Scott Galloway (US ELECTION SPECIAL): “I bet $358,000 That They Win The Election!”, “33% Chance Trump Dies In Office!”, “Men Will Have Less Sex If Trump Wins!”

The election is going to be decided based on who presents a more aspirational vision of masculinity. And what you have on the far right is this vision of being provocative, aggressive, speaking your mind. The far left, their vision of masculinity is being more like a woman. And if any of them resonates, it's the right. That could swing the entire election. What happens to America if Trump wins? Are you scared? If America...”

Objectively, what has Trump done well? He's unpredictable. Look, I publicly endorsed Vice President Harris. But one of the things I hate about mine, party, partly as we become f***ing unilous. Everything's offensive. And people are just so sick of that f***ing. And then he showed up and started saying these really offensive things that felt raw and felt authentic and really appealed to people. And then if you go to the Democratic Party's website, there's a section that says who we serve. And at least 16 demographic groups. But not one mentioned in the group.

It has fallen furthest in the United States. And that's young men. Three out of four homeless people are men. Three times is likely to kill themselves. Twelve times is likely to be incarcerated. And you have been fighting for everyone except for them. But they feel seen by the Republican Party and Trump. Even though under Trump will probably have the largest tax increase in history on young people. And that has a lot of unfortunate ramifications. And I don't think young men realize this. Who do you think is going to win? I'll tell you what I'm doing this afternoon. I'm going to bet $358,000 on f***ing.

What are you thinking about at the moment? I'm thinking that I've been on this thing four times. I didn't get a jacket. And that you used to send this fat van for me with these lights and music and a little fridge. And today you sent me this Joey Bagadona's Uber. I feel like your side piece that you're kind of taken for granted. That's what I'm thinking. The nice call will take you home off the inside. What am I thinking about?

Well, we're on the precipice of what feels like an important action every election people say that in the US. The thing I can't get over. I just got back to the US is how tense it is. Political parties used to be these organizations that tried to grow their membership through policy arguments. Now they've become these quasi religions that attempt to sanctify your beliefs. And it feels like we're in a bit of a holy war. I couldn't get over how tense. And quite frankly, how ugly it feels.

In the US, I was at a fundraiser last Saturday night in Miami, actually, to South Palm Beach. I was talking about teen mental health. And someone yelled out, Trump 2024, which inspired someone else on the other side of the room to start booing. And we're talking about teen mental health.

And it feels like the US, despite all of its blessings, is kind of coming apart from the inside. It feels very polarized and very ugly right now. And yes, that's what I'm thinking about every election cycle in the US people say that this is the most important election of our history. This is the most important election of our time. Do you believe that?

This one's important. I would argue this one's more important. I don't like the catastrophizing from both sides. Each side would have you believe that it's the end of the end of America, the other side wins, which doesn't, which lacks historical context because the US is endured. I would argue much worse than him or her regardless of what you believe. And America is actually doing quite well our institutions. America is going to be around in four years regardless of who wins, I believe.

It does seem pretty consequential though because this issue around bodily autonomy is a pretty big deal. Whereas bodily autonomy has all headed towards a woman's right to determine her own bodily autonomy in Mexico and, you know, Poland. The distinctive a few nations almost every nation has gone one way and that's towards granting people more rights. And in the US, it's the first time we've taken a right away.

So that feels that feels like a pretty big deal. And also we have an individual who has never conceded the election. The notion of the peaceful transfer of power being pretty central to democracy, but at the same time, if people vote for a dog a crack, that's their democratic right. And so if America decides to go that way, it's going to feel pretty odd, I think. And obviously, I'm, I should put up front. I publicly endorsed Vice President Harris.

You know, perfect, not on the menu. She would not have been my choice for the democratic nominee. But it does feel strange that we are so polarized. And it's sort of a, it feels like an election between who America thinks would be less bad. What are all the like macro pieces here that have come together to create this sort of storm that we find ourselves in?

I think of some of them, I think about the role that Elon bang Twitter played in this. I think about, you know, Andrew Tates rise in culture. I think about the economic backdrop of what's going on. And all these pieces, you know, then Biden and then the inflation issues because of like COVID and the stimulus check. All of these pieces. What are those pieces that you think are most pertinent that have landed us in a situation where, as we sit here, you know, with the election happening tomorrow.

In America. It's looking likely that Trump is going to win if you look at some of the odds, but also young men in particular have for the first time in the last, you know, couple of decades really seem to have abandoned the democratic party and have gone for Trump. What are those macro pieces?

What is a lot there? So first off, there's some dissonance between the perception. People have called it a vibe session. And that is, if you look at the economic data, it's strikingly different than the perception. The majority of Americans think that America's headed in the wrong direction. And usually that has something to do with the economy. Since, I think it's 2019, the American economy has grown 12 and a half percent. That's double of any G7 nation.

In 2009, our stock market was a third of the total market capitalization of all stocks globally. Now it's half. In video is worth more than the entire German stock market. China has shed several trillion dollars in market cap over the last five years America has added several trillion dollars. And that's just energy producer in the world. I mean, the just the economic, there's 190 sovereign nations in the world, 189 would trade places with us.

If you take our poorest state, politicians always talk about Mississippi because it's our poorest state with the worst outcomes. The average household income in Mississippi is greater than it is in the UK, Germany or Japan. The rest of the state is doing better than many of what we would consider our competitors. No one's lining up for vaccines from Russia or China or flying to Dubai or to Seoul for AI software. America on any objective metric lowest unemployment historically since 1968.

It's just killing it. The problem is that prosperity similar to what William Gibson said about the future is here, but it's not evenly distributed. And you also have a lot of disruption, a lot of people who aren't who feel like their way of life has been undermined.

You have a lot of people who aren't doing as well as they used to a lot of that prosperity is crowded in the top 1% and economists did a study and said if you took out the top 1% of American earners, France has grown household income faster than the US. The bottom 99 aren't doing as well, but the top one are doing so well that quite frankly creates this illusion of greater prosperity than there is. So for example, we look at the Dow Jones and the NASDAQ. 1% of America owns 90% of the stocks.

So the Dow Jones is really just an indication or a metric on how the wealth you're doing and spoiler alert, the wealthy have hit 76 new all-time highs in the last year, which is what has happened in the market. We have this fissure between perception and reality, but also a lot of people aren't doing as well and 210 times a day on their phone. It's shoved in their face how well everyone else is doing.

I think there's also the fundamental breakdown and the social compact in America is that for the first time when we've talked about this before, the 30 year old is doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. And that only impacts the 30 year old. It impacts his or her parents. It creates rage and shame. 1 out of 3 young men is living with their parents under the age of 25. 1 in 5 are still living with their parents at the age of 30.

There's an absence of connection at a young age. Only 1 in 3 men has a girlfriend under the age of 30 because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally vulnerable men. People are opting out of America, especially young people. 40 years ago, 60% of households with a 30 year old in it or 6% of 30 year old is had at least one child. Now it's 27%. So the ultimate expression of optimism in a society is you meet someone you need to decide if kids.

And so that optimism has been cut in half. So you have this consumer dissonance or fissure between the economic reality and what's going on because a lot of people aren't doing well. Social media algorithms love to pit people against each other. You have young people, especially not doing well. The average 70 year old is 72% wealth here than they were 40 years ago.

The average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy. And when young people or your kids aren't doing well, it impacts absolutely everybody. And then I would say just psychologically, when you are making more money at your job and now wage growth is going faster than inflation, so purchasing power is going up, prosperity is going up in the US.

When you get a raise, you think it's because of your character in your grid. But when the price of cereal is up 40% in the last five years, you blame the administration. So you have social media algorithms pinning us against each other. You have political parties have taken on sort of this religious like feel where the other party is literally the enemy young people not doing as well.

All sort of overwhelm the notion that America is the least bad in the world right now economically on any metric. Like I said, every nation would kill that of our problems. I was just thinking as you were speaking about this idea of perception versus reality. And then you mentioned algorithms and social media. And as you said that I thought to myself, you know what's interesting.

Now that algorithms and social media have made our politicians more visible than ever. If you go back 50 years, you only saw them stood at the podium right making the speech. Now you see them multiple times a day. If I scroll on Twitter, X, whatever YouTube, I see Trump doing 10 speeches a day. I get to know him more. And I was wondering in this digital age is personality now more important than ever.

When I'm not just seeing you at the podium, I'm seeing you for three hours on Rogan, then two hours later, I'm seeing you in another state, then I'm seeing you on a clip, I'm seeing you at McDonald's. And so the old politicians of the past were very like straight. And you'd see them on the podium, how polished was that speech now? It's actually it seems the algorithms are going for low fire. Politicians and personality seems to be more important in principle.

Yeah, we've definitely replaced politicians who were sort of pragmatists and practitioners who used to go to Congress and legislate and pass laws. We've replaced a lot of them with performers. Yeah, in the UK as well. We've just had a series of them. You always got to look at incentives and the person who raises the most money is almost always reelected and the incumbent 92% reelection rate, despite the fact that Congress has an 8% approval.

So the incentives are to raise a lot of money and the easiest way to raise kind of a lot of money is small dollar donations. It's actually easier than trying to get money from a pack or big money. So what you do that is you say something fairly incendiary that tickles the sensors of your tribe by making the other side looks stupid. You say something Jewish space lasers or Biden is a war criminal that ends up on TikTok and the hard left of the hard ride. See that and start sending in money.

And so you have some of the most famous legislators in the US Congress have never passed a bill. But are outstanding at getting on TikTok and raising a lot of money. So it's gone from politicians to performers. I was just thinking about have I ever seen a boring politician on go viral on TikTok. And I've never seen it. I've never seen a boring. But even in the case you said, way, if you say something incendiary, it's both side-send you viral. Which is interesting.

Well, look at Trump. If he says, you know, if he says something crazy that I'm going to protect women, whether they want it or not. That goes viral and then everyone, including on my podcast, we're talking about it instead of having a discussion about inflation. Or if Trump gets into office, his current economic plan shows triple the deficits of the Harris economic plan. That is essentially what we've been able unable to do with the left's been unable to do is help young people connect the dots.

That the deficit under Trump will probably be ultimately the largest tax increase in history on young people. Because I'm not going to be around. We're fine for the next 20 or 30 years probably because of our creditworthiness and our billy-to-barrel money. But at some point, it's going to get real and the Chinese or foreigners are going to stop showing up to buy our treasuries. Interest rates are going to skyrocket and you'd have massive inflation.

And at some point, you know, that debt is going to come do, right? You know, I thought that every lie is a debt and at some point it comes to do. But we haven't been able to connect the dots for young people that these deficits will in fact be attacks on young people. Because it's a wonky boring conversation and we'd rather talk about this outrageous thing you said. So these outrageous things people say take oxygen out of the room around any real discussion around policy.

And in the US, I don't know for the same way in the UK, but politicians love their job. So they're gerrymandering every district. Every congressional district is very hard read or hard blue. So we send kind of the crazies from the far left and the far right. It's no longer the general election. It's the primary. So it's a war. It's an election between Republicans or an election between Democrats. So they all try to out out conservative or out progressive each other.

