Failing Young Men — with Richard Reeves

Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of several books including his latest, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, joins Scott to discuss how the US has set up boys to fall behind, and how that manifests into adulthood. Follow Richard on Twitter, @RichardvReeves. Scott opens with his thoughts on big tech’s ability to monetize utility. Algebra of Happiness: demonstrate generosity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 1:18Scott Galloway?

  Episode 207. 207 is the area code for the entire state of Maine. In 2007, Keeping Up with the Kardashians premiered. Prince performed at the Super Bowl, and the iPhone was introduced to the world. Which Kardashian has had the least plastic surgery?

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Where's Kim? Kim is always late.

• 1:36Scott Galloway?

  Caitlyn Jenner.

• 1:39Scott Galloway?

  Go, go, go!

• 1:48Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 207th episode of the Prop G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of several books, including his latest, Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters. And what to do about it. Richard has essentially become my Yoda when it comes to the conversation around failing young men. And we discussed with Richard exactly that, how our nation has enabled this cohort to fall behind and what we can do to reverse course. Okay, what's happening? We've been talking a lot about the race to a super app, the Swiss Army knife of your digital life. But what we should focus more of our attention on is big tech's race to create your life's operating system, your digital operating system, your DOS, if you will, something that

• 2:32Scott Galloway?

  can be your platform for everything, all the way down to the hardware. We really, we call it an attention economy, but it is, we don't spend enough time talking about how apt that description is. If you can get attention from people, you can monetize it. Full stop. So who's kind of winning this race? Simply put, hello, Apple. US Apple stores have begun selling door locks that can be controlled via your Apple Watch or iPhone. Apple does not manufacture the locks. However, the Cupertino firm controls the software with its Apple Home Key feature. Users simply need to hold their iPhone or Apple Watch near a compatible lock, or they can enable it so you enter a passcode or use Face ID. Users can also give access codes to guests. I love this.

• 3:13Scott Galloway?

  I think that three things I can't stand, shoelaces, keys and passwords. I'm a big fan of biometrics. I think anonymity is vastly overrated. I like going to the airport, going to clear and have them look into my eyes. I think at some point, and then get me through TSA, I think at some point, we should have identity and biometrics come together so you can just walk to the plane or just get straight to your hotel room. Why on earth do you ever need to check into a hotel? I just don't get it. Why do we need to go through TSA? We can get rid of, why do we need locks? We don't need, why do I need a car key? Do you know what it's like for me? I am always five minutes away from losing my keys. The utility here, why do we have wallets? That's going to go away.

• 3:55Scott Galloway?

  I've actually started, I was at this store over the weekend called, I think it's called Sunspiel. It's the James Bond casual wear brand. And they make really lovely wear, really lovely, very, very high fashion, high fashion, I know high fashion, but I'm feeling very British these days. Anyways, I noticed they have the little wallets now that just hold one or two cards. And I thought, oh, I'm gonna get a little wallet. And I think, why do I even have a wallet? I just have my phone. Anyways, so the utility is gonna be there. And anybody who claims is worried about privacy, okay. What I would say is that we need judges and we need thoughtful people who can manage and punish a firm when they abuse the data they collect on you. But the notion that a firm aggregating your data isn't gonna provide great utility is just not true.

• 4:37Scott Galloway?

  And every day, young people vote with their phones when they say, hey, this is exactly where I am and what I'm doing. If you hear someone complaining about privacy, it's usually someone over the age of 40. I do think we need some sort of systemic privacy legislation that punishes people, i.e. meta, when they show absolutely no fidelity or responsible, or, you know, don't make the requisite investments to ensure that your data can't be weaponized or stolen. But the notion that we're not gonna come up with new and engaging ways to use identity and movement is just not, it's gonna happen, folks. And there could be tremendous utility here. You could, why on earth does Delta not know that I've gotten to the airport an hour and 15 minutes early, which never happens, I was in Boston yesterday, and say, okay, there's

• 5:20Scott Galloway?

  an earlier flight and there are seats, we're just gonna put you on it and send you a message saying, guess what, you're on the 12 from Boston to LaGuardia now. We rebooked you because we see you're at the airport and we have the AI and the cameras to know that security is really, really moving quickly. And because you're totally pre-approved and you have shown absolutely no signals whatsoever that you're a danger to anybody else, we're gonna move you through a super quick TSA line. I just don't get it. Why wouldn't I be able to walk into a restaurant? Or better yet, on a Friday, it says, well, every Friday night, you go out with friends. We've booked four tables for you, or they're temporarily on hold. Which ones do you wanna go to? Why on earth wouldn't they immediately say, okay, here's, here's where the gym is in

• 6:05Scott Galloway?

  a hotel, when they see that that's where I usually go every morning? Why wouldn't they immediately say, you always order the goddamn same thing, we're gonna send it to you at 7:00 in the morning? There's going to be a certain level of proactive AI, whatever you want to call it, that uses our phone, biometrics, and in a limited amount of kind of database, and yes, invasion of your privacy or collecting private details add tremendous utility. Now, now, the two firms best positioned for this, the firm that kind of started it all was Google, and they have been blown by by two firms, Apple and Amazon, and each will take a different approach. Apple will be more aspirational, it'll be easier to use. They have in their device, their distribution will be the iPhone. Amazon will come at it

• 6:49Scott Galloway?

  from a value standard standpoint. They'll offer insurance, they'll push notifications to you saying, "Dear Galloway family, would you like to cut your health insurance costs in half? If yes, say, tell me more about Amazon Prime Health Insurance." And they'll use Alexa and Echoes as their distribution, and they'll come at it more through a value-based orientation. So we're going to have Apple, the iPhone, elegant use, aspirational, and we'll have Amazon with value, more financial products and health insurance. But why on earth wouldn't they start saying, "Okay, this is a high-value customer that spends a lot of money, and we're going to push him or her offers based on their geolocation." The negative side of this, and there's those externalities when tech comes into this, is at some point it moves us further and further away from each other. We're now beginning

• 7:34Scott Galloway?

  to tokenize scarcity, and that is you can now buy a token to get into the highest-end restaurants. You can, in fact, get a Disney tour, right? It comes in and they push your notification saying, "Do you want to cut all the lines today? We see that you're a high-net-worth individual that's not at Disneyland very often, and you appear to have money. Click here if you want to skip all the lines for an extra $200, $300, $500, $1,000 per person, whatever it is." And I think a lot of people will push yes. Unfortunately, it'll be in greater segregation, even when we occasionally move into a collective called community gatherings. They're going to use this technology to separate us even further. When you fly first class now on certain airlines, you don't even go through the main terminal. The car, the BMW 7 Series that picks you up, takes you right to the runway

• 8:19Scott Galloway?

  where they wand you and put you right into first class, so you don't even have to see the riffraff going in business class and coach. That is bad for society. We are segregating. So there will be externalities, but you're going to see Apple and Amazon get off their heels and onto their toes and start doing amazing things for our utility. The thing we have to be worried about is it further segregates us between the haves and the have-nots.

