E547 Scott Galloway

Scott Galloway is a marketing professor at NYU, author, and host of the Prof G and Pivot podcasts. Scott Galloway joins Theo in NYC to talk about some of the biggest issues facing young men in today's world, how these issues also impact women, balancing career goals and relationship goals, and why he believes younger generations need a financial boost. Scott Galloway: https://www.instagram.com/profgalloway/ ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Blue Chew: Go to http://bluechew.com and use code THEO to get your first month free - just pay $5 shipping. Shopify: Go to http://shopify.com/theo to sign up for a $1-per-month trial period. Manscaped: Go to http://manscaped.com and use code THEO to get 20% off and free shipping. Acorns: Go to http://acorns.com/theo to sign up now and Acorns will boost your new account with a $20 bonus investment. ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner Producer: Cam https://www.instagram.com/cam__george/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Theo Von?

  I have some new tour dates to tell you about for 2025. I'll be in Toledo, Ohio, O-H-I-O. I'll be in Ramah, Ontario, in the Canada. I'll be in Pittsburgh.

• 0:16Theo Von?

  Eugene, Oregon, we pull in. Kennewick, Seattle, Washington, Victoria, B.C., in the Canada, Belton, Texas, San Antonio, Durant, Oklahoma, M-I-R-I-O, Texas, Oxford, Mississippi, over there.

• 0:35Theo Von?

  Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Tallahassee, Florida, and Rosemont, Illinois. That'll still be the Return of the Rat Tour. Want to let everybody know? It's the Return of the Rat Tour. Yes, some of it changes over time, but it's not a new tour. So hopefully we'll get it done soon. We just,

• 0:52Theo Von?

  there's places to go, you know, so get all your tickets at theovon.com/TOUR and thank you so much for your support. I am excited to announce that I'm starting a foundation. I'm starting a foundation. So thank everybody for coming out and seeing the live shows and stuff and, yeah, we're gonna have a foundation and so it's gonna be exciting that next year we'll be able to do things through that. So it's one step at a time, but I just wanted to say, just thank you guys for the support and I'm excited to see what else is possible. Amen, baby. Today's guest is a professor at NYU. He's the host of the Prof G Markets Podcast.

• 1:36Theo Von?

  He's a marketing and business expert and a public speaker. I'm most interested personally in his work that often explores the issues that young men are facing in the changing world. I'm really grateful for his time today. It's one of the reasons that we're in New York City. Today's guest is Mr. Scott Galloway.

• 2:14Theo Von?

  Scott Galloway, thanks for coming, man.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  I can't tell you how excited my staff is that I'm here. I've never, literally, when my chief of staff found out I was coming on, she wanted to come with me. I said, "What is it about your content you like?" He said, "No, I just think he's really hot."

• 2:29Theo Von?

  Oh, God.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  And I, my-

• 2:30Theo Von?

  And is it a man or woman?

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes. No, Mary Jean Rebus, friends for 20 years, wonderful woman. And my, uh, my, uh, Prop G Markets co-host, Ed, who I can't get to come into an office, decided he was coming to this with me. So you're, you're a legend at Prop G.

• 2:50Theo Von?

  Work from home, Ed, they always show up, huh?

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 2:53Theo Von?

  Yeah. Um, thanks, man. Yeah, I, uh, I gotta get over to Prop G then, man. The next time I come into this city, we'll have to get over and, uh-

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'd like that.

• 3:02Theo Von?

  And have some experience over there. That'd be cool, you know, and I appreciate that. And, um, yeah, I feel lucky to have an audience. You know, I think sometimes it kind of blows my mind, you know?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:11Theo Von?

  And I think I mostly just keep working.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:14Theo Von?

  You know, that's like the only feel like, like the thing I know how to do best. Like, my biggest relationship is probably with my work. You know, I was thinking the other day, somebody's like, "You're gonna get a wife?" And I'm like, "Well, I have, you know, 40 hours a week, I have this wom- you know, I have this, work is like, feels like my wife, you know, a lot of times."

• 3:31Speaker 01

  But I just would press posit, I think that's, I think young people have to have a sober conversation with themselves around trade-offs. And that is, I ask my kids, when I say my kids, my students, where they expect to be economically and in terms of influence. And 70% of them expect to be in, in the top 1% within 10 years. And what I have found is that if you want to be in the top 1% from an influence, from a real spiritual reward from your work, from a financial standpoint, you pretty much have to go all in for 10, probably 20 years. The capitalist society is very good at figuring out who's really in, you know, in it for the full 110%. I don't know anyone who's reached

• 4:13Speaker 01

  the level of success you've reached without pretty much going all in on work. And it comes at a trade-off. It comes at a trade-off of relationships, comes at a trade-off in terms of your own fitness, your own mental well-being. But from the age of like 25 to 45, I really don't remember much else than working.

• 4:29Theo Von?

  Really?

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm not saying that's the right way.

• 4:32Theo Von?

  Right, yeah, no, not at all.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  It was my way. And I don't regret it.

• 4:37Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's funny because I think I do, I think I lament sometimes like it's so funny you say that like this afternoon, I know I have like about two hours, you know, and I'm like, do I go to an AA meeting or do I stretch, right? Those are like my two, like which one is gonna help me more for tomorrow, like, you know, like, but really, like, it's like, yeah, do I do some type of a fitness thing, or do I do like a wellness thing, you know, like a, like a recovery thing? But um, yeah, it's funny, I just, I thought about that a lot recently, like, because work was like something that I think was like, I knew what the return could be, right? So it was a manageable relationship, whereas I think other relationships for me, and I'm not getting into self pity,

• 5:21Theo Von?

  those have been tougher to manage, or I didn't have as much luck, and um, not, not luck in meeting women, but luck in actual managing relationships.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:30Theo Von?

  And so then, uh, I, I was like, well, but this relationship I can manage, you know, and I know what the return can be based on my investment, and there's not a ton of emotional, uh, pain involved in it for me or other people, you know, unless you work for me, sometimes I can get a little heady, you know?

• 5:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this is gonna sound crass, but the opportunities, your selection set for mating will broaden as you become more successful professionally. That's the cruel truth of capitalism. The trade off will become the relationships with your parents, your relationship with God, I know you're a spiritual person, the relationship you have with yourself, but you'll, it's, the world is unfair as it relates to men, and that is as long as we, our trajectory of success professionally and economically is upward, we are afforded a disproportionate number of mating opportunities.

• 6:16Theo Von?

  So wait, so say that part again, that the end part again?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  If you have money, you can get laid.

• 6:20Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:22Theo Von?

  Okay, yeah, if you have money, you can get laid. Um, but then, but there's trade offs, too.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Huge trade offs.

• 6:28Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  One of the things I wish I'd done, I wish I'd started with kids a little bit earlier. I only, I have two boys. One of my biggest regrets is I wish I had a third, I wish I had a daughter. I think a lot about like how much I'm enjoying it, and I was working so hard that I didn't have a lot of time with them. And you know, they're gone, you know, that that eight year old that, you know, used to come in and sleep in my bed with me on Sunday mornings, he's gone. And I see the kind of the gentleness my friends have with some of their girls, you know, I really messed up. And I'm blessed to have two boys. I'm a glass half empty kind of guy. I look at stuff. I know rationally, I'm blessed to have two boys, but I look at it like I wish I'd had more kids. How old are you?

• 7:08Theo Von?

  Yeah, I'm 44. I need to have, I need to get some children. I'd like to get some.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't know much about you, but I would argue that I'm not one of these people that says you can't be happy without kids. But I didn't want to have kids. I wanted to be rich and awesome. Those are my priorities in that, in that order. And what I found is all of that is a means to an end. In a capitalist society, you have to be able to be economically viable. Otherwise, your kid's going to feel that stress. It's going to put stress on your partnership. But for the first time in my life, you know, there's these moments, Theo, where you're, you're watching Premier League football and your kids roll in. And, and they jump on the couch and the dogs come over and your kids just sort of naturally throw their legs on yours. And it's the only time I've ever had this feel, and maybe you've had it other places where I'm like, this is enough.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  You know, when I was your age, coming to New York, staying in a hotel like this, I wanted, every afternoon, I'd start thinking, where am I going tonight that's cool? I was at Equinox yesterday. It was a real cool gym. I'm at Zero Bond. It's a more exclusive club. I'm hanging out with this interesting, hot group of people. Tomorrow, can I hang out with more interesting, more hot people? This is how much money I made this month. Can I make more? It was just like more, fuck it, I want more.

• 8:22Theo Von?

  Where'd that come from? Sorry, go on. And more, and the only thing?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  The only time I've ever been like, okay, this might be enough, is in, usually in the presence of my kids.

• 8:31Theo Von?

  That's interesting, man. You know, I have moments of, yeah, I think there was, like, I do remember, like, leaning against my dad when he was on the couch or something and like a shirt that he would wear. Or, um, that's like probably the fondest memory I have of him, you know, of like, just leaning and, you know, like, and it didn't really matter like what was going on. It was just like being right there.

• 8:53Theo Von?

  Or of like your dad touching you on the back of the neck, that kind of stuff, I think is, is very important for kids. Like, it's such a, like a safe position that a dad can put their son in, kind of like, not choking, but just one hand. And, um, what made you create that first idea that more is the thing, you know? Cause obviously you've seen that. You know, guys, we want to feel like the hunters, the gathers, you want to feel like the create, the, the person who can put it together, the provider, right?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:22Theo Von?

  But what made it, you think, so crucial, like in that next thing, like that hire? Was it almost like an addiction kind of achievement?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  A little bit. Um, I know the exact moment I got my act together and I got really motivated. Growing up, I had, I described my childhood as remarkably unremarkable, wasn't especially good or especially bad. I was raised by a single immigrant mother, lived and died a secretary. And it was, but it wasn't a bad life. Um, but the moment that changed everything for me was when my mom got, my mom got very sick when I was in graduate school and she called me and said, you need to come home. And my mom's not a dramatic person. And so I flew home and went into a situation that was, she'd been released early, she, we were kind of underinsured. She just had her second mastectomy, she'd been through chemo and that hospital basically booted her out kind of prematurely. And I walked into a situation I just did not know how to handle.

• 10:14Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  And I started calling nurses and nurses were 35 bucks an hour and we just didn't have that kind of money.

• 10:20Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  And that feeling, you'll feel this, and you maybe you feel it now with your, your staff and, um, your parents, but as a man, I think you have a very healthy instinct around protection. And this woman who'd been so good to me, I couldn't take care of her. And to be honest, uh, Theo, it was humiliating.

• 10:39Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  And that was when I said, okay, um, I gotta get my act together. I gotta be able to take care of my mom. So that was, that was really sort of my driving, I thought, okay, I didn't want to save the whales. I didn't want to be a good person. I didn't want a close relation with God. I wanted economic security for me and my mom.

• 10:58Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  And that was, and also the other flip side of it isn't nearly as noble. I also noticed that my male friends whose parents had homes in Aspen and were driving BMWs. Were hanging out with higher character, better looking women than I was.

• 11:13Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  And that women were drawn to men with resources, not only because they could offer them a better life, but because it reflected discipline and character and that they might be better dads.

• 11:24Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  But my, the bottom line is, the, the thing that got my, or motivated me was women trying to take, wanting to take care of my mom and wanting to be more attractive to a potential mate. That's when I got my act together.

• 11:37Theo Von?

  Yeah. And I guess that's really the, probably the truth for a lot of, and some of that's nature, right?

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. A hundred percent.

• 11:44Theo Von?

  Yeah. Because women want to be felt safe, you know? Oh dude, I remember this dude, Mr. Willie put a fence up on his fucking house in our neighborhood and people were like, look at this fucking hero over here, you know? Cause nobody else had it.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  That's what takes the fence?

• 11:58Theo Von?

  Well, it was one of those double door fences and we're like, this guy's, they, they think they live in a damn estate, you know?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 12:06Theo Von?

