0:01

I’m Ian seesaw like and I’m the host of bands playing a show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists by going deep into their histories and discographies.

We’re back with a brand new season at our brand-new home, the ringer podcast Network, tackling a whole new batch of artists from grunge Gods to Powerpuff Pioneers to new metal Legends and many many more.

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Listen, a new episodes, every Thursday, only on Spotify.

Today’s guest is Scott, Galloway.

Scott is the host of several extremely popular podcasts about tech and business, like pivot Prof, G pod.

0:38

He’s a big macher in the world of tech and media.

He can also be pretty controversial.

He picks fights with Facebook and Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.

And he has a new book out this week called a drift, which is a chart field tour of politics business Tech and culture.

0:54

I think it’s fair to say that some of the episodes that we do on this show.

Many of the episodes that we On this show are very focused.

I think of them like an espresso shot of news analysis trying to seek to explain something very concentrated and specific whether it’s the Ukraine Counter-Strike or the psychology of self talk.

1:13

But I also want this show to occasionally have room for the very opposite for wide-ranging conversations.

With people that I admire about stuff that isn’t necessarily in the news that week.

It’s about bringing on a big brain.

To tell me about what they’re obsessed with and what’s got me obsessed and we can share our obsessions and unlock a few ideas about the world and how it works.

1:38

This episode definitely fits into that, latter category, Scott, and I cover a lot in the next hour, we talk about tech addiction and internet regulation.

We talk about what it takes to be a good pundit today.

And why decent people in the take slinging business should feel a little bit guilty about the relationship to catastrophe and anger.

1:59

Given that catastrophizing, the news with a tremendous amount of anger, is a very reliable way to get, and hold people’s attention, but it’s not necessarily a very reliable way to be a good person.

We pick up on a theme that I covered last week with Richard Reeves on the state of men in America, we talked about the future of education and why it’s so hard to disrupt college with virtual or online education and we close with a little rapid fire on crypto and the metaverse.

2:27

If you have questions, comments ideas for future episodes.

Keep emailing us at plain, English at Spotify.com.

I’m Derek Thompson.

This is plain English.

2:59

Scott Galloway, welcome to the podcast.

Derek it is always good to see you.

Yours is the only podcast I’ll do except for the dozens and dozens of others who just asked but but I was most excited about this one.

So your new book a draft is a chart filled statistical Guide to the state of America in the world and it spans Economics and Tech and politics and culture.

3:23

I’d really like to start with online culture.

I thought I was beyond the capacity to be shocked by phone new statistics, but you managed to shock me, you have a Statin here that says, the average gen Z American unlocks her smartphone 79 times per day.

3:39

That means approximately one unlock every ten eleven twelve minutes of Waking Life, a 20/20 study, that you referenced found that 96% of gen Z Americans will not go to the bathroom without Out their phone.

I know that you follow Jonathan, Heights.

Work on teen anxiety.

And smartphone, use what is the Crux of your concern here?

4:01

So, a couple of things, a couple dozen things, I think that at a very basic level that putting phones in the hands of teens 24 by 7 is to sort of put them their full selves in their face 24.

4:20

Seven because they’re tempted to say things post pictures of themselves and they’re sort of in the high school, cafeteria 24 by 7 and you’re younger than me.

But when I used to come home from school, I watch cartoons that interact back with me.

I saw my mom, she did not know what happened at school.

4:37

She loved me.

Regardless of what I said, or did or what I wore.

And I just got a bit of a break from it.

And now, I think what happens is a lot of kids Retreat to their room and start posting on Instagram, And getting feedback.

And I think with teens, especially teen, girls boys, bully, physically and verbally.

4:56

And you’ve heard about this poor girl’s bully relationally.

So I think there’s a lot.

I think we’ve taken bowling and abuse and addiction to kind of new heights.

Also, the male brain, the prefrontal cortex doesn’t develop as quickly for girls 85% of gambling addicts or men and when they can start trading crypto or stocks on Robin Hood and there’s kind of these dark psychological techniques to get Addicted.

5:20

I think it’s much more easy to get addicted to certain types of feedback, affirmation gambling, like Behavior.

So I worry that our youth is growing up depressed, and you mentioned Professor height.

5:36

He’s done a lot of work showing that since social one on mobile.

I’m kind of parroting back, a lot of your stuff has exploded, you know, Hospital admissions and I also worry that it’s making our discourse Us more course and a younger generation is growing up.

5:52

Not feeling good about America.

I think the kind of content that they’re drawn to in the algorithms like are more likely to talk about income inequality, as opposed to the great success, stories of our immigrants.

And there’s a kernel of Truth in everything, but I worry that we’re kind of eating ourselves from the inside out.

6:07

So income inequality teen depression, unearned lack of patriotism.

These are all things and then, and I’m last thing I’ll stop talking, but this is a Point in life, where people start establishing relationships and young adults start mating.

6:24

And if you look at what’s happened with online dating, whenever technology comes into a sector consolidates, its oh, a Consolidated Consolidated, retail social and search with Amazon meta and Google.

We’re consolidating dating and that is now majority of people who establish relationships, establish them online and because everybody has access to everybody, you have Porsche polygamy and that is temper.

6:50

Scent of the males, get about 90% of the attention.

So if you have 50 men on Tinder, 50 women, 46 of the men, sorry 46 of the women will show all of their attention to Just For Men leaving 46, men vying for for women.

This means that the top 10% of men have too many opportunities which doesn’t lead to good behavior.

7:08

The bottom kind of the top 50 to 90%, get a date maybe and the bottom, 50% of men are just shut out of the mating market and we’re producing too many of these.

Very broke and alone men who are Catching to work on attaching.

The school aren’t attaching to a job.

7:24

You know I saved Salman Rushdie is attack wasn’t as much about the fatwa is it was about a young man living in his mother’s basement.