• 8:44Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back for our conversation with Richard Reeves. Support for the show comes from Nutraful, the number one dermatologist-recommended hair growth supplement brand used by over one and a half million people. With age comes knowledge, patience, and for some, hair loss. Didn't say it was all good things. And for those who want to do something about it, there's Nutraful. Nutraful has formulas built for men at different life stages. They have Nutraful Men for guys age 18 to 49, plus the new Nutraful Men 50 and older. That's the first product of its kind specifically for men over 50. You can now address the key root causes of thinning wherever you are in life. Grow visibly thicker, fuller hair in just three to six months. Start Nutraful today and make the hat optional.

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• 11:07Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Richard Reeves, the author of several books, including his latest, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It. Richard, where does this podcast find you?

• 11:20Richard Reeves?

  I'm actually in East Tennessee, on the East Tennessee-North Carolina border.

• 11:25Scott Galloway?

  Wow, I would not have guessed that.

• 11:27Richard Reeves?

  You can't tell from the accent that I'm from East Tennessee.

• 11:31Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I knew you were from somewhere else, but I wouldn't have guessed Tennessee. So, let's bust right into it. Your book, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, outlines what we've been most concerned about lately. We've been talking about this for a while, and I've been searching, and I've said this on other podcasts, I've been searching for a Yoda here to sort of articulate what we've all been witnessing and feeling, and finally, that happened, specifically your book. Can you kick us off by explaining why this is something we should be concerned about?

• 12:02Richard Reeves?

  Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for those kind words. To be a Yoda figure to you, Scott, is high praise. The more I look at the trends in the education system, in the economy, in family life, what I see is just some huge disruptions that have taken place, many of which have left a lot of boys and men, frankly, reeling, dislocated from some of the recent changes. So, we see huge gender gaps now in education, and you've talked a lot about this over the past few years, declining labor force participation of men, especially those with fewer skills, and just a reshaping of family life that's, frankly, benched many of our fathers. You put all those together, and I think what you see is a clustering of problems specific to boys and men that can no longer be ignored.

• 12:47Scott Galloway?

  So, there's biological, societal, and economic. Can we start, I find a good place to start with this conversation that's sort of... Keys to temperature sort of low is when you talk about the biological reasons, because people don't seem to be as offended when you talk about actual biology. What are the biological reasons that young men are falling behind?

• 13:07Richard Reeves?

  Yeah, well, I think it depends which circles you move in as to whether or not mentioning biology low as the temperature. I mean, honestly, I have a chapter on biological differences in the book, and it's one of the chapters I was urged to take out. Simply like, just why would you go near anything about biology? But I kept it in because I think that there are clear biological differences, on average, overlapping distributions, let's just take that as given for this conversation, between men and women and boys and girls, many of which are now putting boys at a disadvantage in the education system, where we prioritize skills like sitting still, staying on task, future orientation. And in the labor market, where we've seen the combination of automation and free trade

• 13:51Richard Reeves?

  has disproportionately affected traditionally male jobs that could be done with your hands, even with relatively low levels of education. And so to the extent that we see these differences in the orientation and skills of men and women, most of the trends have been to the detriment of boys and men in recent decades. And that's in terms of where they come out of this biologically. And to me, those are just facts. What we do with those facts, how we interpret them, is a different question. But let's start with the facts.

• 14:18Scott Galloway?

  My understanding is, after reading your book, is that an 18-year-old girl, woman, is essentially, when she's competing against an 18-year-old, she's effectively competing against a 16-year-old cognitively and neurologically. Is that correct?

• 14:33Richard Reeves?

  Is between a year and two years the difference? But for sure, the chronological age is not a good proxy for the developmental age, if you then think about gender. So yeah, the brains of young women, girls, are developing between a year and two years earlier than they are for boys and men. And so it's not a level playing field in the classroom if they're the same chronological age.

• 14:57Scott Galloway?

  What about societal differences that impact or have a dampening effect on a boy's prospects?

• 15:07Richard Reeves?

  What has happened is that with the successful unpacking of the old model of masculinity, which was pretty narrowly defined around this primary breadwinner role in a capitalist economy. What it means if you undermine that role, if you change that role as a result of the successful rise of women economically, then you put a big question mark next to what does it mean to be a man? And to be fair, social conservatives were warning about this half a century ago. They said if women become economically independent, men will become a choice. And so unless we rethink what it means to be a man, we're in trouble. Now, they said that was a reason not to do feminism. That was a reason not to have all this women's rights stuff because we'll end up with a whole bunch of redundant men.

• 15:52Richard Reeves?

  That was a bad argument, both morally and empirically. But they were right to say that the question would need to be answered in a way that it hasn't been for arguably a very long time, which is what does it mean to be a mature man, a successful man in a world of gender equality? And I just don't think we've been willing to undertake the cultural task that is staring us in the face, which is to reimagine and re-script masculinity for a world of gender equality. Barely begun that. We're having conversations, but we've barely begun the conversation.

• 16:27Scott Galloway?

  Talk a little bit about the term toxic masculinity.

• 16:31Richard Reeves?

