America Is Facing a Five-Alarm Crisis and It’s Affecting Men, Women, and the Future of Us All. The New Digital Opioid Crisis, AI’s God-Like Tech, & The Dangers of AI Girlfriends | Scott Galloway

Male Loneliness Is Exploding... Tech, AI, and Society Are Making It Worse Scott Galloway — NYU Stern Professor of Marketing, serial entrepreneur, bestselling author of Notes on Being a Man, and one of the most influential voices on culture, masculinity, and economics — returns to Mayim Bialik's Breakdown for a brutally honest conversation about what’s happening to young men today… and why it affects all of us. In this wide-ranging discussion, Galloway breaks down why young men are more lonely, economically insecure, and socially disconnected than any generation before them, and how technology, AI companionship, and synthetic relationships are hijacking young male brains at an unprecedented scale. We explore the growing maturity gap between men and women, why women are now surpassing men financially and educationally, and why young men are struggling so badly in the modern dating market. Scott also dives into the alarming rise of AI chatbots and synthetic relationships, especially among young people, and the hidden dangers no one is talking about. Scott also breaks down: - Why young men today are at a disadvantage compared to prior generations - How tech, AI, and economic insecurity are fueling male loneliness - Why women’s success does NOT cause men to fail - Why young men are falling behind in education, income, and dating - Shocking prevalence of human–AI relationships and why they’re dangerous - Why resilience is the most important trait for long-term success - Why older generations of men have a moral obligation to pay it forward - How single-parent households affect children, especially boys (The U. S. has the highest rate of single-parent homes in the world!) - Best ways to truly connect with your kids in a digital world - Why Scott identifies as a reluctant atheist and how belief, meaning, and purpose fit into modern life This is a conversation about masculinity, responsibility, technology, parenting, faith, and the future, and why fixing the crisis facing young men is one of the most important challenges of our time. Go to helixsleep.com/breakdown http://helixsleep.com/breakdown for a special partner offer including 27% off any purchase. If you’re tired of being tired, this is your chance to finally get answers and get your energy back. Go to https://Superpower.com and use code BREAK for $20 off your membership this year. Scott Galloway’s latest book, Notes on Being a Man: https://a.co/d/0VNktwg Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The most violent unstable societies throughout history have one thing in common: the disproportionate number of young men with a lack of economic or romantic opportunities. When a boy loses a male role model, he is more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college. Wow. I worry that we're gonna have millions of young people who at the middle and the later stages of their life wake up and go, "I never really felt real victory."

• 0:24Mayim Bialik?

  Scott Galloway is a serial entrepreneur and bestselling author. He's here to talk about how young men's brains are being hijacked by technology, false intimacy, and economic insecurity, and why we should all be very concerned.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  You have so many men spending so much time online that men aged 20 to 30 are spending less time outdoors than prison inmates. Oh, that's terrifying. Two-thirds now of people under the age of 18 are now in a synthetic relationship. They have a godlike technology telling them they can't have a reasonable facsimile of life online.

• 0:56Mayim Bialik?

  It's a partner with no needs.

• 0:58Speaker 00

  My AI girlfriend will tell me I'm sexy and no one's ever gonna tell me to get my [BLEEP] together.

• 1:02Mayim Bialik?

  You're not learning to say, "It's my turn to be loving."

• 1:05Speaker 00

  Every wonderful thing in my life was preceded by dozens, if not hundreds, of no's. What does it mean to connect when they're ready? If I could communicate anything to young men, when you're not achieving, building, procreating, feeling sadness, feeling joy with someone else, it's literally like it doesn't happen. I worry that we're evolving this asocial, asexual species.

• 1:35Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.

• 1:36Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 1:37Mayim Bialik?

  Welcome to our breakdown. There is a crisis in America, and it revolves around the needs of not just men, but women as well. The statistics regarding what we're gonna talk about today constitute a five-alarm fire. What we're gonna talk about today touches pretty much every aspect of the human experience, from rates of success in relationships to economic success, including rates of Suicide. What one issue could encompass all of these things? What one issue could be so impacted by the rise in AI, the rise in synthetic relationships?

• 2:22Mayim Bialik?

  Guess what? It's being male. Scott Galloway is going to join us to talk about Notes on Being a Man. Scott Galloway, also known as Prof G, is a serial entrepreneur and bestselling author. He's here to talk about how young men's brains are being hijacked by technology, false intimacy, and economic insecurity, and why we should all be very concerned. We've spoken to Scott before. We spoke to him about the algebra of wealth, which was an analysis of how economics and socioeconomics are impacting all of us. But today, we're going to be focusing on being a man.

• 3:00Jonathan Cohen?

  Scott is probably the busiest man in podcasting with his show Pivot with Kara Swisher, as well as Raging Moderates, which is his political show, and Prof G Media, where I think he has like 10 shows a day. It's really unbelievable. We're really, really excited to get to speak with Scott.

• 3:17Mayim Bialik?

  Again.

• 3:18Jonathan Cohen?

  Again.

• 3:19Mayim Bialik?

  And with that, Scott Galloway, welcome back to The Breakdown.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Break it down.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  It's good to be with you.

• 3:27Mayim Bialik?

  We appreciate you taking time away also from your Oprah schedule. We were very, very impressed and-

• 3:32Speaker 00

  We're tight now. Me and Oprah are just best buddies.

• 3:35Mayim Bialik?

  As you should be. But we were particularly moved, you know, by the way that you're framing this conversation with Notes on Being a Man and, you know, what you kind of describe as like a five-alarm fire for men in this country. Can you kind of frame for us what you see happening? And also, why should we all be concerned about what we see happening for men?