And we've sent a group of people to Congress who fundamentally have a entirely different world view than one another. And also it's minority rule in the US 20% of our population is 80% of the senators and the majority of Americans are somewhere in the middle. And that does not describe the representation. So we have sort of minority rule now. What is Trump done well?

So if you were objectively analyzing his ability to capture votes and to get people to believe and come with him, what would you say if this was a marketing class and you had marketing students in front of you. And they were trying to learn from him as to how to market their products and their lives. What would you say to them? Well, the ultimate business strategy is when everyone's barking at the same tree. When everyone's digging, you zag.

So I'll just the notion that Amazon was the biggest e-commerce company. The model was you own the consumer data. You build the biggest platform and then you slowly, but surely start increasing your take and then Shopify comes in and says, your packaging, your data. I mean, the opposite, Amazon, we're not about the customer. We're about you're the customer of the client. You want to sell on our platform. You own everything we're just here to service you. They kind of zag.

That's the ultimate business strategy when everyone's going away to go the other. For the last 40 or 50 years, politicians have been very PG 13 trying to appeal to every group worried about offending everybody. And people over time just felt like this guy is really slick and makes me feel good, but he or she's lying to me. And then he showed up and started saying these really offensive things that felt raw and felt authentic and really appeal to people.

And this guy is on a freight. He's telling it like it is. And he kind of tapped into this sort of grievance and anger that had been bubbling up. And started saying these really off color things. I'm going to ban Muslims from entering the country. And a lot of people, even if they don't believe that said, well, you know, he's not a politician. He wants to burn it down. And he doesn't like he wants to burn down his own party.

So he really tapped into this authentic zeitgeist of zagging while everyone was digging. He's absolutely the most non traditional politician. I think in person he is charming. He's done a great job with social media capturing attention. You know, we're in an attention economy, right? And he every day is in the news cycle realizing that it's a Gimberto echo the Italian philosopher said the new economy is about being famous.

It doesn't even matter what you're famous for. And he's captured that. So he comes across as authentic, unafraid, politically incorrect and a sea of political correctness that kind of infected both sides. He has great political instincts. So he's he's kind of zag war been one was digging and people found it refreshing. And even if people don't like him. They a lot of people are in the impression that because he's a business person.

I think 40% of America goes into the voting booth and just votes on who they think will put more money in their pocket full stop. Government's ineffective. I just want them out of my pocket. And I think correct there incorrectly more Americans believe that they'll have more money in their pocket because he's a businessman and will lower taxes. Even if we kick the can down the road in terms of deficit. He's convinced Americans that he's better on the economy than the Democrats.

So he's touched him on Joe Rogan the other day. I saw some of it. That whole strategy of getting out and doing the podcast. I think is this is the first election cycle where I've seen podcasting becomes so important. And that that Joe Rogan Trump moment, I think is a real defining moment in podcasting, but also like political strategy. What did you think of that move? You're absolutely right, Stephen. So every election brings a new medium to the forefront, the Kennedy and TV, FDR and radio.

Obama and Google, Trump and Twitter. This will be the election, the podcast election. Because the last time there was a presidential race since the last presidential race, cable TV is down 22% and podcaster up 30%. So by going on Joe Rogan 11 million people 40 million people have seen that on YouTube.

The average cable show gets about a half a million, a prime time cable show gets about half a million people. So going on Rogan for Trump is the equivalent or reaches the same number of people as if he went on MSNBC CNN and Fox every night during prime time, four an hour, every day for an entire week. He will reach more people going on Rogan.

He might get 300,000 or 400,000 going on CNN maybe for a six minute or 10 minute or 20 minute interview. So this is definitely this the election of podcasts. They have become dominant. I would argue the seminal podcast was actually vice president Harris going on color daddy.

Not only did they not go on this medium, they wouldn't have gone on that type of podcast. But for a week, the entire Zeitgeist in the US was talking about that podcast. It wasn't talking about her interview on face the nation or it was talking about her on this podcast. So this is the election of the podcaster.

And for me as an objective marketer watching that Rogan interview, I thought that Trump's team did a master's joke. I thought it was, yeah, I thought it was absolutely the perfect thing to do because absolutely humanized Trump.

So I was so soft and in a way that I hadn't seen before and fun, I wouldn't name their name, but I know a lady who's a very strong feminist and is very anti Trump and it's very liberal. And she said she watched it. And the next day I said, what did you think of it? And she said to me, I passed out laughing like 10 times he's so funny. He's a charming guy. So she said to me.

And he talks about, you know, when he was on the apprentice and it's softened and made him seem more human, which is what he needs. So it's a big mistake. Occasionally, I hear from the campaign and the Astero advice. And whenever a campaign calls you an Astero advice, which campaign? Well, the only people have ever contacted me on the other side. I got contacted by the Trump campaign in the last cycle, but not this one. I think they figured out who I'm supporting.

And whenever, by the way, I want to be clear, when they call you an astero advice, that's Latin for please send us money. They pray, I think they pretend to care what you think. So I don't want to pretend that I'm having any sort of influence, but one piece of advice anyone I can talk to who's remotely linked to the Harris campaign is that she get on a plane, got awesome and do Rogan.

Why is it in your view that men are, because Trump's assembled this kind of this group of interesting individuals to be part of his campaign from RFK to Elon to the Vect, to Tulsi Gabbat now and himself. And this is drawn in. It seems like young men. It seems like a lot of the I actually did a poll in my group chat the other day, three or four days ago, six men in there.

And I pulled them, I said, who do you want to win the election? And four of them said Trump, my position, actually, which I've not really ever shared publicly is that I, I see no great option. Oh, perfect. Not on the menu. Yeah, I see no great option. So I'm like, and the things that again, I think a lot about other the wall, the walls that are going around the world.

And I think a little bit about the economy. And then also from a selfish perspective, think about my ability to build businesses to get visas in the US and those kinds of things. Yeah. And I also think about women's reproductive rights, because I think that's an issue that's quite close to my heart. But why are men choosing Trump?

So this is an unusual election in the sense that neither of these candidates, based on their metrics has ever been elected before we've never had since I think since maybe rose a belt was rose a belt or Truman actually have we had a president and incumbent party be reelected when they're less than a 50% approval. So we have Harris gets elected. It's almost a first time occurrence that an incumbent administration, this unpopular gets reelected. Trump never cracked 50% approval.

No, no presidential candidate who has never been about 50% has ever been reelected. So whoever wins, it's on it's unprecedented election of someone who typically does not get reelected. And so in terms of men, what you've seen as young men are going more conservative, young women are going slightly more progressive. And that has a lot of unfortunate ramifications because again, it's another reason why young people are not getting together and mating.

It's yet another reason not to date somebody when I was your age, I was thinking about this when I was dating for the life of me, if I went through every person I've dated in my 20s and 30s, I don't remember what their political affiliation was. I didn't care. I didn't care about that. I didn't care about that. I didn't care about that. I was like, you know, are you fun? I'm fun. Are you attracted to me? I'm not, you know, let's go out, let's drink. Let's see what this goes.

We can talk about politics. So it's a shame because now politics is now kind of a gender divide. So it's having social ramifications. I would argue that young men are not going to the Republican party. They're actually less conservative or people have this image of young men that their knuckles are dragging along the ground. They actually are almost as in favor of gender rights as young women.

But I would argue is that they're leaving the Democratic party because if you go to the DNC, the Democratic party's website, there's a section that says who we serve, click on it. And it says these are the constituents in America that we serve that we advocate for and at least 16 demographic groups ranging from Asian and Pacific Islanders, the disabled seniors, black Americans, veterans. So all of these groups, and I tried to add it up. And I think it adds up to 76% of the US population.

But similar to kind of the DEI apparatus on campus now or on University campuses, when you're purposely advocating and trying to advantage 76% of the population, you're not advancing 76% of the population or advocating for them. And you're discriminating against the 24% and that 24% are squarely one group. It's young men. And if you look at the Democratic National Convention, it was a parade of demographic groups, but not one mentioned the group that has fallen

out of the United States and that's young men. Families and young men feel this. Right. We don't have an opioid or a homeless crisis in the United States. We have a male opioid and a male homeless crisis three out of four opioid addicts three out of four homeless people are men. Three times is likely to kill themselves 12 times is likely to be incarcerated women under the age of 30 and now making more money than men, more single women own homes and single men.

And by the way, we should never do anything to get in the way of that. That's a remarkable victory for us. But a lot of young men and their families feel that they are these young men are really struggling. And they are not seen by the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party, I would argue that our big failure over the last 20 years is so we've become sort of these self-appointed cops of social justice.

And have tried to try to lecture the nation on what is the right social policy or behaviors and that America has pretty squarely rejected this. The example I use is the University of Michigan, amazing university has invested $150 million in DEI social policy.

And the number of complaints about racism is up 30 fold, the sentiment, the feeling about America has all gone down. And so the Democrats have decided where about social policy is opposed to the economic policies that are actually going to impact you. And a large part of America has sort of rejected it. Young men do not feel seen by the Democratic Party.

And it's not only just young men but it's their families. So I would argue it's not so much they're moving to the Republican Party as they're moving away from the Democratic Party. But there's just to use this overuse term, young men do not feel seen by the Democratic Party. It's like you're fighting for everyone except for me. And let's be honest, my group is not doing well. The group that has ascended the fastest globally is women.

Twice as many women in the last 30 years elected to some form of parliament. More women globally now are seeking tertiary education than men. And by the way, again, a huge victory for all of us, fantastic. But there's this analogy that Chris Williams, the podcast account reminds me a little bit of you uses and he calls it the high heels effect. And that is 50% of women say they want to date someone who's shorter than them.

I bet it's more like 80% it's just an embarrassing thing to say and it's very instinctual because women at some point are more vulnerable because of pregnancy and raising kids and they want someone who instinctively they feel could physically protect them. So they tend to be not attracted to a man shorter than them.

Metaphorically, women are getting taller and taller each year, making more money, more college attendance. They're just killing it. More and more people elected to positions of power and influence men are getting shorter and shorter. So in some, you know, we've talked about this women made socioeconomically horizontal and up men, horizontal and down. The pool of horizontal and up among men is smaller.

And when men don't have the prospect of a romantic relationship, they come off the rails. Women oftentimes will reinvest that energy and friendships and work. Men reinvest that energy and vaping and video games and porn. Me men without the prospect of a romantic relationship. I mean, look at the most violent unstable places in the world that all have a proponder to things. And that is a bunch of men with very little economic or romantic opportunities.

And so you have a cohort of not only young men, but families that are upset and angry about this cohort, maybe unfairly expectant around what they should expect from the American economy, but they're not doing well. And they feel seen by the Republican Party and Trump, who are pushing back on many of these social policies that the snake is eating its own, its own tail that it's gone so far.

And so you have to be very careful to the progressive that at the end of the day, it's no longer promoting the rights of non whites, for example. 60 years ago, 12 black people at Princeton, Harvard and Yale, that's problem. Two thirds of Harvard's freshman class now identifies as non white. And somehow as a non white male that's not making us much money, that's more inclined to be an addict or gambling that owns fewer homes.