  I think the term toxic masculinity is itself toxic. It escaped from the margins of academia in 2016 until that had been used by maybe eight people in three journals with no citations to it, really in criminal justice areas. And then because of Trump and Me Too, it burst out into the mainstream. And it's become a term that is applied so loosely, so broadly, as to lose any serious meaning. It's rarely defined. It's just any behavior that the user of the term disapproves of. But more damagingly, By putting those two words next to each other and putting that into into general conversation, that sends a message, sends a message to boys. I've raised three boys

• 17:14Richard Reeves?

  myself into their twenties. It sends a message. There's something about masculinity. There's something there that has to be exorcised, something that has to be removed, expunged or or in some ways sedated. And for all the attempts to say, no, no, no, no, no, there's non-toxic masculinity as well. Usually those attempts fail. And all the messaging is incredibly off-putting. It is not an inviting conversation with young men. If you start by saying, how can we help you be less toxic? And even many feminists now are saying, we just shouldn't use the term. It's pushing men away rather than drawing them in.

• 17:48Scott Galloway?

  Is it possible to try and zero in on a moment or an action, kind of zero to eighteen, where a boy becomes vulnerable? Or that that action takes them off the track? Is it when they're suspended because they can't stay focused? Is it when they don't get into college? Is it when they don't develop the EQ to to have successful relationships? Is it dad no longer being present or a male role model? If you had to kind of zero in on, on, you know, where the where the spark of disarticulation from a productive society happens, is there one point or is it just a variety of them?

• 18:31Richard Reeves?

  Well, of course, every year matters. It's going to happen across across the board. But I love the question. And I'll give an answer, which is ninth grade. The transition to high school. I think generally transitions are these critical moments in opportunity journeys. So you talk a lot about on-ramps. I like that language. And I think about stepping stones or transition points. And it is like, do you successfully make the transition from one phase to another? And you can think about lots of transitions. Including from high school into further education, from education into the labour market, family formation, there's a number of these transition points. But it does look, partly because of these differences in development, as if grade nine is where boys really start struggling.

• 19:15Richard Reeves?

  It's tough, they're not quite ready, a lot of them aren't quite ready for high school. That's when a lot of boys get held back. Remember, one in four black boys repeat a grade before finishing high school. And so that, and that's when it starts, it is when the suspensions kick in. And it's also where the father absence, and I'm defining that relationally, not in strength, but the absence of a father in your life, it really affects adolescence. And so adolescence and high school, to me, are the moments when these things really start to come together. And particularly that transition to ninth grade. It looks like that's when boys' grades just go up, they just plummet. They're not ready for high school, they struggle to make the transition. They're not as mature as the girls, the girls seem like young women, the boys are still boys.

• 19:59Richard Reeves?

  And, and so they, they, they enter the high school journey at a disadvantage and they never recover.

• 20:06Scott Galloway?

  So I think of ninth grade, I think of, immediately think of puberty and becoming more aware of your sexuality. What role does that play in one gender falling behind?

• 20:19Richard Reeves?

  Well, puberty occurs earlier in girls than boys. And it looks like the gap, if anything, might be, might be getting bigger. And one result of that is not just that they become more mature in terms of sexuality and fertility, et cetera. But it's actually more important than that because puberty seems to trigger the development of the prefrontal cortex. So this is the bit of the brain that's called the CEO of the brain. I like to think of it as the bit of your brain that remembers you have chemistry homework to turn in and then does the homework and then turns it in, right? And then those skills associated with that bit of the brain are highly rewarded in the education system. And so the earlier onset of puberty in girls has direct

• 21:01Richard Reeves?

  Impact on their ability to navigate successfully the current education system because of its impact on the prefrontal cortex. Now, it also means, of course, they're going to want to date older guys. I looked at the data on this and, you know, a 10th grade girl is twice as likely to be dating a guy from grades above as her own grade. And again, it's like, well, duh, you don't need a social scientist to tell you that. But that, what is that telling us? It's telling us that at various different levels and in various different ways, there is just this maturity gap in high schools that you can see them reacting to behaviorally. But we continue to educate our kids as if that wasn't true.

• 21:38Scott Galloway?

  If you, what would your advice to a parent, a school administrator, or, you know, an elected official who is concerned with this? What type of programs or parental modifications could we be more, at least more knowledgeable about in terms of what we should be thinking about or paying closer attention to when our boys are around 14?

• 22:00Richard Reeves?

  Well, one of the things I think we should really consider is starting boys in school a year later than girls to account for this developmental gap, less because of the gap at five, there is a gap at five, but more because of the gap at 15. So build that in and actually just create, that would actually create more of a level playing field, right? Boys being a year older chronologically would be closer developmentally to the girls in their classroom. And so I think that's something that school districts administrators should consider, if not as an act of policy, at least allowing that or encouraging that. Interestingly, the private schools do that. I got the data from one very well-known private K-12 school on the East Coast, and 30% of their graduating senior boys were a year old for their year, that at some point they'd

• 22:45Richard Reeves?

  had that extra year. So this is like an open secret in elite circles, that it's not a bad idea to give boys an extra year. So why not do that more generally? And then, some of this stuff, I think, is obvious to parents, but not always to policymakers. Start school later, have more recess, have more exercise, much more phys ed, more extracurricular, more coaches, more men in, more men in the classroom, and some messaging in the school, which is as empowering to boys as it is to girls about the importance of educational success. Right now, the messaging in schools, you know, walking through the corridors of my kids' high school, there was poster after poster about girls' college night, girls' on the run, you go girl, black girl magic. I love all that. Nothing on the other side, nothing about boys.

• 23:30Richard Reeves?

  The presumption that the boys are just gonna be okay is is false empirically and is now becoming a self fulfilling prophecy in these in these educational institutions. So this cultural messaging about educational success is also hugely important. And then as parents, look, I don't need to tell most parents this, the school system assumes your son has a prefrontal cortex. He doesn't. You're gonna have to be the substitute prefrontal cortex for a few years. In fact, that's virtually the definition of parenting a boy, being a substitute prefrontal cortex for a few years.

• 24:00Scott Galloway?

  I love that.

• 24:00Richard Reeves?

  And that's what everyone's doing. So you are gonna invest more in your son than in your daughter, and that's not because you're sexist, it's because he needs more help.

• 24:07Scott Galloway?

