THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Why Following Your Passion Might Be Holding You Back with Scott Galloway

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Ever wonder what true wealth is? In today’s episode, I sit down with Scott Galloway, a fierce thinker, NYU professor, and one of the most influential voices on business, technology, and modern soci...ety. Scott pulls no punches as he redefines what it means to be truly wealthy—and why it goes beyond the numbers most people think about. Together, we confront the gap between appearances and actual financial security, touching on the lifestyle traps that can lead high-earners to economic stress, while those who live strategically build lasting wealth. Scott and I also dig into the concept of following your passion. For all the young people out there, Scott makes a compelling case for honing your talents in practical fields, building toward mastery rather than just "following dreams." We’re breaking down what it really takes to succeed in a world that loves glamorizing the "overnight success" without showing the grit behind it. We also tackle the future of artificial intelligence and what it means for today's workforce. Scott warns us that AI itself isn’t the enemy, but ignoring its potential impact on every job market could be. For anyone worried about the future, his advice is simple but profound—learn the tools of the new economy so you're always ahead of the curve. Finally, we take a hard look at some tough societal issues, from the challenges facing young men today to the influence of social media on youth mental health. Scott’s unapologetic take on the need for positive male role models, community involvement, and emotional resilience is a wake-up call to us all. Key Takeaways: True Wealth: Why wealth is about security, not salary, and how to focus on what really matters. Practical Passion: The balance between passion and talent, and how to build a career that sustains both. AI Advantage: How to future-proof your career by mastering the essentials of AI. Building Strong Men: The importance of male mentorship and community in shaping resilient young men. Social Media’s Toll: The hidden costs of social media on youth mental health and what to do about it. This episode isn’t just an interview; it’s an education in life strategy. Tune in, take notes, and be ready to rethink how you approach wealth, success, and influence in every part of your life. Get ready to dive into some of the most essential, unfiltered life advice you will ever get! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 So hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive and the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down, growthday.com forward slash ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way the way he's asked me I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start he's got about five thousand ten thousand dollars worth of courses that are in there that come with the app also some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content and they're
Starting point is 00:00:37 on a regular basis like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app and I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis, and I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're gonna get a free, tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also.
Starting point is 00:00:53 So go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. ["The Admirals Show Theme Song"] Ed. This is the end. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the show. So the gentleman that's on the show today, I wanted to have him on for a long time. I've been a fan of his work. If you're old enough, you ever liked the dos Equis guy,
Starting point is 00:01:19 like the most interesting man in the world. I kind of consider my guest today, that guy. Go on. It's true! Sharks have a week about me, Ed. I'm telling you, the reason is you can ask him about almost any topic, whether it be money or current issues, the economy, social stuff, emotions, you name it. He's just so well spoken on so many different things. He's a contrarian thinker to some extent. He's also a very intense guy and he speaks his mind. I don't agree with him on every single thing he says, but I find myself nodding and cheering for a lot of the things that he talks about. Been very successful in business, had some exits, had some stuff that hasn't worked out as well, but he's become a very, very wealthy man, young in his life as well. Teaches at NYU, he's a professor of marketing there,
Starting point is 00:02:06 but this guy is the real deal and his brand's exploded the last few years. So, successful podcast as well. That's probably enough. Let's get into the conversation. So, Professor G, Scott Galloway, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. And let me just say, I'm really enjoying this podcast so far. So far, it's just working for me. And you're being, thanks for your generous comments. It's true though. I mean it and that's why, you know, I do a lot of intros. They're not always that long or that
Starting point is 00:02:31 complimentary. So, got a book out right now called The Algebra of Wealth. He's had a bunch of different books that have crushed but I'm gonna ask you about wealth first because I think you have a really interesting statement about what it is. What is wealth by definition for you? Like the definition of wealth is what? Having an absence of economic stress so you can focus on your relationships. Rich is the kind of the people see,
Starting point is 00:02:55 wealth is the things that people don't see. I love this quote from, it was called The Little Prince, this great little movie when I was a kid and it said, the essential is invisible to the eye, real wealth is invisible to the eye. And it means that you have enough economic security that you can focus on the other things that are really important in life. And you can achieve wealth different ways.
Starting point is 00:03:21 And that is the definition of wealth more specifically or more mathematically for me is passive income that's greater than your burn. So I have a close friend who's the head of M&A for a large bulge bracket investment bank, makes between three and $10 million a year, all current income, lives in New Jersey. So he's taxed at 52% a year between his ex-wife, his alimony, his home in the Hamptons, his master the universe lifestyle, trying to keep up with the Joneses. I'm pretty sure he spends most or not all of it. And I also know it's incredibly stressful for him because he wonders what happens if the music stops. And M&A has been down the last couple of years, so he hasn't made as much money as he was anticipating. And even though he still makes millions, he's built a lifestyle where he hasn't been able to aggregate the kind of wealth where if he were to retire,
Starting point is 00:04:09 his passive income would not be greater than his burn. And I'll flip to my father, who's 94, who between his pension from the Royal Navy and Social Security, and he owns a few washing machines in trailer parks, he makes $52,000 a year in passive income and he spends 48. My dad really enjoys not spending money. He is wealthy. He never needs to work again.
Starting point is 00:04:33 So having passive income that's greater than your burn, wealth is what you don't see. And the key, the means is making money, but the ends is having an absence of economic stress, which can really damage your relationship with your spouse, with your kids. But having that taken out of your life so you can focus on your relationships,
Starting point is 00:04:53 I think that's the definition of wealth. Perfect answer. By the way, totally true. 99% of my friends are the former description. They make seven figures and they are not wealthy because their burn is so high. It's like a never ending burn. The amount of money that they would need to accumulate
Starting point is 00:05:10 and based on how long life expectancies are going now to exceed their burn rate, it's really stressful for so many people that a lot of you follow on social media that a lot of you think are very wealthy people. Scott is 1000%, right? By the way, today we're gonna skip around, like social issues, we're gonna talk about the way today we're going to skip around like social issues.
Starting point is 00:05:25 We're going to talk about young men. We're going to talk about emotions. We're going to talk about money because he is so skilled at these things, but that's the absolute definition of wealth and in my own case, you know, Scott, I'll tell you I've been fortunate. I've had a couple exits and I've made, you know, a significant amount of money in my life. And as I got into my 50s, I realized it's time to get serious about really
Starting point is 00:05:44 being wealthy meaning by your definition What is all this stuff gonna cost me the next 30 or 40 years if the stops? And that if the music stops is what most people don't consider. So he's a hundred percent right about that I did something smart young and I want to ask you about this. I did not follow my passions young And you talk about this really eloquently. I chose a career that took advantage of some natural proclivities that I had. Some giftedness of mine. And when young people ask me all the time, should I follow my dream? Should I
Starting point is 00:06:17 follow my passion? I always say maybe, but I hedge on that because I don't think you can be successful in life unless you become great at something. And I think you become great at something, you have to have some natural proclivity or talent at least trending in that direction. You talk about that a lot. So what, someone's young listening to this or even they're in their middle ages and they go, look, I want to switch careers. What advice would you give them? So we have two types of speakers at NYU where I teach. The first is really accomplished, impressive people. And the second is billionaires.
