Scott Galloway — affectionately known as “Prof G” to his legion of podcast followers — is deeply concerned about young men in America. In his new book “Notes on Being a Man,” he reflects on how a lack of economic viability and social connection have created powerful headwinds that make the experience of young men today far different from his own. Scott joins Nicolle to share his analysis of several careening crises at play, from the intentionally isolating effects of social media to a stark imbalance in generational income, while the crushing costs of everyday life pile up. With his entrepreneurial spirit and data-driven approach, Galloway isn’t just diagnosing problems — he’s mapping a way forward. Blending personal life experiences with research, he delivers a conversation that’s candid, introspective, and unmistakably “Prof G.”
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NOTE: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Scott Galloway: And two of my role models for masculinity are Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton never forgot about protection. Through her whole life, she’s always like, “I’m about helping kids,” always made a part of her public policy, was always very pragmatic about it. It was public policy that would plant trees, the shade of which you would never sit under. I think that is the ultimate expression of masculinity.
Nicolle Wallace: Host, “The Best People with Nicolle Wallace” We are so happy to have this week’s guest here in studio in-person. Not a lot of these get to be in-person. I want to introduce you in the way that we met you a little bit though.
The best people, to me, are the people that I stop and soak in every word and then take those lessons and try to use it to inform the questions I’m asking in two hours of live television and in the weekly podcast.
And one of those people is Scott Galloway. Everything that you create, all of your content, all your podcasts, and especially your new book about boys and men resonate so deeply with me. So, without any further ado, this is “The Best People,” and this week’s guest is Scott Galloway. Thank you.
Scott Galloway: Thanks for having me. Those are very generous comments.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, your contributions to the political conversation may not be intentionally impacting how we cover politics, but I think your lens is one that speaks to me both as an anchor and as a mom. And I want to dive right into the book and then back into politics if that’s okay.
Scott Galloway: Sure.
Nicolle Wallace: I think that we spend so much time figuring out why people voted the way they voted. But I think with men and boys, it’s important to understand why they’re looking for what they’re looking for and where politics comes in because politics feels very downstream from some of the crises —
Scott Galloway: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: — and some of the hinge points that men and boys are dealing with. So, start where the book starts with your story.
Scott Galloway: Yeah. Born to a single immigrant mother, lived and died a secretary a lot of my life, fairly remarkably unremarkable childhood. As you get older, you get more thoughtful, that’s the good news, as you get older though, the bad news is you get more thoughtful.
And my narrative on my backstory was kind of like, check my shit out, I overcame all these obstacles and now, I’m a baller, like, smell me. And what I’ve realized is I reversed engineer some of my success and blessings. They truly are blessings in the sense they weren’t my fault.
But also I consider myself a product of big government. I got assisted lunch, I got Pell Grants. I speak openly about this, I don’t think she’d mind. When my mom was 47 and I was senior in high school, I was living at home, I was either going to go to UCLA or I wasn’t going to go to college. I just didn’t have the money or the sophistication to apply to other schools.
And my mom became pregnant, terminated a pregnancy, that was made available and inexpensive. If my mom had not had that freedom, I don’t think I would’ve gone to college, is the only male in the household or the only person in the household I think that would’ve gone to work.
I got in UCLA when it was a 74% admissions rate, because there was many more seats relative to the population then. The admissions rate is now 9%. I got Pell Grants, I got financial aid because I came from what was considered a modest income home. I graduated into the Internet economy where American households had made these huge investments in this post-apocalyptic communications network called the Internet.
My backstory is that America loved unremarkable kids. That gave us all a shot. And now, I worry that it’s essentially the hunger games where the economy now is, we want to identify two groups of people, the children of rich people who are 77 times more likely to go to an elite university than the bottom 99%, or the freakishly remarkable.
And the good news about Americans, our superpowers are optimism. The bad news is we’re a bit unrealistic. We all think our kids are going to be in the top 1%, and I can prove to every one of us that 99% of our children are not on the top 1%.
I feel like America used to be about giving everyone a shot at being a millionaire and having some purpose. And now, they’ve crowded all the opportunity thinking that we just want to make more billionaires.
So, I feel like the America, the reason I’m in this chair, a lot of those things are under attack right now. And, by the way, I’m not a humble person. I think I’m a fucking monster. I think I’m creative and super hardworking. But I would not have what I have had I been born anywhere else.
Nicolle Wallace: I benefit from a lot of the same things. I went to U.C. Berkeley and I too got Pell Grants. And I think though there’s a piece of benefiting from things that are under attack that make you a remarkably effective advocate for them among people who have no idea what you’re talking about, right? So, a lot of your peers are other masters of the universe.
Scott Galloway: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: What do you feel about sort of putting that distance between you and them to make these arguments from a moral high ground?
Scott Galloway: Well, I don’t know if it’s a high ground, but, like I said, I’m not humble person, I think I can really use platforms and creativity and art to communicate some of these messages and create a more empathetic nation. And most people don’t look at me and don’t think that kid got Pell Grants.
And I think if you grew up with money, you can have sympathy for people without money and you can still be a huge advocate, but you really can’t have empathy. I don’t think people really know. I remember feeling like, you have these series of conversations when you’re a kid and you don’t have money.
We’d win a little league baseball game. Yeah, I know your son’s a baseball player. And you’d kind of get shuffled and sequestered into the car because your mom wasn’t sure who was paying for what, and she didn’t have money.
It feels as if when you grow up without money, it literally feels as if you’re walking around. I remember thinking that, like, my mom and I just weren’t worthy. It’s like, there’s a ghost following you around in a capitalist society saying, “You know, you and your mother, you, guys, screwed up.”
I think it’s so important to have these stories because one of the things I think we’re really missing in our nation right now, my books about masculinity, and I think one of the legs of the stool of masculinity is protection.
And I feel like we’ve lost that. I think some of our leaders have conflated incorrectly and dangerously masculinity with courses and cruelty and have skipped the whole protection part of masculinity.
