Dan Senor (3:59)

A number of best selling books.

Podcast Announcer (4:01)

He's the host of the Prof. G.

Dan Senor (4:03)

Podcast and he's also the co host of Pivot.

Podcast Announcer (4:06)

He also runs the no Mercy, no Malice newsletter which you can subscribe to. We'll have a link to it in the show Notes. Scott has also been very open about the impact that October 7th and its aftermath had on his worldview on his Jewish identity, something we've spoken with him about before on Call Me Back.

Dan Senor (4:25)

So today we talk a bit more about this.

Podcast Announcer (4:27)

Mostly we discuss the ideas Scott explores in his new book titled Notes on Being a Man and how it intersects with Scott's Jewish identity.

Dan Senor (4:37)

This is Call Me Back.

Podcast Announcer (4:42)

And I.

Dan Senor (4:43)

Am pleased to welcome back to the podcast. Now for the third time, my friend Scott Galloway. Why don't you tell our audience the podcast you were recording just before you came on to join me?

Scott Galloway (4:54)

Well, it's very similar. I was on with Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop podcast.

Dan Senor (4:58)

So this means many of our listeners are gonna hear this conversation twice because there's huge overlap. Like we're basically cannibalizing the conversation by Gwyneth and I. Sharing you back to back like this.

Scott Galloway (5:09)

We're clearly all gonna talk about $75 scented candles. She's got a pretty nice life. She lives in Montecito. She still looks 25. She looks great and she's selling like shit for 75 bucks to a hugely devoted audience. She's living her best life. Anyways, how are you, Dan? Where are you?

Dan Senor (5:29)

I'm in New York City. I'm in New York City, the capital of the Jewish Diaspora. I've been watching you from afar bounce around in these live podcasts. You've been doing this live tour and I will say, try to imagine your 1980s or 1990s self and telling that person that in 30 years or so, 30 plus years, you'll be traveling around the United States, filling out live concert halls, doing live recordings of something called a podcast. And it would be like all the rage. I mean, it is sort of nuts, right? You basically record a conversation in front of an audience and this is treated like a rock concert tour.

Scott Galloway (6:08)

It makes no sense to me. The whole thing seems strange to me in terms of expectations. I had high expectations for success. You can never imagine, as I'm sure you can't, the format it's going to take. I came out of the gate strong right after business school. I started a company and it was in a strong economy and I hit something and I was in the right place at the right time, and I had a bunch of early success, and then I kind of went sideways for 10 years. And I think that that was especially hard because having had registered some initial success, you assume that your trajectory is going to maintain. And when it doesn't, and you kind of wake up and you're in your 40s and you're like, I'm not as successful as I thought I was going to be at 30. Like, I was more successful at 30 than I was at 40. That, quite frankly, really messes with your head. And I always say, after working my ass off for 35 years, I'm an overnight success. Yeah, it feels great to be the fans and the cities. It was a ton of fun. A lot of work, but a ton of. Actually, I'm pretty sure you could feel pretty big halls right now.

Dan Senor (7:06)

Well, we.

Scott Galloway (7:07)

I saw you fill a big hall at some temple or something.

Dan Senor (7:10)

Yeah, yeah. We did a live podcast at the Stryker center after the Gaza deal was announced. We announced it with like six days notice.

Scott Galloway (7:16)

That must have been a laugh riot.

Dan Senor (7:18)

Six days notice, by the way. Six days notice. And we, you know, had a big turnout for me and two of my Israeli regulars, Amit and the Dove. And, you know, what I realize is the stage is an important part of it, but the smallest part of it. What I realized with many of these events is the sense of community is a huge part of the attraction. People feeling as connected with one another as with what's happening on the stage. So there's. I can't quite figure it out, but there's something going on there that is more than just the experience of just like watching a performance.

Scott Galloway (7:49)

It is very rewarding. It's fun in person.

Dan Senor (7:52)

The other thing that's rewarding is releasing a book and having it the number one bestselling book on Amazon. That's also rewarding.

Scott Galloway (7:58)

Yeah, you left number one on New York Times. I need to invest in this relationship. Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan. I don't like to fall into the trappings of your capitalist metrics. I don't care if it touches some people's hearts. That's the whole objective for me. Yeah, right. Daddy's number one.

Dan Senor (8:18)

Dan, notes on being a man. I mean, I know you've been talking about this issue, and we're gonna get into it for a while. Before we get into it, I am curious, did you anticipate it finding such a big audience? Because there was always a risk that there was gonna be a backlash.

Scott Galloway (8:33)

It's sort of strange. It has inspired some backlash online. I've had a lot of people say, you know, point out the soft tissue in it or. And some. Actually, some of the criticism I think has been valid. But it felt like the timing was good. It feels like the dialogue, people were nibbling around the edges. But it's a conversation I think a lot of people are having in different environments. And I have the platform right now, and I've been talking about this for a while. You know, I have a big enough footprint to create awareness around it, so I got the sense this was going to do well.

Dan Senor (9:03)

Okay, so let's get into it. I have a bunch of specific questions, but let's just start in macro terms. How would you summarize what happened to men in American society, Western society, since.

Scott Galloway (9:16)