Starting point is 00:06:48 We've just decided that once your wealth has three commas, you have insight into life. And they always end their talks, or almost always, with what I think is some of the worst advice you can give a young person. And it's the following. Follow your passion. And the guy telling you to follow your passion made his money or his billions in iron or smelting.
Starting point is 00:07:09 Anyone who tells you to follow their follow your passion is already rich. This is your job. Your job is to find something you're good at, which isn't easy, that you could potentially after you invest 10,000 hours and endure the bulls**t and demonstrate the grit and perseverance and overcome obstacles that you become great. Aim to be in the top 10 or 1% of something and say, where could I do that? And this is the key part. In an industry that has a 90 plus percent employment rate, which by the way is 90 plus percent of industries, and be careful not to mistake your hobbies for your passion. I'm 6'2", I have a pretty good arm, a decent vision or plain of vision. I'd really like to be quarterback of the Jets. That's what I wanted when I was 16 or 17.
Starting point is 00:07:57 I was blessed to go to UCLA where they had real athletes and quickly learned I was never going to be in the 0.1%, which you need to be in professional sports. So if you want to be in acting, modeling, fashion, nightlife, restaurants, you want to be a DJ, I don't want to crush your dreams, but unless you get bright flashing green lights that you are in fact in the top 0.1%, which you'll get that validation immediately.
Starting point is 00:08:24 If you're messy, people will tell you that. If you don't, think to yourself, okay, where could I be in the top 10% where being in the top 10% provides a great living? There are 180,000 actors in the SAG-AFTRA union, which, by the way, is not an easy union to get into. It means you've done real work. It means you're talented. And last year, 83% of those union members didn't qualify for health insurance because they made less than $23,000. So the romance industries attract too much human capital driving down the returns. And also people think, okay, but I will never be, I'm giving up, I'll never be passionate about tax law.
Starting point is 00:09:07 Well, guess what? If you have the discipline to get into good undergrad, if you have the ability to get into a great law school, if you understand the intersection of law and economics and know how to handle clients and are good with numbers, and you can bring that sort of skill, the best tax lawyers fly private and have a larger selection set of mates than they deserve.
Starting point is 00:09:30 And all of those things and the other accoutrements of being great in a high paying industry, camaraderie, relevance, prestige, will make you passionate about whatever it is. Passion comes from mastery. It comes from economic security. It comes from prestige, especially in a capitalist society. So your job is to find your talent, not your passion. And trust me on this, as you get older, and Ed, you know this, what do we become passionate about?
Starting point is 00:09:57 We become passionate about taking care of our parents when they get older. We become passionate about giving our kids some of the opportunities we didn't have. We become passionate about taking our friends to Aspen and not worrying about money. That will, trust me on this, in a capitalist society, whatever affords you that economic security, you will become passionate about, find your talent. I so agree.
Starting point is 00:10:24 Everybody, that's what I tell my kids. I was golfing one time with Elway and we were reminiscing on like all the cool courses we had played in our life, you know? Yeah. Hey man, what's your favorite course? And I thought, is he gonna say Augusta or Pebble Beach? And he goes, come on man, you know this.
Starting point is 00:10:40 It's wherever you play the best. That's your favorite. Oh yeah, that's great. It applies to what you just said. If you get great at something, you'll find yourself become pretty passionate about it. And even if it's not, if you're passionate about fly fishing,
Starting point is 00:10:50 get really wealthy so that you can go fly fish whenever the heck you want. This is absolutely cogent advice, everybody. Here's the question I have for you. You said, choose a career where there's a lane that's open that you can solve problems or that there's gonna be gainful employment. How do you know with AI? I've not heard you asked about this. I'm sure you've answered it.
Starting point is 00:11:09 Just in my prep for this, I didn't see your answer about it. What's your overall view if you're giving somewhat advice about their career? Like I had a guy the other day go, this doesn't apply to me, man. I'm in the trades. I'm like, well, they're 3D printing houses now, so I don't know that it apply there as well. So I want to leave my job, find a new career. Okay, I got it. Check the box. It should be something I'm pretty good at or I could get good at.
Starting point is 00:11:32 What about AI in your mind? How's it going to affect the world the next decade? So, look, nobody knows, but I have some thoughts on this. And generally speaking, I don't see why AI wouldn't follow the same curve as every other technology. And that is when automation hit the auto industry, they were like, that's it. No more jobs in the automobile industry. It's just going to be a bunch of robots and occasionally a person upgrading the software. And in the short term, there's usually some job destruction when there's a real technical breakthrough. As there was, we lost some jobs on the shop floor in Detroit. But over the medium and long term, that type
Starting point is 00:12:07 of innovation usually creates more jobs because while there were fewer people on the factory floor, we didn't anticipate heated seats or car stereos or GPS, which ended up creating more jobs. And now there's more jobs in the auto industry globally than there was pre-automation. So I actually think AI will create more jobs over the medium and the long-term. And what I tell people is, I mean, there's certain industries. If you're in customer service,
Starting point is 00:12:31 that's probably not a great place to double down right now. If you're, I'm not sure I'd want to be a radiologist or an epidemiologist right now, but what I tell people is generally speaking, nobody really knows, but what I'm more confident saying is that AI is not gonna take your job. Somebody who understands AI is gonna take your job.
