Notes on Being a Man — a Live Conversation with Ben Stiller

Summary

The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway

Episode: Notes on Being a Man — a Live Conversation with Ben Stiller

Date: November 13, 2025
Featured Guest: Ben Stiller
Theme: Modern Masculinity, Purpose, Fatherhood, Relationships, and Building Meaningful Lives

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Episode Overview

This live episode at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan features a candid, wide-ranging conversation between Scott Galloway and actor/director Ben Stiller. The talk centers on Galloway's latest book, Notes on Being a Man, exploring the state of modern masculinity, the challenges facing young men, and what it means to build a life filled with connection and meaning as a man today. Topics include mentorship, role models, mental health, family, career, relationships, and policy—peppered with humor, personal stories, and memorable moments.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Introduction & Set-up

Timestamps: 03:34–09:37

• Ben Stiller’s Appreciation: Ben opens with a personal introduction, sharing how he became a fan of Galloway through his media appearances and unique turn of phrase. Ben reads off a list of his favorite “Scott Galloway quotes” (05:02), blending humor with admiration.
  • “Tesla is a drunken tourist with a Hublot watch.”
  • “Three things I hate most in life are shoelaces, keys, and passwords.”
  • “You have to let your inner child develop an outer man.”
• Ben’s curiosity:
  • “At one point, before I even met Scott, I was so taken by his turn of phrase… that I literally started a file in my notes app of Scott Galloway quotes.” (04:38, Ben Stiller)
• Shift to Scott’s work: Ben explains his intrigue with Scott’s work on mentoring young men and the “controversial” nature of talking about male struggles in today’s culture.

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2. Why Is Talking About Mentoring Young Men Controversial?

Timestamps: 09:37–16:42

• Scott’s Data-driven Context:
  • “If you go into a morgue and there’s five people who died by suicide, four are men… What we really have is a male homeless and a male opiate problem.” (09:41, Scott)
  • Men are disproportionately affected by homelessness, opiate addiction, and incarceration.
• Political Framing:
  • Right-wing approaches see young men’s struggles as a call to return to the 1950s and conflate masculinity with “coarseness and cruelty.”
  • Left-wing discourse often frames male challenges as a zero-sum issue or ignores them, according to Scott.
    • “Empathy is not a zero sum game. Civil rights didn’t hurt white people or gay marriage didn’t hurt heteronormative marriages.” (14:24, Scott)
• The “Gag Reflex”:
  • “The gag reflex is understandable because… when you hear a white dude talking about ‘oh, poor men,’ they immediately have a gag reflex like, oh shit, it’s that Andrew Tate weirdness again, trying to set me back.” (12:33, Scott)
• Changing Nature of Opportunity:
  • Shattered on-ramps to the middle class for young men.
  • Tech and social media sequestering young people into digital spaces, worsening isolation.
• Mothers Leading the Conversation:
  • Progress on discussing men’s issues is driven by mothers noticing their sons struggling (low motivation, poor job prospects, social isolation).
    • “My fans are young men, but my supporters are women. Mothers.” (15:53, Scott)

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3. The Makeup of Scott’s Career

Timestamps: 17:21–21:46

• Ben’s playful grilling:
  • “What do you actually do? …I know you’re a professor, but you’re also, like, super rich…” (17:24, Ben)
• Scott’s ‘Three Buckets’:

  • Writing (books, newsletters): 1/3 of time

  • Media (podcasts, TV): 1/3

  • Investments/entrepreneurship: 1/3

  • Teaching (on leave from NYU, but considers himself a teacher)

    • “Greatness is in the agency of others.” (20:19, Scott)
    • “If you want to have outsized opportunities… you do this.”

  • Delegation and partnership: gives away >50% ownership in companies to attract great people.

    “The reason I get to live the life I lead is because I was always able to find really good people, give them a bunch of ownership… Greatness is in the agency of others.” (20:36, Scott)

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4. Role Models, Childhood, and Forgiveness

Timestamps: 25:11–33:53

• Scott’s upbringing:
  • Raised by a single, immigrant mother “who lived and died a secretary.”
    • “If someone tells you every day, in small and big ways… that they just think you’re wonderful… you can’t help but start to believe it.” (25:43, Scott)
  • Father absent, multiple marriages, but ultimately forgave him as an adult.
    • “The biggest unlock… was: What kind of son do I want to be? …Hold yourself to that standard and just put away the fucking scorecard.” (29:38, Scott)
  • Importance of not letting relationships be transactional.
• Ben’s reflections:
  • Had loving, present parents—famous comedy duo Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.
  • Even with a great dad, still faced the challenge of “living in his shadow.”
• Impact of parenthood:
  • Both reflect on how having kids shifted their perspective on parental relationships and emotional connection.

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5. Regret and the Limits of Character

Timestamps: 33:53–38:49

• Scott shares a story about his godparents and the consequences of failing to show up:
  • “Quite frankly, I could have found time. I should have found time [to see Carson before she died]. And I’m not proud of that. It’s just a lack of character, right?” (36:08, Scott)
  • The unpredictability and fragility of success, and the importance of relationships over material outcomes.

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6. Marriage, Happiness, and the Arc of a Man’s Life

Timestamps: 38:49–49:21

• Marriage & Relationships:
  • Ben and Scott, both in long-term marriages, discuss the data and lived experience:
    • “Widows are happier after their husband dies… Widowers are less happy.” (39:57, Scott)
    • Men benefit from relationships more than women; absence of marriage/partnership increases male risk for substance abuse, anger, isolation.

      “There is nothing like the guardrails of a relationship, and especially marriage.” (41:05, Scott)

  • The arc of happiness: resembles a “big smile”—happiest later in adulthood.
  • The central role of fatherhood and building a family in feeling “sated” and fulfilled.
    • “The only time I have ever felt sated is when I’m with my boys and my partner…” (41:28, Scott)
    • “The happiest people are generally part of a family.” (42:41, Scott)
• Economic Realities:
  • Marriage rates linked to economic security:
    • “Marriage is a new luxury item. 4/5 of people in the top quintile of income earning households get married. Only one in five men in the lowest quintile ever have an opportunity to mate.” (47:23, Scott)
  • Deterioration of young men’s economic prospects endangers social stability.
    • “The natural state of kind of barbarism… is Porsche polygamy, where the few men… get multiple mates and the majority… don’t have any. And a society collapses on itself because those men get angry.” (47:55, Scott)

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7. Masculinity in Marriage & Creating Surplus Value

Timestamps: 52:52–56:30

• Ben asks about masculinity’s role in lasting marriages.
• Scott’s three secrets for successful marriage:
  1. Put away the scorecard:
     • "Decide the kind of husband you want to be and always try to be in the plus column." (53:43, Scott)
  2. Express desire and affection:
     • “Always express physical desire, sex and affection. It’s what says, I choose you.” (54:27, Scott)
  3. Never let a woman (partner) be cold or hungry:
     • “Never, ever let a woman be cold or hungry.” (55:22, Scott)
• Surplus Value:
  • An adult man is one who creates more value (economic, emotional) than he absorbs. (53:39, Scott)
  • “The ultimate litmus test is surplus value.”

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8. Empathy, Protection, and Masculinity’s Highest Purpose

Timestamps: 59:13–66:49

• Empathy for Others:
  • The “three legs of the stool of masculinity”:
    1. Provider
    2. Protector
    3. Empath (protecting outside your own family)
  • Role models for masculinity should prioritize protection—using privilege and strength to shield the vulnerable.
    • “The ultimate expression of masculinity, full stop, is you plant trees the shade of which you’ll never sit under, right?” (61:35, Scott)
  • Modern leaders (e.g., US presidents, billionaire tech leaders) are failing to model responsible masculinity—highlighting the need for better public examples.
  • Societal healing requires a renewed “alliance between men and women.”
    • “Let’s decide we’re allies again. Instead of finding reasons why it’s the other gender’s fault, let’s get out there.” (66:34, Scott)

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9. The Role of Emotions & Repression in Men

Timestamps: 67:25–72:44

• Emotional Expression:
  • Scott didn’t cry from age 29 to 44—not even at his mother’s death or during divorce.
  • “…literally forgot how [to cry]. And then I started again. The advice I would give to any man is… when something moves me, I weep up and I cry.” (68:27, Scott)
  • Encourages men to “lean into crying,” fully experience emotions to “slow life down” and reduce anxiety/anger.
  • Ben and Scott agree that feeling and appreciating the moment is critical to being human and fully experiencing life.