You, Scott, came of age, Disproportionate amount of advantage to people my age. From 1945 to 2000, America registered a third of the economic growth on the planet with 5% of the population, so reductively six times the prosperity of the rest of the planet. And then within that mass of prosperity, it was all crammed into one third of the population that was white, male and heterosexual. And so I had gale force wins in my sales. Everything from applying to UCLA, 74% admissions rate. Bought a home in San Francisco for $280,000. Tuition for all seven years. Undergrad and graduate school cost me $7,000 total tuition. So I had a lot of environments, a lot of places to meet women and demonstrate excellence, a lot of romantic and mating opportunities, a progressive tax structure that invested in these big technology bets, whether it's GPS or darpa, Post Apocalypse communications network. And I was able to start companies building on that infrastructure that was from the government. I got assisted lunch, I got Pell grants, immigrants built my businesses. All these things that were just incredible advantages for me and also unfair advantage. Through the 90s, I probably raised a couple hundred million dollars for my startups. And I never stopped to bother and ask, why are there no women raising money? Why don't I know any gay CEOs. And the reality is there was this huge conscious and unconscious bias against anyone who wasn't a white heterosexual male. So growing up, unfair advantage. And then slowly but surely, I think over the last 20 or 30 years, for a lot of reasons, sociological, biological, economic, young people have really struggled. The average person our age, Dan or my age, is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. The average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy. That has taken an especially difficult toll on men because men are still largely evaluated based on their economic viability. And I'm not talking about the way the world should be, I'm talking about the way the world is. Relationships have become a luxury item. If you're in the upper quintile of income earning homes, there's a 4 in 5 chance you're going to get married. If you're in the lowest quintile, there's a 1 in 5 chance you're going to get married. So relationships, including what is considered the key relationship, the opportunity to mate and procreate and have a real life partner, has become a luxury item. We have seen a total reversal in education and that is I think the education system is in fact bias against boys. Twice as likely to be suspended on a behavior adjusted basis if you're a boy, five times as likely if you're a black boy. And when we kind of level the playing field and tilted it towards girls with title ix, which I think is a wonderful thing, I don't think we should get in the way of it. We now have 60, 40 female to male and it's more like 2 to 1 when you look at graduation rates because men drop out at a greater rate. And then you have the big tech enters the scene. And while we know it's bad, I don't think people really realize how much damage it's doing to young men. Men biologically have a prefrontal cortex that is 18 months behind a woman. This sort of gas on, gas off break, stop playing video games and study. And what's happened is, don't you call.

Dan Senor (12:14)

It in the book the CEO of your brain?

Scott Galloway (12:15)

Yeah, the brain CEO. And the reality is 12 seniors in high school, boy and a girl, the girl's competing against a 10th grade girl. And you have big tech. 40% of the S and P by market cap now is 10 companies whose sole mission is to get you to spend every day another 30 seconds on a screen versus with relationships. And there's billions of dollars at the incremental second, they can put you online. And they found that polarizing you and sequestering you from your families, friends and potential mates in the workplace is hugely profitable. So I feel like the economy has now attack attached to one objective and that is to take advantage of the immature male brain and evolve an asocial, asexual species of young men. And I worry now that with a combination of fewer economic opportunities because of destruction in our manufacturing base, mixed messages from the community around what it means to be a man and how men probably shouldn't approach strangers or mental contact with women, I think they get mixed messages. A lack of the kinds of jobs that usually existed for men who may not be as academically oriented as their female counterparts. And then this indomitable enemy with godlike technology trying to convince them they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. And we end up with one in three boys under the age of or men under the age of 25 living at home. One in five men at 30 are still living at home. And while women continue to get taller metaphorically and economically, that is amazing. We should do nothing to get in the way of that. I want to be clear. It's been great. I think something the far right gets wrong is it's come at the expense of men. That's just not true. We needed women in the factories in World War II, the 70s and 80s. We wouldn't have maintained economic growth without women in the workplace. It does have some knock on effects though, and that is men made socioeconomically horizontally and down, women horizontally and up. And when the pool of horizontal and up keeps shrinking, there's just an absence of mating opportunities for both sexes. Because as many subscriptions to the Atlantic and the New York Times as you have, there's still a very strong correlation between sexual interest and perceived economic viability of the man. And when fewer are more economically viable than women, there's just less mating. And I don't know how we're going to change that. And I think we need a new definition of what it means to be a provider, including supporting your spouse who might be better at that money thing, but when the woman starts making more money than the man, the likelihood of divorce doubles and the use of erectile dysfunction drugs triples. So as much as we'd like to think, well, it's fine, this is great, I do think that dual income homes are key in this society where it's gotten so expensive. And I think men would really benefit from universal childcare that Eased up economic anxiety. But you now about one in seven men qualify as what's called a neet. And they're neither in education, employment or training. And I think we're going to start to see, Dan, fewer and fewer young men out in the wild. I think they're literally sequestering from the rest of society.

Dan Senor (15:06)

So you talk in the book about deaths of despair, which is a topic we dedicate a whole chapter to in our last book about Israel. And there's been this direct correlation where Western societies are becoming wealthier and wealthier and yet we've had this crisis, this public health crisis of deaths of despair. So how does the phenomenon you're describ describing connect to the deaths of despair?

Scott Galloway (15:25)

So deaths of despair, alcoholism, opiate overdoses, drunk driving accidents, suicide since 2004. So over the last 21 years, the incremental number of deaths of despair amongst men, not what was happening every year, but the increase in deaths of despair in the last 20 years amongst men has taken more male lives in World War II. So more incremental deaths from deaths of despair than young men died in World War II. So I think it's a lot of things. I think a lot of young men are purposeless, are not attaching to church, not attaching to work, not attaching to relationships. I think they feel a lot of economic anxiety and they have a brain that is more prone to addiction. You know, we talk about the homeless and the opiate crisis. What we really have is a male homeless and a male opiate crisis. They're three times more likely to be addicts, three times more likely to be homeless. Gambling really freaks me out right now. The availability or ubiquity of online gambling. 1 out of 2 college age men bet on the super bowl and it's just impossible to win over the long term. It's not investing, it's gambling. So I think a lot of young men end up obese. We have a food supply that is quite frankly monetizing obesity. I think that whether it's McDonald's or PepsiCo, their stock price is directly correlated to obesity. And then they hand them over to the industrial healthcare complex of knee replacement, hip replacement, kidney dialysis, statins. I think there's just a lot of money and obesity. And we continue to tell people they're not obese. They're finding their truth, which is bullshit. They're finding diabetes. And I'm not suggesting we don't have empathy for them, but we end up with a generation of young men who are, they don't have relationships, they don't have the guardrails relationship, they have romantic opportunities, they don't have economic viability. And then 210 times a day they're reminded on their phone that they're failing. And I think you wake up, a lot of these men wake up with real anxiety and real depression and unfortunately turn to subst much more. Six out of seven gambling addicts are men. Three out of four drug addicts, men. So you know the numbers here. If you walk into a morgue and there's five people who've died by suicide, four are men. And unfortunately, because of the unearned privilege of my generation and to a lesser extent of your generation of men my age, there's a lack of empathy for them. If there was any special interest group killing themselves at four times the rate, we'd weigh in with programs as we should. But when it's men, it's like, sorry, you've had a 3,000 year head start. And the question I present to everybody is hold me accountable, don't hold a 19 year old accountable. I get I had unearned privilege. I'm even up for, like, I don't think a wealth tax would work, but conceptually I get it. I've had a disproportionate amount of privilege. But we appear to be holding young men accountable. And by any metric, they have fallen further, faster than any group in American history.

