← Lost Boys
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- [00:02]
Anthony Scaramucci
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- [00:27]
Scott Galloway
Go to your happy price.
- [00:29]
Anthony Scaramucci
Priceline this episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. From streaming to shopping, prime helps you get more out of your passions. So whether you're a fan of true crime or prefer a nail biting novel from time to time, with services like Prime Video, Amazon Music, and fast free delivery, prime makes it easy to get more out of whatever you're into or getting into. Visit Amazon.comprime to learn more. Thanks for joining us for this new limited edition podcast we're calling Lost Boys. I'm Anthony Scaramucci and I've been really concerned about what's happening to young people, specifically young men today. I grew up in a blue collar family with a very tough father. He wasn't always easy, but still, there were a lot of adult men in my life that served as real role models for me and a lot of men like me. We knew what men were supposed to be and supposed to do. But I worry that today, between the morass of social media, the confusion about pronoun usage, and the whole change in the culture, it's a lot harder for young men to thrive. Young men are just doing much worse than ever before. Last summer I started talking to my good friend Professor Scott Galloway about all this. Many of you know him as the professor, businessman, entrepreneur and podcaster. And it turns out he is very passionate about this issue and the more we talked, the more we both felt let's see if we can do something about it. So together we're starting this podcast, Lost Boys to talk about what the problem is and then figure out what we can do about it. In our first couple of episodes, we're going to talk with the author and researcher Richard Reeves, who who has probably done more to shine a light on this problem than anyone else. I'm sure you'll find this as interesting as I do. Here's part one of my conversation with Scott Galloway and Richard Reaves. I'd like to introduce now my good friend, my dear friend, Scott Galloway, who will introduce Richard Reeves. But guys, thank you so much for joining me. I have a lot of questions. I have a lot of moms that are going to tune into this podcast. Trust me. I've been watching all over the speaking circuit talking to moms about this very issue. So take it away, Scott.
- [02:53]
Scott Galloway
Yeah. So thanks first off, Anthony. Thanks. This is Anthony's vision. And I was an easy. Yes. I think Anthony is having a, for lack of a better term, a moment, is sort of an interesting kind of thought leader or commentator on the state of the US So I wanted to be supportive of anything that brought attention to the issue. And the issue is pretty straightforward. I would argue that no group has ascended faster globally than women. And by the way, that's a wonderful thing. The number of women elected to Parliament has doubled in the last 30 years. More women seeking globally tertiary education than men. And no group has fallen further faster in America than young men. And Richard will go into some greater detail as he's my Yoda around this stuff, but effectively you have, if you go into a Morgue and there's five young people who've died by suicide, four of them are men, three times as likely to be addicted, 12 times likely to be incarcerated. And I relate to this on a personal level because I was one of those men. When I was younger, I didn't have a lot of economic or romantic prospects living with my mother and kind of lost. But America sort of loved me and picked me up by the scruff of my neck and flung me forward in the form of the University of California assistance and welfare from my mother. And I don't find that some of those same programs and some of those same opportunities or the way society operates. And had I been that kid today, I worry that outcomes would have been different. And so this is something that's a passion project and immediately found the person to kind of, I don't know, serve again as my sensei, if you will, or my Jedi Master is Richard Reeves. Richard is the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. Born in Petersboro, United Kingdom. Educated in geography at Wadham College. Am I saying that correctly?
- [04:42]
Richard Reeves
Yeah. You are amazing.
- [04:43]
Scott Galloway
Crazy, right?
- [04:44]
Richard Reeves
Right.
- [04:45]
Scott Galloway
And has a PhD from the University of Warwick and has had several pretty high level positions, including joining the office of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. He's also was at. Was it the Hoover Institute? Where were you?
- [05:01]
Richard Reeves
Demos.
- [05:02]
Scott Galloway
There you go.
- [05:03]
Richard Reeves
Ippo. Yeah.
- [05:04]
Scott Galloway
And has not only that is not just a bureaucrat. One of the things I respect most about Richard, he not only wrote kind of this Landmark book or David Brooks described it as a landmark book of boys to men. But he's an entrepreneur, and that is, he went out and started a foundation or a research think tank. What do you call this? A think tank?
