The Problem with Men, with Scott Galloway

Author/entrepreneur Scott Galloway joins Trevor and Christiana to discuss the economic and social crises plaguing the world (okay, only some of them). They contemplate why young men are failing, the masculinity crisis, how we can all help, and the importance of “garbage time”. They also debate the great American misdirect and how the billionaire class bought the 2024 election and got young people to pivot away from the Democratic party.

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

• 0:00Trevor Noah?

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• 0:45Trevor Noah?

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• 1:30Trevor Noah?

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• 1:43Speaker 01

  I realized that if someone wasn't interested in me, someone didn't want to hire me, someone didn't want to invest in my company, I was gonna be just fine. It didn't get in the way. I ran for sophomore, junior, and senior class president. I lost all three times. Based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president, where I went on to wait for it, lose. But recognizing no is not the worst thing in the world is the key skill. And young men, because of a low entry... Low risk entry into relationships with bots or AI sex dolls or you porn have decided they no longer want to tolerate. No, that is the key.

• 2:20Trevor Noah?

  But I would suggest, if you do get the no, don't say you're fine. You can say I felt rejected. You can say I felt like a loser. You can say I felt like I can't get a woman. You can say all these things, but I think it's important with anti fragility to say, but I know I will be fine.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35Trevor Noah?

  I'm still here. There's still gonna be tomorrow.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  I'll get past it.

• 2:38Trevor Noah?

  It's not the end of the world. It should end. You're embarrassed and you feel stupid and all these things, but I love what you say, like you will be fine.

• 2:49Trevor Noah?

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 3:02Trevor Noah?

  Where are you coming in from, by the way?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm, I have a place. I live in London, but I have a place here.

• 3:06Trevor Noah?

  You live in London?

• 3:07Speaker 01

  I do, yeah.

• 3:07Trevor Noah?

  What part of London?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Marlborough.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Oh, what made you choose London? I'm from, I grew up there.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm in, around this stuff, I'm an influencer, not a decision maker. My wife told me we were moving, uh, five years ago.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  You sound like a great husband.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, well, I'm on the road a lot, so she says I don't get a vote.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Is your wife British?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  No, she's actually born in Poland, raised in Germany. And both my parents are initially from the UK, so I was one of them.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Oh, nice. So you have the citizenship?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Uh, I have dual.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Uh, I was almost drafted when the Falkland Islands crisis broke out, which my mom was not anticipating.

• 3:38Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  So your parents are British, but you were born in America?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Born in America, yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  And did your parent, are your parents still in America?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Uh, my mom's passed, my mom passed. My dad is, is in San Diego.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Oh, so they stayed at the state?

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Does he still have his accent?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Oh, it's, it's a Scottish accent and it's.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Oh, he's a Scotsman. I love that.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. If I could give my sons anything, it would be a Scottish accent.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  And what made your parents leave, um, the UK?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  You know, they just wanted a better life. I think why a lot of people came here. They came here when they were nineteen and twenty-two, respectively, on a steamship from Glasgow and London, respectively.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Man, your dad's from Glasgow?

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Well, Glasgow was a bad town. I'm from London, South London.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  I came out in two thousand and fourteen.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  That's been here a while.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Um, so, yeah, I was, came out when I was like twenty-six, just about to turn twenty-seven.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  I've been here ten years now, but I'm thinking about what my exit is and when I talk to Trevor about it all the time.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Oh, really? We should talk about that.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just like, I'd like to have a foot in each world. Like, how can I build my career? So I'm like, partially in L.A., partially in London. Because I don't know how you feel, but I found London very, like, grounding and, like, grounded in a way that I haven't found in the U.S.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Um, as much as U.S. has lots of opportunity and all of that, I'm just like.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  I think about that a lot. We should talk about it.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're talking about it, yeah.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Are we? Are we recording?

• 4:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, we're recording. Welcome to the podcast.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Oh, I'll be infinitely more charming and insightful then.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  So, the way I would distill the difference between the U.S. and Europe is the U.S. is still the best place to make money and Europe's the best place to spend it. So my crude, reductive analysis on someone at your age is you're probably still in the making money part of your phase. There's more opportunities that will bump off of you in the U.S. than will in triple the time in Europe. But once you get to a point of economic security and you start thinking about lifestyle, Europe's a much more civilized, sane place. It's great for kids.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got three kids.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  You can get a much better bottle of wine for ten bucks in Spain than you can anywhere in the U.S. Uh, the people are friendly, but the reality is the opportunities and the risk capital just isn't there. For every company in the U.S., there's five million in venture capital. For every company in Europe, there's one million. So there's just not nearly the risk aggressiveness, uh, and the opportunities to make money in Europe as there are here. So I would say if you're, as I was when I was your age, I was very economically focused. I wasn't trying to be a better person or find a family or change the world. I was trying to be rich. And America is absolutely the best place to establish economic trajectory. Uh, once you have money, peace out to Europe.

• 6:07Trevor Noah?

  So this is actually a question I had for you. You know, I, I think, when you say the name Scott Galloway. Depending on who you say it to, depending on where they've seen it, they have a completely different idea of you, which which I actually love. Like, I know some people, I said Scott Galloway is gonna be on. Immediately, some of my friends were like, man, finally, talk about masculinity. We gotta talk about being men. We gotta talk about. Then I say to some of my friends, Scott Galloway is on. They're like, yes, talk to the man about capitalism. Talk to him about tax, you know, the business work. We we gotta talk about. Then you go, I'm on with Scott Galloway. They're like, oh, man, please talk about like what's going on in America and what's happening in the world. And the conversation organically started in where you are, where you see the world, where you see America. Do you think that what's happening in America is bad? Or do you think there almost needs to be a new, I don't wanna

• 6:51Trevor Noah?

  call it a new world order, but like, if if we think of a world without like borders the way we've drawn them, right? There used to be this general trajectory of people. They would work in a small town or live in a small town, grow up somewhere, move to the big city to make money. And then generally, they'd migrate back to the small town at some point. Now, if you think about generations that came to America before then, they left the small town, but on another continent. They've come to the big town that is America. They've made the money, but now there's no moving back. Do you think like America's always just gonna be about making money? And where do you think that where do you think that leads us ultimately?

• 7:26Speaker 01

  I think what's going on is mostly bad. I think that there's a series of 80 year alliances, the post World War II order that was based on trust, reciprocity of free trade, a general notion that America might get it wrong, but our heart was in the right place, and that we believed in rights, women's rights, civil rights, democracy. We would push back on autocrats. We would push back on war criminals. And those alliances feel like, or that playbook feels like, maybe we're taking it for granted, has been ripped up. And just distinctive the morality of what I think is unforgivable surrendering to a murderous autocrat. Put the morals aside and just talk about it economically. We have some of the best trading relationships

• 8:09Speaker 01

  and mutual reciprocity agreements with the largest economies in the world. We trade, we get along, we trust each other, we're willing to go. Arm in arm with each other. Let's look at Canada, largest undefended border in the world. That says something about our friendship. Open trade. They led us into World War I. We followed them. They were in World War II before us, training allied pilots. I love the test of that wonderful, very emotional test of friendship that the Holocaust survivor said to Buffett when she was saying, who are your real friends? She said, my test is, I think, would they hide me? That is a very puncturing question, right? And the reality is, the 1979 hostage crisis, the Canadian Embassy, they hid us. They hid

• 8:52Speaker 01

  six American diplomats, taking enormous personal risk to get them out of the country, and then they stayed behind. And if they'd been caught, there's a good chance they would have been hanged by cranes. So the Canadians are willing to hide Americans. They are really true friends. And right now, we're in a situation where they don't even understand why we're trying to levy so much damage on their economy. So this post-World War II order that America has been sort of the leader in is being ripped up. And I don't think it's a good idea. The silver lining, I like to think, what could go right? I struggle with anger and depression, so I consistently ask myself, what could go right? What could go right is that possibly Europe is finally a union. And that is, they realize their rich uncle has lost his shit.

• 9:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  There's no more trust fund. We cannot count on the $800 billion military umbrella and the economic, what I'll call, consistency and rational thinking of America. And they are talking about increasing their defense budget from 1.9% of GDP to 3%. And I think that stimulus, I think Europe actually coordinating because of the crisis around the lack of American leadership. The EU economy is $19 trillion. Russia is $2 trillion. Russia's actually smaller than Canada. So there's no reason that if the EU gets shit together and starts coordinating and increasing their military budgets, they shouldn't be able to push back on Russia all on their own. And I think that stimulus and also the spillover of technology might actually create an upward spiral of economic growth in Europe. So I'd like to think the silver

• 10:21Speaker 01

  lining here is that some of the most advanced civilized democratic economies in the world, and some of the most robust economies, are quite frankly, getting their shit together. That Europe is a union for the first time in a long time.

• 10:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Some would argue that like...

• 10:36Trevor Noah?

  That stimulus is part of the reason that we're in the problem we're in today. You know, building our economies around the military, spending our money and really getting things going by sort of getting wars going. And we've seen, we've seen the effect that it has on an economy. You go to war, things start moving, you know, people start getting paid, things start getting made.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  But it's also war.

• 10:54Trevor Noah?

  But it's also war. And like scholars who know far more about this than I would, would, when I sit with them, they'll say to me, you know, the US has always been very bad at actually understanding where Russia is versus where Russia says it is. You know, and like one of the more um salient examples was when Russia invaded Ukraine and the tanks were falling apart in the mud. You remember that? And, and I remember analysts were shocked. They're like, oh, these tanks are trash. And we didn't know that Russia, it doesn't look like Russia's infrastructure is as robust as we thought it was, the military infrastructure, right? And I couldn't help but think back to like the days of Gorbachev and all of these, like, not that I was there, but like when I, when I watch documentaries and I read and I go, Russia's bluffed for so long.

• 11:38Trevor Noah?

  And America has responded to that bluff for so long that some people argue that it's just a war of bluff that never ends. And some would say, and I wouldn't be the one who says it, but I always like to consider these crazy ideas. Some would say, although Trump may be doing it in the wrong way, he's the person who's breaking this thing. And it may lead to the right conclusion. How do you, how do you, you know, because I know you're always thinking about the pros and the cons of everything. Do you think in a weird way, Trump might be doing the right thing in the wrong way that get, gets the world to a better place? Or do you think it was better for it to continue the way it was?