  And if you think about, you know, I think of, um, this podcast is mostly an excuse for me to talk about me, but when I was growing up in the seventies, it was a badge of honor that in the third grade, I was sent to the fifth grade for math and English classes. And I ended up at UCLA, at university, at the age, I just turned seventeen. And it was a fucking disaster. I didn't know how to handle alcohol. I didn't know how to handle relationships. I was wildly insecure and ended up in the emergency room, almost failed out of my freshman year. And now, as you've noticed, we've learned, wealthy people are all holding their sons back. There's actually, I don't wanna call it a problem, but, you know, parents of boys are

• 24:50Scott Galloway?

  asked to produce birth certificates because everyone's kind of figured out that a kid, I think there's, there's evidence that the youngest male in the class is more prone to depression because they're not as physically or as neurologically advanced, which can create insecurity. But I, I found that joining a fraternity in college, which is, triggers a lot of people, was hugely important for me because the difference between a seventeen year old and a twenty-two year old male, which there are a lot, you know, a quarter of the men in the fraternity were twenty-two, was really important to me. And we were assigned what was called a big brother. And I remember my big brother setting me down and saying, Scott, you can't stop smoking so much pot. You know, I didn't have a dad around.

• 25:33Scott Galloway?

  How do we create, you know, how do we institutionalize, if you will? I like the idea of coaches trying to get more men involved in primary education. But what can, have you thought of other means of trying to, have you thought at all about prison release programs? I mean, it's, it strikes me, we just need more men involved in boys' lives. And one way is to have more male teachers, more coaches. Have you given any more thought about making more socially acceptable to have more men involved in boys' lives?

• 26:00Richard Reeves?

  Those are all great examples. And I, and I think that for men to have leadership roles in the community is hugely important. Like, I think it is very important for, for, for guys to feel like they have status, they have purpose, they have standing in whatever community they're in. And so like, if you're not, if you don't get that standing in the old way, you can get it in a new way. So I'll take the opportunity to use your podcast to talk about myself. When I was staying at home to look after the kids and my wife was the main breadwinner, I actually then became the local scout leader. I got heavily involved with the school. I was, you know, chaperoning a lot of the school trips. Quite often it was helpful to have a guy, right? Because, because you needed someone to take to the bathroom, et cetera. I became a leader in the community.

• 26:45Richard Reeves?

  And I was very proud of my role and my wife was very proud of what I was doing. And I was, you know, dedicated to our kids and I took them on camping weekends and all that. And I think that's the kind of having it, that sense of purpose and drive is really what women are looking for in men. They don't necessarily need the guy to show that in the old fashioned way through breadwinning. He might, but what they really want is this sense of leadership. So what other ways could men be leaders, I think is the question?

• 27:11Scott Galloway?

  It seems as if there was a, a belief that, and to your point, that toxicity and masculinity were incorrectly conflated and that there was an attempt to sort of starch out what would be considered traditional masculine behavior from, from a boy's activities. I, I'd like to believe, and I think there's evidence of that, that a lot of people are now feeling that, that femininity and masculinity are both wonderful things. But a lot of it comes down to how do you define masculinity? How do, what do you, how do you help your son? Identify what it means to be a man, what masculine attributes are, you know, the masculinity is wonderful, but okay, but what is it?

• 27:54Scott Galloway?

  Have you given any thought if your son asks you, what are the attributes? Dad, you want me to embrace being a man? What are the values? What are the attributes?

• 28:03Richard Reeves?

  Yeah, and again, I would focus on mature masculinity. Like, what does it mean to grow up, right? To go from boy, boy to man? And I think it's exactly the right question. And it does require us, first of all, to recognize there is such a thing as masculinity and femininity, even though they overlap. I've heard you say this, Scott, a lot. Of course, there are going to be some feminine attributes found in men and emasculine in women. But it doesn't mean that just because the distributions overlap that they aren't distinct. So what are the things about being a man that are good on average that are different? Well, one is more risk-taking. Actually, yeah, go for it. Take a risk. So one of my sons took a risk, stopped out of college to try, became an esports coach in Las Vegas for a while.

• 28:47Richard Reeves?

  Huge risk, didn't end up paying off, but why, my God, did he learn a lot along the way? Great, you want that. You want risk-takers, you want entrepreneurs. And if that is more common in men, great. Physical courage, hugely important. And you can see the number of times that really matters. So I stumbled across, well, I shouldn't say stumbled across, I was alerted to by Carol Hooven. He writes about testosterone, has a great book on testosterone. These things called the Carnegie Hero Medals, which I write about in the book. They're civilian heroism medals for people who've, who've risked their own lives to save the life of a stranger and not as part of their job. And they are trying so hard to find women, they can't. It's all men. It's like 95% men, 15-year-olds who've run into a burning building, lost their own lives, but saved the lives of two others.

• 29:31Richard Reeves?

  17-year-olds that have dived into a river, saved the life of a mother and child, died in the attempt. And, and we have to find a way to just say, that is great to be courageous, to be protective, to be willing to put your life on the line for the good of others is much more associated with men and masculinity. And it's a great thing, so do that. And then also just socially, like, how do you interact with women? I came across this great quote from J.F. Roxburgh, who was the headmaster of Stowe School in, in England. He said, "My job is a boys, private boys' school." He said, "My job is to create men who will be invaluable in a shipwreck." And acceptable at a dance.

• 30:15Richard Reeves?

  And I was asked in an interview recently, can you update that? Can you give, what's the modern version? And I thought about it and I said, actually, that's pretty good. What is that telling me? What is this telling me? It's telling me that actually, these are men who will be courageous, who will be willing to put their lives on the line if emergency comes along. But then they also then know how to behave respectfully and appropriately in social interactions with women. That's not a bad model. And so you have agency, you have purpose and you have respect. And that is, those are the values that I think are associated with masculinity and that we should be unafraid of saying so.

• 30:49Scott Galloway?

  You identified a few things, more risk aggressive, more quote unquote courage in certain environments, if you will. You also said that males, or you can identify males as having greater sexual desires. How do you channel that into something? How do we have an open and honest conversation that acknowledges that? And then take the next step and say, how do you channel that into something positive? Because there's so much media, justifiable media about how that has morphed into something negative for society. How does, how does that, how do you tell your 14 year old? Who is, you know, spending a lot of time in the shower?