Now, I'm still the enemy. I'm still like, I've been told by media that I'm kind of should have collective guilt because of the privilege my dad and my granddad received. So there's a, I think justifiable anger and a feeling that the Democratic Party has really moved away from young men. It's interesting because you make the case that you're not necessarily convinced it's entirely young men are choosing the Republican Party versus them being pushed out of the Democratic Party.

And so that kind of summarizes your thoughts in the Wall Street Journal, and did a piece showing that the Republican Party have gained more young men over the last couple of years. In 2016, it had 35% of young men by 2023, they had 48% of young men. And that's a 13 point increase in just seven years. And I mean, that's the stat from 2023. So I can't imagine what those numbers look like in 2024.

Based on this election cycle. It made me think a lot because it made me think a lot about the, the DEI narrative and how the Democratic Party could champion women without pushing away young men because we all want some way to belong.

If you, if you tell me that I don't belong there and if I'm guilty of something, then I'm going to go find somewhere. And what is it that the Republican Party have done because if that 13% increase towards the Republican Party, if young men is true, there's something the Republican Party are saying, which is making me think I belong over there. Sure. What is that?

To a certain extent, I mean, the strange thing about this, or one of the strange things about this election is that a lot of people thought it was going to be a referendum on women's rights, bodily autonomy. I would argue those voters are already decided if you're fiercely around focused on bodily autonomy, you're going for Harris.

If it's not a big issue for you, you're probably Trump, or if you're pro-life, you're definitely Trump. I actually think the election is going to be decided based on who presents a more aspirational effective vision of masculinity.

And what you have on the far right is this vision of masculinity that I would argue is kind of they would say it's being provocative, aggressive, speaking your mind, strength, right, toughness. But the far right is basically saying, be a little bit coarse and cruel as how I would describe it.

The far left, their vision of masculinity is be more like a woman. And neither of those seem to be resonating with men. If any of them resonates, it's the right around young men around this vision of masculinity. What I would argue is that what we should, or the way to position it, you said that you were passionate about bodily autonomy, is the Democrats have not done a good job of convincing young men.

They don't know how many will affect them, specifically a lack thereof. If you want to be kind of cemented in poverty, having an unwanted child as a man, that's not going to help you economically.

What I've been making the young men when I did an endorsement of vice president Harris is that I think if you pulled a bunch of men under the age of 30 and said, would you rather have more opportunities for sex or less opportunities. I think the majority would say, rather have more opportunities for sex. What is going to happen to random opportunities for sex when if a woman gets pregnant, she might end up in a mirror and she's in parking lot because the doctors won't treat her.

If she's having a failed pregnancy and she's in sepsis, there are now instances where an emergency room doctors are worried about treating her for fear that they're going to be criminally prosecuted. What's going to happen if a young woman gets pregnant and has to carry the baby to term? Do you think she's more inclined to have random sex?

So I think what we needed to do and we failed to do on the progressive side is to say the bodily autonomy affects men almost as much as it does young women. And that the economic policies of Harris will also give you, I mean, I think about masculinity is being a provider, a protector, an appropriator, provider.

Who's going to give young men the chance to be the better provider? People think it's going to be Trump that he's a better business person. He did have a strong economy under his administration, not a strong as the Biden administration, but the general few is he would offer a better economy, which atmosphere am I more likely to be a good provider and they've done a better job of articulating that even though I would argue the evidence is that if whether it's Goldman Sachs or any investment bank that's done the math, they've said that the economic growth under the Harris policies would probably be stronger.

Especially when you take into account that if Trump in acts that tariffs is talking about 60% on all 10 use goods and does anything resembling the war on immigration legal and illegal that he's articulated, that's a recipe for inflation.

So I don't think I think the Republican Party has done a better job with convincing men you're going to have an easier time being a provider under our administration because look at him, he's a billionaire, we're about cutting taxes, we're about economic growth, drill, baby drill, when I would argue the data does not reflect that protector.

This is where I think we really blow it and that is and Michelle Obama give a very powerful speech. I think your first instinct, your operating system as a man should be your default operating system should be moved to protection. Like real men break up, fights at bars, they don't start them. Real men protect their country, they don't ship host it. Real men have a real, a real instinct, a reflex instinct. I felt this way very strongly when I was younger, it was very motivating.

To protect the women in their life, right? You know, I don't know if you are you closer to your mother. Already. I'm sorry to hear that. I was very close with my mother and the first time I ever thought I need to get my shit together professionally was when she got sick and I had this immense feeling of like failure as a man because I couldn't take care of my mom at the level I wanted to.

I think that's a really good default setting for a man to move to protection. You don't need to understand the LGBT community, you don't need to understand trans rights, you don't need to understand nuances of legal or illegal immigration. But when you see a group being demonized, your default setting should be to protection. I think it comes naturally to men. Men are more inclined on the battlefield to run out and save a calm rad and get shot.

Then women women are more thoughtful. They're more like, is that a good idea? Wouldn't we be better retreating, planning and then kicking the shit out? They're more they're more thoughtful. They look at the fruit and say as their pesticides in this, whereas a guy sees movement in the bushes grabs his spear and tries to go kill the thing and bring it back. They're more prone to they're more risk aggressive.

And I think this default setting of protection is really powerful for men and we haven't connected. And I thought Michelle Obama did an outstanding job trying to make the case that men need to have a default setting around protecting women and women's rights are under real serious threat in the United States. It is becoming a little bit handmade.

They're more prone to domestic violence. And the most important thing about that is it's not a war on women. It's a war on poor women. Because if you have money and someone your niece, or your daughter gets pregnant, you'll figure it out. access to mess a festaron, I don't know if I'm saying that correctly, or can get her on a plane to a city where she can terminate the pregnancy. It's the 15 or 17 year old black girl who gets pregnant.

Doesn't have access to resources, single mother, doesn't have money, is embarrassed, and no one knows until she's five months pregnant. That person is really screwed. So I would argue that the second leg of the masculinity stool here around protection is not been made that strongly, or as forcefully as it should be around the democratic policies. I was trying to think through the lens of someone a young man in the USA who is looking at both candidates and thinking,

which one is it going to allow me to be the protector the better? And again, this is where the economy comes back in because I think to myself, well, if I'm rich, I can take care of my mother. 100% if I'm rich, I can take care of my family. So if I want to be the big strung protector,

then I need to vote Trump because I'm going to get rich. I think that's their message. And I would argue the data actually says something different that if you look at the economic policies, the clearest signal we have with policies would be under Harris, would be to look at Biden's policies the last four years. As a matter of fact, she made a huge mistake on a big show called the view. They asked her how she would differ how her policies would be different by them. And she

says, I can't think of anything. And it's like, well, we didn't want to elect him again. Why would we want to elect you? It was a huge gap. And by the way, she's not good on her feet. I mean, we don't like to say that on the left. She's gotten better. She was outstanding in the debate because you could tell she practiced and have the split screen. She destroyed him during the debate. But on her feet,

she's not nearly as good as him. He comes off. He says stupid things, but he's likable and funny. And she thinks too much. She's just trying to mow for the perfect dance. He just goes, blah, blah, blah, I walked into the room and I told Putin. I said, way, you said way to the president of Russia. And also, if you want to see real sexism in misogyny in America, there's just no getting around it.

She is graded on an entirely different curve than him. If she had ever been accused of sexual assault, if she'd said half the crazy shit he said, it just would be like everyone's hair on fire should be totally disqualified. Van Jones who I admire, La said, he's lawless. She has to be flawless. I mean, people are parsing her words. And then he says the most this strangest, weirdest things that make no sense and seem sort of just ridiculous. So she's graded on an entirely different curve

than him. But provider, right, they've done a better job. Protector, I think men are, young men are starting to see that this is getting really serious around bodily autonomy. We're head in the wrong direction. And then procreation and all these things are tied together. She's, you know, she's offering a first time home virus tax credit, small business loans. She, her tax policy would probably better for young people, worse for older rich people, right? So I would argue that and also at the

end of the damn bodily autonomy, I go back to what I said earlier. Guys, if you're looking to have sex, you gotta give women control dominion over the domain, over their own person. There's a few things that I thought as you're talking through that then. One of them is in life generally, you've got to be careful what hill you build yourself. And what I mean by that is if Kamala Harris has built this hill of perfection and polish, then that's what she's graded on.

And it's the same for all of us. I remember having a conversation with my friend who was taking to the internet to talk about environmental issues and stuff like that when I knew he didn't really give a fuck about those things. And I said to him, I said, be very careful because if that's the brand you build for yourself, that's also the brand you'll be attacked based on because no one

wants a contradiction. So be careful. You might not want to be perfect. I think the best, the sort of most protective position you can take in a world of cancel culture and work as him is to admit how shit you are at everything and then admit how imperfect you are and how much you don't recycle because then at least nobody can call you out. And what Donald Trump has built is this hill of like kind of swappiness off the cuff. So we're so desensitized to it and we don't actually hold

them to the standard of the law anymore. And so he's almost impossible to attack because it's so consistent. It's so consistent. If you're going to be accused of assault by a woman, the accused would be accused by 28. You know, you don't you don't say one offensive thing. You say offensive things every time you open your mouth. Rapist of the prime example. No one comes at them for what they say. No, but if some if Taylor Swift said something off, I'd be like, whoa, you know,

so it's flood the zone, but he seems authentic. And I also think that this is a lesson for the Democratic Party, I think to get out of identity politics. I don't think we should have that page identifying policies based on your race, your sexual orientation, your gender. I think the Sun has passed midday on that. I'd die. The whole die thing. I would argue that affirmative action is a wonderful thing. And it made sense for it to be race based back in 1960. What is that?

Sorry. Well, D.I. affirmative action. So essentially in America, we've decided to advantage certain people from a very young age. We give them money. We give them preference getting into college. We're told we hire them based on their gender, their sexual orientation, the color of their skin. So we give we advantage some people, which there's just not getting around it, disadvantages others. So the question is, most people agree with Democrats and Republicans that some people

have had so many headwinds in their face, they deserve a hand up. The question is, how do you identify what's the metric for qualifying for a hand up? And traditionally, it's based on D, the D.I. apparatus built on campus has been based on identity politics. Are you gay? Are you non-whacked? Right? And what I would argue is that we need to move past that, get out of identity politics, still have affirmative action, but it should be based on color. And that color should

be green. And that is in America, and this is wonderful. Today, you'd rather be born non-white or gay than poor. And there's all sorts of evidence. And so Harvard now, two thirds of their freshman class is non-white, but 70% of those non-whites came from upper income homes with dual parents. So letting in the Taiwanese billionaire private equity daughter is not diversity.

So where I think we need to head and the nation is to move away in the Democratic Party from identity politics and say, you know what, we're here to continue to reinvest in the greatest innovation in history in that's the middle class. And we're here to give people from lower income homes to hand up. And by the way, 70% of the people who now benefit from affirmative action would still get it, because we do still have a bit of an economic apartheid in the US. Black and Latino

households average net worth around 20, 25 grand average white household 150, 160 grand. So what you would do is the people who would lose in a new construct would be non-whites from wealthy households and the people who would gain are white kids from Appalachia who come from along from homes. But you tell some white kid being raised by a single parent in Kentucky whose dad has been incarcerated that, oh no, you don't deserve any sort of help. That family is pretty pissed off.

