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Logan Ury & Scott Galloway: Why Young Men Are Falling Behind

How fewer male role models leave young men short of school, work, and dating; the mating gap widens as girls keep moving ahead through school and career.

Logan UryguestScott GallowayguestSteven Bartletthost
Mar 31, 20252h 26mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:03

    Intro

    1. LU

      This is a critical conversation around truly the future of humanity.

    2. SG

      But we don't like to talk about this.

    3. SB

      This report is absolutely shocking. This is a crisis and young men are struggling, so I sat down with two leading voices on societal issues to discuss the rise of millions of lonely, addicted men. And the most important question is, how do we fix this? So let's start with this graph. It shows that young women are now out- out-earning young men.

    4. LU

      It is true. We have given women so many tools to achieve, but now boys are being left behind.

    5. SB

      And that the number of males aged 16 to 24 who are not in education or employment has increased by a staggering 40%.

    6. LU

      Yeah.

    7. SG

      And the data I've seen is that when the woman in the relationship starts making more money, they become twice as likely to get divorced.

    8. LU

      Because traditionally women seek partners who have more economic or social status than they do, and emotional intelligence is the new currency in dating. But these guys were raised not to be emotionally intelligent-

    9. SG

      Yeah.

    10. LU

      ... but to be a provider.

    11. SG

      That a lack of male involvement in kids' lives is a big factor leading to this. And once they lose a male role model, they become much more likely to engage in criminal activity.

    12. LU

      And so we are just creating a lot of these angry young single men who are saying, "Well, this is rigged against me."

    13. SB

      We actually emboss an audience to write in, and this guy, Jeffrey, wrote in and said, "My entire life, I have never felt like I was good enough, like I could never earn my place in society."

    14. SG

      It's devastating. That's something that's controversial, I'm getting pushback on. I think the secret weapon for men that they don't leverage is to... (instrumental music plays)

    15. SB

      So we wanna hear a woman's perspective on it.

    16. LU

      Honestly, what I would do is... (instrumental music plays)

    17. SB

      This has always blown my mind a little bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to this show. So could I ask you for a favor before we start? If you like this show and you like what we do here and you wanna support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button. And my commitment to you is, if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback, we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to, and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so much.

  2. 2:03 – 6:02

    The Lost Boys Report

    1. SB

      Lost Boys. In March 2025, The Center of Social Justice released this report which has sh- sent a couple of shock waves across the UK, especially across the media. And just to give you a little bit of a sort of preface and some context on what this report says, at the start of the report, Andy Cook, who's the CEO of the report, says, "We listened to those working on the front line, the teachers, the youth workers, the charities, and the parents who s- day in, day out see the struggles of young people, and in recent years, they've been telling us the same thing. Something is going on with our boys." And because of this, they wrote this report called The Lost Boys which looks at all of the- the different facets of why young men are struggling. And in this report they say, "Boys are struggling in education, they're more likely to take their own lives, they're finding it more difficult to find stable work, and far too often they're caught in crime. The numbers don't lie. Something has shifted and we cannot ignore it any longer. It's not just about Andrew Tate or online influencers. These are symptoms, not the cause. The deeper truth is that too many boys are growing up without the guidance, discipline, and purpose they need to survive." And there's some frankly horrific graphs which actually sent the CEO of my company, a lady called Georgie, um, into quite an emotional state. She- she texted me and told me she was crying look at- looking at some of these graphs which we'll talk about today. But this is a subject that I know both of you know very, very well, so I'm keen to get into exactly why this is happening and what we can do about it. But to preface this discussion to understand where you both come from and the perspective you have, Logan, who are you?

    2. LU

      Yes.

    3. SB

      And what do you do?

    4. LU

      I'm a behavioral scientist turned dating coach. So that means that I take all of the lessons from the field of behavioral science, how we make decisions, and then I apply them to the field of relationship science, which is how love works. And so, I'm really passionate about this topic, because for a long time I've found that wherever I go, people say, "Oh, I know all these great single women. Do you know any great single guys?" And I just thought, "Oh, okay, maybe that's always been happening." But when I actually dug into the data, I saw that we are truly in a dating crisis right now and there is a huge mating gap between the type of men that women are looking for and the type of men that are available. This is a critical conversation around truly the future of humanity, because marriage rates are down. That means birth rates are down. And so this conversation is extremely important.

    5. SB

      And what sort of reference points do you draw upon? Because you've got some sort of unique access to data, right?

    6. LU

      Right. So I work at Hinge for the last five years, and so I have access to tons of data there around how daters are dating now, how daters are dating differently, what sets successful daters apart, and then I also have conducted my own research for this conversation, so I sent out a survey to thousands of my newsletter subscribers and people were very excited to talk about this, and I've conducted a lot of new research that I'll be sharing for the first time on this topic.

    7. SG

      Um, so I make my living looking at data and trying to come up with insights. I spent most of my career looking at data to try and make, add shareholder value and then I have the luxury now of focusing on things I'm really interested in, and I just started s- stumbled upon data about that reflects that the cohort that has ascended fastest globally is women. And this is a wonderful thing and a huge collective victory, and the group that has fallen furthest fastest is men in Western markets. And the data was just so overwhelming, and also, I was close to being one of these men. I didn't have a lot of economic or romantic, um, prospects when I was a young man, but there were programs and an environment where I could be successful. And I worry that some of the temptations of technology, the economic trends, uh, had they been where they are now then, I could have very easily ended up a statistic. So I just sort of relate to these problems.

    8. SB

      I- I'm keen to understand from your perspectives what you think, like, the first domino

  3. 6:02 – 10:27

    How Did This Happen?

    1. SB

      that falls in a young man's life or a young boy's life that causes the outcomes we're talking about today. Like, what is, where is the first place to start?

    2. SG

      So, the research I've looked at and Richard Reeves from the A- American Institute on Boys and Men, it's some good research here. The, the point of failure, if you reverse engineered issues too, is when a boy loses a male role model. And that is, in the US, we have the second most single family, uh, parent homes behind Sweden. And what's interesting is that in single parent homes, girls actually have similar outcomes, similar rates of high school attendance, income, rates of self-harm. Boys, once they lose a male role model, become much more likely to be incarcerated, engage in criminal activity, harm themselves. It ends up that while being physically stronger, boys are emotionally and mentally much weaker. So, the loss of a male role model is, I would argue, kind of the first point of failure that predicts that a kid, a boy is gonna struggle. And that has impacts on family court, economic policy, and just general in our s- general zeitgeist in our society, where men need to step up. If we want better men, we need to be better men.

    3. LU

      Yeah.

    4. SG

      We need to step into that void.

    5. LU

      Another one that Richard Reeves talks about is that there's not enough men in the education system.

    6. SG

      100%.

    7. LU

      So, I believe when Tim Walz was a teacher, one out of three teachers in his school was a man, but now it's like 24%.

    8. SG

      Yeah.

    9. LU

      And so where do kids spend most of their time? In school. And who's teaching them? Mostly not men.

    10. SG

      And it's, and you think, "Well, w- women can be fantastic teachers." And it's true.

    11. LU

      Right.

    12. SG

      But after school programs, not as many coaches.

    13. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SG

      They typ- typically are ma- male. Not as much compensation, so they don't get rewarded for being coaches.

    15. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    16. SG

      And if you just think about it logically, who does a teacher champion? A teacher champions someone that reminds them of themselves when they were a kid. So, a- and also just look at the, there's incredible bias, I would argue, against males in school. A boy is twice as likely to be suspended on a behavior-adjusted basis, twice as likely to be suspended for the exact same infraction as a girl.