You know, our budgets reflect our values. 20% of the nation is under the age of 18, but 40% of SNAP recipients are under the age of 18. That reflects a value on the part of both parties that we’ve decided we’ve made a conscious decision that there’s going to be double the number of hungry people under the age of 18. You know, it generally is not their fault.
So, I feel as if our nation has moved from a sense of protection and a sense of empathy and a sense of trying to give everyone a shot of being in the top 10% and instead double down on this notion that we’d rather just have a small number of freakishly remarkable or fortunate kids.
So, I think it’s important to tell these stories. As you get older, you get more thoughtful when you start thinking, “Okay, maybe I have an opportunity to just reverse engineer and make sure my success and make sure some of the things that got me here that those avenues are at least as wide as they used to be and hopefully a little bit wider.”
So, I feel like I have a debt. From 1945 to 2000, America registered a third of the world’s economic growth with 5% of the population. So, Americans, ‘45 to 2000, got six acts to prosperity, and then all of that massive prosperity was crowded into a third of Americans that were White male and heterosexual, and I’m all of those things.
So, the smartest thing I did was being born a White heterosexual male in 1964. I hit the lottery without buying a ticket, which means men in my generation have a debt, and the way I try and pay that debt is I try and raise awareness around the struggles of young men because they’re being held accountable and guilty for my privilege.
And when I start talking about this stuff, there’s an understandable gag reflex from progressives, from women, from non-Whites. I get it. But I think the mistake we’re making is we’re holding young men accountable for my unearned privilege. I get it. I’ve had too much advantage crammed into people who look, smell and feel like me.
But the notion that we’re not going to recognize that now, with young people, if you go into a morgue and five people who’ve died by suicide, four men, if there was any other group committing suicide at four times the rate of the control group, we’d weigh in with programs. But because of my unlearned privilege, we just have a lack of empathy for young men who do not in any way register the same advantage that I’ve registered.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, who’s the we, because I think your analysis of the results of the 2024 election is spot on, that it wasn’t just young men lured (sp?) into the Trump adjacent manosphere, but it was their mothers?
Scott Galloway: We don’t like to have these conversations because, you know, the truth sometimes doesn’t reflect either gender well. And the reality is there’s still a lot of women who will vote for who they perceive as best for their husbands and their sons.
And we talked about this on your show, the three groups that pivoted hardest from blue to red, 2020 to 2024 were, one, Hispanics. The second group that pivoted hardest was people under the age of 30. And in some, they’re 24% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago. And people in my generation are 72% wealthier.
So, people say they’re not as good in math, fine, but they can do math. And all they know is, things are harder for them. Housing’s gone up 6X while their income’s gone up 2X, right? Education’s gone up 7X while their income’s gone up 2X.
So, like, everything I need to get ahead, all the keys to meeting, all the keys for savings, pride, having a home, being successful are getting harder for me and more expensive, and yet, 210 times a day, I’m reminded that I’m not killing it. There are billionaires out there and I’m not one of them.
So, it’s understandable, they just want change. They don’t care who it is, they just want the non-incumbent. But as you referenced, I thought the most interesting one was 45 to 64-year-old women pivoted hardest relative to 20 (sp?) to red.
And my thesis is that’s their mothers because if your son is in the basement, and we used the term before, vaping and playing video games, (inaudible) give a shit about territory sovereignty in Ukraine or transgender rights.
The basic compact any society has with its populous is one thing, play by the rules, be a good citizen and your kids will do better than you. That’s the fundamental contract. And for the first time in the 275-year history of America, a 30-year-old man or woman isn’t doing as well as his or her parents at 30.
And not only impacts the 30-year-old, but likely, his roommates, his parents are reminding him of his failure every day by virtue of the fact, he can’t afford to move out and it creates rage and shame across the whole household.
If your son is failing, almost half of men under the age of 24 are living at home. One in five men aged 30 are living at home. One in three will live at home at some point before the age of 25.
And all I can tell you, is if you’re the parents of a struggling kid, your whole world shrinks with that kid. And politically, if you see it as a non-health-related issue, you just want change in chaos. And I think you’re very open to the idea of a strong man in authoritarianism.
And the most unstable violent societies in the world all have one thing in common, they have a disproportionate number of young men with a lack of economic and romantic opportunities. And that isn’t to say that a lack of economic or romantic opportunities is any less bad for women, but the reality is women, when they have less economic opportunity, they can still find or have an easier time finding a mate.
Men made socioeconomically horizontally down, women horizontally up. And when the pool of horizontal and up males keep shrinking, there’s a lack of household formation. And the joke is that Beyoncé could work at McDonald’s and marry Jay-Z, but the opposite is not true.
And we don’t like to have an honest conversation, but let’s have an honest conversation. 75% of women say economic viability is key to a mate. Only 25% of women, they don’t really care. And so, what you have is a pool of economically and emotionally unviable men. One in three men is in a relationship under the age of 30. It’s two in three women. And you think, “Well, that’s mathematically impossible.” It’s not.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Scott Galloway: Because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. And let me just finish this word, salad. Okay, loneliness is bad, but it’s bad for everybody.
Actually, it’s worse for men because there’s a cartoon of a woman in her 30s who didn’t find romantic love. What a tragedy, what a crime against humanity. She’s alone living with cats. Well, you know what, Nicolle, she’s just fine. Women have a tendency to take a lack of romantic energy and pour back into their friend network and their professional lives.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Scott Galloway: If a guy hasn’t been married or cohabitated with a woman by the time he’s 30, there’s a one in three chance will be a substance abuser. Men need relationships much more than women.
Widows are happier after their husband dies. Widowers are less happy. Women in relationships live two to four years longer, men four to seven years longer. The reality is men benefit much more from relationships, and quite frankly, go down a downward spiral when they lack an opportunity for a romantic relationship. And without economic viability, they’re just not attractive to women.