  And, uh, but yeah, I think there is something about that, about being able to provide. So it makes you feel, especially if you don't know anything else, I think it's the, it's the first and most, I don't want to say the easiest thing to do, but it's something you can immediately start to do.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Well, I think everybody needs a code, right? It sounds like you got a code, a few codes from different places, whether it's your spirituality, your church. I think AA has a nice code.

• 12:30Theo Von?

  Yeah. That's probably my biggest one.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  And it's a powerful one, right? And it's a construct that works for millions of people. And it, the thing I like about AA is it's both an opportunity to improve yourself, but immediately move to how you help others. Being in a service is something bigger than yourself. It's just, it feels to me like a really strong code.

• 12:48Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  I'm trying to figure out how, if masculinity can be a code for young men. I feel like a lot of young men now, they're not attached to church, they're not attached to school, more single parent households than any country but Sweden. They're not joining the service. They're not in a relationship. Only one in three men under the age of 30 is in a relationship, whereas two in three women under the age of 30 is in a relationship. Why? Because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. So if a guy has, is not going to church, he's not playing sports, not in college, not in a relationship, and he doesn't have a male role model, where does he get his code? And I actually think that while masculinity has been conflated incorrectly, in my view, with toxicity or something bad, how can we better define

• 13:33Speaker 01

  a modern form of masculinity such that it can serve as a code for young men, a guiding light, the same way kind of AA has for you? And I think very loosely, and I'm writing a book on this, and I still haven't figured it out, and I'm curious if you have any thoughts. I think the kind of the three legs of the stool are provider. We live in a capitalist society. I'm not talking about the way the world should be the way it is. Men are disproportionately evaluated based on their economic viability.

• 13:57Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  If your son lives in a, or your daughter lives in a household that's economically strained, he or she is going to have a higher resting systolic blood pressure. Stress from economic stress invades everything in a capitalist society. You're expected to be a provider. And by the way, sometimes that means getting out of the way or being some more supportive of your partner who happens to be better at this money thing than you. More women are graduating from college, two out of three jobs now need college degrees. But you should start from a position of I need to be economically viable. I need to learn a trade, a skill, get certified, show up, work hard, and try and, try and have some discipline around saving, develop a savings muscle. Don't be that idiot that orders bottle service. You know, try to show you have your act together economically. Two, protector. I think a really nice default

• 14:43Speaker 01

  setting for a man should be an immediate movement to protection. Like, real men break up fights at bars, they don't start them. Real men protect their country, they don't shitpost it. You know, real men don't complain. They're there to absorb. They add surplus value. They create more revenue for the government than they consume. They help people more than maybe they require help. And sometimes that can go off the rails because some men feel like it's not masculine to express vulnerability. So there's a downside to that. Maybe you don't understand the LGBT community. Maybe you don't believe in all this, what's going on with the focus on trans rights. But your first instinct should be, if you see a community that's being demonized, whether it's migrants, the LGBT community, your first instinct as

• 15:28Speaker 01

  a man, I think, should be to protection. You hear someone talking shit about someone behind their back, your first instinct should be to protection. So I like that notion of protection. And the final one that's more controversial is procreator. I think the desire, where I am now, most rewarding thing in my life, we're talking about is my boys. If we reverse engineer it, it's them, it's my partner having birth, it's us living together, it's us getting a dog, it's us spending a lot of time together, it's us having a relationship. But if I reverse engineer it to the source code of the most rewarding thing in my life, it's me seeing this very attractive woman at the hotel pool at the Raleigh Hotel. And I didn't think, oh, she's going to be great at buying land and developing it, and she's

• 16:12Speaker 01

  going to be economically viable, and she's going to be a great mom. It started with me really being physically attracted to her. And I think men need to look at themselves and say, how do I put myself in a position where I can be not only attractive to women, but get the skills where I can express physical desire while making them feel safe? And it's a very basic question. Would you want to have sex with you? Would you want to be romantic with you? Are you in good shape? Are you a good person? Are you kind? Or do you have your act together professionally? Do you listen? Do you give notice to their life? But protector, provider, and procreator, I would like to figure out a way to develop a more aspirational model for masculinity that serves as a role model or a code for young men.

• 16:58Theo Von?

  The book that you're working on now is something that you're saying that that kind of addresses some of that space, you know, like figure like kind of almost giving a like kind of charting a course, but you know, adding some coordinates to a course for young men.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm hoping. Young men, there's no group in the world that's ascended faster than women.

• 17:15Theo Von?

  Right.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  More women are seeking tertiary education globally than men now.

• 17:19Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Twice as many women have been elected to some sort of form of parliament in the last 30 years. More single women own homes in the US than single men. In urban centers, women are making more money under the age of 30 than men. And by the way, we should do nothing to get in the way with that.

• 17:34Theo Von?

  Yeah, no, dude.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 17:35Theo Von?

  I'm a league of their own fan, you know?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  It's amazing. But the second order effect we were planning on, and we don't like to talk about this, is that 50% of women say they won't date a guy shorter than them. I bet it's 80%. They're just embarrassed to admit it. And metaphorically, every year, women are getting taller.

• 17:52Theo Von?

  Dear God.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  And men are getting shorter.

• 17:54Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  So.

• 17:55Theo Von?

  Is that true?

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Well, metaphorically, if you look at how many, oh, 100% women are killing it right now.

• 18:02Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  50% more women will get college degrees this year. Right? So.

• 18:07Theo Von?

  More than men?

• 18:08Speaker 01

  They'll be at 60, 40.

• 18:09Theo Von?

  Right.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  It used to be 40, 60.

• 18:10Theo Von?

  Got it. So that's it. Yeah, it's about the same. Yeah, it's about 50% more in a couple of years.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  One in three men walking down the street under the age of 30 hasn't had sex in the last year. So in mating, if we're gonna have an honest conversation about mating, we have to have an honest conversation. Women mate socioeconomically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down. Three out of four women say economic viability is key to a mate. Only one in three men state that. So when the pool of horizontal and up of men is shrinking, there's less household formation, there's less relationships. And the weird thing about a lack of a relationship is that when a woman doesn't have a romantic relationship, she finds more productive uses for that additional energy. She'll channel it into work, she'll channel it into her friends, into her family. Guys come off the rails when they don't have the guideposts of a romantic relationship. I know I did.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  I was, I was getting high every night. I love marijuana. And I remember my girlfriend saying to me, basically, What it came right down to is she said, if you don't stop getting high every night, I'm gonna stop having sex with you. And so I decided to stop getting high every night. Cause I really enjoyed what we were doing and I enjoyed the relationship.

• 19:18Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  I think guys need that guidepost of a relationship. And oftentimes when the men don't have the guideposts of a relationship, they become insecure. They be, they start becoming more prone to conspiracy theory. They start blaming women. They start blaming other people. I mean, the skills to, some of the skills to maintain a healthy relationship are some of the same skills required to be professionally successful. And so, single men are basically the most dangerous thing in the world. A young, single, broke man. And I don't wanna pathologize every guy that doesn't have a girlfriend.

• 19:55Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  If you look at the most violent, unstable societies in the world, they have a preponderance of one thing, and that is young men without a lot of economic or romantic opportunities.

• 20:03Theo Von?

  And you're saying we're creating more of those now?

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Oh, 100%.

• 20:06Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Twice, twice as many women under the age of 30 are in a relationship versus men under the age of 30. Three million millennial men have given up on dating. They're not even trying.

• 20:14Theo Von?

  Yeah, I'm in groups of a lot of them. Here's one thing I would, I would, so how does it start? So let's say like, how does it kinda start to, if a lot of people are growing up, cause it feels like a lot of times that a lot of our media or our society has wanted to break up the nuclear family, right? And I don't know if that's sometimes like, I buy into that. You know, I grew up outside of a regular family like you did, and so, you know, you definitely see the side effects of that, you know, like, I have siblings that went kind of errant ways and found, uh, you know, hope and purpose and friendship and people that were making poorer choices. You know, I got kinda lucky and, and found some friends that were doing the opposite

• 20:57Theo Von?

  kind of, but not having that role model, I think, in the home probably, is probably a big start. So if that's something big that's going on, how do we, like, like, where do we even start with that, you know? Like, how do you start to fix the family first, I guess? I mean, what do you fix first, you know?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Well.

• 21:18Theo Von?

  Like, role models?

• 21:19Speaker 01

  You, you've exactly zeroed in on, on the, the ground zero of it. If you look at, so first off, let's look at the problem. If you go into a morgue and you have five young people who've died by suicide, four of them are men.

• 21:31Theo Von?

  Wow. But women aren't, I mean, women aren't.

• 21:36Theo Von?

  Women don't wanna, they would rather have somebody kill them, I think, or you know what I'm saying? That's crazy to say, but it's like.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  I agree with you, that was crazy.

• 21:44Theo Von?

  But they love Dateline, you know what I'm saying? Like women, there's something.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Well, they like crime dramas. There's a difference between like crime drama.

• 21:50Theo Von?

  Yeah, but they want a guy to unexpectedly come over type of shit.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Well, there's, there's some weird shit. Like, so for example, women are just as prone to try to commit suicide. Unfortunately, men are more comfortable with gunplay and are more successful at it. But if you look at where a guy comes, a boy comes off the tracks, it's when he loses a male role model.

• 22:09Theo Von?

  Right.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  More single parent homes than any, any country except for Sweden. And the interesting thing is, is that a girl in a single parent home, when we say single parent, we men, we mean 92% of the time headed by mom.

• 22:21Theo Von?

  Right, because, because usually children stay with the mom.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  The family court is very biased towards women for a lot of good reasons, some, some less good reasons. So, a girl in a single parent home, just living with mom, has the same college attendance, the same levels of self-harm and depression, the same, the same likelihood of depression. She's fine. Once a boy loses a male role model, he becomes dramatically more likely to be incarcerated, less likely to go to college, more likely to engage in self-harm. What most of the studies show is that while boys are physically stronger, they're mentally and emotionally much weaker than girls. They mature later, they mature later, they're more prone to violence, they're more prone to self-harm. They're literally 18 months behind their prefrontal cortex, they're biologically less mature.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  And without the male role model, the deep voice, the admiration, the, the virtuous role model of a man, they come off the tracks. And when you look at a lot of our communities with how many single parent homes they have, when you look at a lot of kids aren't in after-school programs, kids are obese, not playing sports as much, so they don't have as much interaction with a coach, maybe they don't know a pastor because they're not going to church or temple. There are millions of young boys who grow up and the first male role model they have is a prison guard. And so

• 23:39Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  The solution, if you were to try and weigh in with programs, it's all right. I think of another, I think of masculinity, I go back to masculinity. The first circle of masculinity is you take care of yourself. You're in good shape. You have good self-care. You are economically viable, right? You take care of yourself. Next ring out, you can take, start taking care of your family.

• 24:00Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Help out your parents, help out your siblings. You can start taking care of people at work. You overpay them. You're concerned about them. You're empathetic with them.

• 24:10Theo Von?

  Cause there are two of them are in here.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  You start taking care of your community.

• 24:13Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  And then

• 24:15Theo Von?

  Yeah, things that make you feel good, things that make you feel purpose.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Surplus value. And then I think also we need to create a kind of a gestalt or a default or a zeitgeist in our society. Where one of the ultimate expressions of masculinity is you take an interest in the well-being of a boy that's not yours. And unfortunately, because of some very unfortunate instances in the Catholic Church, or well-publicized stories about

• 24:39Theo Von?

  Chuck E. Cheese's.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Or Michael Jackson.

• 24:42Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  I was on Bill Maher and I said, more men like you, Bill, need to get involved in a young man's life. He's a single guy. He's a good role model. He's like, I can't get involved in a 15-year-old boy's life. You know what they'd say about me? And that's the problem. Cause there's a lot of men out there with a lot of love to give, who feel a lot of fraternal and paternal love. And if you just did a quick survey of the people in your work and your neighbors, you're gonna find single mothers or a lot of your friends, whose sons are struggling. And you don't have to be a baller. You just need to be a virtuous guy trying to live your life.