Starting point is 00:12:51 So let's lay off the woman who really understands AI, said no employer ever. Your job is to understand the intersection between AI and your business. Now AI could potentially come for our jobs, Ed. There's now AI where they can come up. I can say to AI, I can upload every script from every Prop G and pivot
Starting point is 00:13:15 or a Raging Moderates episode and say, in this voice, look at current events with a focus on these three topics, create a script, then I can go to another AI and have a reasonable fact some way of my voice, read it You want to get really good at it and you want to figure out how it's going to impact your industry. And what I've so far is it's pretty anodyne. It can't replace, it's like all chip, no salsa is the way I would describe it. But if you get, what it does is it starts me thinking and along the journey through AI, I realized, wow, it's not very good, but I can get 90% of the way there in Korean. It's impossible for me to speak Korean
Starting point is 00:13:50 using this AI tool I found. And that's going to make me, and I'm getting eight or 10 or 12,000 downloads in Korean now, where it reads my podcast in my voice in Korean. So this is your job, trying to predict the future around which jobs will come and go around AI. I think that's really hard. What I can tell you is the ROI on spending 15, 20 minutes a day playing with AI. You wanna understand AI, you wanna prepare for an AI future,
Starting point is 00:14:18 go on ChatGPT, go on Claude and see the difference. Go on Mid Journey, start playing with images and get really good at it. Cause I'm pretty sure it's gonna impact every industry. I don't know which ones it's going to disrupt or not disrupt. If I had to guess it would be healthcare. Because to me that's the place that's had the greatest level
Starting point is 00:14:36 of inflation relative to underlying innovation, which is kind of what I call a disruptability index. And I think AI will be the fist of stone coming for that giant chin called the US healthcare. But what I would say to anybody is the way you try to prep yourself or immunize yourself against the AI future is to become, quite frankly, really good at it and understand, all right, I am in customer service. I run guest relations for the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Starting point is 00:15:04 I'm going to use AI. I'm going to feed in all the customer data I know so I can anticipate people's needs, and then I'm going to start educating the people around me. Then the person at corporate at Dorchester, which owns this hotel, is going to go, that woman who understands AI, let's put her in a position around strategy or what have you. But trying to figure out what industry you should go into based on technological innovation, that's a difficult one. If you'd gone into autonomous driving 10 years ago, which was the next big thing, those companies are struggling because tomorrow doesn't seem to be today as quickly as they'd hoped. It's tough to chase technology. Can you get a job at an AI company then take it but but the bottom line is
Starting point is 00:15:50 Learn about it understand it. That's how you that's the Kevlar for an AI future So hey guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth and you know By the way It's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow and also taking a look at the future if you want to Change your future you got to change the things you're doing if you you continue to do the same things, you're probably going to produce the same results. But if you get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented, you're much more likely to do that yourself. And that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second, growthday.com forward slash ed. My friend, Brendal Bruchard has created the most incredible personal development and
Starting point is 00:16:22 business app that I've ever seen in my life. Everything from goal setting software to personal accountability, journaling, courses, thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well. I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute as do a whole bunch of other influences like the Avengers of influencers and business minds in there. It's the Netflix for high achievers or people that want to be high achievers. So go check it out. My friend Brennan's made it very affordable, very easy to get involved. Go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. So hey guys, it's been said that we really have two ages. There's our true age and our biological age. So a medical test can show you your biological age and it can show you if your body's aging prematurely. Better nutrition has been shown to help reverse one's bio-age.
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Starting point is 00:19:08 of these right now but it's coming. It's just a matter of when it's coming. And then I got on the airplane, I was prepping for this because I was excited about it and I started to actually think about something I want to talk to you about which was my son. My son's 22 years old. I have a daughter who's a junior in college and I just left California. I moved to Florida and people ask me often why did you make that move? And I said quite frankly taxes was a major. Me too. The other thing is I'd like to be around my children someday and I can't find a scenario under which I think they could possibly buy a home before they're 35 or 40 years old anymore, if ever there. A decent home there's
Starting point is 00:19:46 $800,000 to a million bucks. That means after taxes, my kids would have to have saved liquid cash of two, $300,000. When the heck is that going to happen? And I started to think about the world that my kids are in today. And I wonder what your thoughts about that. I worry that the dream in many cases is much more difficult in the current tax climate. I do look at two things. I don't think you need to tax people more because the top 1% pay about 50% of all the income tax in our country, bottom half pays almost nothing. So this billionaire is going to pay their fair shares to me like a completely political line. Having said that, one of the reasons the bottom
Starting point is 00:20:33 half pay so little is they make so little. So growth has not kept up with the whole with inflation in terms of home prices, consumer goods, etc. So there's this challenge with wages, I feel like, in the United States. And I worry about wages, particularly for young people. What's your view on all of that I just threw at you for a 22 to 25 year old, where you see the world going in such a direction where there is this disparity in wealth. And to me, it's a wage gap, not a tax gap. Well, first off, you're doing what I I call you're a great host because you're setting me up
Starting point is 00:21:09 for success because you know this is something I think a lot about. So let's start with the problem. The whole reason we do all of this, the whole shooting match is we want to have a household and we want to raise good kids that are loving, secure, good citizens. That's the whole shooting match. We want to set our kids up for success. We right now in America, despite our prosperity, unprecedented prosperity. China's not threatening us.
Starting point is 00:21:36 No one's lining up for Chinese or Russian vaccines. We have the strongest economic growth, the lowest inflation. AI has created, there's been more wealth created in the seven-mile radius of San Francisco International Airport in the last two years than the entire auto industry is worth right now. America is killing it on most dimensions. Now, at the same time, we're raising a generation of the most anxious, most depressed, most addicted, most obese young people in history, in the history of the US. For the first time in the US, a 30-year-old man or woman isn't as wealthy as his or her parents. That has never happened before.
Starting point is 00:22:12 That is a breakdown in the social compact. The average 70-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. The average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy. 40 years ago, 60% of 30 to 34 year olds had at least one child. Now it's 27%. People are opting out of America. They've lost confidence.
Starting point is 00:22:34 And the strongest reflection of having confidence or lack thereof is having or not having children. Now why has this happened? The incumbents and people my age will claim that it's network effects or globalization. They'll blame it on something else. That's bull. This has been a concerted decision by people my age
Starting point is 00:22:54 to transfer wealth and opportunity and prosperity from young people to my generation. What is the best means of for savings and a kind of a path to economic security and saving money and forming a household? It's buying your first home. When I was when I got out of business school, the average salary was 100 grand. The average house in San Francisco cost 280 grand, 200, 2.8 times. Now the average salary out of the hospital business is 200 grand, which is amazing.
Starting point is 00:23:24 The average home in San Francisco costs 2.1 million. So it's gone from 2.8 times to 10 times. Education is up seven fold. So how do you get ahead? If you're smart and a good student, you go to higher education. How do you start to save money and think about mating and propagating?
Starting point is 00:23:42 You buy a house. Those two things have been sequestered to the children of rich people or the freakishly remarkable. When I applied to UCLA just down the street from where I am now, it had a 76% admissions rate, now it's 9%. And the virus that infects our economy is the following. We have adopted an LVMH rejectionist strategy.
Starting point is 00:24:04 And that is if I'm an incumbent and I already own a house, I already own stocks, I already have a college degree, the best strategy for me to increase my wealth is to artificially constrain the supply of all of those things. So if I'm an alumni and I hear that UCLA's admissions rate has dropped to 9%, I like that. I applaud, isn't it great?