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10. Fatherhood, Regret, and Parenting Daughters

Timestamps: 73:08–76:14

• Father of Girls:
  • Scott regrets not having a daughter, mostly out of a sense that daughters care for their fathers.
  • No specific advice, but highlights the profound anxieties fathers experience about providing and parenting.
• Ben jokes: Not the right guy to ask; he (Ben) does have a daughter but doesn’t position himself as an expert.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the challenge of discussing men’s issues:

  “The gag reflex is understandable because… all of that prosperity was largely crammed into the third of the population that was white, male, and heterosexual. So when they hear a white dude talking about ‘oh, poor men,’ they immediately have a gag reflex.”
  (12:33, Scott Galloway)

• On relationships and happiness:

  “The only time I have ever felt sated is when I’m with my boys and my partner…and we know we’ve done something right…this is enough.”
  (41:28, Scott Galloway)

• On role models of masculinity:

  “The ultimate expression of masculinity, full stop, is you plant trees the shade of which you’ll never sit under.”
  (61:35, Scott Galloway)

• On emotional vulnerability:

  “The advice I would give to any man is… when something moves me, I weep up and I cry. And unfortunately it’s gone a little bit overboard. I cried on the View and the Daily Show.”
  (68:27, Scott Galloway)

• On balancing hard realities with hope:

  “You can be the toast of the town. These people had everything. …And I don’t have any Hallmark channel lessons here other than relationships are everything.”
  (36:34, Scott Galloway)

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Important Timestamps

• Ben’s introduction & list of favorite Galloway quotes: 04:38–05:52
• The “Gag Reflex” and the controversy of men’s issues: 09:37–16:42
• What does Scott actually do: 17:21–21:46
• Reflections on parents and growing up: 25:11–33:53
• Personal regret and godparent story: 33:53–38:49
• Marriage, family, meaning: 38:49–49:21
• Role of masculinity in marriage: 52:52–56:30
• Empathy and men’s highest purpose: 59:13–66:49
• Repressed emotion and men: 67:25–72:44

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Tone and Style

• Open, reflective, robustly data-driven (Scott’s style)
• Wry, warm, and self-deprecating (Ben’s approach, often poking fun at himself and at Scott)
• Mix of humor and pathos—both men are candid about failings, regrets, and the messiness of life

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Summary Takeaways

• The conversation blends statistics, personal narrative, and relational advice to illuminate challenges facing men and boys today, without ignoring ongoing issues for women.
• The most fulfilling aspects of life are rooted in meaningful relationships, mentorship, and building something greater than oneself.
• Emotional expression, self-reflection, and leaning into both vulnerability and responsibility are keys to healthy masculinity.
• There’s a societal need for renewed empathy across genders, economic classes, and generations—starting with supporting young men and building diverse alliances.

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Recommended for: Anyone interested in modern masculinity, family and career, personal growth, or understanding social challenges through a smart, honest, and entertaining lens.

Transcript

[Host/Announcer]

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[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

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[Scott Galloway]

Episode 373373 is the Country Club from Moldova. 1973 the Exorcist premiere. True story. Supposedly the Exorcist is coming out with a sequel, but this time it's about trying to get the priest out of the boy.

[Ben Stiller]

Go, go Go.

[Scott Galloway]

Welcome to the 373rd episode of the Prop G Pod. So what's happening today?

[Host/Announcer]

We're going to do something a little different.

[Scott Galloway]

We're sharing the live recording of a recent event we did at the 92nd Street Y here in Manhattan with our friend Ben Stiller. We talk about modern masculinity, friendship, fatherhood.

[Host/Announcer]

Purpose, and how men can build lives.

[Scott Galloway]

Filled with meaning and connection.

[Host/Announcer]

It was an interview on my book.

[Scott Galloway]

Notes on Being a Man. You're probably sick of me talking about it, but this was a good one. Ben is a really Thoughtful guy and funny and, you know, kind of. Kind of just what you would imagine. And also just a quick plug for Ben's documentary that just was just released.

[Host/Announcer]

On Apple tv, Stiller and Mira.

[Scott Galloway]

Nothing is Lost.

[Host/Announcer]

It's a documentary directed by Ben about.

[Scott Galloway]

His parents, the comedic duo Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. The film explores, or the documentary explores.

[Host/Announcer]

The professional partnership, marriage, and the impact.

[Scott Galloway]

It had on Ben. It is surprisingly. Is it surprising?

[Host/Announcer]

I won't say surprising.

[Scott Galloway]

It's just very thoughtful and moving. So anyways, Stiller and Mira. Nothing is lost. Check it out. So with that, here's our conversation.

[Ben Stiller]

All right. Hi, everybody. Hi, Scott. How are you?

[Scott Galloway]

So if you're looking for the ultimate sell signal, it's when Ben Stiller is interviewing me. Literally sell everything. Cats living with dogs. The earth is rotated off its axis like this. Quite frankly, this shit just doesn't make sense.

[Ben Stiller]

You asked me, and I said yes.

[Scott Galloway]

I appreciate that.

[Ben Stiller]

I'm a fan. So I've written a little preamble that went longer than I thought. I promise we're going to talk a lot with Scott, but I just had to get this out, and I thought, this is going to be my introduction. Okay. I've been a fan of Scott's ever since I saw him going off on a rant on Bill Maher's Real Time about four or five years ago about Twitter and the Internet and the future of technology and I think crypto. And I understood about 30% of the words he was saying, but he said them so fast and so assertively and with such confidence that I thought I understood all of it. And what I did understand was so crystal clear, and his analogies were so clever that it made me think I could actually understand bitcoin. Turns out I don't. But I did realize that I love listening to you.

[Scott Galloway]

Thank you.

[Ben Stiller]

And. And then I started listening to his podcast with the great Kara Swisher, who I also became obsessed with. And their hilarious banter back and forth like an old married couple talking about super sophisticated ideas, made me feel like I could be a part of a world. I always was intimidated by tech and finance. And at one point, before I even met Scott, I was so taken by his turn of phrase, this is true. That I literally started a file in my notes app of Scott Galloway quotes, which I pulled up. This is from, like, late in 2023 or early 2024. And these are just random quotes that I had that I wrote down that I thought were writing down worth writing down. Here. Here are a few okay. Tesla is a drunken tourist with a hublot watch. No idea what that means, but I love it. You can't read the label from inside the bottle. Oh, my God. You just said mendacious algorithms. And I was like, yes. I don't even know what I mean. I guess I know what that means. You have to let your inner child develop an outer man. That's great. Three things I hate most in life are shoelaces, keys, and passwords. Do you remember saying that?

[Scott Galloway]

I do, yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

8% of elected officials don't understand technology. We'll get into the statistics in a second. Vertical content. Own the hardware, own the rails. That. I had no idea what vertical content was when you said that now, but then I heard it. It made me want to get some. I started to look him up on Twitter, on YouTube. I would watch his rants about technology and the Internet and being a male person. And I started to hear him talk about mentoring young men. And then the somewhat controversial sounding idea that young men in our society were at risk and needed older male father figures to guide them. So then I'm like, is that what he's all about? Is that, like his full time job? He's, like, into Boy Scouts and things? And, you know, I just wanted to know what. Who is Scott Galloway? What does he do actually, besides memorize statistics? The man knows more statistics at the top of his head than any human being I've ever met. Quick, just give me a statistic right now.

[Scott Galloway]

45% of men 18 to 24 have never asked a woman out in person.

[Ben Stiller]

Thank you. Okay. Then I learned that he was really wealthy and he had a plane, and I really wanted to know, like, what does this guy do? And the more I watched him, the more fascinated I was with how he could just distill down the ideas of this very complicated culture that we're living in that goes a million miles an hour and make things seem clear and simple. And also had a point of view about what it was to be a person. More specifically a man. This is when I realized, even though I don't know what he actually does, I want to be Scott Galloway.

[Scott Galloway]

Just made up.