• 25:16Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  And my mom was really good at that. I had a guy down the hallway come over with his girlfriend and say, we're going horseback riding. And he took me and he would start taking me. My mom, a couple of my mom's boyfriends stay involved in my life after they were broken up. I had a stockbroker. Theo, when I was 13, I walked into Dean Witter Reynolds with $200 my mom's boyfriend had given me. And I bought 12 shares of Columbia Pictures for 16 bucks a share. And every day for two years, I'd go to Emerson Junior High pay booth, put in two dimes and call him. I wasn't a very popular kid. Two or three times a week after school, I'd go to the stock brokerage.

• 25:50Theo Von?

  If you're buying stocks at lunch, yeah, you're not popular. You know, hey, you're forward thinking.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  True. It's paid off now.

• 25:56Theo Von?

  Yeah, I get that part.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Got me cool. Made me cool later in life.

• 26:00Theo Von?

  Yeah, at a certain point, yeah, for sure.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  This guy, Cy Sero, this 30 year old guy working at Dean Witter. And I'm 46 years later, I got a text from Cy yesterday. We're still close.

• 26:11Theo Von?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were out of each other's lives for 30 years and then we reconnected. I actually asked my class to try and track them down and they did. But if you're, you know, I love the statement, I think the true expression of manhood or being a good person is planting trees the shade of which you'll never sit under, but I think more specifically for men. Well, I'll give, I'll ask you straight up.

• 26:32Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Are you mentoring any young men or boys?

• 26:35Theo Von?

  Let me think about that.

• 26:38Theo Von?

  Uh, maybe my nephew, one of my nephews, but I mean, he has his father, you know? But I think I keep a constant relationship with him because I want to be a part of his life. But in a more local environment in my community, no.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Do you realize in New York, there's big sisters and big brothers? There are three times as many applicants for big sisters than there are for big brothers.

• 26:57Theo Von?

  And why is that? Because young men just aren't, mothers don't get their, or the kids, the male, the boys don't apply?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  I think men have been told that if you take an interest in the life of a boy, that there's something wrong and people need to be suspect of.

• 27:09Theo Von?

  Yeah, people would, yeah, people would definitely question it. Oh, it's crazy. I remember this started maybe about 10 years ago. If I saw somebody's kid or something and I wanted to give them a compliment, you feel like you couldn't.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  You gotta be careful.

• 27:21Theo Von?

  Yeah, you, and then like suddenly like.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  You gotta be careful.

• 27:24Theo Von?

  Everything, there's a legal issue or you can't.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Or people are suspicious.

• 27:28Theo Von?

  Yeah, there's a famous case of this kid, Greg Kelly, can you bring that up? Who was, uh, his mother was watching children. She was, she ran a home in their, uh, after school care in their home. And one of the kids accused him of something and they don't, it seemed very flippant. But he ended up going to jail for three years and it seemed like a witch hunt, you know?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was that childcare place in California where it ended up, it was all made up. But, but Theo, what you were talking about with your nephew?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  You can still play a huge role because I can attest to this. There's research showing your nephew right now, especially once he hits 15 or 16, he's more, he's more inclined to listen to you than his dad.

• 28:05Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  So I noticed this.

• 28:07Theo Von?

  Yeah. Did you notice anything? Yeah. Who were some people that, yeah, when you, because sometimes I do, I think about a voice that could be just like, dude, sometimes it was like, um, I remember one of my mom's boyfriends bought me and my brother tickets to go see a Saints game, right? And we were so excited. It was like a big adventure for us, you know? So I, it is funny how little things that somebody shares with you, um, or moments that they have. I remember there was a teacher that would sit outside with me and talk to me sometimes after class. That was huge to me. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing the effect that you can have, I guess, you know, that you don't realize. Who were some of those people for you?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  I was really lucky. I had, I played sports, so I had coaches, a couple of my mom's boyfriends. Like I said, after they broke up, stay involved in my life. I had Si, the stockbroker. And also I'm a big fan of the Greek system at colleges. I joined a fraternity.

• 29:00Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  And while people talk about, everyone's got to find their tribe. You gotta find your brothers or your sisters. You gotta shrink the world down to a small group of people. And for me, I, I don't think I would have graduated from UCLA had I not joined a fraternity. I immediately got something called a big brother. I had roommates. We all kept tabs on each other. We all gave each other a tremendous amount of shit, but it was sort of like a guiding, guidepost.

• 29:23Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's fun.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:25Theo Von?

  Oh dude, there's so much fun, like, there's nothing better than like, when you think about the times you were on a team of some sort, right?

• 29:31Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 29:32Theo Von?

  Just like the feeling, you know?

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Did you play sports growing up?

• 29:35Theo Von?

  I did, until I was like 11 years old, I didn't get, I didn't do much sports. I played a little bit of baseball, but it was like, the field was like uneven in our town, you know? And so the fucking, every ball went to the same guy.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  The field was uneven?

• 29:48Theo Von?

  Yeah. We had a bad field over there. And so all this dude, and I was, they.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  You couldn't get the guy with the radical, the like, the amazing fence to, to give you the new field?

• 29:59Theo Von?

  Yeah, not a bad idea, bro.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  But it doesn't have to be sports, it can be band, it can be chess club, it can be church. But everyone's got to find your tribe.

• 30:06Theo Von?

  Right, so that's, so now we're looking at some solutions to some of the things you're talking about for young people and even for mothers that have single, that, you know, because a lot of times with moms, it's hard to find that space, like, how do I put my kid in a place that's going to be safe? Or what's the type of thing to get them involved in, you know? And yeah, I think that was one thing that was tough for my mom, she just didn't have as much time. I was fortunate, I had a basketball coach that would give me rides home from practice. And so that changed a lot of things, because then, as long as I could get to practice and I could get home. So that was like an amazing role model, that I had this guy coach Steve, that was really awesome. Yeah, I think, and yeah, you're right, like, how can I do that in my own community? Like, what are ways that I could start to do that? But yeah, so creating a group for your kid, finding a group for your kid to be in.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Well, there's a lot of, and there's a lot of more systemic things we could do. So, for example, I'm a big fan of vocational programming. In America, we have this kind of zeitgeist that if your kid doesn't go to Dartmouth and end up at Google, then not only has the kid failed, but you failed as parents. And two thirds of our kids are not going to end up with a college degree. 3% of LinkedIn profiles in the US say apprentice. It's 11% in the UK and Germany. We need more of an apprentice culture and we need to stop shaming kind of trades jobs.

• 31:15Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  I think we should start, boys, we should redshirt them, we should start them a year later in kindergarten, because they're literally biologically less mature than their female counterparts. You don't notice this as much because you don't have kids, but I have a 14-year-old. My 14-year-old just had a Halloween party, 15 boys, 15 girls. The boys are 14, a couple of the girls look like they could be the junior senator from Pennsylvania.

• 31:39Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  They look 35.

• 31:40Theo Von?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  And they act that way, they act that mature, they literally mature faster. I think if a college isn't growing its freshman seats faster than population, it should lose its tax-free status, because it's no longer a public service, it's a hedge fund with classes. I'm a big fan of the idea of mandatory national service. I've spent some time in Israel recently. Despite the existential threats and the problems in Israel, there's less young adult depression in Israel than almost any Western country. And I think it's because of national service, they're serving the agency of something bigger than themselves. They're outside, they're in great shape, they're learning how to handle weapons, equipment. It's where they meet co-founders of businesses, it's where they make lifelong friends, it's where they meet potential mates. So I think mandatory national service would be huge for us.

• 32:26Theo Von?

  You ever realize that you spent your entire morning thinking about lunch? It's 9:00 a.m. and somehow I'm already in negotiations with myself about how I'm gonna spend $20 on a sandwich at noon? And then I eat it, or you eat it, or somebody eats it, and then an hour later, you're just standing in the kitchen worrying about what you'll do for dinner. And that's one reason why I've been into Huell. The Black Edition Powder is a complete meal you have instead of food, not a shake on top of food. Their powder starts at less than $3 per meal, has 40 grams of protein, and mixes with water or milk in about 30 seconds. I like Huell's shakes because they're clean and it's quick.

• 33:09Theo Von?

  Sometimes I just want to make sure I have everything I need to keep going the way I want to keep going in a healthy manner. So with Huell, basically, lunch went from a daily logistical problem to a thing I can solve in about 30 seconds. Make healthy eating simple. New customers get an exclusive offer of 15% off online with my code WEEKEND at huell.com/weekend. That's H-U-E-L dot com slash weekend. Thank you to Huell for partnering and supporting our show. Many of you know that I used to have a job in my hometown, and it was off the books. I would clean the coins out of wishing wells for the city of Covington.

• 33:53Theo Von?

  Well, Acorns lets you start investing with the money you've got right now, even if it's just spare change. Sounds like a match made in heaven, doesn't it? I know firsthand how much spare change can start stacking up. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start investing with the money you've got right now. I like that. That's right, you don't need to be an expert. Acorns will recommend a diversified portfolio that matches you. You don't need to be rich. Start with just $5 a day, or even your spare change. That's it.

• 34:35Theo Von?

  When I look back in my life, the most invaluable thing that I had is time. And if I'd have been investing small bits at certain moments, man, that would have built up quick. And here's the best part, sign up now and Acorns will boost your new account with a $20 bonus investment. Thank you. Offer only available at acorns, A-C-O-R-N-S, dot com slash Theo. That's acorns dot com slash T-H-E-O to get your $20 bonus investment now. Paid non-client endorsement. Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Investing involves risk.

• 35:17Theo Von?

  Acorns Advisors LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor. View important disclosures at acorns dot com slash Theo. For some, it's the most wonderful time of the year. And for others, it's just another round of dodging questions about your love life while trying not to look like you just crawled out of a cave. Enter the Performance Package 5.0 Ultra by Manscaped. To save your dignity this holiday season, Manscaped will be there. Don't be that family member who shows up solo and scruffy at another holiday gathering. Iron your shirt and trim your life.

• 35:56Theo Von?

  Get your winter overgrowth under control with the Weed Whacker 2.0 and the Lawn Mower 5.0 Ultra. Help you seal the deal this cuffing season. Join the over 11 million men worldwide who trust Manscaped. They help. I use them. That Weed Whacker 2.0 Ear and Nose Hair Trimmer. God, mm, clean me out. They do it. Get in there, smooth trimming every time. Oh, God.

• 36:30Theo Von?

  Get 20% off and free shipping with code Theo at manscaped dot com. That's 20% off and free shipping with the code T-H-E-O at manscaped dot com. Stay on top of your grooming game and be ready for anything the season throws your way. It feels a lot of times like there's an attack on being a man.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 36:53Theo Von?

  You know, you're like, you feel like these days, if you're almost, if you're a kid that's not bi, then you're not even going to be welcome at school.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 37:00Theo Von?

  And I don't know if that's true. I don't talk to kids. You know, I don't, I don't know that, but it's like, you know, you get this, this feeling sometimes like, um, I don't know. I don't know what I'm talking about.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Well, to your point, did you have the Presidential Fitness Awards when you were in?

• 37:15Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  I got badge one, you got a number on it. I got badge one, badge two, and I had a growth spurt and I couldn't do the pull ups. And I trained for a year, pull ups, and I got strong again. And now the, the awards are done away with because it was sauce fat shaming. So, and if you walk down the halls of NYU, you're going to see all these support groups for women.

• 37:35Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  You know, black women in consulting, golden seeds, women in venture capital. There are no support groups for men.

• 37:41Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  And I don't think men have a place in our political world. I think the far right is kind of telling men to be, quite frankly, a little bit coarse and cruel. It's toughness and strength gone a little bit overboard. But on the far left, their definition of masculinity and their advice to men is to be more like a woman. That doesn't work either.