So all of these things worry about the phone, I think it’s got a tremendous upsides just as pesticides and even opioids have up sides.

7:40

But I worry, we’re not regulating or thinking thoughtfully about the downsides before Adams award salad.

That was a big question.

You gave a big ass Answer only appropriate.

I imagine that some people are going to think.

Well, there has to be an equality in terms of men’s attention to women as well is is, is it your understanding that the inequality is actually more weighted toward female to male interest?

8:06

I actually did not know that.

So the gini coefficient, which measures variance if mating were an economy, the online mating economy is more unequal than the economy in Venezuela in terms of income inequality.

And that is because it’s very to demand.

8:22

When you meet somebody, there’s Vibe, there’s humor this pheromones.

There’s just a lot of different things that go into.

There’s persistence.

There’s just a lot of things that go into why people decide to be attracted to each other to fall in love and to mate and online.

It’s much less rudimentary and specifically it’s mostly for men their ability to Signal resources or ability to Garner resources.

8:43

So if you’re at MIT and just got a job with KKR and you live in a wealthy zip code in your, you know, that you’ve Ash accidentally or your profile photo shows your Rolex, you’re going to get a lot of swipe rights and women are much easier than men.

8:58

Our guy will see.

A guy will see a profile and think.

Oh, she looks nice.

Or she looks attractive and swipe right?

Women are much more selective because instinctively they have to be because the downsides of pregnancy are much greater.

So they have a much finer filter.

9:14

So the result is just as massive inequality, where again, Disproportionate amount of interest is Flowing to the top 10% which you end up with is Portia polygamy and the most unstable violent Societies in the world.

9:29

Have this one thing in common and that is they have a small group of men that Garner the majority of the mating opportunities and there’s an African proverb that if the young man doesn’t feel the warmth of the tribe, he’ll burn it down to make his own worms.

And I worry that we’re producing too many kind of societal arsonists if you will, hmm, on the issue of online dating.

9:47

I will admit, I don’t know that I’ve revealed this on the show, I met My wife on Bumble and not only that, I need my with on Bumble.

She initially swiped left on me bumble.

However, several months earlier to introduce a function that allowed women to shake their phone and the app would recognize the shaking of the phone and once or twice a day, allow the woman who’s flipping through the mail faces to get back the face that she had just rejected.

10:12

So she had rejected me very, very quickly and then shook the phone got me back and it is literally only because Campbell introduced that feature into their app several months before she saw my face on her phone that I married my wife it is, it’s just you know you don’t want to take yourself too far down that existential Avenue where you realize just how contingent life is if only I’d been there on that day.

10:36

If I take a different tack see in my life would have been totally different but this this definitely gets me down that street.

I I’d love to know what you think we should do about this.

There is a, I think a growing sense that That it is, okay, to use the word Addiction, or at least compulsion here, Matthew against cow, and others at Stanford have shown that when we pay people to not use social media, they self-report less anxiety, and more happiness.

11:03

In just this August, there was a new paper by the surnames are Avery June, tella, and JWoww called.

Why don’t we sleep enough if listeners?

When I Google it called, why don’t we sleep enough?

They paid college students to set consistent sleeping schedules.

And they found that students did not reduce social time.

11:20

But they did reduce social media screen time by 40 minutes a day.

When you’re paid to do something.

You don’t do it and you are aligning, your sort of hoped for Persona with your reveal Behavior.

This to me describes, a compulsion, people know, this is bad for them, and they’re looking for some intervention to help them stop using it.

11:38

So it tells me that there is some form of addictive behavior here and we have a model of regulating certain addictive behaviors whether it’s, you know, cigarettes or drug use.

I wonder if you think we need to go that far when it comes to social media and smartphone use.

11:55

So what do we have here?

We have, I mean, you talk about gen Z unlocking, the phone 80 times a day and I think it’s like 20 or 30 for Boomers.

I mean, I don’t know about you, but if I’m in a cab just instinctively don’t not expecting a message, not looking random, specific news, just look down and open my phone and her in a reminds me of when my father would just be sitting, you know, sitting on the Couch doing nothing and we’re just instinctively light up a cigarette.

12:24

I don’t even think he thought about it.

It’s just like okay I’m doing nothing or any moment.

Any moment of silence.

Any moment of peace, I have any moment of contemplation I’m going to light a cigarette and now it’s I’m going to open my phone.

I think that in terms of Regulation, regulation is a pretty crude Hammer.

12:41

I think the first thing starts with just education, I think educating young men about the fact that 80 to 95 percent and most of the legitimate studies put it Close to 95% of people who day trade, lose money and Robin Hood’s tagline should be the more, the more you trade, the more you lose the best performing.

12:58

Investors right now are a class of people known as dead people and that is when people die and their accounts, going to an escrow.

And they have, there’s no in trading or has the authority to trade their stocks, they outperform, most Traders.

So educating people about the dangers of day trading, educating people about the importance of putting their phone out of Arm’s Reach when they’re sleeping parents being, I can’t modulate when my kids are on when they’re on their phones but I can modulate how much time they’re on their phone.

13:32

I think we all need to and also carving out section portions of section 230.

Where if there is a direct link between your app and teen depression that, that a class action suit can be filed against you.

If this podcast, if there was tangible evidence, that this podcast was resulting in teen girls, And self-harm we would get sued or your program would get sued.

13:54

And I think that’s a good thing and I think it makes you more thoughtful about some of the externalities.

So I think there’s regulation.

I think there’s liability think there’s education.

I think parents need to be thoughtful about what it means to be a good parent and involved in their kids Behavior.

14:10

But I think there’s I think there’s a lot that can be done and one of the things I don’t like about coming out of the big Tech narrative is what I call the delusion of complexity and generally speaking.

Narrative, goes something like this.