    17. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    18. SG

      Five times as likely if it's a Black boy. And so, and once you're suspended twice, it probably means you're not going to college. In addition, look at the behaviors we promote in school. Sit still, be a pleaser, be organized, raise your hand. You basically just described a girl. And so, and also, quite frankly, a lot of the jobs that require tertiary education attainment, there's more women now in law school and medical school.

    19. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    20. SG

      And quite frankly, good for them. They're just better at that. They're better students. They deserve to make more money. They deserve it. But the reality is, it has huge ramifications when we no longer have wood, auto, or metal shop. They've gone away.

    21. LU

      Right.

    22. SG

      So, those used to be a pass-

    23. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    24. SG

      ... to do some middle class jobs. They've been replaced by computer science. And so what are the paths for-

    25. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    26. SG

      ... the two thirds of males that aren't gonna end up with a traditional liberal arts college degree?

    27. LU

      Right. And just to add a few more stats to that. So, we know that 70% of valedictorians in the US are female, and women are much more likely to be in the top 10% of their class. But then on the SAT, men and women, or young men and women earn the same scores.

    28. SG

      Hmm.

    29. LU

      So, there's definitely something happening in schools that is prioritizing the female experience or that women are better at that. We definitely wanna celebrate the success of women. I think the changes that have happened over the last 50 years are incredible, and I feel like I'm a beneficiary of that, and so is my daughter. If you look at all of the books that my daughter was given when she was born, they're about great women in history, "You Can Be Anything", "Dream Big, Little One". And so I feel like we have given women so many tools to achieve, and in many ways those have been manifested, but now boys are being left behind. And so this isn't a zero sum game. I was nervous about coming on here because I thought people would say, "She's a male apologist. She doesn't see how much women are still struggling." I think everyone is struggling. I think life is hard.

    30. SG

      Yeah.

  4. 10:27 – 14:29

    Fatherless Homes

    1. LU

    2. SB

      It turns out, as you were speaking, I was looking at the stats around fatherless homes, and it turns out that there has been a significant increase in the amount of young boys being raised without a father present. About 25% live without a biological, step, or adoptive father, according to the National Fatherhood Initiative. And the US has the world's highest rate of children living in a single parent household, and 92% of the time, that's with the mother alone. And in 1968, only 11% of children lived without, lived with only their mother, compared to 21% in 2020. So, that's doubled in the last 50 odd years, which is pretty s- pretty staggering. And then obviously the consequence of that, as Scott described, is that individuals from f- father absent homes were 300% more likely to carry drugs, to carry guns, to deal drugs, um, and all of, and there's this huge plethora of mental health consequences if you don't have a father in the home. I mean, what do we do about that? And like where are the fathers?

    3. SG

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      Where are the role m- where are they going?

    5. SG

      Well, it's, it's complicated. There's, there's male abandonment. There's just no getting around it. But also going back to family courts, sometimes the courts and the finan- you know, our economy make it difficult for a man to stay involved in the kids' lives. And also, um, you know, family court's getting better at saying, "All right, the kids..." Uh, I mean, just a, a, a personal anecdote. I, uh, have a friend who recently has gone through divorce, two daughters, very much wants to be involved in their lives. They're 13 and 15 year old girls, and quite frankly dad's there on the weekends and they got their own thing going on.

    6. LU

      Hmm.

    7. SG

      And they don't necessarily make dad a priority. And dad's not around for what I call the garbage time, and that is the, what, what I found with my boys is the moments of serendipity and connection happen randomly. When you're taking them to school, when you're out in the back-... you know, jumping around or playing, whatever it is, i- i- these garbage moments. And when you're not in the household, for whatever reason, there's just, there isn't that much garbage time. And I think slowly but surely, they lose, sometimes, connection with their kid. There's also, there's something weird going on, and I'm curious, Logan, if you've got data on this. But you have a one-year-old daughter, right? You're gonna be amazed. When my unfortunate boy had a Halloween party, and the boys are, like, cute, but they're dopes. They're boys. There are some 14-year-old girls who look like they could be the junior senator from Pennsylvania.

    8. LU

      (laughs)

    9. SB

      (laughs)

    10. SG

      They're five foot 10-

    11. LU

      Yeah.

    12. SG

      ... they're articulate. "Hello, Mr. Galloway. How are you? What a lovely home." And the boys were like, "Uh, no." And l- and biologically, girls mature faster.

    13. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SG

      Their prefrontal cortex is 18 months ahead of a boy's. An 18-year-old girl or woman is competing against a 16 and a half year old when she's competing against an 18-year-old. And they're even finding that it's getting worse, that women or girls are starting to menstruate earlier, and boys' testicles are descending later. So, the gap in maturity, biological gap, they think might even be growing, and they don't know if it's pesticides? But when I meet my, uh, eighth graders' colleagues, there's a huge difference between-

    15. LU

      Colleagues. (laughs) Yeah.

    16. SG

      Yeah, between the s-

    17. SB

      (laughs)

    18. SG

      ... between the boys and the girls.

    19. LU

      Yeah.

    20. SG

      And Richard's, one of Richard's suggestions is that we red shirt boys, that we hold them a year back. The boys start kindergarten at six, whereas girls start at five.

    21. LU

      So, the research in the UK shows that 70% of girls are ready to start school at age five, but many fewer boys are capable of starting at that age, in terms of readiness. And so, if you were to hold boys back, then they might be on more equal playing field for those critical moments of four to five, of 13 to 14, where the brains really develop at a different stage.

    22. SB

      I w- I wanna talk about that sort of early education experience and how it can be adapted, but also-

    23. LU

      Yeah.

    24. SB

      ... just like if the environment of the classroom is right for boys. As we were talking about the point about fathers' listlessness as well, I found this graph, which is also pretty shocking, and it, it goes into what y- something you said, Scott. It basically shows

  5. 14:29 – 16:41

    Are Boys Mentally Weaker?

    1. SB

      that the absence of a father on a boy-

    2. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    3. SB

      ... causes depressive symptoms. But the absence of a father on a young girl doesn't cause the same depressive symptoms.

    4. SG

      Yeah. Yeah.

    5. SB

      Which means that the absence of a father for a boy r- drastically increases their chance of being depressed, whereas if for a girl, it doesn't.

    6. LU

      There's a lot of other-

    7. SB

      Which is...

    8. LU

      ... graphs that look like that, in terms of women and young girls are just actually a lot more resilient in childhood. So, if you are in foster care as a young woman, you have less negative outcomes than young men. And so there's this theory in parenting of, is your child an orchid or a dandelion? And so the orchid really needs very particular situations to grow, they need a certain amount of light, they need to be watered in a particular way, and they'll thrive in some situations, and they will not thrive in others. Whereas a dandelion can really survive in many situations. And so women, young girls tend to be more dandelions in childhood. And so that's why when you have a boy and a girl both in negative situations, the boy is more negatively impacted.

    9. SG

      Boys are just weaker. There's a crazy stat I read that two, uh, 15-year-olds, a boy and a girl, both sexually molested. And to be clear, they're equally heinous crimes. But the boy who's sexually molested is six to 10 times more likely to kill himself later in life. It ends up that boys are just less resilient.

    10. LU

      Do you think there's somehow more of a stigma there? Like, I wonder why that's so dramatic.

    11. SG

      Shame, they can't talk about it.