- [05:25]
Richard Reeves
Think tank is probably the best term. Yeah, I guess. Sounds important, though, doesn't it?
- [05:29]
Scott Galloway
The American Institute for Boys and Men and immediately was able to raise a lot of capital. People have a ton of respect for him, his research, his kind of thoughtful, almost sort of nonpartisan approach to this, and saw the need and just one just to do some name dropping. I believe you received a $10 million grant from the Melinda French Gates Foundation. Is that accurate?
- [05:49]
Richard Reeves
Pivotal ventures. That was 20. Yeah. Most of which meant to give away, which is great.
- [05:52]
Scott Galloway
There you go. Well, we can help anyways with that. Richard Reeves. So, Anthony, do you want to kick us off with a couple questions for Richard?
- [06:01]
Anthony Scaramucci
I think so. I want to start out by making a statement, Richard, if you don't mind. And get. Get you to react to it. I feel like things were more easily defined when we were growing up. Scott and I are contemporaries, both born around 1964. And I feel like we had some definition to our lives. You know, there were certain things that boys did, there were certain things that girls did. And again, I'm not trying to be overly parochial, and I understand that we want to be accepting in our culture for varying lifestyles and so on and so forth. But, you know, Scott said something to me that really penetrated a few months back. He said, you know, there's no advocacy for white males. There's maybe 75 different affinity groups at NYU, but there's no white male affinity group. And not necessarily saying that there should be, sir, but I guess I'd like to ask you first for the statistic that Scott's giving. What happened in our sociology, what happened in our world, our culture, that's led to this problem that we're all facing?
- [07:05]
Richard Reeves
Well, the first thing to say is that I think Scott has been a real leader in terms of elevating this as a cultural conversation. So there's a danger now that you just get some praise inflation between me and me and Scott now, but let's get that over with. But, but he was really leading on this before I wrote the book.
- [07:23]
Anthony Scaramucci
He's one of, I want the praise inflation, Richard. I mean, you don't know me, but I. I have a very fragile ego. So don't focus on Galloway. Just like, find subtle, subtle ways to praise.
- [07:36]
Scott Galloway
I'm sorry, continue, Richard. Anthony, please.
- [07:38]
Richard Reeves
So, so far, Anthony I have no reason to object to you. How about that? All right, so someone sort of said, like, he's a friend in the sense that he didn't mean me. Active, ill will. Let's start with that. Anthony, I'm thrilled you're doing this. Yeah, I think that's right. And it's interesting the way this is both like a. Like a factual problem in the sense that, like, we've got all these facts, some of which Scott's referred to, but like in education and wages and employment. And that's my background. Right. I'm a fact guy. I'm a researcher, policy guy. But I think there's something behind that, which is what you're both talking about, which is this identity question. So beneath the surface of facts, there's this question about identity. And I do think that there was a clearer script. That's the way I like to think about this, is that there was. The old script was for women, wife and mother. You're going to raise the kids, you're going to etc. And the old script for men was you're going to be the economic provider, head of household, breadwinner. Right. That was the script my parents had, and I had a great upbringing, I'm very lucky, etc. But there wasn't like a question that they had to ask about how it. How they're going to divide it. We tore those scripts up. I think, Anthony, I see how you both react to this. I think we tore them up and we said to women, your script is no longer housewife, mother. It's anything you want it to be. It's CEO, it's leader, it's you go girl. It's amazing. And as Scott said, that's arguably the biggest economic liberation in human history. Amazing. So the script that girls and young women get now is around autonomy of independence, assertiveness. It's all uplift. It's incredibly empowering. We tore up the old script for men, which was breadwinner, head of household, et cetera. And we didn't replace it with anything. We just tore up the old script. And so what that means is a lot of men now feel that they're basically improvising. They basically don't have a script, or if they do, it's a negative script. I really fear that one of the problems now is that the script around what men, what men should be, is more defined negatively. It's don't be toxic, don't mansplain. So there's a long list of don'ts now for Men, most of which we would probably agree with. But what about the do's? What's the to do list for a 24 year old man now? And we don't have a good answer to that question. That's created a massive vacuum I think in our culture and our politics.