These are complex problems.

Teen depression has a variety of inputs and you know our platform just represents larger society, some good some bad and I find that just extraordinary bullshit.

14:32

When Amazon started getting critic bombed for the Lord of the Rings or for She-Hulk attorney at law, they took they found that people were lying people.

Someone got angry and Bad actors showed up and started giving him bad reviews.

They took they closed it down.

14:49

They used a i II.

They use commenting a software and they cleaned it up and they post it back up, 48 hours, and they got a much cleaner, more civil, more accurate read, but yet Google and Facebook, just can’t figure it out.

They just can’t fit.

One account, gets kicked off a Twitter and somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of election misinformation is gone the next day.

15:09

So it’s this Rusev complexity that we’ve all sort of in the median academic kind of bought into that, these are difficult problems.

I actually did think a lot of, that’s not all of it but a lot of It can be solved and teen depression is complex.

But the two primary drivers that I’ve I’ve seen from work.

15:27

Are One Concierge parenting or bulldozer parenting where we, you know, use the salmon.

So many sanitary wipes on our kids lives.

They don’t develop their own communities and also social media.

There’s just you look at the line and and all these people who have not taken statistics will hear this program and say correlation does not equal causation.

15:46

Well, actually when you eliminate every other Cause correlation does not equal causation.

And we have that here, social media going on mobile is a huge source of teen depression.

I agree with so much of what you just said.

I am nervous about the blunt tool of Regulation as you called.

16:06

It one reason why maybe I’m more pessimistic about regulation to help to clean up the social media and lies that cross social media is that I think that, you know, there are some things that people say that are clearly outright lies and there’s some things that people say that are clearly just disgusting propaganda, but there is so much that is sometimes considered false or considered propaganda that turns out to be true and disentangling.

16:39

Those two categories is really, really difficult work.

I saw this throughout the pandemic in the first weeks the pandemic, you had Public Health officials like fauci.

Talk about masks as if they weren’t particularly useful and then we later learned that they were and then we later learned that only some of the masks sometimes worn.

16:58

Well, were useful for blocking transmission.

You take an issue like the vaccines which initially were fantastic against blocking.

Both transmission and severe illness but then because of the variance they became efficient at only locking severe illness and their effectiveness against transmission.

Clearly went down, you had a lot of confusion throughout the pandemic about does this thing spread from services or not?

17:20

And an organization required.

The CDC is is an organization that was required by virtue of its its its establishment within the public health hierarchy to distinguish fact from truth.

And they often struggled to do it.

17:36

And this tells me that it’s just going to be really, really difficult to have a body that scrubs, the internet for truth and doesn’t from time to time get things.

Pretty He famously and catastrophically wrong, does that concern you?

17:54

All right, 100% agree with you.

I don’t know who we would or what we would have point to try and be the Arbiter of Truth a couple years ago or 18 months ago someone suggested on Twitter that the virus originated in a Chinese lab and they were immediately attacked as jingoist you know jingoistic and xenophobic and we all just kind of like whom went after them, right?

18:14

And it ended up that that might in fact, be a plausible explanation.

I’ve changed my mind on that 7:00, I mean that’s an example.

Yeah.

But here’s the thing.

Someone should be allowed to go on Twitter and the Public Square and I believe they should be allowed to say that.

I think people should be allowed to espouse conspiracy theories.

18:31

What?

I have a problem with is Bad actors.

Creating thousands of fake accounts to promote theories or undermine people’s credibility to serve their own Financial interests or to diminish or intimidate critics of Putin.

And I believe that happens.

I think identity would clear up a lot of this problem LinkedIn doesn’t have nearly the amount just just total vile bullshit that Twitter and meta have because they enforce Identity or mostly enforce it I think we should be age gating certain social media.

19:01

I’m just not sure any 13 year, old girl needs to be on Instagram.

Instagram starts from a place of perversion, the algorithms encourage girls women under the age of females under the age of 18 to post pictures and very provocative, you know, positions in revealing clothing and then be evaluated.

19:19

Aided by their peer group and strange men all around around the world.

That just I mean parents just shouldn’t be down with that.

I’m not sure why any 13 year old needs to be on social media.

I’m not sure why social media shouldn’t be verifying identity and having some age gating but I agree with you.

19:36

People deciding what is or is not true or false or rumor.

I think some of the really crazy shit they can do away with but also certain libel laws when Fox reports.

When they knew the voting machines from Dominion were not being weaponized by Venezuela and they reported on this conspiracy theory and legitimised it.

20:02

And there was evidence showing they knew it was false but they put it out there anyways and it cost Dominion a causal Dominion, a lot of economic harm they were sued for libel and then the next day you saw every anchor on Fox say we were wrong.

20:17

There’s no evidence that It had voting machines, weaponize that shit still circulates on social media, they have no such obligation.

So I think there’s a lot of sunlight in between trying to find people who are the Arbiters of Truth and just enforcing basic identity basic libel laws, when these organizations are people know what they’re saying is false.

20:41

And also educating another issue at the intersection of technology and news is this idea of of what kind of stories tend to go viral.

And I’m so interested in this just the way that our emotions create a particular emotional ecosystem online.

20:58

You have a great graph of one of my all-time favorite studies.

The 2012 study by Jonah Berger at Wharton on, what makes online content go viral.

And for those who aren’t familiar with my going on, and on about this, they studied which New York Times articles for the most likely to make the papers most emailed list and they identified that the emotional qualities of those articles that are most likely to ensure virality.

21:19

Anxiety or, and more than anything else, anger, that articles that inspired anger were the most likely to be shared.

And when I think about this study, I always feel a little bit guilty.

Because if I’m really honest with myself, truly, truly honest, I know that when I’m trying to sell the take or a headline, I can always default to anxiety or anger to sell it.