Starting point is 00:24:27 And you hear people brag, I would never get into the university I went to now. Well, guess what? That means your daughter's not getting in. Once you own a home, you become very concerned with local traffic. One of the worst things to happen to America is new housing permits have basically been put
Starting point is 00:24:41 in the hands of existing homeowners that like the fact that we don't want new home permits, we need another one and a half to three million home permits a year. So you have seen housing prices do the following. Pre-pandemic, average price of a house was 290. Post-pandemic, it's 420. And with the unprecedented acceleration in interest rates, the average mortgage has gone from $1,100 to $2,300, meaning that whereas it used to be two-thirds of Americans could afford a house, now it's one-third. And especially all of these factors really hit hard young men.
Starting point is 00:25:17 We all knew that guy in high school who was just never going to go to college. The education system is incredibly biased against young men. Who do we want at school? What behaviors do we incentivize? Sit still. Be organized. Be a pleaser. Raise your hand. You just described a girl, but we used to have on-ramps into the middle class for that guy who was never going to go to college, but we did away with wood shop. We did away with metal shop. We did away with auto shop. A lot away with metal shop. We did away with auto shop. And a lot of the industries that supported that middle and upper middle class lifestyle have been outsourced.
Starting point is 00:25:52 And in addition, even worse, parents shame their kids if they decide not to go to college. You've been at those cocktail parties where hush, hush. Oh, so and so dropped out of Rutgers. They came home. Well, guess what? Two thirds of American children don't end up with a traditional college degree, and that's okay.
Starting point is 00:26:09 There's actually been a surge in demand amongst the trade jobs. So what do we have? We have a group of young people who can't afford a home, can't afford the upward lubricant of mobility in our society, unless they're the freakishly remarkable or the child of a rich kid. You're 77 times more likely to get into an elite university if you come from a top 1% income earning household because my generation has weaponized housing,
Starting point is 00:26:35 weaponized the stock market. COVID, $7 trillion into the economy, 85% of it wasn't needed. It was saved. Why? Because you never miss an opportunity to make my generation cheaper. So what happened to that $5 trillion that wasn't needed for food, wasn't needed for rent? It went into the market, housing, stocks.
Starting point is 00:26:56 So what happened? Stocks went on a tear. Housing prices went insane, which is awesome for you and me, Ed, because we already own stocks and houses. But what about the kid who's trying to get into the market? The reason why I am at the Beverly Hills Hotel right now and I have economic security is in 2008, we bailed out the banks, but we didn't bail out the economy. And Apple fell to eight bucks a share. Netflix fell to 12 bucks a share.
Starting point is 00:27:22 Amazon to nine bucks a share. I was coming into my prime income earning years. So I put all of my money in those three stocks and they're up between 30 and 60 X. Where does a young person find value when you bail out the baby boomer owner of a restaurant? All you're doing is robbing opportunity from the 26-year-old recent graduate of a culinary academy that wants her chance at disruption, wants to swoop in and buy a cheap home when we have churned. There are exogenous events. We need turnover.
Starting point is 00:27:55 The key to capitalism is you let sh-t get real and you let assets fall. But what we've decided is a million people dying from a virus would be tragic. But what would be a disaster is if we let my generation get less wealthy. So here's an idea. While I'm in the club doing rails of cocaine and partying with champagne, the only way the young person participates is they get to lend me their credit card so I can run up all this debt on their back so I can stay rich. We have literally lost the script.
Starting point is 00:28:28 My generation has been stealing from a younger generation and people want to claim they're entitled. Bulls**t, they're entitled to be enraged. We are not making the same types of forward leaning investments. Old people keep voting themselves more money. 40% of all government spending is now on people over the age of 65. It's gonna go over 50%.
Starting point is 00:28:48 And the next 20 years, meaning we can't make forward leaning investments in education, in R&D, in technology, in infrastructure, that things that show an actual return on investment and create jobs for young people. This needs to stop. We need a forward leaning. There used to be 12 people supporting every senior.
Starting point is 00:29:04 Now there's three people. We don't have the money. We are robbing more and more prosperity and opportunity from young people. And I'll return to where I started. What's the point if we have depressed kids? What is the actual point of any of this if our kids aren't doing as well as us? And you know what it feels like, you and I are blessed. A disproportionate amount of opportunity was sequestered to white heterosexual males through the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. We took advantage of it.
Starting point is 00:29:33 And now young kids don't have nearly, nearly the amount of opportunity we had. I'll wrap up my word salad here just about tax policy. You're absolutely right. The thing that gets in the way of a progressive tax structure is when they need to start this populist Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren bullsh-t of the billionaires, walk over people. Here's the bottom line. The people who get most screwed in our tax code are what I affectionately refer to as the workhorses. Mom's a baller at a law firm making a million and a
Starting point is 00:30:04 half bucks a year. Dad is a chiropractor with four people working for him. He makes 500 grand a year, 1.9 million in income. If they're living in an urban center in a blue state where you usually need to be to have that kind of job, they're paying 52% in taxes. They're paying way too much, but something happens on the way to being a billionaire.
Starting point is 00:30:25 Once you make the jump to light speed and become an owner instead of an earner, which happened to me about 10 years ago, I make all of my money buying and selling investments, starting and selling companies. My tax rate has plummeted to somewhere between 17 and 19% because of capital gains, because of 1202. So while the 1% pay too much in taxes, the 0.1% pay too little. The 25 wealthiest Americans in America
Starting point is 00:30:50 pay between an average tax rate of six to 8%. Corporations are paying their lowest tax rates since 1939. So the work horses lower their taxes. The super rich and corporations, I actually think we need to raise their taxes. Well, another conversation the other day, I would argue they paid income on that money already, but that's a whole other conversation. Is it double taxation?
Starting point is 00:31:10 Yeah, I think I feel pretty strongly about that. I've been a fan all my life for lower taxes, but there's now no evidence that that money is being returned into the economy to benefit working people every day like I thought it would. I thought if you tax the rich guys less, quite frankly, they would dump that into increasing wages and they don't. Companies don't do that. And so I'm torn on it and that's why I asked you the question. I'm really open to the answer.
Starting point is 00:31:37 And this thing you said about boys and girls, I just think gender neutral, we build conformists in our education system. I feel very strongly about that. We build robots that conform and follow instructions and contrarians and weird people change the world. I want more contrarian, weird people. If you listen to the show for awhile, you've heard me and my guests talk a lot about how critical it is to have your wellness goals in order, especially lately with me.
Starting point is 00:32:00 So you know how powerful visualization is when you visualize yourself one, 10, 30 years from now, you've achieved all your goals. Ask yourself this, am I healthy at that point? In your visions, of course you are, but like anything else without a plan to get and remain healthy, you can't hit the goal. That's why I'm so thrilled to be partnering with LifeForce. It's co-founded by my good friend Tony Robbins and Peter Diamanis. LifeForce is a leader in proactive care. The LifeForce membership includes everything you need to understand your wellness and help you make good decisions today to keep you on track in the future for your health. Listeners on my show get $250 when they first sign up for their membership by going to mylifeforce.com.