So, and I have a bias here. I'm a beneficiary of affirmative action. I got something called Pell grants. I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived in Died of Secretary. A household income was never over $40,000. So I got grants, not loans, based on my household income. And that obviously I'm a big fan of that. And so I think the Democratic Party would be well served

to move away from identity politics and just talk about things like the middle class. Talk about helping people who are, you know, if you are from a top 1% income earning household, you're 77 times more likely to get into an elite school. The best thing that can happen to you in the US, the smartest thing you can do is decide to be born to rich parents. It's in a different life. And so I believe that the University of California system did in 1997, 27 years ago, it's the right

way to go. And that is they banned race based affirmative action. And they have what's called an adversity score now. And they say, has this kid shown resilience and an ability to overcome obstacles in his or her life? And I think that's the right way to run quite frankly government policies. Because when we get into identity politics, I think it just creates more. It's now

creating more problems than it's solving. I completely agree. And I'm obviously, you know, I think people would consider me to be a black man because my mother's Nigerian, I was born in Africa. But and you know, we had a tumultuous start in to my life, I guess, in a way, because we didn't have money in the household. We struggled economically. But now I'm good. Yeah. So my future black kids aren't requiring any kind of advantages,

because they're going to be born into a different class. 100%. So you don't need to give my future black kids like any leg up in the world when they've started with a dad who can open doors for them and can get them into whatever school he wants to get them into. So my belief has been, and it's a real belief that's grown and me over the last couple of years is that we should be doing this based on class, as you say. Yeah. And benefiting those at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder

and with those advantages and not people like my future kids. That's right. You absolutely will not need it in any regard. And I do think they're the DEI conversations a bit problematic. And I've tried to keep it away from my companies. But at the same time, we do want a diversity of opinion, we do want a diversity of lived experience because we're in the creative industries and we want to see, we want to represent the world. But we don't want to be disproportionately handing out

opportunities based on factors like race alone, gender alone. It's encouraging to hear you say that, but also I also have to acknowledge I've been the beneficiary of massive bias. I didn't even, when I was raising money for my companies in the 90s, I didn't even acknowledge why are the only people getting funded in Silicon Valley? White dudes, all white dudes. 98% of the capital was going to

not man white men. It's like, okay, I didn't even notice. And it's gotten a lot better, but when I was raising money from my last company, L2, the venture capital from the back desk, and they have a standard and that is you have to meet with all the partners in a one big meeting, 27 partners. My two co-founders, both women, I'm in there, I didn't even notice. Meaning goes, well, in the middle of the meeting, my co-founder, who's not a dramatic person, goes, I need to speak to, we walk

out and she's like, we can't take money from these guys. I'm like, well, why, what's happened? She's like, you have a notice? All 27 people are men. There's not a single woman in the partnership of this venture capital firm, not one out of 27. And I didn't even dawn on me that all of this prosperity and opportunity had been crowded into basically 23% of the population. Now, having said that, that was 2014, 10 years later, I think a quarter to a third of their partners are now female,

because they got the memo and things have changed dramatically. And I would like to think that we made enough progress around affirmative action around identity that we can move to what you're talking about and that's economically driven affirmative action. And the great thing about this as well as you said a second ago, the people who are in those minorities because of the statistics will be included within a class-based system. The majority. The majority, yeah. Yeah. Which is

really, really encouraging. You talked about this October surprise, being Tony Hinchcliff's speech at the Madison Square Garden rally the other day. You know, there's a lot going on. Like, I don't know if you guys know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it's called Puerto Rico. Okay. All right. Okay. We're getting there. It's absolutely wild to see. And in Texas,

stuff is really, really crazy. We're right there by a wide open border. Where are my Proud Latinos at tonight? You guys see what I mean? It's wide open. There's so many of them. It's absolutely incredible. Believe it or not, people, I welcome migrants to the United States of America with open arms. And by open arms, I mean like this. It's wild. And these Latinos, they love making babies too. Just know that. They do.

They do. There's no pulling out. They don't do that. They come inside just like they did to our country. I feel like I'm in two minds about it. Because I think mind one is I go, he's a comedian. And everybody knows he was telling a joke. Everybody knows it. A, wasn't Trump. That's it. And B, everyone knows that he's a comedian there to say inappropriate things. If you listen to his Killtony show, that's what he does. Yeah. He's not, there's no part of me

that thinks God, he hates Puerto Ricans, whatever. And then the other part of my mind goes, they should have known that in that context, any word would be used as an opportunity to create a marketing campaign. Do you think, what do you think of that incident? So there's a common ground with us. I think comedians should be cut a really, a really wide birth. I think when Dave Chappelle says offensive things about the trans community, he should be given

a wide birth. When Michelle Wolf at the White House Correspondent Center says really off-color things, I think she should be given a wide birth. Comedians play a really important role. And that is, they say provocative, sometimes obnoxious, offensive things to soften the beach to get you to think. And they're comedians. So I agree with you, they should be given a wide birth. In my view, whether you think it was racist or not, I don't think that's important conversation.

It's 10 days before the election. Art is getting away with it. If you say something offensive, it better be funny. I say, part of the success of my podcast with Karriss Wischer, is I say very offensive things. She's a lesbian and I'm like, how's the German shepherd in the Subaru? And there's a pause and uncomfortable pause. And then she laughs and it gives everyone permission to laugh. And the majority of the times I say something offensive, it's a little bit, okay, I don't

want to laugh, but that was funny. I get away with it. That's art. He did not, that was not art. It wasn't funny. I mean, the worst, the most offensive thing about what he said was it wasn't funny. If it had been fucking hilarious, people would be like, oh my god, they'd like, and they would have forgiven him. His jokes did not land. And when you said things like, we welcome immigrants with open hands. And what we say to Mexican immigrants is no not here.

And by the way, they have kids, they come inside just the way they came inside. And it's just like, it just wasn't that funny. It was offensive. If you're going to be offensive, be better be funny.

And he wasn't. And just tactically speaking, when you say that there's this floating island of garbage in the sea and it's Puerto Rico, and there are 400,000 Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania, and of 10,000 more who might have sat on the couch that day, actually get up and kind of, you know, soles to poles, feed on the street, get to the pole. Those people could swing Pennsylvania, which is a toss up right now, and Pennsylvania could swing

the entire election. So just tactically speaking, whoever's in charge of his campaign, when they saw the teleprompter, by the way, they knew what was going on. This was on a teleprompter. On a risk-adjusted basis, they should have said, no, we're going to put the jokes about Puerto Ricans aside for now. Because if, for whatever reason on a risk-adjusted basis, we offend them, we could lose the entire election. So I don't even think of it as an argument around whether

comedians should be giving a wide berth or not, I agree with you. I don't think a conversation around whether if it reflects racism on the part of the Trump administration or the fact that they quite frankly have a really appealing sense of humor. One of the things I hate about my party, quite frankly, is we become fucking humorless. Everything's offensive. Everything is, I mean, unless it's a dad joke, everything is offensive or triggers people. People are just so sick

of that shit. A post-racist society, I'm majority of my close friends are gay, and they constantly make fun of my sexual orientation. And I make fun of theirs, and it's a form of affection. It's not mean-spirited. And the Democratic Party feels just so sensitive and so weak on this shit. So whether you think that's the right way to go to be a touch offensive, sometimes very offensive in the auspices of comedy, I'm down with that. Tactically, it was stupid. And I believe it might be

the October surprise. I'll be very curious. I have friends who are canvassing, and I'm going to be clear. A lot of this is confirmation bias. I'm saying ghosts where I want to see them, right? Because I'm really hoping it's Vice President Harris. But I have talked to people in the Harris campaign. We have 300,000 people feed on the street, walking people to the polls. Trump supposedly has 50,000, somewhere between 30 and 50,000. So for every one person knocking on doors

for a Trump voter and saying, did you ever go into the polls? Do you need to walk there? Do you need to ride there? There's 10 people in these states, these swing states, working for Harris. I think they might get another 5 or 10,000 Puerto Ricans who weren't going to vote to the polls, and that could swing the entire election. I just think tactically on a risk-adjusted basis, it was a really stupid move. 100%. Strategic, tactical, giving the other side an opportunity to run

ads with the Trump vans little placard thing there was someone insulting Puerto Ricans. Most people wouldn't have seen the rally. So all they're going to see is this, like hundreds of millions of people are going to see that clip. And they're going to think Trump vans insulting Puerto Ricans. That's who I am, that's my blood. I can no longer with good faith, tick that box. I can no longer do it. So they're either not not ticket, although they'll go to the polls and they otherwise wouldn't have

done. So tactically and strategically terrible decision. But it's funny because I also look at it as I said as an incident in an isolation. And I go, it actually put me off a little bit, the the left because of the fake outrage. I know you're not pissed off. Yeah, they're like, how dare you. And I look at I'm going, I know you're not that pissed off at that. Like if you are, I feel really sorry for the life you know. Yeah, you know, we're going to be fine. But strategically and

objectively bad decision, I completely agree. Yeah. Who do you think is going to win? Well, I tell you, I'll tell you what I'm doing this afternoon. I'm going to bet $358,000 on polymarket. I'm doing this. I have my CFO figuring this out. I'm going to invest bet $358,000 on Harris because on polymarket, it's $6238. Because my observation is that the people who go to these betting sites tend to be younger tend to be more male and they're much more Trump.

The statistics in the polls, every A plus quality poll shows it is a toss up within the margin of air with a slight advantage to Trump. So if I said to you, Steve, and I'm going to flip a coin, you have to pick heads or tails. If you bet a dollar though, you're going to get $2.90 back. You would take that bet because say it's a 50% or close to 50% likelihood, but the payoff is 2.8 to 1. On a risk adjusted basis, you're getting free risk adjusted return.

Here's why I wouldn't bet on Harris. It's because I've seen that Hillary Clinton election where all the polls had Hillary winning in a landslide and then something happens. This is invisible force. That means that people for whatever reason, either they don't express their true opinions about Trump because they're social ramifications. They're embarrassed. Or the enthusiasm force, which is, who have you got more energy to get off the sofa that day and go and vote for? Is it Hillary Clinton

who's more of the same, whatever? Or is it Trump who's going to burn it down? I think that's a fair point. Back to the 380, if I win, I get a million bucks back. Even if the edges to him on a risk adjusted basis, it's a great bet. Because you're getting the odds of her winning are not one in three. They might be two in five, but they're not one in three. I just look at it statistically that I'm getting free potential free risk adjusted upside.

Anyways, what you said about the enthusiasm, I went canvas for Secretary Clinton. I think Secretary Clinton was like, I think she's incredibly unlikable and an outstanding thinker in politician. I think I'm foreign policy. She's one of the most competent people to have ever been in government. When I canvas for her in Florida, I went into sort of a, I call it a lower upper middle class neighborhood mixed, quite a few black people, quite a few whites.