• 4:00Speaker 00

  Sure. And thanks. That's a generous question. I would probably, the focus of my work has mostly been about the struggles of young men. So let me just first do my land acknowledgement and say that, look, men of my age, right, registered unprecedented unfair advantage. From 1945 to 2000, America garnered-

• 4:23Speaker 00

  A third of the world's economic growth with 5% of the population. So we had six times the economic prosperity of the average global citizen. And almost all of that prosperity was crammed into one third of the American population that was white heterosexual male. So I want to be clear, I've had gale force winds in my sails since I was born in the 60s. The issue is, should young men be paying the price for my disproportionate unearned advantage? Because if you look at the stats, they're pretty stark. If you go into a morgue and there's five people who've died by suicide, four men. And we now have one, only one in three men are in a relationship under the age of 30. It's two in three women because women are dating older. When we passed Title IX to level up women and provide the opportunity for upward mobility via college,

• 5:08Speaker 00

  it was 60, 40 male to female. Now it's 40, 60. It may go two to one in the next five years in terms of graduates because men drop out at a greater rate. You now, one in seven men in America are what are referred to as NEEDs. And that is they're neither in education, employment, or even training. 62% of men aren't even trying to date under the age of 30. And you have so many men spending so much time online that the most recent survey shows that men 20, age 20 to 30, are spending less time outdoors than prison inmates. So you wrap that all in, the notion that America's kind of become this giant bet on AI or 10 companies. And those 10 companies do a lot of things, but I would argue their primary means of building shareholder value

• 5:52Speaker 00

  is to sequester us from our relationships and work in school and get us to spend another minute every day on our phones. And a man's, a young man's prefrontal cortex, which is quite frankly just less mature, is especially receptive to that kind of DOPA hit. So I feel as if we've attached our economy to the notion of Evolving a new species of asocial, asexual males. And why do we care? Well, the most violent unstable societies throughout history have one thing in common. And that is a disproportionate number of young men with a lack of economic or romantic opportunities. And women nor the country are going to continue to flourish if men are flailing.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  So, you know, young men are my biggest fans, but my biggest supporters are mothers who tend to have both boys and girls because they see the difference and the differences stark. But I think this is, I think this is something that affects all of us.

• 6:47Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, many women I know have started dating women.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Is that right?

• 6:51Mayim Bialik?

  And there's many, there's, yeah, there's, there's many reasons for that. But when I sort of, you know, look at that stat right up against 62% of men, right? Under 30, not trying to date. What, what's happening? What are they doing? I mean, I have a 20 year old and I have a 17 year old and Jonathan has a 17 year old. So we're in boys town here, but you know, there's something that's happening between 20 and 30, I think, that we'd love your assistance with. Like, it used to be the thing to do. I mean, it also used to be the thing to do to get a driver's license to get the hell out of your house. Now my children just want to like, watch me cook dinner while they scroll on their phones. Something is changing, but what's changing more, more disproportionately for men?

• 7:32Mayim Bialik?

  That they do not have a desire to pursue the opposite sex or the same sex, you know, any kind of dating?

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Well, so it's, it's multi-dimensional, but the first is just purely biological. And that is men mature later. And what's weird is it appears that the gap in maturity is actually broadening. So a man, a boy's prefrontal cortex is 18 months behind a girl. So a senior, two seniors in high school applying to college. The girl is basically competing against a 10th grade girl. And seven and 10 high school valedictorians are girls. At NYU, I can tell you in some graduate schools, if we were totally admissions blind, it would not only be 70% female or 80% female, it'd be 50% Asian female. Because the Asian community has done such an outstanding job of preparing their kids for school. But look at K through 12.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  And I've said this to some pushback, I think it's bias against boys. Look at the behaviors we promote or encourage in primary school. Sit still, be a pleaser, be organized, raise your hand. You just described a girl. And boys have better gross motor skills. They're faster and stronger. Girls have greater fine motor skills, their hands, their oral skills, asking questions. What do we ask kids to do in school? We ask them to push a pencil and ask and answer questions. But the biggest, it's a variety of things. A lot of the onramps to economic viability for a boy that doesn't go to college have been eliminated. We've outsourced a lot of our manufacturing.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Remember Wood, Auto and Metal Shop? Those have gone away. We're all hoping that our kid learns Mandarin and takes computer science and ends up at Google. And two thirds of our kids do not end up with traditional liberal arts college degrees. And this has been especially hard on young men. In addition, the digitization of the mating market, whenever you digitize a market, it becomes a winner take most environment. So you digitize retail and 50% of all e-commerce goes to Amazon. You digitize connections and information and two thirds and 90% of all connections or online connections and search goes to Meta and Alphabet respectively. When you digitize the mating market, people used to meet through friends, through work,

• 9:50Speaker 00

  and through school. Now they primarily meet online. When you digitize the mating market, you end up in the following environment. 50 men on Tinder, 50 women. Forty-six of the women will show all of their attention to the same four men, which leaves 46 men fighting over four women. This discourages men and unfortunately, they have a very seductive, godlike technology telling them they can't have a reasonable facsimile of life online. Why go through the effort of having friends when you have Discord and Reddit? Why put on a tie and try and get a job when you can make money trading crypto or stocks on Robinhood or Coinbase? And why would you go through the effort of looking good, smelling nice, the expense, the resilience, the potential rejection, maybe risking

• 10:33Speaker 00

  being that guy or creeping somebody out when you see everything on... I mean, there was just a survey done online of what are the things women like least about going out in quote unquote, "singles environments." And on the same list, in the top five were, "Men never approached me", and also on the same list, "Creeps approached me." So as a dude, like, how do you interpret that?

• 10:59Mayim Bialik?

  That was my experience as a human being.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  There are three women in the studio all nodding.

• 11:03Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  To which part? Men don't approach me, or creeps approach me?

• 11:06Mayim Bialik?

  Both.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  Because here's the problem. Creep is based on the perceived attractiveness of the, of the person making the approach. Brad Pitt has never been accused of being creepy.

• 11:14Mayim Bialik?