[Ben Stiller]

He actually embodied all the traits that I wish I had. Except being bald, though. He pulls that off. But he's tall, articulate, smart, funny, has a plane and is tall. And I never in a million years would want to go on a punt as a pundit on Bill Maher or msnbc. Yet everything he says I agree with. And I'm like, yeah, that's the guy. Who I want to be. And then I realized that we actually do have a lot in common because we both went to ucla, started the same day, same time. Right. We're basically the same age. We were weaned on the same beautiful 70s TV, Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, I Dream of Jeannie, $6 million man. And that's actually all we really have in common. I realize I quit school, I went back to New York and so we never probably crossed paths. Cause I was only there for like nine months.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, there's a lesson there. Kids drop out of school.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah, I could have probably met you if I rushed the Jewish fraternity. But instead I stayed in my apartment on Hill Guard and learned to juggle and not meet girls. Now, Scott, you've written a book that I think is part autobiographical, part handbook, part manifesto and completely engrossing. I found it incredibly honest and revealing and at the end, very emotional. I think you were willing to be vulnerable and real about your feelings of ego, anger and insecurity. And it just makes this book very personal and relatable. And even though it's kind of in ways a self help book and you include a lot of charts and graphs on economics and employment, it's really written as a no holds barred, honest memoir too. And I think what you're writing about here is both personal exploration and also a sort of call to arms on how to help raise young men based on your own experience. And you know, I think in this day and time, it's always strange. It's a strange thing to talk about when you talk about mentoring young men, because I think a lot of people sort of misinterpret it. And I was watching you on the Today show the other day and you said, you know, even they said it at first like, oh, this is like, seemed controversial at first what you were talking about. But you know, really, what. Why is it so controversial? Now I'm gonna start asking you questions. Why is it so controversial to talk about mentoring young men? Well, if you think it, if, if you agree with that idea.

[Scott Galloway]

So first off, to, to set the groundwork. The statistics are pretty stark, right? If you go into a morgue and there's five people who died by suicide, four are men. We have a homeless and an opiate problem, but what we really have is a male homeless and a male opiate problem. The third time, three times as likely to be addicted, three times likely to be homeless, 12 times to be incarcerated. And if so, the problem is pretty present and to the right's credit. The right or the Far right really recognized the problem and started talking about needing to lift young men up. The problem is the remedy from the far right and the voices that filled that void. Their suggestion was that we return to the 50s where women and non whites had less opportunity. That's not the answer. And they began conflating masculinity with coarseness and cruelty. At the same time, the left hasn't been that helpful because their advice when talking about the struggles of young men is to say, well, if you're only more in touch with your feelings, you don't have problems, you are the problem. And basically their advice is act more like a woman. I don't think that's helpful either. And so there's an opportunity. The gag reflex is understandable because, let's be honest, we've had a 3,000 year head start. And since 1945 to 2000, the US registered a third of all economic prosperity globally, which is 5% of the population. So essentially, Americans registered six times the prosperity of the rest of the world. And then you take that 5% and all of that prosperity was largely crammed into the third of the population that was white, male and heterosexual. So when they hear a white dude talking about, oh, poor men, they immediately have a gag reflex like, oh shit, it's that Andrew Tate weirdness again, trying to set me back. That feels that there's an inverse correlation between women's ascent and men's descent. And the reality is the reason we won World War II and men got to come home heroes is because women, we embraced women in the factories, Hitler wanted women to stay at home, and we said, fuck that women can make P51s, let's get them in the workplace. Had women not entered the workplace, had we not had the advancement of non whites and women through the 60s, 70s and 80s, America's economy just on a very, you know, economic Detroit level would have crashed. So the left, I think, does not recognize that empathy is not a zero sum game. Civil rights didn't hurt white people, or gay marriage didn't hurt heteronormative marriage. But when you started talking about men, there was a gag reflex from the left that, wait, you're one of those guys, that your discussion of men is thinly veiled misogyny, that the answers are always going to be setting back the wonderful rights that we've acquired for non whites and for women. And so I get it that there's a bit of a gag reflex. And effectively what's happening is young men are being held responsible for our unearned privilege. We got more opportunities than we deserved. A lot of our success is not our fault. When I applied to UCLA, the admissions rate was 74% when we applied, now it's 9%. Homes are now six times as expensive as they were when we were buying homes. Incomes have gone up twice as much. Right. The cost of education has gone up sevenfold. And a young man is now only one in three men are in a relationship under the age of 32 in three women. You think, well, that's mathematically impossible. It's because women are dating older, because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. And a lot of the jobs that were on ramps for men into a middle class lifestyle have disappeared. And then you talk about the ultimate enemy, which is big tech trying to convince men and attaching a profit motive, trying to convince young people that can have a reasonable life, facsimile of a life on a screen. And so the result is a young generation of men who don't have nearly the opportunities that we had, but are being held liable and accountable for the opportunities we had. And the result is you just would never have a special interest group killing themselves at four times the rate of the control group and not weigh in with programs. And so when you go to the Democratic National Convention as I did, you see this parade of people talking about the very real challenges facing special interest groups. But there's not one mention of the special interest group that's fallen further faster than any group in America and that's young men. So I think the gag reflex is understandable. I get it. But if you really start looking at the data, you recognize that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can still address the problems facing women. A woman, once she has kids goes to 73 cents on the dollar versus men. That's a problem. Social media is unfortunately attacking the self esteem of young girls and the rates of self harm and cutting have doubled since social went on mobile. That's a problem. We can address it. But we can also recognize that young men are really struggling and that our country isn't going to continue to flourish and women aren't going to continue to ascend if men are flailing. And what I would offer up, and this is the conversation has become so much more productive than when I started talking about it five years ago and immediately got this wild pushback. You're Andrew Tate with an mba. The pushback. The dialogue has gotten so much more productive. Governor Moore, state of the state address said he's going to focus administration this year on the struggles of young men and boys and the cohort that has advanced the conversation and made it much more productive is simple. It's mothers. And what's happened is mothers. I get a lot. My fans are young men, but my supporters are women mothers. And they say something like this. I have three kids, two daughters, one son. One daughter's in PR in Chicago. One is at grad school in Penn. And my son is in the basement playing video games and vaping. Mothers. See what's going on. There is a lack of economic opportunity, a lack of romantic opportunities, and the deepest pocketed firms in the world have connected profit and revenues to sequestering young people from relationships and anything else in their life and. And then taking them online and enraging them. And unfortunately, men with a much less mature prefrontal cortex are much more susceptible to this. So I think the dialogue. The good news is the dialogue has become much more productive. This would have been out of the gates five years ago, seen as two old white dudes trying to keep women down.

[Ben Stiller]

Speak for yourself.

[Scott Galloway]

But this was. Hey, I. College graduate.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah.

[Scott Galloway]

I'm sorry things haven't worked out for you.

[Host/Announcer]

By the way.

[Scott Galloway]

He just said. He was just saying. He was just saying to me off the offline, I'm like, what are you working on? It's like, meet the parents forum. Like, it's good to see you. I'm finally making some money from that shit anyways. But look, why was it so controversial? Why was it so controversial? No, the art world. The art world needs that. The art world needs that. Ben.

[Ben Stiller]

Sorry.

[Scott Galloway]

The gag reflex is understandable is what I'm trying to say.

[Ben Stiller]

So what do you actually do? I'm totally serious.

[Scott Galloway]

What do I do?

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah, because, like, I know you're a professor, but you're also, like, super rich and you are super successful. I know because I got a ride on your plane once that was exciting.

[Scott Galloway]

Just because you're famous. I'm a total Starfleet.

[Ben Stiller]

Okay. Yeah. But seriously, though, like, what is this combination that you put together, being a professor who also is, like, very good at business? What is it that you actually spend your days doing besides memorizing statistics? Because how do you know all these statistics?

[Scott Galloway]

I did a lot of.

[Ben Stiller]

It's insane how many statistics you know?

[Scott Galloway]

I did a lot of drugs in college, day in school.

[Ben Stiller]

But, like, what's your. Like, what do I do when you're not doing a book tour?

[Scott Galloway]

How do I make money? What do I do? What do you want to know?

[Ben Stiller]

How do you spend Your time. Just, just.

[Scott Galloway]

So let me.

[Ben Stiller]

How much time do you spend thinking about this stuff versus teaching, versus running your company?

[Scott Galloway]

So kind of three buckets. I spend about a third of my time writing. I write a newsletter. I enjoy writing books. About a third of my time on media, podcasts and television. And about a third of my time, quite frankly, on investments, where I go on boards. And because I've lived in Europe the last three years, I'm on leave from nyu. So I'm not teaching. But typically one of those things, a third of the time would be teaching. But I consider myself, at the end of the day, a teacher. And my superpower, or my core competence is communicating. I make a lot of money and get more relevance than I deserve and can have an impact because I'm a good storyteller. As you can tell, I'm not a modest person, but my superpower. My superpower is that people such as you think I work harder than I do. I used to work very hard. I don't work nearly that hard anymore. And the secret to scaling and making money and having more relevance and impact than you deserve is my superpower. And I'm great at this. I'm great at attracting and retaining really talented people. Profit media people think it's amazing that you can draw these graphs and all this right. I got 25 people at propg Media, and Kathryn Dillon is here. Drew Burrows is here. New employees, Billy Bennett. I don't know if anyone else, anyone else from propg here. Mary Jean, my assistant, is here. My chief of staff. My point is, and this is, I always try to reverse stuff to a Learning greatness is in the agency of others. And I'm not saying that to be politically correct. If you want to have outsized opportunities economically or from a relevant standpoint, you do this. I mean, I can. Severance must have taken at least three or four people, right? Three, four, five people.