I'd go into black households. I knock on the door, I'm canvassing for Secretary Clinton. Oh, come on in, super nice. You voting? Yeah, you voting for Secretary Clinton? Yes, I am. Do you know where your polling station is? Oh, no, we haven't. Are you registered?

You just started to, like, it's the enthusiasm clear wasn't there. And a couple of times, when I would knock on, and again, I'm playing identity politics, maybe a white, a more often a white household that was Trump's porter, they slammed the door in my face. And I said to the, they always send you out with two people. I'm like, that's passion. The other folks are being nice to us. They don't even know where their polling stations are.

They're not turning out like they were. They weren't, there's not the enthusiasm there was for Obama. And I remember thinking we might be in trouble here. The embarrassment or hold my beer while I go behind a curtain vote for Trump. In fact, I think that's mostly gone away. I don't think people are nearly as embarrassed to say they're Trumpers now. I know. So I think, I think the polls are probably, there's less of a delta between the polls and what's actually going on that I think than they're

used to be. But you know, the honest answer is I don't know. The three reasons, or the reasons I think that Harris's might pull it off or is going to pull it off is one, the issue impacting women is bodily autonomy. I do think women are young women are squarely in Harris's camp. And quite frankly, women are more organized. So you have a young man and a young woman both planning to vote. There's a much greater likelihood that women actually vote. This is sexist, but women are more

organized and more meticulous. They're better planners, the better allocators of their time. You're going to have more men, young men, on November the 5th, for whatever reason, something's going to get in the way and they're not going to make it to the polls. That's going to happen a lot more to young. I mean, you'll see this when you're, you have young men. I have a 17 or 14 year old. Young men are just dopes. I'm not even a dad. I'm their prefrontal cortex.

Helping them make decisions. And young men's prefrontal cortex literally doesn't catch up to a woman's until they're about 25. And then it catches up. So I'm banking on a much more, a much bigger turnout among young women than young men. And that's advantage Harris. I do think the last minute thing around Puerto Rico is really stupid in Pennsylvania. And also I'd like to think some of this message around men being protectors and the message that I think the Democratic

Party's done a pretty good job over the last couple of weeks is guys. It's time for us to step up. But again, this is all confirmation bias. I'm looking for reasons why Harris is going to win. And the majority of the polls I see within the margin of error. But if you were a statistician and you had to pick one, you'd probably pick Trump right now. So do you think Trump's going to win? I don't. I think Harris is going to win. Really? You think her person? Yeah, you know what? I don't

again. I think when people get behind the curtain, it's like, I think people are just exhausted. America is so, it's like if America were a horror movie, the call is coming from inside of the house. Yes, we're doing really well on the majority of dimensions that people we're going to grow our economy next year in terms of gross domestic product by more than the rest of the world combined and gross dollar level. This is a prefrontal cortex. Well,

can you name a great AI company outside of the US? Most dominant technology in history are creating more shareholder value in the last 24 months in the entire auto industry has done since the beginning of the auto industry. What AI company exists outside of the US? This is all prefrontal cortex. And what's the amygdala? The amygdala, the emotional center of the brain is seeing this guy in a suit get off a plane with his name on it. And so it doesn't really

matter what you say when you come into the podium. I just saw a billionaire get off a plane with his name on it. He's going to help me get rich. That's what the brain is like. And it's so interesting because there's a market here. I've come to learn over time that stories, especially emotional ones,

always trump data, facts and stats in every regard. I had a sat here with a neuroscientist one day who was talking about Trump and I think it was Dr. Ben Carson and they were having a debate during the I think the early primaries, maybe in 16 when they were talking about the vaccine. And the doctor made his case for why the vaccine doesn't give you autism, went through the stats, the facts and the figures. And then the neuroscientist said to me, she goes, and then Trump made his case

and he started his case like this. The needle, I've got a friend who has a daughter who is this big and points to the floor. And they came to her with a needle, this big and they gave her the injection and she's got autism. And the neuroscientist said to me, she goes, I know he's not telling the truth, but even me, I felt less likely to give my daughter that vaccine because of that one emotional personal anecdote versus the stats. And this is what this election looks like to me, the stats don't

matter, the facts don't matter. How do I feel? What is the frame telling me when I look at you? Well, also it reflects a lack of respect for our institutions, both Republicans and Democrats. The anti-vax movement actually started on the far left. It was sort of a granola, don't put weird things in your body. But I think as much as you're talking about wanting to tickle people's emotional sensors and they move, they want to feel good as opposed to think about the data. We used to come

together around data and we used to respect institutions. When the American Pediatric Association said, there's no evidence showing a correlation between vaccines and myocardia or whatever it is. There's no, we can't find a correlation between vaccines and autism, the CDC, the American Pediatric Association, the American Health Association, the Journal of American Jam, now people are like, oh, you can't trust those folks because there's a lack of respect. I do think the rights have been

more responsible for the left. They go after institutions. People don't know who to trust and they trust their social media algorithm now, which is feeds them really incendiary, kind of polarizing content. But back to why I think Karris ultimately is going to pull it out. I think people are exhausted, Steven, and I think that Trump represents more chaos and exhaustion right now. Do people, I don't know this, but I'm hoping quite a few swing voters are going to go, do I really want to go

back to that? Do I really, I mean, it was pretty people, I don't think people, I wonder if people are going to remember, I like, I wish they had those Apple rails, just how chaotic and tense it was. I mean, think about Biden, the thing I love most about Biden was he was pretty boring. I think people have forgotten what it was like. That COVID, the Black Lives Matters protests, everything being smashed to pieces, the US burning, and then they're like, hold COVID chaos.

And when I looked at the stats ahead of our conversations today about that, ask people, is your life better or worse than it was four years ago? Most people think their life was better than because they, because they, you have this road rose tinted sort of glasses about the past. It's why that question, I can't remember, was it Reagan or one of the politicians who was the pioneer of that election shifting question, which is, do you feel better off now than four years ago?

It works every election cycle because people almost always think they were worse off for years, they were better off four years ago than they are today. They always think that you could say that in any election cycle and it's persuasive. You know, actually, yeah, even if you have more money, you're doing your health is better, your education is better, you'll still look back at the past and go, those were the good old days. I think it's just a bias if humans, you've rose tinted

glasses, you forget the bad. Well, and also for in America, if you're under the age of 45, you've never experienced inflation. And when you look back and think, wow, hotel room at the Beverly Hills Hotel, you're going to LA is doubled in the last four years, and it has. The serial I buy is up 30 or 40%. Again, you get a raise, you think it's your grit and character. The price of serial goes up, you blame, you blame the government. But I don't,

I mean, I'm hoping Harris wins and I'm finding reasons why I think she will. It's total confirmation bias. What I also really hope happens is that whoever wins, I hope it's decisive. Because political parties, you know, in the 30s, we had kind of the new deal from Democrats, 80s, we had the Republican revolution, people kind of came together and admitted, this was where America wants to go. Things, the worst thing about, you can argue, the worst thing, the thing that's ailing America,

is what's ailing the Middle East. There's never a definitive winner. There's never some, there's never a party that kind of, and I don't want to say the best thing that could happen, because I think one party's got it wrong on things like bodily autonomy and peaceful transfer power. But we need a party to kind of come in and win 55 or 60% of the vote. So there's no arguing over the direction America wants to go right now. Because if it's really close, there's just going to be so much.

I mean, the amount of money that's being lined up and the number of lawyers lined up to contest the election on either side right now is just crazy. And one of the things I love about the UK, you guys start in finish an election in eight weeks. And it also kind of seems like whatever this guy's name is, people don't like them, but they don't hate them. It's sort of like, okay, it's over. Keep calm and move along. And the US, it's gotten so, it's like we're so spoiled by

our blessings and our prosperity. The one algorithms have taken us away from each other also. And I realize I'm paranoid, but it doesn't mean I'm wrong. I think the CCP and Russia cannot be just kinetically, they cannot be just economically. So they're weaponizing social media platforms to divide us from one another. And I think they're doing a really good job. And Americans are easier to fool than convinced we've been fooled. And I think there are bad actors, foreign actors who weaponize

these platforms quite frankly, start getting us to hate each other. The easiest way to defeat Native Americans was to get them warring with each other and have them kill 30% of each other and then come in for a cleanup operation. And I think that's happening in the US right now. If you go on TikTok, there's 52 pro-Homass videos for everyone pro-Israel video. And I'm not suggesting the CCP or the GRU are anti-Semitic. I'm suggesting they see an opportunity to polarize people internally in the

US and get us hating each other. No one can defeat us right now. We are undefeatable from a military or an economic standpoint right now. The way to defeat us, indeed position us strategically internationally, is to get us hating each other. And I think they're doing a good job of it. That's the most convincing argument I've actually ever heard for why China played a role in TikTok. And why also they don't care about owning it is because they set up an algorithm which is so unbelievably

brutal. We were from a social media background where we worked in social media for 10, 15 years now. And the one defining thing about this TikTok algorithm is if you post something, regardless of how many followers you have, it'll either get a thousand views or seven million. It's the only algorithm with such extreme variance. And what that tells you is that the algorithm is basically saying, okay, take that and show it to everybody. And actually that's not good to show it to nobody.

And because it's doing that, you can imagine the amount of sort of division where polarizing content on this side is going to everyone. New ones goes to no one. New ones like unemotional new ones, new ones takes goes to no one. And then polarizing content on the left or the right also goes to everyone. So if I was actually thinking about if I was brainstorming in China and I wanted to deter the West apart, what I would do is I would introduce an app that has an extreme algorithm

either way. And I wouldn't care about earning it. I wouldn't care about that. They can run it. I'll give them all the shares. Just get it into their society. While over there in China, we control our algorithm. Well, we don't and we don't allow foreign actors anywhere near. I'm going to listen to every American media company in China. Okay, I'm done. They just there's just no way they're going to let us over there. And yet we have a neural jack and planted into the wet matter of our youth. It's

more dominant than CBS ABC and NBC were in the 60s. So would we allow would we have allowed the Kremlin to own CBS NBC and ABC? That's what we're doing right now with TikTok. Kids spend more time on TikTok now under the age of 25 than they spend on all broadcast media combined. This is also true

of meta. And the primary fuel for that algorithm with the algorithm tries to suss out. The thing that used to be the ultimate gangster movement marketing used to be sex, sex cells, show hot people playing volleyball and people think, well, if I drink more beer, I too will be hot. Right? If I have this car, I'm more likely to have a random sexual experience. I would really like to have more random sexual

experiences. So I'll buy the new Chrysler Cardoba with original Corinthian leather that right. It used to be sex cells. Basically meta figured out there's something better than sex rage. So if you have a long, hour long conversation with a epidemiologist, it says, yeah, we rolled out the polio vaccine too quickly in the 50s and 60s and a bunch of people died. But generally speaking vaccines are probably have probably prevented more unnecessary death than anything. I mean, a long

thoughtful conversation that's data driven. The malagrethms hate that shit. But if you're advocate, junior and you're on a podcast in Lansing, it says, Steve, the best thing you can do when you see some of the baby is to say to them, don't get her vaccinated. Like he says, hand some charming guy and he looks at you and says, that's the best thing you can tell a new mother. Oh my god, the algorithms love that because the people who have been worried about vaccines and believe that

conspiracy love it. And people like me get fucking outraged in shit post him more comments, algorithm, oh my god, more comments, more interaction, more Nissan ads, more shareholder value. So let's take the most incendiary shit and give it way more reach center would get organically.