Nicolle Wallace: When we started talking about the ways that government or the state can level the playing field through Pell Grants and what it’s like to be in those programs, it sounded like there was some flash of emotion and sort of the path that you took.
Is the other side of all of that human capacity for vulnerability? And did you always have that or is that what you’re talking about, you added to your ability to understand your story in hindsight?
Scott Galloway: So, it’s strange. One of my hacks, I have this series of life hacks, I struggle with anger and depression, which probably doesn’t surprise anybody who listens to my podcast. But the way I try to address the issue is I try and learn all about it then write about it. That’s cathartic for me.
There’s a series of life hacks I try and remind myself up. From the age of 29 to 44, I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry when my mom died. I didn’t cry when my business went Chapter 11. I didn’t cry when I got divorced. I just kind of forgot how.
And the advice I would give to any men and women who don’t express their emotions a lot is that life goes so fast as you get older, that the only way to slow it down is to really lean into your emotions.
We’re sentient beings, which is synonymous with emotion. And what I would suggest is when you stumbled upon a piece of art or flowers or something that inspire you, you stop and really kind of lean into and ask yourself, “Why does this inspire me?”
When you’re watching “Modern Family”, and I’m now like cry to drop of a hat, with “Modern Family”, I can’t help, but get through an episode at some point and not cry, ask yourself, “What is it about this that inspires me? Is it the parental relationship? What is it about you?”
I used to go to Brazil every year with a bunch of guys, and if I ever managed to get up on a board, like just being in awe and wonder of this cylindrical mass of millions of gallons of water, just to really try and lean into your emotions, because as men were taught that masculinity signals strength.
And also the reason that we’re more uncomfortable crying and showing vulnerability is the following. It’s very obvious. For 99% of our time on this planet, if you cried, it demonstrated weakness, and if you demonstrated weakness, there was a decent chance another man might kill you and have sex with your wife and eat your children.
I mean, there’s a reason why men have been taught instinctively not to demonstrate vulnerability or weakness. But what I can say is that being more emotive as I’ve gotten older informs what’s important to me, it slows my life down, it’s cathartic, I think it makes me healthier.
And so, my advice to men is laugh out loud, you know, feel sadness. If you feel like crying, cry. And when you’re inspired by things, really slow yourself down and say, “What is it about this that moves me and what does that say about what’s rewarding in my life?”
Nicolle Wallace: You know, as you’re talking, I’m thinking of John Boehner, you know, the former Speaker of the House —
Scott Galloway: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: — who was such a —
Scott Galloway: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: — wonderful male public figure. He cried all the time.
Scott Galloway: I saw that. I have a —
Nicolle Wallace: I never took him live because if we were taking him live, there was something happening without watching him weep.
Scott Galloway: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: He cried when the Pope came. I think he’s still crying about the Pope. I mean, he cried when he got the job, he cried when he left the job. And it was so additive to his persona and to what people thought about him. Why do you think people are still trapped in a phony view of what masculinity is?
Scott Galloway: I don’t know. I think it’s conflating masculinity with a weird sense of strength. Like, when I think about what makes a good partner, you know, what you really want is you want someone to notice your life, right? You want someone who, like, just observes you, because the biggest fear is you go through life without a series of deep and meaningful relationships and it’s as if you never happened, right?
And I think men are taught that their role as a protector and a provider and a procreator, that’s what I think of the three stools of masculinity, that it’s hard to present yourself as strong and a provider and a protector if you’re emotional.
But I do think that’s changing. I think men are getting better at that. I mentor a lot of kids. And I’ve only had it happen once. I said, “You know, listening to you,” I was talking to this kid about his mom’s Alzheimer’s, and I said, “You know, I feel so bad, I’ve had a shitty day,” and I’m like, I can hear the emotion in my voice, I’m like, “Don’t be freaked out, I cry all the time,” and he started crying. And I think it was nice for him because I just think at some point, you need that release and you need to process. We’re just not good at it, Nicolle.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, yeah.
Scott Galloway: But the thing about it is that I’ve noticed, I was on the view and I started crying, and I didn’t like it at the moment. I was really, like, embarrassed. I’m like, I’m with four really impressive women in front of a studio audience where they’re getting free shirt handed to them and everyone’s like, “Yay, and it’s great to be in fall in New York.” And then this professor comes on and starts crying when he’s talking about his father and I’m like, “Oh, fuck.” And, of course, that’s the thing they clipped.
Nicolle Wallace: We’ll take a quick pause right here. Next up, much more in my conversation with podcast host and bestselling author, Professor Scott Galloway. Stay with us.
This may be one of the enduring gender divides. I think what women feel when anyone is emotional, a man or a woman, is connection.
Scott Galloway: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: And maybe what men feel ashamed. And I just —
Scott Galloway: Yeah, right.
Nicolle Wallace: — want to toggle back to childhood. And I wonder for any child, how twisted and braided is it with shame.
Scott Galloway: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: And how twisted and braided was that for you. Are you talking about the wave? I mean, one of the first things you write about is the waves. You described them almost the same way when you talked about surfing with your dad.
Scott Galloway: Yeah. I mean, my dad was very emotive. My parents are European. But I think you can only learn from what your parents do to what they don’t do. I started something that’s been a gift for me. I’m super affectionate with my boys.
I used to kiss them on the lips until they wouldn’t let me. My closest friend Lee, his father used to come over and his father looked like Burt Reynolds. He’s such a handsome guy and he was an entrepreneur. He was one of those guys to just look up to.
And they used to walk in and Lee is a young handsome guy. And just very naturally and seamlessly, they’d kiss each other on the lips. And I had never seen anything like that. My dad occasionally would mess up my hair, but that was about it.
And my mom couldn’t help it sometimes. She would occasionally grab my hand, but she was raised non-affectionate. There just wasn’t a lot of affection. And you can make a conscious decision like we’re an affectionate species. We’re meant to lie on top of each other.