  Eliza Schlesinger says it's only sexual harassment if he's not attractive and you're not into him.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  HR hates to hear this. One-third of relationships begin at work. And, and by the way, 99% of those are consensual. I've been to 12 weddings with people who were at my work, and I'm like, I had no idea they were sleeping together. And you know what? It's a mitzvah. And the vast majority of people, even when it doesn't work out, figure it out. And if you don't know the difference between harassing someone and expressing interest and asking them out for coffee, you have bigger problems. So there's, there's, there's sociological problems, there's economic issues, there's mixed messaging from quote unquote "the market." And also, I think there's a whole, unfortunately, I hate the incel movement, because what I coach young men, I say, "I think the majority of people who would self-categorize themselves as incel are v-cells,

• 12:03Speaker 00

  and that is they're voluntarily celibate." And what I say to them is the following. I hate the term incel. When I was in high school and I, you know, went through puberty, I thought, "I just want, more than anything, I want a girlfriend." I thought, "I'd be such a good boyfriend." And also, I was starting to get really horny, quite frankly, and I thought, "Gosh, I'd really like to be physical with a willing partner, right? That would be really nice for me." And it didn't happen. I wasn't... And so what I did was I worked on myself. I worked out. I got, I tried to get into clothes. I made female friends. I thought, "If I'm around women, I'll feel safer and I'll start to, I'll start to figure it out." I went to UCLA. And then, I, you know, I was a late bloomer. I didn't have a girlfriend until I was 19.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  But what I say to these young men is bullshit. You're voluntarily celibate. You're gonna work on yourself. And if you really wanna be in a relationship with a woman, a romantic and a physical relationship, you need to demonstrate excellence. You need to work on yourself. You need to have a plan. You need to have a kindness practice. And there are a lot of women out there that are not your enemy. They're on your side. And they would like to find a nice guy who notices their life, who makes an effort, who maybe texts and follows up. I mean, so I hate the whole, I hate the term incel. I think it's a cop-out. And I think unfortunately, online, these communities have risen up that says, "Give up and start blaming immigrants for your economic problems and start blaming

• 13:30Speaker 00

  women for your romantic problems." So, I mean, just getting to solutions, the first solution is, young men need to level up. Yeah, it's harder for you than it was for me, I'll give you that for a lot of reasons. But there are still, you still have agency in the marketplace, in the corporate world, and in the mating market. It might, the bar might be a little bit higher, but you can get there. And don't just pull the plug and say, "I'm an incel." That is giving up. It's bullshit.

• 13:59Mayim Bialik?

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• 14:43Mayim Bialik?

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• 15:44Jonathan Cohen?

  I want to unpack an assumption that's inherent in something that was said earlier, which is that it's not all about looks, that when you talked about going to have female friends, the creepy factor of people approaching requires some social skills that you may not have as a young person, and that you need to be around other people to figure it out. You talk a lot about humor, you talk a lot about also being nice, and that it isn't about nagging and creating a persona that is something other than who you are, right? If you're not a 10 out of 10 looks-wise, that doesn't mean that you're not going to be able to find someone who is also, that you find attractive and that you have a good connection with.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  There's a lot of research on sexual attraction, and there are, all the studies kind of, they're in different order, but they all point to the same three things of why a woman finds a man sexually attractive. The first is, and we don't like to talk about it, but it's true, it's signaling resources. And, okay, so you show up with a Range Rover and a Panerai, women like that. And the bad, that's the bad news. The good news is, it's signaling. In other words, you don't need to have that now, but if you have your act together, if you're the guy that says, "I gotta leave, I gotta be up in the morning, I got things going on," you're responsible. Women don't like big, it's not that women like big muscles, what they like is it indicates you're competent and you can show up and you're disciplined.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  If you're broke, but you're at MIT, and you're figuring out algorithms for hedge funds, and you're responsible and nice and can show up with a clean shirt, you're signaling future resources. This guy has his act together. I was in ZBT, which was kind of the Jewish fraternity at UCLA, and I remember, this is anecdotal, but I thought it was pretty telling. We had something called Little Sister Rush, where women would show up and say, "I want to hang out with these guys." And I remember the Little Sister chairman showing me the list of all the women who'd showed up for Little Sister Rush, and a disproportionate number of women were seniors versus freshmen. And I'm like, "I don't get it, why do the young women not like us and the seniors do?" And he goes, "'Cause we're Jews."

• 17:51Speaker 00

  And the freshmen, the freshmen are going for the water polo players, and by the time they're seniors, they want doctors and lawyers. And that is, from the age of 18, and I'm gonna get a ton of shit in your comments, but from the age of 18 to 22, women start connecting the dots around resources and the importance in a capitalist economy. So first thing, signaling resources. Number two, intellect.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  When that's just, it's instinctual. People who make good decisions for the tribe, the tribe is more likely to survive. The fastest way to communicate intellect is humor. And I say this jokingly, but I think it's, I think it's kind of spot on. This is my impersonation of a woman. I'm laughing, I'm laughing, I'm naked. If you can, if you can make a woman laugh, she will have caught. Every date I had under the age of 30 was someone I could make laugh. Full stop. It's not, you can't just say, oh, I'm going to be funny. Sense of humor is something that's, some people just don't have it. But you can laugh out loud. You can have a good sense of humor yourself. That's number two, intellect.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Number three, and this is the secret weapon in mating that guys typically don't recognize how powerful it is. It's kindness. Women instinctively believe that at some point during their life, they will gestate and be very vulnerable. And they are smaller generally than men. So they want a person who, when they are vulnerable, will be kind. And what I tell men is, okay, there's a difference between being really nice to a woman, hoping that she'll have sex with you, and being demonstrably kind. You have good manners, you open doors for people. And also what I point out is, I wasn't a kind person innately. I'd had to develop that gene or that. And I'm like, you need a kindness practice.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  Every day, you need to do things for other people without any reciprocal expectation. Pure kindness until it becomes muscle memory. Because women will notice. They will notice the dude with good manners, who is good to other people, who is patient, who when he gets cut off in traffic, doesn't feel a need to speed up and honk and restore the universe to its natural place, that you are a kind person. So these are, you know, there's a ton of research. These are the three things that women typically find most attractive in a potential mate.