Dan Senor (18:16)

So anyone that knows you knows that this is all very personal to you. You talked a little bit about that. I was struck by it. It was very much. It's not what I expected because I've heard you talk about these issues on and off over the years. The book almost feels to me, Scott, like part memoir, personal memoir, coming of age, growing up memoir. So that's what I didn't expect from the book. So the book is like, it's very much your story, right? I mean, was that what you had intended to do? Like when you said, I'm going to write this book on lessons for men and boys, I'm going to wind up doing it through the lens of my own story?

Scott Galloway (18:51)

Absolutely. And everybody says the same thing. They think they're going to read something about what it means to be a man from an endocrinology or anthropological or societal. And it's really just a lot of it is where I quite frankly came up short as a man and what I learned from it and what I would try and teach my boys. And I talk a lot about my childhood and growing up without a father. Figure and what it was like to be raised by a single mother and economic success and what it meant. But the book initially started as, all right, chapter one, Testosterone. And I'm trying to figure out, okay, I tried to do a ton of research. Like, okay, there's a surge of testosterone in utero, then at three months, and then again at 17. And finally I'm like, I am out so far over my skis. I'm not an endocrinologist. I'm not an adolescent psychiatrist. And my agent, Jim Levine, who's a role model of mine, Guy, 75, great shape, married for 50 years, just great at what he does. He says, you're approaching this wrong. He said, you're opening yourself up for so much criticism because you're not an expert in any of these things, but you do have an ability to talk about your own life experiences in a very raw, authentic way and set it against the context of trying to become a man. And so it did become more autobiographical. Like, this is what my observations around a certain code and a certain means of behavior, around what I think it means to be a man and how it has, you know, where I've done well and where I've missed the mark. You know, the bottom line is I don't have the skills or the domain expertise to talk about what happens in utero that separates, you know, someone who's born as a male or a female. I'm not a gender studies PhD, but this is meant to just be okay. This is what I think I've learned, where I've screwed up, where things have worked for me and what hopefully young men can take from it and try and form an aspirational vision of masculinity. And I'd like to think most of it is right, but I know some of it's wrong. And I'm very open to a debate here or a dialogue. But what I want is, my life's gotten much easier as a, quote, unquote, I don't know, author or thought leader, when I said, all right, my job is to inspire a dialogue, and my heart's in the right place, and I do the research, and I have 15 pages of notes and citations here. But also recognize that if I inspire a dialogue, that's the key. I just want to get a dialogue. I'd like to be right, but more importantly, I want to inspire a dialogue. And that's what I'm trying to do here. But it's definitely much more autobiographical and less like academic than anything I've written.

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Dan Senor (21:02)

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Dan Senor (22:00)

Your gift, big or small, can help someone find their way back. We have a number of listeners to this podcast who either live in Israel or are very familiar with the Israeli story. And when I say the Israeli story, I don't mean the Israeli political story, but I mean the Israeli societal story. Salsinger and I wrote a whole book about Israeli society and why we think it's so much healthier for everybody, especially young people, than Western society today. And I want to just tick off a few phrases or words that you use in the book, because I read those and I thought, wow, that's how Israelis raise boys and young men. So I just want to rattle some of these off back to back because they come from different parts of the book and then I want to go through each one. So the ones that I made note of was fraternities. You're a champion for fraternities, meaning Greek life on college campuses. Here, being a warrior in your 20s, not being ashamed of your failures and friendship, the importance of all of those things. Now some of those things actually could be quite controversial here. And to me, they speak to something that Israel is actually quite well in terms of how they raise young males. And I'll get to that in a minute. But before I do, I want to go through each one of these. So why are you a believer in fraternities? Because that's controversial.

Scott Galloway (23:18)

I needed to be around other men. I didn't grow up with a lot of men. And also just getting to UCLA on a very basic level and shrinking it down from 30,000 people to a group of 100 people. I also needed the guardrails of male mentorship. My third week at ucla, you get what's, quote unquote A big brother, right? And by the third week, my big brother sat me down and said, you need to smoke less pot. You're getting stoned every night. It's a lot of fun. But I was 17 when I showed up to UCLA. I just didn't have the judgment to handle all the temptations. And having an older man who was 21 who seemed like this incredibly impressive guy, tell me to stop smoking pot because he was living in proximity to me. And also just to do shit like, no, no, no, no, don't take chemistry. That's a hard course. Take psychology. You need the confidence of passing your classes your first semester. So just having a small group of men who immediately you common with and who seem to have a vested interest in your success. So when you join a fraternity. I went on to be interfraternity council president. I was king of the jarheads. When you join a fraternity, you become twice less likely to drop out.

Dan Senor (24:24)

Really?

Scott Galloway (24:24)

Yeah. You kind of have your people.

Dan Senor (24:26)

Wow.

Scott Galloway (24:27)

Also, they give a lot more. They stay much more involved in the university, give a lot more money. Some people would say it's. That's white male privilege. But there's some very positive things they do better academically. Kids in fraternities. The bottom is, you need to find your people.

Dan Senor (24:39)

But, Scott, how do you juxtapose that or contrast that with this perception that fraternity's full of crazy parties, a lot of booze, a lot of hazing. How does that connect with do better academically, more likely to stay in college? Actually, the way you're describing, it's more likely to lead a constructive and responsible life in college, which is not the perception of John Belushi in Animal House.

