn't have a lot of money. No romantic prospects. but America love me. Free education. Remarkable institution.

Great job. A chance to get economically viable, a chance to take care of my mother. I would have been one of those guys today. Angry, upset. So I relate. Yeah. Your mother was an integral figure in all of this. Yeah, look, the reason I'm here with you now, it's easy to credit your grit and your character for your success

and blame the market for your failures. I get to come here and I get to bomb out of here and go to the Beverly Hills Hotel and have like a, you know, do whatever the fuck I want and, you know, have an incredible life because of one, the generosity and vision of California taxpayers and the Regency University of California who said, job is to give unremarkable kids a remarkable opportunity, being born at the right place of the right time, and the unconditional love of my mother, right? Single immigrant grandmother,

I lived and died of secretary. But, you know, every day told me that I was wonderful. And I think that stuck with me. But yeah, like, I don't know what your relationship was like with your parents. But if you think about investing, there's some basics, right? You invest a little bit of money. compound interest is just this remarkable thing most people feel that the singular relationship in their life if they're asked to identify the singular relationship in their life they usually more often than not number one is their mother and it's because she made those tiny little investments in you every day waking you up with a soft voice worried about you could hear you get up when you were a kid and come in and come for you every day just dozens of little investments and you know your mom wakes up

and you wake up when you're older, regardless of whether you don't get along, maybe you don't even like each other, but it's a singular relationship. And, you know, I think a lot about the relationship, how powerful it was for me and what was really wonderful about my mom and she had the foresight to get a lot of men involved in my life.

Because if you look at the singular point of failure in a young man's life, it's when he loses a male role model. And it's interesting because we have their second most single parent homes in the world, behind Sweden. And when we say single parent, 92% of the time, that means it's a single mother. And what's interesting is the data shows that the daughters of single mothers have the same outcome, same college attendance, same income, same rates of self-harm. Boys, once they lose a male

role model, immediately become dramatically more likely to be incarcerated, dramatically less likely to graduate from high school, dramatically more likely to suffer from addiction. What it ends up is that while boys are physically stronger, they're emotionally and mentally, much weaker. Just because you say it's really important that a boy have a man involved in his life, that's in no way diminishing the superheroes that are single mothers.

But I think we have to acknowledge that it is really important that men be involved. And that's the problem with schools now that don't have enough men because there's an entire generation of young men that go through their lives until they're 25 with absolutely no men involved. And if you have kids,

you see that occasionally dad just plays a bigger role, his physical size, his voice, whatever it might be. And I'm thinking a lot about masculinity. I think the ultimate expression of masculinity is, I've got my shit sew together, I can take care of myself, I can take care of my immediate family, I can take care of my kids, the people I work with, you know, I pay good taxes.

But the ultimate expression of masculinity is getting involved in the life of a boy that isn't yours. And unfortunately, Michael Jackson and Catholic Church have fucked it up for all of us and created this weird notion that if you're a guy your age and you're super successful, you might have love to give

and you might see a 15-year-old boy that could use your help and it feels unnatural to get involved in his life. And that's not true. Yeah, the culture of mentorship has waned to say the least. And I think it's fair to say that America was built on the idea of apprenticeship and mentorship. But that culture seems to have a very important.

Like, where are the mentors? Where are the sage councils and the, you know, healthy, masculine men who are helping to guide the next generation? Well, I got it from coaches, but a lot of kids aren't going to church, though. They used to get it from the Reverend or the rabbi. Community-oriented programs have gone away. What are the rates of young men in sports? Is it the way that it was when we were kids, are less young men participating in sports? And where are the other healthy? outlets for the young men in need of mentorship. So sports is like most things. There's still the same level of participation, but unfortunately it's been crowded towards the wealthy. Engaging in a sport has become not a luxury item, but pretty close.

Even if you look at the college athletes outside of basketball and football, it's disproportionately rich kids. Because if your kid wants to play lacrosse to send them to lacrosse or herd of lacrosse and get them the right training and the right equipment, it's just expensive. but I think, you know, sports are, and after-school programs are being cut. But going to solutions, I think there's a ton of solutions. So starting boys a year late in elementary school, they're just less mature. The worst thing that happened to me or almost happened to me is my parents wanted me to skip a grade

because it was back in the space race. And if you were offered the opportunity to skip a grade, that meant you were going to be a work for NASA. I showed up at UCLA at the age of 17, and I was way too immature to handle the alcohol and the pressure of it all, start them a year later, try and create greater incentives to get more men in primary and secondary high school and elementary school, more vocational programming. There's just a ton of jobs in the real economy

for specialty construction, specialty nursing. Anyone who's renovating a house knows that a roofer makes really good money, much less a plumber, and stop shaming those jobs, start elevating them. I think we have to level up young people in general. There's been an enormous transfer of wealth from young people to old people. Specifically, people under the age of 40 used to control 19% of the GDP in terms of their wealth. It's been cut to 9%. The average 70-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. The average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy. And that affects women and men, but it's disproportionately affecting men because men are fairly or unfairly evaluated from a mating perspective based on their economic viability. The best example of, I think, that depicts this. The greatest innovation in history wasn't the iPhone or a semiconductor.

It was the American middle class. Bought wars, pushed back on fascism, paid an enormous amount of taxes, was innovative, came up with DARPA, came up with vaccines, came up with GPS. And where it all started was 7 million men returned from World War II. And they demonstrated excellence in uniform. And the government said, we're going to make a massive investment in them in terms of the GI Bill and the highway construction bill were getting them jobs

who were getting economic viability and quite frankly they were just very attractive and they had an easier time finding mating finding a house two-car garage and it set off the baby boom

and it set off a generation of confident loving kids who were comfortable and said all right it's time for civil rights it's time to bring women into the workforce it's time for women's rights and it just set off this kind of you know post-World War II

liberal progressive society the likes of which we've never seen that type of prosperity, but the middle class is an accident. It doesn't self-sustain. The incumbents and people on the far right will claim that the middle class is a self-repairing organism. It's not. It's an anomaly. Middle classes have never existed in society before. We figured it out. But unless you have economically and emotionally viable men, you can't have a middle class. So the question is, how do we level up young men? And I don't think you can just have affirmative action for men. I think that's too political. But I do think we have to put more money

into the pockets of young people who have seen a transfer of wealth. And I'll touch a third rail here. Every year we transfer one and a half trillion dollars. The greatest economic transfer in history happens every year from young people to the wealthiest generation in history, senior citizens, and it's called Social Security.