I think the nicest things I did as a dad was I decided, I’m down with co-sleeping. And one of the biggest regrets I had is we read some stupid article about in psychology today or something that you’re not supposed to let your kids sleep with you. In India, co-sleeping is big, in Japan, co-sleeping.
And my two year old son used to show up at our bedroom door with an offering of his basket of cars saying, “If you let me come in now, you can play with these too.” And we’re such idiots. For the first two years, we didn’t let him co-sleep with us because we thought that was bad.
But one of the most rewarding things I’ve had in my life was letting our kids when they want to come in and sleep with us. Just trust me on this one, for the men sleeping out there and the mother sleeping out there, co-sleeping with your kids when they’re little is a gift, and when you’re older, you’ll cherish it, just trust me on this.
Nicolle Wallace: I’m with you. I mean, my ex-husband still calls me a panda mom. I mean, it’s all the soft things.
Scott Galloway: And —
Nicolle Wallace: And my mother and grandparents are Greek and so, it was everyone kissed everybody on the lips.
Scott Galloway: I’ve gotten to a point now, I try to manage my depression without pharmaceutical. It’s not that they can’t serve a huge purpose, but I know when I’m going dark and I have this means or this behavioral therapy to try and reverse the downward spiral.
It’s an acronym, SCAFA, S-C-A-F-A, S for sweat. I immediately try to reset —
Nicolle Wallace: Okay, yeah.
Scott Galloway: — my system by sweating. Clean, I try and eat at home, non-sodium, non-fatty food. Abstinence, what I mean by that is I love alcohol and marijuana, I’m good at them. I’m a better version of me, a little fucked up. I’ve gotten more out of alcohol and it’s gotten (sp?) outta me. They’re additive to my life. But when I feel myself going down, I stop all outside substances banging on my sensors.
F, family, I find being around my boys as restorative. because my boys can be such jerks, it makes it impossible for me to stay in my screwed up head. And then affection. And I’ll even say to my boys, you know, I’m feeling down, and they know to kind of like, come sit down with me on the couch and throw their legs over mine. The dogs I find are very affectionate. Dogs will fall in line (sp?).
Nicolle Wallace: They’re kinda nice, yeah.
Scott Galloway: I have a little rescue mutt that I think is a Dachshund, and then we have a Great Dane. So, we have some very big and very small.
Nicolle Wallace: Big lapdogs, yeah. I have two Vizslas, they’re lapdogs too.
Scott Galloway: Oh, we had a Vizsla. Sweetest dogs in the world.
Nicolle Wallace: They have to run, they have to feel, they have to touch.
Scott Galloway: Very sensitive dogs.
Nicolle Wallace: Very sensitive dogs.
Scott Galloway: Yeah, yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: How much of managing your own mental health? You know, leave the gender piece out of it, but does everyone have to take responsibility for understanding that there’s so many things working against you with the phones, with the isolation, with whatever sort of —
Scott Galloway: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: — post-COVID work habits are? I mean, you talk a lot about it in your podcast, you write about it. I mean, how much should be as much of a practice to take care of your mental health the way people take care of their workouts?
Scott Galloway: Well, first is to acknowledge that unfortunately, unwittingly, moment by moment, we have connected our economy to diabetes and depression. Health care is the biggest industry in the United States, $2 trillion a year. And a decent amount of that is based on the obesity industrial complex.
And then the most valuable companies in the world representing 40% of the S&P by market value and 20% of global equity value are big tech firms who do a lot of things, but the two real primary businesses they’re in are sequestering you from all other activities. The more time you’re on the screen, the less time with your parents, friends, mentors, mates, the more money they make. And also in order to keep you engaged, they want to enrage you.
I’ve been in marketing my whole life from 1945 to the introduction of Google. We thought the ultimate secret sauce was sex. Drink our beer, you’ll be hotter. Buy this car, greater likelihood of a random sexual experience.
What the algorithms found out is there’s something that sells better than sex, and that is rage. And so, you have to be cognizant of the fact that the industrial food complex wants to get you addicted to sugary, fatty, salty foods, hand you over to the diabetes industrial complex, which will make money on dialysis, statins, cholesterol, drugs. Drugs, hip, and knee replacements, it’s a big business.
And that the most valuable companies in the world have a profit incentive to use their god-like technology to sequester you from relationships. And the worst thing you can do as a mammal to your mental health is not be around other people.
Put an ork in a tank alone, see what happens. The worst thing you can do to a human is solitary confinement. By the way, there’s a new study coming out showing that 20 to 30-year-old males are spending less time outside than prison inmates.
Nicolle Wallace: Jesus.
Scott Galloway: What happens to your dog when you leave it alone without another dog or another being? In some, your success, your economic success, your mental health, your likelihood of becoming a millionaire, your likelihood of not engaging in self-harm, your likelihood of not hurting someone else, your likelihood of having more sex is inversely correlated to how much time you spend on a screen.
So, just recognize, you are up against a very capable, well-armed foe that wants to sequester you and divide you from the key thing to mental health, and that is being around other people.
Nicolle Wallace: I say this about the phone because I have a 13, almost 14-year-old, and we have a lot of structure around phone use still, and it’s a friction point. But I say to him, “You’re the only generation that’s going to have one of those things,” it’s going to be like cigarettes, you are going to look at your kids and they’re going to say, “You had a phone when you were 10?” That would be like me giving a pack of cigarettes.
Like, do you think that the society and policy and laws and norms will catch up with all that is available in science, all that information that you just shared?
Scott Galloway: Yeah. I think our biggest regret around our economy in big tech is we’ll say, “Okay, the income inequality was bad. The monopolization, you know, there were a lot of bad things at big tech.” The thing we’re going to just and be in disbelief about is how on earth did we let this happen to our kids?