Scott Galloway (25:01)

So I want to acknowledge, and I'm not really in touch with the fraternity system anymore, but when I was there, I want to be clear. On the whole, I thought it was a net positive. I also had a pledge brother almost die of alcohol poisoning. And I remember it was pledge pinning where you were hazed. You were encouraged to drink more than you should. This kid next to me passed out and his eyes were rolling back, and someone said, just put him to bed. And someone had the wisdom to say, no, we need to take him to the emergency room. And by the time we got him to the emergency room, he was breathing seven times a minute. There was real, real abuse in fraternities, real ugliness. There was racism. One of the fraternities used to have a south of the border party where you'd have to crawl into barbed wire to get into the Party there was some really ugly shit. And I think a lot of that happens in the dorms and in other parts of the campus. I think a lot of that is just young men behaving stupidly. I do think it's gotten better. I'd like to think it is. And I still think the risks of partying and alcohol are dwarfed by the risks of social isolation when you don't find your group. Now you can find your group in theater, in the gay and lesbian sports teams, whatever it is. But people need to find their people and shrink that big space down. I was 17 when I showed up. This was back in the space race where they thought anyone that could do well on a math test should skip a grade. My roommate was 16 when he showed up at UCLA. Can you imagine being 16? Think about your kid when he got his driver's license. Alcohol, partying, pressure to meet girls, academic pressure. So it's not right for everybody. Had I not personally not had the friendship and male bonding of the fraternity and quite frankly, the enjoyment, I would have not graduated from ucla. I would have just not had the incentive to stay there. I wanted to stay in school, quite frankly, so I could stay in my tribe and be with my friends. And also you do get male mentorship there. They will step in and say, you know, you're screwing up, you need to stop. So are there real issues? Yes, but I would argue it's a net positive.

Dan Senor (27:03)

All right, what about being a warrior? That also is provocative, the idea of encouraging young men being a warrior in their 20s.

Scott Galloway (27:10)

I think you play to your advantages and something I think we need to celebrate. We celebrate the female form. It can grow bones and muscles and do something singular, give birth, and they're better balanced, more coordinated. I think we celebrate the feminine form and I guess we celebrate the male form. But what I would say, my advice to young men is, under the age of 30, you're gonna look back, your dense bone structure, your double twitch muscle, and this amazing substance called testosterone, and you're going to wish you turned yourself into just a fucking monster. The strength you can acquire, the speed, it's just a marvel. And I jokingly say any man under the age of 30 should be able to walk into any room and know if shit got real, they could either kill and eat everybody or outrun them. I think taking advantage of that incredible physical form when you're a young man and having a bit of a warrior mentality, like I rode crew and basically crew was who was willing to put themselves through more pain One like, we all had decent technique, we were all in decent shape. It was about who was willing to endure more pain. And it has paid dividends my whole life. Whenever I'm really heartbroken and think I can't take anymore, no one wants to love me or I have a business, go chapter 11. And I think, fuck, I just can't handle this anymore. I know that when I think I'm at my limit because of crew, it means I'm a third of the way to my actual limit. So having that sort of intensity and testing your limits, I just think it's fantastic for a man and also, I imagine, for a woman. But I think that young men should take advantage of their aggression and their strength and channel it in really positive ways. Who breaks up fights at bars? Big strong men. Who starts fights? People who feel bad about themselves and being strong and having a little bit of aggression around, lifting heavy weights and running long distances in your mind and in the gym. When I started Morgan Stanley, I was just less educated than my peer group. And it wasn't because UCLA wasn't a great education. It was because I graduated with a 2.27 GPA. I just didn't take it seriously. So I said, okay, what are my strengths here? I'm in great shape. I have no relationships. I'm mentally strong. Every Tuesday morning I would show up at 9am and I would work till 6pm on Wednesday, I would work 36 hours straight. I wanted to show them I came to play. I liked that kind of warrior mentality. I was strong. I was a bit of a, you know, I was aggressive. I was willing to push myself really hard in the agency. Not of my nation or of anything good, but of Morgan Stanley. And it sent the right signal. And a lot of people would say, well, you're, you know, that's abuse. And you're setting up unreasonable expectation. Yeah, fuck that. Show up and be ready to play. Be aggressive. Push yourself really, really hard. Because what you're gonna find is that confidence that you get from that serves you well the rest of your life. So I like a little bit of this warrior mentality. Be strong, be aggressive, Use it to protect people, use it to achieve. But yeah, be a warrior.

Dan Senor (30:06)

So my younger son plays now. He's in second season of playing tackle football. And I sometimes even I watch him on the field and he's now developed real techniques for tackling. And I watch him and it's like when he gets on the field, this switch goes on. And I sit there thinking, this is going to sound. I don't want it to sound overly harsh, but it's almost like he's been trained in violence when he gets on that field, he's playing. I mean, let's just say it. Football is contact football. It's a violent sport. And he's been trained now with technique 100% to deliver that, to execute on that violence. Now what's interesting is he's also very careful about turning the switch off when he's off the field. Like, really, he's very mindful of that. I don't know if that's in the coaching or something, but when he's on that field, this is like a different person. And, you know, he's our baby. I mean, he's not a baby anymore, but he's like our little kid. And it's just. It's sometimes a little unnerving to watch that. Like the, you know, like his eyes lock in when he gets on that field. What you're basically saying is that it's not such a. We shouldn't find it so unnerving.

Scott Galloway (31:09)

The moment the game is called, they shake the hand of the opposing team. That guy just ran me over, hit me so goddamn hard and so violently. But this is part of the game. And at the end of the game, great hit, brother. And they shake hands and they learn how to modulate that aggression and that violence. So they learn how to play on a team. They learn how to be invested in something bigger than themselves. And I think that stuff is fantastic. Now, I would hope that your son is not that talented such that he doesn't spend his career in it because of head injuries.

Dan Senor (31:38)

His mother feel the same way.

Scott Galloway (31:40)

Yeah. You want them just to have a little bit of athletic talent. Not a lot. Exactly.

Dan Senor (31:44)

That's the Jewish dose. Like just enough to the Jewish dose.

Scott Galloway (31:48)

I love that. The J dose.

Dan Senor (31:51)

And then pursue a different career. Friendship. You talk a lot about friendship. It almost seems obvious the role that friendship plays in life and that you list it among some of these other items I just rattled off as. As important as anything.