    12. LU

      Yeah.

    13. SG

      Get uncomfortable.

    14. LU

      Yeah.

    15. SG

      Feel there's ............................ There's a lack... I mean, I think and just until a few years ago, the social incentives were to never speak about it.

    16. LU

      Right.

    17. SG

      I was on Lewis Howes' podcast, and he just openly said, "I was sexually abused as a child." And it was so shocking for me-

    18. LU

      Wow.

    19. SG

      ... to hear this big, handsome guy.

    20. LU

      Yeah.

    21. SG

      I don't think he would've said it 10 or 20 years ago.

    22. LU

      I-

    23. SG

      I think people would've assumed that it was his fault-

    24. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    25. SG

      ... or made him less of a man. So, I, I think a lot of that has hopefully gotten better.

    26. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    27. SG

      But it... We just have to acknowledge boys, mentally and emotionally, are weaker than girls.

    28. SB

      Lewis Howes didn't admit that until a couple of years ago.

    29. SG

      Is that right?

    30. SB

      So, he's lived with that his whole life, and-

  6. 16:41 – 22:39

    Is the Education System the Problem?

    1. SB

      I think, having dysfunction in his relationships and a few other things had happened that he decided he wanted to say it publicly for the first time. Which, again, feeds into your point. We actually, um, asked some of our audience to write in, and one of the people that wrote in was a teacher in a primary/preschool. And she said to me, she was an anonymous teacher in Germany, and she says, "Every year, it seems like more and more children, always boys, have this new energy to destroy the classroom dynamics. These boys almost always have two things in common, a lack of boundaries at home and unsupervised, unlimited access to all kinds of content on the internet, e.g. porn. Their perception of what is okay and what is right becomes completely distorted. I have tried so many things, and every year, it's becoming an even bigger challenge." (sighs) Young boys in school. So, one proposal is to delay education for boys-

    2. SG

      Mm-hmm.

    3. SB

      ... put them in education later. Is the classroom itself a problem? Like, the sitting in school, listening to someone speak at you? Someone proposed to me on this podcast before that boys need more sort of practical play, and the classroom isn't designed for that. I wasn't sure if that was...

    4. SG

      Well, in, in single-sex boys school, they end up with double the amount of recess time. And that is, they've, they have... I, I equate boys to dogs. A happy dog is a tired dog, and if it's not tired, if it ha- doesn't get to run, it's gonna cause trouble. And I feel the same way about boys. So, in these schools where they decide what's best for the boys, there's usually more exercise and more free play, and more roughhousing, co-ed schools. And I... You're also seeing, I think with boys... I mean, there's just... We d-... by even acknowledging that men play a critical royal- role in boys' lives a few years ago, that was seen as sexist.

    5. SB

      (laughs) .

    6. SG

      What, you mean, what, you're saying Moms can't do this? And I can just tell you, there are certain moments when my partner needs me to weigh in. I don't know if it's the depth of my voice, my physical size, the way they relate to me, the fact that I'm not... You need Dad, (laughs) or that's what I have found, especially with boys. They need, almost like that- that- that, not physical intimidation, but it's almost like they begin tuning out their mom over time. I mean, they're incredibly close to their mother, they look to her for nurturing. When they really have a problem, I find they go to Mom. But they will constantly test the boundaries, constantly. And I think a lotta- a lotta single mothers, quite frankly, with boys, just can't keep a lid on that kid. They can't control the kid. So, and I think you're finding at schools, when there's no male kind of, I don't know, involvement, or that- that, I don't know, what I'll call physical presence, and then you add on this Dopa, uh, machine, that they get used to squeezing a Dopa bag a hundred times a day as they need it, and then you take the Dopa bag away, they're just more prone to emotional outbursts. I'm curious if you've done any research around why that- is that emotional outburst more common among boys than girls?

    7. SB

      I haven't done that research, but I am imagining that there's moms out there that are raising boys on their own, and they might be like, "Yes, it is hard, but what do I do?"

    8. SG

      Right.

    9. SB

      And so, for that boy, who isn't taught by a lot of guys in school and isn't in the Boy Scouts, which doesn't exist anymore, or doesn't have big brothers, big sisters, like, what does that mom do?

    10. SG

      So with that- uh, you talk- brought up Boy Scouts. In America, there's- there's Scouts for America-

    11. SB

      Right.

    12. SG

      ... and it can be boys and girls.

    13. SB

      Right.

    14. SG

      But Girl Scouts have their own single sex-

    15. SB

      Yeah.

    16. SG

      ... but Boy Scouts aren't allowed to have their own-

    17. SB

      Right.

    18. SG

      ... single sex. So, the questions are, I- you know, what do you do? And I think that we need a societal zeitgeist that says immediately, if there's no longer a male involved, we have to get other men involved-

    19. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    20. SG

      ... and acknowledge that that's not being sexist, that that's, you know, that that's important, that you get men involved. And I think, so- so I came from a single parent household, raised in- by a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary. Light of my life. As soon as my dad was gone, and then he had to move away for work, she got other men involved in my life. And I had wonderful men involved in my life. I had a ............................ Neighbor down the hall came in with his girlfriend and said, "Do you wanna go horser- horseback riding? You take me horseback riding." I don't know if men would be comfortable doing that, uh, in today's age. So, getting men involved in their lives. After school programs. Boy Scouts. I had a lot of wonderful men. I used to go camping with, you know, it, and there were men everywhere involved in my life. And I- I worry that a lot of those institutions-

    21. SB

      Yeah.

    22. SG

      ... and also, there's a reticence and a hesitance for men to get involved in a boy's life that isn't theirs, for fear they're gonna be perceived as something's wrong with them.

    23. SB

      I was thinking that. So if we have less men in the home raising the children, and then we go to school and if- if the stat says that 72% of teachers in middle school are women as well, there's no men at school either, it's no wonder that boys are struggling so severely at such a young, early- early age, for so many reasons, because one would assume that they're being socialized in the same way as girls. I'm seeing, I've got m- a- a mother at home, don't have a father, I've got women at school, don't have male teachers. I mean, that's a controversial thing to say. I'm sure it used to be, but I think people are waking up a little bit now.

    24. SG

      We need more male teachers. There's more f- there's more female fighter pilots per capita than male kindergarten teachers. There's just- there's an absence, there are some boys, not some, there are millions of boys in America whose first male role model is a prison guard.

    25. SB

      Yeah.

    26. SG

      There are just no men in their lives. After school programs being canceled. No women, very- very few men K through 12. Dad's not around. There are- there are communi- there are literally communities, you read articles about it, where it's like, "Where are the men?"

    27. SB

      Yeah, that- that's what I'm trying to figure out. Where are they? Between-

    28. SG

      Online. (laughs)

    29. SB

      Doesn't look like they're in work.

  7. 22:39 – 29:58

    Where Are Male Role Models?

    1. SB

    2. SG

      The- the-

    3. SB

      They're not in college.

    4. SG

      The reality is, there just aren't, for a lot of reasons, a host of reasons, male- a lack of male involvement in kids' lives is a big, big factor leading to this. There are other factors, there's socioeconomic factors, there's biological factors, there's a lack of vocational training, there's outsourcing of many of the jobs that made a- a man's path to middle class viable. When you wanna talk about the UK, a big problem is the lack of growth.

    5. SB

      Yeah.