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I think on the whole, this is not good for America and the West. And I just want to acknowledge that Eisenhower, a general, warned of the military industrial complex. He said, if you build a privatized shareholder gains based on a war machine, you're going to vent reasons to need the war machine. Having said that, I would argue that we on the left are sometimes naive about the fact that the moment. Some bad actors believe they can come for us and take our Netflix and our espresso away. They will. And that I actually am a bit of a warhawk and believe in a very strong defense. I would also argue that just economically, two points. If you look at the most valuable companies in the world, whether it's Apple or Google, they're built on the backs of middle-class investments vis-à-vis the Defense Department.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  So GPS, which is what all mobile technology is based on, was initially a technology developed for ICVMs to put them in the pocket of Gorbachev.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  DARPA, which is what the Internet is built on, was paid by an extraordinary investment meant to create a hubless communications network so we could communicate with each other after the Russians nuked us. So I would argue the military spending, for the most part, in the US has been, I would argue, a net positive. Now, that's not to say that it should anyway rationalize entry into Southeast Asia or into Iraq. These are disastrous positions. Now, as it relates to, let me go to Ukraine. I think of a manager as somebody who's just supposed to allocate capital to a greater return than your peer group. That's their job as managers. The job of the president, he's the biggest capital allocator in history. I would argue that the decision to allocate $60 billion a year to Ukraine is one of the best investments that has ever been made in the modern world.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  In exchange for that $60 billion, to your point, we've kind of defanged the reputation of this supposedly ferocious army of Russia. It was five days and Kiev's fallen, right?

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  That did not happen. We've taken out a third of their kinetic power, a third of their tanks and much of their navy has been taken out. Also, Russia's not a good actor towards us. Their intervention or introduction to our economy is to steal our IP and attack us from cybersecurity. So them being focused on a failed war, a defenestration of their "ferociousness", and also sending a signal to the world that when the West binds together, we are a formidable fighting force, and all of this was without a single boot on the ground from America. In addition, that $60 billion a year, somewhere between 70 and 90% of it, has come back to the US to manufacture weapons, mostly in red states.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  So for about 8% of our military budget, we are keeping a bad actor occupied, reducing their military Very kinetic power and sending a message to the world that the West is a formidable backer of even a small motivated army. I think this is the best money we have spent in a long time.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Well, the thing is, Scott, I think the reason why what Trump is doing, if from a geopolitical perspective, it's like a bad decision if you think about the real politic.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  But to the regular American who's worried about the price of eggs.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Right? He was just like, I'm worried about my employment. I'm worried about the schools my kids go to. I'm worried about the housing crisis that's ongoing.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  And they hear, you sent how much to Ukraine?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  So how do we kind of speak to those people and get them to see the other perspective?

• 15:31Speaker 01

  I think it's through numbers and data. In terms of the very real justifiable argument of like, there's a lot of problems here. We should be focusing all our capital here. There's the $75 billion in USA, the $60 billion in Ukraine, I would argue, is nothing but a weapon of mass distraction to get you to look away from the fact that the tax cuts that Trump is about to implement will increase our deficit for eight by $800 billion. And the problem is Democrats don't speak in language that people can understand. This is what a deficit is. A deficit is a tax on you and your children in 10 to 30 years. It crowds out investment in technology and education that create more growth. It crowds out our ability to have programs for younger people.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Basically, our debt, our entire federal budget is moving towards senior citizens. Forty percent of everything goes to people over the age of 65. Interest on our debt and the military. So we can't make these forward leaning investments that benefit you and you're going to have to pay it back. Not me. I'll be dead by the time we run out of credibility and the treasury market fails. So all of this nonsense around, let's not invest in Ukraine, USA, bring the money home. The Doja, $2.6 billion in savings so far, according to the Wall Street Journal. If you want to six X the savings from Doja, stop all subsidies to Tesla. So your job is to allocate capital. So I think the helicopter crash was DEI. Doja, only male and female, the gulf of cheaper eggs. It's all a misdirect from the most.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  Irresponsible spending that we're about to incur. And that is you're about to incur a future $800 billion tax every year such that I can make more money. That essentially, America has become about our fiscal policies have become the following. Give me your credit card so I can be in the club doing rails and champagne. And all you get to do is pay for it in the form of deficit. 60 billion is a decent amount of money, but it's nothing like the $800 billion a year we're going to lose in deficit spending. I think USAID is an amazing investment for people around the world to feel good about America. I think pushing back on Russia for $60 billion a year and setting a signal that we are willing to sacrifice for democracies and repel murderous autocrats.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  I think that's an outstanding investment. $800 billion a year to give me a tax cut? Bad idea. And all this other shit is just a misdirect to get you to look away from what is about to happen, and that is the biggest tax increase in history on you and your children.

• 17:57Trevor Noah?

  You know, listening to you speak, sometimes I think to myself, it's often easy for us to focus on a problem in the moment and not ask ourselves who played what role in helping us get there, right? I like that you brought up like the Democrats or progressives or left-leaning people. You know, that old saying, a system isn't what it says, it is what it does. First part of it. When we talk about like what people could be doing and should be doing, when the Democrats had the power and they were able to do the things, you can't help but look at the disparity between what Trump does, even illegally, let's call it, with executive orders or, you know, beyond his power. He does the thing. Forget whether you like the man or not. He does the thing that he says he's gonna do.

• 18:43Trevor Noah?

  The Democrats, when they've had the power that they had, didn't do the things that they say they're gonna do.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  I mean, Biden was pretty significant about climate change and infrastructure.

• 18:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, this is, this is, in the term that they had with the power that they had. And that's true, he has been one of the more significant presidents, funny enough. But like, what do you think they have missed there? Or what do you think we are missing in that side of the equation? Where there's even that meme that I think captures it perfectly, where it's like, Democrats in power, we don't have enough power. Democrats out of power, we don't have enough power. You know what I mean? It's like, is that a system that's broken? Or is it two sides that are playing a game very differently?

• 19:19Speaker 01

  That's a really thoughtful question. So when you hear Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren rail about billionaires and then we need a progressive tax structure, which I think is accurate. There's some nuance there in the sense that, so I'll take you as an example, Trevor. I imagine you make an extraordinary living, but it's current income, meaning if you live, is your home here? Are you a New York resident?

• 19:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  You're probably paying 50 or 52% tax rate.

• 19:38Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, 52% tax.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Because the majority of your income is current income and you're, you make enough money to be in the highest tax bracket. Now, I've made my living starting and selling businesses and now I make my living buying and selling stock. My tax rate, I'm a Florida resident now, has been 17% for the last 10 years.

• 19:56Trevor Noah?

  Damn, I'm doing things wrong.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Well, here's the thing. The people that get screwed are the super earners and then your tax rate plummets when you become a super owner. So when I was in my 30s and 40s making an extraordinary living as a consultant or as a writer, I was paying 30, 35, 45%. Once I became a super owner, my tax rate plummeted. And this has been a conspiracy that both the Democrats and the Republicans have fomented. And where they come together is the following, and that is democracy over the last 30 or 40 years in terms of rights has become solely a function of how rich you are. Any woman in my life will have access to mesepestrom. I could be in the deepest, reddest part of America and if someone I know has an unwanted pregnancy, we're gonna have no problem. If they start rounding up people and people say that could never happen in America, bullshit. It happened 80 years

• 20:42Speaker 01

  ago. We started rounding up the Japanese despite the fact many of their children were serving in the European market, fighting in our uniform. It could absolutely happen here. I think we're one economic shock away from, and who knows who the group will be? It might be Muslims, I don't know, or immigrants. I, I think it could get very ugly, very hot fast. It's not a threat to me. I'm rich. I can peace out to Dubai.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  You're male?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Some of that, some of that. Although, just to comment on that, I actually think in America, and this is a collective victory, and we should celebrate it, I think you'd rather be more non-white or gay in America right now than poor. I think it's the poor-

• 21:17Speaker 02

  I mean, but they, they intersect. The group most likely-

• 21:20Speaker 01

  There's a huge overlap.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, the group most likely-

• 21:22Trevor Noah?

  But you would rather, say that line again though, but you would rather be born-

• 21:25Speaker 01

  In today's America.

• 21:27Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  A sign of our collective victory, but should also inform how we allocate resources and lift people up. Affirmative action should be based on color, and that color should be green.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  And then you're gonna help a lot of people of color. Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Seventy percent overlap, but here's the bottom line.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Seventy percent is significant.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Trevor knows, kids, you don't need any help.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Your kids in America today, and we should celebrate this. You'd rather be born non-white or gay than poor. The academic gap between black and white sixty years ago was double between rich and poor. It has flipped.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  But Scott, don't you think it's still concerning that seventy percent of the people who are poor are people of color?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  But then the question is, how do we help them? Letting in the Taiwanese daughter of a billionaire is not diversity affirmative action.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  I mean, I've never felt that's diverse.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Sixty, sixty years ago, there were twelve blacks at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale combined. That's a problem. Race-based affirmative action made sense. This year, sixty percent of Harvard's freshman class identify as non-white. But here's the thing, seventy percent of those kids come from upper-income homes. So where should we go? I think most Republicans and almost all Democrats agree that some people are born with winds in their face that deserve a little bit of help. By the way, I'm talking my own book. I got Pell Grants. My mother lived and died a secretary. We were generously upper, lower, middle class. Well, I got unfair advantage in the form of Pell Grants because I came from a household that was considered in the bottom quartile.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  I think that's where it should be now. But what we have in the US is a conspiracy between the 1% and any administration that says, you don't need to worry, you don't need to speak up, you're the most powerful, but bitch about it to your friends and wring your hands about what's going on, but you're not gonna come out and speak about it. You're not gonna refuse to go to his inauguration, you're not gonna refuse to give him a million bucks, because this is the bottom line. The rich, right, are protected by the law, but they're not bound by it. And the poor in this country are, are bound by the law but not protected by it. Your rights and your democracy have never been better if you're in the 1%, but the whole point of American constitutionality and democracy is that it's meant to

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Protect the bottom fifty. Rich people don't need democracy. They don't need rights because they have money. I have more rights than any individual in history because I'm rich. And that's what America's become. It's become an operating system for transferring rights and money and democracy to the one percent at the cost of the bottom ninety nine. It is total bullshit. It is un-American and is the conspiracy emerging. And the reason why so many rich people are being quiet is because they're like me. They upload their W two's to chat GPT. I'm going to save nine hundred and thirty grand this year if the Trump tax cuts go through. So stop, stop. It hurts so good. That was a mouthful.