- [09:59]
Anthony Scaramucci
But Scott, what Richard is saying happened for what reason? Through osmosis, A backlash to masculinity or male toxic masculinity? What caused this to happen? Or did it just happen naturally or.
- [10:17]
Scott Galloway
Well, and I'm going to do like a rich little version of Richard here and he can correct me where I got it wrong or I got it right, but the right will claim that it was. If you tell men that they're idiots and predators for four or five decades, they start to believe you. I think that's part of it. But I would argue that it's much more nuanced in that the primary culprits, if there is a culprit, are much harder to solve and less political. The on ramps, the on ramps into a middle class where, you know, for someone who wasn't cut out for college or education, a lot of those on ramps have been taken away. Simply put, we've outsourced a lot of our, our manufacturing jobs. One third of jobs used to require a college degree. Now it's 2/3. What happened to wood shop, metal shop, auto shop? There is a bias now that we've leveled the playing field in education. In my industry, women have just blown by men. You know, the attributes to be a good student just come more easily to a woman than you know, at nyu, we don't like to talk, we don't say this out loud. There are certain graduate schools at NYU where if we were admissions blind, they not only would be 70% women, they'd be 70% Asian women. And so there's just the natural attributes of a woman lend themselves better to education. I also think economically we've passed a lot of legislation that has transferred money from young people to old people. People over the age of 70 or 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. People under the age of 40 or 24% less wealthy will that affects men and women? Yes. But when men don't have money, quite frankly, they're just less attractive. That is more of a hit to them than it is a hit to women. So you have an education system that's biased against them. You have. Richard can speak to the actual biological reasons, prefrontal cortex, societal, economic. I think those are the primary culprits. I think it's a little bit. And Richard, I'm curious to get your opinion. I think it's a little bit lazy to say that it's people not respecting men. I think that's part of it, but I think it's a more complicated. There's a bunch of dimensions here that are probably bigger contributors to the fall of young men. But I'm open to pushback here. Richard?
- [12:39]
Richard Reeves
Yeah, I think in some ways I think that the discourse around men and the toxic masculinity, what that's done is put fuel on the fire. There are all of these more structural, longer term problems, as you say, Scott, around education. The labor market has really turned against, particularly men with less skill. I mean, the fact that men without a college degree are earning no more today than they were half a century ago, like stagnant male wages for that, for most men, that is a massive economic fact and therefore a cultural fact. But I do think that the fuel on the fire has been to say if men are struggling, it's sort of their fault. One of my criticisms of more progressive leaning people is that they can't accept that men have problems because they're still convinced that men are the problem. And that's created a blindness to the reality of these problems of men or a tendency sometimes to say if men are struggling, it must be their fault. So if men are committing suicide or having mental health problems, that's because they won't get help. If men are dying of COVID it's because they wouldn't get the vaccine. If men are not doing well in school, it's because they can't be bothered to crack a book, et cetera. And so there's this weird sort of blame thing that, that happens with men, but only men now, rather than saying, well, maybe the education system's not working very well for men, maybe the workplace has changed. And so I think you're right, Scott, that these are deeper challenges. But I also think you're right, Anthony, that it does make things worse if we actually then not only say men aren't having problems, but also point to them as the problem. So it's a really unfortunate set of circumstances. You know, the reason men are struggling is not because people are being mean to them, but that doesn't mean people being mean to them doesn't make things worse. And I certainly think it makes them open to much more reactionary voices who can then credibly claim that mainstream institutions and people don't care about them because they're too busy pathologizing them. And I do think if you want someone to really kind of feel threatened and alone, then threaten their identity. That we do know that. And masculinity has become part of that problem.
- [14:51]
Scott Galloway
But to Anthony, to your point around misandry, you never hear the word. You hear misogyny all the time. You never hear misandry. You know, I went on Theo Vaughan and I was talking about struggling young men. And I get what I always get. Dozens, if not hundreds of comments along the lines of, well, if young men just got their act together. Now imagine me saying that about the black community. Well, if black people just got their act together, what would be the response? Well, if women were just in touch with their emotions, I mean, it is open season on. If you're at a conference and you say, well, women are better managers, they're more thoughtful, they're more nuanced, they make better doctors, they're more nurturing, everyone just kind of claps politely and nods their head. If I were to say men are more risk aggressive and on average make better entrepreneurs, what would the response be? So it feels like we can't even have an open, honest conversation because it's open season on one gender and the other from just. Even, even, even if you're trying to have a science based conversation, it's. It's a third rail. You can't say anything that might imply that women are, you know, might be contributing or the role women play, that this might be part of the, you know, they might be part of not only the solution, but also part of the problem. You can't even go there.