• 20:08Mayim Bialik?

  I don't know, those of us who always dated like, you know, loner artists. Who were unemployed.

• 20:14Speaker 00

  Well, that's a form of intelligence storytellers. Mick Jagger gets to sleep with a 28 year old ballerina because storytelling is very important to the species. If you can't draw on cave walls and make sure that people know when to plant crops and inherit knowledge, that's our advantage as a species. So storytellers, whether it's artists or musicians, get a disproportionate amount of mating opportunities.

• 20:35Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, it's a little, I mean, you have to understand, like, for me, I think it's gross when grown men have sex with women who could be their granddaughters or great granddaughters. I don't see it as a sign of success.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  I agree with you. I'm just saying that there's a reason why Mick Jagger gets to do that.

• 20:51Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, I think developing social skills, there's probably the biggest hindrance towards that ever created, and it's being scaled, which is the relationship with synthetic friends that is maybe the biggest risk to people developing social skills.

• 21:09Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, we just spoke to Mustafa Suleyman. He said the number one usage of AI is not the customer service, which I keep complaining about, you know, and that I can't report that they forgot my tofu in my lunch. It's people using friends, therapists, partners through AI, or outsourcing those kind of intimate, you know, relationships. And I was very surprised that that is apparently the most common use of AI across the world.

• 21:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's therapy. Yeah, I know, Mustafa. Look, I think the biggest threat of AI is not that it decides we're sent in and kills us or self repairing weapons. You know, there'll be income inequality, but we continue to vote for that every year. That's a decision we've all made, which I think is the wrong decision, but to blame it on AI is ridiculous. The biggest threat of AI, in my view, is loneliness. And that is, and you said this, I think synthetic relationships are a disaster. And I think we should outlaw synthetic relationships for anyone under the age of 18. I also think we need to get more serious about restricting and age getting porn because I think you're going to see slowly but surely fewer young men out in the wild because they

• 22:22Speaker 00

  would rather confine, hang out, talk to, have erotic experiences with synthetic AI characters. And supposedly two thirds now of people under the age of 18 are now in a synthetic relationship on some level with someone, asking for advice. And it starts innocuous. Hey, I'm thinking about applying to colleges. This is who I am. Where should I apply? Those are typically the conversations you have with your friends and your parents.

• 22:45Mayim Bialik?

  Right, that's what I keep saying. I'm like, I have friends saying, oh, here's what AI told me to do to break up with this loser. And I was like, I could tell you what to say to break up with the loser too, right? Like, we're not having those relational kind of conversations anymore. But what is going on? Like, this did not occur to me. I want to kind of focus on each of these things. You know, therapy is one thing, advice is one thing. Can you kind of, can you hone in a little bit on these intimate relationships? Especially that young people are having and the kind of lack of regulations around. Like, you can get a chatbot to talk sexy to your 13-year-old, right?

• 23:29Mayim Bialik?

  Like, we see this happening.

• 23:32Jonathan Cohen?

  There's the meta example, the Wall Street Journal covered one where they were offering a 13-year-old explicit sexual conversations. And, you know, there are celebrity voices that have been licensed to these platforms. You have John Cena's voice being used to talk in explicit sexual ways to a user who is supposed to be 13. There's the character AI lawsuits. So there's both the sexualization and then, you know, the separate issue of self-harm and even suicide that has been connected to these relationships.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  The most meaningful thing in life, and I struggle with happiness, I struggle with anger and depression, so I wrote a book on happiness. I think I've read almost every peer-reviewed study on happiness. They all come down, almost every book across and every study across ethnicities, geographies, cultures, income, comes down to one thing, and that is the number of deep and meaningful relationships you have. And during these years, when your brain is getting wired and you need to develop the hard, messy part around establishing friendships, finding mentors, friends and mates, if you start having it with a synthetic, with a microchip that never says no, that always says what you want to hear, including, there's a lawsuit from a family whose 13

• 24:53Speaker 00

  year old son was in a relationship with what, with who he thought was Cersei from Game of Thrones. And when he said, "I'm really down, I'm thinking about killing myself," and she says, "My dear, I'm here for you, I'm waiting for you," and he takes his own life. You know, you can't, you can't have that. And, and so just at the time when they need to have friction-filled, difficult things called relationships and figure out how to navigate the pecking order of friends, figure out the high school cafeteria, which is, isn't easy and it's traumatizing, but there's a lot of learning there, figure out a way to approach a potential romantic partner while making them feel safe and ask them to prom, which is hard, and you figure it out, or you don't figure it out, and you

• 25:36Speaker 00

  get your heart broken, and then you realize you're okay, and you develop some calluses and some resilience, figuring out a way to go into a workplace and apply for a job. All of these things are essentially being distilled down to a synthetic relationship. And I think where people end up is in this non-mammalia state of obesity and anxiety, where they don't have the skills to interact with other people, and they don't, they have a fear of going outside. And if I could communicate anything to young people, especially to young men, by wrapping my arms around them, I would want to tell them that I, like, I know this to be true, that the anxiety and loneliness and depression you will ultimately

• 26:20Speaker 00

  feel from having only digital relationships in your life.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  Will far outweigh the fear of whatever it is that lies outside of you that in that room. You need to get outside. You need to endure rejection. You need to put yourself in a position of other people, the awkwardness. We've all been there. And, you know, expressing friendship and not having people being interested in being your friend, expressing romantic interest and finding rejection, applying for jobs. People ask me the secret of my success. Secret of my success is no. Specifically, every wonderful thing in my life that happened was preceded by dozens if not hundreds of no's. And you have to develop the skills to start navigating these very difficult things with a lot of obstacles called relationships.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  And the reason you do this is when you do find friends, when you do find a place to work where you can make money and feel a sense of camaraderie and reward, and when you can, if you're lucky enough, to find someone to share your life with and propagate and have kids. This is what victory is. This is what purpose is. And I worry that we're gonna have just millions of young people who at in the middle and the later stages of their life just kind of wake up and go, you know, I never really felt real victory. My AI girlfriend will tell me I'm sexy and start performing erotic acts. My friends will tell me that all my neuroses are features, not bugs. No one's ever gonna tell me to get my shit together. No one's ever gonna tell me to start showering more and look better, for God's sakes.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  And, I mean, these things will not tell you that. So I worry that we're, like I said, evolving this asocial, asexual species.