• 24:17Trevor Noah?

  No, but I love it because everything you're saying for me, you know, it's funny. You and I had this conversation. A lot of what you're saying now is what Chairman Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers said at some point when he mobilized a coalition of poor people. Rainbow coalition. The rainbow coalition.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Martin Luther King. Don't forget the white poor.

• 24:34Trevor Noah?

  He said, he said, when they tell us black and when they tell us white and they're forgetting the thing that connects all of us, poor. And he said to that group of people in that church that he gathered, he said, hey, listen, you may call me the N word and you may say these things. But he said, but look at your bank balance and look at our bank balance. We have something in common. So I'm not your enemy.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 24:53Trevor Noah?

  We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break. Some of the most interesting things you learn happen while you're doing something completely ordinary. Maybe you're cooking dinner while watching a history video. Maybe you're on a flight catching up on a long form interview. Or maybe you're trying to figure out how to fix something in your house because apparently owning a screwdriver means you're an electrician now.

• 25:17Trevor Noah?

  But you see, that's one of the things I love about YouTube premium. I travel a lot, so I download videos before a flight. That way I'm not leaving my entertainment in the hands of airplane wifi. Yeah, I've made that mistake. Before you think you're gonna watch something in 4K and suddenly everyone's face is pixels. But one of my favorite features is smart downloads. You see YouTube Premium can automatically download recommended videos for you based on what you already watch. So sometimes I'll get on a plane, I look at my phone, I'm like, ah, I didn't download anything. Then it's like, no. YouTube already thought about this. They packed entertainment for me in my little lunchbox. And with background play, I can lock my phone, switch apps, and whatever I'm watching just keeps on going.

• 26:01Trevor Noah?

  So if you like YouTube, you will love YouTube Premium. Sign up now for your free trial at youtube.com/premium. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. This segment is brought to you by Google Pixel. Every day, it feels like I'm on a new scavenger hunt, but not the fun kind. I'm constantly switching between countless apps just to try and find the information that I need. Like the other day, I was trying to find the address of a restaurant someone had sent me. Simple enough, right? But then this is what happened. I opened my messages. I saw a video somebody sent me of a parrot singing opera. And then the next thing I know, I'm watching an interview with a woman who trains parrots. 20 minutes later, I know the average lifespan of a macaw.

• 26:45Trevor Noah?

  I've forgotten where I'm supposed to have dinner and I'm wondering whether I have what it takes to raise a bird that might outlive me. Enough with digital rabbit holes. Thankfully, my Google Pixel 11 is designed with Gemini Intelligence. Helpful suggestions pop up right in the text thread when I'm making plans, proactively pulling up restaurant details, calendar availability, or live flight info. The info you need, right when you need it. Learn more about what the Google Pixel 11 can do at googlestore.com. These AI features are available in select countries and languages for users 18 and older. Make sure to check responses.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  Get the Daily Show's ongoing coverage in Decision 2026. Coverage you shouldn't miss because there will be a test. I don't make the rules.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  It's the most trusted fake news in America. Comedy Central's The Daily Show, new weeknights at 11.

• 27:45Trevor Noah?

  So like when we, when we think about that, like when we think about politics through that lens.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:51Trevor Noah?

  Did it fall apart when America said that, you know, companies or money is speech, you know, like Citizens United, is that when it fell apart? Or was this like a gradual creep? Was this the inevitable conclusion of a place that was built on the idea of just money and the most money wins?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  And I do want to say something. It's actually shown that when black people do acquire some wealth or high income, because of the communities we're connected to, a disproportionate amount of that income goes to other family members of friend. So black rich is actually very different from white rich.

• 28:25Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  If we talk about that black kid at Harvard or Princeton, maybe they are like one or two generations away from having someone who wasn't a college graduate. So I think we should be careful when we do talk about like the black affluent class who are apparently getting all these handouts.

• 28:40Trevor Noah?

  Right, but if I'm hearing what Scott's saying, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, it's similar to, there was an author that I spoke to once from the UK, and she had this brilliant dissertation where she, she essentially said, "I cannot wait for America to get over its race war, to then realize that it's been a class war all along." But in America, specifically in America, you cannot separate the race from the class. But even when you get past it, let's say tomorrow we wipe away color, then the real game begins, then you'll be like, oh, wait a minute, now we see what was peeled away. And to your point, class has become a signifier of race and race has become a signifier of class.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  They're intertwined.

• 29:21Trevor Noah?

  They're intertwined, but even when you dismantle them, you will then realize that they're not actually, they just happen to be intertwined in this moment.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Because I mean, I don't think the solve for all of this is black people, Asian people, whatever group to become rich. Or even the solve that we have for the, the white male crisis.

• 29:35Trevor Noah?

  Is that what you're saying, though? I don't think that's what you're saying.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Well, so if you, to be fair, to acknowledge the point, so if you look at, um,

• 29:44Speaker 01

  There is still an economic apartheid in the United States.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Latino and black households have an average wealth of $20,000. White households $150,000. So it's hard not to acknowledge.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  And it's going to deepen with the great wealth transfer that's going to happen with the boomers. I think we have to acknowledge that when the boomer generation pass on their wealth, they're calling it the great wealth transfer. And that is going to deepen the inequity between black minority groups and white millennials in ways that is unprecedented.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  There's some nuance to it. When you normalize it and when you compare black Latino households with a college education to white households with a college education, things get normalized or evened out.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  They don't. They're also more likely to live in a poorer neighborhood. The New York Times did a great story on affluent black people who had the same income and wealth as white people.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  I think we're falling into the trap of the following. I think that the algorithms and the incumbents want us to be thinking it's black versus white and it's the old, quite frankly. Old people figured out they could both themselves more money. And an average seven-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. And the average person your age is 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago. Every economic policy in America is meant to transfer wealth from the lower 99 to the top one and specifically from the young to the old. And who it impacts most is people of color and poor people.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  And the question is, how do we move to a solution?

• 31:06Speaker 02

  But Scott, what I wanted to say is I completely agree with you. And I think what you have is a very fair reading. But I worry about us losing the nuance of the collective experience that certain groups in this country have that are different.

• 31:18Trevor Noah?

  That's why I say to me, it sounds like you're saying the same thing. That's what I'm saying. So when I look at it from two different places, it's almost like one is meditative and one is contemplative, right?

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:28Trevor Noah?

  What Scott is saying is if you blindfolded said, we are going to help poor people in this country, more black people would be helped and more Latino groups would be helped because they are the people who are more poor. However, tons of white people will be helped because there are tons of poor white people as well. So he's going, what the promise of America is being neglected right now to people who are being left behind because we're moving to a society where it's more like an oligarchy than it is an actual meritocracy. It's all about the compounding of the money versus where your rights are in relation to you. And now what you're saying is even when we're building these systems, we mustn't forget who's been left behind.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  No, I just want to use the model. The University of California, which saved my ass. I think had the right approach. In 1997, they did away with race-based affirmative action, and they went to what's called an adversity score. What is your background? Do you come from a single-parent household? Do you come from an economically strained household? Do you come from a household where someone is incarcerated? And by the way, the overlap.

• 32:28Trevor Noah?

  That's genius.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  The overlap.

• 32:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Is 70%. But what it also solves for is the fact that, quite frankly, Trevor, your kid should not get affirmative action.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  And.

• 32:38Trevor Noah?

  I don't even have a kid, Chris, I'm just not bullying, right?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  This is what happened. The identity politics ends up enraging. This, how did we elect an insurrectionist as president? That's an honest question. And I think this is what happened. If you look at the groups that pivoted hardest from red, from blue to red, 2020 to 2024, it was three groups. It was Latinos who, in my opinion, gagged on the notion that because of their identity, they were expected to vote some one way. Mexican-Americans in LA are much different and have different priorities than Cuban-Americans in Southern Florida. They pivoted the hardest. The second biggest pivot was people under the age of 30, who for the first time in the nation's history, aren't doing as well as their parents were at 30. That's never happened before. The third group that pivoted hardest to the right

• 33:23Speaker 01

  were women aged 45 to 64. And I believe, I believe that's the mothers of young men who are failing. This was supposed to be an election on, or a referendum on women's rights. We thought that's what was going to save us, for those of us who, who supported Vice President Harris, that women's rights were going to step into the fold. Women's rights did not show up. It was not a big swing vote in this election. What showed up, quite frankly, was struggling young people and their parents. Because if your kid is in the basement playing video games and vaping, you don't give a shit about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine. You don't care about transgender rights. That's a luxury rich, rich Democrats get to have. Not us. My kids aren't doing well. And so they voted for chaos and change.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  And this guy is so coarse, so unconventional, so kind of non-bullshit, quite frankly, that you saw people pivot hard from blue to red.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Okay, and now this is where I bring in the race stuff, right? Black women overwhelmingly voted for Vice President Harris. Whose sons in this country are doing the worst? Who's going from the school to prison pipeline? Who was disproportionately impacted by the marijuana being illegal? Who's disproportionately interrupted by the castle state, whether it's being stopped and frisked? It is black men in this country. So why didn't black mothers do that? Because we care about our sons too. I know I care about my son.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Well, okay.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Why didn't they make the same decision? And their sons are also.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  But the data you're missing.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  If they're not in prison, they're downstairs playing video games as well.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  But the data you're missing is the following. Black women overwhelmingly voted for Vice President Harris.

• 34:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  But more of them voted for Trump than they did in 2020.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I can tell you why that is.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Why's that?