And it just isn't saying that this group that is consistently seeing their wealth and on an inflation-adjusted basis, their livelihood go down and down and down, transfer money to the wealthiest population in the world. Up next is me and John Price, who is a depth psychologist and basically this mystic, this modern mythmaker. So yeah, we're going deep today. Let's do it. We're in an era in which, you know, community is fractured.

Community centers are no longer. You know, we're lacking in those spaces and gathering places. and gathering places that used to be part and parcel of every village and every town and every city and those have sort of vanished. The path is being dictated by the mores of Western capitalist society, which says your value and your entitlement

to be loved and accepted is indelibly tied to your ability to produce, achieve, distinguish yourself. And that's a poisonous, noxious, message where you feel like your self-worth is only in so far as you're able to kind of like acquit yourself in this material world. Like there's a violence to that. And the teachers who can disabuse you of that and set you on a different course are few and far between. You know, you're not going to find them in the public schools. And you're not going to find them in the community centers that no longer exist. Right. And occasionally, you know, that coach will come

along or that special one person that makes a difference, but it seems to me that there's less and less of that. And that's a greater challenge. And my sense is that, you know, this is noxious for the culture and for all people, but I think it has an outsized impact on men and particularly young men. And when you share the story of the, you know, the crying boxer, like, that's sort of the encapsulation of like this whole like dilemma that so many men are facing right now who are moreless because they don't have a teacher, they don't have a path, and they don't have a community. A thought about two things.

I was thinking in that, when I worked in that inpatient residential center, sorry to every therapist out there in the world, but the thing that people remember the most is not the therapist. It's not some interpretation the therapist made and it's not some theoretical orientation. that created some skills-based approach that they learned how to do X, Y, or Z. When people are asked about what mattered the most,

it is an event like the lady behind the counter at the cafeteria saved the favorite dessert of the person. It's these very loving, very relational, very kind, connected moments and the other thing I wanted to address is as you're talking about men and certainly the development of young men Richard

always brings up this one image of these elephants that were in India or somewhere that were just ransacking the town running rushing people, stepping on cars doing things that elephants tend not to do and they bring in this behaviorist elephant expert and says what's happening here and they're like, oh, I get it. They're three adolescent male elephants that the father and grandfather generations have been poached.

And so they are without initiation. So they said, not funny, but I love the solution. They bring in two granddaddy elephants. And if any of you know Richard Rohr, I love him when he does this because he says these elephants just kind of move their ears around. And the adolescent young ones are like, well, what is that? And we see that in gangs, for example, that the same spells that we need for healthy initiation and community process are utilized in co-op. by what I would consider to be uninitiated people or people at least that are using the spells in service

to some kind of harm to culture as opposed to the opposite. And so that, I mean, just a full disclaimer, I mean, I don't want to get into necessarily a conversation that seems to paint capitalism or free market enterprise as negative. Again, it's just incomplete. When the enterprise doesn't recognize,

that there are people being left out by this equation and do the things necessary to bring along those who are being lost or forgotten, that's the problem. So if you're going to have whatever kind of economic or philosophical or political orientation, okay, run the experiment, see if it works. All over the world, we're going to do that. But any orientation is going to create some kind of neglect

no matter what you're doing. And so if you're not doing things, I think, to nourish and nurture those who are left, then that's the problem. So I think when it comes to men, the statistic that really came out as you were beginning your question or thought about men,

is that men right now have 50% less friends than we did 20 years ago. And I could give you statistics all day long about suffering of men, but to me that's the most important. Because? Because I think it's the catalyst list for all the others. I think in the absence of real genuine connection, intimacy, presence,

the experiential process of bumping up against another human being, of being known, of being seen and witnessed, of being held accountable, of being beholden to relationships and forces that are outside of your own desires. I think that's a real travesty in our culture and men all over are suffering the burden of our issue. What is your sense of what's driving this loneliness? Well, I think that see kind of item number one around a culture that doesn't have initiation. You know, we're telling,

us back to the spirit of the depths, you know, we're telling men how to be producers, but we're not telling men how to be in relationship. One of the things we do at the Center for Healing Arts, the Integrative Wellness Center that my wife and I have, is we look at the human as biological, psychological, social, and spiritual and really try to address all these levels of the ways in which we show up. And the social is one of those levels.

And we don't teach men how to be social, how to be connected, how to be in the mix with other men. And I do think that when you're not beholden to a community and really known deeply, differently than you are with a romantic partner, whoever it might be. But with a community of men, I just think that there are elements of our psyches that get untethered. And I don't know how you measure that necessarily, but I certainly know that I work with it a great deal and the kinds of addictions and depressions and alienations. isolations that happen as a result are paramount.

And I mean, there's a reason why in our prison systems, which I could be deeply critical of, there's a reason in our prison systems, the kind of worst consequence that you can give to somebody is isolation. That says something about our needs. And if we're creating a culture that is essentially knowingly, because we know the consequences with men that are disconnected from each other and feel. feeling more and more isolated, that's a problem because we're taking a pretty aggressive part of our species and creating a pretty aimless hurt.

Yeah, that's going to go out into the world and like those elephants, you know, just stomped cars. Correct shit. Yeah. Yeah. And again, there's this ethnobotanist named Mark Plotkin that I interviewed once, who had been, he spent a lot of time down in South America working with all these different tribes. And he said, you know, really with the shaman, like, it's all the same spells.

You know, they're all reading from the same spell books, whether you're doing what could be considered dark magic or light magic, same spells. It's just your intention. And so gangs use the same spells that we might have in a community that creates rights of passage, that creates kind of in-group, inside jokes, you know, markers of being a part of the group, process is to go through together to bond each other closely. I mean, all kinds of dynamics that we need, that gangs will capitalize on,

that the military capitalizes on. But for everybody that is not called into those arenas, we're without a process of moving through. I mean, I think in the best rights of passage, this is really hard for people to hear a lot of times. My favorite right of passage, which seems really kind of mess. up, is a process down, I believe it's in Columbia where they take, tends to be young boys

at about 12 years old, and they take these bullet ants. Have you heard of this before? Bullet ants. So bullet ants are these ants that are given the name bullet ants because their bite feels like a gunshot. And what they do to these kids is they smoke all these ants out so they're stunned, they weave these palm gloves and they weave the ants inside the palm gloves so that when they wake up, they begin to sting or bite the children. So you see these images of these children that have these palm gloves on and for 10 minutes there to sit there and take it. And then 24 hours, it's gone. I mean, it doesn't last. Can you endure this? And it's an experiential process where you're saying, I have done hard things. I've done hard things. And most importantly, then those hard things

that I've done created in me a community of connection and the community conspires. They want you to be a part of this. They want to fold you in. They're supporting this. And they fold you in after you pass this test, don't speak. And they give you all the ethics and moral dynamics and all the cultural accoutrema of being a member of the tribe. You can then be in real relationship, you achieve something important. You know, when you talk to a young person, you're like, what are your rights of passage? You know what they'll say?