So it's happening naturally even among US companies. But then if I wrap it in cute dance videos, and I can put my thumb on content that's really incendiary with it's a conflict in the Middle East or income inequality or a lack of opportunity, I mean, just a lot of my content around how young people are not doing well, it's gone viral on TikTok. And I'm kind of playing into the algorithm. Oh, this guy saying young people should be angry. We like that thumb on the scale. I just think it's

so ridiculous that we don't think we're being played. What would we do in the West? If we had an opportunity to dial up anti Islamic Republic content and a social media platform in Iran, you don't think we'd game that shit? We have a division of the army called siops. That's all they do. Is trying spread. Our media content that's very pro-American and anti our adversaries across different mediums across the world. The problem is we're not used to them doing it to us.

And it's so genius. Meta involved. I've finally got after seven years, I finally got an original scripted series on big tech, Greenlighted. It's going to be on Netflix. And I'm really enjoying putting together certain scenes and scenarios. And a scenario I believe has happened over and over is that Zuckerberg goes in front of Congress and gets pilloried. No concern for young people,

skyrocketing, teen suicide. They get their TikTok moment. Then he goes into a confidential security hearing and he says, guys, do you want me to continue to help you kill terrorists? Meta is the ultimate espionage vehicle. The most out of the CIA, the GRU would kill to have control meta. I can tell someone's relationships, their vulnerabilities, where they are. I can GPS locate it. I bet he says, do you want me to continue to help you kill terrorists? And I say,

yeah. And then it's like, then back the fuck off. And what do you know? There's never been a law past regulating social media. I think that is what is happening after these Congress people get their TikTok moment. We're riding a scene right now where I believe that a lot of the drone strikes against terrorists and Yemen and other places have been

aided by social media platforms tracking people down. Your fortune your old has their phone out and they're on Instagram and their dad or their uncle at the wedding of bad people doesn't know this kid's on their phone. They've all been told. I mean, everyone is on these platforms. So I think we're doing it. And the CCP would be stupid not to be dialing up content that makes us angry at each other. So that we're not focused on whether China invades Taiwan or not.

They have a, they'd be stupid not to be doing this. Do you think age matters in this election? Trump says what's he's going to be 80 something years old? Well, he'll be, he'll be, if he's elected, he'll be older than when Biden was elected. The difference is he presents is more robot and we don't like to admit this is Democrats. He presents is more robust than Biden. I mean, remember when Biden made the trash comment, he like he popped up out of nowhere. I'm like, oh, Biden's still around.

It felt to me like a video of someone about to go into hospice saying how much they love their great, great grandchildren. He started over the previous two sentences to manage to get the wet side. I'm not going to go. His voice is weak. He just, he feels like his past is expiration day. And on the Democratic Party, we're so politically correct. We thought we were being ageist. And if Harris loses, I don't think, I don't think it's going to reflect well on Biden. Biden

did not want to drop out. We have this myth that he dropped out. No, he was booted out. Nancy Pelosi walked, Pelosi walked up speaker Pelosi and said, if you don't drop out, she saw the down ballot was going to be terrible with him at the top of the ticket. Every day for the next 10 days, I'm going to have more and more people come out against you in your party. He did not want to lay. They haven't spoken since that conversation. The notion that haven't spoken. How did you

there's a she'll admit it. She said publicly they haven't had a conversation since that conversation. I mean, the notion that all of a sudden he woke up, whatever it was, it nine weeks before the election and decided it'd be best for America if I dropped out. No, these people are narcissists. The same way Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her narcissism ended up hugely, no one believes they're actually going to die. Right? I mean, you didn't see Senator Feinstein. It was a ghoulish. It was the land

of the walking dead. And she couldn't show up for her hearing. By virtue of you running for office, to put up with all of that bullshit, you have to get tremendous gratification from ego-driven industries. You have to be, I think it's almost impossible not to be a narcissist. Biden's narcissism may cost us the election because the reality is this would have been a much better candidate. Have there been a competition, not a coronation? We are great at producing qualified candidates

who have to go through. If you talk to anyone who's going on a mission in the military and they get to pick their crew, this first question is very simple. Have they ever seen combat? Have they ever been on a mission that involved combat? That's the first consideration. There's just nothing that gets you ready for combat, like combat. And the primary process is combat. The debates, the media scrutiny, you get good, you get battle tested, or you get swept off the deck immediately. Here are

some of the people who are leading in the polls. You know who Herman Canis? Oh, is he the black candidate? Yeah, the black candidate. He was leading the Republican. Rudy Giuliani was leading. Do you remember Fred Thompson was? No, the star of LA law. He was number one in the polls. As soon as the campaigns and the primary started, they got swept off the decks. Now, vice president Harris may have well been the candidate of one, but I think she would have been more

battle tested. She'd been forced to do a series of debates, or we would have ended up with a new swim or a witness. I think we did ourselves a disservice or specifically Biden in the Democratic Party who thought that ageism got the memo about being biology, got the memo about ageism and being politically correct. It is insane that we allowed that to happen to go on as long as it did. He should have been forced out of the race well before he was. I think in there'll be

a lot of second guessing if she doesn't win. I think a lot of it is going to land on his shoulders and the people around him in the Democratic Party who went into this consensual hallucination that we were being ages. Well, you know who else is ages? Biology. And biology's attitude was hold my beer. Look at this guy. You said on the pivot podcast that there's a one in three chance

that Trump dies in office just based on his agent, BMI. If I was an insurance agent and he wanted $300,000 in insurance, life insurance, and I didn't need profits or anything, I would charge him $100,000 because just based on his body mass index and his age, there's a one in three chance he leaves feet first from the White House. Two last things. Trump and Elon Musk, what you make of that partnership? Do you think that's been a net positive for the Republicans? Oh yeah.

Yeah. When you see that boost of rocket barreling towards gravity, gravity sucking it back down and then it ignites and somehow this shit straightens out and it veers and navigates into these giant metal chopsticks. You're just like, fucking a man. I want a Tesla. I want to go on Twitter. I want to whatever that guy's voting for. I'm voting for. I mean, that stuff is impressive. He's also got a very big platform to weaponize. He's basically said, I don't care if it's illegal.

I'm going to run these contests, million bucks a day to registrants. I think he's probably the most aspirational figure among young men globally. I mean, he's building cars, rockets, and has... Brand chips. He's like, he's every eight-year-old boy's dream. It's always. Yeah. I mean, he's impossible not to admire on a lot of levels. It's very good for

Trump. It feeds into this manosphere, politically and can correct economic growth. The guy is, there's no doubt about it, a genius and a risk-taker and has balls of size of Saturn to do the shit he's done. So huge, huge advantage. Biden won a Biden's biggest mistakes politically. Was he at an EV summit? And he didn't invite Musk. So let's have the woman who invented the Pontiac leaf there, but we're not going to have Tesla there. That was so... That was so stupid.

And I've hold grudges for much less than that. And Elon used to be kind of a... He voted for Obama. I wouldn't describe him as a hardcore conservative, but he said he cute for hours and hours to shake a bomb his hand. Yeah. So we slash Biden, a bluet, and also the really dangerous thing about an

autocracy is that it's really effective, and that is the following. If you do the algebra, if I'm a VC that's bet big on crypto, and I say, you know, Trump says to me, raise me a billion dollars and I'll have the Fed announce that they're putting $10 billion into crypto in a Bitcoin. I wouldn't be surprised if this conversation has happened. Hey, Mark Andrews, and I know you have huge investments in Bitcoin and crypto on the blockchain. I'm going to take Bitcoin to a million

dollars of coin. This is how I'm going to do it. And I need you to raise me a billion dollars. I bet something along that conversation has happened. A former attorney general and someone who's raised, you know, went to law school, I don't think she's had that conversation with anyone. Or at least it's a lot less, a lot more opaque. In addition, the algebra is the following. If I support Trump

and he loses, there's really almost zero chance. I might not get an ambassador ship to France, but there's zero chance vice president Harris is going to weaponize the DOJ and come after me. He has threatened people and companies with the full power and heft of government agencies if they're not supportive of him. So I support him and he loses. I'm still fine and I'm money good if he wins. I support her and he wins. I don't know. I talk to a very famous host of a morning show

that's this iconic journalist who's been very anti-Trump. He's thinking about moving to London if he wins. Not one of these. Oh, I'm out of here. I hit America. He's physically worried that he might be that he will need to go offline for a while because he doesn't want to get in the crosshairs of the DOJ or organization weaponized. Jamie Dimon, smart guy, great leader. I just don't believe Jamie Dimon in any way supports Trump, but occasionally throws out a nice thing about him because he

wants to be Treasury Secretary and he doesn't want Trump coming after JP Morgan. By the way, JP Morgan is worth more than the 10 biggest banks in Europe just to give you a sense of how well the American economy is doing. So the upside, the math is the following. I have less downside if I support Trump than if I support Harris. Well, happens to America if Trump wins, do you think? Well, are you scared of America? No, not as much as people are. I think the catastrophizing on both

sides is ridiculous. Not ridiculous. I just don't think it's warranted. It doesn't recognize history. America is so strong economically. I think America is such an incredible experiment. People still want to go there. The human capital inflows are still unbelievable. The risk-taking, the institutions, I think America is stronger than any individual candidate. I think we have survived worse than him or her. Both sides claim it's the end of America if he or she gets in.