Nicolle Wallace: Right, right. Like, who thought —
Scott Galloway: How much —
Nicolle Wallace: — who’s going to hand a nine-year-old a screen.
Scott Galloway: We age gate the military, pornography, alcohol.
Nicolle Wallace: Voting.
Scott Galloway: But we’ve decided not to age gate —
Nicolle Wallace: Screens.
Scott Galloway: — technology that puts an arcade, Netflix, pornography. (Inaudible) high school cafeteria.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Scott Galloway: — the judgment, the shaming, we’ve decided to let a 14-year-old when they’re especially susceptible to their social capital or lack thereof where young men who are more sensitive in what can become more addicted to opiates faster and we put this in their pocket.
So, typically, what happens is it takes 20 years to figure things out. It took 30 years with cigarettes, it took 20 years with opiates, it’s been about 20 years with smartphones, and it’s happening. There are banning phones in schools.
I think we’re figuring it out. And the thing is there’s common sense solutions. No one under the age of the 18 should be on a social media platform, I’m sorry. A.I. should be similar to movies. There’s a different A.I. for people under the age of 18. And the thing that really has me freaked out is the idea of synthetic relationships. Friction —
Nicolle Wallace: It’s like talking to ChatGPT.
Scott Galloway: A character.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, yeah.
Scott Galloway: And supposedly, one in three people under the age of 18 are now in a synthetic relationship.
Nicolle Wallace: Like “Her” like the movie?
Scott Galloway: Exactly. Friends, advice, therapists. And if you’re a 17-year-old male and maybe your initial overtures to other 17-year-old girls in your high school have been rebuffed, which is called being a 17-year-old male, and you have this lifelike 4k beautiful woman and an algorithm behind it that is figured out a million times a second your fetishes, the type of titillation that works best for you, and this individual synthetic figure never says no, supportive, nice, totally frictionless, and starts performing erotic acts, you’re going to expect that kid to finally, like, take risks and get in shape and smell nice and get someone to dress him and approach strange women and establish resilience and trying to learn a kindness practice and try and develop a sense of humor.
And this goes back to mentoring young men. I don’t tell them to not engage in porn. I think that’s almost unrealistic right now. I graduated from UCLA with a 2.27 GPA, which is not very good, but one of the reasons I graduated is when I went on UCLA’s campus every day is I wanted to see my friends, it was a beautiful campus, but also to be blunt, there was a remote, but non-zero probability I’d meet a woman and get her to come back to or invite her to a fraternity party and at some point have sex with her.
I wasn’t seeing women and thinking I want to lower rates on insurance when I’m 40 or I want to even raise kids with this person. I was thinking I would really like to have sex with this person. And I think we have pathologized young men’s sexual and romantic interests, not recognizing that some of the messages they get discourage them from learning the skills around how to express romantic interests when making that person feel safe.
But also, if I’d had lifelike synthetic porn on my phone and computer 24/7, I’m not sure I would’ve gone on campus as much, and I might not have graduated from college. And it’s also giving young men an unrealistic expectation of a relationship it’s leading to.
Ultimately, porn gets more and more extreme, and quite frankly, it becomes violent and misogynistic. It’s just training men to not take risks and it’s training them to have unreasonable, strange expectations around what a romantic relationship is.
The most rewarding things in life are the hard things. The only thing the best things in life have in common is they’re really hard and they usually involve a person. And the reason why relationships with people is so rewarding is it’s so goddamn hard.
It’s hard to figure out the pecking order and the insecurities of establishing a friendship group. It’s hard to come into an office like this and put up with a bullshit boss who’s less talented than you or not make as much as Bob because he’s been there 20 years longer. It’s hard to navigate that.
And finally, to try and figure out the nuance and the rejection and the perseverance and the skills required to establish a romantic partnership, that shit’s hard. But at the end of the day, when you figure out the skills and the resilience and the perseverance to establish these things, that’s what victory looks like.
And then I think the most rewarding thing hands down in life is to establish a romantic partnership with someone such that you commit enough to each other, where you raise these things that get less awful every day called kids. That’s the only time I’ve ever felt purpose.
And I can tell you that is hands down the hardest thing I have ever done. And it happened because I was so attracted to someone that I’d mustered up the courage to endure humiliation by approaching her under the sun of midday without the benefit of alcohol at a pool in a hotel in Miami called the Raleigh Hotel, simple line, “Hey, where are you, guys, from?” And 18 months later, our son’s middle name is Raleigh.
If you want to punch above your weight class economically or romantically, get ready to endure a rejection and get off a screen. But initially, you gotta recognize the entire economy in the United States right now is a giant bet on big tech and A.I. and they’re not malicious people, but their algorithms have figured out the less time you go out making friends, mentors, and mates, the more their stock price will go up.
Nicolle Wallace: At what point is Trump the beneficiary of that and at what point in the second term as president is he the architect of that? I’m just thinking of his bets on A.I., his bets on the billionaires —
Scott Galloway: So —
Nicolle Wallace: — to the exclusion of his own working class base.
Scott Galloway: So, I think essentially, most candidates who win, whether it’s Kennedy or FDR, TV and radio, so to speak, weaponize a new platform that’s emerging and weaponize, leverage and battery. President Trump did it in his first in ‘16 with Twitter. In ‘24, the medium that got him elected was podcasting, I believe.
Nicolle Wallace: Me too.
Scott Galloway: And that is the average viewer of a cable news network, if you distill it down to a person, is a seven-year-old White woman. She knows who she’s voting for. The average podcast listener is a 34-year-old ethnically ambiguous male. He’s a swing voter, because he typically votes on who he perceives as being better for his pocket book, and that flips back and forth between Republican and Democrat.
So, when he went on Rogan, he got between his audio downloads and video views. He got 55 million views. Vice President Harris would have matched that number of impressions would’ve had to go on MSNBC, CNN and Fox every night for three hours for two weeks.