Scott Galloway (32:07)

If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and have friends and you don't smoke and don't have friends, you're going to live longer if you smoke a pack a day and have friends. We're a herding species. We're meant to be around other people. One in four men doesn't have a best friend. One in seven men can't name a single friend. And also, when men are less romantically viable, they tend to have fewer friends. Because oftentimes as you get older, you make your friends through your kids, friends, parents, your partner or woman. Is usually more, has more talent from a relational standpoint, does a better job of maintaining friendships and environments where it's not as easy but at the end of the day. And I've done a lot of, you know, I struggle with anger and depression. I wrote a book on happiness because I struggle with it. Every study kind of says the same thing. And that is, it all comes down to the number of deep and meaningful relationships you have across three areas. One, at work, do you respect and admire people and do you feel like they respect and admire you? Amongst your friends, do you feel a sense of joy and camaraderie? And what's really interesting is what's even more important or more accretive to your happiness is celebrities and rock stars have a lot of people that want to be their friends. But the happiest people are the ones that know they provide a lot of joy and camaraderie to other people that they know they're a great friend and they know their friends get a lot of joy from them. And then finally across your family, do you feel an intense level of love and support and as important or more important do you know they know they are intensely loved and supported but friendship. But I think that's one of the real problems with men right now is that they have very few venues to make friends. They're not going into work as much with remote work, they're not going to church or temple enough. Attendance to religious institutions has hit an all time low in America and they don't have as many venues to demonstrate excellence or find friends. I mean it's just so important. And also romantic relationships, you can try hard, but they're a little bit more unpredictable when lightning strikes Friends is a competence. You can figure out a way to find your people and have friends. And also when people ask me, they say I've been laid off or I'm looking for a job. What's career advice do you have? I think first thing is you need to be social. You need to be put in a room of opportunities even when you're not in it. Google puts out a job opening, they get 200 row cvs within like 15 minutes. Because it's Google, they shut it down. They bring in the 20 most qualified people. 70% of the time the person that gets hired has an internal advocate. Oh, I know Dan, I can personally advocate for him. So if you want to be put in a room full of opportunities if you want to have more professional success, be more social, make friends, take every opportunity to help other people establish friendship and help other opportunities such that they think, you know, I would really like to help this guy or gal out. And that way when they're in a meeting and they hear, oh, we're looking for someone to be a controller or CFO or in marketing, they go, oh, I know, I know this guy named Bob, he'd be amazed. I think that's in Friends. There's this cartoon of rich people that they're Monty Burns, they built a nuclear power plant and they crawled over people to get there. And I said this at your conference, generally speaking, other than men or people who have inherited money, really wealthy people generally over index in friends because the only way you get to that point is if you've established a lot of allies along the way, that people want you to win and they keep finding opportunities for you. And I generally find on the whole, they're really wealthy people, are generally high character people. And the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren faction of the party want you to believe that rich people are not nice. Now, I would argue rich people are not paying their fair share. I think we should have more progressive tax structure. I'm especially disappointed in the very wealthy people in the tech community. It seems to me they have not connected their good fortune and their blessings being born in America. They credit their grit and their character entirely. But on the whole, I think very successful people have one thing in common. They, generally speaking, have a much broader set of real friends.

Dan Senor (36:01)

You talk a lot about mothers and the role of mothers in digging us out of this crisis. And you talk a lot about your own mother. Can you talk a little bit about that, how you think of the maternal role in dealing with this?

Scott Galloway (36:15)

Well, look, I'm a 61 year old man that's still not over the death of his mother. I still, like, I have a tough time talking about my mom and not getting emotional. Every time something nice happened to me, my mother would light on my life. Single immigrant mother, lived in, lived and died a secretary, raised me on her own. And anytime anything good happened to me, anytime, you know, my first bonus of Morgan Stanley, I got the number of an attractive woman in line at Starbucks. I call my mom right away, right away, because you can brag to your mom, right? Your mom and your dad are the only people that want you to be more successful than them. And I'd say, oh, you know, I just got this number. And my mom will be like, well, of course you did. You're so handsome and you're so funny and you're, you know, it's like, okay, bring it on, right? And I used to call her after, after anything good that would happen to me because I know she would cement it for me and she just loved it so much. And I literally, Dan, anytime something good happens to me, my natural inclination is to call my mom. Despite the fact she's been gone for 21 years and for the longest time it just didn't feel like it happened. If something good happened and I couldn't call my mom and tell her, it was literally like, oh, it doesn't really happen. It was like not cemented. My mom was pulled out of school at the age of 13. Not well educated, not very sophisticated, but worked hard and like every day, in small and little ways, just told me I was wonderful. And I do believe that, you know, as you get older, you like to reverse engineer your blessings and your success to some things and then try and reinvest in those things. And one of those things was, I do think that if you have someone who's a good person, and my mom was a good person, just telling, you know, giving you the sense that you're wonderful, every day you start to believe it. And I feel like I've had a real base or cornerstone of confidence because of the irrational passion my mom had for my wellbeing and how emotive she was about just how much she not only loved me, but really liked me. She used to laugh hysterically at my jokes. And so what I say is I do think we recognize the importance mothers play. What we haven't recognized or what the data shows is that unfortunately, when a boy loses a male role model, he becomes at that moment more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college. And what's interesting is that girls in single parent homes actually have similar outcomes as girls in dual parent homes. Same rates of college attendance, same rates of income. They tend to be more promiscuous because they're looking for male attention in the wrong places. But on the big stuff, college attendance, self harm, same rates, it ends up that while boys are physically stronger, they're mentally and emotionally much weaker than girls. And without male mentorship and male involvement, they tend to come off the tracks. And even just stating that five years ago got huge pushback. What, you're saying women can't raise boys? No, look at my life. Lie to my life. But you have to have. If you want to increase the likelihood of success of a boy, you need to have men in his life.

Dan Senor (39:07)

I wasn't planning to get into this, but we've never talked about this in the podcast, but you and I have talked about this. Your mother was Jewish.

Podcast Announcer (39:13)

Jewish, yeah.

Dan Senor (39:14)

You were raised basically atheist, but your mother was Jewish. But yet there was some. I remember you telling me you had some experience with her. I can't remember listening to the rabbi's sermons, and you guys would discuss it or refresh my memory. There was some kind of experience you had that clearly had made an impression on you from her in that regard.