I mean, they'll take a stab. I mean, short of a bar mitzvah or, you know, being on a sports team, I suppose, on some level, or going through, you know, the process of, what do they call it when you're trying to get into a fraternity? Or like, these are very, Very low hang, you know, like very low grade versions of that. They're almost like vestiges of, you know,

this ancient practice that has existed for, you know, as long as humans have congregated and formed communities together. But this is kind of all that remains. That's it. The culture doesn't conspire, right? Arguably the fraternity thing does. But still, you might argue that a kind of immature, sorry guys, but a kind of immaturity is running the show there.

Yeah, there's no wise elder, like, lording over the right of passage and making sure that everyone understands, like, the greater purpose here or, you know, what the aim is. So most people that I talk to when I ask them questions about rites of passage, they will say the first time they drank, the first time they had sex, and when they got a car. and fine but those again aren't supported you're not having the celebration of your community and your elders and your family because now you're a part of something and you can fight for

the community and you can serve the community the stakes are i mean i think in a lot of ways we're warriors that don't have a war and don't have a process to i mean that spiritually i don't mean that about going out and hurting other people. Again, I'm masculine in that way. And this spiritual war of working through your own impulses, your own tendencies, your own hedonism, your own desire to retreat and isolate, your own narcissism and your own self-indulgence. That tension is something you must fight against. And so, no, I'm not a tribal person in South America, but I do need a marker in my

life to say I was once this way and now I am this way and I've achieved something great and I've learned that I can do hard things. We've got a lot more to come, but first. Immune health is one of those things that most people don't really think about unless they're sick or getting sick. But the real game is promotion, played in the daily choices you make when you're feeling just fine. And that's my approach with Peaks' daily radiance liposomal vitamin C, which I've been taking as part of my morning ritual as well as part of my surgery recovery, because vitamin C has antioxidants, of course, which help with collagen production, which is not just for skin health, but also wound healing, which is key for me.

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These experiences, obviously, were formative and made you who you are, and I know you have a lot of gratitude for them, but what's the other side of that? What is the pain point? Like, when you look back on that, what is your relationship with that? past when you're not, you know, on a microphone and there's cameras. I, you know, a lot of things we don't choose. I mean, I don't choose how I feel. I happen to be fortunate that I don't have one ounce of negative thinking about my past. Not one ounce.

And I don't know why. you know it's just not there yeah i just i just have you know i remember the the tough times but i also remember very clearly the sweet times the gentle times that my father showed that my mother showed you know how wonderful they were and how supportive they were in the schools and the sports field and it would be everything even though they were not kind of like the American parents it's so different my parents have never

ever watched me in a soccer game never ever watched me in a basketball game or track and field shot with championships chauvelin throwing championships anything like this that we did in school never ever because no one did there was no parent hanging around

and saying let's watch our kids like we do over here yeah in the documentary there's the one where they actually do you show up at that one body building competition and you were confused. Well, they showed up because my friend, Freddie Gerstel, that I met very early on, invited them.

And he was a very respected kind of a man in town. They did it for him. I think because he invited them and so they took it seriously. Oh, this must be something special. And then when they saw me up there on the stage, I mean, it's just like they couldn't believe it, you know. Even though I have to say my mother

sewed for me my bathing suit because I found some bathing suit, it was just too big and I wanted to have a little cut down. So she was sewing, we're just sewing machine the day before the competition. I told her I'm going to go into a competition and I needed a small bathing suit and so she was sewing it and I was drying it on for her

and it was doing the fitting and off that stuff. It was very sweet of her. I mean, how many mothers do that? But I mean, so there's that side. But they just, it was not the style then to go and to watch kids. The only competition that my parents ever watched was that one competition in Graz. And then one competition in Essen, in Germany, when I won Mr. Olympia for the third time. And then right after then my father passed away.

So I was fortunate that he saw that. there's this resistance or just refusal on your part to to in any way be a victim and we're in a culture right now where we have a different relationship with victimhood I'm sure that drives you insane and this book is really speaking to that on some level like positivity as an antidote for the lack of agency that a lot of people feel or the indulgence with an identity around victimhood as powerlessness, right? And this is all about calling people to action to take responsibility for their lives and giving them tools in a roadmap that it's straightforward advice in this book, right? But it's very direct. And because it's from you, it's so palpable.

So I guess what I'm asking is, you know, how do you think about the way that our culture now thinks about mental health and our relationship with this idea of powerlessness? I think that in general, I think what the book is trying to do is to say to people, you need to work. on yourself. If you just try to be pampered, and if you're trying to be soft, and if you're trying to be the victim, you're not going to go anywhere, we need to get stronger.

We need to get bossier. We need to get tougher. We need to not be afraid of failure. We've got to go and do the work. We got to face adversity. adversity breeds character the strength and fighting and resistance

it doesn't only make the muscle grow but it makes also your head grow makes you a stronger person we have to be willing to go through hardship through suffering through pain through crying periods all of that stuff don't shy away

from any of that because it just makes you stronger and I think the day a lot of times our youth is so into kind of oh, let's make him feel good. Oh, no, let's be more sensitive. Well, I totally agree with you to be sensitive about things, but I mean, there's also a sweet spot. Can we go too far?

You know, it's like when someone says, well, today I just need to sleep in. It's that bullshit. You don't need to sleep in. This country was not built on sleeping in. So let's get up in a morning and let's get on that bike and let's do some exercise

and don't even think about it, don't look at your email or anything like this. Let's just get going. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Let's get going and let's start building. And so that's the idea is just not to be overly soft and overly kind of like sensitive

and everyone is in the victim kind of a thing. I just don't buy into that. But you have to understand that every person has to be approached or also differently. It's like the mind is just like the body. I cannot give you exactly the same. same training routine that I had because your body is different.