• 38:01Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  So we need to re-embrace the notion. I mean, I say jokingly, when Russian troops come pouring over the Ukrainian border, you want some of that big dick energy.

• 38:10Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  There's nothing wrong with being physically strong. I think any man under the age of 30, our bone structure and that double twitch muscle with this amazing substance called testosterone poured over it is a fucking amazing thing. You're going to look back on your physique right now and your strength, and you're going to wish, and you kind of look this way, that you were a monster. Any man under the age of 30 should be able to walk into any room and know that if shit got real, they could either kill and eat everybody or outrun them.

• 38:40Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  And that is a wonderful feeling. It'll make you less prone to mental illness. It'll make you more attractive mates, less likely to be depressed, and you'll be that guy that breaks up fights at bars. Not that's insecure, right? This is strength, re-embracing strength, re-embracing protection, re-embracing initiating relationships. I force my kids, I don't do this anymore because they've had enough of it, but when we left the house, I used to say, I'm not going to let them back in unless they talk to a stranger. And it was easy for one of them. It was hard for the other. I'm like, just go up to them and pet their dog and say what kind of dog it is. Because your ability to initiate contact. Is key to finding a job. It's not easy to email strangers or go into a strange interview.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Your ability to express interest, romantic interest, while making someone feel safe. Right? Demonstrating excellence. Where does a guy demonstrate excellence right now? Doesn't go into work, doesn't go to church, right? Isn't playing sports, right? Isn't going to college. So where do men demonstrate excellence and attach to relationships? But there is, there's, we talk a lot about misogyny. It's a huge problem. It has been for a long time, but we don't talk about is misandry. And that is

• 39:51Theo Von?

  What is misandry?

• 39:52Speaker 01

  A hate, hate of men. There's generally

• 39:55Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  If you were to talk, have you ever heard the term toxic femininity? People don't use that term, but toxic masculinity, it's almost like it's one, become one word.

• 40:04Theo Von?

  Oh, I feel, there are places I feel embarrassed to even be in because I feel like people look at me and think like, oh, this guy thinks he's some kind of man or something, you know?

• 40:13Speaker 01

  That would be true.

• 40:15Theo Von?

  But that happens to me in New York City sometimes.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  You feel that way here?

• 40:18Theo Von?

  Yep. There's certain places I'll walk in and just by the ambiance of like, the people that work there or something, I'll think that. And I'm not saying that that's real, but it could just be perceived in my head, but I'll feel like I almost have to play down being a man or if I'm going to be like accepted in this space, you know, or feel welcome here.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's definitely, but there's definitely, and if you look at, if you look at the stats though, men are really struggling. Like, we don't have a male homeless problem. I'm sorry, we don't have a homeless problem. We have a male homeless problem.

• 40:51Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  We have an opiate problem, but we really have a male opiate problem. Three out of four homeless, three out of four addicts are, are men. And if you had four out of five people killing themselves, they were in any one special interest group, we would do something about it. And there's a lack of empathy because of the 2000 year head start we've had on women. There's a lack of empathy for

• 41:12Theo Von?

  Who had it mended?

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. We've been

• 41:13Theo Von?

  How?

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Oh, come on. We, even when I grew up, Theo, when I came of it professional age in the nineties, 98% at least of venture capital went to the 24% of the population that were white heterosexual males.

• 41:28Theo Von?

  Okay. So men had that. I see what you're talking about.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  And until the last 30 years, men have had literally a 2000 year head start. But because of my advantage, does that mean a 19 year old male should be punished for it?

• 41:39Theo Von?

  Right.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  There just isn't a recognition that 19 year, a 19 year old male with a single mother in Appalachia. He's got no advantage. As a matter of fact, he's kind of disadvantaged right now.

• 41:50Theo Von?

  Oh, well, there's an attack. There's certainly an attack on white males, it feels like. And then if you're white, you can't, you can't be like, hey, can we do a white help group? You know what I'm saying? Because suddenly you're racist if you, you know, there's definitely this like shaming of like being in white skin, you know? And it's like, we're constantly doing that, like reliving the past or refocusing on the past and using it as a scope to aim at the present, you know? And it's not very fair. And I definitely see it as a lot of people feel embarrassed to be white, you know?

• 42:22Theo Von?

  And that's a shame, you know, because you didn't choose to be white. And a lot of people, white people, we didn't have shit, dude. You know what I'm saying? Like, at least when I was growing up, I felt like if you were black, people like, like you at least had the like, well, I'm fucked because of society, you know? But if you were white, you're just like, people were like, you didn't even have an excuse, you know? If you weren't doing good, you were like, well, how did you not do good? You know, like, I don't know.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  It's a nuanced conversation, though, Theo, because.

• 42:49Theo Von?

  Yeah, I know it's nuanced. I'm, you know, I'm kind of generalizing. I'm not trying to correlate anything. I'm just saying, yeah, you can't make a, hey, white people need help also group.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  But, but we're talking about the bias against males. Our education system, the business I'm in, is highly biased against men or boys. Seventy to eighty percent of primary school teachers are women. Who are they going to naturally champion someone who reminds them of themselves? What are the behaviors we promote in school? Be organized, be a pleaser, sit still. You're basically describing a girl. There are more per capita female fighter pilots than there are male kindergarten teachers.

• 43:22Theo Von?

  We don't need male kindergarten teachers, I don't think.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Oh, sure we do.

• 43:25Theo Von?

  You think so?

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Young men need male role models.

• 43:27Theo Von?

  Right. I agree with that. I think we need a PE teacher with some short shorts, you know what I'm saying? He's kind of, you know, who doesn't want to go home to his wife. But I don't know if we need, if I'd have walked into a kindergarten, you know? I mean, but I still keep in touch with a lot of my teachers. I had a lot of affinity for them, whether they were male or women. I did have male middle school teachers. I don't know, but I'd be alarmed if there was a male kindergarten teacher.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  But an example of that, the bias, a boy is on a risk, on a behavior adjusted basis to be, is twice as likely to be suspended. You have a girl and a boy, two different times, same infraction, cheating on the chemistry test. The boy is twice as likely to be suspended as the girl. A black boy is five times as likely to be suspended. So a lot of the issues we're talking about, self-harm, depression, um, lack of, lack of success in school is really difficult among young boys, and it's even more acute among non-white. Now, when you get to college, the whole DEI thing, right? Uh, 60 years ago, there were only 12 black people at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale combined. That was a problem. So giving them the advantage

• 44:34Speaker 01

  or a lift up with race-based affirmative action was the right thing to do 60 years ago.

• 44:40Theo Von?

  Right.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Now, this year, two-thirds of Harvard's freshman class identifies as non-white. 70% of those people, however, come from dual-parent, upper-income homes. So when you're letting in the daughter of a private equity Taiwanese billionaire, that's not diversity, that's not helping anybody.

• 44:57Theo Von?

  Right.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  So what I would argue is we, affirmative action is a wonderful thing, but it should be based on color, but that color is green.

• 45:03Theo Von?

  Right.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  And that as a white kid from Appalachia deserves just as much. I'm a beneficiary of affirmative action. I got Pell Grants. In 1994.

• 45:12Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, I got them.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  There you go. I think that's the way to go. Because the wonderful thing about America today, and we don't celebrate America's progress enough. Young people want to shitpost it as if we've made no progress. We've made extraordinary progress. And as fucked up as we are, we're less fucked up than I believe any nation in the world. You would rather be born in America, and this is a good thing. You'd rather be born today, and the stats show this, you'd rather be born gay or non-white than poor. The people who need a hand up, the best way to identify who is most screwed and is going to face the biggest obstacles and deserves the most additional resources and kind of unfair help is a poor kid. We need to get out of identity politics.

• 45:51Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  And focus on economics.

• 45:53Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's a good point, man. I don't know how, uh, you know, I know we're looking at a lot, I like a lot of the issues. It's like, how does, um, How do we like get into like solution and keep it kinda and also like keep it positive? Cause sometimes I'll get in this space where I'm just looking at the problems, right? So how do I start looking at the solutions to like, I mean, I guess you said like, you know, you can get involved in your community. You can try to take care of yourself as a young man. But then it just also feels like a ton of pressure on young men, you know?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you feel that pressure, right? I mean, you're here in New York. You gotta get gas. You gotta, you feel pressure, I'm sure.

• 46:31Theo Von?

  Oh yeah, I definitely feel pressure. I guess I'm thinking like as a young man, you know?

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 46:35Theo Von?

  Like, how do you start to create masculinity if you were just a young, if you're, you know, say you're, you're 20 years old and you were raised by a single mother and you're out in college right now. How do you start to, I guess, define your world of, you know, staying, feeling masculine and creating more masculine in your life? And maybe you've outlined some of those things already, you know?

• 46:55Speaker 01

  I think, I think again, it's come back masculinity is a social construct. We get to decide what it is. And by the way,

• 47:00Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  It's not sequestered to people just born as males. I, I used, before my shoulders got all fucked up, I used to go to CrossFit and I noticed over 20 years, more and more women showing up. Some women demonstrate wonderful masculinity. I'm drawn to men. My closest friends are more feminine. They're more caring. I have, I have male friends who kinda take care of me.

• 47:19Theo Von?

  Right.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  So, but I think using those things as a code could be a great guidepost for young men, right? There's nothing wrong with wanting to make money. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be strong. There's nothing wrong with wanting to have sex and wanting to, to find romantic and sexual partners. And using that as a guide, why are women, for example, why are women drawn to men? What are they attracted to in reverse order? And there's research around this. Number three, kindness. They want a guy that's nice to his parents. They want a guy that treats strangers well. They want a guy that thinks about other people when, even when they're not in front of them, that treats them well, even though they'll never see them again. Number two is intellect. And this goes way back anthropologically.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  The guy who makes good decisions for the tribe, the tribe's more likely to survive. At some point, typically throughout history, women are much more vulnerable because they give birth and they're much more physically vulnerable. So a woman wants a man who is smart and makes good decisions. By the way, the fastest way to communicate intellect is humor.

• 48:19Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  And my, I jokingly say, my impression of a woman is, I'm laughing, I'm laughing, I'm naked. If you can make a woman laugh.

• 48:25Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  If you can make a woman laugh.

• 48:27Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Look at you, you're looking guilty.

• 48:29Theo Von?

  No, I'm thinking this, I'm laughing, I'm laughing, and then, oh. You're missing, you know? That's more because it's like, I'll always won't close a deal. You know what I'm saying? I'll literally be fucking.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  I don't see.

• 48:41Theo Von?

  I'll stand on the curb and I will not get in the Uber, dude. I just, there's, I just, I mean, I just, I get afraid. The other day I talked to some girl, right? I saw her at the fricking Whole Foods, dude. She was getting, I thought it was spaghetti or something. I was like, oh, you like spaghetti? And it's, but I had looked at the wrong thing or whatever. And she was buying flowers, right? And she's like, what is this guy talking about? But I guess she thought it was cute or whatever. And so then I kept talking. And then I was like, oh, do you know if there's a hot bar around here? And she goes, it's on the other side. So I went, then I'm like, fuck, now I have to go to the other side away from her. Right? Then she comes over there and I'm like, this is it, you know? And then I just kept looking at her and then she, uh, left, you know?

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, but this, this is a good segue to the number one thing.

• 49:22Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  And that is the ability to signal resources.

• 49:24Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  And it's not necessarily have to be a baller at that moment.

• 49:27Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  But you have to have a plan.

• 49:29Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  You have to be the guy that's disciplined. One of the reasons women are attracted to men who are in good shape is it shows you show up. It shows you have discipline. So if I could give you any advice in that specific situation, it would be, oh, hi, are those flowers? By the way, I have one of the 10 biggest podcasts in the world. Boss, that's how, anyways, but you get my meaning.

• 49:50Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Three kindness, two intellect and one, your ability to signal resources.

• 49:54Theo Von?

  I see. Would you like to go to Holland where they have tulips year round? I could say that.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  I'm leaving tomorrow.