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Some of the immigration sentiment really resonated.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Really resonated. And Tressy talks about it all the time, the idea of black jobs. A lot of people laughed at Trump when he said that thing about black jobs. But for a lot of black women, they're like, I know the jobs he's talking about. The jobs that my brother used to do and my uncle did, that my father did. So I think the immigration sentiment also spoke to them. And also VP Harris, they weren't, some black women weren't fans of hers. And they didn't feel like they should have to vote for her based on their identity. But I just, I kind of rub up against the idea that this cohort of white women voted because they're worried about their sons. I think perhaps they wanted to be protected under patriarchy, which is a very rational decision. And I don't, I mean, I may have feelings about it, but I like, they're probably siding with their husbands.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  That's, that's a strange phenomenon, and that is a lot of women will vote for what they perceive as best for their husbands and their sons.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  But we all thought, at least I thought, I thought Roe v. Wade being overturned, Roe v. Wade is another example.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  But those women don't, these women can't have babies that shifted. But they're not worried about getting an abortion, they're in menopause.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Fair enough.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  I mean, I'll give you another interesting stat where Trump was really brilliant. I'm fascinated by how he won. We're on a podcast, right?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Trump flew into the manosphere. Crypto, rockets, Joe Rogan, he flew right into the manosphere. He said, I am worried about young men. I relate to young men. I am coarse, aggressive. He, this was, this wasn't the women's referendum election. This was the testosterone election. And he flew right into the manosphere. And quite frankly, it was brilliant. By him going on Rogan, 40 million video views, 15 million audio downloads. He got more attention in 90 minutes than Kamala. If Kamala Harris wanted the same level of attention exposure, she would have had to go on, had to have gone on MSNBC, CNN and Fox every night for three hours for two weeks. She absolutely should have flown down to Austin. He saw the opportunity to appeal to struggling young men and the people concerned about them.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  And by the way, the struggles I talk about, I talk about struggling young men a lot. They're even more acute for young men of color. Yeah. A boy is twice as likely to be suspended as a girl on a behavior adjusted basis. Same exact confracture in school. A boy is twice as likely to be suspended. A black boy is five times as likely to be suspended. So we have an education system that is not only biased, in my opinion, against males. It's really biased against males. All these problems I talk about with men, whether it's suicide, opiate addiction, homelessness. It's especially acute among non-white men. But this is something, you, going back to your question, when did this happen? I feel like America, our lack, and I'm an atheist, so I'm not suggesting that church is the answer.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  But as a nation becomes wealthier, its reliance on a super being and church attendance goes down. But into that void fall, we still need answers. So we try and find idols. And the new Jesus Christ of our economy are technology innovators, tech billionaires. Because this shit feels like magic and these people create trillions in wealth. So we're fascinated by them. And I think where we came off the tracks is this idolatry of money. When I was a kid, my dad's boss had a slightly bigger house, but we all went to the same country club. We all went to the same school. Money buys you everything from better healthcare to better schools to a much broader selection set of mates. So we have become obsessed, understandably, with money.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  The idolatry of the dollar and these tech innovators has gone berserk. And so the pursuit of the dollar, in my opinion, has crowded out almost all. Traditional character, when the wealthiest man in the world and probably the most admired man in the world is making Nazi salutes, we normalize that shit. Why? Because he's really fucking rich. Look what money has done to us. Look what it's done. If you had a friend who was making Nazi salutes at parent teachers conferences and was being sued by two women for sole custody of their kids and you had heard from credible sources that they were addicted to ketamine, wouldn't you move in and say, hey, boss, something's wrong here? But not if you're rich, not if you can put a rocket into space or make a shit ton of

• 39:11Speaker 01

  money with EVs. Money has perverted us. It has crowded out all sense of character, of decency, of what it means to be a real man. We have decided that you can get away with anything as long as you're rich. It's been a total, in my opinion, a lack of a moral failing. We used to admire cops. We used to admire people who were, had fidelity to their religion. We used to admire people who defended our country. We used to admire... The sexiest man I remember thinking that I looked up to was my principal. He drove a 240Z. He smelled like Aqua Velva. He wore these cool coats with an elbow patch. He can't get laid now. Do you think a vice principal has any game in any city?

• 39:52Speaker 02

  I mean, vice principal is a good job. I think some of my friends would take one.

• 39:56Trevor Noah?

  Fair enough. It's so funny how so many of the things you're speaking about tie into all the conversations we've been having on this season of the podcast. So you talk about the dismantling of a community. We talked to Robert Putnam and how you can directly correlate communities falling apart with distrust in a government and people now voting against their best interests. You talk about young men feeling isolated. We talked on the show about, you know, mass shooters and like the psychology behind it and like where these men are. You, Christiana, funny enough, you were the one who talked most about like the women voting for their sons. You kept on saying in the lead up to the election, you were like-

• 40:33Speaker 01

  You have kids?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  I have three kids.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  You have three kids. How old are they?

• 40:36Speaker 02

  I have a five-year-old. I have a 19-month-old and I have an eight-week-old.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Oh, you're in the middle.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  I'm in the trenches. A son and two daughters. And I said, as I say on the show, I want my son to turn out great. I want my daughters to have great options for husbands. So I am actually invested.

• 40:50Trevor Noah?

  But that's what I mean. And no, but Christiana kept on saying it. No joke. On the show, she kept on saying, I'm worried, guys, that these women are gonna vote for their sons and it's not gonna... And we were like, what do you mean? What do you... But I'm looking at all of these things that you're tying together. And maybe, maybe there's two aspects of it. I'd love to try and- Try and figure out with the help of your brain. First of all, I love that you talked about Trump and the paradox that he contains, right? In that he is, at the same time as being someone who lies more than most human beings we've ever seen, he's also strangely authentic and no bullshit, right? It's a weird paradox.

• 41:29Trevor Noah?

  Do you think America, for the most part, has done a good job of being no bullshit with its people and itself? So that people make the right decision? I'll give you an example. Let's go back to Ukraine and maybe we can even talk about it through the lens of COVID a little bit. I would argue, most Americans, when they're told why America should invest in Ukraine, they're told it's because of morality. They're told, we've got to help democracy. We've got to help countries stand tall. We've got to help. Why do you have USAID? Because there's malaria in Africa. We've got to help fight these diseases. These poor Africans need our help. I think it would be a lot more honest and it would get to people more if you said, hey, hey, hey,

• 42:13Trevor Noah?

  you know why the things in America cost cheaper than most places in the world? Is because we have so much soft power that those countries

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Make the economic argument.

• 42:22Trevor Noah?

  Have to give it to us. So you see, if you didn't live in America, this is how much you would pay for this. This is how much you would pay for that. This is how much you would pay for that. You know, when you travel and your dollar can buy you anything? Yeah, it's because we have this soft power. So you think we're helping Ukraine for nothing. Do you know who the largest exporter of grain is in the world? It's Ukraine. Like, and I think sometimes America, like, there's been a lot of politicians who've made it like this morality argument, which in some ways is a little duplicitous, but I also understand it because it can come with that. The two things can coexist, but they also don't tell the truth. For instance, if you help, I have friends who their programs have been cut by USAID. But a lot of people don't realize, if you work in the business of tracking disease

• 43:05Trevor Noah?

  and you work in vaccines and you're around the world, not only are you helping, you're also doing two things. One, you're preventing mass migration. Where do people migrate to when shit hits the fan? They're coming here.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:19Trevor Noah?

  So it's like, help them in their country before they come to your country. I don't see any politicians on the grand scale saying that. The other thing that I don't see them talking enough about is how it benefits America and its surveillance. You get the data. People forget this. When America is helping the world track malaria or AIDS or whatever, you're also getting data on people and data is power. Data is information that you can use to help your markets. Do you think there's a world where that would help, where people get a little more real saying to Americans, hey, actually, we're not just doing this because we're nice guys. We're doing this because it makes us powerful and rich.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent. I think, so for example, think of the world as a hundred and fifty-nine NFL teams, a hundred and fifty-nine countries. Imagine you were the one team that got first-round draft choices every year. You get to pick any player in the world because you're that one team. Everyone wants to come play for that team. That's America. We, the best and brightest all have one thing in common. They want to come here. I mean, it's just, and that's so that soft power, that brand imagery that, okay, we make mistakes, but our heart's in the right place, whether it's the Peace Corps or USAID or our incredible products. Trump came along and basically saw an opportunity where Democrats and Republicans have been lying to us and afraid to tell people the truth and saying one thing in

• 44:37Speaker 01

  front of one audience, saying one thing in front of another. And he just came along and came across as very authentic, was crude and was coarse. And we got so sick of this kind of starched vocabulary from our politicians and not doing anything. And also corruption on both sides. Speaker Emre T. Pelosi has been trading stocks. That's just blatant corruption, right? And they would argue on the right right now that this, at least, yeah, this is corruption, but we're just more brazen and more, less opaque about it. You've had the same corruption on the left for a long time, just through lobbyists. And, you know, how does?

• 45:13Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, the revolving door.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. How do these people get so wealthy? So, look, I always like to offer a solution in terms of money in politics and some of the corruption. I believe we should go to a Singaporean model. I think every one of our representatives and senators should make one and three million dollars respectively. And there's absolutely zero tolerance for any special industry group, any speaking fees, can't go to work for a lobbyist, pay them a shit ton of money.

• 45:36Trevor Noah?

  Is this after you leave office, you can't go to lobbyists?

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Five years. Singapore model. They pay them a lot of money, but they say, Zero tolerance for corruption. You cannot, you cannot take campaign contributions from a military industrial complex. You cannot take speaking fees. You cannot go to work for Merck or Pfizer the day after you leave office. And they pay them a lot of money because the incentives right now are, if you're a senator and you're making, what, $230,000 a year? You may not even be able to afford your home in Los Angeles and DC. So the incentives to do what everyone else is doing and find different ways to take money. The thing that's most disappointing about Washington is I have come into some level of economic security. Is not that they're whores, I knew that, it's what cheap whores they are.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  How cheap are they?

• 46:19Trevor Noah?