[Ben Stiller]

No, I did it all by myself.

[Scott Galloway]

400. I mean, my point is I'm a no.

[Ben Stiller]

You're saying delegating in a certain way or what is it. Is it choosing. This is an interesting thing to me, like choosing the people who work with you and making those choices that someone that is so good at what they do that you can then relax and go, I know this person is going to handle this for me, is that it's everything.

[Scott Galloway]

The only thing, the reason I get to live the life I lead is because I was always able to find really good people, give them a bunch of ownership. So the way I've made money is I've started and sold companies, but when I sell the company, I typically never own more than 30 or 40% of it because I'd rather have 30 or 40% of something that gets sold for a lot of money. And the only way to get people to act like owners is to make them owners. And so I've always given away more than half my company to the employees. And as soon as I find someone good, I hold onto them. I've been working. I've known Mary Jean for 25 years. I've been working with Katherine Dillon for 15 years. Drew, our tech guy, who I think is here tonight, I've been working with 12 years. So it sounds passe, but greatness is in the agency of others. So what do I do? I teach, I communicate. And I'm very fortunate to have great people around me who scale my efforts and create a lot of economic opportunity and relevance that I wouldn't have otherwise. We'll be right back after a quick break.

[Host/Announcer]

Support for the show comes from Betterment. Nobody knows what's going to happen in the markets tomorrow. That's why when it comes to saving and investing, it helps to have a long term approach and a plan you can stick to. Because if you don't, it's easy to make hasty decisions that could potentially impact performance. Betterment is a saving and investing platform with a suite of tools designed to prepare you for whatever is around the corner. Their automated investing feature helps keep you on track for your goals. Their globally diversified portfolios can smooth smooth out the bumps of investing and prepare you to take advantage of long term trends. And their tax smart tools can potentially help you save money on taxes. In short, Betterment helps you save and invest like the experts without having to be an expert yourself. And while you go about your day, Betterment's team of experts are working hard behind the scenes to make sure you have everything you need to reach your financial goals. So be invested in yourself. Be invested in your business. Be invested with betterment. Go to betterment.com to learn more that's better. B T T E R m e n t.com Investing involves risk performance, not guaranteed. Support for PropG comes from Chime. It's no secret that managing your money can be stressful. Overdraft fees, missed payments, and a constant worry about saving more can add on undue pressure when life already feels full. Chime says it can help ease that stress by giving you simple tools to take control of your finances one step at a time. With Chime, your money moves faster for you. You can open a checking account with no monthly or maintenance fees, set up direct deposit and even get paid up to two days early. Plus, Chime offers fee free overdraft coverage of up to $200. Chime says it's already spotted members more than $30 billion and with more than 47,000 fee free ATMs, that's more than the top three national banks combined. They say you'll have your money wherever you go. It's all designed to help you stress less, save more and make your money work harder, harder for you. You can work on your financial goals through Chime today. You can open an account in 2 [e-mail] propg that's chime.com prop g Chime feels like progress.

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[Scott Galloway]

Support for the.

[Host/Announcer]

Show comes from LinkedIn. We say this all the time on our show, but it bears repeating. Running a small business isn't just a full time job. It's about a dozen full time jobs.

[Scott Galloway]

That you rarely, if ever get to clock out of.

[Host/Announcer]

At least until you get to the point where you can start hiring the dream team.

[Scott Galloway]

And if you've made it that far.

[Host/Announcer]

You already know there's no time to mess around. That's where LinkedIn Jobs comes in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network and get qualified candidates if you you can manage all in one place and LinkedIn's new AI feature can even help you write job descriptions and then quickly.

[Scott Galloway]

Get it in front of the right.

[Host/Announcer]

People with deep candidate insights.

[Scott Galloway]

And if you decide you want to.

[Host/Announcer]

Go the extra mile to find the perfect candidate, LinkedIn says that promoted jobs get three times the number of qualified applicants. It's all these little things that let you find help fast without compromising on quality, which add up to you finally having extra time in the day for, I don't know, relaxing or knowing my listeners. You'll probably use that extra time to expand your empire even further. Post your job for [e-mail] Prof. That's LinkedIn.com Prof. To post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

[Ben Stiller]

Just to get back to what you were talking about Before I interrupted you about it, I was. It's interesting to me when you say these role models for young men and you talk about mothers.

[Scott Galloway]

Role models. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit?

[Ben Stiller]

Because I. In the book, you talk about your childhood a lot and your parents. And can you talk a little bit about how they influenced you growing up, having divorced parents? What role? Your mom and your dad. But really how your mom affected you?

[Scott Galloway]

So I've cried twice this week on national tv, first on the View and about two hours ago on oh, no, it's not cool. I was just on the Daily show. And I'm not exaggerating. Jordan Klepper literally moved his hands across and held my hands and looked around like, oh, fuck. I don't know how to deal with it. Look. Raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died as secretary lied in my life. And the basic takeaway is the following. And I try and do this and beat is here. We do this, I think, really well. If you say to a kid, regardless of my mom worked very hard. We didn't have a lot of money. It was just us, me and her against the world. But if somebody tells you every day in small and big ways, implicit and explicit, that they just think you're wonderful, you know, I was. By the time I was 16, I was 6ft with bad acne and 120 pounds. I wasn't like, I didn't have huge social capital, let's just put it that way. But when someone's telling you every day that you're wonderful, you can't help but start to believe it. And I think that confidence has always been resident inside of me, you know, and she. I was just really blessed when I reverse engineer all of my, you know, what's happened to me. The base of it is someone who just was just, you know, every day convinced me I was a good person or that I was worthwhile. My dad wasn't around. My dad left. My dad was a handsome man with a Scottish accent, which meant in 70s California, you could not only think with your dick, you could use it. Married and divorced four times, as far as we know. And so he left when I was 8. And he wasn't, you know, he tried. I forgave, gave him later in life because I think the primary box you have to check as a dad is to be better to your son than your father was to you. And my dad was a much better father than his dad was to him. His dad was an alcoholic and physically abusive to him. And he was pulled out of school at the age of 13, lied and joined the Royal Navy, where he was jumping into freezing water in a wetsuit at the age of 18 to come home after two years, sending all his money home because he wanted to come to America, where his mother informed him she'd spent all his money on whiskey and cigarettes. And it was angry at him when he was upset because she said, what was I supposed to do? I'm bored. So my dad didn't have a lot of great role models in his life, but he tried checked a box. I inherited the gift of storytelling. And he made the smartest decision that had the most impact on my life. And that is he and my mother decided to immigrate to America. A lot of my success is not my fault. So their decision to get on a steamship at the ages of 20 and 21 and come to America, I'm just very grateful. And in divorce, you have a tendency, I think, to sanctify one person and demonize the other. And I did that. I didn't speak to my father for years at a time because I would get very angry when I would think about he could have made my mom and my life much easier, and he didn't. And you, you know, you hold on to that resentment, right? I don't know. A lot of us have complicated relationships with our parents. But the learning here or the big unlock for me and what I would tell anybody, it's just made me much happier, is that growing up, my approach to relationships was transactional. Am I getting as much from this friendship as you are with a girlfriend? Oh, my parent. Your parents are in town, and I hung out with your dad. That means you got to hang out with my parents. And if you don't, everything was a transaction. I had a scorecard around every relationship, including my father. All right, I'm not going to be a better son than you were a father to me, full stop. I'm just not. And then the biggest unlock or one of the biggest unlocks from my life that started my father is. I said, okay, what kind of son do I want to be? What kind of friend do I want to be? What kind of partner do I want to be? What kind of investor do I want to be? What kind of business partner do I want to be? And then hold yourself to that standard and just put away the fucking scorecard because you always inflate your own contributions and diminish theirs, and you end up unhappy. You always end up. And I decided I wanted to be a loving, generous son regardless.

[Ben Stiller]

Can I Ask what point did you. In your life. Did you make that shift a few.