• 50:00Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:01Theo Von?

  And then I'm not, but still, you know? Take her to holland.com, you know?

• 50:06Speaker 01

  I don't know where you got that.

• 50:07Theo Von?

  But still, yeah, that could be interesting. Yeah, I think there is that, but yeah, that confidence, it's a good point, you know? To signal that you just have confidence in yourself. That's really what the, that is, you know? Is just saying, I have some confidence enough in myself. And sometimes I'll, sometimes I will make the extra step, but it's just like, I have to just practice it more. And I have to realize that if that one girl says no, it's not that every girl's saying no, man. That this is just a.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Huge point.

• 50:30Theo Von?

  A momentary, it's just a momentary challenge. What would you say to, to mothers who have children, right? Single mothers who have children? How can they do that for their kids, you know? One thing I do, that I will think is put your kid into a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class. I think it's the best, it was the best place that I ever went. I trained for like maybe a year and a half, right?

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:50Theo Von?

  It was the first place I ever went where you would be wrestling one second, but then having an emotional conversation with somebody the next second. Because it was very-

• 50:59Speaker 01

  You and Lex Friedman, you're both really into jiu-jitsu, right?

• 51:02Theo Von?

  No, he's really, he's still doing it, practicing, right? I just kept getting hurt so bad and it was affecting my ability to work. But it was like, you were like monkeys, you know, like you, you would like be battling against somebody, but even if you lost, they still cared about you. So there was this element of safety that you started to learn, right? And that felt like years of manhood in months that I was learning.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  But you said something really important, and that is, I was asked, so I'm an entrepreneur, I've registered some success, and I go, what's the secret to your success? I'm like, one, it was being smart enough to be born in America. There's just more opportunity. You'd rather be good in America than great in almost any other country.

• 51:42Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  There really is, you have more agency here, if you work hard and you're a good person, to be successful than any place in the world. And none of that was my fault. It was my parents' fault. They got on a ship, a steamship, in the 60s from Europe, take a huge risk, which paid huge benefit for me. I came to professional age in California where I got free education that was accessible, came of age in the internet. And when I was your age, I was like, all my success in my mind was because of my character and my grit. And then as you get older, you realize a lot of your success isn't your fault. But if I've done one thing well, it's what I call failure. And that is, I ran for sophomore, junior, and senior class presidents, I lost three times. And based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president,

• 52:27Speaker 01

  where I went on to, wait for it, lose. I've started nine businesses, seven have failed. I can't tell you how many women in Whole Foods and other places and other retail establishments I've been rejected by.

• 52:39Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  But the reason I get to live the life I lead, the reason I'm with a very high-character attractive person, is because I have always been able to endure rejection. And that is the key, that is the skill. Because one of the great things about America is we don't embrace failure, that's bullshit, but we tolerate it. If your business fails, but you're a good person, usually your investors will back you again. And if you approach a woman and express interest, and she's not interested, you're both gonna be fine.

• 53:07Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  And show me a guy, show me a guy. You know, we all know that guy. You think, okay, he's a nice guy. He's modestly successful. He's not that attractive. And he's with just such a high quality woman. That guy is not afraid of rejection. That guy cycled through nine women who said, get the fuck away from me.

• 53:27Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Before he found that one woman who gave him a chance to be funny, kind. She was drawn to his smell. She liked the way he treated his parents. The key to success in America is what Winston Churchill said, and that is the willingness to fail. Or your ability to fail and not lose your sense of enthusiasm.

• 53:46Theo Von?

  Hmm.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  And the one thing about jujitsu and about sports is quite frankly, it teaches you how to lose. And show up the next day.

• 53:53Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Right? So I think you gotta put your kids and mothers gotta put their sons in an environment where they-

• 53:59Theo Von?

  This is off and it's ringing. So that's the government.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  That's the government.

• 54:03Theo Von?

  I'm not even joking. It happens a lot. Go on.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Anyways, your willingness or your resilience, your ability to move through rejection without losing your sense of enthusiasm.

• 54:14Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's funny. A lot of times when I felt rejection, it attached to some old feelings inside of myself that were of rejection. And that would be, it felt demoralizing at times. But I agree with you. Yeah, we've seen those guys who are like, how did that guy do it? You know, how did he figure it out? You know? How was he able to just, you know, show up for himself in the face of rejection? But I bet rejection does get easier the more you start to swim in it, you know?

• 54:40Speaker 01

  You realize that, I mean, here's the thing. So I know you're religious. I'm an atheist. I think at some point I'm gonna look into my kids' eyes and know our relationship is coming to an end. And it's empowering. It's one of the biggest unlocks in my life. Because I realize if I fuck up on this podcast and you don't think a lot of me, I'm bummed, but you're gonna be dead soon. And so am I. It really doesn't matter. Everything we're worried about, we're a group of mites on an unremarkable rock in one of a billion universes in 10 billion galaxies. We're not even here for the blink of an eye. So why on earth wouldn't you squeeze as much lemon or juice out of this lemon as possible?

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Because the moment you think you've done something embarrassing, the moment you're worried about approaching that woman at Whole Foods. Everyone who saw you, everyone you're worried about, she, they go on to thinking about themselves right away, and it doesn't matter because you're both going to be dead soon.

• 55:38Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  I find that liberating. Why wouldn't you go up to someone and tell them you admire them? And it's also an unlock for me emotionally. I started telling people I love them. I started telling people I care about them. I started, when I was single, going up to people outside of my weight class and telling them I was interested in them romantically. Most of the time, they'd say no, and guess what? We're both going to be fine because we're both going to be dead, Theo. It doesn't really matter.

• 56:00Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  So this ability to get back your embarrassment, get over your fear, for me, that sounds strange, but it comes from a recognition that I'm just not going to be here that long, and either are they. It's this enormous unlock. Because if you think about what you said about, I mean, for God's sakes, you're like this baller. You're a handsome guy who's got a top 10 podcast, and you're intimidated by some woman at Whole Foods. Can you imagine how most men feel?

• 56:28Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  So what you got to do is, what I'm trying to do with my sons, is I'm trying to encourage them to say, okay, get up, talk to strangers, talk to strange women. Also, kind of a segue here, try and modulate your use of porn such that at some point, you become so fucking horny, you're willing to take those risks.

• 56:46Theo Von?

  Yeah, now that's it. Let's, we can, we can definitely go there, brother. Because yeah, I think that was something that I got sidetracked with pornography for sure, man, you know? And I'll tell you why, too. For pornography, for me, it was, it was a relationship that I could manage, right? It was the first kind of interaction with women, it felt like, that I could manage this. It's, it's like-

• 57:06Speaker 01

  It's low risk.

• 57:07Theo Von?

  It's low risk. It's, it's available when you need it to start and when you need it to stop, right? It was like, that was something that was very manageable for me. But then, over time, it starts, you realize that it kind of devalues women. It makes you think of sex like in just like still frames and instances, right? And, and you would see sex as individual scenes of things. I would have a date set up, then I would end up masturbating, and then I wouldn't even go on the date. Because I was like, well, now I don't feel any fire inside of me.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Lose your mojo.

• 57:35Theo Von?

  Yeah. And that, and then you do that for a decade, and you don't, your mojo is a ghost.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  But we were talking about school and society and, and a bias against men that, that hurts men, right? And what I would say is that one of the biggest obstacles men face right now is the most talented, deepest resource companies in the world that attract the brightest minds and the most capital and have the best technology are all trying to do the same thing. They're all trying to give men the false impression they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. You don't need friends.

• 58:11Theo Von?

  What's a facsimile? I'm sorry.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  They can have a fake life. They can have a life on a screen with an algorithm.

• 58:17Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  So you don't need friends. Having friends is hard. Remember making your posse of friends in elementary and junior high, trying to break into the right pecking order of friends? It was high barriers of entry, but it was high barriers of exit, right? And you learned a lot together. And we used to take off, you know, I think parents overprotect their kids now. I used to leave my mom's house at nine in the morning on a Saturday with a Schwinn bike, an Abba Zaba bar and 35 cents, and she wouldn't see me for 14 hours. But what are tech companies? What are the brightest companies in the world that are the most well-resourced? You don't need friends. You got Reddit and Discord. You don't need to go through the humiliation of trying to get a job and buying a suit and showing up on time. Trade crypto or stocks on Coinbase or Robinhood. You don't need to go through

• 59:01Speaker 01

  the humiliation, the rejection, the perseverance of trying to establish a romantic relationship, going on dates, being funny, trying hard, enduring rejection, following up. Why? Why would you do that? You got you porn. And what we gotta tell men, what we gotta convince them of is over the long term, nothing wonderful is gonna happen to you on a screen, ever. And also, you porn is a distant second to your porn. I'm convinced I wouldn't have graduated from UCLA if I didn't think there was a reasonable probability that if I went to class and went on campus at UCLA.

• 59:36Theo Von?

  Meet a girl.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  I might meet someone.

• 59:38Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  That was my far. And I, quite frankly, if I had you porn at home and I had these new AI girlfriends, I'm not sure I would have ever gone on campus. So this is what young men are facing. They're facing a low risk, low barrier of entry, reasonable facsimile of life that over time they get depressed and lonely. Because the reason romantic comedies are two hours and not 15 minutes is this shit is hard. But here's the good news. It's worth it. It's absolutely worth it.

• 1:00:09Theo Von?

  Well, right now, I think you have like, even with like, elections, like, yeah, you're almost people are trying to vote that back into. I think there's a little bit of like, well, we need to get something masculine going on, you know, because it's definitely this world has a big labia on it, you know, and we need to, and that's fine.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  You say that like it's a bad thing.

• 1:00:30Theo Von?

  No, I don't. Look, we're happy with a decent amount of labia, but we need to make sure it's, you know.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Hey, are you buying flowers?

• 1:00:39Theo Von?

  Oh, that's pasta. But here's what I think. I think people are expecting the government to rescue them. That's what I mean with the but with some of the voting, right? We want the gov. But how much of that is us having to govern ourselves? And how much of that is do we need some like, changes in our actual like laws and stuff like that? Like, what is realistic of one to expect?

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Well, I've been thinking about this election. Yeah, I do. But I've been thinking a lot about this election. And I was vocal, I supported Harris. I was shocked she got beaten and she got beat. She got destroyed. She just got beaten. She got destroyed. She went seven of the she lost seven of the seven swing states. As I looked at the data, I would describe this election as the testosterone election. And what do you have? You have men doing more poorly, men under the age of 30, doing more poorly than they have in a long time. And it all the election all zeros down to one piece of data for me, or the results. For the first time in our nation's history, for the first time in 275 years, a man or woman at the age of 30 isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. That's never happened before.

• 1:01:46Theo Von?

  Okay, so let's say that. See, you say that again, a little bit slower, Scott, just so I can we can really digest that a little bit. A man.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  For the first time in our nation's history, a man or woman at 30 isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30.

• 1:01:58Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  It's always been your kids are doing better than you on average.

• 1:02:02Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  And when that doesn't happen.

• 1:02:04Theo Von?

  You start to feel like a failure as a child, especially in light to your parents, for sure.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Not only your self esteem, but it creates rage and shame in the house. And who's doing really poorly under thirty? Men, the average seventy year old is seventy two percent wealthier than they were forty years ago. The average person under the age of forty is twenty four percent less wealthy. And two hundred and ten times a day, they get a notification on their phone reminding them that they're failing because it seems like everyone is at the Alman Hotel or flying in a Gulfstream.

• 1:02:31Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  But I'm not, everyone's telling me that the economy is good. I keep hearing about crypto going to eighty thousand dollars, stock market hitting seventy one highs in the last twelve months. All these things are true, but I'm living at home and I can't afford rent.

• 1:02:44Theo Von?

  Well, if I'm you one more little coin pussy running around about this Bitcoin stuff, I'm gonna fucking eat my nuts off my body. That stuff, I lost two thousand dollars in it like every one of my friends did about four years ago, and I didn't touch it since then.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  I'm a no coiners too.