  Well, look at the Menendez story. My mind, can I tell you? Even like, I say this as a South African, with my South African friends, we would talk about this. We were shocked when we found out that Senator Menendez did the thing that he did for like a Mercedes Benz C-Class. No, no, a C-Class, not an S-Class, not a Maybach. I'm shocked at how many times America's corruption or even like lobbying and whatever comes up. And I can't believe how cheap the price is to buy America's soul from these people.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  It's the best ROI in the world. Give a million dollars to the Trump campaign. Pay, pay 40 million for Melania Trump's shitty documentary. Fine, fine, right? The fastest growing expense line across big tech is an R and D, it is an AI. It's lobbying. If you were to give $25,000 to each of the 100 senators, two and a half million bucks, real money. I bet every time you go to Washington, one of 70 of the 100 would meet with you in person. And influence is a function of proximity. And it's not them, it's the system they're in. The person who raises the most money gets reelected. So we've created an incentive system where they're basically paid to be pay for play. For God's sakes, pay them a lot of money. They're important, they work hard, they're mostly good people.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  But zero tolerance for corruption.

• 47:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Anyways, I, I, I think that there's just no getting around it. Money has washed over Washington. It's been weaponized by money. And we have an incentive system that is the following. More rights, more democracy as you get richer. And the reason the bottom 99 put up with it is that America's superpowers are optimism. Most kids believe and are taught you're going to be in the top 1%.

• 48:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  I can prove to every one of us, the 99% of our children will not be in the top 1%. And so we put up with a level of income inequality and rights accruing to the 1% because God love us, most of us believe my lottery ticket, I know the lottery is dumb, but my baby, my ticket's a winner. My kid is in that 1%. And the whole idea of America is the majority of our laws, the majority of our economic programs are supposed to help the bottom 50. And we creeped into the situation where it's really all about the top one. And then the bottom 99 get 210 notifications a day that they're not in the top one. I mean, just think of what we're doing to the self-esteem of young people who are not making as much money. Rent's gone up, education's gone up. When I applied to UCLA, the admissions rate was 76%.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  This year, it's 9%. But if you don't get in, you get Instagrams from your friends all day showing the amazing parties they're experiencing at UCLA. Not only denying opportunity to young people, we're throwing in their face all of this wealth porn all day. And what do you know? We have the most anxious, obese and depressed generation in history. 50% of people my age feel good about America. One in 10 Gen Z and millennials feel good about America. Something comes off the tracks with one of your kids, the whole world shrinks to that kid. And I'm, again, going to solutions here.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Have you experienced that?

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, and you will too. It's just, that's just, that's what it means to have kids. The, the receipts for love is anxiety and grief. Right? That's it, you know?

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Come on, Scott, you gotta give me some of the goods. There's good things coming ahead. Don't scare me like this.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  I have finally, I have finally.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  I'm ready.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  When I was Trevor, imagine a less handsome, less successful guy. All I wanted was more money, more experiences, more women, more money. More experiences, more women, but I never felt sated. I never, I just more fucking more. The first time I felt sated, and you will feel this way, there will be moments with your children. We think, okay, this is enough.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Oh, my children are ready enough.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  This is enough. But something happens to them. And I mean, none of this other shit matters.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  It doesn't mean anything. And for me, the unifying theory of everything, and where I would like to see every policy reverse engineer is to one goal. And that is every person under the age of 40 should have a reasonable prospect of finding a mate. More third spaces, mandatory national service, more freshman classes, vocational programming, more bars, more alcohol. Quite frankly, I think young people need to drink more, make a series of bad decisions that might pay off.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Let's, let's, let's give young people a chance to hook up. Remote work, no. Tax companies that don't have in-person work. Fall in love. Give men a chance to demonstrate excellence. He's funny, he's kind, he smells nice, I will have sex with him. And then you have children, and every economic policy should be the following. Two people who are working, minimum wage $25 an hour, universal pre-K. Get rid of long-term capital gains, tax deduction, mortgage interest rate. Who owns stocks and homes? Me and Trevor. Who makes their money from salary and pays rent? Young people. Every, every policy in America with this prosperity should have one table stakes. And that is two young people should have the ability to find each other, fall in love. And should they decide to have kids, be able to afford it.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Forty years ago, 60% of 30-year-olds had at least one child. Now it's 27%. It's because they don't want kids? No, it's because they can't afford them. If you decide, by the way, not to have kids, and you want to spend all that income on brunch and safe parts, more power to you. But every young person should have the option to find purpose in their life through family. And they may decide not to do it. You don't have to have kids to be happy. But for God's sakes, if the most prosperous nation in the world can't offer people the prospect of meeting, falling in love, mating, and having a reasonable standard of living, then none of this is working.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  I mean, I love it. I'm a Nigerian woman. I love weddings. I love, I love the idea of a society making people get married. I've been trying to get this guy to get married for years.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  No, no, no, you have, you have.

• 52:01Trevor Noah?

  Don't go anywhere because we've got more What Now after this. Some of the most interesting things you learn happen while you're doing something completely ordinary. Maybe you're cooking dinner while watching a history video. Maybe you're on a flight catching up on a long-form interview. Or maybe you're trying to figure out how to fix something in your house because apparently owning a screwdriver means you're an electrician now. But you see, that's one of the things I love about YouTube Premium. I travel a lot, so I download videos before a flight. That way, I'm not leaving my entertainment in the hands of airplane Wi-Fi. Yeah, I've made that mistake before. You think you're gonna watch something in 4K and suddenly everyone's face is pixels. But one of my favorite features is smart downloads.

• 52:46Trevor Noah?

  You see, YouTube Premium can automatically download recommended videos for you based on what you already watch. So sometimes I'll get on a plane, I look at my phone, I'm like, ah, I didn't download anything. Then it's like, no, YouTube already thought about this. They packed entertainment for me in my little lunchbox. And with background play, I can lock my phone, switch apps, and whatever I'm watching just keeps on going. So if you like YouTube, you will love YouTube Premium. Sign up now for your free trial at youtube.com/premium. Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  Get The Daily Show's ongoing coverage in Decision 2026. Coverage you shouldn't miss because there will be a test. I don't make the rules.

• 53:29Speaker 04

  It's the most trusted fake news in America. Comedy Central's The Daily Show, new weeknights at 11.

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• 54:12Trevor Noah?

  You know, one of the first videos I saw of yours, a friend sent it to me. And you were talking specifically about mates and mating and relationships and people. And you said something about, and I think you captured a deep feeling that not many people were speaking about. And funny enough, Christiana talks about it a lot. I think that's why she's such a fan of yours as well. Is the idea of the purposelessness that can come with not having love or not having some sort of thrust in your life. And I saw this video of yours and I remember thinking, man, because someone was like, what do you think? This is crazy or not? And I was like, I think this is brilliant. And also, it's so easy to prove in the most extreme circumstances. Go to any terrorist cell in the world, like, I'm talking like ISIS.

• 54:56Trevor Noah?

  What are they promising them as well?

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Wives and girlfriends, yeah.

• 54:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's crazy that even on that level.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  In the afterlife, in paradise.

• 55:03Trevor Noah?

  But I'm saying even before the afterlife, they're saying, we're gonna go there and we're gonna take women. We're gonna get wives. We're gonna get, in some parts of the world where life is a little simpler unfortunately because it's harsher. You see that reality slap people in the face. My life is not going well. I'm joining ISIS because ISIS didn't just tell me we're gonna fight. They said, we're gonna fight to get a wife and a better life.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Also, the key, ISIS pay.

• 55:28Trevor Noah?

  Well, they pay some people.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  But the reason they got more, at a point, they got more recruits than Al Qaeda is because they paid you a bit more.

• 55:35Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, well, they were smart in the beginning.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  So it's just like, they gave them jobs.

• 55:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, so let's talk about, let's talk about the man's side of this whole thing. Because I love that you talk about it, the manosphere and the... Before we even get into that, I'd love to know, what do you think it is about you that has connected with a group that people would have argued wouldn't have connected with your views? Maybe like two years ago. Because if you, if you wrote down on paper, Scott Galloway, this is what he believes in. He believes in basic incomes being this. He believes in healthcare. He believes in pre-care. He believes in... If somebody had drawn that up and then somebody had put the crypto bros and the whatever we want to call people if we're putting them in a box, they would have said, oh, this person will never agree with that person. And yet you've made massive inroads with a

• 56:19Trevor Noah?

  lot of these young men who people have said wouldn't agree with their views.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  And some young women, I'm a fan.

• 56:24Trevor Noah?

  Oh, no, no, yeah, but I'm saying the men, no, no, no, but I'm saying the men in particular, where they, where people have just said no, you know? So what do you think it is that you are saying or what do you think it is that you are doing that is connecting you to them and what are other people missing about connecting to them?

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, thank you. Your comments are generous. Look, I, I started talking about struggling young men five years ago and real insight is when you state something that's obvious, but people weren't thinking about. And the data is just overwhelming. And that is no group has ascended faster globally than women. And by the way, we should get, do nothing to get in the way of this. Women are, more women are seeking tertiary education now globally than men. The number of women elected to parliament in democracy has doubled in the last 30 years. In the United States, women in urban metros under the age of 30 are making more money than men. More single women own homes than men. Two in three women under the age of 30 are in a relationship, only one in three men. And you think, well, that's mathematically impossible. It's not because women are dating older because they

• 57:25Speaker 01

  want more economically and emotionally viable men. What you have in the U.S. is no group has fallen further faster than young men. And it's for a variety of reasons. Biologically, their eight, their prefrontal cortex is 18 months behind a woman. So it doesn't catch up till 25. They just lack the executive function and the judgment. A big part is male abandonment. A lot of young men don't have the male involvement in their lives that is key. And even if you were to say that five years ago, the gag reflex was, well, what are you saying? Mothers can't raise sons? No, I'm not saying that at all. But the research is pretty striking. When there's a single parent household, and let's be honest, 92% of the time, it's the woman heading the household in a single parent home, as mine was. The girl in the household has the same outcomes,

• 58:10Speaker 01

  same rate of college attendance, same rates of self-harm. In some, she's okay. The boy, the moment he loses a male role model, becomes much more likely to kill himself, much more likely to be incarcerated. What it ends up, if you look at the data, is that while boys are physically stronger, they're emotionally and mentally much weaker. And we don't even want to acknowledge, at one point, four or five years ago, you could get into trouble by even claiming there was a difference amongst genders in young people. And if you were advocating for men, you were seen as a misogynist because so many unproductive voices filled this void with bullshit, thinly veiled misogyny. And what we have come to realize, and the dialogue's gotten a lot better, and it's mostly been led by mothers,

• 58:54Speaker 01

  is that empathy is not a zero-sum game. We can still acknowledge the immense challenges women face. The moment you had kids, your average salary went to 73 cents on the dollar. Corporate America has still not figured out a way to maintain a woman's professional trajectory when she decides to use her ovaries. At the same time, young men, if you go into a morgue in the United States and there's five people who've died by suicide, four are men. If any other special interest group was killing themselves at four times the rate of the control group, we'd weigh in with programs. And finally, we're starting to acknowledge that women cannot continue to flourish, and our country cannot continue to flourish if young men are floundering.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  But Scott, don't you think it's poison to the fact that a lot of men don't care about men? Because I think about the women in my life, not just mothers, sisters, friends. We spend a lot of time worrying about the men and boys in our life. Whether it's, give the example of a single mother is just with her son. Now, if a mother is absent from a friend's life, other women will step in and fill that woman's role. Why aren't men saying, "Well, there's a single mother down the street, or I have a family member that's single." Why aren't men stepping in? Why don't men care about men and boys?