Starting point is 00:32:36 slash Ed. That's my lifeforce.com slash Ed. Take control of your wellness with Life Force and see what the healthiest version of you actually looks like and is capable of. These products and statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Hey, those of you that run a small business, it's difficult, isn't it? There's all these different things you have to worry about, hiring, payroll, compliance, all this different stuff. And it just takes up so much of your time. And it also gives you anxiety if you don't know how to do it or you've never done it before. And then of course there's how do I questions that you're going to get all the time.
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Starting point is 00:33:29 We've actually started to adopt them now in one of the companies I have in the retail space and it's made life so much easier. It's like, why did I not know about JustWorks before? Visit JustWorks.com slash podcast to join the thousands of small businesses that trust JustWorks to take care of payroll, benefits, compliance, and more. That's JustWorks.com slash podcast. There is something I want to ask you about that is gender specific that I've heard you talk about and I've only heard you talk about it. And that is single parent homes as it affects young boys.
Starting point is 00:34:03 I'm not a big gender guy like boys versus girls. I really just think most people are humans but there is a lot of evidence about boys that are raised without a strong male figure in their lives and I was with like I said I was with my son this weekend and of all the things I am grateful for is he's had multiple strong male figures in his life. He's had myself, he's had two great grandfathers, he's had multiple strong male figures in his life. He's had myself, he's had two great grandfathers, he's had good coaches, good mentors in his life, and I feel like in addition to being a white male, but what a great advantage it is. And there was another young
Starting point is 00:34:36 man with us who his dad's been in and out of his life most of the time and has not had a strong male figure. His life has an amazing mother who's worked two jobs and just has done everything she could for him. But in observing both of them in the same screen over the same period of time, I did see a confidence and a way about handling himself and a presence frankly to my son who I'm not saying because he's my son who's had strong male figures and the absence of that in the other. What do you what do you think is the solution to that? And I'd like you to speak to that topic to so many single mothers listen to my show
Starting point is 00:35:17 and have these boys they love so much. What can they do when this boy doesn't have that strong male figure? So it's a generous question. So first, let's talk. Let's talk about the problem. Young men are four times as likely to kill themselves. If you go to a morgue and you have five people who have died by suicide, four of them are men.
Starting point is 00:35:39 And if you had any other demographic group killing itself at four times the rate of the control group, three times as likely to be addicted, three times as likely to be homeless, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated, 40% less likely to go to college. I mean, we'd be moving in with programs, but because of the advantages that our generation received, there's a lack of empathy for them. And if you try to reverse engineer to, and I do think we're finally having a productive conversation,
Starting point is 00:36:09 the numbers are just so overwhelming that people are finally starting to pay attention. And then I track everything, I'm pretty into data, I track everything I do. And the number one email I've received over the last three months is some version of the following. I get about 140 emails from strangers a day, and number one, I categorize all of them. The number one email is it too late to buy Nvidia.
Starting point is 00:36:29 It's hilarious. Everyone's obsessed with Nvidia. The number two email that I've gotten consistently for the last three years is a mom, usually a single mom, asking for advice about her son. And it goes something like this. I have three kids, two daughters, one son. My one daughter's in PR in Chicago, the other's in graduate school at Penn, and my son, who's 25, is in the basement playing video games and vaping and seems just totally lost. There's a variety of factors that have come together here. One is just biological. Men's prefrontal cortex is 18 to 24 months behind the girls. They're literally more immature. Have your son and his 10th grade friends come over and the 15 and 16 year old boys are boys and some of
Starting point is 00:37:12 the girls look like the junior senator from Pennsylvania in terms of how they equip themselves. Two 17 year olds applying to college, a boy and a girl, the girl's competing against a 15 and a half year old. They're just biologically maturing later. And there's something weird going on. I don't know if it's hormones or pesticides, but girls are beginning to menstruate earlier and boys, their testicles are descending actually later. It's actually headed in the wrong direction. So let's move to solutions. One, I think we need to redshirt. And by the way, I'm parroting my Yoda on this, Richard Reeves from the, who's the president of the American Institute on Boys and Men. We need to redshirt boys.
Starting point is 00:37:46 We need to start them at six and girls at five. They're just less mature. Two, more vocational programming. Bring back wood metal shop, more freshmen seats at universities. If you have an endowment greater than a billion dollars and you're not growing your freshmen seats faster than population growth,
Starting point is 00:38:01 you should lose your tax-free status because you're not a public servant, you're a f***ing Chanel bag. I mean, you've decided that you're basically in the luxury business. I think we need a national service. I think men need to find their fraternity. The thing you also mentioned, which is that if you were to reverse engineer to where boys come off the tracks, it's exactly what you reference. It's when they lose a male role model. We have the second most single parent homes. Dan Quayle was right.
Starting point is 00:38:28 Kids are better with two parents. Where he was wrong is it doesn't matter if it's two women or two men, but if it's a boy, he absolutely needs male role models. What's interesting is that in single parent homes, girls have similar outcomes, similar outcomes of college attendance, similar income, similar rates of depression, self-harm.
Starting point is 00:38:47 It doesn't appear to really damage girls when they lose a dual parent household. With boys, they come off the tracks. What it ends up, the studies show, is that while boys are physically stronger, they're mentally and emotionally much weaker. So what's the advice to moms who are 93% of single parent households?
Starting point is 00:39:11 And let me be clear, I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died as secretary, lied to my life. But my mom immediately got men in my life. The neighbor down the hall went out of her way to introduce me to him, got the sense he was an empathetic good guy. Used to take me horseback riding on weekends. I walked into a stock brokerage when I was 13. I wasn't very popular. I wasn't very good at school. I was into stocks.
Starting point is 00:39:35 My mom's boyfriend gave me 200 bucks, said, if you don't go buy stocks by Monday, I want the 200 bucks back. I went down. When I was 13 13, used to take two dimes to the phone booth at Emerson Junior High School, call him my own Columbia pictures and he would teach me about the markets. Close encounters of the third kind is a hit. That's why the stock was up 50 cents a day. I'd go buy Dean Winter Reynolds on Westwood and Wilshire
Starting point is 00:39:59 and hang out with him for an hour. Literally, Ed, 45 years later, he and I text each other. Wow, well, male role models, if you're a single mom, you have to get men involved in your son's life. And also just for men, I've been thinking a lot about masculinity and what it means to be a man. You take care of yourself. You're fit, you're smart, you're kind, you take care of your immediate family. You take care, you start showing love and concern and empathy for your community and your neighbors. But the ultimate expression, in my view, of masculinity, is when you take an active role and you become irrationally passionate about the well-being of a kid that isn't yours. Or put another way, if we want better men, we need to be better men. And unfortunately, because of the Catholic Church and because of Michael Jackson, if a man who has love didn't care to give wants to get involved in a young man's life, there's suspicion. Oh, no, there's something wrong with him. No, there's not. There's a ton of men out there that for whatever reason, maybe they have their own kids, maybe they don't, who have empathy and concern to give.