• 31:32Scott Galloway?

  How do you channel that into something positive? What does it mean? What, what, how, what productive role does that play in society?

• 31:39Richard Reeves?

  Well, I will say that the, the one chapter that I did take out of the book was the one on sex. And that was partly because I wasn't, I wasn't as sure of my position. It didn't have clear policy implications. But also because as a friend said, if you have a chapter on sex and you talk about porn and desire and testosterone, nobody is going to talk to you about your ideas for technical high schools. And I thought that was pretty good advice. And I wanted to some extent to avoid some of the difficulties around this subject. That said, it's a very important question. And the way I would address it is as follows. Number one, there is nothing wrong with that sexual drive. Having that higher level of sex drive, being more driven by sexuality and by more driven by sex desire is not a bad thing.

• 32:24Richard Reeves?

  It's a good thing. It's part of who you are. The question is how you express it and what you do with it. So the first thing is, don't pathologize it. Don't, don't make it toxic. I worry that we get to a situation where the only kind of sexual desire that's not seen as good is the sexual desire of a man for a woman. And given that that is most men, that's a real problem, right? We can't have a society where there's something wrong with that kind of desire. So when my sons, they spend time in the shower or they're learning how to deal with this. I've tried never to make them feel guilty about it. It's okay to be horny. In fact, that's not completely natural. What it means then is you can have a much better conversation about things like pornography. We should have porn ed in our schools. And I think those should be divided by sex because it's a very different thing

• 33:09Richard Reeves?

  uh for men and women to think about porn, but we should be educating our boys in our schools. What is, there's a very good book, Your Brain on Porn: Understanding the Risk of Addiction. Right now, we have a debate about porn where it's just like, it's a public health crisis in, I think, six US states now. And so there's this moral revulsion. And along with that, there's this sense of, there's something wrong with you if you're attracted to that, right? But actually, there's nothing, there would be more likely something wrong with you if you weren't attracted to that. You are wired to be attracted to that. The question is, what do you do with that desire? How do you express it in a way that's appropriate without pathologizing it? And that's the message I've tried to send to my sons. And I think as a society, we've, we've got to do that.

• 33:53Richard Reeves?

  You see this, I think, and I've heard you talk about like the guy asking the woman out, right? What we don't want to do is say that a guy expressing sexual interest in a woman is de facto toxic or a creep. That's, that would be a very dangerous path to go down because then of course pornography becomes relatively more attractive. And then we blame the men for looking at porn.

• 34:15Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 34:19Scott Galloway?

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• 35:04Scott Galloway?

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• 35:26Speaker 04

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• 35:56Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I want to, I'm curious to get the reaction to the book specifically where you get the cohort, if there is a cohort that is most supportive of your work and then where you get the most pushback. I have found that I get the greatest levels of support and pushback when we talk about this issue from two different groups of women. One, young women find these statements verge on sexist that, okay, you've had a 400 year head start. You know, men are having a few struggles and your hair is on fire. Where have you been? And, you know, it's not our obligation. Again, you saying that these abject or rejected men are going to become more violent is, is just repackage violence.

• 36:41Scott Galloway?

  Hands down though, where I get the most support is mothers. Who say something along the lines of, I have two daughters and a son. One daughter's in Penn, one daughter's in Chicago, working for a PR firm. And my son is in the basement vaping and playing video games. What have you found in terms of observations around support for your work or people who push back on it?

• 37:04Richard Reeves?

  Well, that's interesting because I think you're right. I'd actually add another generation to this. I would say that the generation, one generation older than us, really struggle with this because they're the women who did have to fight tooth and nail to get these opportunities. And so there's a natural recoil from them, which is like, are you kidding me? Really? And to be fair, this has happened so recently that it's hard to overcome that initial reflex. Then there's the younger women, who I think particularly on the left, whose identity may well be around ideas of patriarchy and sexism and so on, who just find it difficult off the bat to engage with this subject. Although interestingly, a lot of young women are looking for men who've got their act together and are worrying about it from that perspective.

• 37:49Richard Reeves?

  But I have the same experience. In fact, one of the reasons I wrote the book was the number of mothers, including very liberal mothers, career Democrats, super feminists, deeply worried about their sons. And looking in the schools and looking at what was happening and really, really worrying about boys, their own boys in general, their own boys and boys in general, but not being able to say that in public. Because we've framed the conversation as such that even to have this conversation, Scott, is to run the risk of being seen as somehow anti-feminist, somehow against the progress of women and girls. You frame it as zero sum, pick your side. And so people won't say this stuff in public, even if they're feeling it in private. And I think that the response we're both getting from those mums is, yes, we completely agree.

• 38:32Richard Reeves?

  But what we're both trying to do is say, well, let's talk about that publicly then. Maybe there are some policies, maybe there's some cultural interventions. Maybe, maybe this isn't just a conversation to have around a million dinner tables, but to be having out loud. And so it's, one of the reasons I wrote the book was to try and bridge that private-public divide. And in fact, I did some polling of the American Family Survey, which asked parents, are you most worried about girls or boys in general, growing up to be flourishing adults? And are you most worried about your own son or daughter? And liberal parents were most worried about girls in general, consistent with their broad views about a sexist society, but more worried about their sons. And so inverted, right? So the difference between the public and private was shown in

• 39:15Richard Reeves?

  that polling. But I now think there's a general sense, and I've been encouraged by the response to my book, frankly, that there is a sense of, look, as long as we don't frame it as zero sum, yeah, there's something to see here. Let's, let's talk about this.

• 39:28Scott Galloway?

  It feels as if, if you were to try and, and this is reductive, kind of K through 12, there's a bias against boys, the systemic bias in the education system, right out of college, early professional years, it feels like there's this brief moment of equality between the sexes. And then the workplace turns against women. It becomes biased against women, specifically about the time they have children. What are your thoughts?

• 39:54Richard Reeves?