Scott Galloway (39:31)

Well, my mom occasionally would take me to temple, and it was always sort of like it was more like a class. She'd be like, oh, he's talking about Israel, he's talking about this, and we should go. It's going to be really interesting. I think my mom was looking to meet single men, quite frankly, but we used to go. And I remember thinking, oh, this guy is smart. And he was more sort of educational than it was spiritual. At least the temples I used to.

Dan Senor (39:52)

Go to for a lot of synagogues, I mean, the rabbi's sermon is almost like a class. I mean, it's like a good university lecture.

Scott Galloway (39:59)

Yeah. So it was very intellectual. And also, I'd say I had sort of two basic exposures to Judaism. I was also in a Jewish fraternity. I didn't realize it at the time. I rushed a bunch of fraternities, and my criteria was, do you have live in spots? And I walked into zbt and then I found out after I got a bit, it was a Jewish fratern, and the majority of the kids were Jews from the Valley. And the thing that struck me there is that relative. I had a lot of friends in a lot of different fraternities. The kids at ZBT were, quite frankly, just more ambitious economically. They From a very early age. And I think some of it's probably bad. It probably imparts a certain amount of pressure that might be unhealthy in some ways, but there was just a real focus on commercial success from a very early age. You know, the Phi Caps were just great guys who were partiers. The Phi Size were like handsome, cool guys. The Zebs were guys going to medical school.

Podcast Announcer (40:52)

Right.

Dan Senor (40:53)

Right.

Scott Galloway (40:53)

I needed that. I liked being around guys who were very focused on success. And I never picked up on the spiritual side of it. I've never. And we've talked about this, felt much connection to Judaism. But what I picked up on was I found that these guys held in high esteem by the Jewish religion. Rabbi really loved ideas and loved communicating them. And I Was very interested in that. And I still like, you know, I follow Rabbi leader on TikTok. I still like the whole lessons and incorporating history. I still find that fascinating. And also I just think I came out as EBT more ambitious. The SAEs aspired to be big and strong and ripped in athletes. The fisi's aspired to be cool with the ladies and we all kind of aspired that. The Lambda Kai's aspired to be good dressers and super dappers and the Zebs aspired to go to law school. They aspired to go to a top law school. I mean, and it's sort of a trope and I guess a stereotype. I'm probably offending a lot of people here. I benefited from that. I wanted to have success.

Dan Senor (41:53)

So these past two years, you and I have talked a lot about what's happened the last two years post October 7th. And I'm thinking about it in the context of what we're talking about now because you talk in the book about the importance of being part of a community and seeking purpose and a lot of the mob mentality that was organizing against Jews against Israel. You saw a lot of it on college campuses over these last couple years was. Some of it was naked, you know, just antisemitism. But actually I often felt some of it wasn't some of these kids that were joining these protests and the encampments and all of that. Cause I would sometimes, you know, I was visiting a lot of college campuses, so I'd like walk by some of these scenes and I would, you know, I wouldn't really engage the kids, but I kind of watch, watch. And there was something sad about a lot of these kids that had joined this war on Israel, war on genocide, war on the apartheid, whatever you want to call it. And many of these people really didn't know what they were talking about. They didn't really understand the issues. I hate to say this, there were a lot of young men, boys, who were looking for something like community, a purpose, a calling. I don't want to read too much into this from pop psychology here. On the one hand. On the other hand, you do talk about this. Boys being lost. When I was reading your book, I was thinking about it in the context of the last couple years.

Scott Galloway (43:14)

Yeah. And I mean, what was really rattling for me was there's a lot of Jews, a lot of Jews with these protests.

Dan Senor (43:20)

You're right. Although I would say many of those were Jews who were disconnected. Not all, but mostly, if you look at it, it's mostly Jews who were disconnected from Judaism, which is interesting.

Podcast Announcer (43:29)

Yeah.

Scott Galloway (43:29)

Or had no sense of the history.

Dan Senor (43:31)

Right.

Scott Galloway (43:32)

I think there's a lot that went into this. And let me just acknowledge up front, I don't think Israel has draped itself in glory from a perception standpoint. We used to be the good guys, Dan. We're no longer the good guys. We were in Tebbe Munich. Acts of heroism, fighting back against unfathomable odds. Now we're the dominant military power in the Middle east and there's some credibility, the notion of over settlements. I don't think Netanyahu is perceived as a person who sometimes is. There's just some. We've gone from David to Goliath. So let me start with that. And I'm hoping that Israel, you know, I don't get to vote there. People get to vote for their own people. But I'm interested in the survival of Israel and I do hope that there's a bit of a reckoning around some of the things that have happened in Israel and that they change the leadership. I know that you're closer to the administration than I am am. But then the primary things are sort of rooted in the following. And you can call it anti Semitism, but it's more nuanced than that. And that is at universities we have done a real disservice to kids and that is we have basically created this orthodoxy of oppressed and oppressor that it's great that America's coming to grips with its history. There has been a lot of oppression of special interest groups. So what happens is kids go on the hunt. They have some of that warrior aggression mentality and they're just learning about that. We intern. Japanese people are looking. Look at the bullshit that gay people have had to put up with. Look at the fact that women were not, you know, were at 60 cents on the dollar. From a just a pure sexism standpoint, there's a lot to be angry about and you're either oppressed or you're oppressor. And what I find is a lot of young, thoughtful kids who are understandably upset about our past go on the hunt for what I call fake racists. And you're going to have a difficult time finding true racists on a campus. And yet we have a 200 person DEI group in Michigan when 55% of the fresh identifies as non white. I've always said wherever there is a DEI department, it means you're at one of the most diverse, equitable and inclusive places already on the planet. And so you have these kids who are on the hunt for fake racists or fake oppressors in their proximity so they can express their outrage and be warriors of justice. That comes from a good place. The problem is that they don't. To your point, well, which river and which sea are you talking about? Have you done any real research here? Here? No. So the easiest way to do shorthand around oppressed and oppressor is two attributes. How rich and how white you are. And fairly or unfairly, Jews have been conflated with the richest, the whitest people on the planet. So, boom, we have our oppressors, right? And then you have the zeitgeist on campus where we've decided that DI has gone so goddamn far that you can say things about, about the quote, unquote, really rich white people, Jews, you would never be allowed to say about anyone else if I passed out bans. But the most shameful part of all this, like the moment I'm like, wow, we have really lost the script here. And I got involved and I reached out to the regents of the University of California, was when a ucla, I'm pretty sure you saw this, a group of kids were sequestering the quad Royce hall, which is the main area of the campus, and you had to have a band, and they only gave out bands to non Jews.