21:43

And so, I feel this pundits, temptation to use the power of anger to my own Advantage.

I want to do You also feel that way about the power of anger in media.

Do you have this complicated Frenemy relationship with this with this quality?

Yeah.

21:58

I don’t have moral Clarity around this because part of the reason I’m successful part of the reason, I’m economically secure as I’ve channeled, my anger into my media and people respond to it.

I should post a lot.

I’ve attacked people personally, I do have a code around attacking people.

Personally, I only do it with, people are much more powerful than me, and when I think the data subdue subjects them to scrutiny, but I recognize my Here has as served me, well professionally online and I’m trying to modulate it and be more cognizant of it.

22:27

And you’re right about the media.

I mean it’s just if it bleeds, it leads 65 of the last 68 days gas prices have gone down.

That’s cause one headline on their way up.

The four months where they were skyrocketing there was 21 New York Times headlines on increasing gas prices.

What I think is interesting if you were to expand, if you were to say, all right, media can only pick one headline for the last hundred years in the West.

22:49

That headline would probably be America and Europe turn back fascism but incredible heroism.

The brains the bronze in the blood of the British, the Americans and the Russians turned back fascism.

If you were to say, you can pick one headline for the last 50 years, it would probably be something along the lines of unexpected unfathomable Global Prosperity.

23:15

If you just had, if you were only allowed one newspaper to sum up the last The years that would be the headline, but that doesn’t look get.

You know, we in CNN we have the situation room and you’re right, all the data shows that we’re like Tyrannosaurus, Rex is where a drawn towards movement and violence.

23:32

And so we have to modulate ourselves and I’m trying to do this.

I yesterday, I had a wonderful flight on JetBlue.

And so, I got the names of a true Circle right now, I’ve got the names of the flight attendants, and I tweeted out the flight number and how outstanding.

And on time and wonderful to fly was Us and I got like, I got like you know I’m you know that the same affirmation whores.

23:53

Anybody else I got like six hundred likes because we’re so in, this is the guy I am.

I’m the guy that’s much more likely to talk about my room service being late or, you know, to take the Twitter as a weapon of Retribution, when I don’t get the treatment as a consumer that I believe I deserve, but I think we just have to modulate that behavior.

24:12

And I have a chapter in the book, on the progress we’ve made, it just has to not acknowledge.

America’s role in the prosperity and freedoms we have more democracies in autocracies.

The World Health Organization in nineteen nineteen eighty set a goal of cutting Global poverty in half and 40 years.

24:33

They cut it in half and 20 years and then we cut it in half.

Again we have eliminated diseases, we talk about inequality in the US but if you pan out and look at the Earth, we’ve actually had this unbelievable Global Equalization, take place.

People are spending more.

24:49

More time than in history donating time and money to people.

They will never meet, we have people all over the world, planting trees to shade of which they will never sit under.

There’s tremendous and America, I believe America has led that March fifty percent of all Global philanthropy starts with us institutions so but that shit just doesn’t make headlines because it’s not that interesting.

25:12

So you have to I think and I do this at the beginning of the book, acknowledge the progress we’ve made it as As as as a species and specifically the role America has played in it.

Yeah.

But the media it doesn’t sell papers that does that stuff doesn’t get you to tune in right?

25:29

You’ve outlined the problem.

So well I I just read a study that made a had a really interesting point.

They said the reason that anger seems to go viral more than kindness is the kindness can spread to the edge of a social network but anger can spread Beyond it.

Anger is like a universal language and way the kindness is not so free.

25:48

Your Tweet is a perfect example.

Uncle Scott Galloway had a great flying experience is interesting information to people who know who Scott is, but it’s not finishing 2nd, it’s not interesting information.

Anyone who doesn’t know who you are?

If you have an amazing story of, I mean, I just literally saw a tweet today of the fact that like a bulldog and a plane, like, had diarrhea and ran up and down the aisle of the plane, that our choice firehose pug.

26:12

That story is funny to anybody.

No one needs to know who tweeted that in order for it to be funny.

And so this anger and awe, can go viral outside of Networks in a way that kindness does not.

And I try to think about ways of folding this into my journalism and I try to in a way, maybe one way to think of it as like a trojan horse of anger, you arrive at a problem with anger, you sell it with catastrophe.

26:34

You say you know America is suffering the fastest declining so life expectancy of any country in the oecd.

This is fucking terrible.

We have to solve it but then once you get people through that door of anger and catastrophizing you, open up the Trojan Horse and what’s inside.

Oh, here’s some solutions.

26:50

Here are some ways that we can think about lowering life expectancy.

Here’s a diatribe on how we make medical education.

A little bit too expensive and long.

And so I mean this I’m sort of giving up the Playbook right here in terms of a lot of my work but like I think that sometimes using anger to get people in the door and it’s like now you’re here.

27:07

And I can tell you what’s useful and what’s true and what’s not necessarily just designed to make you feel like shit.

I don’t know if you ever think about you your own work that way that you know it’s of catastrophizing up front in order to bring people in.

The back.

Absolutely.

And if you want to be really successful in media, you have to be an outstanding catastrophe catastrophe assist.

27:27

I mean that is that is the core competence.

You’ve got to be able to take data and take it to a very ugly place to capture people’s attention and I do that a lot, but what I’m trying to do is to say, okay, here are some proposed Solutions and here’s the Silver Lining I have.

Now in every presentation I do, I do about 80 presentations a year.

27:45

It’s kind of how I make my living is.

I do an entire section.

And I forced myself to do Silver, Linings because I’m naturally a pessimist I struggle with anger and it’s been very economically advantageous to me.

But at the end of the day I’m not sure how much it’s helping Society.

28:01

I just think of it as like the fifth grade you know, occasionally someone did something kind.

There was a lot of kindness kids aren’t kind, but some are.

But the thing that got us all interested was a resource.