[Scott Galloway]

Weeks ago under the influence of mushroom chocolates? I'm reconsidering it. No, about. Quite frankly, not until I was about 40 or 45. And as soon as I decided I want to be a generous, loving son and put the bullshit away, our relationship just got much better. And I realized I forgave him for his flaws, recognizing he did try to. And a lot of his DNA, a lot of his risks have paid huge dividends for me. So there's no reason I can't be grateful for those things. I want to flip it back to you. You had a different relationship. Your parents married long term. I get the sense from the things I've read about you, it sounded like you grew up in what I would call a very stable, supportive, loving household. But that's the exterior image.

[Ben Stiller]

I mean, you know, Upper West Side, New York, 70s Parents who are a comedy team, relatively stable. You know, like, it was a different time. It was a. You know, I just, literally, I just made a documentary about my family and that whole experience. And there's so much that I can identify with. What you're saying in terms of getting to a point in your life. For me, where it took me to get to a point in my life where I could appreciate that point of view of looking at what kind of relationship do I want to have with my dad as opposed to holding on.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

Because I had a great dad. And in a way, though, the daunting. Of course, I always had stuff with him, as any son does. But the daunting thing was, for me was that he kind of cast a big shadow in terms of the way the people reacted to him, because he was a very generous guy, a very loving guy. So, like, for me, it was hard to. I was in sort of in conflict because I was like, well, yeah, but he's my dad, and you don't really know.

[Scott Galloway]

Like.

[Ben Stiller]

And he was great as a dad, too. It wasn't some secret of, like, what he was really like, but it's still challenging. But to get to that point for me was when I had kids and I wanted to kind of get into this with you a little bit. That point where you kind of matured to a point where you could say, okay, I want to have this kind of relationship while your dad is still alive.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

You know, you wrote in the book about. There's a little section where you talk about your parents, friends who you grew up with, who, you know, were very kind of these larger than life characters, sort of when you were a kid and then they got older. And you talk about how when your mom's friend was older and she. You basically, she needed someone to help take care of her, and she left you things. And you just. You wrote. There's a little mention there where you say, like, I couldn't quite be there. I couldn't be there for her the way that maybe you felt you should have at the time. And I really. It really resonated with me because I felt like. And then you said, you know, as you matured, you were able to figure that out. But looking back, you said, like, I wish I had shown up more for that. And it reminded me of a time when my parents, friends, two of their very close friends, one of them was very sick when I was in my 30s. And I couldn't deal with that of this. This guy who I remembered as a kid was like. Like, I loved him so much. And I. And he was on his deathbed, and I couldn't go to visit him. And I felt awful about it because. And at the time, I just couldn't deal with it. And I feel like you really talk so eloquently in the book about. You write so eloquently in the book about how you've gotten to this place with your kids, of really wanting to be something and have a relationship with them that maybe you couldn't have when you were younger. And I think that, to me, is like, one of the themes in the book, the idea of, you know, of growing and changing as a person. And when you get to these points in your life where you're able to appreciate those things.

[Scott Galloway]

So the backstory is, my mom's best friends and my godfather were Carson and Charlie Evans. And remember the first time you remember people, if you registered in motion for a first time with them. And I remember thinking, for the first time, these people were cool and rich. I'd never met cool, rich people before. They lived in the Hollywood Hills, and they'd have parties with live bands and cool music, and everyone seemed beautiful. And Carson was gorgeous. She was literally. And Charlie had a business. They were kind of the toast of the town. And he took an interest in me. And I remember going to his business, and it didn't look like I was going to go to college. So when I was a senior, I started spending time at his printing company in the Valley, and he was trying to get me used to the thought that I might go to work there. And they were the toast of the town anyways. Charlie lost his business, lost everything. Carson said, I'm leaving you went into the garage, killed himself. And my fast forward 20 or 30 years later, my mom is sick and I'm living with my mom. I'm doing a lot of virtue signaling right now. But it's true. I was living with my mom. And Carson calls. And by this time Carson was a raging alcoholic addicted to painkillers. And she said, I'm coming, I'm coming. I'm like, no, no, we're fine, we're fine. And then up rolls from San Diego to Las Vegas, this canary yellow Corvette with a little Scottish terrier and 12 bottles of Johnnie Walker Red. And she says, I'm staying here. I'm here to take care of my best friend. And she used to make Hot Pockets for us. And unfortunately, the image that will always stay on my mind is me walking in, getting there on a Sunday night from New York and Carson naked on her back with these enormous enhanced breasts and a maintenance worker. And it said Carlos. And they were fooling around on my mom's couch. And the weird thing is it was such a strange time in my life. I'm like, this fits, this fits. And just going back, you know, and then things dissolved. My mom passes away. And Carson, about three years later, couldn't get her meds. And I guess without opiates, basically she died without, because her system passed away. And I get a call saying, you're the only beneficiary of her will, you're the sole beneficiary. And quite frankly, I could have found time. I should have found time. I called her every once in a while, but I didn't find time to go see her. And I'm not proud of that. It's just a lack of character, right, to not find time to go spend time with a woman who took care of your mom at the end. And there were just certain things I couldn't do for my mom that Carson did do. As fucked up and drunk as she was all day, she was a huge asset to me at a critical moment. So I got all excited. I was sad. But then I got excited about potentially a windfall and, and she had a safe. And I'm like, oh my God, there's gotta be something good in there. And it was like some weird stuff, some photos and this gold belt, and I used to remember her wearing it of these big five dollar Indian head gold coins. And I think the belt was probably worth like, I don't know, 20 or $30,000. And I thought I'll just hold onto this in case shit really gets real. I need to shove something up my ass and move to New Zealand or something. And so I put in an addresser. It is never a good idea for me to try and hide anything. And then a few years later, a friend of mine got divorced and I was moving and I said, you can have all my furniture. I'm moving to a smaller apartment. And about five years later, I just like really needed some money. I'm like, oh, I'll sell the belt. And gold had spiked to like a million dollars an ounce or something. So I go on this frenzy looking for that goddamn belt. I can't find it. And then Fast forward another 24 months later. My friend Adam goes, by the way, you know, we have this great costume jewelry we found in one of the dressers you sent me. And I'm like, that thing's probably worth like 80 grand by now. And he's like, oh, my 13 year old's been wearing it to his eighth grade because he thinks it makes him look like a rapper. And I'm like, does he have it at school right now? Because if he does, could you go get it? Like, he can't lose this thing. But these gold coins are a reminder that at the end of the day, like you can be the toast of the town. You know, these people had everything. One guy sticks a rifle in his chest, you know, Charlie. And the other dies addicted to opiates. And I don't have any, like Hallmark channel lessons here other than relationships or everything. And just to recognize a lot of your success and a lot of your failure is not your fault. And you don't know what's going to happen anyways. You probably. That was probably more than you wanted.

[Ben Stiller]

Thank you and good night everybody. It's been great talking to you, Scott. Well, I mean, let's talk about. You want to talk about marriage and relationships? No, no. Okay, yeah, sure. Well, I thought was like, really? I love how much you talk about marriage in the book because you obviously are invested in your marriage and we both have long term marriages and you give interesting, I think great advice about what makes a marriage work. You had a bunch of statistics about how married people live longer and are happier or they're happier. So I'm, I'm just.

[Scott Galloway]

I know you're really selling this. His wife is here.

[Ben Stiller]

No, no, I'm happier now. I'm like, I'm in. But this actually is about the arc of happiness that you have in the book is interesting. He has the graph about the arc of happiness, which is like, across your lifetime. And it kind of goes like a big smile.

[Scott Galloway]

Smile. Yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

And I found it to be very true.

[Scott Galloway]

So this is. I'll try and bring this back to the book about men. And that is. So there's this cartoon of a woman in her 30s who doesn't have romantic love. It's like the greatest tragedy ever. You know, poor Lisa never found romantic love. And now she's in her 40s and she has cats. What a tragedy. Guess what? Lisa's just fine. All of the research shows the following. Men need and benefit from relationships much more than women. Widows are happier after their husband dies. True. This is true. Widowers are less happy. Women do live longer in relationships. They live two to four years longer. Men live four to seven years longer. If a man hasn't cohabitated with a woman or been married by the time he's 30, there's a 1 in 3 chance he'll be a substance abuser. When women don't have a romantic relationship, they oftentimes pour a lot of that energy back into their friend network and their professional lives. When men don't have a relationship, they pour a lot of that energy back into online content, nationalism, misogyny, anti immigration. They start blaming other people for their problems. The bottom line is men need, especially young men, need guardrails. And there is nothing like the guardrails of a relationship, and especially marriage.