    6. SG

      There's just not, there's not a lot of income opportunities for a young man who's not exceptional. And what we've seen in the US is essentially, if you look at our economic policies and college, it's never been better to be remarkable. Like, if you're in the top 10% of your high school class, you're gonna make more money than the top 10% did, 10, 20, 30... If you end up at Google, you're- you're gonna make... A kid at Google who's amazing, computer science degree, can make millions of dollars by the time they're 30. But I can prove to every one of us, mathematically, that 99% of our children are not in the top 1%. And our economic policies have basically said that school and college is meant to identify a superclass of one percenters that we're gonna try and turn into billionaires-

    7. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    8. SG

      ... instead of figuring out the infrastructure and the programs to ensure the bottom 90 have a shot at being in the top 10. And one of the stats is just around, uh, college acceptance. When I applied to UCLA, the acceptance rate was 76%. Now it's 9%. I was unremarkable, for whatever reason. Prefrontal cortex, single mother, whatever you wanna call it. But back then, they had the mission and the charge to let in unremarkable kids.

    9. SB

      (laughs) .

    10. SG

      And that's no longer the case, because America's superpowers are optimism, and we all believe our kid's in that top 1%. And the reality is, they're not. Or people think...... "I like an economy where you can make a billion dollars 'cause that's gonna be me one day."

    11. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    12. SG

      So, they have ignored the fact that we are crowding more and more prosperity and opportunity into the remarkable. And I, for me, it comes down to what is, what do we want in America and the UK? Do we want a superclass of billionaires or do we want a society and an operating system that gives unremarkable people a shot at being in the top 10%? Uh, it's become winner take all, and we have purposely created a set of economic and educational policies that crowd a massive amount of prosperity into the top 1%, and we have opted for it because we believe we have a shot at being in that top 1%.

    13. LU

      I love that because I think that the winner takes all applies to a lot of different things. So I bet the top 10% of Americans now are healthier than they've ever been-

    14. SG

      100%.

    15. LU

      ... while the rest of the country has never been healthy.

    16. SG

      Best healthcare in the world if you're in the top 10%.

    17. LU

      Yeah.

    18. SG

      Yeah.

    19. LU

      Or in marriages, the top marriages today are the best marriages of all time, yet we have declining marriage rates. So we're nearing the lowest rate of marriage that we've ever had in American history. So most people are, or fewer people are getting married, but if you're, you know, two college graduates who get married in your 30s, you might have an even stronger bond than people in the past. But that is a small group at the top.

    20. SG

      To you, marriage has become a luxury item.

    21. LU

      Yeah.

    22. SG

      If you're in the top quintile of income-

    23. LU

      Right.

    24. SG

      ... earning households, you're, you're, 75% get married. If you're in the bottom quintile, only 20 f- If you're in the lower quintile of income-earning men, only one in four chance of getting married.

    25. LU

      And this has huge impact on our society because we know that married people are healthier, they're wealthier, they live longer. When couples are married, they actually have lower rates of child poverty. And so this has huge implications for our society if we're having fewer marriages, especially when you think about having fewer babies.

    26. SB

      I, um, I wanna get into dating and, and marriage and love and all those things. I, one of the things that really shocked me as I was preparing for this conversation was this graph.

    27. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    28. SB

      Because this isn't the narrative that we hear. Can you both see this one?

    29. SG

      Mm-hmm.

    30. SB

      This is the reverse gender gap.

  8. 29:58 – 34:32

    What the Stats Say About Dating

    1. SG

      out a way to maintain a woman's professional trajectory once she decides to deploy her ovaries and have kids. And there's some data saying, okay, two-thirds of divorce can be reverse engineered to the man starting to make less money. If, i- when the woman in the relationship starts making more money, they become twice as likely to get divorced, three times as likely to use ED drugs 'cause the guy loses his sense of purpose and self-esteem. What gets lost in that data is the reality is, if a woman is stepping up and stepping into the economic void and being more economically...... uh, being a greater economic contributor, then logically it would make sense that men need to step up logistically. And I think what a lot of women are saying is like, "Okay. I'm not getting anything." (laughs) "I'm not..." You're no longer a provider and by the way, you haven't filled that void. You haven't made up the delta.

    2. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    3. SG

      So, there's some, there's some nuance around it. What, what also I think is important to say is that if women are better students and g- showing the discipline and the skills to go to college in an information economy and making more money, then okay. Good on them. Just as, for whatever reason, men made more money. Maybe it wasn't fair, but y- you know, we, i- it's not a crime against humanity if women have the skills to make more money. What happens though is the second-order effects that you're talking about, and that is, and we don't like to talk about this, 75% of women say that economic viability is hugely important in a mate. Only 25% of men. For men it's not a criteria. For women it is, and it... Chris Williamson of the Modern Wisdom podcast, he has this great stat, or he calls it the high heels effect, and that is 50% of women say they won't date a man shorter than them. I'm curious what you think-

    4. LU

      Yeah.

    5. SG

      ... but I think it's more like 80%. I think it's an embarrassing thing to say because just instinctively, women feel like they'll be vul- vulnerable during gestation and they want someone they think physically could protect them. I just think it's hardwired into them even if they don't know it. Women, metaphorically, are getting taller every year, and women made horizontally and up-

    6. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    7. SG

      ... and men horizontally and down.

    8. LU

      Right.

    9. SG

      And when the pool of horizontal and up keeps shrinking, they just have... So this notion, a ton of great women, where are the men? Or there's no men. There's a lot of men, just not men they'd wanna date.

    10. LU

      Right.

    11. SG

      And then you speed ball it with the guys who are in the top 10% can engage in Porsche polygamy. They can get a date every goddamn night, which does not encourage long-term or very good behavior. So the guys they all want are not incented to enter into long-term relationships, and the bottom half of men are literally shut out of the mating market. And we always kind of, we always kind of, and this goes to your bailiwick, kind of portray men as the predators and the idiots and the, if they just got their act together. There's something strange going on and that is online dating, when a woman, a woman can go out with a guy, a high-status male, and I'll put forward this thesis and I want you to respond to it, she can have sex with him which gives h- her the impression that's her weight class for a relationship, but he's not interested in a relationship. And then she basically decides the bottom 90 are no longer in her weight class. And you can't tell a woman to lower her expectations-

    12. LU

      Yeah.

    13. SG

      ... but the reality is, uh, and what the data I've seen on dating apps is that all of the women want the same few guys, and they shut out the rest.

    14. LU

      Yeah. Okay, so there's a few things I'll respond to there. So one, going back to the income graph, I wanna just call out that, yes, right now in a few urban markets, women are making more than men. So, women in DC and New York under 30 are making more than men on average, but in most situations, men are still making more than women. But we're talking about a projection. Going back to the dating research. So yes, it's exactly as you described. What we have right now is there's fewer and fewer men that are hypergamous mates for women. So if there's a much smaller pool of guys, then what you have is you have a bunch of women competing for the same men, and then a bunch of guys get ignored. But what I also see is that those top guys are having a hard time deciding. So I feel like in my coaching practice as a dating coach, I'm working with a lot of women who say, "What do I do? I've changed my profile the way you said I should. I took your class, but I still feel like there's just not enough great guys." And then I work with these CEO men who are having such a hard time choosing. And so I think we really have this exacerbated problem where so many women are competing for the same men and then a bunch of guys are getting ignored. And then what ends up happening is where do those guys go? And they go online.

  9. 34:32 – 44:13

    Dating Standards

    1. LU

      That's what you see.

    2. SG

      They go to porn.

    3. LU

      They go to porn or they go to Reddit. I mean, I love Reddit but, they're really going to some of these red-pilled communities.