If someone started having words, then we surrounded him and start screaming fight fight fight that just summarizes our entire media industrial complex like, Fight fight.

28:20

I got, you know I am in a lot of.

It is starts starts with the man of the woman in the mirror.

I think we all have an obligation to try and take the temperature down a little bit because it went, and I talked about this in the book.

Fifty-four percent of Democrats are worried about their kids marrying.

28:39

A republican, a third of each party thinks the people in the other party are their mortal enemy, and I like to think I’m a student of of World War Two history.

There’s this great colorization of all these World War two photos by this wonderful.

New York Times photojournalist.

28:54

I forget her name anyways, and there’s one of these guys on Omaha.

Beach, waiting into the water, the average age of 26, they were paid on an inflation-adjusted basis, 800 bucks, and I imagine them Being around and looking at us and going.

Oh, you like social media and income inequality, like held out.

29:10

Those are your biggest problems.

Check, check.

What I’m fucking facing here and you can’t solve that.

You can’t be a little nicer to each other.

I imagine I can’t imagine any of these young men had any idea what political party the guys on the left and right.

They just knew the two or three, two of the.

29:25

Three of them were going to get off that beach alive.

And I so I’m, I’m now a Believer and it’s easy to for me to say that I’ve aged out and Social Service, I think we need more connective tissue.

You to realize we’re Americans first, before Republicans Democrats and also we need to we need to acknowledge Americans.

29:42

Best allies will always be other Americans and we’ve lost that.

So I think you know the way the way we are being atomized were the we’re actually geopolitically probably a strong as we’ve ever been where food independent where energy independent regardless of the rise of China.

30:00

We still have the most valuable companies in the world.

We make the best vaccines, no one’s And for the Chinese of the Russian vaccines right now, most important product at last, 50 years, wasn’t a fucking phone.

It was a vaccine and we make the best ones and we made them the fastest, we have the best distribution.

30:16

We still we are the best position Nation globally, economically philosophically spiritually.

And yet, we’re going after each other.

So we’re eating each other from the inside out.

So I’m trying to figure out ways where I’ve stopped shitposting government.

30:32

I try to highlight the FCC are weighed in on one of my tweet threats today, talking about what they’re trying to do.

And I’m immediately, like, thank you for your service and American flag, right?

I realize these people are good.

People doing their level best and everyone is so critical of them, anyways.

30:49

Big speech.

In the interest of being catastrophist that offers Solutions, I want to talk about the state of men in America for a bit.

Your book has some really interesting statistics.

Some alarming statistics to so men’s share of college enrollment has declined to 40 percent.

31:08

That is an all-time low men in.

America are nine times more likely than women to go to jail, 92% of mass Shooters in America are male and sixty-eight percent of those are under the age of 35 and you write, quote more men getting off the ladder.

To Prosperity means more men getting on the path to becoming what I consider the most dangerous cohort in America broke and lonely males.

31:32

I want to talk about a few ways to take that piece of terrible news of anger, inspiring catastrophic news and think about some ways that we can change the situation and you emphasize I love this more paths to the upper middle class and you lay out a couple different ways that we could do that by reforming college and forming some areas around education.

31:54

So let’s go through a few.

One idea that you propose is that we should essentially bribe colleges to expand their freshman seats by threatening to tax their endowments.

Tell me a little bit about this idea and how you think it could help the situation with young men in America.

32:09

So, first up to some, you’re right college enrollment has gone from 60/40, male-to-female to 40 60 but it’s actually worse than that.

When you talk about college graduates, it’s two to one, female 2 males because men drop out at a greater rate.

So, when you’re walking down the New that is America for everyone male college grad.

32:26

You’re going to see two female college grads and this has a knock-on effect and that is women made socioeconomically, horizontally and up men, horizontally and down.

So when there are no educated men out there, women aren’t going to mate with them.

So we’re going to have lower household for formation, a decline in birth rates, which kills an economy.

32:43

So it’s actually, you know, kind of worse than we think.

So, my idea around education, is what I call a grand, bargain.

And a Matting of education.

And that is the reason I’m here with you.

It’s so easy to credit your grit and your character for success, and blame the mark of your failures.

33:00

The reason I’m here with you, the reason I’m economically secure, the reason it’s easy for me to be a loving father, and a good partner.

And I’d like to think a good citizen is because the generosity and Grace, and wisdom of California taxpayers, and the Regents of the University of California, when I apply to UCLA, you were talking about shaking your phone and your wife, getting another, another you getting another kind of crack at it when I applied.

33:22

She’ll lie, the admissions rate was 76% and I had to apply twice.

The admissions rate this year will be six percent.

So, without a degree at UCLA, I wouldn’t have got a job at Morgan Stanley.

I wouldn’t gotten into the MBA school at Hays.

I wouldn’t have started analytics companies.

I wouldn’t have hired and fired 1,400 people and I wouldn’t have paid Thirty or forty million dollars in taxes over the last 20 years, it’s paid off for all of us.

33:45

But now we’ve decided that we’re going to only higher education is only for two cohorts and that is the children of rich.

Velour 77 times more likely to get into an elite University.

Then the bottom 99% or the freakishly remarkable and I can prove to all of us, 99% of our children, will not be freakishly remarkable.

34:03

They will not be in the top 1%.

So I’m not a fan of the federal student debt.

Forgiveness.

I think it should have been targeted around people who go into social service or underpaid Fields with a with three or four hundred billion of the 602.

A trillion that’s going to cost.

You could have gone to our great public universities that teach two-thirds of our kids and said okay this is the deal.

34:22

You’re gonna expand enrollments by six percent a year over the next 10 years and you’re going to double enrollment.

You’re going to, you’re going to double freshman seats.

UCLA is going to go from 6,000 to 12,000 Cal State, Northridge University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, double the enrollments.