[Ben Stiller]

And.

[Scott Galloway]

I'll flip this back to you, but when I was younger, when I was, you know, in my 20s, 30s, and even into my 40s, everything was about more. I wanted more money. No matter how much money, I want more money. Relevance. I want more relevance. No matter how fabulous my experiences are. The people I was hanging out. Could I hang out with more interesting people? Well, I'm in Saint Barts for New Year's. What about F1 for New? I just. More. I want fucking more. Just never quite sated. And the only time I have ever felt sated is when I'm with my boys and my partner, Beata, and we look at each other and we know we've done something right. And it's a hassle and it's the end of the night and the kids instinctively throw their legs over ours and we're all on the couch or. I know they're safe. I know they're protected. I know they're loved. I know they love me immensely. It's the only time I've ever had a moment where I thought, okay, I get it. I could go now. I Don't want to go now, but I get it, this is it, this is enough. Only time in my life where I've ever felt sated and what I would say to I didn't want to get married, I didn't want to have kids, I just didn't. I thought, you know, being single and alone in New York is an empty and meaningless experience. But as far as empty and meaningless experiences go is pretty damn good. And then I found someone who wanted to have kids and said, I'm not interested in a long term relationship with kids. I'm like, fine, we'll have kids. And now hands down, and all the research shows this, the happiest people are generally part of a family. And I think the part of masculinity is the greatest reward I feel is making them feel like they're noticed and they're loved. Being a provider for them, making them hopefully that they feel protected. But it is the most unexpected means of finding purpose and meaning in my life and the most wonderful thing. It's not even making money that's great. It's making it with people, it's making it with a team. When I met my wife, I had no money, she had no money. We built a great life together. We had no kids. We have these two boys who get less awful every day. But doing that with someone else when you don't. When my mom passed away, one of the hardest things about that was every time something good happened to me, I would call my mom. I got my first bonus from Morgan Stanley. Call my mom. And you know, your mom can just wax on and she just loves hearing about great things. I met a woman at a coffee line and I got her number. Well, good for you. That's so wonderful. You're so handsome. It's no surprise, you know, and for a good five, 10 years, every time something good happened to me, it was as if it didn't happen. Because without calling my mom, it wasn't cemented, it was like it just didn't happen. And so now with a wife and kids, it's like good things happen again. Like we are building something together. And hands down, the most rewarding thing in my life and if I could have any sort of public policy. In sum, we need to put more money into the pockets of young people such that they can afford to mate and build loving, secure families. 60% of 30 year olds used to have at least one child 40 years ago. Now it's 27%. And it's not some cool anti kid thing. Oh, they're worried about the climate, they can't afford to. And also when you have a lot of young men who aren't economically viable, we don't like to have an honest conversation about mating. Men mate socioeconomically, horizontally and down. Women horizontally and up. Beyonce could work at McDonald's and marry Jay Z. The opposite is not true. 75%. It's the truth folks. 75% of women say economic viability is key to a mate. Only 25% of men. So when men are not doing well economically, we have an absence of mating. We have an absence of what is the opportunity to do the most rewarding thing in the world. And that is build a family where you get to that point of building something with someone else. And without those opportunities, you know, it's tough on women, but it is absolutely disastrous for men because without the guard, guard posts or the guideposts of a relationship, a man really comes off the tracks. So the question is, how do we figure out a way to lift up all young people which I think will disproportionately benefit men right now because they're kind of falling off of the tracks. And that is they don't have the money, the confidence or the skills to find a partner. And when I think about the most, it just makes me very upset and rattled to think that the most rewarding thing in my life is effectively off limits. Marriage is a new lux item. 4/5 of people in the top quintile of income earning households get married. Only one in five men in the lowest quintile ever have an opportunity to mate. And unfortunately that's more the average or more typical in history. Only 80% of women have reproduced in our species on the planet, only 40% of men. Because the natural state of kind of barbarism and a society just left where it doesn't redistribute money back to the middle class. The natural order is Porsche polygamy, where the few men who are anointed money or so talented or lucky, they get a lot of money, they have multiple mates and the majority of the lower 90 of men don't have any. And a society collapses on itself because those men get angry. And the most dangerous person in the world is a lonely, broke young man. If you look at the most unstable, violent societies in the world, they have a disproportionate number of young men without a lack, who have a lack of economic and a lack of romantic opportunities. And I think right now the reason why we have elected an insurrectionist president is because young Men are failing. And young people pivoted hardest from blue to red, 20 to 24. And the second group that pivoted hardest was 45 to 64 year old women. And my thesis is that's their mothers. Because if your son isn't doing well, you don't give a shit about territorial sovereignty in Ukraine or transgender rights. You just know your kid, your son, isn't doing well. So I think we have all sorts of reasons to make a huge investment in younger people. Not just men, all younger people. Right? The $40 billion a year tax credit for children gets stripped out of the infrastructure bill. The $120 billion cost of living adjustment for Social Security flies right through Congress. Old people have figured out a way to vote themselves more money. Our elected representatives are a cross between the golden girls and the land of the dead. And they keep transferring more money from young people to old people. A person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy than they were than a person that age 40 years ago. People our age are 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. What does that mean? It means young people are struggling. They're more anxious, they're more obese. And it is especially hard on young men because we don't like to talk about this, but when a young man has fewer opportunities to be a provider, he is harshly judged in society. Women are disproportionately and unfairly evaluated on their aesthetics. Men are unfairly and disproportionately evaluated on their economic viability. And we are producing way too many economically unviable men. It is bad for household formation. It robs young men of the greatest opportunity for happiness. To build something with someone else. And it makes a nation unstable and violent. We'll be right back.

[Host/Announcer]

Support for our show comes from Adobe Express. Here's the thing. Most companies don't fail because their product stinks. They fail because the brand gets sloppy. Cropped logos, mismatched colors, the wrong font in a sales deck, it's death by a thousand cuts. And the second your brand looks amateur, you start bleeding trust. Trust equals money. And you all know we hate losing money. If your business is scaling content across social, print, digital and more, your teams need Adobe Express brand kits and lock templates make following design guidelines easy for everyone. Hr, sales, marketing. Whoever has content needs anyone in the company, regardless of design chops can remix and reuse pre approved templates to create content with a consistent look and feel. And with custom home. All templates are right where your team needs them. Front and center for quick and easy reuse. Bottom line Scaling your brand shouldn't mean sacrificing quality. With Adobe Express, your business can put its best foot forward no matter where your customers find you. Adobe Express the quick and easy app to create on brand content. Learn [e-mail] Go express support for PRPG comes from Pipedrive the sales process isn't exactly an easy process. Even the most experienced entrepreneurs can have trouble keeping up with everything, and it's even harder when you have a bunch of scattered information spread across tools and systems with no clear view of what's happening. Pipedrive brings your entire sales processes into one simple centralized space, giving you a crystal clear, complete view of sales processes and customer information so you can stay in control and close more deals faster. Pipedrive knows every team works a little differently, which is why they let you fully tailor your CRM to match your unique sales process and strategy all within one platform. In pipedrive's visual sales pipeline, you can see every deal, track its stage, and know exactly what needs to happen next. It's a powerful, simple CRM built by salespeople for salespeople. Join the over 100,000 companies over already using Pipedrive right now. When you visit pipedrive.com profg you'll get a 30 day free trial. No credit card or payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com profg to get started. That's pipedrive.com profg and you can be up and running in minutes. Support for the show comes from Crucible Moments, a podcast from Sequoia Capital. We've all had pivotal decision points in.

[Scott Galloway]

Our lives that, whether we know it.

[Host/Announcer]

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[Ben Stiller]

Talking about masculinity in a marriage. This is just something I was thinking about, like, how important is it for men in a marriage, do you think, to maintain like that. That thing of feeling like a masculine man? Because that's, you know. Do you know what I mean? Well, I mean, just in terms of, like, you talk about masculinity in young men, but, like, as guys get to our age, you know, I feel like guys our age start to try to grasp onto holding on to something as you start to get older.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, look, I don't. I don't think of it. The honest answer is I don't know. I haven't parsed the role masculinity plays in a. In a.

[Ben Stiller]

What do you think about in your own marriage?