- [16:23]
Richard Reeves
It's really interesting, Scott, if you look, there is some really interesting research where if you show people evidence on sex differences, if you say there are some, on average, differences between men and women, say on risk taking or conscientiousness or something, if you say, and that makes women better, people are much more likely to accept that there are sex differences than if you say it the other way around. And so there's this real asymmetry here, which is that people are much more willing to accept sex differences when women come out better from them than they are the other way around. And that's just intellectually bankrupt. And you understand why it's happened, but it also, you understand why if we literally have nothing positive to say about masculinity and men, then no wonder so many of them feel under siege. And it means that we don't get to tackle these serious problems that Scott and I are both so exercised by.
- [17:13]
Anthony Scaramucci
I want you Both to react to this, because this is something I see in my children, which I try to combat. And maybe you could offer me some advice on how to do it. I feel everything that you said is true and I feel that there is an undercurrent of this lack of advocacy for men. They can't advocate for themselves. And the other thing is they can't express that they feel the way that you guys are suggesting, meaning you can't have a 15 year old say, Professor Galloway, you know, I feel left out of the equation, or I feel, I feel one way. But if I assert myself and say xyz, I'm not heard, or people come down on me like a ton of bricks. I guess where I'm getting to is a lot of these guys, my children included, they'll find recluse in the Internet. They'll go on the Internet, they fall prey to some conspiracy theories. Some of these guys think the moon landing didn't happen. I've got to listen to all this sort of nonsense that goes on on the Internet. And I feel like they're falling into a trap of despair without the tools necessary to stand up for themselves. Do I have that wrong? And if I do, tell me what I have wrong and if I have it right, is there a solution?
- [18:27]
Scott Galloway
Richard?
- [18:28]
Richard Reeves
Yeah. So I think you have it right that the question of what am I supposed to do today as a man? How am I supposed to date? What about money? What about sex? What about fitness? All those questions like what's the script? What's the story? How am I supposed to be today? That question is on the lips and the minds of the, of almost all young men today. So the question is not is there a question? It's who's providing answers? And you're right that if they're not getting answers in the classroom from their fathers, from their scout groups, from their churches, from wherever, and they don't have that conversation, those role models, of course they'll go and look online. And so the solution is to have this kind of conversation is for us to be having a conversation, to be having a good faith conversation about advocating for our boys and men. Scott already mentioned the suicide statistics, but just to put a sharp point, we lose 40,000 men a year to suicide now. And since 2010, almost all of the rise has been among young men. So the rise in suicide among men under the age of 30 has been 30% just since 2010. We have a crisis of loss of male lives in this. And if we can. And by the way, it's higher among white men. There are lots of other issues that go the other way, but if we can't have that conversation honestly and openly and tackle it, someone else is going to have that conversation. The question is not are we having this conversation? The question is who's having it?