The catastrophizing from both sides, I don't think recognizes history nor appreciates. America has endured much worse than him or her. I don't think America goes away or anything like that. There are certain groups that will be hurt. I do believe women who want to have bodily autonomy. If he gets another one or two appointments on the Supreme Court, we could see pretty pretty onerous abortion laws across, not 21, but maybe 41, maybe even a federal ban. I mean,

it could get pretty ugly for women who believe the bodily autonomy is important. I think it's ugly for young people to rack up these deficits. Essentially, a deficit is a tax on young people paid in 10 or 20 years. Deficits are really good for me because I get the champion in cocaine of short-term stimulus. We're spending $7 trillion a year on five trillion in receipts. That's

great for me. My stocks go up. The price of my homes go up. By the time shit gets real and Chinese don't show up for a treasury auction, I'm probably, I don't know, sitting in a husband waiting for the ask answer. I'm literally going to be 70 or 80 by the time that happens. People at your age, by the time you come into your prime income, you're earning years. If you're in America, you might see mortgage rates of 22%. You might see runaway inflation. These deficits

are totally out of control. I think young people, long-term economically, I think women in terms of bodily autonomy, short-term are big, big losers. Corporations probably win in the short-term with Trump because he's talking about doing away with all taxes. I pay American taxes right now. He's talking about doing away with taxes for guys like me that live abroad, that I want to have to

pay taxes. I'm like, all right, brother, let's rock on. Let's roll. But young people in America who are going to have to deal with a debt to GDP that might be two or three hundred percent, which usually doesn't end well. So I think certain groups won't do well. But the notion that the America is going to go away or all of a sudden, I think we probably have less authority on a global stage. I think it's very hard for us to wave our finger at anyone. I think we'll lack moral authority with someone

like Trump in office. But at the same time, a lot of policy experts say people, the nations might be more afraid to take actions against America because he's unpredictable. He's not measured in any way. So do you think he's more likely to end the wars? Because I have to be honest, this is one where I go, I think Trump calling up a Putin,

right? Well, is more likely to end the war than Kamala Harris or the Democrats calling up Putin, because they're on a similar wavelength of, I don't even know what the word is, but I feel like that's there's a higher probability. I'm not saying it'll be a good deal for the Ukraine. Right. But I think the missiles will stop firing. So from Putin's end, if Trump is in power,

I understand that math. The way I do the math is similar, but it's when that call happens and what position of leverage we're in to force Putin to strike a deal that restores, maintains as much dignity as possible in land for Ukraine. And I think that call is best placed when it's fairly clear the West is willing to go much deeper and much longer. I think the Russians respond to one thing, leverage in power. And I do think the Europeans are actually ready to step up if America steps

back. I think we get quote unquote a better deal if that call is, yeah, I've just allocated another 60, 70 billion. We're ready to do this. Europe stepping up. This is going to continue to be a meek grinder for you. Or we can do a deal. I think that's the call you want. Whereas I think Putin gets on the phone with Trump day one and thinks I have a lot of leverage here. This guy wants this guy wants out. He's he's going to pull funding. So I think the call happens either way.

I don't think it happens as quickly in a democratic administration, but I think we have more leverage. Also, I'm a bit of a, I don't want to call myself a war hog. But if you talk about the Middle East, I think there's a bad, there's such a thing as a bad piece. We need to end the war. People are dying unnecessarily. Let's cut a deal now. That was the advice that many members of parliament and Churchill's war cabinet gave to him in 1939. There is a bad piece. And I think, I think that

I mean, I've said this, I've got a lot of shit for it. I think Israel is doing our dirty work. In the US, Israel in six weeks eliminated more terrorists on the US most wanted list than we had in the last 20 years. I think there's a greater likelihood of peace now with the defenestration and elimination of Hamas, a weakening of Hezbollah, and the taking out of a lot of these terrorist leaders. I think Middle East peace is more sustainable because Israel's gone on

the offensive in this war. And I think in America, we have such a knee-jerk reaction to peace. So was the answer because we've never really been attacked. You could say 9-11, but we've recognized so many blessings and so much prosperity. I think that our go to is always peace. There is a bad peace. And I would argue that I'd like to see, we all want peace in the Middle East, but the question is how do we get to a sustained peace? And sometimes that I think there is a good war.

So I'm more of a, I'm more on the side, I think than many people on Israel's offensive actions. I think what they did in Lebanon taking out the Hezbollah combatants was the most precise anti-terrorist action in history. I think it was just incredible. And then I see real hope here. I think after the war is over the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I think we'll normalize relations, but I would argue all the death and destruction in the war on both sides. I don't want to say it's never worth it for the

people in Korea. That could type of destruction. I actually am hopeful. I think there's going to be a more sustainable peace in the Middle East because I think there's going to be a winner here. And I think the winner is Israel. And I think a lot of nations in the Gulf want to normalize relationships with Israel. And I think the Kingdom of Saudi America, I'm getting really off topic here. And Israel

normalize relations. That's going to create an iron dome that is more effective than their existing iron dome. So I'm actually quite hopeful that this war will result in a more sustainable peace. And I'm not sure the pieces are what's the answer as most Americans feel it is. I think everyone's hoping for peace. I think that there's so much there's so much generational hate and resentment that's going to remain. I agree. Any aftermath that and with the way the algorithms are,

I think a lot of we create more terrorism or killing. I think stability is probably less likely in my view. Lastly, men, you're writing a book about men. Yeah. Yeah. It's exciting. Yeah, I will. Why? I mean, you've written books. There's a hormone that supposedly is released when women go through childbirth that creates literally amnesia. Otherwise, they would never have another one. Because it's

such an unpleasant experience for them. I feel like the same thing happens to me every time I write a book. And that is I forget how awful it is. And I sign another contract. And now I'm like I'm a chapter two or three. And I'm like, Jesus Christ, I can't believe I've signed up for this shit again. But I've been thinking a lot about struggling young men. It's something I identify with. I was one of

them. I don't think they're getting nearly the recognition. I think if any other special interest group, if you went into a morgue and five of the people who had died by suicide, four of them were one special interest group, you'd go, there's something wrong. We need to weigh in with programs. Four out of five people who kill themselves in the US are men. And man after divorce, it's not only young men. A man after divorce becomes eight times more likely to kill himself. And we have a

society that is increasingly for a lot of reasons, sociological, biological and economic reasons. A lot of men feel useless and worthless. And those are the two words you hear most in suicide notes. So the key is how do young men get a code? You can get a code from the military, religion, your friends, your family work. And I think that we need to recreate and articulate a code around masculinity. What does it mean in a modern age to be a man? It's something I wanted to do for a long

time. And it's also something that I think I'm hoping can have more value than writing about, you know, fucking Facebook over and over again. I mean, I think people have heard that. Anyways. Are you hopeful for men? I'm the plaintiff men, young men, and struggling men. The pad answer is, well, Stephen, I'm an optimist. I'm not. I'm a glass half empty kind of guy, struggle, anger and depression. I have a tendency to see things. What's wrong with things?

That's the bad news. The good news is I hate my life less and less every day. But yeah, I do think that I do think the opportunities, the agency young people have, they're more socially conscious. The fact that the economy, especially in America, tends to be up into the right. I do think I think people are recognizing. I track all the inbound emails I get. I get about 80 emails from strangers a day. The number one email that's telling me down lately is the following.

It's a too late to invest in Nvidia. That's the number one question I get on email. The number two most frequent email is an email from a mother, a single mother worried about her sons. My daughter's in PR in Chicago. My other daughter's a pen. My son is in the basement vaping and playing video games. And so I think that we're finally having a productive dialogue. You've mentioned

Andrew Tate. I think that took the dialogue to a bad place. Because then for a couple years, whenever you started advocating for men, there was a gag reflex that, oh, here's another guy in the manosphere that's basically thinly-failed misogyny. We are finally having a productive

conversation. I know you've had Richard Reeves on this podcast. He, in my opinion, and to a certain extent, Jordan Peterson, who deserves a lot of credit for bringing up these issues before it was politically correct, but Richard's work at the American Institute for Boys and Men has really highlighted how severe and deep the problem is. And even a lot of feminists and people he would expect to push back on a discussion or an advocacy for men recognize that we can't have

an America. We can't have women who flourish if men are floundering. And I think people are finally coming around to the fact that there's something wrong in Mudville here and it requires attention and resources and creative thinking around how we can help this group. So I'm actually more optimistic now about our willingness to have a productive conversation around the plights of young men instead of a politically charged conversation. I think the shit I hear online,

yeah, you know, now your hair's on fire. Where were you for the last 2,000 years as women and people non-whites have been? I'm like, well, I think we were there for you. I think we've done stuff. I think we've tried. And now it's time to recognize a, women still face huge obstacles. We should be focused on that. We should do nothing to slow the progress. But we have to acknowledge

what's going on with young men and that it requires empathy. It requires resources. It requires a productive conversation and I'm optimistic we're finally starting to have that conversation. Well, I last question to you before I go to the book is something that I was thinking about as you spoke about the young kid in his basement. His mother emailing into you, his her daughters are doing

fine, but the son is in the basement playing video games. So where did you mention earlier, but the word that we had a debate about on this podcast a few weeks ago, which is the conversation around pornography. It's become so prevalent. Only fans figures are tremendous. The revenue, the profit of that company, with a decline of sex amongst young men, having sex later and later and less and less with it, becoming harder and harder to find a partner. Pornography is now

a booming industry, a bigger industry than ever before. One thing I learned, which I didn't realize recently, is that women get addicted to pornography and men. And I didn't say that in the debate. So I just wanted to say that because the top comment on the debate video was, by the way, we as women, I have pornography addiction too. And actually a really good friend of mine sent me

a seven minute voice and I'm just listening to the debate. I was really annoyed because there was two women sat there and no one mentioned the addiction that people like me have to pornography. And my friend said to me, and she's spoken about it now publicly that she had a pornography addiction. But going back to the point, pornography, should that kid in the basement be watching pornography?

Well, there should and there there is. Okay, so he is watching pornography and a lot of it. And then most of the research shows that a small number of people consume a disproportionate amount of porn. And it isn't necessarily, it's like drinking or consuming THC. Porn in moderation, I don't think it's necessarily an evil. I'm not like project 2025, I was talking about banning pornography. And I actually think only fans is sort of an interesting

economic innovation. I like the fact that a lot of young people are making a lot of money doing the amount and a little bit torn on it. The point you're getting to is a larger point. And that is one of the biggest threats to young men is that the most talented, deepest resource companies in history are trying to convince people, specifically young men, they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. You don't need friends, go to Reddit and Discord and find

people who are specifically interested in the weird thing you're interested in, right? You don't have to try and make plans with a kid at high school app. You don't have to try and make friends. I remember it was hard to make friends. But once you made them, the barriers of exit were strong. We had a posse of five guys, two or three of us didn't like each other, but we were friends.