34:40

You’re also going to lower cost 2% a year and we’re going to pay for the infrastructure and Technology to get you there.

And we’re going to hold you to a certain level of efficiency which there is a lot of efficiency to be reached out of these universities use.

In technology.

And that?

Where does that get us in 10 years?

34:55

You can have double the enrollments add-on, application, adjusted basis.

Half the cost College isn’t for everybody, because in the third we want thing, we want in exchange for this massive investment.

In addition to its broader Admissions and lower costs is we want a massive investment in non-traditional.

35:11

Non four-year training, a two-year program and cybersecurity a one-year program in specialty construction of nuclear power plants and 18-month program.

And Station and health tech.

There are so many Main Street jobs that pay well that people don’t know how to get into it.

35:30

Fifty percent of Germans have some sort of vocational certification, it’s 5% in the US.

And that’s an investment, not only in America, but it’s especially an investment in young.

Men who don’t have the skills.

Don’t have the discipline.

Don’t have the attributes that call it.

That schools are looking for.

35:45

There are some schools in NYU.

Derek that if they were totally application blind, they not only be 60. 70% female, they’d be 60 or 70 percent Asian female and good for them.

They’re successful.

They have figured out the attributes that colleges want when 7 and 10 high school valedictorians.

36:05

Our Girls when boys are twice as likely to be suspended even when adjusted for Behavior because schools are run by women who see themselves and young girls.

And when a boy and a girl are brought into the principal’s office for cheating.

36:21

That boy is Twice as likely to be suspended.

And once someone is suspended and it with black boys it’s three to five times.

And once a boy is suspended, two to three times is not longer going to college.

So I think a massive increase in freshman seats, a halting to the fetishization of this four-year liberal arts, degree is recognizing.

36:40

Some people don’t have the money.

They don’t have the time that I met inclination.

They just want to learn, how can I make 120 Grand a year?

Installing energy-efficient HVAC.

I want to serve my people.

I want to either.

Probably working with our great armed services company a chance to have a two-year training in certain types of jobs in the military.

36:59

They turn them into officers such that they don’t have to go for four years.

So I think it’s expansion of our College enrollments decrease in costs and also just a massive leveling up around vocational programs because if you started affirmative action for men, it probably become so politicized, it doesn’t work and it enrages people, I think what we need more broadly is Recognize that in the last 40 years as a percentage of GDP the wealth controlled by people under the age of 40 has gone from 19% to 9.

37:31

We need to make a massive investment in our young people.

We’ve just kind of soak them.

The two biggest tax, deductions are mortgage interest and capital gains who owns homes.

And stocks old people who rents and makes all the money from salaries young people.

So my approach to helping men, if you will, is to just level up all young people and I think that will disproportionately help young men.

37:52

Men and then you’ll see more mating taking place because we need more economically and emotionally viable.

Young men.

You said so much that I want to follow up on but I also want to make sure we get to Tech.

I guess I’ll just restricted to a comment and a question.

The comment is that it’s really difficult.

38:08

I think to talk about these issues and I think these issues should be talked about to be clear, but I think it’s difficult to talk about them.

Sometimes about being accused of being a men’s rights activist or your face.

You think you’ve tried it laughing without being called and Route 8, with a college degree.

That’s what I’ve been getting called on the inner anyways.

38:25

I’m sorry, go ahead.

Well, one of the reasons I think is that and this is how it sounds a little bit testicle.

But there’s more variation among male outcomes, men are more likely to become billionaires.

They’re also more likely become Mass Shooters.

They’re more likely to earn two hundred thousand dollars.

38:42

There are more likely to fail out of college and there’s more variation, which means that for every Mass shooter that you point to and say, We have a crisis of broken only men someone else can point to a man they think is lonely but is a billionaire and that variation sometimes serves to confuse us but that variation is I think really important just to just to State as a fact.

39:06

The question I wanted to put you on education is that we just come out of a two-year period where we saw the benefits of virtual work for lots of people and virtually working out.

For lots of people remote work went up like crazy and Palatine went up like crazy.

39:23

It also came down like crazy in terms of stocks but as a social phenomenon it’s still a big damn thing.

Why do you think it’s been so difficult for online education to have its post pandemic moment.

So I got this wrong.

I started an online education firm and it’s struggled.

39:39

We came out of the gates just gangbusters because people were stuck in their homes and thought okay I’ll take a class and I mean we were doing classes with 1,400 people spending 1,000 Exit pop, but the MPS is of 68.

They were happy, they were thought they were good.

39:56

They thought I’m getting a decent met, you know, proximity or decent facsimile of a class that would cost 7,000 at MIT or NYU Stern for a thousand.

And then, six months ago, it all just fell off a cliff because the last thing people want to do is be in their homes, learning and staring and staring at a screen online.

40:13

Ed has not had its moment Coursera to you all these online.

Education companies have crashed and I’m not Early.

Sure why I think that there’s still one less people are going to college to people now want to be out and the ones who are really qualified.

40:32

Want that certification that comes from what are the strongest brands in the world and that is universities.

But online Edge is hasn’t had its moment.

We keep waiting for it to happen, the way it happened in retail and media, you know, at some point online, you know, the digitization of these industries has happened.

40:52

It just Just hasn’t happened an online.

Ed.

I’m curious what you think because I can’t figure this out.

I’ve gotten it wrong.

I don’t know.

My best bet is it has something to do with the sheepskin effect and accreditation the sheepskin effect.

Just being that, you know, going to Harvard doesn’t just mean you get a Harvard Education.

41:10

It means you get a diploma that says, I graduated from Harvard University, I think it’s, it takes time for those sort of status games to be won by startups.

In fact there, what was the last great American University?

Is it Stanford?

41:25

Which was founded.

What 100 years ago?