- [20:06]
Anthony Scaramucci
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- [23:07]
Scott Galloway
SCOTT oh, you know, I've often said that my worst days are better than most people's best days, but I was, I was never, I'm pretty blessed, Anthony. I've had, you know, I've lost like most people. I've lost people I've loved. I've had a business go out of business, you know, some, some big business failures, personal failures. Been divorced, but never got to the point where I think some of these young men get where they feel as if, I mean, the saddest thing I saw, I read was that with young men in suicide, a lot of it is depression, drunkenness, addiction, related. The most rattling information thing I read was that with men our age who kill themselves. I read a psychiatrist said that it's a rational decision, that this is an individual who does the math. It typically the path to suicide for them or a very common path is they have a financial, they have financial strain, they lose a business, they go broke, they are no longer a provider. Their wife who no longer sees them as a provider is less attracted to them. In divorce systems, 70% of divorce filings are from women. And we all like to pretend that all women are Lisa Simpson or margin high character people. I can prove statistically there's a lot of good women, some not so good women. There's a lot of good men, some not so good men. And then the man, so the man loses his wife, his primary relationship. He oftentimes loses access to his kids. I'm going through this with a lot of my friends right now. They have teenage girls or kids and they get divorced and quite frankly, the kids want nothing to do with them. It's like dad shows up, he doesn't live here, he's not part of my ecosystem. And all of a sudden the dad goes from having all this great kind of what I call garbage time hanging out with his kids, and he's no longer in the same house. Family court is sometimes biased against men. And then he just has no. No role, no purpose. And he makes a conscious decision to check out. And that, to me, was just the most, like, devastating, that it's a quote, unquote, rational decision. And what Richard was saying about the conversation, I think it's gotten remarkably more productive, in large part because of some of Richard's work and research. But American households, millions of them, felt this and saw it happening for the last two decades, and no one was talking about it. And unfortunately, that void. Into that void slipped some unproductive voices that said, be proud of yourself. And the problem with these unproductive voices is it starts positive. Be fit, be action oriented. Take control. Go up and approach a woman, and then it comes off the rails. Then it's like, now, invest in crypto and that. Don't let that bitch go to the club with her friends. You know, put your foot down. It turns into thinly veiled misogyny. And so right away, the dialogue got a really bad rap. And the moment. And I'm sure, I imagine you experienced this, Richard. I know I did when I just even started mildly advocating for men who are talking about these problems. They're like, oh, you're one of those guys. You're one of those misogynists. And people just shut off. And the good news is, I think the conversation has got a lot more productive because the people now driving this conversation or the afterburners, are mothers. We're like, guys, I am not political. Something. I have. I have three kids, two girls, one boy. One's in the girls in pr, one's in Carnegie Mellon, and my son is in the basement playing video games and vaping. So I think the evolution of this conversation has gotten a lot better. But be clear, that void got filled by some very unproductive voices that have kind of delayed a productive conversation.
- [27:12]
Richard Reeves
Yeah, I just want to add a data point to Scott's point about being needed. Like, feeling unneeded, not useful to the tribe or to the family, is literally fatal. And so we both mentioned that there's a four times higher suicide rate among men of all ages than women. But among divorced men and women, it's eight times higher because it shoots up for men, but not so for women for exactly the reasons that Scott's talked about, which is you don't have these connections, you don't have these ties and these. These tethers. And. And I think the conversation's moved on A little bit as well, but it's taken a while. And the problem is that for too long, people like Scott were breaking the ice around this was people said, in order to advocate for men, you have to somehow become go against women. We've actually, our institute published a piece on zero sum thinking, in other words, the idea that for one group to do better, another group has to do worse. And zero sum thinking is the enemy of a flourishing family, a flourishing community. But we have been trapped in zero sum around this, which is that somehow to advocate for men, care about men means to care less about women. Which is like saying to a parent, you're only allowed to care about your son or your daughter, like, which one are you going to choose? It's batshit crazy. But it is the way that the gender debate has played out on both sides, because you now get reactionary saying, in order for men to do better, we need women to go back. We need to go back to the 1950s, women back in the home. And that's only true of the reactionary fringes. But unless we get to this idea that we have to rise together, which is what mums want. Scott's right. Then we'll continue to have this vacuum that other voices can fill.
- [28:58]
Anthony Scaramucci
So, Richard, do you think it's possible to insert this more broadly into the educational system, whether it's here in the United States or in the UK or more broadly the Western liberal democracies? Is there something that we could insert in the curriculum that you could get buy in from teachers unions, women progressives that, that provide some more awareness? Like, listen, I know when I was in elementary school, they told me not to smoke. Some of us listened and some of us did the very opposite. But just the awareness of the health issue probably slowed people down.