If you noticed, Trump went on every manosphere podcast because somebody very genius in the campaign said the swing voters are young men. Our message of what I would call full masculinity is resonating with them. They don’t feel seen. And the way we reach them is with Andrew Schulz and Theo Von. I think the manosphere and podcast delivered the election to Trump.
Now, what I think what’s really damaging to young men right now is that whether we like it or not, the premier role models for young men are going to be the most powerful man in the world and the wealthiest man in the world. And right now, that’s Trump and Musk. And —
Nicolle Wallace: What about athletes?
Scott Galloway: Maybe, or rock stars, but I still think that globally, if you had to pick the two role models that young men are going to look up to or young people in general, it’s going to be the president and in a capitalist society, whoever’s won the game, right? And that’s the richest man in the world.
The whole point though of prosperity, and I think we miss this sometimes, the whole point, the whole shooting match, you develop economic security so you can take care of yourself, you want to fix your own oxygen mask.
But the second leg of the stool is protection. Think about the most masculine jobs, cop, fireman, military, at the end of the day, they protect. The whole reason you want to work out and be big is such that you can protect people physically. That’s when you feel, in my opinion, most at peace, when you feel like your kids are safe and your partner feels noticed, when you can protect your country.
And this is where I think our leadership has entirely failed. I just think they don’t move to protection. Being sued concurrently by two women for sole custody of that child because you have not spent any time with that child, that couldn’t be any more anti-masculine. Figuring out a way such that in the most prosperous nation in the world that kids are going to go hungry, there just couldn’t be anything —
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, and they’re trying to manufacture hunger. I mean, it’s not an accident that they’re refusing to solve. It’s a benefit they’re designing a way to not provide. And I like that you write about, it’s a correction I made immediately that toxic masculinity isn’t a thing, it’s oxymoronic.
I called a couple of guys that I know felt disaffected after 2024. And I said, why don’t you start like a BDE pack, like big democracy energy, like what masculine? And this was after —
Scott Galloway: That’s right.
Nicolle Wallace: — the cabinet came together.
Scott Galloway: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: And you’ve got Hegseth was investigated for rape allegations. Matt Gaetz was his first choice for A.G. who was repelled by his own Republican caucus. They repel no one. I mean, why isn’t there an effort? Forget about politics, I guess, for a second. But hopefully, it ultimately benefits politics to rebrand like male energy and what masculinity is and isn’t in a way that graphs onto our politics. It makes all these points in a political arena. Would you take this mission and run for office?
Scott Galloway: There’s a lot there. So, I consider myself a patriot, I want to add value, I’ll go in reverse order. The way I can have the most value is by bringing attention to what I think is an outstanding bench of Democratic candidates. That’s my superpower. And so, that’s going to be my role.
And other than being a narcissist and having some money, which are qualifications to run for office, I don’t especially like people, I don’t think I’d especially enjoy the job, I don’t think I’d be especially good at it.
So, the way I can be a patriot is by trying to restore some of the great, you know, quite frankly, I say, I want to make America, America again. And the way I can be helpful is what you’re doing, and that is bring attention to the issues. I just think we have an outstanding bench of people who are great at this. So my —
Nicolle Wallace: But do they think outside the box enough? I mean, you’ve been talking about an economic strike for months. Someone should have done it already and they should have done it when states started passing voter suppression laws predicated on a lie about election fraud in 2020. I mean, do you think anyone in the political arena moves fast enough?
Scott Galloway: When I spend time with some of these politicians, and I coach a lot of them, I’m like, “No, no, just, we’re in a world where you just need to sound real.” If you’re not saying something occasionally off color or offensive every once in a while, you’re not being real.
And just getting on with the stump speech that tries to thread the needle and not offend anybody, if we’ve learned anything, the public forgives undelicate statements and it doesn’t necessarily reflect your character as long as your heart is not replaced (sp?), as long as you’re willing to apologize.
But I feel like I need to do a land acknowledgement here and recognize that I’ve always asked for male role models and I was like, it’s not male role models, it’s masculine role models. And two of my role models for masculinity are Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton never forgot about protection. Through her whole life, she’s always like, “I’m about helping kids,” always made a part of her public policy, was always very pragmatic about it. It was public policy that would plant trees, the shade of which you would never sit under. I think that is the ultimate expression of masculinity.
So, masculinity and femininity are not sequestered to people born as males, as females. And a lot of women bring great masculinity, but I would argue that 95% of us who are born binary, which, by the way, doesn’t mean any lack of opportunity and grace in respect for the 5% are non-binary, but 95% of us are born binary.
And for those of us born biologically male, I think leaning into masculinity can serve as a great code. There’s too many decisions to be made in this world without a code. And you might get your code from your family, from your religion, from the military.
I think I got my first code from work. I worked at Morgan Stanley. And there was a certain acceptable behavior and approach to work and approach to each other, but I think masculinity in an aspirational format can be a great code for young men.
And to your point earlier, there’s cruelty, there’s abusive behavior, right? There’s being unfair, there’s being reckless. That’s not masculinity. So, I think there’s an opportunity to reframe masculinity in an aspirational way and help young men lean into it.
There’s an award called the Carnegie Award where they basically give awards to people who risk their own personal safety to help somebody else they don’t know in the heat of the moment, literally the rushing into the burning house award.
They give about 80 awards, I think, every other year. On average, 75 of those 80 go to men. Where we see recklessness in young men, you also have to recognize there’s valor there, right? Where we see impulsiveness, young men are willing to rush an enemy.
But if I say women make better doctors and lawyers, and it looks as if they are on average, better doctors and lawyers, because they have better EQ, more detail-oriented, more nurturing, more observant.
If I say that, people nod. If I say women are better managers because they have better EQ and maternal skills I think are somewhat synonymous to good management skills, people politely clap.
If I say men make better combat soldiers or on average might make better entrepreneurs, there’s a general gag reflex of, “I don’t feel safe around you.” So, I don’t think we have an honest conversation around the positive side of masculinity. The far right was the first to recognize it to their credit. But their answer is to take non-Whites and women back to the 50s.