    4. SG

      Yeah.

    5. LU

      And so what you're seeing now is just men really opting out of society. So when you go back to that stat, one in seven young men in the UK is NEET, not in employment, education or training, they have just opted out. And as Scott says, there's nothing scarier than a single man, a young single man. And so we are just creating a lot of these angry young single men who are saying, "Well, this is rigged against me." And so that's why I am worried about the rise of people like Andrew Tate. And if we wonder where are the dads, where are the men, well, men are finding these father figures but they're finding them online and they're not the father figures that I would choose for the majority of men. And so I'm really worried about this because I feel like women are saying, "Guys, you need to step up because I can provide and I don't need that from you," and guys are not prepared to rise to the occasion.

    6. SB

      What, what are women looking for? He, Scott talked about height.

    7. LU

      Yeah. So I would say, you know, I work at Hinge but I do think that apps have perpetuated this issue around height because if you can set your height filter to something then you might set it higher and then it's as if you have, the dating app is a club and you're literally having bouncers that prevent a bunch of guys from even getting into the club. So, many women in the US set their height filters at six feet, but only 14% of men in the US are six feet or taller. So w- what happens to the other 86% of men? And women are saying, "Where's my guy?" It's like, well you, he's not even showing up on your app. And so a huge thing that I push women to do is to change their height filters and just say there is nothing that proves that you're gonna have a successful long-term relationship if the guy is higher. I'm married to a short king. I love it. I feel like I really found this gem, and I think that so many women are ma- missing out on great potential partners because of things like height.

    8. SB

      Scott's point as well about they will date one of the men in the top 10%.

    9. LU

      Yeah.

    10. SB

      ... sleep with him, potentially. And then that kind of adjusts their standards and they expect all other men to meet that standard. But there isn't just, there isn't enough men to meet that standard, is there?

    11. LU

      I haven't specifically heard that. I mean, there is a lot of evidence around assortative mating, that people sort of have an internal sense of how attractive they are and that they end up with someone similar to that. But assortative mating is different than hypergamy, which is really this idea, as Scott said, that women tend to date horizontally and up and men date horizontally and down. So, if you have two-thirds of women who are college grads and one-third of college grads who are men, and some of them are gonna date women without college degrees, you truly do have this dating crisis where there's just not enough men to meet this hypergamous mating.

    12. SG

      Again, you can't tell women to lower their expectations, but this is the reality. When you ask a man, "If you could have a woman who had 80% of everything you wanted," 75% say, "Yeah, I'm on board."

    13. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SG

      When you say to a woman, "A man has 80% of what you want," 75% say, "That's, that's not enough." But if you-

    15. LU

      Yeah.

    16. SG

      But, but, but even look at the media.

    17. LU

      Right, right, right.

    18. SG

      What does the media tell a woman to do? "He's out."

    19. SB

      (laughs)

    20. SG

      What, he didn't open your door? He's not nice to his parent? You... Walk, walk right out on that man. Like, it's literally... Every piece of media is, "You don't need him. You're a strong, independent woman. Pull the rip cord. You're out." And i- i- i- it is (laughs) ... The, the, the basic kind of communication around this is, "You are a strong, independent, powerful woman. That is wonderful. And quite frankly, you don't need the imperfect man." And, uh, i- i- they're just not, they're just not connecting. I read that on Tinder, a man of average attractiveness has to swipe right 200 times to get one coffee, and then four of those five coffees will ghost him.

    21. LU

      (gasps) .

    22. SG

      They will, they will decide they don't wanna meet him or they won't show up. That means a guy of average attractiveness-

    23. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    24. SG

      ... has to swipe right 1,000 times to get one coffee. Now, what does that tell that guy? "Women don't value me. Women make me feel rejected." And then they go online and they meet, they see these misogynists telling them, "It's not your fault."

    25. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    26. SG

      And these men become much more prone to misogynistic content, much more prone to nationalistic content. I- i- blaming other people for the lack of economic opportunity. They start sequestering from society. I worry that we are literally evolving a new species of asexual, asocial male. And if a man, by the age of 30, hasn't either lived with someone or married someone, there's a one-in-three chance he's gonna have a substance abuse problem.

    27. LU

      Wow.

    28. SG

      In addition, it goes so much deeper than that, because if they don't develop the skills... You know, the reason romantic comedies are two hours and not 15 minutes is this shit is hard.

    29. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    30. SG

      Like, finding an attractive, intelligent woman. Generally speaking, 75% of people who've been married longer than 30 years say, "In the beginning, one was much more interested than the other," and it was almost always the man. Women are, women are much choosier. The basic, the basis of evolution is seed trying to get everywhere, men, and women deploying a much finer filter to, to select the f- strongest, smartest, and fastest speed. So, men need an environment to demonstrate excellence. And you hear these women talk about it. "He was kind. He was good at work. I liked the way he smelled. He was funny." Where do men demonstrate excellence when they're not going to college?

  10. 44:13 – 46:06

    Do Women Really Want Emotionally Attuned Men?

    1. SG

      In marketing, we call it consumer dissonance, what people say they want-

    2. LU

      Yeah.

    3. SG

      ... and then what they actually buy. And what women say they want is an emotionally in touch man, and what they want is a masculine man. And that they will articulate what they want in a man, it includes being more emotionally available, and then they wanna have sex with a traditional masculine man. And what I hear from a lot of women, this is anecdotal evidence, and it's pulse marketing and you tell me what the data says, but there's just so many single women in my age group, and there's lit- it feels like there's literally no men in my age group. As bad as it is for w- people in their 20s and 30s-

    4. LU

      Yeah.

    5. SG

      ... try being a woman in your 50s trying to date, right? And they tell me the same thing. These are liberal, progressive, educated women, they say, "By the way, I like a manly man."

    6. LU

      Yeah.

    7. SG

      And they say it under their breath. So there's what supposedly is stated around, "I need more emotional availability, someone who's in touch with their feelings," but what the research shows is they want a guy with facial hair, who's the str- who's still... Women are still very attracted to-

    8. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    9. SG

      ... traditional masculine attributes.

    10. LU

      Yeah. I mean, I think we're just in such a hard moment, because you have women who are saying, "I don't wanna date a guy who earns less than me," and you might think, "Okay, well, the data hasn't caught up with the dating." If more women-

    11. SG

      Yeah.

    12. LU

      ... are in higher education and more women are earning more, then maybe you're going to be the one who earns more in your relationship. But what they feel like is projecting out, "I'm gonna end up doing most of the housework, most of the childcare."

    13. SG

      Yeah.

    14. LU

      "I might as well get a guy that can contribute financially." So they don't wanna change their expectations around that. And so I think we truly are in a moment where women are being asked to do more masculine things, and men are being asked to do more feminine things, and I think a lot of that is progress, but it also seems to be creating a lot of confusion in the dating world.

  11. 46:06 – 47:56

    If They're Okay, Always Go on a Second Date

    1. LU

    2. SG

      Yeah, it's sort of... I was just thinking, I coach a lot of young men, and occasionally women ask me for dating advice. And you coach, it sounds like, a lot of both. And what I, first thing I say to men is I ask them, like, "Would you wanna have sex with you?"

    3. SB

      (laughs)

    4. SG

      "Right? Are you in shape? What do you look like naked? Are you, do you have a plan? You don't have to be rich now, but do you have a plan? Right? Uh, have you, do you f- have you found means of being confident? Can you demonstrate kindness and excellence across anything?" And the only advice I give women is second coffee. And that is, maybe it wasn't great. I mean, if you don't like the guy and you're just like turned off, fine. But if it was just okay, maybe give it a second coffee.