Dan Senor (46:47)

Yeah.

Scott Galloway (46:47)

I'm like, dan, do you realize if I found a group of students at UCLA in the 80s to pass out bans only to white kids and not to non whites? And then I sequestered black kids from coming on campus, they would have called in the fucking National Guard. Right? I mean, that shit would have been shut down so fast. But instead there was like a need for nuance and context. And I thought, and I love Chancellor Block. I'm still very involved in UCLA because I think the test of friendship is loyalty, is when they screwed up. When your friends screw up, oh my God, they screwed up. And so Israel has not draped itself in glory. You have this accidental DEI where this snake is eating its own tail on campus. And then the third thing, we don't talk about as much. I just believe Big Tech is so fucking with us. Specifically the CCP and TikTok. There's 55 pro Hamas videos for every pro Israel video. Young people are where they spend time, as are the rest of us. So when you see 55 to 1 pieces of content talking using words like genocide and mass starvation event, and there just aren't a lot of videos on, well, actually the ratio of civilian deaths to Combatant deaths is lower than it's been in any previous war. And they're leaving millions of voicemails and dropping leaf. You don't do that when you're trying to commit a genocide. You don't leave voicemails saying, please get out of this area.

Dan Senor (48:10)

There have been hundreds of Israeli soldiers killed since October 7th. It would have been much simpler for Israel if they wanted to genocide the place, to not send ground troops in and just obliterate the place from the air.

Scott Galloway (48:19)

They have nuclear weapons. They have nuclear weapons and heavy artillery.

Dan Senor (48:23)

Right.

Scott Galloway (48:23)

I believe somewhere between 2 and 3% of the population of Gaza has been killed. That's a tragedy. But you want to talk about a genocide? I mean, Hitler took out 40% of Jews. The Armenian genocide was like 50%. The Rwanda, 80% of Tutsis were murdered and about 100. If Jews in Israel are trying to commit genocide, they're not very good at it. So I thought there was this alchemy of a bunch of things. And what just shocked me, when I look at World War II, I like the notion of distilling something down to its most basic level to try and understand it. I see World War II as the following. Germany and Japan killed 40 of the 60 million people that died. Died. We're wringing our hands over Dresden and dropping the atomic bomb. Japan killed 40 million people. They were brutal. Brutal. What the Germans did to Russia was just inhumane. But we want to talk about. Okay, fine, what we did. The nuclear. I get it. Should we have dropped a second one? I don't know. War is terrible, but basically I'm just shocked at how many people in Europe enabled the genocide. And when I tried to summarize October 7th, what I say is, if I try to distill it down, it's like, okay, a group of people butchered a group of Israelis, and the whole world sort of said with their actions over the next 12 months, well, you know, maybe they had a point. Maybe there's a reason they did it. Maybe it comes from trauma. That they were so emotionally oppressed and devastated that it could justify, you know, taking people underground. And then when they rescue them, finding 53 different specimens of sperm on them. Maybe it's the victim's fault here. And it's not. It's like, this isn't, in my view, if you just do any goddamn research. This isn't about trauma or emotional retribution. It's about a playbook that is excused by religious doctrine and enforced by violence. This isn't some acting out of trauma. This is a playbook and it is a threat to the west to think that we're going to sequester it to the small group of people we've decided are rich and white. So maybe they deserve a little bit of comeuppance. And you know, Dan, I still don't feel a lot of connection with Israel. I've talked to you. I want to get back into it. I want to get back into Judaism. It's just not going to happen for me. I think it's too late.

Dan Senor (50:42)

I disagree.

Scott Galloway (50:43)

I know you're still trying. I'm still trying. You're still trying. I appreciate that. But where I do go is the false. I love American values. I love no child labor, jury trials, academic freedom, freedom of speech, democracies. And if the Knesset took over the White House and the Congress the next day, we wouldn't know any different. Still problems. They're fucked up just like we are. But they're not going to start throwing gay people off roofs and call me an apostate. I mean, if you want American values to flourish around the world. And our aircraft carrier, the way I see Israel, is just very real politic. It's the biggest, biggest, most talented aircraft carrier representing our interests in the Middle East. That's how I see it. So I'm at a minimum, I see my support of Israel as just being very pro American.

Dan Senor (51:26)

Okay. You've said this to me many times. It's too late for me. I'm sort of drawn to Judaism. You say, and you feel this connection to it, but it's too late. In your book, in the closing, which I thought was the most moving part of the book, which is your letter to your sons, you keep coming back to community, find a community, be part of a community, be willing to defend a community. The advice you're giving your son, Scott, is one of, if not the cornerstone, I'd say one of the most important cornerstones of Judaism and Jewish life, which is being a part of a community. And what I find one of the most powerful things about being part of a community, a Jewish community, is all the relationships in the community are non instrumental relationships. When you go to synagogue on a Saturday, you're not sitting there next to the person, whoever you're at synagogue with and thinking about like do they work at Goldman Sachs or, or what credential do they have? They're just part of your community and they would help you through a difficult time and you would help them and you'll wish them a mazel tov when they're going through some celebratory life cycle event and they're a community of relationships where people are not calculating the value of the relationships that is so central to Judaism. And it sounds to me like that is what you want for your kids in that letter.

Scott Galloway (52:38)

Yeah, I don't regret, I just never found faith and I'm envious of it from the people who do find it. I've never found it. I have found community else elsewhere. I have fantastic friends. I'm really good at with friends. I have found those communities. So I've kind of scratched that itch. What I do regret, Dan, I regret and now I'm trying to catch up, like, you know, I'm going to do the proverbial trip to Auschwitz with my sons. I do. Like I need to catch up and make sure my kids who've had no religious indoctrination feel a connection. And in a nod to me, even if they don't feel it, are always going to be supportive of Israel. Because what I find is, okay, 2 billion Muslims, 1.2 billion Catholics, a billion Chinese, 1.4 billion Indians and 15 million Jews. It's like if you're not like in the game and advocating for us, we're going away. It's not about ideology, it's about numbers. I mean, it's just not going to take a lot to take take out 0.2% of the population when it appears that a lot of people seem pretty dead set on that. So what I do regret, and I'm trying to catch up with my kids and you have to be careful because if you press anything too hard in the face of TikTok, they're going to go the other way. One of the things I'm planning to do before we leave is to go to Tel Aviv. And my strategy is simple.