[Scott Galloway]

Okay, so I've given a couple best man toasts, and I'll give you the exact toast I give for a successful marriage. This is my feeling 1. Put away the scorecard. We talked about this. Just decide the kind of husband you want to be and always try and be in the plus column, by the way, I think that is the litmus test when you become a man. I think there are a lot of males that grow really old and never become men. And I think the ultimate litmus test is the following. It's the term surplus value. You create more. Every one of US is absorbing 20, 30, $60,000 a year in tax, other people's tax revenue. If you call 91 1, someone shows up, if you need to go to the hospital, they'll take care of you. There are brave men and women handling very expensive equipment to try and defend our shores from people who would like to kill us. All right, so we have a debt. So do you create more economic value in jobs than you absorb? Do you notice more people's lives then notice yours at some point? Do more people complain to you than you complain? It's okay. You want it. The moment a man. And some men never get there to a point where they are adding more economic value, adding more love, adding more concern, absorbing more complaints, making more people feel good about themselves and maybe made you feel good. That's the whole fucking shooting match is surplus value. So anyways, keep. Put the scorecard away. My first suggestion in these toasts. The second is the following. Always express. Always express physical desire, sex and affection. It's what says, I choose you. I think women want to be wanted. Sorry, that's my experience. And I think having a really Robust, always wanting to express your desire and express affection. I think that says to your partner, our relationship is singular. I think it's hugely important. And finally, and maybe most importantly, never, ever let a woman be cold or hungry.

[Ben Stiller]

Cool. I was afraid I wasn't going to have enough questions, but, man, it's great to listen to you talk. I got one more thing I want to talk about before there are questions from the audience, and I really want to read a bunch of them because I.

[Scott Galloway]

Well, first off, what do you think makes a successful marriage? Oh.

[Ben Stiller]

I think you have to want it and you have to appreciate what you have. And for me, it. That's where I got to. It took me a little bit to get there. And really, I think that's the thing in marriages that go on a long time is that you get used to each other and you take for granted what you have. So to me, it's like always, every day, not taking it for granted. I had that ability because I wasn't together the whole time we separation came back together.

[Scott Galloway]

And what was the moment where you realized, this is worth investing and re upping.

[Ben Stiller]

What was it when I didn't have it? I mean, when I had time to really sit with, you know, being on my own and think about it and.

[Scott Galloway]

Was it loneliness or not sharing your life with someone or not being in a family unit?

[Ben Stiller]

It was all of those things and having the space, I guess. I don't know. I don't know. Like, I was just, like, I realized, oh, I miss. I miss this. And, and yeah, and then I felt very fortunate that I actually was able to, you know, come back and that we were able to come back. But, like, the great thing is, is like every single day. That's never a question for, you know, now at this point, but I'm here to interview you, Scott. No, I wanted to. In what you were saying, before we go to the questions, I wanted to talk about, pick up on what you're saying about the surplus value thing. And in the book, you talk about how much you love your family, which I found really moving. And I've got a friend who's an author, George Saunders, great author, who's written in his short stories and novels about the idea of loving bigger and outside of your own family unit. This idea of like, you know, having that willingness to sacrifice outside of those in your immediate blood relations. And you wrote. I just wanted to read this before because I thought it was really moving. And it's what you write about your relationship and how you changed in terms of appreciating that. When you say, you say I lost my self absorption for a moment and thought about the millions, maybe billions of people in a constant state of despair over the well being of their children. And this is talking about the family unit which we all feel that connection with our children but facing everyday things they can't control that aren't their fault or they're doing that threaten their kids well being, except it feels like it's your fault. Our only real job here is to ensure our kids survive and prosper. Any threat to this survival and hopeful prosperity is the ultimate failure. It cuts to tissue and emotions you didn't know existed. So that idea of what you feel for your own kids, how important do you think the idea of empathy is for those outside your immediate circle is in terms of how we go forward in the world? I think about it in terms of having done work with refugees and seeing I think the horrible attitude that our government has towards people who are vulnerable and how important it is to have that empathy. Is that something you think about?

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, I couch it in the. I talk about the three legs of the stool of masculinity. Be a provider. I think it's important that men at least attempt from a very early age to be economically viable. But the whole shooting match, the whole reason why you make money, establish strength, establish skills, is you move to the second leg of the stool and that is protection. And what really worries me about our current leadership so just naturally young men are going to look to the most powerful person in the world and the richest person in the world for leadership as an example around masculinity. They're just going to model those people whether we want them to or not. Because president's the most powerful person in the world and the richest man in the world has won this game called capitalism. And what I just find so disappointing and so incredibly damaging and I think it's going to haunt our young men for decades and it'll take a ton of time to reprogram them, is that these individuals are not taking their prosperity and moving to protection. If you cut aid, if you're the richest man in the world and you're cutting aid to HIV positive mothers, that should be a reputational extinction event. That is just that the whole point I think of masculinity is take care of yourself, get really fucking strong. A man under the age of 30 has incredible bone structure, more double twitch muscle and this amazing substance called testosterone. 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 kill and eat everybody or outrun them. And when you get physically and emotionally and mentally strong, right, you're going to feel better about yourself. You're going to be less prone to mental illness. You're going to be more attractive to potential mates who breaks up fights at bars, really strong, confident people who starts fights at bars, people who don't feel very good about themselves. So you protect yourself, you get strong, you protect your family, then you start protecting your community. And the ultimate expression of masculinity, full stop, is you plant trees the shade of which you'll never sit under, right? Well, you're talking about your work with refugees. That's the whole shooting match. And I don't say that to be virtuous. I say that it took me forever to get there. I was so focused on myself and taking care of myself and making money. And I'm not naturally, I'm not naturally a kind or philanthropic person and I'm embarrassed to say that, but it's true. These were things I had to learn and I had to appreciate. But what you realize is that if you can get to that outer ring of protecting people, you'll never meet Jesus Christ that makes you feel like a man. And I'm not suggesting that that's not reward that women can't get. I think they actually have those nurturing instincts come more easily. But that's the whole point of leaning into your manhood. Be really fucking strong, be really talented, make a shit ton of money, get influence, be smart, be generous, be kind, and then start if you can, protecting others. That's the, that's the basis of masculinity. If you think about the most masculine jobs, military, fireman, cop, at the end of the day they protect. And I think that a lot of men, the men we're supposed to look up to, have totally missed the boat on protection. Why on earth would you make that much money if you didn't use it to protect people? It makes absolutely no goddamn sense to me. And these are the worst role models for young men. They conflate masculinity with coarseness and cruelty. That couldn't be more any anti masculine being sued by two women concurrently for sole custody of that child because you've never seen that child, Elon Musk. That couldn't be any more anti masculine punching down. And our nation quite frankly, is not very nurturing or masculine right now. 20% of people Americans are under the age of 18, but 40% of kids under the age of 18 are on food stamps. That means we have decided we are no longer in the business of protecting the most vulnerable. Our nation is losing its roots of protection and masculinity. I think women heal. I think the most successful families and the most successful alliance in history. And I'm going to work on hopefully flipping Congress. And I want to get involved in politics in terms of helping someone retake the White House, but restoring that. That is so pandering to this audience. But. But I think the theme for the next 10 years in America has to be restoration of alliances, alliances with our great trading partners, alliances between moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats who see themselves as Americans before their parties first. But also, I think we need to restore the greatest alliance in history, and that's the alliance between men and women. And what each gender has done a great job of is trying to convince themselves that it's the other gender's fault. I know when a young man is, like, unsavable, he starts blaming immigrants for his economic problems and he starts blaming women for his romantic problems. It's like, there's nothing I can do. Boss, you've lost the script. And at the same time, just to be an equal opportunity criticizer here, a lot of young women have absolutely no empathy for young men. There's this movement on TikTok where women are saying they won't date. They've stopped dating because they're worried about being unalived. I don't know if any of you have seen these things have gone viral, meaning they're worried they'll be murdered by this violent pathological group called young men. And here's the data. If a man goes on a date, he's 16 times more likely to go home and hurt himself than hurt his date. You're four times more likely to get hurt on the car ride over or choked during dinner than to be hurt by a man. Men are dangerous. Young men are not doing well and they're dangerous, but they're dangerous towards themselves. And just saying to young men, you don't have problems. You are the problem. We need empathy from women. Women have to lead this dialogue, especially mothers. And young men need to recognize we need to celebrate the progress of our sisters and mothers. But for God's sakes, I have seven and a half billion points of evidence that the greatest alliance in history is the alliance between men and women. The happiest households in the world bring a combination of masculine and feminine energy. And by the way, two women can bring masculine and feminine energy. I'm drawn. My close friends are generally more feminine. I like nurturing, caring men. I'm more drawn towards feminine attributes than men. None of these qualities are sequestered to people born as a certain gender. But young men have an easier time leaning into more masculine attributes, and we need to recast them as something wonderful. There's no such thing as toxic masculinity. There's cruelty, there's abuse, there's violence. Those couldn't be more non masculine. But for God's sakes, let's lift each other up this shit. Men and women together, bringing a mix of that incredible femininity and masculinity. That's the whole fucking shooting match. That's the most rewarding thing ever. So let's decide we're allies again. Instead of finding reasons why it's the other gender's fault, let's get out there.