    5. LU

      I have a chapter in my book called Make the Second Date the Default.

    6. SG

      Yeah.

    7. LU

      And it's really because I feel like I won the lottery with my husband, but he is somebody that takes longer to open up and he's this slow burn. We met in college, we met again seven years later, then we were friends for a year. And I feel like he's this incredible partner, husband, father. But I don't know that if we'd met just randomly on the first date that I would've gone on a second date.

    8. SG

      Yeah.

    9. LU

      And so I think people really do need to train themselves to look for these slow burns.

    10. SB

      Logan, Scott said something there about what he thinks women want, which is these-

    11. LU

      Yeah.

    12. SB

      ... sort of traditional masculine features. Is this what you see in the data?

    13. LU

      What's hard is, I think Scott's right about what people say they want versus, like, so stated versus revealed preferences. So according to the research that I did, women are saying the number one thing that they're looking for is kindness and compassion. That's also what men are saying that they're looking for. So in many ways, this is great. People are looking for the same things. But I just feel like there's these huge disconnects now where people don't feel like they can get what they want.

    14. SB

      M- men are saying they want kindness and compassion?

    15. LU

      That was, I made them say, "What are all the things that you care about?" And then, "What is the number one thing that you care about?" And kindness and compassion was first for both of them.

  12. 47:56 – 54:46

    Men's Groups: Should We Have Them and What Are the Benefits?

    1. SG

      The stuff I've seen, or the stuff I've read, is that for women, and I've talked to men about this, number one-

    2. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    3. SG

      ... is they have to signal resources. And we don't like to say it out loud. And by the way, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a Range Rover and a Panerai now, but you have a plan.

    4. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    5. SG

      Right? You, you have your shit together. You go home at midnight when everyone's partying because you have to be up for work. You work out, which shows a level of discipline and that you can commit to something. You're in school. You've got a good job. This person is gonna have resources. And I don't think that's changed a whole lot. I think it, it, a man's ability to, to signal future resources has gone down. I'm not sure it's become any less of a criteria. Number two is intellect.

    6. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    7. SG

      And it's very instinctual, because if you make good decisions for the tribe, your kids are more likely to survive.

    8. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    9. SG

      Someone who's smart is more likely to take care of your offspring than someone who's stupid. What's interesting, I, and I love this, is the fastest way to communicate intellect is humor.

    10. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    11. SG

      And I joke, I joke, and this is bad, but I say, this is my impression of a woman. "I'm laughing, I'm laughing, I'm naked."

    12. LU

      (laughs)

    13. SG

      And that is, I've always thought if a guy can make a woman laugh-

    14. LU

      Yeah.

    15. SG

      ... she will, she will date him. And then the third thing, and this is where guys screw up, this is what I tell a guy's secret weapon is, it's kindness. Women want...... to see that you are a good person, you, you treat service staff well, you're good to your parents, you have manners, you treat people well even with no reciprocal expectation. Because they know that a kind person, if and when she's vulnerable and needs help and maybe isn't as, bringing as much to the table for certain periods of time, that, that this is a kind man. And, you know, sure, you wanna do your best to signal resources and have a plan. Sure. Maybe you're smart, maybe you aren't. There's not a lot you can do there. But the secret weapon, I think, for men that they don't leverage, and I do think it's a practice, is to demonstrate kindness. And we don't talk about that enough as men. It's like, well, okay ... And, and it's little things. Have good manners.

    16. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    17. SG

      Be thoughtful. Follow up with people. And I, I think that ... Anyways, those are the three things that I have read women want, uh, in men.

    18. LU

      Okay, there's so much there. So one-

    19. SG

      (laughs)

    20. LU

      One is I do think we need a new definition for modern masculinity or mature masculinity or evolved masculinity. And I think that that's why this moment feels so painful, is that we don't have it. Because I agree with you. I don't think women are saying, "I want a feminine man."

    21. SG

      Mm-hmm.

    22. LU

      I think they want a modern masculine man. And so that means somebody who is decisive and can provide, but also somebody who's able to communicate with them emotionally. And so one of the suggestions that I came here today to talk about is this idea of men's groups. So about a year ago, my friend David Klavins, who happens to be a world-class magician, came to my husband and said, "I'm gonna form this men's group." And so it's about six or seven men, and they meet together monthly, and they have served, uh, they, they have formed this council of peers. So every month that they get together, every guy sits down with Post-It notes and says the two issues that are most pressing for him. So first of all, I think that that's a great way of doing it, because it's actually that time to say, "What am I struggling with?" I think many people in their lives, maybe especially men, don't sit there in saying, "What's top of mind for me?" So guys get the quiet time to do that. Then they go around in a circle, and whoever has the most pressing issue, they get to take their time. And some men might say, "You know, these are top of mind for me, but it's not a priority. I'll give the time to someone else." And each month, they talk about what's going on for them. They hold each other accountable. So month three, they might say, "Hey, David, you've been talking about that for the last three months. Are you gonna actually do anything about it?" And I love that these men have a masculine space to actually go through what's going on for them, because maybe they have wives and girlfriends they can go to. Maybe they don't. But I think it's a different type of advice that you get from a council of trusted peers. And I really do think that men's groups could change a lot of these issues, because I can sit here and say, "Everybody should be in therapy." Guess what? Therapy's really expensive, and many insurance companies will not provide it or there's a huge waiting list. And so if we just sit around for all these guys to go to therapy, that's not gonna happen. But men's groups are a way that men can lead each other. They can provide this tribe of peers, and I have just seen so many changes in this group. So David told me his story where he had a lot of anger about his mom's debilitating illness, and he wasn't really experiencing it and it was coming out as anger at his mom, but he wasn't conscious of that. But by getting the anger out in a safe place with men, the only place where he felt like he could truly be angry, he was able to get over it and to actually treat his mom with a lot more empathy. Or my husband has gone to the group and talked about ego stuff at work or how hard the transition to becoming a parent has been, and I feel like the men in this group have grown so much over the 12 months that it's been happening, that I just paid for my brother-in-law to be in a men's group. And I want there to be tons of men's groups, because I really feel like this isn't an issue that a therapist or a mom or I can really solve. I think men need to be solving this problem within themselves.

    23. SG

      What you said is really powerful, because if you walk down the hallway at Stern, there's Golden Seeds, venture cap- women in venture capital, Black Women's Consulting Club. There, uh, there are women's support gr-... There's nothing for men. And these groups are really wonderful. Uh, ManTalks is one that I've been looking at, where they've said, "Let's get together and just be supportive of each other." Uh, and it, and it's, and it's a fairly new phenomenon.

    24. LU

      Yeah. I think people are afraid of men gathering because traditionally, bad things have happened in that space.

    25. SG

      Gangs. (laughs)

    26. LU

      (laughs) Right. There, uh, I mean, gangs. I'm just thinking of, like, many situations-

    27. SG

      That's funny.

    28. LU

      ... in which, like, if, once there's a tiki torch, I want there to be some women there, right? Like, so there's a reason why people have been fearful of this. Or it's like, when the whole world was a men's group, a men's club, you didn't need to have men's clubs.

    29. SG

      Yeah.

    30. LU

      But I think in this moment, this is a really powerful, organic, grassroots way for men to change. So I imagine that you have group chats with men that are your peers that you go to for advice. And I feel like there's men out there that don't have that. And we are meant to make decisions by getting advice from other people.