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  It's a great point. If you were to reverse engineer, when a boy comes off the tracks and becomes an unproductive man, it's the single point of failure is when he loses a male role model. We have the second-most single-parent homes in the world, behind Sweden. And unfortunately, there's a taboo. If you were to get involved in a 15-year-old's life, if you were to look around the office and say, "Single mother, say I'm Trevor. I'm going to a game. Do you have a son you'd like to hang out with me?" Because you're immediately suspected. You're immediately, quite frankly, Michael Jackson and Catholic Church have fucked it up for all of us. And that is if a man wants to be involved in a boy's life, there's a bit of trepidation. Is there something wrong with him? Is he up to something really mendacious or awful?

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Could he be possibly a pedophile? And this is such a tragedy because there are so many men with fraternal and fraternal love to give them. Maybe don't have kids of their own. Or maybe just are concerned or see the problem, who are willing to weigh in. And they're kind of told by society not to. And also, quite frankly, men are not stepping up. There are three times as many women applying to be big sisters in the New York Big Sisters program as there are men applying to be big brothers. In sum, if we want better men, we have to be better men. And you're exactly right. Men need to, there needs to be a zeitgeist in our society. Family court, neighbors, the moment a boy no longer has a male role model in his life, other men need to step into the void. My mom was really good at this.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  She made sure, I'm still in contact with a couple of her ex-boyfriends. There was a neighbor across the hall who used to come over with his girlfriend and take me horseback riding.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  I had men in my life. And sometimes there are millions of young men right now, boys. The first male role model they have is a prison guard. Because men aren't stepping up. And I think of, I'm writing a book on masculinity. I think of concentric circles of masculinity. You take care of yourself. You're strong, you're economically viable, you're kind, you're a, you're a, you're a fucking monster. You have this unbelievable thing called superior bone structure, risk aggressiveness, this amazing substance called testosterone. You protect others, you take care of yourself. Second circle out, you protect your family, you're a good provider. Next circle out, you take care of your community and your neighbors and you help other people. The ultimate expression of masculinity, in my view, is to take an irrational interest

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  in the well-being of a child that's not yours. And not enough men are doing this.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  And it is so easy to find them.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Can I tell you an idea I have? I wish more men made men who are bad fathers a pariah. Like if you have a friend that doesn't see his kid, he shouldn't be a friend.

• 1:02:50Speaker 01

  So, can I, can I say two things to this, right?

• 1:02:54Trevor Noah?

  I agree with the premise completely. But I think it is important, just as you do on all issues. I think it's important to consider what the possible reasons can be.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:03:07Trevor Noah?

  So on the one hand to what you're saying, I don't think like most men would not want to step in etc. I don't think so, honestly. But I do know from speaking to men everywhere around the world to what you're saying about like wealth porn etc. Man, men, maybe because they imagine it or maybe because they're experiencing it. A lot of men just feel like they've got to like double grind to even get the basic. That first concentric circle to what you're saying has been crushed, right?

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:03:39Trevor Noah?

  And we've got to consider all the ways it's been crushed. How have like the junk food companies crushed people's abilities to even like eat what they eat and stay healthy? You start with people's food, what they get access to. You start with, as you say, opportunities, income, being kicked out of school, etc, etc, etc. And I think you've also got to consider what it's like to be a young man where the dreams that you are sold and told don't come true because the system hasn't been set up, as you said, correctly, right? So I think, I honestly believe that.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  And I feel a lot of compassion for, I think, any failed promise, whoever it's made to. I feel a lot of compassion for those people.

• 1:04:16Trevor Noah?

  No, so I'm just saying in understanding that is like I go like for me as Trevor, for instance, I have more time and I do make the time to be with friends or extended people's younger kids because they know me, so they can trust me, right? But it's like, all right, take him go-karting, take that one there, do that thing there. But I have the disposable income and I have the time income as well to be like, yeah, I can do that and I will do that. You know what I mean? But I've seen for a lot of people, they go like, hey, man, I can't even get my shit together. Who am I? I to you know, I think that's the first one. The second one to what you you were saying, you said that the the the you said the thing that you were you you the proposal you had was?

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  I think that um you should become a social pariah if you don't look after your kids.

• 1:04:56Trevor Noah?

  So.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  No, cause I and I'll say this and and I've seen it in my community a lot. There are deadbeats and there is no consequence. Their friends still roll with them, their mother still let them in their house, and they do not show up for their kids.

• 1:05:09Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  And if a woman does not look after her child, if a woman even comes back to work early, I've had people DM me like, you had a baby eight weeks ago.

• 1:05:16Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  Who's with the baby, right? Like, and I'm I ostensibly think I'm doing a good thing, do you know what I mean? And a woman who is not seen as a perfect mother is judged and vilified.

• 1:05:27Trevor Noah?

  Completely, I agree with you.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  Fathers, there is no social consequence.

• 1:05:31Trevor Noah?

  Completely.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  So I'm saying saying there should be a social consequence for not showing up for your sons.

• 1:05:34Trevor Noah?

  So now this is, I agree with you one hundred percent on this. And because of that, I would like, I was so fervently in that mode that I would like fight with people on this. And then I came to realize something that maybe in this world, we aren't addressing in the same way. There are many, many, many men who feel like they've been made a deadbeat dad. Do you get what I'm saying? There are many, many, many men who feel like they go, yo, this and I, this is me now anecdotally only, anecdotally. I know some men personally who were good men, wanted to be with their kids, you name it. And the woman in their life was like, you see, we broke up. I'm going to make sure you never see these kids ever again. And they and and I'm not saying this is all of them, so I'm not absolving them.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  I normally see the inverse. I think, and it's it's it's evolutionary biology. They say that um what is what's the saying that it's a mother's babies, fathers maybe. A man is more likely to treat his his sister's child with more love.

• 1:06:33Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  Than he is his mate's child or his wife's child. They've done studies on this because you know your sister's child is related to you.

• 1:06:40Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:06:41Speaker 02

  All that to say, I believe a man's relationship with his children, I don't I I know this is not going to be a popular thing to say. It's often connected to how he feels about the children's mother.

• 1:06:49Trevor Noah?

  Yes, no, but I agree with that.

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  So for the most part, it's men being like, I split up with you, yeah, I see you less. He gets a second wife and he's a really good dad to those second set of kids. I see that all the time. Less so do I see women, and I'm not saying that these villainous women don't exist.

• 1:07:03Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Who say you can't see your kid. I think that's a cultural trope we've made up.

• 1:07:07Trevor Noah?

  No, I was just saying, wait, I was just saying one. Please, please, let me let me explain. I was giving you one, one that I know anecdotally.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Trevor Noah?

  I'm not saying all of them. There's another one, and this is again the system that we've created. In America in particular, and in many other countries, you get divorced, you get broken up with whatever. Most of the time, the system says the mother keeps the child, the man has to pay for the child to be with the mother. And that money is calculated strangely in some places. Some places, some people say it's very fair, some people say it's unfair, but it's strangely calculated. And now to what Scott was just saying, we live in a world where people already cannot afford the one house that they were promised. You know, in the American dream, forty years ago, people could buy that house even on a meager salary. You know, you, someone was putting out the numbers recently and they showed that like forty years ago in somewhere like Philadelphia,

• 1:07:54Trevor Noah?

  you could buy a house, you could put down the down payment for a house with like a month's salary. There's no way you can do that now in that same Philadelphia, even because houses have gone up way, way, way faster than salaries have gone up, right? So, so from that perspective alone, I think it is important to look at a place like Sweden. I remember going to Sweden and talking to, it was like, basically they had like Dr. Fauci and I was asking him about like, why Sweden has so many one-parent household households, but so, so few of the problems? And he said, yes, but you're forgetting one thing, and that is here in Sweden, first of all, you are not a pariah if you are single, right? That's the first thing. And secondly, you're protected by the state.

• 1:08:34Trevor Noah?

  It makes a big difference when your relationship with the other person is not determined by your money.

• 1:08:41Speaker 02

  I think we're making a lot of excuses for men because mothers can't do the same thing.

• 1:08:45Trevor Noah?

  No, but I'm saying why, I'm not saying it's an excuse. You see, there's a difference between an excuse and an answer. I think an excuse is saying you've done it, but there was nothing we could have done and you're not wrong. I'm not saying you're wrong or right. I'm just saying like, what is the answer for this thing? And I think sometimes when we look at the socio-economic impacts of how, in America specifically, how it sets it up, when you are a dad that leaves the house, for many men, it is difficult to continue being the dad the way you want to be. Now, how they deal with it is shitty. And also credit to women. I was also raised by a single mother and I've seen it. And in our programs in Africa, we still do the same thing. We know you give them. Money to women because women know how to make that dollar go further.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  I think you're both right. One in six men, three years post divorce, have no contact with their children. Some of that is male abandonment, some of it is just a total lack of character. You don't hear a lot about female abandonment because it just doesn't happen that much. At the same time, family court is also, you would argue, biased against men. Sometimes it literally impoverishes them. Sometimes also, the reality is in divorce, there's a lot of emotion and my parents weaponized it and tried to convince me to hate the other. And you're just more inclined to believe the person you're living with, that the other person is bad. So I think that we need to change the side and say, okay, regardless of how you feel about each other, you need to be supportive of each other for the kids' sake, post divorce.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  It's a nuanced argument with a lot of factors, but in general, there needs to be a zeitgeist in our society that the moment a boy loses a male role model, the community has to rally around that kid, the mother, the brothers, the uncles and the men, to say, we have to get men involved in his life. And that's not happening. It's not, you know, these, think about it, after school programs, not as many coaches anymore. Right? They're not going into work. My first job was at Morgan Stanley. I got a lot of male mentorship. I was in a fraternity. I remember my quote unquote big brother in the fraternity sitting me down my freshman year and saying, you need to stop getting high every night.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  And I needed a 22 year old male that I could look up to. I didn't have a lot of male involvement in my life to tell me that. My first boss, you know, was a great guardrail for me. Young men need guardrails more than young women, quite frankly. Where young women get them, when a young woman isn't in a relationship, she reinvests oftentimes a lot of that energy into her friend network, into her professional life. When a man's not in a relationship, he oftentimes reinvests it in video games and porn, and he sequesters from society. And a tremendous guardrail for young men that they're not getting is a relationship.