Dan Senor (54:01)

When you say before you leave, just because our listeners understand you and your family are living in London right now, that's what you mean before you leave, not before you leave the world.

Scott Galloway (54:07)

World? No, no, no, no.

Dan Senor (54:08)

You mean before you leave Europe.

Scott Galloway (54:09)

We're moving back. We've lived there for three and a half years. We're coming back in six months.

Dan Senor (54:13)

Right, so before you leave. Yeah, exactly.

Scott Galloway (54:15)

But I know that my 18 and 15 year old son, they will love Tel Aviv. I'm going to take the cheap way out. I'm going to be like, this is a cross between Miami and Berlin. I'm going to take them to great restaurants. I'll take my son to a couple cool bars. They'll see how Hot the women are, they're just going to like it and they're going to be like, okay, this is, I would like to roll with these people. This is a cool city. But I'm trying to think, okay, I need to give them like the high, low, like the fun of Tel Aviv and then we go to Auschwitz. Right? But how do I ensure my boys, who I just don't think are going to end up in any religious institution at this point. A connection that when shit gets real, there's at least two more people who will devote their time, their treasure and their talent to this survival in the flourishment of Israel. I feel like at a minimum that's my obligation. I did not feel that sense of obligation previous to October 7th. I love how you call me, what is it? You call me an October 8th Jew.

Dan Senor (55:10)

An October 8th Jew.

Scott Galloway (55:12)

I deserve that.

Dan Senor (55:13)

But I want to call you an October 2025 Jew too. Which is now the war's over. And now it's like, so where do we go from here? Yeah, those are the Jews that don't just. That weren't just Jews for the two year war, but are actually. And it sounds like you are actually thinking about that. I wanna talk to you about public service, cuz you talk about it in the book as a remedy to some of the problems we've discussed. So can you say more about that?

Scott Galloway (55:37)

I got this from you, Dan. I am going down and speaking to the 47 Democratic senators about storytelling, about media. And what they want me to come down is they say for positioning for 26 and 28, what programs, what big ideas. They basically said we can't be the party of indignants, we have to be the party of ideas. Ideas. And I know you're a Republican, but I'm coaching a lot of Democrats and that sounds pretentious, but it's true. And the one idea they said, what are like one or two ideas that you think would be really important for America? I'm like, okay, if there was anything I could do as related to young men. And this is an idea I got from your book. Startup Nation is mandatory national service. It doesn't have to be military. It could be working at a no kill shelter for dogs, it could be helping seniors, it could be being a smoke John jumper, teaching preschool, whatever it is, but in the agency of other kids. And you mentioned it and I love this data. I think I even got it from your book Lowest levels of young adult depression in the western World. When you're outside, when you're finding Friends, mentors and mates. I spent some time when I went to Israel with an IDF battalion. Like, whatever it is, 120 beautiful young men and women fit outside learning that nothing like being in a foxhole gets you to evaluate people based on their character and their grit and not on their identity, their income. They don't care who their dad is. When you're being fired on. You don't care if they're gay or not. You just want to evaluate them on their skills and their character. And these kids. The data is clear. This helps give young people a sense of purpose. I think it would be hugely accretive to the mental and emotional health of boys. I think a lot of boys at 18 are not ready for college or what's next. And I think a structured environment with, around other people, high expectations, wake up early, work hard. The Mormon Church does it with mission. I think it's a really great idea. And the real free gift with purchase here is America's been so frayed that we have to get back to a point where people think of themselves as Americans before they think of themselves as Republican or Democrat or gay or whatever. And if you look at the, the periods where we had the most legislation, it was because all of our leaders had served in the same uniform. So if I could pass any one thing, if I had the magic wand, it would be mandatory national service for our young men and women.

Dan Senor (57:51)

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. As you know, it is not only so healthy for boys, but it's also for, as you said, it's breaking down socioeconomic barriers because as you said, like, you're in the hull of a tank, son of a tech billionaire from Tel Aviv, son of a bus driver, son of a religious Jew from the periphery of Israel. I mean, just everyone's in there and they're in the fight together, whatever that fight is. And I see it with these Israelis. These are relationships they have for life and they don't view one another as the other. That's the most important thing. They go through these crucible experiences together, these crucible leadership experiences, these crucible bonding experiences together. And when they have that in like a bubble, if you will, meaning they're not around their normal environments that they grew up, up in. Those relationships are formative and rock solid for life. And it really changes the whole complexity of the country. Scott, thanks for doing this. The book is Notes on Being a Man, which you should order today. Lest Scott slips from number one on Amazon to number two. We want to make sure he stays on number one. And I will say, if Amit Segal or Nadavael are listening to this podcast, my regular contributors, if they now ever come on the podcast and say, I'm sorry, I'm running a few minutes late, I was on with Gwyneth Paltrow, they will have learned, if nothing else from this podcast, the ultimate Flex.

Scott Galloway (59:08)

I was going to say, I don't know. Is that a weak flex? Is that a flex or a weak flex?

Podcast Announcer (59:12)

No, no, no.

Dan Senor (59:13)

It was good. It was good. It was good. That was a good flex. It's the best excuse anyone has ever given for running late. So anyways, good seeing you, Scott.

Scott Galloway (59:21)

Likewise, brother.

Dan Senor (59:22)

Talk soon. That's our show for today. If you value the Call Me Back podcast and you want to support our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members only show, Inside Call Me Back. Inside Call Me Back is where Nadava, Amit, Segal and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversation that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling. To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to arkmedia.org that's ark media.org call me back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. ARC Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti Sound and video editing by Martin Juergo and Marian Khalis Burgos Our Director of operations, Maya Rock research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.