Starting point is 00:41:07 Here's the thing, you don't have to be a baller. You don't have to be a senator. You just have to be a man trying to live a virtuous life. You know what the most important thing to being a male role model is? Just being there, just spending time with the kid, giving him... There are just certain things a boy is not going to talk to his mom about. So it's a variety of social programs, taxation, vocational programming, red-shirting boys, national service, more freshman seats, and we as men, Ed, there are four-to-one applications for big sisters in the U.S. as for big brothers. Men have to get involved in boys' lives. That's the bottom line.
Starting point is 00:41:47 And we're finally having a productive conversation because whenever, I think it really bottomed out about two or three years ago, you started talking about the problems with boys, there was a gag reflex of, oh, that means you don't like women. Empathy is not a zero-sum game. Civil rights did not hurt white people. Heteron. Civil rights did not hurt white people. Heteronormative marriage did not hurt gay marriage. Recognizing the problems that young men are facing does not mean you're anti-women. Who wants more economically and emotionally viable men? Women.
Starting point is 00:42:17 How many times have we heard from people, I know all these great young women, high character, attractive, professionally on the ball, and they can't find a man. No, they can find a man. They just can't find a man they want to date. We are creating millions of lonely, economically and emotionally unviable men. It is something we really need to be focused on, and we need to stop this nonsense that somehow that empathy is in any way anti-women or massages.
Starting point is 00:42:48 No, it's not. Women are making unbelievable progress. We should do nothing to get in the way of that. It's fantastic, but we need to acknowledge something is not right in Houston right now. We need programs and we need attention and we need more men to get involved in the lives of boys. So much you just said is true. My show, it's funny when it started, first three or four years is about 80% male and now it's about 70% female and it's the number one message I get as well, is moms concerned about their sons which is why I covered the topic today because you guys all know I'm not a big guy on this gender, that gender. I'm a big human person. Having said that, a couple things he said I want to tell you. I was watching on the
Starting point is 00:43:30 flight back last night, I was watching a biography on Mr. Rogers and the same thing he said, just a guy who loved kids as far as I know, right? And all the flack and criticism, just a man who lived a virtuous life, who loved kids. We have to not stigmatize these men that would like to get involved in the lives of young men and help them. And the other thing everybody, you know, ask yourself if you have a son and he doesn't have a male figure, what male figure get in his life? And the other thing to look at that he said that I just want to unpack the worst combo that I see is a little boy who does not have a male figure who is also not physically fit. 100%. Look at their body. If that young man doesn't have a man in his life, ladies, that you've got a son
Starting point is 00:44:11 and you're allowing him to get unfit physically, that is a lethal combination for where that young boy is going in his life. At least get him physically fit and active and working out and playing a sport and on a good nutrition program. It's a deadly combination for your young boy if he's got both those things against him. Okay, I want to ask about you. I don't have too much more time and I love talking with you. So what do you do to recharge? I mean you're so reflexively, you know, I don't want to feel like I'm stroking you on every question but like you're reflexively very smart on every question and you bring an energy and an intensity to everything I'm stroking you on every question, but like you're reflexively very smart on every question and you bring an
Starting point is 00:44:45 energy and an intensity to everything I've ever seen you do. Is there something you do for your own personal energy routine wise as a habit, any ritual or routine that you do to recharge? It's, it's more like me asking you a question the audience gets to listen to because we're both involved in the same space and I'm always impressed with you just always seem to be on when you need to be on. You're being, okay, first off, you're being generous. I f*** up a lot.
Starting point is 00:45:09 I make a lot of professional mistakes, be clear. I've had several companies fail. I've had failed relationships. I've been married and divorced. I've had a lot of self-inflicted wounds that were unnecessary, but okay. So how do I try to recharge? Well, you said about fitness, just. And I can tell you're obviously
Starting point is 00:45:27 very physically fit. I've been working out four times a week for 40 years. And I coach a lot of young men. And the first thing I do is I say unlock your phone, I'm not going to be judgmental. I'm like, I watch porn, that's okay. I'm not going to be done on TikTok too much. I have the same addictions you do. And I find eight hours in their phone. And I said, Okay, between Coinbase, Robinhood, Twitter, porn, we're gonna take eight hours, super easy to find, and we're gonna reallocate
Starting point is 00:45:50 that finite human capital. You want to lean into your advantage. When you're young, you have capital, it's just time, it's not money. And the way you do it is if you reallocate that capital of time, human capital, you'll eventually hopefully get financial capital. Like the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna start working out three to four times a week. I think any man under the age of 30 should be able to walk into pretty much any room and know that if shit got real, he could kill and eat everybody or outrun them. And there is nothing wrong with that. You're gonna look back on the incredible male form of that double twitch muscle,
Starting point is 00:46:21 that bone structure, and this unbelievably wonderful substance called testosterone that gets poured over it. And you're gonna think, why the f*** wasn't I a monster? And if you were, and if you were in good shape, it's gonna give you confidence, it's gonna increase your selection set of mating, you're gonna be much less to be depressed. There's studies showing that exercise is just as effective
Starting point is 00:46:42 as SSRIs in many cases of mild depression. The reason why women and employers are attracted to fit people is because not necessarily because big biceps make you more attractive, but it says something about you. It says you have discipline. It says you can commit to something. It says you like yourself, which probably means you'd be a pretty good employee and a pretty good father. And instead, we've decided because there's a lot of money in diabetes,
Starting point is 00:47:11 because there's a lot of money in obesity, let's say that obese people are finding their truth. I want to be clear, we should have empathy for people who struggle with weight. We should try and get rid of food deserts. We should have healthy eating funding or funding that helps make sure that people at least have the opportunity to eat healthfully. But for God's sake, stop romanticizing obesity. 88% of the people who died in COVID had at least one comorbidity,
Starting point is 00:47:41 and 82% of them had two. And the vast majority of them were related to obesity. So I love those old Kennedy videos where he said, we're going to build the strongest young generation, and it's also amazing for women. I think it's as important, is that true? I think it's actually more important for men, but I think fitness among young women is amazing. But the industrial fitness complex took women to a weird place.