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  Okay, Scott, I think a relationship is one thing.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:26Speaker 02

  Um, my husband, interestingly enough, was raised by a single mother, but had great male role models in his grandfather and his uncle. So I'm actually get concerned about how little trauma he has. That's my worry with him. Um, but he has this incredible group of male friends. Like, they're like really tight and they've all become dads at the same time and they take their kids out together. And I'm really struck by how much he invests time in his friendship. And even in that group of men, there's about seven to eight of them. A couple of them aren't married yet, but they're still involved. So if there's a birthday, they'll fly in, et cetera, et cetera. I kind of rub up against the idea that having a mate is the only arena these men can find care. Because I see a lot of women marry men and they're like, now I have someone to babysit.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  Isn't there a way that we can encourage young men to invest in their friendships and in a brotherhood and in their communities in a way? That means even if you don't have a romantic relationship, you still have a really rich and fulfilled life. Because I just, this world where my daughters are gonna grow up and, okay, the man does have a job or whatever, but she's gonna have to look after him all the time. And if she doesn't, he falls off the rails. I'd rather like it be a man who has a really rich interior life and social network. And if he's married or not, or if he has a girlfriend or not, it doesn't matter. It's not as socially devastating.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  I think you're talking about the way the world should be, not the way it is.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  Or we can perhaps make it.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  That's, that's very nice.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  No, I'm not an optimist. I'm just saying that we have a.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  But we have that in common.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  A thirty, a thirty year old.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  I see why you guys, why you're offended.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  A thirty year old, a thirty year old male that hasn't lived with a woman or been married has a one in three chance of becoming a substance abuser. And a strong friend network is incredibly important. But without a romantic relationship, men have a tendency to not reinvest in their social network and their professional lives the way that women do. You clearly have figured out that male friendship is really important for men. They open up to other men. They can express, the people who have the most job prospects are the most social. They have an outlet with each other. Do you think in general, though, that women, once they get married, are really supportive of men spending more time with their friends?

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  I think it depends on the friends. I like my husband's friends.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Okay, most women see a guy spending more time with their mates as a threat to the relationship. In addition, corporations don't want men spending a lot of time with their friends. They want them making more money.

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  This is the difference. I don't really like men. There's a boys' club and they leave me alone. It's a dream.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  But the larger point you bring up is the following. One in seven men in America doesn't have a single friend. One in four men can't name a best friend.

• 1:14:06Trevor Noah?

  Damn, that's crazy.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  And we have what I would argue is a loneliness crisis. And the most frightening thing for young men right now, in my view, is that the deepest-pocketed, most talented companies in the world are trying to convince young men, especially, that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. Why go through the effort of trying to have friends and figuring out the pecking order and your social currency when you can go on Reddit and Discord? And why, for God's sakes, would you ever go through the humiliation, the rejection, working out, having a plan, being funny, smelling nice, enduring rejection, feeling humiliated, figuring out a way to feel confident, showing the perseverance such that you can establish a romantic or a sexual relationship when you have porn?

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  So what we have is that, I think unfortunately, we're evolving a new species of asexual, asocial males. And they're the most dangerous people in the world.

• 1:14:59Speaker 02

  Very dangerous.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Because, and I don't want to pathologize them. We have a tendency to say, oh, they're the school shooters. Actually, the people they're most dangerous towards is themselves. They're much more likely to harm themselves than harm other people. But the one thing the most unstable, violent societies have in common is a disproportionate amount of young men who have no economic or romantic prospects. So, and we don't like to have an ominous conversation around mating. The reality is women mate socioeconomically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down. And when dating apps are now where 50 to 60% of all relationships begin, the reductive analysis is the following. Can you signal resources and are you tall? Men have very few arenas to demonstrate excellence.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  Anymore. If you talk to people who've been married longer than thirty years, eighty percent of them say one was much more interested in the other. And it was almost always the man was much more interested. But when there's no places when men aren't going into work, when men don't have third spaces, when they're not serving in the military together. They have no place to demonstrate kindness. He was funny. I liked his hands. He was great at what he did. And so as a result, we have this dating environment. Where the top ten percent get literally all of the interest and the bottom ninety percent are just shut out. And then they become very prone to really ugly voices that say it's a woman's fault. They're much more prone to misogynistic content. Yeah. They're much more prone to nationalist content. So figuring out environments where more people can meet.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  And more men, quite frankly, can demonstrate excellence such that they can get through the finer filter of mating that women have. The greatest innovation in history, it's not the iPhone or the semiconductor, it's the American middle class. And fundamental to that innovation was that seven million men returned from World War Two, they had demonstrated excellence in uniform. We gave them enough money so they could afford a home. We gave them jobs and they became very attractive to a lot of women and we started the baby boom. And we had such wonderful prosperity that American liberal households said, let's bring women into this prosperity. I know, let's bring, let's bring non-whites into this prosperity. And we got along because the majority of our leaders had served in the same uniforms, so they saw themselves as Americans before they saw themselves as Republicans or Democrats.

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  But unless we figure out a way to level up young people and find a place where they can meet and fall in love and mate, and they have the economic wherewithal to do it. We're just going to continue to generate the most dangerous person in the world. And that is a young man with no economic or romantic prospects. I coach a lot of young men and one of the first things they talk about is they really want a girlfriend. And the first question I ask is, would you have sex with you? Would you have sex with you? Do you have a plan? You don't need to be a baller, you don't need to be rich, but do you have a plan? Are you going to vocational school? Are you thinking about driving an Uber and saving up so you can get a second car to have a second Uber? Do you shower? Do you have good grooming? Are you funny? Are you willing to endure rejection? Are you willing to try really hard? You know, would you have sex with you?

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  And there aren't enough men. How many times have we heard? I've got all these great women in my life. They're so attractive, they're so shit together, but they can't find a man. No, they just can't find a man they want to mate with. And women are getting taller every year. They're becoming more economically viable. It's leading to a lot more divorce because quite frankly, men are not ascending in terms of picking up some of the slack logistically. So it's like, okay, you're no longer a provider. And by the way, it's not like you're really picking up the slack at home.

• 1:18:22Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  So women are saying, you're out.

• 1:18:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:25Speaker 01

  So for a lot of reasons, I think we have to figure out a way to have honest conversations with men around. Okay, this is what women are attracted to. Signaling resources. That's the hard truth. You need an economic plan. Two, intellect. Are you interesting? Are you funny? Do you, do you have interest in current events? And then the third thing, the secret weapon for men in mating that we don't talk a lot about is kindness. Women actually want someone who's going to be kind because it means you're more likely to be good to her parents and good to your kids. Where do young people find mates in America right now?

• 1:18:58Trevor Noah?

  So when I think about every aspect of this problem, I think about where some of that potential is being leached out. I love video games with all my heart. What I hate now is video games have been made perpetual. So when you start, when I started playing video games, they ended. It was great. You played a game and ended. Game over. You know what I mean? You finished Mario Brothers and that was it. And games evolved and you played whatever it was, you know, Duke, you can, you name it, you name it. You, you could finish the, games don't finish now. And so like in a weird way, the first thing I think of is what you're saying is you cannot meet these people and you cannot go on to do these things. If you're perpetually stuck in a game that's been designed, by the way, it's been.

• 1:19:41Trevor Noah?

  Designed to keep you there, to keep you spinning, to keep you going. You you also aren't going to think of being kind or funny when you're not around other people. We we've shown time and time again, being with people makes you like those people. As in like, it makes you be more like them. But if we don't have third spaces where people can can go without money, for instance, how do we get that? Like, where where are you going? I even ask people this all the time in New York and Manhattan, anywhere. I go, where can you go without money, honestly? Yes, you can go to a park, but beyond that, like in the in the doldrums of winter in New York, where can you go?

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  You're from London?

• 1:20:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  Forty percent of nightclubs in London have closed down since Covid.

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  I know, I know.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Young people don't have money.

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  And they're also drinking less. But you were talking about kind of, I I think our economy has moved from an attention economy to unfortunately, an addiction economy. And I think it's especially hard on young men who are more prone to addiction because they're more risk aggressive. I think a basic our economy now, the kind of axis of evil is get people addicted to shitty food, to gambling, to porn, and then hand them over to the addiction industrial complex. The most valuable company in Europe now is a GLP one producer.

• 1:20:47Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  And then if you think about young men, they're much more prone to addiction and especially gambling addiction. Six and seven gambling addicts are boys, fifty percent of college age men bet on the Super Bowl. And the net income of Las Vegas is down forty percent this year because everyone now has a casino in their pocket.

• 1:21:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  And the crazy thing about gambling addiction is that the addiction with the highest suicide rate is gambling. Because if you had a meth addiction, we would know it and someone would weigh in who cared about you. You can get out so far in front of your skis with a gambling addiction and no one knows.

• 1:21:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, we talked about that on the podcast with Kaya, my friend. His younger brother committed suicide because he was deep in gambling debt. No one knew until it was too late.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  No idea.

• 1:21:31Trevor Noah?

  Things spins and now, this was even pre the apps in that way. And now it feels like, I mean, the apps run every sport now, the NBA, the NFL. They they're almost sanctioned by the leagues now. They're the official betting partner of, do you know what I mean?