[Ben Stiller]

All right, we're getting close to the end, so I'm gonna just ask a couple of these questions.

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, thank God.

[Ben Stiller]

Oh, this was your idea. Thank God this is not about Stiller Soda.

[Scott Galloway]

It's so good to see you finally making some money.

[Ben Stiller]

Okay.

[Scott Galloway]

Stiller soda. Ben doesn't drink. That's why we'll never be close.

[Ben Stiller]

Thank you.

[Scott Galloway]

Okay, but.

[Ben Stiller]

So he started chocolate mushrooms.

[Scott Galloway]

He started a soda line. What's mine?

[Ben Stiller]

I asked for your input on branding because you do branding.

[Scott Galloway]

I just wanted access to my social. It's like when candidates call me for advice. They just want my money. Cheers, brother.

[Ben Stiller]

Cheers, man. Cheers. Good to see you.

[Scott Galloway]

Good to see you.

[Ben Stiller]

Thank you. Okay, here's a couple of questions. And going off of what you just talked about, which was pretty profound, how big a role. How big of a role does repressed emotion play in this young men, all men issue? And is therapy helpful?

[Scott Galloway]

I don't feel really qualified to comment on that. I'll just say from a personal standpoint that I'm not an adolescent psychiatrist. I just don't have any domain expertise here. And people are constantly fond of reminding me on Twitter that I have no domain expertise in this area. What I will say is the following. This is just personal. From the age of 29 to 44, I didn't cry. Do you cry a lot?

[Ben Stiller]

I do more now.

[Scott Galloway]

Now? Yeah. Meet the parents 4. We really needed that. Anyways, from the age of 29 to.

[Ben Stiller]

44, you're not getting invited to the premiere.

[Scott Galloway]

From the age of 29 to 44, didn't cry once. Didn't cry when my mother died. Didn't when my company went chapter 11 you know, just didn't, didn't cry when I got divorced. Just didn't. Just lost. I forgot how. Literally forgot how. And then I started again. And the advice I would give to any man is that life goes, especially as you get older, life starts falling off a cliff. Years become quarters, quarters become months, months become. And I'm an atheist. I think at some point I'll look into my kids eyes and know our relationship is coming to an end. But it kind of liberates me to be a little bit more fearless with my emotions and what I started doing. And it's been just a gift, is when something moves me, I weep up and I cry. And unfortunately it's gone a little bit overboard. I cried on the View and the Daily Show. But my suggestion or advice to men is don't fall into some sort of fucked up sense of masculinity. That there's a good reason why men don't want to cry or exhibit weakness. Because for about 99% of our time on this planet, if you exhibited weakness to another man, there's a decent chance he might sense that weakness, kill you, have sex with your wife, and then eat your children. So men have been taught instinctively not to in any way exhibit weakness. Vulnerability is not something that's hardwired into our DNA. But if you see something that inspires you, in my opinion, my advice would be to stop and really bask in it and try and understand why this thing inspires you. This piece of art, this piece of design, something you've read. Read it again and really try and understand and inform your emotions. Why does this move you? Try and let yourself lean into crying. When you find something funny, do your best to laugh out loud. Because you need to slow life down. You need to inform yourself. And I find that I'm much less prone to real anxiety and real anger, both of which I suffer from. If I'm more in touch and registering emotions, I just think it's healthy, it informs your life, it slows life down. In terms of at what point that type of repression impacts a kid psychologically, the honest answer is I don't. I don't feel like I have the domain expertise. Why are you crying more, Ben?

[Ben Stiller]

Because I. I don't know. I mean, I think, I mean also like, you know, when you're an actor too, like you're sensitive sometimes, you know, and it's like kind of like that stuff is actually stuff that you try to somehow be in touch with. But like in life for me, I think I just value Everything that I have, I'm more self aware. And maybe, I don't know, maybe it's because life, you know, things I've gone through in life, losing my parents, appreciating that them as people, watching my kids grow up, seeing how they become people. Cats in the cradle is true, you know, on a certain level, it's life happening to you. So I feel like it's a good thing too. And I think what you're talking about also is not just you're talking about, like stopping and experiencing the moment of what's happening in terms of something that moves you. Like actually because we're just all going a million miles an hour with social media and TV and life and everything. If you're saying, like, stop and actually experience the moment and think about what you're feeling and feel it and just be in the moment. And that, I think, is a very important thing too.

[Scott Galloway]

We're sentient beings. The fear or the danger is you rip through life, maybe make some money, maybe had a couple kids. But did you ever really feel anything, like at the end of your life, like, did your life really happen? So my sense is, if you're committed to squeezing as much juice out of this lime called life as possible, if you aren't regularly practicing feeling shit, your life will go like that. And at the end of your life, you're going to regret not having slowed it down and being what it is to be human. Sentient means feeling. I'm not good at it. I'm getting better at it. But I think it's great advice for all men. Live your life, feel shit. Lean into it.

[Ben Stiller]

Do you feel like when you watch something or listen to music or watch a movie or something, it unlocks something for you? Or do you find it just happening in real life more?

[Scott Galloway]

Oh, I get a lot of it from Martin. I can't watch Modern Family without tearing up.

[Ben Stiller]

Okay. I do think Meet the Parents 4.

[Scott Galloway]

Might really bring it out. Okay.

[Ben Stiller]

All right, I'm gonna do one last question and I agree to see this shit. What is your perspective on the role of a man that is a father of a girl? How do you have that? How do you have that Some impact without a male child to show the way? Can you here. You couldn't quite.

[Scott Galloway]

A doctor wrote this, maybe.

[Ben Stiller]

Or the person.

[Scott Galloway]

I think. And my wife's gonna kill me when I say this. We have two boys and she wanted a third and I said no. I was so freaked out about. I mean, the reality is you have your world of work, you have your world of friends, you have your world of kids. Something comes off the tracks with one of your kids and your whole world, that's it, the whole world just shrinks to that kid. And like most people, we knew people who had had issues with their kids, I mean, not huge issues, whatever, pick your acronym. And my attitude was, we're good. We know our two kids are either going to be good or great. Let's cash out at the table. We're pushing our luck, our odds. And also, to be blunt, I wasn't making a lot of money and the most stressed I've ever felt. When Beata gave birth to our first child, it was right during the teeth of the great financial recession and I was basically broke. I basically lost everything. I've been rich three times, which means I've lost it all twice. And the great financial recession came along and just wiped me out. And the first thing I felt when Alec had the poor judgment to come marching out of Bayada at the wrong time, it was not Bright lights. And Beyetta will confirm this, it's not Bright lights and angels singing. I was. The first thing I felt was kind of like shame and anxiety because the paternal instinct kicked in. And I'm like, I have had. I've made so much fucking money and I've just blown it. I was so narcissistic and egotistical thinking I should double down on my own companies. I was that idiot that borrowed stock against his company to buy more stock and, you know, never diversified in it to win it. I'd read these articles about, you know, Bill Gates putting all of his money into his company and Mark Zuckerberg turning down a billion dollar, you know, just. And I bought so into that kind of macho. And then we had a kid at exactly the wrong time for me. And so quite frankly, I was just worried I wasn't gonna have the economic security to handle three kids, especially in New York. So, yeah, I don't want to pretend where I was headed with this. One of my biggest regrets is not having a third and not having a girl because. And now it's for selfish reasons because girls take care of their dads. But I don't know if I have any specific advice on parenting girls versus boys. You have a daughter, so.

[Ben Stiller]

Yeah, no, wrong person.

[Scott Galloway]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Stiller]

All right, listen, this has been great. I seriously, you are incredible. Scott Galloway is incredible. What a resource. What an amazingly. To talk for another two hours here. And yeah, thanks everybody for coming and buy the book. It's really, really good. And I hope you do what you said and you'll get more involved in this next election cycle. All right, thank you.

[Scott Galloway]

Thank you Ben. Thank you.

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[Ben Stiller]

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