• 1:02:57Theo Von?

  This is a pyramid scheme, it feels like.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  I'm a no coiners.

• 1:03:01Theo Von?

  You are?

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've never owned a coin.

• 1:03:02Theo Von?

  Well, it just seems like it's like, oh, I can sit here and win this thing from home.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Easy money.

• 1:03:07Theo Von?

  And that's a more to part of the trap that you're saying is you can't sit here and win this thing from home, probably.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  But when your kids aren't doing well, you're not interested in hearing about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine. You're not interested in talking about trans rights. Your kid isn't doing well, and when your kid isn't doing well, you don't want change. You don't want a Democrat. You not only don't want change, you want disruption, you want chaos.

• 1:03:32Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  And you also, you want some of that what I'll call male energy back. And look at how Trump positioned himself. What did he do? Crypto, embrace of cars and rockets, Elon. What medium, did he go on MSNBC and CNN and Fox?

• 1:03:47Theo Von?

  UFC fights.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  And he went on podcasts, your podcast.

• 1:03:52Theo Von?

  Now, I wonder if that affected a lot, I don't know.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, are you kidding?

• 1:03:57Theo Von?

  The UFC is what did it, people, and the guy didn't fucking stop. People can say whatever they want, that's a seventy or eight year old dude who for four years, the guy, I don't know if he doesn't sleep, but the guy works hard. He got killed a couple of times, he climbed back out of the, you know, the coffin or whatever. He kept dying and getting up and go, he didn't stop. There's something, at a certain point, I, you just have to be like, I'm not betting against that dude, you know?

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Well, let's.

• 1:04:24Theo Von?

  And he got Elon, people love Elon. He got, you know, he got, it's, I just feel like the parties have changed. I used to be, feel like a Democrat, I don't even know what, nothing really embodies me anymore, it feels like. I don't know. It's, it's all changed now. It feels like.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  But look at, look at, let's just use some examples. MSNBC, which is considered like the left or the, a big political network. Average a million, its most popular shows get a million viewers. You know what the average age is of MSNBC? Seventy.

• 1:04:54Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  And it veers towards women. Podcast, Joe Rogan, Trump goes on Joe Rogan.

• 1:05:00Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Forty million views on YouTube, fifteen million downloads, average age thirty-four. Fifty-five million thirty-four-year-old males versus one million seventy-year-old women. And what do you know? Let me guess, he was on your podcast, right?

• 1:05:14Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Okay, he was on Who the Boys, they call him the, what? He, his strategy was, I'm gonna take the top ten podcasts, right? Eight of them lean right and lean male. I'm going on every one of them. I'm not going on CNN or Fox. I'm going, I'm flying into the testosterone storm and the media of men right now is podcasting. It's where young men are going.

• 1:05:37Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's probably true. Yeah, I mean, I like watching podcasts and podcast clips and stuff like that more. But it's also, you look at, Rogan used to be a Democrat, he was a leftist. I'm a Bernie fan. It's like, these people fucking alienated my heroes in the Democratic Party. It's gotten like, you know, it's very bizarre. I mean, the, the political part of it is very bizarre to me. But I do think there's a lot about what you're saying is like, yeah, a man wants to feel like it's okay to be a man. And you're like, sometimes you leave the house, like, is it okay to be a man? Do I have to put my, do I have to check my dick at the door of this restaurant or whatever? Like, it's, it feels like that sometimes, you know? And it's not how somebody should feel. So, yeah, I think it's, I think it's great that we're talking about this and that we're thinking about that stuff, you know?

• 1:06:21Theo Von?

  What do you think of the effects of like, social media are on young men?

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Oh, it's a disaster. There's, my colleague at NYU, Jonathan Haidt, he wrote this book called The Anxious Generation.

• 1:06:31Theo Von?

  Jonathan Hyde?

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Haidt, Jonathan Haidt, H-A-I-D-T.

• 1:06:35Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Essentially, there's a lot of peer-reviewed research, including research that just came out of Oxford, showing that there's about a sixty percent increase in self-harm, eating disorders, and anxiety for people who spend too much time on social media. Imagine, did you have social media when you were in school?

• 1:06:51Theo Von?

  No, dude, you had to yell at somebody, right?

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  But imagine the cafeteria.

• 1:06:56Theo Von?

  Graffiti, that was the only social media you had, dude. You'd be like, you know, Larry likes dudes. And it's like, who knows, bro? But it never told you their last name. It was very, and it would be like, but now even, even graffiti dude, especially like in Brooklyn. It's so, it's like Larry likes dudes, but only if he's okay with it. I read that and I was like, that's not, what is it? It, everything's fucking confusing, dude. Nobody cared if Larry liked dudes or not. It was just the fact that somebody got to say it, you know? And then now it's like, only if he's cool with it. It's like, who's right? Anyway, what were you gonna say?

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  The bottom line, social media is bad. It's bad for teen girls and it's bad, really bad for young men. There's a direct, there's a linear correlation between anxiety, eating disorders with young women, anxiety with men, because it's like, you never get to leave the high school cafeteria. And it's especially hard on girls in high school because boys bully physically and verbally. Girls bully relationally and we put these nuclear weapons in their hands. They're actually a little bit, they can be a little bit meaner. And so, and then you take online dating. Anytime you digitize a sector, it becomes a winner take most environment. So.

• 1:08:04Theo Von?

  Okay, say that one more time. Anytime you digitize a sector, like what does that mean?

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  Anytime a sector becomes all about the internet. So retail used to be stores. It becomes online. Amazon now controls 50% of all e-commerce, right? We used to go to the Encyclopedia Britannica, to the library, to microfiche, to different newspapers. Now we go to Google. Google has 93% of search. Uh, social, uh, Facebook and Meta owns two thirds of all social media. Online dating, everyone has access to everyone. You think that's good? It's not, because women all want the same dude. And if you have 50 men on Tinder and 50 women, 46 of the women will show all of their attention to just four men. So that leaves forty six men fighting over four women.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  And the reality is those women can have sex with the top ten percent, but they're usually not going to have a relationship. And because that top ten percent of men get eighty to ninety percent of the opportunities, they can engage in what I refer to as Porsche polygamy. And that is, it doesn't encourage long-term good behavior. It doesn't encourage them to settle down. Whereas when we were kids, you went to your church, your temple, your high school, and you kind of figured out your weight class. There were eight single women at your temple, eight single men, and you sort of paired off.

• 1:09:22Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  And men had an opportunity to demonstrate excellence at some point. If you talk to married couples that have been together longer than thirty years, seventy-five percent of them say, one was much more interested in the other and was always the man, man who was much more interested. But over time, she saw that he was kind.

• 1:09:37Theo Von?

  Wow.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  She worked with him. He was good at what he did. So where do men demonstrate excellence now? And then a man goes online, here, check out this stat. On Tinder, a man of attract, average attractiveness, has to swipe right two hundred times to get one swipe back for one coffee. And then four of five of those coffees will ghost him. Her screen will come up again and she'll decide not to show up for a coffee. So a guy of average attractiveness on a dating app has to swipe right a thousand times to get a coffee. So he feels rejected by women. He becomes much more prone to misogynistic content online, prone to conspiracy theory, less likely to believe in climate change.

• 1:10:14Theo Von?

  And he's hopped up on caffeine too, because he's been fucking sitting there sipping by himself, you know?

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  In some, he becomes a shitty citizen. So social media and online dating have been really bad for young men and women. I think online dating has been especially rough on men.

• 1:10:29Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah, I don't like to be online dating. I haven't been on, I'm like seven years off of it. Raya won't let me on there because I told an awesome joke on Twitter that they got offended by, I guess. So fuck them anyway, dude. But I also, I didn't want somebody to be able to say no to me when I wasn't there in person. That's how it felt to me. I just didn't want to give somebody that pleasure that they could say no. And even though it's not a real no, it, you know, it's all very hypothetical, but I just didn't want to allow somebody to have that. But then also, by not doing that, it's, it is hard. You have to meet people in real time, in real life, you know? And so it is more of a challenge, but it's also. You know, it is, I guess, uh, you just feel like you're not getting rejected.

• 1:11:12Theo Von?

  Um, when I started podcasting and online stores, the furthest thing from my mind, the last thing. I was thinking about other stuff, hot air balloons and making love and different stuff like that. And mostly women and other stuff that's good desserts. Now we have an online store and we're selling different things. In fact, we just put a couple of new items in there and it's so easy all because I use Shopify. That's who helps me. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. From the launch your online shop stage to the first real life store stage.

• 1:11:54Theo Von?

  All the way to the, did we just hit a half a million orders stage? Hmm. Shopify is there to help you grow. Whether you're selling scented soap or, or dang raccoon fur hats. Or offering outdoor outfits. Shopify helps you sell everywhere. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash T H E O. All lowercase. Just go to Shopify.com slash Theo now to grow your business. No matter what stage you're in, Shopify.com slash T H E O. Our next sponsor needs no introduction.

• 1:12:39Theo Von?

  Cause you know, I've talked about them a million times. And if you really want to feel them, if you really want to get that cane going for you and help you run up off that limp, baby. Blue chew. That's right. Put that Viking in your striking daddy.

• 1:12:58Theo Von?

  This isn't your grandpa's blue pill. This is the one, the OG chewable tablet for better sex. Blue chew is a unique online service that delivers the same active ingredients as Viagra, Cialis and Levitra, but at a fraction of the cost and in chewable form. Does it work? Yup. Do you think you need it? Talk to them. You can try it free also for a month and see. You're gonna love it. I like it. Boom. BlueChew wants the entire country rock hard. They told me that's the mission. They will not stop until every man is bricked up. Like a brick house. Till every ten is pitched, till every rod is raised.

• 1:13:40Theo Von?

  Discover your options at bluechew.com. And we've got a special deal for our listeners. Try BlueChew free when you use our promo code T H E O at checkout. Just pay $5 shipping, that's it. That's B L U E C H E W dot com. Promo code Theo to receive your first month free. Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank BlueChew for sponsoring the podcast. How do we prevent moms from just having to raise these young men by themselves? Like, what would you say to a young couple that's starting out? If the male is listening, or the female, to help give them the best chance to stay together,

• 1:14:22Theo Von?

  which would seem like would help affect other positive things along the way?

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  So again, we have a tendency in our society to assume that all divorce is the man's fault. That the man is either a predator, or not a good person, and the woman has no agency, and she's the victim. And the reality is 70% of divorce filings are filed by women. And the majority of those divorce filings, if you look at why the woman is filed for divorce, it's not infidelity, it's not a lack of shared values, it's the man has something happens that makes him less economically viable. A mental breakdown, a loss of a business, a bankruptcy. Women still look at men primarily as being providers. And once a man, a man going through divorce, so young men are four times as likely to kill themselves. A man two years after divorce is eight times as likely.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  He no longer serves a role in his church, he no longer serves a role in his primary relationship. He might lose his kids. One out of three men have no contact with their children after six years. So he has literally no role-

• 1:15:22Theo Von?

  After six years of a divorce, you mean?

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  After six years of divorce, one out of three men has absolutely no contact with their children.

• 1:15:27Theo Von?

  Oh, man, that's heartbreaking.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Well, it's hardly not around a lot. So what I would suggest is that- One, I think we need to level up young people economically. And I don't think you can just target men for economic programs. I think it's too political, but I think we need to restore the child tax credit. I think we need a massive program to build more housing. I think we should have a national nuclear energy project similar to what Truman did in the 50s with the National Highway Act. That'll create hundreds of thousands of good, millions of good paying jobs for young men.

• 1:15:59Theo Von?

  So what do you mean talking about like, uh, like, um, like Space Mountain going everywhere? Like, what do you mean? You mean like a train system?

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  No, nuclear. So if you look at what's happening in our economy with AI and some of the innovations around digital, the choke point of the friction is energy. We're not going to have enough energy.