Nicolle Wallace: My conversation with Scott Galloway continues right after the break. We’ll be back with more in a moment.
(BREAK)
Nicolle Wallace: When their answer is to put into that coalition, Nick Fuentes, who I know is a trigger for you, I mean, their coalition is to take everything toxic and merge those two words together, toxic and masculinity.
Scott Galloway: Yeah. Unfortunately, Nick Fuentes is just an aberration and a cancer that is fueled by this environmental toxin called social media, where the things he says are so vile, so stupid, so inhuman, that the algorithms just love it because a bunch of us can weigh in and make comments, and every comment we make that’s outraged, a bot will come in and promote it, and it’s another Nissan (inaudible) shareholder (inaudible).
Nicolle Wallace: But his human body was inside the real-life household of Donald Trump, the current president. So, I mean, I guess the Nick Fuentes part in that male sort of coalition, that includes MAGA, and I don’t know how else to describe, I don’t know if it’s the MAGA coalition that includes a lot of men with the wrong perception of what it means to be masculine or if it’s a masculine coalition that includes MAGA. I’m not sure which is the apex sort of figure.
But it includes Nick Fuentes not just as an algorithm, it includes him as a person that went to Donald Trump’s house. How do you bring men into a political coalition that values decency and is repelled by figures like Nick Fuentes?
Scott Galloway: So, if you look at the cadence of politics in our country, I would say, if you tried to reduce it to something pretty simple, it’s the following. Democrats have their heart in the right place and they developed a narrative, and they have a certain apostate culture, if you don’t sign up for the narrative exactly, you’re cast into the wilderness.
Nicolle Wallace: Cancel culture.
Scott Galloway: Well, yeah. Two and a half years ago, I said, Biden’s too old. I’m an ageist. And you know who else is ageist? Biology.
Nicolle Wallace: And 85% of the country thought he was too old.
Scott Galloway: We have the oldest elected populace of any democracy. Our elected populace is across between the walking dead and the golden girls. And people say, “Well, you’re being ageist.” Okay. When 75% of Congress is going to be dead in 25 years, do they really give a good goddamn about the national debt or climate change?
Nicolle Wallace: Got you. Yeah.
Scott Galloway: Do they understand how to regulate TikTok? The average age in America is 35. I’m not suggesting everyone needs to be 35, but we have an ageist problem. And guess what? Old people have figured out a way to vote themselves more money and people under the age of 40 are 24% less wealthy. And people of my age are now 72% wealthier because kids don’t vote and unfortunately, young people don’t vote. So, the child tax credit is stripped out of the infrastructure bill, $40 billion, with $120 billion cost of living adjustment to social security flies right through Congress.
But the political algorithm or pattern is the following. Democrats start with the right idea. They take it way too far. 60 years ago, there were 12 Black people at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale combined in 1960, only 12. That’s a problem.
Affirmative action made sense. Race-based affirmative action was the right decision in 1960. This year, 55% of Harvard’s freshmen class identifies as non-White. The problem is 70% of those kids come from dual income, upper income homes.
So, the academic gap between non-Whites and Whites was double between rich and poor 60 years ago. Now, it’s flipped. So, we need to evolve and say, “Okay, some people have wins in their faces that deserve a hand up.” All Democrats believe that. I’d say some or most Republicans believe that.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Scott Galloway: But affirmative action should be based on color. And that color is green. A White kid from Appalachia with a drug addicted mom and a father who’s been incarcerated, that’s the kid that needs help. And so, we need to evolve our policy.
And what happens is in an effort to understand and show empathy for the trans community, which has been demonized, we sit around and politely applaud and look at each other when a 6’5 person born as a male shows up at an NCAA women’s swim meet.
Democrats take shit too far. And we put our chins out by quite frankly, just being a little bit crazy on some of this stuff. And then Republicans weigh in with an overreaction and start implementing a series of cruel. They take the name, Harvey Milk off a frigate and a big fuck you to the gay community.
This was a guy who served his country. The word used most in Harvey Milk’s military reviews were excellence, goes on to be the first elected official for the gay community, which must have given huge comfort to the gay community. And now that one of the first acts of the Secretary of War is to take his name off a frigate.
So, we as Democrats take things too far. In my opinion, one of our many flaws is we’re more concerned with grabbing perceived virtue than focusing on actual programs that will improve the material and psychological wellbeing of Americans, all right?
And then we stick our chin out with, in my opinion, irrational, crazy behavior and the Republicans come in with a set of incredibly cruel course policies that not only don’t help people but seem to be saying, “I’m strong, and the way I communicate my strength is through just baseline cruelty.”
One of the basics of our democracy, and you’ve talked about this, is we reward and punish people based on their character and their behavior. And now, we’re slamming cars because of someone’s identity. “Oh, they look brown, pull them over and ask for their ID.”
So, I think Democrats need to be more focused on ideas versus indignance. Stop the purity test. And I don’t think the right suffers as much from that. The right just writes me off as a libtard. But some of the most vehement ugly emails I’ve gotten from people I know is, “You don’t understand the assignment.”
At some point, we have to be more than the party of no and indignance and running around with our hair on fires. Like, well, what’s our plan? Is it $25 an hour minimum wage? Is it lowering the cost of health care? We need nationalized medicine.
Our medical industrial complex is monetizing health. We spend twice what everyone else spends per capita. We die sooner, we’re more anxious, we’re more obese. Lower eligibility for Medicare by two years, for 10 years, and 20 years, anyone over the age of 45 is eligible, that’s a big, bold idea, right?
Mandatory national service, 8 million homes in 10 years. For God’s sakes, let’s move to the ideas part of the program instead of look at how awful he is. You either think he’s awful or he isn’t.