  13. 54:46 – 55:40

    Ads

    1. SB

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  14. 55:40 – 1:02:32

    Steve's Supportive Group of Friends

    1. SB

      It is hard as a, as a young man to, um, share how you feel with other young men. Even if they are like your best friends, it's so much easier just to roast each other.

    2. LU

      Yeah.

    3. SG

      Yeah.

    4. SB

      Like, my, my group chat with my guys-

    5. LU

      Yeah.

    6. SB

      ... is probably a little bit more advanced in, in terms of emotional-

    7. LU

      Yeah.

    8. SB

      ... um, openness, but most of it's just like a war zone. We're like criticizing each other, attacking each other, but that's kind of our way of showing love. And then you'll have once every two weeks, someone will be going through something. So like one of my friends now, he, they've just found out that there's a s- complication with the pregnancy.

    9. LU

      Mm.

    10. SB

      And the tone shifts and we all become supportive, but my girlfriend tells me how rare that is, that we have this space where we all, we'll talk about our emotions and how we're feeling and we'll swift, sw- switch from like trying to kill each other in the most like funny way to being really, really emotionally supportive. A lot of men don't have that.

    11. LU

      Well, it's so funny that you said that because my husband's really funny and so are some of the other guys in the group, and they actually had to talk about how they needed to be less funny because the f- the humor was becoming a distraction. And somebody brought up, you know, in their own male way, like, "I think that sometimes we're about to go deep and then someone makes a joke, and even though that joke was really good, we don't go back to where we were and we don't go as deep." So they actually work on being less funny in that group. But look at the work that you do. You sit for hours a week and you learn and you ask people questions and you're working on yourself. I'm not surprised that you have a group of peers that you can go to for that. But I would wager that the average man doesn't have that.

    12. SB

      Yeah.

    13. LU

      And I feel like there are gonna be so many women who are listening and watching this and they're like, "I want that for my husband."

    14. SB

      What is the evolutionary basis for this? This is what I was thinking the whole time. I was like, "Did we lose the man's group at some point in our past? And, uh, is that why we're adding it back into our lives?" Like, what was, what used to do this job before?

    15. LU

      So what I've heard, and I think evolutionary biology, you always have to take certain things with a grain of salt-

    16. SB

      Mm.

    17. LU

      ... 'cause people can kind of explain away anything with it.

    18. SB

      Mm.

    19. LU

      But it's that a lot of times men were sitting next to each other and they were having these conversations on the savanna, and that's often why like guys prefer to do activities side by side and not facing each other. And so you had men who were in conversation with their peers or, you know, in-

    20. SG

      And outside.

    21. LU

      And outside. (laughs) Yeah.

    22. SG

      Fishing. "Hey, heard you're getting divorced."

    23. SB

      Yeah. (laughs)

    24. LU

      Right. Right. Or it's like, you know, why it's so good to have conversations in the car.

    25. SB

      True.

    26. LU

      I feel like you had a lot of men that were in groups at church. You had men who were in the Elks Club. You had veterans that were meeting. We actually feel like this is a time where much fewer men are getting together, and this is all of the amazing research that's happening now around loneliness, is that the average young guy is spending many fewer hours a week with their peers-

    27. SG

      Mm.

    28. LU

      ... face-to-face. So even though a guy might be catching up with his friend playing video games, I just don't think that that's the same thing. And so I feel like we need this in-person time with our friends to develop these relationships, and instead we have people on TikTok, people on Twitch watching other people live their lives.

    29. SG

      You brought up two interesting things. One is your, your, your friend group. I have a similar group, same eight guys, eight guys I lived with my freshman year at UCLA. For 30 or 40 years, we've been kind of constant contact, email now and WhatsApp. When your friend had something bad happen to him, I think for a long time men have weighed in and s- showed empathy for each other. What none of my male friends have ever done, their friend group would say, is I w- I have never heard one of my male friends go, "I'm depressed. I'm, I'm just super fucking lonely and depressed." You just don't hear that from men. "I'm struggling with anger. I'm, I ha- I'm, all of a sudden I have erectile dysfunction." You would just, I've never heard one of my male friend when their mom dies or they get divorced, we weigh in with a lot of empathy, but you never hear them really open up because men are worried that if we display weakness, another man might kill us and take our shit from us, or that women aren't gonna wanna have sex with us. So there's still, I think, a huge inability for men to proactively talk about how they're really feeling. And then you talked about a board of directors. A great board of directors for a man in his 20s unfortunately, not unfortunately, is a girlfriend.

    30. LU

      Yeah.

  15. 1:02:32 – 1:07:51

    The Dangers of Porn for Young Boys

    1. LU

    2. SG

      I think a real enemy of relationships and mating for people in their 20s that we haven't talked a lot about, I had Dr. Anna Lembke from Stanford on my pod talking about addiction and something we're just starting to come to grips with, and as I read more about it, I think porn is really-

    3. LU

      Let's talk about porn.

    4. SG

      Well, personal experience. I used to go on camp- ... The only reason I graduated from UCLA, I graduated with a 2.27 GPA. If I had graduated with a 1.97, I wouldn't have graduated.

    5. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    6. SG

      Not an en- Not the only motivator, but a real motivator for me was the prospect of meeting someone. I, I could go onto campus and there might be a chance I'd meet friends, be social, and possibly meet a potential romantic partner. It was very motivating. And if I'd had porn on this-

    7. LU

      Right. (laughs)

    8. SG

      ... and on my screen always available, I'm not sure I would've gone on campus and ... I, I just would've spent a lot more time at home. And unfortunately, the deepest-pocketed, most talented companies in the world are trying to convince young people that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. And what I say to young men I coach is that, "I'm not gonna tell you not to consume porn, but try to modulate it," because I think that fire of wanting to meet someone and wanting to demonstrate excellence, and being ... having perseverance and enduring rejection and getting your shit together and dressing well and smelling nice and showering, for godssakes. That mojo, that desire is incredibly important for society. And we're taking young men's mojo away with frictionless, open-access, on-demand porn.

    9. LU

      Have you seen these NoFap communities?

    10. SG

      Yeah.

    11. LU

      Have you seen this?

    12. SB

      Yes.

    13. LU

      Okay. So I was listening to this episode of Modern William with Chris Williamson and he was interviewing Hamza, who was self-identifying as a former red-pilled person. And he was talking about how much it changed his life to try to enter the NoFap community.

    14. SB

      Which means?

    15. LU

      No masturbation. And so I do think that porn is a huge problem. My first job out of college was running the Porn Pod for Google. So what this meant was that we would sell ads for the porn advertisers. This team does not exist anymore. This was a long time ago. Um, my parents were like, "I sent you to Harvard, and now you're selling ads for pornography." But when I look back, I'm like, "What was I perpetuating?" Because I feel like there's just so many problems with what technology is doing in terms of replacing human connection. So let's just project out. ChatGPT is already amazing. I'm currently in my Google feed getting ads for Replika, and the ads say, "Get your perfect AI boyfriend, always there for you."

    16. SB

      Yeah.

    17. LU

      So you think about the fact that real-life relationships are messy. I tell my husband on a weekly basis, "Please throw your contact lens in the garbage." And every week we have a disagreement about that. Well, guess what? Your online girlfriend, she doesn't nag you. She doesn't tell you to pick up your socks. She only tells you how great you are.

    18. SB

      Yeah.