You're a much leaner person. You need to kind of have to do maybe less reps and what is. You have to have a different diet if you want to bulk up and all this. So I have to be aware of that that even within my family, one of my daughters had to be approached differently than my other daughter. One son had to be approached differently than the other son. So you have to be sensitive about those kind of things. But overall, it was discipline in that.

house. You don't turn out that light? I will unscrew those light bulbs and you will be going into a dark room with the age of three and you will be scared. So you better start learning to turn off those lights. You have someone else make you bed? Okay, I'm going to take the mattress and throw it down the balcony and then you carry it upstairs and you make your own bed again. So this is the way that my kids grew up, you know? And it was like, there was crying there. Or when I burned her shoes when she left my daughter left her shoes

for the three times in front of the fireplace I said the third time he goes in the fire the third time he did go into fire right in front when she was crying the whole night

yeah those things happen but now she does the same to her daughter and now she says that was great that you did that you see what I'm saying so now my kids

were crying on the ski slopes I want to go in I want to go hot chocolate there will be no hot chocolate you know the usual kindergarten cop kind of a thing you know there would be no hot chocolate they said we're going to ski four runs and then there's a hot chocolate they say not after the first run

yeah but I'm cold they say so am I so what so what so now let's go be cold and then go skiing it's the more we ski the bumps and the more we ski the powder the warmer we get and the more we warm up it says let's get going and so now the day when they come up to send valley with their friends, they get up after the dinner with their wine glass and they say, oh, the toast, Daddy, because he made us good skiers. And that's why we're here today.

That's why we enjoy skiing with all of you. Resilience. You get to just kind of figure it out, you know, how to do that in all this. But, you know, it's not easy. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not an expert with this. but one thing I know for sure, I can help anyone to go and be a little bit better.

Up next is John Pearson, and John has the very interesting distinction of being the original male supermodel. In this conversation, we discuss mental health and modeling healthy masculinity, which are the themes that underscore John's very cool lifestyle and self-improvement digital magazine, which is called Mr. Feel Good.

I think the idea, like young men, like, it is a more confusing time. Like, we grew up in an analog world, right? And we're one of the last generations of people to kind of traverse from analog to digital. Yeah. But our formative years were pre-computer, completely, right? And now, I think we're in a confusing state for a lot of men, where there's expectations for them to, you know, be strong, be the provide, like to kind of like inhabit the traditional sense of what it is to be masculine.

And yet also to be the sensitive person, the person who goes to all the, you know, school events and, you know, on weekdays at 2 o'clock in the afternoon or and who, you know, is caring and like, like somebody who has to fire on all cylinders, right? And there's an expectation level that I think is difficult for, you know, anybody to live up to, essentially. And when you kind of step down into even the younger generations who are dealing with, you know, how to how to how to date and that's all digital now with these apps and all that kind of stuff and, you know, this is something Scott Calloway talks quite a bit about. Like, I think it's really hard, right? And, and, you know, we're at a certain age where we don't have direct experience with those sorts of things. So how do you think about, you know, lending a hand or being a mentor or communicating helpful information to that person who is trying to navigate, you know, those, all of those landmines? It's tough. It's tough. I think our sons have to, and their tribes have to learn to be vulnerable

and be connected as a community and to not have too many expectations because there are a lot of expectations on them. It is a different world. I think it's very difficult. I think they're also very smart a lot of them and they can figure it out and things that I worry about for them

they aren't even worrying about because if they're focused, if they're fortunate enough to have something they love to do, have a purpose or a goal, or be passionate about something. I think that helps them a lot to direct the focus and to move forward as they go into life as a young adults. But you can't manufacture that for anybody.

No. Especially your kids. No, unfortunately. You can expose them to lots of different things and just hope that something connects with them and lights them up in that way. Yeah, it's true. I mean, it's a work in progress, you know,

and I think all we try and do is be open, but provide a safe space where they can explore those kind of feelings and worries and advise them on what we know and what we've experienced in an ever-changing world where they can then sort of bespoke it if they're able. And all my kids personally, our kids are, you know, they're pretty, the greatest, really one of the greatest things of my life is that my kids know who they are. And I think that's, you know, a lot more than I did at that age. I think the French say bien d'en sapeur, comfortable in their own skin.

That's like you're on the 10-yard line if you have that, you know. Yeah, and I'm really, I stand back and I watch them and I observe them in company and the way they sort of address the issues of the day, their own personal challenges. And I feel really just so grateful that they've got that. And I think it probably comes from my wife's family's side. But I think that's a marvelous thing. That's a real blessing. I think it's tough out there.

I really think it's tough out there. And I, by no means, have an answer for you that's eloquent or rooted for you yet, in all honesty. But I also want to engage. And as we grow younger people into Mr. Fieldgood, I want to bring them into their sort of fold and have them right for me. And a couple of them do already. And just sort of the idea of sitting around a table with, these kids, you know, 12 men. I won't you to do this with me at some point, but 12 really interesting men who can sit around and we can talk and we can listen. And I think community,

when you build community and especially of men, you know, I think that's a really powerful thing. I think to sit and to be listened and to be heard is a really powerful thing and especially in a circle of men who are trying to do the right thing, who are trying to do the right thing, who are trying to calibrate this ever-changing sort of world. I think that's really vital, but I certainly don't have the answers, but I'm determined to try and help and contribute in some way. Yeah, I mean, vital's the right word. I mean, I've been lucky enough to be parts of groups like that,

you know, through recovery and also through other therapeutic modalities, and it's been absolutely transformative for me. But I'm also aware that it's not the experience. of most people, most men, right? And I think a lot of men suffer in silence. Yeah. And they just carry on and push it all down until something one day breaks or explodes.

And I think that's the more typical experience and to the extent that there are solutions for people who are in that state, like I want to be participating in that. Because I think it's chronic, honestly, and there is. an epidemic of mental health disorders that it's not unique to men, but I think there is something about men where it's not talked about to the extent that it should be and getting help

is not as permissive as it should be. And it should be and we should all, you know, we should take time to reach out to our community and put the effort and the energy into building these sort of creating these situations where we can all exchange, where, you know, we can sort of feel safe to talk about. I mean, the whole vulnerable thing, that's a really sort of mysterious one for me. I know it's important and I know it's valuable. And I never really recognize my own acute vulnerability until I started doing Mr. Fieldgood. I had episodes, but consistently being accountable and having to do this after having had an agent who just said, this is the flight, this is how much, there you are, you know.

And I still, I'm still really curious about the whole vulnerable thing. And, you know, when to be restrained, when to be open, what value will that give the person I'm sitting with, you know? And I still, my Yorkshire roots are like, no, man up, man up, you know, don't talk. Don't be soft, you know, and all that stuff. But you won't survive. You won't survive. You'll be a, you know, you'll self-medicate, you'll drink, you'll whatever your drug of choice is,

or you'll just implode. Yeah. And you'll freak out and you'll do something stupid. And I think we have to change that. Maybe it's an education. You know, maybe it's having people like you and Scott, myself perhaps, you know, going in and talking about this, actually delivering, you know, lessons on this sort of thing. you know, actually going into the education system.