  Yeah. So I, essentially, I think that's right. The education system is structured in favor of girls, and the labor market is structured in favor of men. And so there is one view of this, which is like, well, you know, two wrongs make a right. And until we fix one, we shouldn't worry about the other. I think that's wrong. But, but you're right that what's really happening here is it's a parenting pay gap, right? It's not a gender pay gap so much as a parenting pay gap. It's just that the parents are women. By and large, it's women who take time off, women who go part time. And so that has, and it has this huge effect on their earnings. So if you look at the earnings charts, you see men's earnings and women's earnings tracking pretty well through the twenties now, right?

• 40:37Richard Reeves?

  Basically, as you say, basically. And then around the age of 30, the men's line just keeps going up and the women's is like a meat, it's got, it got hit by a meteorite. The meteorite is called kids. And that's true of women at all education levels. And so that means, first of all, we have to think hard about what the solution to that problem is. So that's a different kind of problem. Some people would say it's not a problem. Social conservatives would say it's not a problem. It's a choice, right? But that's the real debates to have. My view about this is that we have not reformed our labor market institutions, anything like enough for a world where both parents work, which is true in most families now. But we have no paid leave, we have, still have very inflexible work, maybe the pandemic will help. And we have, most of all, Claudia Goldin's work

• 41:19Richard Reeves?

  on this is really exemplary. What she shows is, it's your thirties where your career really takes off, right? So there's a kind of, it's not linear. There's a non-linearity in a lot of professions, which is like 30s of when you make it to partner, you make it to senior management, you get promoted, and then you see this real uptick. But of course, that's exactly when you're trying to raise your kids. So not only is jobs, but labor market trajectories are right now structured in a way that's quite anti-family. And we've barely begun to to think through the implications of what it means for this new world in terms of our labor market institutions.

• 41:55Scott Galloway?

  So, Richard, I think this is a landmark book. And when I wrote my first book on big tech, it got a lot of attention. And if this hasn't already happened to you, I think it will. I get summoned down to DC and several elected representatives, senators, congresspeople, say, OK, read your book, concerned about this problem. Give me the three ideas, your three best ideas for how to address this issue. So if you haven't already had that call, let's assume you have the call. You're brought into DC, you meet with a variety of elected representatives. And what are the three things we need to do to help to help address this issue?

• 42:31Richard Reeves?

  Well, I start with vocational education. I start with, can you get that apprenticeship bill out of the Senate where it's been languishing for a year? Could we have a thousand new technical high schools and a big investment in CTE? By my estimates, we could actually double the number of kids that can go to a technical high school in the US for $5 billion a year federal subsidy, which is 1% of the cost of getting rid of student loan, of canceling student loan debt, right? That strikes me as a pretty good bet. So huge investment in vocational forms of learning, on ramps, to use your language, into the middle class, et cetera. And secondly, get serious about fatherhood. Reform the child support system and the way we treat unmarried fathers and institute paid leave that is available independently to mothers and fathers.

• 43:14Richard Reeves?

  I don't care what the level is to start with, but just right from the beginning, enshrine the principle that fathers are as important as mothers. And then thirdly, let's get serious about men's health. I mean, you've talked about this, I've talked about this, the fact that men are three times greater risk of a death of despair from suicide, alcohol, or drug overdose. 70% of opioid deaths, you know, the suicide rates among young men, huge. But under Obamacare, young women get a free annual healthcare checkup. Great, but men don't. And then we point fingers at men for not going to the doctor enough. So how about having they have an annual well woman checkup? How about an annual well man checkup too? And how about more investment in some of those mental health programs as well, specifically tailored towards boys and men?

• 43:59Richard Reeves?

  I have many more, including a massive recruitment drive of male teachers, which I know I've heard you talk about too. I think it's unconscionable, the way we're just letting the teaching profession become gradually more female and not do anything about it. So I'd have scholarships for men, et cetera. But the last thing I say to them, and it depends how brave they're feeling. And I have had a few of these conversations is, look, at least take credit for the stuff you're already doing. And my salient example right now is the infrastructure bill. The infrastructure bill will create whatever it is, 800,000 new jobs. 70% of those will go to men, almost all working class men, and slightly disproportionately men of color, actually. But nothing the administration has said has referred to that fact. We only know that fact because a women's lobbying group

• 44:43Richard Reeves?

  crunched the numbers in order to criticize the infrastructure bill. How about rather than seeing the fact that the infrastructure bill will help working class men, including black and Hispanic working class men? How about seeing that as a feature rather than an embarrassing bug? How about talking about the fact that this, here's what we're doing. So they've actually passed legislation that will help working class men. But you wouldn't know it from anything anyone has said. And so I encourage them even to say, just take credit for it. But what that requires them to do is step into this space, recognize there's a problem and recognize above all, you can think two thoughts at once. You can be doing all this stuff for women and girls. Keep doing that and doing stuff for boys and men. And the political opportunity in front of you is huge.

• 45:27Richard Reeves?

  I think anybody that starts to be able to do both those things at once is huge.

• 45:32Scott Galloway?

  If you'd written this book 20 years ago and found this research and made these observations, how would your parenting have changed? How would you have been a different dad? And how would you have been a different husband?

• 45:47Richard Reeves?

  As a husband and as an individual, in some ways, the arc of the book, which is from a recognition that we need gender equality and fighting on behalf of girls and women and being a good feminist, to being a good man, is essentially the arc of my own journey. I have learned, the hard way, that when I've struggled in my marriage, in my relationships, it has very often been because of an inability to occupy my masculine self in a way that is respectful of and egalitarian enough. And I can say that I've had it said to me by someone very close to me, "The problem is not that you're not feminist enough. The problem is

• 46:28Richard Reeves?

  you're not masculine enough." And that was a crucial moment, just in my own personal development. Because I just invested all of this, "I need to be a good feminist. I need to be in favour of women. I need to be on..." And I just forgot, "Yeah, but I also need to be me, and I'm a man, and I need to own that and occupy that. I need to occupy that space in myself in a way that is not embarrassed, or seeing that somehow there's something wrong with me, to be okay with my own masculinity." So that's been a journey for me, Scott, honestly. And I think it's kind of a proxy for the journey that we're having as a society, which is, yes, we go on gender equality, but we also don't, we don't need to evacuate the very idea of masculinity in order to have gender equality. I think that I learned some