• 1:16:16Theo Von?

  We're not gonna.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  So nuclear energy is, in my opinion, the cleanest form of energy. And we're gonna need a massive number of nuclear power plants built. Those are good jobs. For the National Infrastructure Act, 70% of those jobs are for young men. That's a good thing. In sum, let me back up. Biggest innovation in history is not the microchip or the smartphone. It's the American middle class. And the way the American middle class happened, it's, it's an accident. It's not normal throughout history to have a middle class. The way the American middle class formed in America was we had seven million men return from World War II and they had demonstrated excellence in uniform. They were in good shape. They were strong. They had demonstrated real heroism. And then Truman put in place a variety of programs that leveled them up economically, right?

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  The GI Bill, FHA, or subsidized home loans, National Transportation Act. He created millions and millions of men who, quite frankly, were really solid citizens who were attracted to women. There was huge household formations and it gave rise to the baby boom. And this created a number, millions of American households that thought, I want to give other people this opportunity. I want to bring women into this opportunity. I want to bring non-whites into this opportunity. Eventually, I want to bring gay people in this opportunity. It created a more loving, generous, what I'll call liberal society. We have to feed the middle class and the part that's failing the middle class right now is young men. So the question is, how do we level up young men, quite frankly, economically?

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  And I think it's a variety of programs, national service, more job programs, more apprenticeship.

• 1:17:48Theo Von?

  What does national service mean?

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Two-year mandatory national service to get out of high school.

• 1:17:52Theo Von?

  Oh, I see what you're saying.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  You serve either in the armed services, maybe you go into senior care, maybe you help the, you know, whatever it might be.

• 1:18:01Theo Von?

  Right. It could be like digging down, you know, installing like.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Fighting fires, whatever it might be, helping seniors.

• 1:18:07Theo Von?

  Wow. Cause then first of all, you're going to feel a attraction to your own country. You're going to feel like you contributed. And once you feel like you contributed something, it means something to you. It's like whenever you used to, you know, your dad would drive you through the neighborhood or your grandfather, they'd be like, I built that house or I painted that or, you know, I used to, you know, eat sandwiches over there or something. And this makes you feel connected to an area, right?

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  But rather than you and me seeing each other, you go, okay, Scott's a libtard. And I go, oh, this is a Republican pretending to be an independent. We just say we're Americans.

• 1:18:36Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  The greatest legislation in history, or at least in America in the 50s and 60s, and the reason we had such a productive Congress and they got along was because they served in the same uniform. They weren't blue or red. They were Americans, right?

• 1:18:48Theo Von?

  Yeah. You go through those graves, cemeteries, you go to them and it's all it's different ethnicities, different religions, different.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  There's no red or blue.

• 1:18:54Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  It doesn't say Democrat or Republican. So a massive leveling up economically of young people. I'd like to do what Portugal did. Portugal has said, we're turning into this retirement place for hedge fund managers and the brightest young people in Portugal have one thing in common. They leave. So you know what they've done, Theo? They've decided no taxes, age 20 to 30. And it actually doesn't cost them that much because most people age 20 to 30.

• 1:19:19Theo Von?

  Aren't making much money.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  Don't make much money.

• 1:19:21Theo Von?

  Right. It's beyond that. You make your money.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  We need, 40% of our budget goes to seniors, which leaves less money for education, programs, investment in R and D, which are more productive investments. We have a political system where old people keep voting and more old people who vote themselves more money. Right? The $120 billion cost of living adjustment increase for social security flies right through the $40 billion tax credit to help young families that gets stripped out of the Inflation Reduction Act. We need to massively economically lift up young people, which will disproportionately benefit young men who have fallen further faster and quite frankly, make them more attractive. And people are going to start having kids again. Forty years ago, 60% of 30-year-olds

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  had a kid. Now it's 27%. The average age of a home buyer this year is 54. Forty years ago was 36. Do people, are people not buying homes and not having kids because they don't want them? No, they can't afford them. And guess what? When a guy shows up and says, "I am not economically viable. You are not going to be able to buy a home with me. I am not going to be able to protect you." The woman doesn't want to pair with this guy.

• 1:20:25Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  We need a massive lift up of young people and everything we do is nothing but a thinly veiled transfer of wealth from your generation to mine. COVID, $6 trillion in stimulus, 85% of it wasn't needed, 85% of it wasn't spent. So where did it go? It went into the stock market. Stock market hits all-time highs. Housing prices have gone from $290 average house pre-COVID to $410. That's great for me. I own stocks and I own homes. Ed, my co-host at Prop G Markets, he doesn't own homes or stocks yet. So what's going to happen? We're not, we're spending it all on his credit card. We're running up these massive deficits which he will have to pay back. So I get the champagne and cocaine with his credit card.

• 1:21:11Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  We need to stop this crazy deficit spending that both, the only thing that passes as bipartisan behavior right now is reckless spending. We need economic responsibility and we need to transfer wealth back from the incumbents to the entrants and level up young people, which will disproportionately benefit the group that has fallen furthest, fastest, and is young men. We need to make young men more economically viable again, such that they can form households.

• 1:21:36Theo Von?

  Yeah. Yeah. And it's, yeah, it's like, yeah, almost if you're a young man these days, you just want to just hide sometimes, I think. You know, and it's not even their own fault. That's one thing I want to say. Like, some of it is the society that we're in isn't really doing its best to support you. Is that okay to say that?

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Oh, 100%. One of three.

• 1:21:55Theo Von?

  Yeah, I just want, I don't want young men to hear this and feel like, "I'm a loser."

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  Young men have it, I mean, on one level, people have more agency in our nation than they than they've had in a long time. But young men, there's definitely in our society a bias against them. If you go to the Democratic National Committee's website, there's a section that says, "Who we serve." They actually spell out, "We're the Democratic Party. This is who we serve." And it lists 16 demographic groups, from Asians and Pacific Islanders to Black Americans, veterans, the disabled, immigrants. I added it up, it's 76% of the population. So when you're purposely advantaging 76% of the population, you're not advantaging them, you're discriminating against the 24%. And who are the 24% that aren't mentioned?

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  Young men. The Democratic National Convention was a parade of every special interest group, but they never once mentioned the group that has fallen furthest, fastest, and quite frankly, in my view, needs the most help right now, and that is young men. So we need a more productive conversation that looks at the stats. Four times as likely to kill themselves, three times as likely to be addicted, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated. If that was happening to any other special interest group-

• 1:23:09Theo Von?

  It would be through the roof insane.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  We'd be weighing in with programs, with empathy. And here's the thing, empathy is not a zero-sum game. Gay marriage didn't hurt-

• 1:23:18Theo Von?

  What does zero-sum game mean?

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  Well, there's a there's a feel, when I talk about young men, people go to, "Well, that's gonna hurt women." No, it's not. You know who wants more economically and emotionally viable men?

• 1:23:30Theo Von?

  Women.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  Women.

• 1:23:31Theo Von?

  Yep.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  Women.

• 1:23:32Theo Von?

  God.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Civil rights didn't hurt white people.

• 1:23:36Theo Von?

  No.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Gay marriage, in my opinion, didn't hurt heteronormative men. It didn't get in the way of me marrying a woman. And having empathy for men isn't gonna hurt women. We can't, women are not, women in the United States are not gonna flourish if men are flailing, and they are. And because it's men, and because of the privilege I recognized, there's a lack of empathy for them. And quite frankly, because some, I would argue, fairly unproductive voices entered that void about five, 10 years ago, a lot of people had sort of a gag reflex when you started talking about men. And you know who's leading the charge around this topic right now, who I get the most emails from? Mothers. And it goes something like this, "I have three kids, two daughters, one son. One daughter is in

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  Chicago in PR, the other's in graduate school at Penn, and my son is in the basement vaping and playing video games." And if you look at the election, the two groups that swung most viciously away from blue towards Trump were two groups, people under the age of 30, young people aren't doing well, and the second group and the most surprising, 45 to 64 year old women, or put another way, mothers.

• 1:24:46Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  So this was, in my opinion, the kids are not all right, or kind of the testosterone election, and that is if your kids aren't doing well, you want to blow everything up. All you want, you don't just want change, you want chaos, and one guy was the chaos candidate.

• 1:25:05Theo Von?

  Yeah, well, I think also, though, one great thing that Trump did was when he brought RFK Jr. in, because RFK Jr. was also a very, was a rogue, remember people were like, this guy is like a crazy guy or whatever, like he's eating, you know, he's, you know, he didn't believe in, you know, he just got so labeled by the media, and so I think bringing him in was a great point, a great idea.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  I agree with you that he's crazy.

• 1:25:30Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  He's batshit crazy.

• 1:25:33Theo Von?

  Oh, he's a great guy, man.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  Oh, dude.

• 1:25:35Theo Von?

  He's a great guy.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  Give me, I don't know if you're holding vaccines, but let's shoot up.

• 1:25:39Theo Von?

  No, no, no.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  There's nothing I love more than being high than not being sick. Vaccines are the best thing to happen in modern society.

• 1:25:44Theo Von?

  I don't disagree that they are, I just think that they just need to make sure that they are.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  He's great on the environment, I'll give you that. I think he's great on the environment.

• 1:25:52Theo Von?

  Yeah, that's fair, we don't have to agree on it. Why do you, so let's, I know you're a professor here, here at NYU, and why do you talk about, I've heard you talk about advising your students not to follow their passion, but to follow their talent, is that right?

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:08Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  I think anyone who tells you to follow your passion is already rich. I think this is your job. I think your job is to find what you're really good at.

• 1:26:16Theo Von?

  Okay.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Because I think a lot of times, young men mistake their talent for their hobbies, or mistake their hobbies for their passion.

• 1:26:22Theo Von?

  Okay, they mistake their hobbies for their passion.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  I wanted to be a football player when I was 17, then I wanted to be a pediatrician. I mean, what I found was I was really good at analytics, and very few boys grew up thinking, I'm really good with data, and so the majority of the quote unquote, passion fields are really shitty industries, because there's too many people going into them. There's 180,000 people in the SAG-AFTRA union, which is the union representing actors, 83% of them last year didn't qualify for health insurance, because they didn't make over $23,000.

• 1:26:53Theo Von?

  They're not even making any movies anymore.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Try and be a DJ. Do you know what percentage of high school basketball players make it into the NBA? I mean, it's insane.

• 1:27:02Theo Von?

  I don't know. Yeah, very few.

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  The more romantic or sexy an industry is, the lower the ROI on your effort. This is your job. Find something you're good at instinctively, you have an affinity for, that you could someday maybe in the top 10% or the top 1%, and here's the key part, it has a 90-plus percent employment rate. Because if you're good, I'm renovating a house right now, and this guy comes in, he's the Soapstone guy, he knows more about Soapstone than anyone, he's this Iraqi immigrant, and he got really into it. And he was very open with me, he makes 1.8 million pounds a year, he clears 800,000 pounds a year, right? I don't think he grew up as a child thinking, I'm gonna be the Soapstone guy in Marlon Bow in London.

• 1:27:42Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  No one grows up thinking, I want to be the best tax attorney in the world. The best tax attorneys fly private and have a larger selection set of mates than they deserve. And the guy telling you at NYU to follow your passion, made his billions in iron ore smelting, right?

• 1:27:57Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  The boring industries, the boring shit, is where you can make a great deal of money.

• 1:28:04Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  Be a DJ on weekends.

• 1:28:06Theo Von?

  Be a welder on the week.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  That's right. Find a job that you're good at, you become great at, that's got a 90-plus percent employment rate. If you're just good in that industry, you're gonna make a, and this is what happens.

• 1:28:16Theo Von?

  What does that mean, the 90-plus? Before you, I just want to make sure that that's clear, that has a 90%, what were you saying in that part?

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  Employment rate.

• 1:28:23Theo Von?

  And what does that mean when you say that?

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  Tax law, anyone with a degree in law.

• 1:28:27Theo Von?