And I do think, you know, doing retreats with fellas with men is really good. Young guys and older guys. And I think there's a lot to be said for taking sage advice from those who came before us. You know, even though they lived in a more closed-off sort of or a more one-dimensional idea of masculinity. I was brought up to respect my elders. And I was lucky because when my parents' divorce, go and see my father, and he'd always do meals on wheels, and he'd take me around delivering food to the elderly, and most of these guys had just come out, and ladies had come out of

the Second World War. They were the last, and it was fascinating to engage with their sort of stoicism and their dignity. And I think, you know, I learned a lot about listening to people then, and I think we have to do something about it. I think we have to engage. I think we have to sort of join forces and, you know, create something that really does, because the important thing is, a lot of people sort of start doing these things, but it's the, it's being there for the long ride, which is important. And especially in this day and age, when everything's so disjointed and quick and we're overcome with sort of information, I think to be consistent is really a great quality to have. And I think, you know, if you're, if you're mentoring,

someone you're in it for life yeah you know you should be and you'll reap benefits you know but really it's you you can't just do it for a day you can't give a bit of advice and think it's done you have to be consistent yeah i want you to pause for a moment because i want to tell you about my friend rj now you might know this guy as the founder and CEO of rivian he's certainly that but he's really so much more. He's one of those rare people who actually walks the walk. I've watched him over many years, and I know him to be this incredibly, deeply committed person, committed to preserving wild spaces, while also inspiring people to explore responsibly. And that's basically Rivian in a nutshell. Their mission, keep the world adventurous forever, comes from this understanding

that adventure and a healthy planet, these are not separate things. They're the same. same thing. Here's what gets me. Every generation deserves wild places to roam, to climb higher, to run farther, to be changed by the journey. But obviously, that's only possible if we're not destroying those places in the process of getting there. So yeah, Rivion builds electric vehicles, but really, they're building something bigger, momentum toward a future where exploration does not come at the expensive nature, but actually inspires us to protect it. It's like, like, why create the ultimate adventure vehicle if we're not protecting the adventures themselves? And that's why I'm so proud to align forces in partnership with Rivian.

This isn't just about transportation. It's about building a world worth exploring for our kids, for their kids, and for generations to come. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. When it comes to the infinite scroll of our digital world, there's an important to I like to draw, which is that there is a difference between consuming content mindlessly and on the other hand, using our computers with creativity and intention as a tool to build something meaningful, whether that's a coaching practice, for example, a store or a portfolio for your photography. What you need and deserve is a high quality, highly designed platform

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A way of being that brings me close to myself, close to other people, and to what matters most in life. And for me, what we wear in that pursuit plays a crucial role. And that's what I appreciate about on. They don't just make gear. They engineer apparel that supports and elevates the practice of movement itself. From running shorts with built-in support to technical teas that cool you down right where it matters.

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and I'm still just so impressed by how they continue to elevate and innovate in the name of purpose, not flash. Head to on.com slash rich roll to explore gear that supports you every step of the way. Okay, next stop is

Star of Screen's big and small Terry Cruz, who joined me on episode 676 for a long-form exchange on overcoming toxic masculinity, transcending obstacles, confronting your past, and stepping into your truest power and most actualized self.

Maybe talk a little bit about masculinity and how you're thinking about it. What was wild is that I remember having to fight my way into school. It was, you know, the gangs, the drug dealers, the people that were around me were always looking at me, suspiciously. They would say things like you talk white, you know, and I'm like,

what is that? And what was happening is, remember, I was kind of sheltered is what it was. I mean, I was religious, and I was in this thing where it wouldn't allow us to do anything, but so I would go into my hole and I would draw and draw all day. I mean, I would draw what I wanted to see,

you know, and it was an introspective, very nerdy world. I became this nerd, but then when I came out, Outside, I was always challenged on it like, oh, man, this is, you know, back in, back in the day, they called you a square, you know, and it was like what, and but then athletics coded black, coded hardcore. So I said, all right. So I have to be that, you know, and I knew that I had to be big, strong, fast, athletic, and they would leave me alone. You know, it's like I knew what I got some traps that they were. They would think twice about, they go, well, he's probably going to do some athletic stuff so they leave him alone. But the skinny kid, he had no choice. They would beat him up.

It would be crazy, it would be violent. They used to beat up my brother. He was smaller than I was. He's my half-brother. And I remember these gang members threw him in the Rosebush. And he was just hurt. We went home and he was in tears. And I was just like pulling him out of it.

But they didn't mess with me. Yeah. But that coated black and it coded hardcore. You know what I mean? But it's almost like this shield, this armor that you built around yourself simply to protect that artist within you. So he could still, you know, do his thing quietly without, you know, being bullied or taking the task.

I always knew that I was what you would call weird, you know, in that respect. Because people were always, you know, they would just tell me, man, you weird, man. And I'm, hey, you know, whatever, I don't, I would just kind of blink it off. And but, and this is another thing is that I would, I would fake it. You know, a lot of my acting ability, you know, one thing I used to do is dumbed down. It was, oh, man, I don't know what you're talking about. Man, what you're doing, man? Yeah, you know, you know, and you can just learn to mirror the lingo and the mirror.

I would mirror people so that they wouldn't be suspicious, you know what I mean? Just get along to go along. It was, and then go home. And then all of a sudden find somebody who, or even be at school and find somebody who had, we had the same, you know, interests. And it was like, oh, man, I could go all in on this. You know what I mean? And it was funny because even when I met my wife, she said, he said, I thought you were the biggest

nerd and I saw you with your friend and you talked the whole different way. And I was like, ah, that's kind of how I'm doing my whole life. You know, I knew. because she was like, you were, here I'm thinking, you're this nerdy black guy, and then I turn around and you're with these guys, your friends, and you're talking all cool. And I was like, it's like two people.

And I was like, yeah, it's had to be that way, my whole life. But this idea blossoms into this notion that this is the case for all men. Doesn't, don't all men have two lives, the secret life that they hide from everybody else and then the way that they show up in the world? That's right. That's just the way it is. It is. I believe that.

I believe that. That was definitely the case for me. Yeah. So without any kind of healthy role models for yourself as a young person, you strike this vow with your friend, which I think is super interesting. It's almost like a survival tactic.

Like, hey, no one's showing us the way. Like, we've got to help each other out. I mean, I remember coming to my friend, my best friend in the world, his name was Darwin. And I said, hey, man. I said, dude, no one is telling us anything. And we had nothing but questions.

And we would try. We would ask. The men wouldn't give it up. They would literally, you're going to find out. They tell you, hey, let me tell you something. You're going to find out on me. You know, and you're like, oh, man, what? And it's like, dude, I'm 11.