110 years ago, it’s been a A long-ass time, since a great American University was started as Arizona State to a certain extent, is doing lots of work in terms of bringing people and sure into the into the middle, and upper middle class.

But a truly, great Elite American University.

It’s been a long time because status is so hard one and it’s hard for status to be made abundant.

41:44

So by definition, the more competition you have the harder it is to introduce a new competitor.

That’s number one.

And I think number two, what did I say accreditation?

I think that there are lots of jobs America likes a teachers for example, where there’s a piece of paper that you need in order to be particularly competitive in these positions.

42:06

My wife is a grad student in Clinical Psychology, there is a long process to be able to be a therapist and to a certain extent, you know, you want to say of course there should be these people have people’s lives in their hands but we do make it pretty difficult to get into certain occupations and as long as there’s this accreditation barrier in front of online education.

42:23

A lot of people reasonably aren’t going to see on that education as a reasonable substitute.

Route for a public for univer year university.

We you tapped into something, powerful, and that is a recognition that universities.

We don’t educate, we certify.

And that is the hardest thing about getting a degree from Stanford is getting in, almost everybody can graduate.

42:43

And it’s not, it’s not like the Navy Seals, were, I think we educate and we certify.

I do think that Stanford and Harvard educate.

But the certification signal I think, is so powerful that it makes it really difficult to figure out.

Wait, exactly how much smarter Is a Stanford comp sci grad, then a mid-tier, public university comp, sci grad.

43:05

I think it’s hard sometimes to see what the knowledge advantages because the network effect is.

So large, you graduate from Stanford cops.

I, you walk down the street into a VCS office, you graduate comp sci at, you know, Stony Brook University or something or a, you know, a public school in New York.

43:24

I don’t think you have the same network and sheepskin advantages.

So I think it’s very difficult.

Not just to know what our college is doing.

What are they actually?

What human capital are they actually giving graduates?

I think it’s actually I think it’s a really really hard question to figure out maybe that’s one reason why it’s hard to disrupt.

43:43

But you talk about Stanford 40 or 15 miles or 60 miles is Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

I don’t think the education between the two schools.

Is that markedly different.

I think they both do an out have outstanding faculties and have do an outstanding job of Getting there’s just no comparison if you want to be a venture capitalist and you walk with a Stanford degree, you’re just you’re on ramp is is that you know, the width of the Mississippi and a Cal State Poly, San Luis Obispo you better know somebody and they better really like you or you’re not even getting an interview and Andreessen Horowitz.

44:17

So I think the certification around these Brands and these brands are the most popular brands in the world.

Now what you talked about is accreditation and that is in order to be eligible to borrow money, you have to be accredited and who runs Accreditation institutions, the incumbents.

So the number of new universities has grown at point four percent over the last 40 years and we have a very dangerous, Gestalt and American society.

44:40

And it’s a rejectionist sort of NIMBY has culture.

And that is once I have a college degree, once I have a home, once I’ve established Tech dominance with a company, the strategy is to make it harder for other people to get a degree.

Make it harder for other people to build housing, which will drive the prices of my home that I own up.

44:58

Make it harder for any new entrants into the atmos into the, into the sector and its total bullshit.

And how many times have all of us said I would never get into the college.

I applied in a kind of Say it With Pride because that means that degree from MIT is just worth so much more now.

45:15

Well, that means your daughter’s not getting in boss or maybe the daughter of a Stanford grad will get in because he or she is likely rich.

But we you know, America in my view especially a higher ed is the tip of the spear, any major A movement or philosophy or thinking or nuclear weapon or movement starts usually on University campus.

45:35

So that the tip of a spear of America and it used to be college is about, let’s find on remarkable kids and give them a remarkable shot.

I got into Berkeley graduate school, the 2.27 undergraduate GPA because they’re like, you know, you’re not qualified but your native son, a California.

We’re going to help you.

45:51

That’s what that’s what education America is supposed to be.

How do we give a real shot to as many people as possible?

And where it’s morphed to How do we identify the top 1% and turn them into billionaires and here’s the problem.

Even if you buy into that, which I wouldn’t.

But even if you buy into that, there’s no way to predict greatness based on a bloodline or anything.

46:11

You can measure at the age of 18, I didn’t have my shit together at 18.

I mean you did you got my senses you got out of the gates really fast.

I was a fucking idiot at 18.

I mean it was an idiot.

I was I knew how to make bombs bombs out of household items and that’s about it.

That was my major talent but there’s a great University of California said, not only going to make a great education accessible, we’re going to make it affordable and now, it’s not.

46:34

Now, you unless you have a patent, Captain the lacrosse team and build wells in Africa, you’re not getting in, you get Arbitrage down to this Joy bag of doughnuts University because your parents have believe they failed as parents, unless they get their kid into college.

And because of this cartel, which is much more powerful and much more corrupt than OPEC.

46:53

In my view, we all raise prices in lockstep a bunch of Youth end up.

Signing for up for this predatory loans, to go to a second-tier school.

They pay a Mercedes prize for a Hyundai product, and we end up with a bunch of indebted young people who can’t get married, can’t form households, can’t buy a house.

47:11

Can’t start a business.

I’ll because me and my colleagues wake up every morning and ask ourselves one question, how do we pay ourselves more and reduce our accountability, and we found the ultimate ultimate strategy and that’s the lvmh Hermes, Chanel strategy constrict Supply.

47:26

Artificially such that the People who have that degree in the Punic been the people who got on the faculty, have an easier time, raising money, and paying themselves more in by starting bullshit departments where, there’s no accountability.

That was a rant.

That was a ranch that was her and I have to ask you a question.

47:46

Metaverse crypto.

What do you think is more bullshit?

Look, if it requires some Nuance, you’ve looked at this.

Like, okay, let’s start with web three.

There’s crypto, there’s n FTS and there’s, you know, dowels decentralized, autonomous organizers.