We were in the group together. You don't need that now. You got Reddit and Discord. You don't need to go through the humiliation of going on LinkedIn and trying to interview and showing up for work on time and not getting high at night because you got to get up at eight in the morning. You have just trade stocks or crypto on Robinhood or Coinbase, right? And that's where I really hate the manis fears. All this bullshit just take my crypto course to learn how to make money and get a

super car like me. I mean, that is just pure theft in my view. You don't need to go through the humiliation, the endurance of showering, getting in shape, having a plan, learning humor, going to bars, going through the rejection of online dating, of trying to approach strange women and make them feel safe while expressing romantic interest. Romantic comedies are two hours, not 15 minutes for reason. This shit is hard. Why do that when you have porn? So when I coach

young men, one of the first things I say is, look, I'm not going to lecture you. I consume porn, right? But try and modulate it because the reason I have the most rewarding thing in my life, which is my boys and raising them with a competent partner is not because I had this vision that I'd be a great dad someday. I knew what that reward was. You don't know what it is. You don't know what it is until it happens. It's because I saw a woman at the Raleigh Hotel pool and I really wanted to

have sex with her. I wasn't looking at her and think, you know what, this woman's going to be great at raising children. This woman's going to be great at buying homes, distressed real estate and Florida that creates cash flow for us and our family. This person, I just got the sense she's a really high character person. And my partner is all of those things. I just desperately wanted to have sex with her. And then we started having sex and then we decided we liked hanging out

together. And then before I knew it, we were spending all of our time together. And then before I knew it, we decided to move in together. And then we got a dog and started playing house. And here I am engaging in what is the most rewarding thing I have ever engaged in. The mojo to have sex is super important. The only reason I graduated from UCLA is because occasionally I go on campus thinking I might need a strange woman to have sex with. Otherwise, I don't think I would have

graduated. I never would have gone on campus. And I know how ridiculous that sounds, but sex is a huge motivator. And what I would say to men is you got to have that drive to have sex with women is a wonderful thing. That's one of the reasons we're on this planet. And the more you engage and porn and start believing that that is a reasonable fact. Similarly, of real sex, you're not that you're going to lose your mojo. You're going to lose your desire to work out. You're

desire to be attracted. Be, you know, if I could give advice to young men and young women, to young men is pretty simple. Be the guy you'd want to have sex with. Get your shit together. You don't have to be rich, but have a plan. Hit the gym every once in a while. Dress well. Smell nice for God's sakes. Figure out a way to make a woman laugh. Take risks. Take chances endure rejection. That's okay. If you approach a woman and she's not interested in you, you're both

going to be, you're both going to be fine. You have to have that mojo. And the advice I give to young women is the second coffee. I can't tell a woman to have higher to lower standards. But every song and every piece of social media is basically telling women, oh, he did this. Walk right out of that door. You don't need that man. It's like, okay. And now what? Right? I think there's so much loneliness. And so what I coach young women around around dating is like,

oh, I met him. He was okay. If you, if you survey married couples who've been married longer than 30 years, three quarters of them say one was much more interested in the other in the beginning. And it was those the man men are much less choosy than women because the downside of sex is much smaller for us because we don't get pregnant. So they're much choosier. So what a man needs is an environment to demonstrate excellence. I found out he was kind. He was great at work. He was great

with clients. I started getting attracted to him. He was funny. I like the way he smelled. But where does a man have an opportunity to demonstrate excellence? They're not going to school. They're not going into work. Young people aren't drinking as much. By the way, you've probably had humor, you've been in atia. I think young people need to drink more. I don't see drunkenness. I see togetherness. Drink more alcohol. Yeah, drink more. I think they need to get out and drink more.

Yeah. My my advice to young people is to go out and drink more and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off. I think that we need we need more togetherness, more people, more more sex, and more more random encounters. And absolutely, people need to be in the company of strangers more and more. And I think young men are sequestering. We're turning into a different species of asexual,

socially isolated, lonely people who become shitty citizens. And when women don't have a romantic relationship, they reinvest in work and their friends when men don't have a relationship, they tend to just go down a rabbit hole. Back to your original question, modulate everything you do. You're drinking too much alcohol. It's going to get in the way your life. You're smoking too much pot. It's going to get in the way your life. You're consuming too

much porn. It's going to reduce your desire to take the risks and go out and meet somebody or put another way. You porn is a distant second to your porn. Get out there and start making your own porn. And you might find that you fall in love, establish the most meaningful thing in life in that as a deep, meaningful relationship with someone you want to build a family with. And a lot of times, for men, that starts with sex. And there's nothing wrong with that.

If you're an entrepreneur, you're probably going to want to listen to this. It's a message from one of our sponsors on this podcast, which is LinkedIn. If you've listened to on this podcast for a while now, you'll know that I've been on a bit of an evolution as a business owner and entrepreneur. And one of those evolutions that has become clearer and clearer as I've matured is that the single most important thing in building a business, in building a company,

is hiring. The definition of the word company is actually group of people. And that is the first responsibility and job that any entrepreneur has and should focus on. But surprisingly, most don't. About 80% of my team have been hired from LinkedIn. And I think there's very few platforms if any in the world that could give you that diversity of candidate with that much information and data on their profiles. It usually costs money. But for the entrepreneurs that are listening

to me, I've got you a free job ad post for your company on LinkedIn. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash DOAC to post your free job ad today. That's LinkedIn.com slash DOAC. Helms and conditions apply. Quick one. I want to say a few words from our sponsor, NetSuite. One of the most overwhelming parts of running your own business as many of your entrepreneurs will be able to attest to, is staying on top of your operations and finances. Whether you're just starting out,

whether you're managing a fast growing company, the complexities only increase. So having the right systems in place is crucial. One which has helped me is one called NextWeek. There also a sponsor of this podcast. And NextWeek is the number one cloud financial system bringing and accounting financial management inventory and HR into one fluid platform. With this single source of truth, you'll have the visibility and control to make fast informed

decisions, which is crucial in business. I remember the chaos of scaling my first business and trying to keep everything in order. It was an absolute nightmare. And it's tools like NetSuite that make this easier. So if you're feeling the pressure, let NetSuite lighten the load. Head to NetSuite.com slash Bartlett. And you can get a free download of the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's NetSuite.com slash Bartlett. It's got the closing tradition we have

in this podcast. There's maybe somewhat linked to what you just said. And it's funnily enough. It's been left by the CEO of Google, the former CEO Eric Schmidt. I know Eric has been on my pod. A thoughtful guy. It's kind of, I already don't like this. It's going to be some very thoughtful question about the future or the environment or something. Well, it kind of links to what we were just talking about, which is the question is, what do you scared about with AI and our future?

The fears around AI that it's sentient and decides in a millisecond that we're all a nuisance and to kill us. Misinformation is a big threat. Polarization, weaponization of our elections, and commit a quality. Those are all real threats. I think the biggest threat of AI is loneliness. And that is, I don't know if you've seen any of these AI bots.

Oh, yeah. But if I'm a young man, I feel rejected online in online dating where the average, the man of average attractiveness and online dating has to swipe right 200 times to get a coffee and four of those five coffees will ghost me. So I have to connect swipe right a thousand times to get one coffee. And then I have these AI bots that are very attractive and increasingly life-like. I worry that AI is going to create a series of fake relationships that reduce our desire to

make real friends, take real risks. I think AI's biggest threat is loneliness. And I, one in seven men don't have a single friend, one in four men can't name a best friend. And I think AI is going to create too many reasonable fact similes of relationships. I think the biggest threat of AI is loneliness. It's so interesting how technology over the last like 10 years, but even in this moment, has made all of our human desires. Not only go to a screen, but it's made them friction-free.

And like you said earlier, like low calorie. So I was just thinking about like social networking made staying in touch with my friends easy, but shallow. And dating apps made like, or pornography has made sex seem easy, but it's not sex. It's not the real thing. And in the context of AI for me these relationships, it's difficult to have a relationship with my partner. It's difficult because we argue and we clash. And then she interrupts me and I interrupt her and we fight. And I'm like,

I'm always through hours trying to get my point be feel seen and heard with AI. I can have a relationship. She loves you. It's never going to argue with me. So easy, but not the real thing. And this is the world I think we're slowly heading towards, which causes me some concern, I guess. It's that it's going to be easy, but it's not going to be the real thing. Look, you know this with your partner. There's just moments you have with your mates, moments you have with your parents,

moments you have with a romantic partner. And then ultimately moments you'll have with your children, that's the whole shooting match. Anything, anything else is just Memorex. It's just not, it's not the same. And also when we sequester from one another, we become more prone to conspiracy theory, we're less empathetic to one another. Yeah, I think the biggest threat is political,

the second biggest threat is political extremism from both sides. But I think the thing that ails us is loneliness because tech companies are trying to convince us, you don't need to go through that rejection or that hard work. I'll give you a reasonable facts and we have a relationship on a screen. There's value in all the friction in life isn't that it seems raising kids or having

relationships going out and getting rejected, putting the perfume on. And that sometimes think that, you know, we're choosing comfort and anything that gets rid of the friction without realizing that all the friction I've described there's huge value in, like going to the gym, there's huge value in that technology and where the technology revolution is, it's going to offer a nice low cost

substitute for that friction in the form of, you know, all these things. The only thing I can promise young people, it's a certain amount of joy and tragedy in their life and a lot of that that ratio is about their circumstances they're born in and how they approach life. But the only other thing I can promise them is anything wonderful in their life

is super fucking hard. That's it. A good relationship, making money. The only thing I can guarantee you and anything that's really rewarding is it's just going to be really hard. And so it should be. As it should be, yeah. Scott, thank you so much. Thank you Stephen. The biggest fan of this book. I hope you like this book. The algebra of wealth so much so that I've endorsed it on the front there. But it's, I mean, every time you come up with this thing, you blurb this thing.

That's how big time you are. That's humiliating. Oh my God. He's right on the front. Did you know I was in the front of your book? Did my publisher decides all this shit? That's somewhat humiliating that a guy 30 years younger than me is on the cover of my book. My best blurb though is on my last book. I had Elon Musk. He said an insufferable numbskull. He said that about me. So I said, put it on the book. Put it on the book. Thanks for that.

Of course. Thank you so much for all that you do, Scott. And we shall see about your prediction and what happens over the coming week with the American election. But either way, I'd love to chat again, choosing because you're so vastly wise and unbelievably remarkable communicator and storyteller in a way that just grips people. So thank you for teaching me everything you've taught me. Everybody needs to go get this book. Everybody needs to go listen to your podcast where I've been

closely following all of your analysis on the election. I saw you coming out and endorsing Kamala, which is why I reached out originally. But I'll link your podcast below and also the pivot podcast for everyone to go and have a listen if they want to hear more from you. Scott, thank you. Thank you, Stephen. Congrats on all your success. Appreciate it. Thank you, Scott. What the actual fuck? I mean, thank you. This is great. I almost slipped and broke a hip there.

I just do that in my age. Jesus. Happy birthday, my mom. I'm shaking. Oh my god. This is so lovely. And entirely inappropriate and unexpected and frightening. Thank you so much. You're on 50. Yeah. Oh my god. You're on 50 this Sunday. So yeah. Thank you. This is great. Wow. Isn't this cool? Every single conversation I have here on the Diary of Aseo at the very end of it,

you'll know I asked the guest to leave a question in the Diary of Aseo. And what we've done is we've turned every single question written in the Diary of Aseo into these conversation cards that you can play at home. So you've got every guest we've ever had their question. And on the back of it, if you scan that QR code, you get to watch the person who answered that question. We're finally revealing all of the questions and the people that answered the question. The brand new version

two updated conversation cards are out right now at the conversation cards.com. They sold out twice instantaneously. So if you are interested in getting hold of some limited edition conversation cards, I really, really recommend acting quickly. Quick one. I want to say a few words from our sponsor,

NetSuite. One of the most overwhelming parts of running your own business as many of you entrepreneurs will be able to attest to is staying on top of your operations and finances, whether you're just starting out or whether you're managing a fast growing company, the complexities only increase. So having the right systems in place is crucial. One which has helped me is one called NetSuite. There also a sponsor of this podcast and NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system

bringing and accounting financial management inventory and HR into one fluid platform. With this single source of truth, you'll have the visibility and control to make fast informed decisions, which is crucial in business. I remember the chaos of scaling my first business and trying to keep everything in order. It was an absolute nightmare and it's tools like NetSuite that make this easier. So if you're feeling the pressure, let NetSuite lighten the load. Head to NetSuite.com slash

Bartlett and you can get a free download of the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning. That's NetSuite.com slash Bartlett.