  Oh, you're gonna get a job and a 90% chance, that's what you're saying?

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Employment rate.

• 1:28:30Theo Von?

  Okay, got it.

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  Employment rate in basketball, DJ, art, modeling, sports, owning a club or restaurant, I would bet the unemployment rate is 90%.

• 1:28:40Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  Because there's too many people pursuing too few jobs.

• 1:28:43Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  So I don't want to crush your dreams. If you want to be a DJ, you want to be the next Lionel Messi, just make sure you're getting bright signals very early that you're in the top 1%, which is where you're gonna need to be.

• 1:28:54Theo Von?

  Right, because the way that certainly you have to play to the odds.

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  Well, this is what you become passionate about. You're gonna see this as you get older. You become passionate about taking care of your kids. You become passionate about taking care of your parents. You become passionate about going to the Hotel de Cap or going to F1 in Austin. I went to Wimbledon for the first time.

• 1:29:14Theo Von?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:29:15Speaker 01

  And I'd rather be Roger Federer than me. I'd rather be named all than me. But I'd rather be me than the number five seed in the world.

• 1:29:21Theo Von?

  Yeah, who's that?

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 1:29:23Theo Von?

  Right, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  And all I know is the number five seed is in the 0.0001%. All I need to be is in the top 10% of my field and I can buy my way into Wimbledon.

• 1:29:34Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  So find something you're great at. And if you're great at it and you can make money at it, you're going to have a great relationship with your wife and your kids. You're going to be a... We live in a capitalist society.

• 1:29:46Theo Von?

  Right. And that's not going to change, right?

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  100% no. America becomes more like itself every day and that is it is a loving, generous place if you have money. It's a rapacious violent place if you don't have money. And I'm not saying that's, that's the way it should be, but that is the way it is. So your job as a young person, what could I be great at that pays? It has a 90 plus percent employment rate. And this is where passion comes from. The accoutrements, the camaraderie, the economic relevance, the status of being great at something where you're making good money. That will make you passionate about that thing. Mastery, artisanship, being a ninja like warrior in anything will make you passionate about that thing, regardless of how boring it may sound when you're nine years old.

• 1:30:34Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's funny. The better I've become at some things, the more I like them. Is that what you're saying?

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  100%.

• 1:30:39Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:41Theo Von?

  That's cool, man. Um, what, I've heard you also talk about the four horsemen, right? And like a lot of the, um, uh, dangerous collaboration of media, right? And like, um, with Apple, Amazon, Google.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:30:58Theo Von?

  And Facebook.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  Yep, very good.

• 1:31:00Theo Von?

  And you've been a part of like antitrust activation towards them?

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  I think they should be broken up. I think they're too powerful.

• 1:31:07Theo Von?

  Me too.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:08Theo Von?

  It's very dangerous, right?

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Well, we don't have any choice. If you're gonna, if you're a parent and your kid is on social media, you don't have any choice. The kid doesn't have any choice. He's going to be on a meta platform.

• 1:31:20Theo Von?

  Right.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  And these companies are so powerful that they're able, and they make so much money that they're able to kind of weaponize government. We've had 40 congressional hearings talking about child safety. We've had zero laws passed.

• 1:31:31Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  And I think competition as a whole is a great way of bringing down costs. I think the best way to handle inflation is competition. And you have one company with 93% share of search, Google, 66% share of social, Meta, 50% share of e-commerce, two companies control 93% of AI, AI LLMs and the GPUs, that's OpenAI and Nvidia. So there's already monopolies forming in AI.

• 1:32:00Theo Von?

  Yeah, it's unbelievable. Here's Australia wants to ban kids. I saw this the other day on 16 from social media as world government seeks to crack down on the addictive apps. I think that that's a great idea. I don't think that kids so, and also especially if kids aren't going to be protected. Like, did you see that moment where they had Zuckerberg with all the parents of children who were killed by adults on Facebook and they were allowed to contact them? Like, why should an adult be allowed to contact a child? You should easily, if you have all the data, you should easily know this is a child and this is an adult. There's no reason for them to contact each other without going through the parent.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  There's no reason anyone under the age of 14 should have a smartphone. I mean, I've said this, I think Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook are basically crack dealers outside of junior high school. No one under the age of 14 should be on a smartphone. Could you have at 14 handled a casino, a betting, you know, a IMAX theater, a porn site in your pocket all day long?

• 1:32:58Theo Von?

  I could handle it at 34, 37.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Right. So, and then, no, I don't think anyone should be on a social media app under the age of 16. And parents are stepping in. And a lot of this, again, is because of the inspiration of my colleague Jonathan Hyde. But entire countries are banning phones and social media. There's just, there's so much evidence around the mental, think about what a place of perversion Instagram begins with. It encourages 15-year-old girls to pose provocatively and sexualize themselves such that their peers and strange men around the world can evaluate and contact them? Imagine, imagine there was a park and there were 15 year old girls and they said to the

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  park, "We'd really like it if you showed up in halt tube tops and mini skirts and then your peers get to sit around you and comment out loud and strange men from anywhere can come and comment and then contact you." Would we allow that?

• 1:33:57Theo Von?

  Not a chance.

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  That's Instagram.

• 1:33:59Theo Von?

  Why do we allow that then? Like, do we expect our government to save us or who's, or do we have to save ourselves?

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  Well, I think at the end of the day, I think it's our fault. We haven't voted in the people who understand these technologies are willing to stand up to these companies. They're very savvy. They spend a lot of money on lobbying. And I also think in the back room, they're probably doing deals around national security to help us kind of hunt down the bad guys. I think it's a nuanced argument. But at the end of the day, our government has really let us down. When we look back, Theo, on this era around big tech, I think we're going to regret the concentration of power, the monopoly power, the weaponization of some of our elections, some of the misinformation that's come out. But more than anything, we'll look back on this era and think, how did we let this happen to our kids?

• 1:34:42Theo Von?

  We failed our children.

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  You don't have kids. I should know better. My son developed device addiction. My kid hides in the bathroom so he can be on TikTok. I don't know what he's on on TikTok. There's been some instances of bullying, both him being bullied and bullying others. And I think we've probably not as bad as some households. This is literally, there is no addiction in America. 24%, two thirds of teens are on social media. 24% qualify as addicts. Can you imagine any, we age gate pornography, the military, motorcycles, weapons, but we don't age gate social media and 20, what other substance, what other company could get away

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  with getting two thirds of kids on that substance and then having a quarter of them be identified clinically as addicts? We wouldn't put up, we wouldn't and haven't put up with it anywhere else. But these guys are so smart, have so many lobbyists. There are more full-time lobbyists.

• 1:35:40Theo Von?

  And there are representatives and senators.

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  Senators. Just at, at Amazon. Amazon has more. Full-time paid lobbyists living in DC than there are sitting US senators. We've been overrun, our government's been overrun by money, and we haven't been able to vote in people that are able to stand up and pass laws. This shit is difficult and complicated, and these companies have taken advantage of it. Also, they have the propaganda to turn up the dials.

• 1:36:06Theo Von?

  Because they own the, they own the information that's going out. They can manage it.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:36:13Theo Von?

  God, Scott, I don't even know if I can fucking get out of this room today.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  Let's go to Whole Foods.

• 1:36:20Theo Von?

  Right before you leave, you said one of the biggest choices is the person that you will marry. I've heard you say that.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  Have kids with.

• 1:36:26Theo Von?

  Have kids with.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:36:27Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  And that goes back to a willingness to endure rejection such that you can find someone who's really high character, that you're attracted to. I have, I have friends who on exterior metrics are really successful. Smart, talented, ballers professionally, a lot of money, but they don't really have a partner. And I find that their life has an unnecessary amount of stress and disappointment in it. And at the same time, I have a lot of other friends who are not as economically successful, but they have a real partner and everything burns a little bit brighter. And I, I hope, oh, I hope I'm around, but I hope we have the chance in 10 or 20 years. I'm confident you're going to find someone, have kids.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  All of this, right? Podcast, AI, social media, GDP growth, Trump. It's all bullshit. It's all a means. The ends, the whole shooting match is finding someone you care about and having kids. That's what I found. I didn't want to have kids. I didn't want to get married.

• 1:37:28Theo Von?

  So you, so that actually disproved what your original thoughts and feelings were.

• 1:37:31Speaker 01

  I got it wrong. And you can't, no one who doesn't have kids can fully understand it. And by the way, I want to be clear, there are other ways to find and receive love. I don't think you have to have kids to be happy. What I can tell you is that the majority of people I know who've had kids have said, it's a tremendous amount of stress, but it's the first time in my life I felt like I had real purpose and real meaning. And that's what our economy is supposed to do. It's supposed to give young people, specifically more young men right now, the opportunity to engage in loving, supportive relationships and have kids. That's the whole shooting match. Everything else is the means. That's the ends.

• 1:38:07Theo Von?

  The G Prof Podcast that you're

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  Close, Prof G.

• 1:38:11Theo Von?

  The Prof.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  I like that better. That sounds like a new Mercedes vehicle, the G Prof wagon. There we go. We got it, co-branded. By the way, hashtag Prof G.

• 1:38:23Theo Von?

  The Prof G Podcast, that's yours, Scott. Thanks for coming and just thinking with us, man. And yeah, we don't want to look down on young men. We don't want to do that. We're just looking at stuff. Because part of it is to yet let young men know, and men know that like, some of the system that we're in, and the environment that we're in is not set up to help us. So don't feel like ashamed of yourself. Right? That's the thing. I don't want to push that at all.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  At 24, I was limbed with my mother. No economic prospects, no romantic prospects. I was broke at 34, then I was broke again at 42. And the first thing, first emotion I felt when my oldest son had the poor judgment to come marching out of my girlfriend, it was 2008 great financial recession. I'd lost everything, was I felt shame and humiliation. Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself. Everyone's been there, right? If you're not doing well. Be a good person, get in good shape. Start making some money, even if it's just a little bit of money, right? The way to make a lot of money is to start making a little and get a taste for flesh. Be out of the house every day, be in the company, the agency of others. Right?

• 1:39:31Theo Von?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  And, and work your ass off and try and show, like, show up, get the easy stuff right. Develop a savings muscle, see if you can save some money. And don't be afraid to approach strange women. The ability to make a woman feel safe while expressing romantic interest is not only the key to being, finding a great partner, those same skills are going to serve you really well and work. There's nothing wrong with that. You are a protector, you're a provider, and you're a procreator.

• 1:39:57Theo Von?

  Let's go, dude.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  Let's go to Whole Foods. Where is she?

• 1:40:03Theo Von?

  Oh, I'm going to approach so many strange women this year. Next team, dude.

• 1:40:07Speaker 01

  That's a little scary.

• 1:40:08Theo Von?

  It's Strange Women 25, baby.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:40:12Theo Von?

  Scott Yalloy, thank you, man. Thanks for thinking with me. Thanks for being somebody that I find inspiring and educational and also able to be earnest about themselves and their own journey. I just appreciate that, man.

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  Thanks, man. Congrats on your success. You're a nice role model for young men. You really do. You bring a different vibe. I think it's important.

• 1:40:30Theo Von?

  Yeah, thanks, dude. I don't know if I feel like a role model, but it's nice of you to say. I definitely feel like a young man, though. So I feel like I'm, you know, we're gonna keep going.

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  It goes fast. Trust me. You're younger than everybody and one day you'll show up and you'll be the oldest person in the room. It's really weird. Time goes fast. You're enjoying, you're really grabbing life by the balls and squeezing right now. So congratulations.

• 1:40:54Theo Von?

  Well, I work really hard. That's one thing I do do, you know. I know that I have learned that. You know, I learned that like just from my mom. If you, yeah, that you can do that. You know, that's in my control, you know, and the rest of the stuff will figure out along the way. And thank you for being here today and helping us think of and learn about some of it.

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  Thank you and welcome to New York.

• 1:41:12Theo Von?

  Thank you, brother.