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:47Trevor Noah?

  So let me ask you this then, Scott, like, I like that you said you love offerings. Solutions.

• 1:21:56Trevor Noah?

  Let's try to think of a solution for the individual and then and a solution for the community. You know, as as Christiana eloquently put, I think even when we're talking about race. It's important to think of who's most affected. And ironically, when men are disaffected, women become the most affected. You see it in like the rates of violence that women will experience.

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  They they become these dangerous men.

• 1:22:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. So let's talk about it on the on the individual side. There's a young man who's watching this right now.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:25Trevor Noah?

  And they go, Scott, I don't have connections. I don't see hope. I don't see anything. I'm watching this video on YouTube right now on my phone or on TikTok or wherever wherever I am. What are like three steps I can take that just get me on the path to moving forward to purpose kindness? And a space where I can show my brilliance.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  I love that. So I try to walk the walk. I try and coach two young men at a time. And the people I coach, quite frankly, are struggling. You know, I get a lot of people who send me emails and say, will you be my mentor? And I talk to them like, you know, dude, you could mentor me. You know, I talked to some twenty four year old working at Google. He's like, I need a mentor. I'm like, you're just fine.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing I do, I try and do it in person, um, but oftentimes it's over Zoom. The first thing I do is the following. I say, open your unlock your screen. I want to see your app time. And the first thing I do to put them at ease is I say to them, I gamble. I buy options. I'm not immune from gambling. I like porn. I try to modulate my use, but I like porn because I want to put them at ease. I'm not going to judge them. And I say, okay, everyone has an advantage. You want to lean into your advantage. Your advantage as a young person is you have a lot of capital, but you have human capital. You have more time than money. But that's an advantage. We're going to find eight to twelve hours of human capital of time in your phone. And it's so easy between TikTok, between X, between Coinbase, between you porn.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  In about three minutes, I can get them agree to find eight to twelve hours a week of human capital. I'm like, all right, next week, we're going to open your phone and you're going to show me that you took eight to twelve hours of human capital out of your phone. And we're going to reallocate that precious human capital into three areas. One.

• 1:24:10Speaker 01

  You're gonna start getting fit. You need to be strong. If you're under the age of thirty and you're man, you're blessed with an unbelievable physiology. Any man under the age of thirty should be able to walk into any room and know if shit got real, they could either kill and eat everybody or outrun them. You'll be kinder. You'll feel better about yourself. Who breaks up fights at bars? Big, strong guys. Who defends our country? Big, strong men. You wanna feel better about yourself. You wanna be less prone to depression. You wanna feel good about your mating prospects. You need to get strong. We're gonna work out three to four times a week, too. We're gonna start making some money. You got a smartphone, you can make money in this economy. I don't care if you're a Lyft driver. I don't care if you're a TaskRabbit. Go into a Panera. I was on the board of Panera. If you show up when you're supposed to show up, three times in a row, you can be making eighteen to twenty bucks an hour in about a month.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  Because you're gonna get a taste for the flesh. You're gonna find out that money is amazing. And when you start making money, you start getting good at it. You start figuring out what are the behaviors that get rewarded for money? Where are the opportunities? And then when you find when you buy shit, it gets your greed glands going. And you start thinking about, I'd really like to go on another date. I'd really like to be able to buy my mom something. You get a taste for the flesh of money. The way you make a lot of money is by starting to make a little bit of money. No one starts off making a hundred grand a year. Most of us have had jobs where we're making no money. And then the third thing we're gonna do is two times a week, we're gonna find ourselves in the company of strangers and the agency of something bigger than ourselves. Church, nonprofit, a riding class.

• 1:25:38Trevor Noah?

  Homeless shelter.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  Anything. And the agency of something else. And here's what we're gonna do after a month of that. We're the exercise. This is kinda 3A.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  I want you to approach a stranger and express interest in friendship. Or, and this is a hard one, express romantic interest while making that person feel safe. Right? Hey, do you wanna watch the game this weekend? Let's go to the pub. Arsenal's playing Liverpool. Do you wanna go? Hey, would you like to have coffee? An attractive woman or a woman you're attracted to. She's not dumb. She realizes, okay, you're probably interested in her. And that's not the goal. The goal is the following. The goal is no. You're probably gonna get a no. They'll be nice, but they'll probably say no, right? And I'm gonna call you the next day and I'm gonna ask you if you're okay. And this is what you're gonna say. Yeah, I'm fine. And that's the key. The key to success is no. Cause you're gonna realize, you're gonna realize that the people who are successful, who have romantic partners,

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  who have economic success, had a shit ton of no's to get to that point of success. This is the scariest stat I've read. Fifty-one percent of eighteen to twenty-four-year-old males have never asked a woman out in person. Think about that. They don't have the confidence or the skills to approach a woman and ask her out. That's it. The goal is the no. Cause you get enough no's, eventually you're gonna get a yes. I can't tell you how much rejection I have endured from women. And the reason I am with them, really high-character, hot person, is because I got comfortable with no.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  I have a question, Scott. I love the recommendations you get, you've given to men. As a parent, as parents at home listening to this, they're raising like pre-teen adolescents. What are the things that they can do to kind of push their sons around, along the right track? Is it delaying giving them a smartphone? Is it putting them in clubs? Not all boys are athletic. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:27:30Trevor Noah?

  No, I'm laughing because my mom made me work at home.

• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  Oh, so you had like?

• 1:27:36Trevor Noah?

  No, no, to what you're saying. And I just laughed thinking of it now because of what you asked and what you said. My mom, I think intuitively sort of figured it out. I couldn't get a job at a Panero. South Africa was different in that way. But she made me work at home. So she went, there are tasks and things that we need done. And like, you know, some are physical, some are whatever. Yeah, but she paid me. And she was like, this is your, and then she made me pay rent to live in the house. No, really. And she was like, this is your portion of groceries. Even, and it was this weird cycle, even though she was giving me them. And I remember asking her, I said, this is ridiculous.

• 1:28:09Speaker 02

  The money's going back.

• 1:28:09Trevor Noah?

  You're giving me the money. That I am then giving back to you to then have the thing. And she said, yes, honey, that's all money in the world. She said, that's literally what it's gonna be. Your company is gonna give you the money that you're then gonna buy their product with and give it back to them. And then you're gonna give the government tax that they're gonna then give you back with the road. She said, that's how money works. I want you to get used to the reality of it. But I'm sorry, that it just made me think of that.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  So I want to be clear. Do as I say, not as I do. I have not figured this out. I have, I have kids. My kids have done really well, but I.

• 1:28:41Speaker 02

  Oh, well, then you have figured something out.

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  Well, but to be clear, they, they have at different parts of their life struggled with device addiction. You think if anyone would understand technology, it's me. I have kids who sneak into the bathroom and are on TikTok and have to bang on the door and say, start masturbating, get off your phone.

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  But look, the basics, right? I think the key for parents is what I call, I think quality time was something invented by executives who weren't spending a lot of time with their kids. I think the key is garbage time. I'll always take my kids, drive them somewhere because what I find the moments of real

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  value and real emotional connection unfortunately happen totally randomly.

• 1:29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  You can't force them or predict them. You're taking your kid to school and he says, I asked this girl out. I'm like, well, what happened? And he talks to you about it or I, I don't think there's any replacement for just a lot of time. And then what you were talking about chores, I've done a terrible job with that. I think sports and fitness is really important for kids. I think kids, especially boys are like dogs. A tired boy is a better behaved boy. I think they just need to sweat and they need, I mean, I have boys, so I'm not, is in touch with what, with what girls need. And then the other thing that I've had trouble figuring out is letting them fail. My son was going to a party at the Westfield Mall that my, you know, kids are really into

• 1:30:03Speaker 01

  malls at 14 and it ends up there's two Westfields in London and I got an Uber and I sent him to the wrong one. Yeah, I sent him to the wrong.

• 1:30:10Trevor Noah?

  Oh, the Shepherd's Bush one, yeah.

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  So immediately it's like his mom wants to call MI6. He's texting me, dad, you're an idiot. His mom calling me, I can't believe you did this. And finally I blew up and by accident did the right thing. I said to my kid, I'm like, You have an Uber app, you have Google Maps, you have an Oyster card. Figure it out. I'm done. Mom, he's gonna be just fine. When I was my kid's age, I used to leave my mom's house with a Schwinn bike and Abba Zaba bar and 35 cents and I would literally come home 14 hours later. And I had to navigate bullies, I had to navigate stray dogs. And I failed a lot and I realized this is absolutely the right thing to do.

• 1:30:56Speaker 01

  Jonathan Haidt, who's my colleague, he summarized it perfectly. We overprotect them offline and we underprotect them online. I am trying to do a better job of letting my boys fail. All right, that's a bad idea. If you ask my advice, I'll tell you it's a bad idea. But, okay, have at it. You think you can go to soccer practice without shoes? Just see how that works out. Have at it. I'm trying to do a better job of letting them fail because if you look at what happens at the freshman year at NYU, we have real issues now around depression and self-harm. And it's for two reasons. One, and this is Jonathan's Valleywick, because they're on social media and they have a lack of self-esteem, especially girls.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  And two, we have created so much bulldozer parenting and concierge parenting that we've used so many sanitary wipes on their lives that they don't develop their own immunities. And they show up to freshmen at college and they get their heartbroken or they get their first C and they literally freak out. So by the time I got to college, I don't know what's like for you, I had failed a lot. And I was, I had thick skin, not thick skin, but I had calluses. So I'm trying to do chores, athletics, a ton of garbage time and letting them fail. But I want to be clear, I struggle. I have outsized emotional reactions. I get too angry at my kids. I say things I shouldn't. I overprotect, I underprotect. I'm not, I am still trying to figure it out.

• 1:32:25Trevor Noah?

  We're all trying to figure it out. And that's why we're here.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:32:29Trevor Noah?

  Scott Galloway. Thank you very much, man. Thank you for making the time. Thank you for braving the journey.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  That was fun.

• 1:32:34Trevor Noah?

  This was really amazing.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:32:36Trevor Noah?

  Thank you very much.

• 1:32:42Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Zainaz Yamin and Jodie Avigan. Our senior producer is Jess Hackle. Claire Slaughter is our producer. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now.

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