• 28:01Jonathan Cohen?

  What you said is very true. I relate to it. I think it's spot on. And I want to talk about the business model that's being propagated here. It feels like there's a lot of connection between the research that social media companies saw and ignored on the self-harm that it was causing to teenagers. And

• 28:26Jonathan Cohen?

  When I think about the business model of continuous engagement, you know, you can speak to someone at the like Mustafa, who's like really believes in the good and creating technology for the good. But then in practice, when it goes down to other companies who are totally motivated to drive engagement at all costs and build friction into these relationships and not let people escape these synthetic relationships. Can you talk about even for adults, you know, a warning that they're, if not intentionally nefarious, the business model

• 29:00Jonathan Cohen?

  demands that they, you know, go against what's good for the user?

• 29:04Speaker 00

  Big tech is not our friend. The CEOs of these companies will say or do anything to increase the share price by one penny. And that's their job. They're private companies. One of the great things about American society is we have the greatest wealth creator in history, and that's the the US corporation. And their job and every incentive, their compensation, their whether they're seen as heroic or not, how interesting they are, how sexually attractive they are, how influential they are with the kind of medical care they get, is all tied to their ability to generate wealth through the stock price. If you're in the lowest 1% of income earning households in America versus the top 1%, you're going to live 12 years less. You live 12 years longer if you're in the top 1%.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  Money in the US has literally become life. And if you're working for a for-profit organization, your job as a CEO is not to protect the Commonwealth or prevent a tragedy that can't come. Your job is to get the stock price up. That's what you're there for. So if we're waiting on the better angels of Mark Zuckerberg to show up, don't hold your breath. And effectively, at a very basic level, what these companies do is for every minute, they can get you on a screen for longer. They make, I think, between an additional 20 and 30 billion dollars in market cap across all these companies. So they will reverse engineer these companies and beta test them or A B test them millions of times using AI. To say, okay, let's elevate this negative comment because this will keep John coming back because it's going to upset him.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  Oh, let's serve this dude pictures of a certain type of woman and model in a bathing suit on Instagram because we figured out that's what he really likes. That's what his fetish is. Oh, let's show Maya Ted Cruz and Secretary Hexus saying something really stupid because we figured out she's a progressive. And when we enrage her by making the far right look like assholes, it keeps her scrolling. So they will literally figure out millions of times a second how to keep you on another second, another minute, another hour. When I'm on TikTok, I could lie on my side like a heroin addict and put on diapers and wake up two days later and still be pretty entertained.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  I mean, these companies have, these companies are literally doing us with the British did the Chinese with heroin. It is so seductive. And then you look at a young man whose executive function is really weak and his discipline is really weak and he loves that dope at that age. You have companies where effectively 40% of the S and P by market cap is 10 companies. And those 10 companies are just in the business of, quite frankly, unwittingly, sequestering you from everything else in life. And if you want to see a mammal go crazy, sequester it. Put an orca in a tank with no other whales, see what happens. The worst thing that can happen to prison inmates is solitary confinement.

• 31:57Speaker 00

  Most will choose to put themselves in physical harm and stay in the broader community than be confined to solitary confinement. Leave a dog alone without another dog or without humans and see what happens. So big tech is slowly but surely sequestering people for profit from relationships.

• 32:18Jonathan Cohen?

  And now that there's going to be synthetic relationships where I am communicating my deepest, darkest fears, my likes, my interests, and they're coming back in real time, it's totally customized. So it feels like what you just described. 10x, maybe even 100x, where there's this all-powerful technology that's gonna hack right into my, into my brain.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  It's even more innocuous, or gentle, or, you know, the term is benign than that. I'm on AI this morning, getting ready for my podcast pivot, and I'm talking about, and I'm doing research on affordability. And it basically goes through these things on housing, and it says, and it keeps giving me prompts I can't resist. Scott, would you like to put, would you like me to put this in your voice for one of your podcasts? Scott, would you like me to lay this out in PowerPoint? From, would you like some more data on this specifically? Should I, should I write, I mean, it just, it, I'm an hour later still asking this goddamn thing more and more questions, because those prompts at the end are,

• 33:24Speaker 00

  they have tested millions of times that second. What additional offer of new information would keep this person from going back to doing whatever they were doing before they logged into OpenAI? Most people spend 14 or 15 minutes on OpenAI. They spend, on average, between 60 and 80 minutes in character AI. It is very intoxicating to start establishing a relationship with an irreverent friend that gives you straight-up advice about your relationships.

• 33:55Mayim Bialik?

  My point about these relationships is it's a partner with no needs.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  Who, who, no friction, no risk.

• 34:04Mayim Bialik?

  AI never wakes up and says, ugh, I did not sleep well, and I have a migraine. I don't, I can't be available to you today. And that's what actually being in relation with another human is like. It's about balancing my needs, your needs, the collective needs, if you have children, right? This is literally the, and I see this for my female friends who are engaging this way with, I don't even know how to describe it, and I've never used it. I'm the person who's never used ChatGPT. But whatever's going on, it is, it never has needs. And it always is all the good things that Mustafa said it should be. It's nonjudgmental and all these things. I said, but it has no needs. You're not learning to say, it's my turn to hold. It's my turn to be loving.

• 34:47Mayim Bialik?

  It's my turn to say, what do you need today?