Starting point is 00:48:06 I used to do CrossFit, now I can, it's too intense for me, but one of the things I loved about it was we celebrated strength for women. These firefighters, mostly gay, would come in, these female firefighters, and they had big f***ed thighs and huge powerful asses, and we celebrated that strength. We're like, just strength is awesome.
Starting point is 00:48:25 You don't need to be rail thin and go get your boobs done to conform to this equinox bull version of what's aesthetically pleasing. We're gonna celebrate just raw strength. And I absolutely love that. And I think that fitness in your youth is hugely important. If you look at the Fortune 500 CEOs,
Starting point is 00:48:45 the one thing that 480 of them do is not that they went to an Ivy League school, not even that they're white males, it's that they work out almost every day. This is where the first place we're going to reallocate your precious human capital. The second is we're going to start making a little bit of money. I don't care if it's an Uber driver, stocking shelves at CVS, the best way to make a lot of money is to start by making a little bit of money. I don't care if it's an Uber driver, stocking shelves at CVS, the best way to make a lot of money
Starting point is 00:49:06 is to start by making a little and you get a taste for the flesh of money. You start thinking about it and you're out in the public. And then the third thing we're gonna do is we're gonna surround ourselves three or four times a week, church, temple, nonprofit, riding clubs, sports league, whatever it is,
Starting point is 00:49:24 you are going to put yourself in the company of strangers such that you develop those skills and you increase the likelihood you're going to find mentors, friends, and mates. Fitness, making a little bit of money and putting yourself in the company of strangers working in the agency of something bigger than yourself. But for me, I agree with you. It starts with fitness. It is my antidepressant.
Starting point is 00:49:46 When I'm on the road and I don't get to work out in two or three days, I can feel myself getting angry. I can hear myself role playing, being hard on myself. I feel less confident. I think it is hugely important. And I think even more so for men because we are meant to be protectors. And feeling strong, who breaks up a fight at a bar?
Starting point is 00:50:06 I'll tell you who, a big ridiculously buff guy who's confident, who's like, I don't have a little dick, I'm big, I'm strong, I don't need to get in fights. I break up fights, I bring peace. I bring a sense of calm and security. You wanna be that guy. And I think a lot of calm and security. You want to be that guy. And I think a lot of that starts with fitness. You run hot.
Starting point is 00:50:31 You're like me. You run pretty hot. You're intense. I am as well. I've done a lot of work on this over the year. Like my default emotion is politely called intensity and more truthfully called probably particularly I was younger anger a little bit a lot of that and I know a lot of people like you and I that have had exits or that are at the Beverly Hills Hotel or that
Starting point is 00:50:57 have had their success which is where Scott's I'm interviewing him from today, but what I mean by this is they've had success but lack fulfillment and Don't live I mean if the quality of your life is truly the quality of your emotions I think poverty makes it very difficult to live in positive emotions because you're it's there's a scarcity going on There's a fear. There's a lack of being able to provide. We both would agree with that. But I don't see necessarily a dramatic correlation between my friends with a lot of abundance and emotional well-being. I'm wondering if you see that as well and if in your own life, beyond working out, beyond the things you've described, have you struggled with your emotional regulation? Is there things you do to take an inventory of your emotions? Do you just pay it? Do you pay attention to it?
Starting point is 00:51:49 Do you recommend people pay attention to it? If we become too sensitive to those things in our cultures, what are your thoughts about fulfillment and especially just, you know, living in the emotions most would seek the desire to have? So, and I've been open about this. I struggle with anger and depression. I have blessings the size of Saturn and I have a mood the size of a small rock. I'm just, I had sort of this revelatory moment about eight, nine years ago. I call my sister every Sunday or every other Sunday and I was complaining and complaining and she just stopped me and she said, Scott,
Starting point is 00:52:22 And I was complaining and complaining and she just stopped me and she said, Scott, you have less right to be pissed off and angry than anyone I know. She's like, look at your life. Look at your life. I was on the phone yesterday with a friend of mine and I was complaining about the room I got at the Bellevue's hotel. It's not as nice as when they usually give me, but then they upgraded me. And that was like the worst thing happening in my day. And he was talking about what ketamine therapy he should have delivered to his
Starting point is 00:52:45 house or should you go to some amazing resort and in Montecito? I'm like, these are our biggest problems. We're to get ketamine therapy. And I didn't get the room I wanted to the Beverly Hills hotel. And as humans, we're competitive and we're meant to focus on the threats. And we're meant to focus on the things that aren't protective as a survival and an innovation, a competition to make the species better. The problem is it can become out of control. And if you're like me, you focus on the 1% that's not
Starting point is 00:53:10 right with your life. I can feel myself going dark. I mean, going to a depressed angry place. And I have a bit of a, you know, I would say, if at some point you recognize your mood does not fit to your blessings, some of that can be motivational. I try and turn my anger into being raw and authentic. I try to take advantage of some of those embers in terms of burning brighter in terms of my content, but it starts to turn on me. When I get upset, I get angry at something, angry at myself.
Starting point is 00:53:39 I don't forgive myself. I'm very hard on myself and it's like acid running through my veins and then it takes a toll and I get dark and depressed for two or three days. Don't want to talk to anybody, become just totally withdrawn. And when I recognize that I'm going dark, I do a few things and I call it SCAFA. The first is S, I sweat. I'm not feeling good, I sweat. It's like a reset button on a computer for me, I sweat. I'm not feeling good, I sweat. It's like a reset button on a computer for me, I sweat.
Starting point is 00:54:07 The C is clean. I try and cut out trans fats. I try to eat at homes, reduce the salt, the sugar, just eat well. The A is for abstinence. And what I mean by abstinence is I love alcohol. I love THC. I just take those things out of my life for a little while. Whatever's going on in my brain, I need to give the pleasure receptors a break, and I
Starting point is 00:54:30 don't do alcohol or marijuana for a while. The F is family. I find that if I'm around my boys, they're so wonderful and at the same time so difficult, it takes me out of my head because I have to focus on their s***, which is really helpful for an angry depressed person who becomes mildly narcissistic focusing on what they don't like about their life
Starting point is 00:54:53 and how they failed themselves and everybody else and goes to a weird place. My kids take me out of that. And the final A is for affection. Being around my dogs a lot, telling my kids, I'll tell my boys I'm not feeling great. And what they'll do is when we sit down on the couch, they'll throw their legs over mine. That's, you know, they're not willing to like hug and kiss me anymore because, you know,
Starting point is 00:55:13 they're at that age. You're like, dad, no, I'm not going to hug and kiss you in case somebody sees us. But they'll do stuff like they'll hang out with me. They'll give me a hug. They'll throw my legs over mine. And that helps take me out. But I struggle with it. I don't, I still look at my life. I still look at how angry I am and how cynical I am about the world. And I'm like, and that gets me even more angry at myself. And then just a gratitude practice talking about on Saturday, I went to some friends,
Starting point is 00:55:44 60th birthday that I've known, I saw guys I've been friends with for 40 years, I met at UCLA in 1982. And all of us get together, a dozen of us get together, it feels like every year and seeing their kids, seeing our blessings, seeing our prosperity, seeing how smart we were to be born in America, best decision I ever made.