Can you please? Just give me some clues. And then what was wild is that we would get all this erroneous information. Like the things they did volunteer was like, hey, man, look, what you want to do, you want to take these, these girls, tell them you love them, get the draws, and then bounce. And I was like, but what if you do like them? No, no, you don't love it, you can't love them. And you're like, what are you talking about?

Like, because I had this vision of actual love. Like, I mean, a picture, like even in the movies. Like, there's people fall in love though, right? And they, no, man, what you want to do? You got to have like four or five and you got to keep them on. And you got to always keep them on a lead. and then call them and then don't call them back. I mean, and the whole phrase was called game.

And it still talked about, even now, you know. And it was like, you've got to have game to run this thing. And then you can have all these girls. You got to have 10. And the more you had, the more of a man you were. And I was like, well, and that's, again, the message of what masculinity was, was that you were a pimp. And that's what I grew up with.

And it was like, but I said, but I don't, I just, you know, and I had a really, really hard time because I said, I don't really want to lie to people. But, and then I escaped into porn. And that was the only, because my parents, never, my father to this day has never had a conversation with me about sex ever. And my mother was so religious. She was like, I was, she was like, you have sex? And I'm like, no, no, I'm not. Don't, don't do it. I'm trying, listen, you know you go to hell, right?

And they're like, okay, back to hell again. You know? And so I totally avoided that conversation. But so everything I learned was at nine years old when I went over my uncle's house, opened up his chest, and it was full of pornographic magazines. And, you know, a lot of people, you know, what's wild about that is that everybody says, well, you know, pornography is great. You know, when people, it's totally acceptable when people are over 18, the whole thing, but I don't know anybody that ever encountered pornography at 18. No.

Yeah. You know, you always encounter it in school or whatever. When someone's showing you and you're like six, seven, eight, nine. I mean, yeah. And it's damaging. It's damaging. It really is. And we, you know, we grew up in a time where it was, you know, in a box that your friend's dad had in the basement somewhere

or buried in the woods or some shit. like that, you know, and now it's like ubiquitous and so readily available and unlimited. And it's fucking crazy. I can't, listen, man, the thought of what kids are possibly looking at right now, it's since chills down my back. Yeah. Chills. And because I know what path it set me on. And again, man, you know, people have said, well, you can't, I don't think you're, I don't think

can be addicted to pornography and the whole thing. But my problem was, is that, hey, man, if day turns in the night and you're still watching it and you say you don't want to and you keep doing it, I don't know what else to call it. But I thought even as a young kid, what happened is when I discovered it, it took all my problems away.

I mean, I was, when I opened that magazine, I didn't even know what I was looking at, mind you. I didn't even know how to have sex, but I just knew, oh, my God, this is mind-blowing, you know, and I was totally numbed out. And I forgot about the violence. I forgot about my dad and I forgot about the religiosity. And then what happened is I would get shame. And you feel like, oh, Lord, I know I'm going to hell.

I'm going to hell. And so you would say, I'll be good, I'll be good. And I became a performer. I became this person who wanted to keep peace in the house. I was going to be the best most Christian kid and I was going to be the best most great kid for my dad and do whatever he says, right? And it just, but I had no say of my own.

Like what I wanted was always fourth thing down the line. You know what I mean? And I was taught that, like literally like, it don't matter what you want. You know, you better listen to what we're saying. You better listen to what's going on here. And so the neighborhood catpool, the gangs had pool, my parents had pulled, but I had no voice.

In episode 827, we welcome the brilliant social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, to the podcast to explore his groundbreaking research on social media's impact on youth mental health, which is the subject of his seminal book, The Anxious Generation. Heit's insights into how digital technology is reshaping adolescents made this one of our most impactful episodes, though. Here is an excerpt from, that conversation. At what age could you ride your bicycle around and go visit your friends?

I mean, super young. Second grade, third grade, seven or eight. Out all day. Yeah. Be home by dinner. That's right. That was the universal thing. And you and I grew up during a crime wave.

There were drunk drivers. There was crime. In the 90s, things got really safe. Crime plummeted, drunk driving plummeted. You know, mothers against drunk driving. We locked up the drunk drivers. So when you and I were young, and in this, goes back, you know, literally millions of years, kids are not an adult supervised programs.

They're on their own. And that's absolutely crucial for developing independence. We want our kids to be self-supervising, self-governing so that they don't have to have someone telling them what to do. But in the 90s, we began locking them up, supervising them, saying we can never let you out alone because there's a microscopic chance you'll be kidnapped, but it looms very large in my mind because I just read us. story and some newspaper about it, which is called the availability bias in psychology.

And it's on the side of all our milk cartons. That's right. That's right. The book is focused on the great rewiring, which is 2010 to 2015. But there's a really important backstory, which is the more gradual loss of childhood independence, loss of trust in children, and loss of trust in each other. That turns out to be one of the main reasons we locked up our kids was we started thinking every adult is a potential child molester. I can't trust my kid with anyone. I have to supervise or just a very limited number of people that I'll trust. Whereas when you and I were growing up during the crime wave, adults generally had the sense

that if a kid falls off his bicycle and is hurt and you see it, you would call their mother. You'd say, well, you know, what's your phone number? We all knew our phone numbers. And that kind of went away in the 90s as we lost trust in each other. And that's part of why we clutched our kids so close that we don't let them develop. And the irony being that we're hyper or overprotective of our kids in physical spaces and completely underprotective in this digital space, which is we're learning, we're discovering is far more dangerous than the imagined threat in the physical world.

That's right. And that's why I started off by talking about the incredible techno-optimism that we all had in the 90s and the 2000s. Because we thought this stuff is so amazing. And we saw that even back in the 80s, you know, kids who played with computers and we called them geeks and nerds, wow, they're starting companies now. They're, you know, they're doing amazing things with this new technology. Hey, there's my kid playing with an iPhone. Maybe he'll grow up to, you know, start a company. Maybe he'll get smarter and more technically skilled.

But that didn't happen. We have all this techno optimism. We think computers are good for our kids. We think, oh, we need to get computers to every kid. you know in the 90s or early 2000s oh it's terrible that the rich kids have computers but the poor kids don't have them we have to have every kid have a computer

and of course the tech companies they want to come in they want to give kids a Chromebook get them using our operating system so we let this happen because we thought well it looks like it'll probably be good for them and there was no data on that and we weren't really collecting any data and we just let the devices take over childhood

and it was only just before COVID that we really began to notice. But then COVID came and confused us all and we lost a few years. Now that COVID has receded. Now I think everyone sees the wreckage. And that's why you opened by talking about how it feels like things are changing, everyone sees it.