48:02

I love the concept of a dow.

They haven’t taken off, but I love the idea of bringing a bunch of people together with a sole purpose mission to either buy an asset or go into a company.

I think when the gas fees come down, I think it’s a really it’s like an SP V.

That is more egalitarian, write a special purpose vehicle.

48:17

I think it’s a neat idea.

I don’t know if it’s going to change the world and I’ve teased I’m actually quite bullish on FTS because I see my kids.

Mine skins on Fortnight.

I don’t it I think a younger generation has an easier time assigning value to a virtual good and if you can create scarcity around 400 Prince of an artist and break the mold and say, there’s only four hundred verses one.

48:40

I don’t see any reason why you can’t translate that to digital and because we’re increasingly finding mates.

Online being able to Signal your worth as a mate by having the Chanel logo.

With from an mft and you’re one of a thousand people that has the Chanel coin or it’s tokenize.

48:58

I think there’s real potential there.

There’s something there, it’s interesting that you’re pointing out a potential crypto, that requires the construction of supply and requires the invention of the very luxury.

That at least ethically you are against in these other debate against education and against it when it comes to public, well, I’m against when it comes to education.

49:20

I think scarcity.

Vishal.

Scarcity is quite frankly, probably the best business strategy in history.

It’s the reason I want to iPhone.

It’s a reason I by 1200 dollar, Bruno cuccinelli, cuccinelli, cashmere tops, the make me feel 56, again.

I don’t, I don’t think we should all be walking around and uniforms for the lowest cost possible.

49:38

I think, scarcity and aspirational value and being one of the billion, wealthiest people in the world with my iPhone, that signals, I’m more creative and I’m a better Storyteller and that you’re more likely.

If you have sex with me or your kids are more likely to survive because I wear a Panerai, not a Echo.

I buy into all of that and I think there’s nothing wrong with it.

49:54

I think our public institutions are public servants, and I understand that not.

Everyone has a Birthright to go to a good school.

I understand that Harvard probably never going to be nor should be 150,000 people, but when UCLA has to take its admissions rate, from seventy six percent to 6 percent, we’re just missing out on a lot of great human capital that could be, generals could be, could be Representatives, could be great, judges could be great, heads of nonprofit, we’re just missing a ton of great human capital.

50:21

Is spilling off the side into you know, into the waste water especially among young men.

So I don’t like I don’t like scarcity as a strategy and public education.

Now back to coins or tokens Bitcoin is genius because of scarcity.

50:37

It’s figured out a way with math, problems and energy consumption and that it has scarcely credibility.

People believe that Bitcoin has more discipline than the u.s. dollar people.

Tell me when tell me when the feds going to stop printing money.

No one no one knows.

One Believes it’s ever going to do it.

50:54

Tell me when Bitcoins going to stop mining people say 21 million coins and they believe it and this kind of Genius method around, it gets more expensive and harder and greater energy consumption.

With every incremental coin is kind of a genius strategy.

So it’s become sort of a legitimate store value etherium.

51:11

I believe, it’s going to be worth more in terms of market cap than Bitcoin at some point because it does appear to have utility.

I get it seems like the majority of these entities are being minted there.

So I would go coins, there’s a consolidation taking rapid consolidation, taking place.

51:27

I do I think everything else is probably going to 0 and if T is I’m bullish on douse Q, legal construct, metaverse.

That’s a complicated question.

There’s already a ton of metal versus, you know, epic is a meta verse FIFA, you know, Twitter or all metal versus they all work really well VR I think is totally overhyped, 40 to 60 percent of people who put an Oculus on within 20 minutes or Feeling nauseous in.

51:53

What is arguably the most striking symbol of arrogance of any Corporation meta believes that it can take gaming entertainment, education and work and create a metaverse around all of that.

When the gaming industry has been at it for 40 years and is created one competent metaverse and that’s around gaming.

52:12

So, the Oculus is a, in my opinion, Dead on Arrival.

And this notion that meta can can build a kind of a parallel, The Universe I could not have thought of a strategy to better kneecap meta than what they have decided to do.

I just I love it.

52:28

I’ve been a big credit of it all the time for the last few years.

I think it is insane.

I think they’d be better off taking 15 billion dollars into the street and burning it.

And having a bonfire with it.

I think that would create more shareholder value.

It just, I don’t get it.

They are huge potential VR.

52:46

It’ll go the same place in most kind of Cutting Edge technology laserdiscs.

It’ll be for video games, and pie.

Learn.

I just don’t see, I think VR is an enormous head.

Fake a are walking around with your iPhone holding it up to an apartment in SoHo and saying I’d like to live here and it shows you which apartments are available and you can click on a button immediately.

53:05

Start messaging the broker all kinds of you plip on your phone and, you know, you get to see who’s single.

I mean, there’s all kinds of cool things that they are and I think I think apple is going to dominate.

I’m not a big fan of glasses or putting anything on your head.

53:20

I think that one thing that’s snap and meta and now Apple get wrong is that people are very particular about what they will put on their face specifically the glass that’s exactly right.

They want it to signify, they want to raise their cheekbones because that communicates, they’re less prone to infection or their offspring will be.

53:40

So people only put shit on their face and makes them look more youthful or makes them look just more attractive as a mate and I don’t think any of these things do that.

So I’m very skeptical of stuff going on.

Face.

I think I think it’s a while before that happens.

I’m so glad that I got the tech, takes Scott Galloway, thank you so so much Derek.

54:00

I’m just parroting back, all your stuff.

I’m the old dog learning new tricks from The Young dog.

It was it was a pleasure to learn at the feet of the old dog.

I really appreciate it.

Thanks again.

Thanks Tara.

Congratulations on all your success.

Thank you for listening.

Plain English is produced by Devon manzi.

54:15

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