Stop trying to convince people. They’re either onboard and they agree with you, or they’re never going to agree with you. There needs to be more pragmatism recognizing that we have made progress and certain things are outdated.
And we absolutely need to figure out a way to say, courses and cruelty couldn’t be many more opposite than the whole point of America, right? The whole point of America is you get more rights dignity and grace to people, and for some reason, we’ve conflated leadership with this weird perverse cruelty.
Nicolle Wallace: Do you think that last night’s wins by Spanberger and Sherrill and Gavin Newsom burying (sp?) that out?. I mean, their campaigns included ideas. Their campaigns were about a rejection of what Trump has wrought in nine months. I mean, Obama’s closing message in both New Jersey and Virginia was, “Is your life any better than it was nine months ago?
Scott Galloway: Off-cycle election should naturally favor the non-incumbents. I don’t know about you. It felt alien to wake up and have wins. This feels good and alien.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s shocking, yeah.
Scott Galloway: It felt more strange initially than good.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Scott Galloway: The thing that was encouraging about it was not the victories with the margins of victories.
Nicolle Wallace: Right, right.
Scott Galloway: And actually, it’s the boring stuff that —
Nicolle Wallace: And the turnout.
Scott Galloway: 100%. And young people, the way they win. I think, actually, it’s the boring stuff that people don’t notice, that’s the most seminal thing. I think Prop 50 in California is actually the most important thing.
Nicolle Wallace: Me too. I said that all night. It was the only idea that was on the ballot.
Scott Galloway: That’s right.
Nicolle Wallace: Everything else was a person. It was an idea, and it was an idea that Californians voted against a few years ago. The electorate went out and rejected midyear redistricting, and they went out understanding the moment, understanding the message, understanding a rather complicated narrative that involves something that a few states overdid and voted for democracy. I thought it was unbelievably inspiring.
Scott Galloway: Exactly. And two to one. And also, I think, right now, it kind of cements Newsom, in my opinion, as the Democratic frontrunner right now with a lot of time to go. But something I was really encouraged by was the governor’s wins in Virginia and —
Nicolle Wallace: Jersey.
Scott Galloway: — Jersey, excuse me. Empathy is not a zero-sum game. Gay marriage and heteronormative marriage, civil rights can hurt (sp?) White people. And advocating for young men and recognizing this stark data doesn’t in any way take from the fact that women still face real hurdles.
Once a woman has a baby, she goes to 73 cents on the dollar relative to her male peers. We still haven’t figured out a way to maintain a woman’s trajectory professionally if she decides to actually continue the species.
The dude’s fine. As a matter of fact, his earnings usually go up. “Oh, Bob just had a baby.” “Oh, Bob would be great for the promotion.” “Oh, she’s pregnant, well, is she going to come back,” right, or, “I don’t know, do we really want to invest in her future?”
Anyways, the real issue is still facing women. And one of the biggest issues that is just so obvious, straight up, misogynist is a tough word, bias against women is the following. The only thing our 535 elected officials have in common, the only thing you’d say as a requirement is I think something like 95% or 97% of them graduated from college. That’s the prerequisite to be an elected leader in America.
More women have been graduating from college for the last 40 years than men. And yet, it’s 26% of our elected officials are women. America is a highly loxist and sexist society when it comes to our elected officials.
Show me a 5 foot 4 person with a high-pitch voice and 140 IQ. Hello, school board president. Show me someone 6’2 with a deep voice and 105 IQ. Hello, Mister Senator. I don’t want to see a woman as the Democratic nominee for president not because I don’t think it’s time, but because I think she will lose because I think America is still very sexist when it comes to its elected leaders. So, last night for me was some sense of progress, because I don’t care if you’re Democrat or Republican.
Nicolle Wallace: You don’t want to see either party nominate a woman?
Scott Galloway: I believe there will be a female president. She will be a Republican and she will bring one attribute that will get her elected presidency. And that is a belief that if you run so much as run a stop sign, she will drone strike your ass. It is going to be a Margaret Thatcher, like, “I do not like people, I don’t like leaving my home.” The only person I’ve ever canvased for door to door was Secretary Clinton, who is a hero of mine in 2016.
I hope it’s a straight White male over 6 feet tall because I just think America deep down is still pretty sexist when it comes to elected officials. And, by the way, I’m not saying that’s the way the world should be, that’s been (sp?) the world is.
Nicolle Wallace: No, no. It’s just we’ve been paying attention, yeah.
Scott Galloway: And going back to New Jersey and Virginia, I don’t care, Democratic Republican, you look at these candidates. Our candidate quality was far superior.
Nicolle Wallace: Through the roof, yeah.
Scott Galloway: And the fact that we even were saying it might be close, so I found it really encouraging not only as a rebuttal to Trump and his policies, but that the candidate quality was so strong and that people are hopefully starting to embrace more female candidates.
The fact that a quarter of women are elected officials means they’re straight up, still a lot of misogyny when it gets to our elected leaders. And my point of bringing this up is, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can recognize that we need to train or educate our younger people, that women, despite all the history books, just showing arguments between, “Dudes, that women can be great leaders,” right?
While at the same time, recognizing that young men are four times as likely to kill themselves, three times as likely to be addicted, three times as likely to be homeless, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated. There’s programs and ideas for all of this.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you for your time on all of this.
Scott Galloway: Thank you.
Nicolle Wallace: Scott Galloway, who never mince his words, that has written a really important, “Notes on Being a Man.” Thank you for being here.
Scott Galloway: Thank you, Nicolle. Thanks for the good word.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you so much for listening to “The Best People”. You can subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple podcast to get this another MSNBC podcasts ad-free. You’ll also get early access and exclusive bonus content.
All of the episodes of the podcasts are also available on YouTube. Visit msnbc.com/thebestpeople to watch. “The Best People” is produced by Vicki Vergolina and and Senior Producer Lisa Ferri. Our Associate Producer is Ranna Shahbazi with additional production support from Querry Robinson.
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