Yeah, now that COVID has receded, we all see the wreckage. Yeah, I'm trying to remember the feeling that I had when the Internet was brand new. And there was this sense of possibility, and this excitement. And it's hard to judge ourselves against the optimistic promise that the internet held at that time.

Like how could it be a bad thing to connect everybody and to have access to information in this way? This can only make the world a better place. That's right. The irony being that that hyper-connectivity is driving loneliness and depression and self-harm and suicide and all the like. So in this thesis around this great rewiring, like what are the, I mean, you've identified kind of four key harms that are at play here.

Yeah, yes. So this started off. I was going to be focusing, I thought, on social media and girls, because that's where the data is clearest. But as the story unfolded, as I went more into childhood, I realized, I need a separate chapter for girls. I need a separate chapter for boys. But there's a bunch of things that are hitting everyone and adults as well. So I ended up calling the four foundational harms. They are social deprivation, sleep deprivation, cognitive fragmentation, and addiction.

So just very briefly, American kids now spend five hours a day just on social media. That's mostly TikTok, YouTube shorts, it's the short videos. Also longer videos on YouTube, and it's also Instagram and a bunch of other things. So five hours just on social media. And then another three to five hours, depending on the study, another three to five hours on other screen-based activities. And none of this includes homework. This is all just leisure. So, you know, eight to ten hours a day on their devices,

that pushes out almost everything else, or at least it minimizes. Think of all the good things you did as a kid. Or think of all the things you'd want for your children today. Would you want them to have any hobbies? Would you want them to read books? Would you want them to go play outside? Like everything that you could want for your kid,

cut it by 90% because they have to spend all this time servicing their network connections and keeping up with what's on TikTok. So you cut out all that stuff, what really matters. So the two that are foundational, the two that just we know are just really important for mental health and for child development, are time with other kids and sleep. Like, who could argue with this? And the data on social deprivation is just stunning. A couple of my favorite graphs in the book, favorite, in that they're kind of horrible, but they're dramatic.

One is the amount of time that Americans spend with each other. So these are studies, the American Time Use Survey, I think it's called, they ask people to fill in detailed records, what were you doing? it this time, this time, this time, this time. And when you look just at time outside of work and school, how much time are you spending with your friends? And for older people, you know, in their 30s or beyond, it's less than an hour a day because people are busy, they're married. But for teenagers, it was always like two and a half. It was a lot, like they spent a lot of time with their friends. Like, you know, you and me, after school, you're just out with your friends. So that begins dropping in the 90s and 2000s as kids get more, you know, television time and more internet time.

it is dropping but when you hit 2010-2012 it plummets it falls really fast and one shocking finding is that you know for the older generations you see it drop with COVID like you see it goes from like you know 40 minutes to 20 minutes like we really were locked away you really see a drop but for teenagers what you see is the drop from 2019 to 2020 after COVID restrictions was no steeper than the drop from 2018 to 2019 oh that's interesting in other words they were they were already so socially distancing so fast since 2012 that COVID didn't even speed it up. Wow. Yeah, you would have thought that COVID would have been this pattern interrupt that we didn't

recover from and that would be particularly acute for a teen, but to understand that it was already at a plummeted state at that point and hasn't recovered, right? That's right. As it plateaued or does it continue to go down? Right. So I don't know because it takes a while to get the data. So here we are in 2024. I don't have data for 2023.

We have data for 2022. Some data is coming for 2020. So we can begin to see the rebound from COVID. But on the time you study, I haven't seen it. But right, that would be an interesting prediction. If adults went down and then they go up a little bit, that's what you'd expect. So my prediction would be that teenagers who went down so far, they're not going to bounce back up. Because it's not as though, oh, COVID's gone.

Hey, after school today, how about if I come over to your house? Like, I don't think that's going to happen. Because they've acclimated to a different way. They've acclimated, and for boys, they literally can't go over at each other's houses if they want to play video games. Yeah, they have to be in their own pots for that. That's right. They have to have their own equipment in their own house. So these technologies that are supposed to bring people together, they end up making them physically separate.

So the social deprivation piece, the sleep deprivation piece, they're relatively self-evident. I would like to know a little bit more about this attention fragmentation idea, this idea of, constantly distracted and having to kind of toggle switch your brain because things are happening so fast. That's right. You know, we all think that we can multitask, but the research has shown for decades and decades. If you try to do two things, you'll do each of them less than half as well. Like there's a net loss from the transfer cost. So multitasking is a bad idea. With our phones, the temptation is always to multitask. That's just one piece of it. The even worst piece is the notifications and interruptions. So when the iPhone came out in 2000,

there were no push notifications, there was no app store. It was just a set of tools that you could pull out when you wanted. As you said before, you get the retweet button, the like button, things get much more viral. Now it's like urgent thing, there's things blowing up, you need to know about it. Apple introduces, I think it was called software development kits, which allowed any other company to create an app. And this is transformative because what now happens is kids are now carrying this thing, you know, beginning by 2010. kids are carrying a portal by which any company can reach your child. Any company can send them notifications.

I mean, if they've downloaded the app. Once they download an app, it's like they're giving permission to this company. Hey, you can interrupt my child whenever you want. Oh, you think there's breaking news. Oh, you can get 10% off on this thing. Oh, you know, somebody said something about you. So we've created these incredible interrupting devices, which all of us are struggling with, right? I mean, we adults, I don't use my phone that much because I'm always at a computer.

And I've shut off almost all notifications. That's really crucial. You have to shut off almost all notifications, other than like Uber, a few things you need to leave on. But it's hard for me to focus because if I'm doing something which is hard, part of my brain says,

what's the weather going to be? Oh, let me go check that. Yeah. Okay. Finally, my guest is musician Toby Morris. He's a long-time, hardcore punk rocker, vegan, straight-edge, role model dad and his son Max is a great drummer who goes on tour with his dad following in his footsteps really quite charming so let's do it you mean you truly are one of the most positive people in my life and you know I've watched you in the world like interact with people everybody you meet you meet with love compassion non-judgment you meet people where they're at like you like all different kinds of people especially like

when it comes to music where it's like, you're only allowed to like this kind or that kind. Like you like everything, you love cold play. And like you like to, you know, all the bands that you're not supposed to be cool. Like you're the first person to say like, you know, these guys are amazing or whatever. Like there's just a really beautiful kind of welcoming energy

that you have. And I, you know, it's clear that like you've just been a fantastic dad. Like I look at Max, this kid walks into a room, and just owns it. Like, he's so, like, charismatic and sure of himself in a healthy way. Like, he knows who he is, he'll look you in the eye, he talks to everybody, he's not intimidated by anyone,

and he just has this, like, really kind of joyful spirit about him as well. And I was like, man, you guys did a good job. Thank you, man. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, the communication is key. My son traveled with us since he was very, very young, We've always an open relationship with my son

talking about everything I wanted to talk about and unconditional love and probably for me I didn't grow up with the dad so everything was new to me just learning along the way and stuff and my wife's an incredible mother and yeah he's just a very well-rounded open mind he's been all around the world

seen different cultures you know he's been everywhere and I grew up around a lot of awesome musicians and people and I'm very lucky man especially a kid growing up in Hollywood too Yeah, I know. There's so many different things, temptations. There's all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, all around, right? All around. Like he went to a big high school to, like it could have gone any number of different ways. Yeah, yeah, it's true. He went to Larchmont for a while, then he went to Helminton High, which is a great school music program.