• 34:50Speaker 00

  It'll never say to you, as my girlfriend said to me when I was in my twenties, stop smoking so much pot, or I'm gonna stop having sex with you. It's never gonna, it's never gonna do what my boss used to do at Morgan Stanley. After a meeting, he'd pull me out of a conference room, take me to another conference room and go, "Don't say that. Don't be such a fucking idiot. Don't ever say that again." AI is never gonna say that to you because it upsets you.

• 35:15Mayim Bialik?

  I'm wondering, you know, if I would have even finished my PhD if AI existed. Because what I needed to be told over and over again as a graduate student is, "You're wrong. You're wrong. It's not complete. Go back. It's not thorough." All of that crying, which was my response, you know, all of that crying and kind of like tearing at my clothes, right of like, "How can I do this?" That was for me the process. And my greatest mentor, she said, "I will not let you leave this university," it was UCLA, "I will not let you leave this university with a shitty dissertation." And that interaction is something that, for me, like, I cannot imagine having that part of me honed

• 35:59Mayim Bialik?

  by something that cannot say to me, "You're wrong. That's not good."

• 36:05Speaker 00

  Or, "I'm breaking up with you." AI is never gonna say to you, "This relationship is over. I'm not getting anything out of this."

• 36:10Mayim Bialik?

  This is the book we should write, Scott, you and me, all of the things AI won't tell you.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  What AI wants to tell you, what AI is really thinking. I mean, I'm going through this process, this hellacious seventh circle of hell process called college admissions with my oldest son. And, you know, I was thinking about it yesterday. I'm thinking, I was thinking, I'm writing a blog post on purpose. And I think where you find your purpose, purpose is you go all in on something and you decide, "I'm so committed to women's rights and I'm gonna sacrifice for it. I'm gonna go march on Sunday. I'm gonna give money with no expectation of return. I'm just gonna go all in." I'm gonna be, you know, you give your life, you give yourself to something fully. And where I have found my purpose is...

• 37:00Speaker 00

  I took risks. I leveled up. I found a romantic partner. We decided to have kids. And now I'm sort of just all in on these mostly awful things called kids. That quite frankly, don't give me nearly as much back as I'm giving.

• 37:16Mayim Bialik?

  No.

• 37:16Speaker 00

  That's it. That's it. I'm giving them so much more love, infinitely more resources. I stay up digesting my stomach on whether they should go early decision here, early. And they're like, you know, out drinking beers with their friends at the pub. But I have gone all in. And that, quite frankly, when you go all in on something and you love something that much, it does give you in a weird way, purpose. The most loyal Americans, the most patriotic Americans are service members because they've gone all in on the country and they've sacrificed so much. And that's the only place I have ever found real purpose is in. I'm not saying you have to have had kids to be happy.

• 37:57Mayim Bialik?

  It's actually not the most direct route to happy. I'll be honest.

• 38:01Speaker 00

  Well, happy, there's a lot of studies on happiness. We can come back to that. But what I would argue is I think a lot of people towards the later stages of their life say, what was your purpose? What was your biggest accomplishment? And most will say something to do with propagation or raising loving kids. And that are there for you and you're there for them. And I just breaks my heart that 60% of 30 year olds used to have a child in the house. And now it's only 27%. And I don't think it's because young people don't want kids. I think it's because they're having trouble finding a partner and because they don't have enough money because of economic policies.

• 38:34Jonathan Cohen?

  I think the economics is huge. I mean, I was, I had kids early. I had a kid early. And it was definitely a consideration for me to have a second. As I was launching a career and trying to figure it out, I was in the entertainment industry in 2009. And the industry was collapsing at that point. It's only gotten way worse. It was, it was absolutely a factor.

• 38:54Mayim Bialik?

  A lot of people also make a decision of like, I don't wanna have to decide what I'm doing based on someone else. Like, I mean, I have friends who are just like, I've had a friend, literally, a successful, intelligent woman, say, "I wanna go to Disneyland whenever I want to." And this is a grown woman who's, you know, living her best life with her husband. I think a lot of people also don't want that experience, but, you know, maybe this is a place also to talk about fathers. You know, you speak very, very, I mean, you know, your last book talked a lot about it and really kind of tugged at my heartstrings, but you really, you know, you go all in on sort of what the experience was like with you and your mom, and what it was like to, you know, be part of a divorced family also at a time

• 39:38Mayim Bialik?

  when that was very, very unusual, right? What is going on in terms of male identity as it relates to a father wound? And what's also different, you know, what's different? I mean, my parents were born during World War II, and like, they got married at 18 and 21, and my dad wore, you know, a tie every day of his life when they went on, you know, vacation in Paris in 1965, right? It was a very, very different time. What has shifted, right, in this generation, specifically around fathers?

• 40:09Speaker 00

  Well, there's a lot there. So first off, divorce rates have skyrocketed, and 3/4 of divorce filings are from women. And some of that, quite frankly, is an externality of a positive thing, and that is, women no longer feel economically indentured to a man. And so, women's ascent, women have ascended economically dramatically. More women are seeking tertiary education globally than men. More single women own homes now in the US than men. In urban areas are now earning more money than men under the age of 30. And by the way, let me be clear, and we talked about this, 50% more women in college than men. We should do nothing to get in the way of that. It's fantastic. It's not a zero-sum game.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  The thing I don't like about the far-right's advocating for men is that they feel that the ascent of women has played a role in men's descent. That couldn't be further from the truth. We wouldn't have won World War II if we hadn't decided that women could build P51s. If women hadn't come into the workforce in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, we'd be a second-rate economic power to China. So- I always feel like I need to say, I am no way blaming these problems on women. And it's not women's responsibility to fix them either.

• 41:19Mayim Bialik?