- [29:36]
Richard Reeves
Yeah, well, I think the tide is turning a little bit on this. Some of the ideas that I've had is to actually give parents the choice to start their boys in school a year later, or at least a few months later, because they do mature a bit later on average. So just having that option, it would be good in public schools as well as private schools, where a lot of them do it. Scott and I have both written and talked a lot about the need for more apprenticeships. Technical high schools are amazing for boys, just a bit more applied, a bit more hands on. Boys, when they're learning, need to know the why and the who before they care about the what. So they need to know why am I learning this? And who are you anyway with the teacher in order to care about the what. Girls are a little bit better at doing the work anyway, even if they don't see the why. So technical schools. But the thing that I feel perhaps most strongly about of all is more male teachers. And that should be something that should not be controversial, at least in theory. It isn't. So in the 1980s, 33% of our teachers were men. Now it's 23% and falling. And there's a way in which the teaching profession has become very gendered. My own son just started teaching fifth grade in Baltimore City, and I asked some people for advice about a man in teaching, and they said, make sure that his door has a window, which most schools do anyway. But if you're a male teacher, never teach in a classroom where there isn't a window in the door. There's a trust issue, which is understandable, but it's gone so far now that we become suspicious of men having a role in the lives of boys, unless it's their own sons. And I think credit to Scott here, he's been very outspoken on this. But the decline in the share of men in the Scouts is not Boy Scouts anymore. This might have passed you by, but Boy Scouts of America no longer exists. It is now Scouting for America and co ed. Big Brothers, Big Sisters has much longer waiting times for boys than girls because they don't have male volunteers. The ymca. The YMCA is now staffed by mostly female volunteers. And so there's this huge absence of men in the lives of boys. And one way that public policy can address that is through schools. If we can't increase the share of male teachers with all kinds of scholarship programs and incentives and better pay, which would be good for everybody, then I don't know what else we could do. And I'm seeing more people open to that argument. We do not want an all female teaching profession. And so that's an example where you should be able to get more support.
- [32:09]
Scott Galloway
And Richard, I think it was your study that showed that if you try to reverse engineer to a single point of failure for when a boy kind of comes off the tracks, it's when he loses a male role model. And I'm not sure, Richard, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but the data on when mom and dad get divorced, 92% of the time it ends up being a household headed by a single parent who's the mom. The outcomes are reasonably similar for girls, but they're much worse for boys. And the fascinating summary or conclusion is that while boys are physically stronger, and I'M pretty sure I got this from your study. They're mentally and emotionally much weaker and just educating, just parents who are going through divorce knowing you really got to keep an eye on the boy. Because as much as we think, okay, they're bigger and they're stronger, they're actually weaker as humans. Richard, did I get that right?
- [33:12]
Richard Reeves
Yeah, you did, yeah. There's this really nice image in psychology where they compare orchids to dandelions. The idea is that orchids are just a bit more fragile. They do well when you take care of them, but they die quickly if you don't. And dandelions are more resilient, right? They can grow in the cracks in the sidewalk or whatever. And it turns out that boys are a bit more orchid and girls are a bit more dandelion. And so family breakdown, neighbourhood poverty, poor schooling, all of those things affect boys much more than girls. Boys are much more sensitive than girls are. Scots exist, right?
- [33:50]
Anthony Scaramucci
That idea that boys are more fragile than girls is one of those counterintuitive ideas that we need to consider if we want to help young men today. In the next episode of Lost Boys, we'll continue the conversation with Richard Reeves and talk about why it's so difficult to even get people to talk about this problem. Can we help boys without hurting girls? The short answer is yes, of course. Why aren't the problems of boys a bigger political issue? Why is it hard for some groups like Democrats to even talk about these problems? And we'll talk about a secret army of women who are demanding we do better by young men. Thanks for joining me and Scott Galloway for this premiere episode of Lost Boys. I hope you'll join us as we continue this conversation. If you'd like more information, please go to our website, www.lostboys.men. that's www.lostboys.men. before we go, let me ask you a little favor. This issue is so important, please share it with someone who cares about it or who should care about this. And let's spread the word. And please, like follow, subscribe and rate Lost Boys wherever you get your podcast. Lost Boys is a production of Salt Media and Casablanca Strategy Group. Barbara Fedita and Keith Summa, our executive producers. Tanya Salotti is our researcher and Holly Duncan Quinn and Stanley Goldberg, our editors. Special thanks to Christina Kasese and Mary Jean Rivas and Drew Barrows.