The guys the interruptors went there, the three brothers. They have like a whole like sort of recording studio. I think that high school has its own label. Yeah, yeah, they do. Yeah, my son's band, okay, my son's band Ren was on that record label. Wow. It was signed to the label. and then one of the students was their manager at the school.

That's crazy. It's like an Adidas sound lab there or something. Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking of. Yeah, so yeah, it's a really great school. He learned how to play the piano really well. He knows how to read music. It was a really wonderful move. He was kind of sheltered in the Larchmont World

and he's like, I want to go. He basically said, eighth grade, I want to go to a school where there's bullies and lockers. That's what he wanted. I went to a real school. Yeah, I mean, Hamilton. Hamilton is that, you know? Like, that's a big place.

It's a really big campus, man. There's kids from all around the whole city that would go there and stuff. Yeah, man, really happy. He's a really good kid, man. And how did he end up in the band? Like, what is it? Like, I know he's like modeling.

He wants to be, is he pursuing acting? Yeah, he's doing all that, yeah. So the band has just happened. I mean, my, he would play one song with us for a really long time. He played a song called Nothing to Prove. He'd come up on stage since he was like nine years old. And then fast forward, my drummer, Tart Friend, shout out the Tard Friend. He had a problem with his shoulder.

He had a couple surgeries where he was hard from to perform. and the timing just happened with my son to jump up and play a gig with us because of that. And it just continued. It's been continuing since that for like two years now. And we still see my drummer. He comes out to the show in New York. He sang a song with us.

It's all love. It's perfect, man. Yeah. So I don't know how long it's going to last. Right. You just take it while you can get it, right? Like, what a cool thing to play music with your son. Yeah, I'm going to be cool next year.

I don't know. You know what I mean? He might be like, he might join another band. There's nothing, like, there's nothing you can do. to be cool for your kid, it doesn't matter. You can front like a cool band or whatever, it's still gonna be, you know. We'll always be cool, I hope, you know?

No, I mean, you'll be cool with each other, but you always think like, I mean, I can't imagine a cooler dad than you, but like no matter what you do or who you are, like your kid is always gonna, on some level, and it's supposed to be this way, like, you're not as cool as you think, you know. Yeah, that's definitely true.

And it's meant to be that way. Yeah. Because they're the next generation, and they got their own. ideas about what's cool. He'll check me once in a while on different things. It's stupid or that's cringe or that's silly something I say. Yeah, what do you do that's cringe to him?

I don't know, I mean it was, I don't know. You said that to me before about something or something or, before if I post something, I was like, sure want to post that? But go check me on stuff, but I like that though. There is a certain thing when you're that age where, where, you know, most people, like in the early 20s, it's all about like kind of cynicism and irony. Like, nothing's cool.

everything's lame, all of that. And you're a very earnest person. And I feel like Max is pretty earnest. Like he doesn't strike me as that person who's like everything sucks or all those bands suck. No, no, no, no, no. He's like, you know, he's pretty enthusiastic about the world. Yeah, he is, man, he has a good life,

but you better definitely have that enthusiasm. He's definitely had a wonderful, he still lives at home, he's 20 years old, it's awesome. How long is that gonna go for? I don't know, man. There's a lot of kids now, it seems like to be like in this generation, they're still living at home kind of late,

it's interesting, It's so expensive. It's so expensive. I know where he would live in Los Angeles. Yeah, I mean, that idea, I mean, our generation, it was like, get out the door, you know, and it doesn't matter if you have to go into debt or run up credit cards, like you're not staying at home.

Yeah. But to me, that's insane. It's so expensive out there. And I don't want my kids to be running up a bunch of debt or spending money unnecessarily if they don't have to. Because that then ends up, you know, sort of impinging on the decisions that they can make about their life and the freedoms

they have. And if I can, you know, provide a buffer by just like, you know, hanging, they can hang out at home a little bit longer. Are they more than happy to do it? Well, our boys had moved out. That's right. They were living in Echo Park doing the music thing. Yes. And then when the pandemic hit, I was like, don't, don't pay rent in a tiny little apartment that you're stuck in, like just come home. Yeah. So they're still home. And that's fine. And they're working and they have their own lives. Um, but I'm not in a rush for them to leave. It's like, stay as long as you I don't care, I don't care, I like having them around. Like, you know, it's not gonna last forever.

They're gonna be gone, they're gonna be gone and then you're gonna be like, oh, wasn't it great when they were there? Like, I'm trying to enjoy it for everything that is. I can't imagine like an empty house, like walking by his room. Like, it's an empty nest syndrome, that's a real thing. Well, our two younger ones are both gone now at school. So it's the older ones that are around. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's hard.

I mean, I'm happy for them. You're emotional guy like me too though. I'm, yeah, I mean, I'm definitely. I'm super emo, man. Yeah. I don't know if I'm as emo as you, but I can get pretty emo. But just seeing about him being gone,

it's like freaks me out, dude. Like, I don't, like stay as long as you can. Like, I mean, I'm not going to pay rent where he works right now. Yeah, you're going to be blank and he's going to be gone and doing his own thing and you're going to be proud of him, but you're going to miss, you'll miss that time. So to be able to be present with it and appreciate it for what it is now. And to play music with me, it's like,

oh, that's incredible. What a gift, you know? Who gets to do that? I know. Okay, we did it. I hope this was valuable and helped you on your journey or could be used as a way of helping a loved one. And if you have been personally inspired,

please consider visiting the full in-depth conversations with these esteemed guests. You can find links to each episode posted in the YouTube description or in the show notes at richroll.com. Thank you. for listening. Thank you for watching. Until next time, peace, plants. Thank you.