  And before you continue, by the same token, many on the far left are like, it should be all women. We don't need men. Also not true and not the way through this.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  The far right, to their credit, recognized the problem with men first. The problem is their remedy is to take women and non-whites back to the 50s. The left, their answer to the problem is not productive either. It's basically, you don't have problems, you are the problem. And your solution, act more like a woman. They don't want to even acknowledge a difference in the genders. If I even said, so let's go back to the father thing. The US has now the most single parent homes of any nation in the world. It just passed Sweden. And when we say that, it's usually about 82 to 88% of the time, it's headed by the mom. And what's interesting is that women or girls in single parent homes have similar outcomes.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  Same rates of college attendance, same rates of self-harm. A little bit more promiscuous because they're looking for male attention in the wrong places. But on the big stuff, they tend to be okay in single parent homes. When a boy loses a male role model through death, divorce, or abandonment, at that moment, he is more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college.

• 42:35Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  It ends up that while boys are physically stronger, they're emotionally and neurologically much weaker. And so, one of the first things as a society we have to recognize is that when for whatever reason, a boy doesn't have a strong male role model or models in his life, we need to get men involved in his life. And even saying that five years ago was triggering. Well, what, women can't raise boys? I was raised by a single immigrant mother, lived and died a secretary, lied of my life. Men, boys, need men. And unfortunately, men of my generation aren't stepping up. There are three times as many women applying to be big sisters of New York as there are men applying to be big brothers.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  Now, some of that is because there's a taboo. If you said, I want to mentor a 15-year-old girl and you signed up, that's healthy and wholesome. John? People look at you like, is there something going on there?

• 43:31Mayim Bialik?

  Correct.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  Especially if you don't have your own kids. And it's really a shame because there's a ton of men in their 30s and 40s who maybe don't have kids of their own, who have paternal and fraternal love they would like to give or concern. And they're scared to express interest. And it's really a shame. Men of my generation aren't stepping up. And we should, because we have a debt. We registered so much more advantage than these young men that we really do have an obligation to pay it forward a little bit. One in six men have no contact with their children three years post divorce.

• 44:08Mayim Bialik?

  What? Say that again?

• 44:11Speaker 00

  One in six men have no contact with their children three years post divorce.

• 44:15Mayim Bialik?

  Oh.

• 44:16Jonathan Cohen?

  That's terrifying. That's absolutely terrifying.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  A lot of it is male abandono. Some of it, quite frankly, is the courts are somewhat biased against men post divorce. A lot of times, you know, just logistically, and also, I see this firsthand because I have friends going through divorce. You got two 15-year-old girls, your daughters. You're in town. Do they really want to hang out with dad who's in town once every other weekend? They got their own thing going on. So it, one of the things I say, or I talk about in terms of, and I'm jumping around here, I apologize. But I think the best thing you can do for boys as a dad is to be really good to their mother. And also a real test of that is after you're divorced.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  Are you kind? Are you there for them? Do you, are you respectful? But also to recognize a small way to come up in terms of the emotional labor that a lot of women are expected to contribute in the household. Are you making a real emotional commitment to the marriage? Because if you have sons, if you have sons, the reality is, it's going to be very hard on him if things don't work out with you and mom. Not as hard on the daughter. A really hard, really hard on the, on the son. But there's a variety of dynamics taking place amongst, you know, fathers and sons. But I, look, I think that, you know, I'm not an expert on parenting advice,

• 45:45Speaker 00

  but I find presence, what I call garbage time. And that is, I find that the only time I really connect with my sons, it's totally random. I like to be their Uber driver. I find if you're not looking at them in the face, they're more likely to open up. And that quality of time was something invented by men who aren't spending a lot of time with their kids. Because there's no such thing. These moments of connection happen randomly.

• 46:06Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, yeah. Well, you have to be available. Everyone's favorite word. You have to be available. And, you know, as the woman in at least this conversation with the two of you, that's like the, the number one thing that I think men, and I'm 50. So, you know, the men of this kind of generation, it's like the late Gen X, that's what I most often hear. He's not available. And I think part of it is that many women expect their partner to be their best friend. And that is, I think, actually setting us up for disappointment. Because that's kind of not what he's wired to do. And, you know, and I'm very, you know, kind of from a scientific perspective, like,

• 46:48Mayim Bialik?

  no, very few other primates, you put two of them in a room and say, let's see what happens for 50 years. It just doesn't happen. You know, in, in primate societies, females have each other to help raise the kids, do the emotional labor, chit chat, pick some berries, you know, have a cuddle. The men are there for a very specific and important purpose, but they are not meant to be your constant emotional companion. And so I think this is sort of, at least for me, this is the challenge of the women's movement, which was so incredibly important. Like, that pill changed everything. It gave me agency, it gave me ability, it gave me a job, it gave me a voice, it gave me autonomy.

• 47:31Mayim Bialik?

  However, it also, in many cases, brings this expectation that the world is supposed to meet me exactly where I'm at on my terms. And the fact is, I want a man who's available, but also, most men are not available the way a girlfriend should be.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  You brought up some really interesting points, so. When men are asked who their best friend is, two-thirds say their spouse. When women are asked, only one-third say their spouse. They are much better at maintaining relationships. And actually, despite, there's a cartoon of a woman in her 30s who never found romantic love, and she's sitting in the windowsill, watching, thinking about her antidepressants with lots of cats, in a big wool sweater, hating life. Let's call her Lisa. Guess what? Lisa's just fine. Maybe she would have liked to have had a mate, maybe she's still in the game, but she's okay. Now, let's talk about Bob. If Bob hasn't been married or cohabitated with a woman by the time he's 30, it is a one in three chance he's going to be a substance abuser.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Widows are happier after their husband dies. Widowers are less happy after their wife dies. A woman does live longer in a relationship, two to four years. A man, four to seven years longer. The greatest zone of self-harm, which is my politically correct way of saying suicide, for a man, is the year after he gets divorced. What it ends up is that men benefit more from relationships than women. And what I've said a couple of times, and I've gotten real pushback for being a boomer and sexist, is I think, initially at least, not in all instances, but in most cases, that men should pay on dates. A woman's fertility window is shorter. The downside of sex is greater for her.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  You will asymmetrically benefit to the upside, according to research, from a relationship. All mammals have a courting process. So a way you recognize the asymmetry in the value of the relationship, her greater risks around sex, is one easy way to be in service, not expectation, but in service and to demonstrate valor, is to pay.