• 47:13Richard Reeves?

  of those lessons in time, to be able to be the kind of father to my sons that I wanted to be, which was to, again, not, to make them feel good about being male, to make them feel good about being physical, to be okay with them taking risks. And say, "That's okay, right, within certain bounds, to be okay with being horny, to be okay." And then learn how to marshal all those things, learn what it means to have those different skills and powers and weaknesses, and then how to take them out in the world, which is mature, and try and model that myself. And so I'm glad that I learned some of those lessons in time, because I think the big difference would be, I had underestimated just how far

• 47:53Richard Reeves?

  the education system was tilted against boys. And now, I will say, so looking back on it... And this is difficult for me to talk about. One of my kids just struggled so much at school. Clearly, big attention deficit problems, but just like the way the environment was structured. Obviously, this is an elementary school, all female teachers, very, you know, just needed to move, couldn't do it. And I would drag him to school every day. And I yelled at him. Some of my least proud moments are those mornings when I dragged him to school. And I actually came home, uh, came home to talk to my wife about it one day. And I was in tears and I said, I feel like I'm breaking a horse.

• 48:35Richard Reeves?

  I feel like I've taken this beautiful wild creature and I'm breaking it. So that it can, cause it can be in society and so it can be ridden on. And I'm not even sure that that was the wrong thing to do, by the way, but it just opened my eyes to the way in which I presumed that this is how the system is. If you don't work in it, I'm going to have to make you work in it. So I'm going to, I'm going to take this, this square peg and ram it into a round hole. Uh, no matter the cost. And I now just really regret that we should have kept one of our kids back a year. And we should have probably rethought some of the education, but most of all, I just shouldn't have made him feel bad about the fact that he was struggling in that institution. I didn't have the data at that point to really realize what I was doing.

• 49:20Richard Reeves?

  And it's among my greatest regrets as a father.

• 49:24Scott Galloway?

  So, um, I can't tell you how deeply this resonates. I have, and I have a couple of regrets. One, I can't do anything about, and one very much relates to what you're talking about. Um, when my oldest was, you know, one, two years old, he used to every morning, come into our bedroom, you know, six in the morning, holding his basket of cars and just want desperately to get in bed with us. And I had read somewhere that you weren't supposed to have your kids sleep with you. And so I thought being a good dad was taking him back to his room. No, you're not allowed to sleep with us. And I can't tell you how much I deeply regret that. Now that I have this 15 year old that I stalk around the house because he's only home a day a week.

• 50:06Scott Galloway?

  Cause he's at boarding school and I just can't get enough of him. And the fact that this little gorgeous thing, you know, that just wanted to be in our presence as he started the day. That somehow I had this fucked up notion that you weren't supposed to have your kids sleep with you. Anyways, I hugely regret that. And I'm going through what you're talking about. Our 12 year old is in a new school and it's not 15 minute classes. It's an hour and 20 minutes and every day comes home miserable. And I literally have to physically drag him out of bed. I mean physically drag him out of bed. Every morning he says he's sick and I'm trying to figure out if there's something that traumatic has gone at school, but I don't think that's it.

• 50:47Scott Galloway?

  I think it's just torture for him to have to sit for 80 minutes straight and learn, you know, French. I just think it's torture for him. And you have the one side that's like, okay, Jonathan Haidt, you don't want to coddle your kids. There's a link between teen depression and how much we coddle and concierge parent these kids. So I think, okay, I've got to be that prefrontal cortex you're talking about. At the same time, I'm like, if I decided these are the norms of society and I'm torturing my 12 year old. And I don't know if there's an answer here. Did you get to a point or advice around that balance that we all struggle with?

• 51:27Richard Reeves?

  Yeah, it isn't that interesting. That is the trade off we're facing. We want to equip our kids for the world as it is, but we also don't want to feel like we're inflicting this horrible pain on them. Actually, we had a similar experience around the bed routine, their bed thing, by the way. Same thing, kid coming, he was sitting on the edge of the bed and he was actually, he'd be like desolate, but we wouldn't let him in for a while. And this went on for a while. And then in the end, I said to my wife, and then we had another kid almost the same age. She's like, well, we can't let one in, not the other. And then I said to my wife, let's get rid of all the beds and just put mattresses all across the floor of the bedroom and just whoever wants to sleep in their camp, which is how most people have slept for most of history.

• 52:09Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 52:10Richard Reeves?

  And our friends thought we were crazy. Our friends thought we were crazy, but it worked great. And eventually they got out of their beds and it was fine, but it was a great metaphor for this like overly rigid approach. What we did, I know, and the end of our kids was just to recognize that the price that we will extract from them for succeeding in a very narrowly constructed education system.

• 52:35Richard Reeves?

  Is too high. Now, I will say that, you know, you have to fuck it up with one of them, probably, to learn it for the others. Um, is just too high. And so when our, you know, our kids, like, they're not doing well in high school, they're not getting great grades, which is, we'll encourage them, we'll support them. But it's like, you know what? You'll be fine. The labor market, you'll be fine in the labor market. That was always my line. The labor market is a welcoming place. The education system is a very hostile place, very narrow, very linear. The labor market will sort you out. And as long as you get some kind of post-secondary education, you'll be fine. Yeah, the one of them ended up taking a gap year, wriggling into a UK college. The other one has gone to a big public in the, in the US South and they're fine. Right? Could they have gone to more selective colleges?

• 53:18Richard Reeves?

  If, if we'd ridden them harder, yeah. But I just kind of realized, we're being asked to extract too much from them in order to succeed against the benchmarks. And like you, I wanna look back on those years they were with us with joy. And not with a sense of just the agony that comes through inevitable conflict of trying to force your kids through a system that is not designed for them. It's too high a price to pay. Better to just do okay in the education system, but have a good relationship and have a good time than to do great in the education system. As, as the consequence of just this grinding approach that you have to take with them. So for what it's worth, so here I am advocating for a bit of mediocrity, maybe, but what the hell? Life is precious.