Starting point is 00:56:04 You just can't help if you have any sense of perspective, feeling really good. And I try to think about that a lot, because it helps me. But this is something I struggle with every day. And the fear is, and I'll wrap up here, the fear is you get to the end of your life. I think about death a lot.
Starting point is 00:56:20 It's actually quite liberating for me. I'm a raging atheist. And you think, okay, a life of incredible prosperity, blessings, people that love me, people I love unconditionally, but I never allowed myself to be happy, never was in the moment. That's the biggest risk I have, is that I get to the end and think, Jesus Christ, look at all this. And I still really didn't absorb how blessed I was or I was never really there for it because I was in the past
Starting point is 00:56:48 because I struggled from depression. I was in the future because like you, I'm successful. And successful people are in the future a lot. They're thinking about what they need to do next and they're not listening to their kids. They're not engaging with their spouse. I think about this a lot. Do I have the answer?
Starting point is 00:57:03 No. Do I still struggle? Yes. But I'm cognizant of it. And I think about this a lot. Do I have the answer? No. Do I still struggle? Yes. But I'm cognizant of it. And I tried to develop a framework early for identifying when I'm angry and depressed and what practice physical, mental, emotional, what people I need to have around me
Starting point is 00:57:17 to try and get out of it. Because it is, it is Ed, I know you're gonna agree with this. Can you get over how fast life is going? I mean, it's flying by. And so when I'm at the end, I at least want to know that mostly I squeeze the sh** out of this lemon called life. It's going by too fast.
Starting point is 00:57:36 And half of that squeeze is just being really grateful and enjoying your blessings. When you were just talking, I went, that's why I like this guy so much. I'm so attracted to him. I, by the way, I'm a devout Christian and you're an atheist and we both have reached the same conclusions about something. I worry my biggest, I think about death every day and my biggest concern, I said this this weekend, I've said this many times from stage, is that I'm going to get out of this life having not really enjoyed myself very much and I struggle with it as well. I'm still working on it. It's still,
Starting point is 00:58:06 I think what I like about you is your vulnerability, your transparency, your authenticity. I also just love to surround myself with self-aware people, even if they're aware of their frailties and their weaknesses and their challenges. And, um, I just think that's magnetic and attractive from you. I really, really enjoyed today. I got one more question for you. I really enjoyed today, like really, really enjoyed.
Starting point is 00:58:28 Thank you, Ed. This is kind of funny, but I want to know, do you still think Zuckerberg is Putin's bitch? I think that under the auspices of free speech, under the auspices of shareholder value, 24% of kids 13 to 17 say they're addicted to Instagram, or social psychologists say their use of Instagram qualifies as an addiction. Can you name anything that teens have a 24% addiction rate to? I mean, the thing we're gonna regret the most, we're gonna look back on the era of big tech and say, did they make our discourse more coarse?
Starting point is 00:59:12 Did we weaponize elections? Did they income inequality? Yes, yes, yes. But the thing we're really gonna regret, Ed, is we're gonna think, how did we let this happen to our kids? And so I think Mark Zuckerberg and Shel Sandberg have done more damage to American youth
Starting point is 00:59:27 while making more money than arguably anyone in history. And during that time, during that addiction over the last two or three years when all those studies were coming up, metastock is up 90%. So unfortunately there's a lot of money in addiction. The highest margin products in the world, whether it's alcohol or tobacco products have a deeply addictive money in addiction. The highest margin products in the world, whether it's alcohol or tobacco products,
Starting point is 00:59:45 have a deeply addictive component to them. The difference with social is we've never allowed that type of addictive product to penetrate our youth just as their brain is getting hardwired. So what do you have with a 13 or a 14 year old boy or girl who are just going through puberty and their brain is literally getting set for the rest of their life? We're giving them a massive dopa bag called a smartphone and we're teaching them
Starting point is 01:00:10 to be addicts. We are setting up a generation of millions of young people who will not be able to function without a constant dopa hit. And they're not just going to find it from social media. They're going to start finding it from other places. So what, in addition to the addiction, I think what we've let happen with social is they will cash anybody's check, including a troll farm in Albania that decides to sow polarization, sow discourse, misinformation up until an election. And I think that these individuals have been weaponized by bad actors, whether it's the CCP, I think the TikTok should be banned unless it divests to U.S. interests. I think Metta should
Starting point is 01:00:50 get huge fines when it comes out that the GRU or the CCP are manipulating their platform to sow division and chaos. So is he Putin's bitch? I don't know. He is a vehicle for addiction for teens, and he has purposely delayed and obfuscated obvious evidence that our children, our children are becoming addicted. There is no reason anyone under the age of 16 should have a smartphone or be on any social media. And they say, well, Scott, you're a parent. It's up to you. No, I'm not. I can't, anyone who says that it's about parenting doesn't have kids because there's something even worse. My colleague, Adam Alter and Jonathan Hyde have done fantastic work on this.
Starting point is 01:01:33 There's a cohort effect where if your kid is not on Snap or Instagram, he or she is even more depressed because everyone else is on it and they are isolated. They are ostracized. So here's the deal. We have to get the Kids Online Safety Act or COPPA. It's crazy we're letting this happen to our kids. We put a casino, an IMAX, a video game,
Starting point is 01:01:58 a constant dopa bag in their pocket. So Mark Zuckerberg has done more harm to children while making more money than any person in history. That's a compelling answer, brother. Piling answer. Yeah, you and I use Instagram. Oh, I'm an I'm addicted. Do as I say, not as I do it. And we're promoting this show today on Instagram probably, but I am with you 100% as it relates to our children. My gosh, that 16 year old part for sure.
Starting point is 01:02:26 I agree with that. Wow. What a great answer. Uh, today was awesome. Thank you, Ed. And I enjoyed the conversation. I'd love to have you on. You got something else going on.
Starting point is 01:02:34 Come on, please. And we'll do it in person. We'll do it in LA when we're in the studio next time, but thank you for today. So much Scott. Thank you, Ed. And thanks for your good work and congrats on all your success. Yeah. Likewise, my friend. Hey guys, the book that he's got out now, The Algebra of Wealth. Go grab it. He's got a bunch of great books.
Starting point is 01:02:51 The Algebra of... what's the other? The Algebra of... I love that book. The Algebra of... Happiness. Happiness. So good. So good you guys. Alright everybody, God bless you. Share today's show. I know you will. Max out.

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