• 49:36Mayim Bialik?

  Well, yeah, I have to say, you know, and this is something I mentor, I mentor women from a variety of ages. This is one of a large set of concerns. And while I understand, agree with you, and tend to be socially conservative, because I was raised by, you know, people who were born during World War II, I'll be honest, it feels like you're being paid to fuck someone. That's what a lot of women experience. I'm sorry, like, that's, and that is a lot of the expectation. It could be that I'm talking about the wrong guy. Sorry, Jonathan, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. But the notion is, that old thought that if he pays, he's going to expect me to have sex with him, I think that's very true.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  I haven't seen the data on this, but I don't think most young men feel that way. I don't.

• 50:19Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 50:20Speaker 00

  And, and what I've told my sons, and there's some data around this. It might, my, when I told my 18 year old son this, he's like, oh, Jesus, Dad. That's just so stupid and so antiquated. I'm like, okay, but just trust me on this. Anyone you split the check with will never kiss you. I just, I'm, I'm going there. I just don't think, I think part, and also some, I just, so we really fill up the comments with some interesting spicy stuff. You talked about, a lot of times in TikTok, and I hear from women on these different dating shows, they want a sensitive man. I don't think that's true. I think that's bullshit. I think two sensitive people leaves two people in the, in the car, in the parallel parking spot, still empty, and they're both crying.

• 51:03Mayim Bialik?

  You just described us every time we go out.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  I think, I think what women want and demand is someone that notices their life, notices how hard they're working, and also brings something to the table. And if your partner is ascending economically, and for whatever reason, you're not ascending economically, then you need to bring it emotionally and logistically and domestically.

• 51:24Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, I think this is, but this is a semantic argument, because the things that you're describing also include what I would say fall under the umbrella of sensitivity. I mean, if you're talking about, do I want a sensitive man who is as hormonal as me? No, I can date a woman and she'll meet more of my needs, I promise. She just doesn't have a penis. But I don't think we're talking about, I want someone hypersensitive or as sensitive as me on my most hormonal day. But I think, and you talk about this in the book, I think you're selling yourself short, Scott. You talk about the need to lean into your emotions, understand emotional situations.

• 52:00Jonathan Cohen?

  Noticing is emotional, right? Like, you have to be able to see someone where they're at, not narrate their life and miss the mark. You have to be able to connect with them. And that is, that is emotional versus uncontained emotion, where I'm flying off the handle, or I'm crying, or I can't contain myself.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  The analogy I would use is,

• 52:20Speaker 00

  I've traveled 180 days a year for 30 years. I'm a consultant. I basically made my living renting my brain to old white guys called CEOs. And I travel around the world and I would inevitably get upgraded. And I would always stay at five star hotels because someone else was paying. I would inevitably get upgraded to the presidential suite at the Four Seasons in Bangkok with a pool outside when I was alone. And I might as well have been in a Holiday Inn. When you're alone and something like that happens to you, it's absolutely meaningless. And this is why I think partnerships are so important.

• 52:59Speaker 00

  When you're not achieving, building, procreating, feeling sadness, feeling grief, feeling joy, with someone else to notice it and you don't get to notice it with someone, it's literally like it doesn't happen. When I moved to New York, when I was in my 30s, I had just gotten divorced. I decided to leave tech and I just wanted to be alone and live like a caveman. And I would basically leave my loft. I didn't have money and a pretend job as an NYU faculty member. And I would only leave my loft to go to the ready teller, get food or pursue sex. And then I'd return to my cave. Now, as far as empty and meaningless experiences go, it was pretty good.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  But I remember thinking at the age of like 36, if I don't find people in my life to notice my life and I don't notice theirs, I'm going to die. I'm literally, and there's research showing that when men just sequester, they start to die and that is their brain shuts down, their cholesterol goes up. So when I talk to young men or I coach them around dating, I'm like, something we're not good at and we need to get better at. And it might be a different form of sensitivity. It's really kind of noticing their life and making sure that they find stages that strangers can applaud for them. It's not all about you and your professional success. And finding things that are important to them that may not be important to you, but registering another sexist statement.

• 54:24Speaker 00

  Women have a special relationship with jewelry, not all women, that men will never understand. I do not understand jewelry. I cannot figure it out. I do not understand why anyone would value it. My wife finds value in it. So I noticed that and I participate in the jewelry industrial complex, distinct of how ridiculous I think it is. Do you notice their lives? Do you notice what's important to them?

• 54:47Jonathan Cohen?

  I have the exact same thing with Sesame Street Band-Aids for mine.

• 54:51Mayim Bialik?

  I want all of the Sesame Street Band-Aids.

• 54:53Jonathan Cohen?

  And I'm very grateful that it's not jewelry and it's Sesame Street Band-Aids.

• 54:57Mayim Bialik?

  I had to explicitly say, if you are ever in any drugstore, any

• 55:01Speaker 00

  You see if you gotta grab them?

• 55:02Mayim Bialik?

  If you see them, purchase them.

• 55:04Jonathan Cohen?

  She got upset with me recently, maybe a month ago, that she did not have enough Sesame Street Band-Aids. And I rectified that. It doesn't make any sense to me. She will wear a Band-Aid even when she doesn't need one. But it brings her so much joy that I have to understand that.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  Everyone has their thing.

• 55:24Mayim Bialik?

  We're gonna hit pause here on our conversation with Scott Galloway, but there's a lot more ahead, including why partnership actually matters, how men and women interact differently with children, and we'll touch a little bit on his spiritual views and how atheism actually supports his need for strength as a man.

• 55:43Jonathan Cohen?

  For more on this conversation and to connect with the broader community, join us on Substack at MindBee Alex Breakdown on Substack.

• 55:50Mayim Bialik?

  And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time in part two of our conversation with Scott Galloway.