• 54:03Richard Reeves?

  Life is short and child, your kids are gonna be gone. Don't pummel them in, into conforming to the current, current society, especially if they're boys. Right? Especially because the girls are just, it, it, it fits better for the girls. There is a better fit with the girls. So there's less, you're less likely to have to force them into it. So there we are. We're basically trying to force boys to meet a female standard of what it means to succeed educationally, because we think that's what's gonna matter in the economy. It's too high a price to pay. So I wanna reform the system so we don't face that horrible trade-off. But in the meantime, don't do it to your kids. It's not worth it.

• 54:40Scott Galloway?

  Richard Reeves is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he directs the future of the middle-class initiative and co-directs the Center on Children and Families. He also writes for a wide range of publications and is the author of several books, including his latest, "Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It." Between 2010 and 2012, Richard served as the Director of Strategy to the UK's Deputy Prime Minister. He joins us from eastern Tennessee. Richard, there's a moment where you're feeling something. You know something's going on, and then someone lays it out with rigor and substance and heart. And it is such a rewarding moment. And that moment, I had that moment when I read your book.

• 55:23Scott Galloway?

  I think you are doing really meaningful work. Thank you very much.

• 55:28Richard Reeves?

  Thank you, Scott. And back to you. This book's only possible because there are people like you who've been talking about this for so long. So, thank you.

• 55:45Scott Galloway?

  "Algebra of Happiness." I was really moved by Richard Reeves' book. And I've been thinking a lot about how to define masculinity and a few observations. First off, I don't think masculinity is the domain of anyone based on whether they were born as a woman or born as a man. I think masculinity is a wonderful thing, and I think it's something that a lot of wonderful women present and a lot of men present. And there's some overlap. I think we're more predisposed to masculine attributes, people born as men. I don't even know the right fucking language anymore without triggering people, but you get my point. But I think it's important to identify it early on. And I like what Richard says about mature masculinity. I'm kind of zeroing in on, for me, what I think masculinity is, as I try and raise men.

• 56:30Scott Galloway?

  And that is, the true masculinity is acquiring skills and strengths such that you can protect and advocate for others. I love that. And I think you see it in nature. You know, elephants pick their leader by who is strongest and shows concerns and has the skills to take care of other baby elephants. Usually, it's kind of a matriarchal society. But I like the idea that true masculinity is doing things, advocating for others. It's planting trees of which the shade you'll never sit under, whether it's voting, voter registration, getting involved in a church group, being a leader in Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. I like this. But more than anything, what I have found makes me feel very,

• 57:15Scott Galloway?

  you know, strong like bull, if you will, is occasionally I'm in a position to help a kid that isn't my own. And that is where I think you feel some of that chest-beating masculinity. And there's no reason why anyone from any gender can feel that type of reward. And it's saying, okay, I have identified a child in my life somewhere that could use some help. And you don't need to look very far. I find what's fairly common is a lot of us who are, have achieved some level of success, try and get involved in kind of institutional giving. You know, we give money to the Boys Club or Planned Parenthood or what have you,

• 58:00Scott Galloway?

  or go to an event and raise money for some philanthropy, you know, or some basically social event disguised as philanthropy. But you don't really have to look very far. You start asking some questions of your friends, and you find out that their sons or their daughters are struggling. And I think to proactively get involved, once you're in a position where you feel like you have some perspective, you can start giving. I was with my 12-year-old, and a kid at his school had a fairly severe seizure. And I spend time, I do this thing called, what does a man do? And I'm like, okay, when guests show up at our house, a man runs out to their car and starts taking their luggage to their bedroom.

• 58:45Scott Galloway?

  That's what a man does. A man, when he needs water from the table, picks up the pitcher and looks around and fills everyone else's glass first. That's what a man does. So I have all these things, that's what a man does. And I said to my 12-year-old, he came home and he was rattled. And he talked about this, a poor little boy who had what sounded like a fairly severe seizure. Can you imagine being 12 fucking years old and in front of the whole school? You collapse and begin foaming in the mouth. And I mean, you just got a feel for this kid. I'm like, what does a man do? And he went through a bunch of things. And he finally said, you know, oh, I should call him and ask him if he wants to come over. And I'm like, that's exactly what a man does.

• 59:29Scott Galloway?

  And that's kindness, and that's femininity. And that's also what a woman does. There's some great overlap. But I'm trying to figure out how I instill across my boys as they become men, that being masculine means showing strength, confidence, grace to advocate for others. And a lot of us talk about it and don't do a lot about it. I'm one of those people. I never, I never helped another fucking human being until I was 40 or 45. I thought that being an entrepreneur made me a bad, I was, I was doing God's work. I was an agent of capitalism, creating jobs for people. Well, smell fucking me, but I never actually went out of my way. I mean, really went out of my way, never really took the time.

• 1:00:13Scott Galloway?

  If someone was struggling, it was like it was a foul smell and I ran from it. And this is what men do. They run into the fire. They sense that someone is struggling. They sense that their nanny's son is at home and struggling. And they say, you know, can I help? Is he interested in junior college? Can I help? You sense that a kid is struggling and the parents don't know what to do. And you reach out and say, you know, would this be an opportunity for, for him to come with us on vacation and give you guys a break? There's just little opportunities everywhere, everywhere.

• 1:00:52Scott Galloway?

  And I find that, you know, I've got a lot of catching up to do because let's be honest, a lot of us talk a big game and are very focused on ourselves. And I think there's some merit to that. You got to fix your own oxygen mask. But what does it mean to be masculine? It means being proactively saying, I'm a fucking baller. I've got resources. I've got generosity. I'm smart. I've got some time. And I have, I'm going to be proactive and find people and recognize people that need help. And you can do it at any age. You can demonstrate masculinity and kindness at the age of 12. You can do it at any age. But how many of you are like me and have some work to do, have some catching up to do? Let's get on it.

• 1:01:33Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Shager and Claire Miller and Drew Burrows. Sammy Resnick is our associate producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week.

• 1:01:56Scott Galloway?

  I forget which pod this is. How is that? How is that? My prostateitis is likely going to flare up in the next two days. How are you?

• 1:02:05Speaker 05

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