    19. LU

      And always tells you, you know, that you're doing the right thing and, "How was your day?" Then you insert sex robots. Okay, so you have your emotional needs met. You have your sexual needs met. Maybe you're watching porn while engaging with your sex robots. Why would you wanna go through the very challenging potential rejection of real-life relationships? And I feel like if all these things come to pass, which it seems very likely that they will, we are truly in a crisis moment when it comes to birth rate and future generations.

    20. SG

      And it impacts them ... It'll impact the economy because the skills you have to develop to be successful in the mating market are life skills.

    21. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    22. SG

      You have to be able to endure rejection. You have to have a sense of humor. You have to be able to read the room. Show me a guy who's good in a bar, I'll show you a guy who'll probably be good in a boardroom. And the skills you have to develop as a young man if you want a romantic and a sexual relationship pay dividends the rest of your life. And if you don't develop those skills, I think it impacts your life across a bunch of dimensions.

    23. LU

      This is something I'm worried about for Gen Z in general. So I did a ton of research with post-pandemic Gen Z daters, men and women in the UK and United States, and such a big theme that came out of it was that they don't have rejection resilience.

    24. SG

      Yeah.

    25. LU

      And I think that we hear this in many aspects of life. So, someone that I'm close to, he's the former dean of Brown, he's a professor there. And he was talking about how it used to be that his office hours were empty and that's when he could do his reading or play solitaire. But now students come basically saying, "Tell me exactly what's gonna be on the test. Tell me exactly what to write in my paper," because they are not willing to fail. I have friends who are managers at Google and they give somebody feedback in a Google Doc and the person is crying because they take that as extreme rejection. And so if you don't have the resilience built up-

    26. SG

      Hundred percent.

    27. LU

      ... to fail, then you are not going to take risks. And everything in life worth having is worth taking a risk for. And so, I feel that I have my dream job. Nobody messaged me on LinkedIn and said, "Hey, Logan, do you want to study dating and relationships?" No. I invented this job and now I get to have it. And same thing is true with relationships. It's not about waiting for the perfect person to show up. It's about becoming a great person who somebody else chooses and going after what you want.

  16. 1:07:51 – 1:13:01

    How Scott Helps Men With Porn Addiction

    1. LU

    2. SB

      I wanna talk about all of this and specifically offer some solution to the young, to the parents, to the boys, to the teens, to the men that are listening. We had a, a young man actually write in on this subject.And he said, "I've suffered with crippling loneliness, and so I've spent over $1,000 hiring women online just to talk to me and to keep me company. On top of that, I've spent several thousand dollars more engaging in other business with them. After doing this for nearly a year now, I still feel incredibly unfulfilled." And on the subject of porn, 30% of internet traffic is now related to porn, with about 80% of that porn traffic coming from men and 20% coming from women. I actually had a conversation on this podcast before about porn, and funnily enough, the top comment was, "By the way, us women, what, get porn addicted too." Because, it was a bit of a blind spot to me, but, uh, I think that's something that's worth acknowledging. Uh, and the stats are staggering in terms of how high a po- porn consumption correlates to higher probabilities of depression. What do you do about it? Like, on an individual level, I get it, try not to watch porn? But, I mean, that doesn't seem like incredibly great advice because if you're lonely, you're not getting laid, no one wants to date you for all the reasons we talked about today. Restraint seems to be a pretty shitty (sighs) solution.

    3. LU

      Let's give this one to Scott. (laughs)

    4. SG

      Okay, so I coach young men. I take two to three on at any time. And I don't know if this is the right way, but it's my way. I'm like, "You gotta lean into your advantage. When you're our age, you have more... You have capital, you have more money than time. They have capital, they have a lot of time." And I ask them to unlock their screen, and I say to them, "I gamble with options. I gamble. At my age, I still gamble. I, I preach about low-cost index funds and I buy call options. That makes no fucking sense. It's gambling, but I know it. I watch porn. I try and modulate my use so I can put the majority of my sexual energy into my partner, but I watch porn." 'Cause I want them to not feel like I'm gonna judge them.

    5. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    6. SG

      And they unlock their phone. And I say, "We're gonna find 8 to 12 hours a week of time, of capital, and we're gonna reinvest that capital in higher ROI investments." It is so easy to find 8 to 12 hours. I can sometimes find 7 hours or 15 hours just in TikTok.

    7. LU

      You look at screen time?

    8. SG

      I look at screen time.

    9. LU

      Okay.

    10. SG

      And I say, "All right, come with, through with me-

    11. LU

      Yeah.

    12. SG

      ... we're gonna find 8 to 12 hours, and then we're gonna reinvest that capital into three investments. One, we're gonna start working out and getting fit. You're gonna work out three times a week with weights. You should be able... The, the human male form is spectacular. You should be able to walk into any room under the age of 30 if you're a man, and know that if shit got real, you could kill and eat everybody or outrun them. I need you to be strong. You're gonna be more mentally healthy, you're gonna be kinder. Look at the people who break up fights at bars, they're big strong men. Look at the people who defend their country. It- you... You wanna be strong as a man, it feels fucking amazing. Testosterone, your, your bone structure, your muscle mass, it's amazing. Lean into that. We're gonna get strong. Two, you gotta start making some money." And the kids I... You know, to be honest, the kids I'm coaching are really struggling. These are kids at home at the age of 23 with their mom, not getting along with their mom. Nothing going on. If you have a phone, you can make money. I don't care if it's Lyft, Task Rocket, 'cause you get a taste for the flesh. And the f- the way to start making a lot of money is to start making a little bit m- of money. 'Cause you start to figure out the economy, "How could I make more money? Maybe at some point, could I buy a car and hire a driver to be an Uber..." You know, what, what is the way... You know, could I get a certification in, in plumb-" And you start figuring out, and you start getting... Your greed glands get going, "Oh my God, it's costing that money. I can go out, I can go to a concert." It gets those greed glands going. And then the third thing we're gonna do is we're gonna put ourselves in the company of strangers and the agency of something bigger than ourselves twice a week. Church group, softball league, nonprofit, uh, char- whatever it is. And then 3A, and this is... I've just started doing this. (laughs) I've only done it two times. And it's an exercise and I say, and it goes to your... I think no is the way to success.

    13. LU

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SG

      Show me someone who's successful, I'm gonna show you a shit ton of nos. I've been reji- I ran for sophomore, junior, senior class president, lost all three times, decided to run for senior class president, lost. I applied to 38 jobs, I got one offer, nine schools, rejected by seven. I mean, I just... My whole life has been about no, and that's why I'm successful is I was always able to endure it. So I say to them, "This is what I want you to do. I need you to go up to a stranger at wherever we're doing, church group, rider club, riders club, (coughs) whatever it might be, online educa- not online, excuse me, education, continuing education, and you're gonna ask them out for coffee, it's a friend. Hey, what are you doing? Do you wanna watch the game? Do you wanna watch the Liverpool game this weekend? Let's go to a bar. If it's a woman you might be attracted to, hey, try and get a rap going, would you like to have coffee? And here's the goal. The goal is no, and we're gonna celebrate no, 'cause you're gonna call me and I'm gonna say, did you ask someone out for coffee or to a bar? And most likely they'll have said no, they'll be polite, they'll come up with an excuse. And then I'm gonna ask you if you're okay, and you're gonna say yes, and that's the victory."

  17. 1:13:01 – 1:15:17

    Men Approaching Women in a Post-MeToo Era

    1. SG

Episode duration: 2:26:13

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