We need to get bossier.
We need to get tougher.
We got to face adversity.
Don't shy away from any of that because it just makes you stronger.
If you look at the singular point of failure in a young man's life, it's when he loses a male role model.
The thinking about suicide is different in boys and girls, and suicide is especially a plague that is destroying boys.
Men right now have 50 less friends than we did 20 years ago.
When you build community, and especially of men, I think that's a really powerful thing.
Where are the mentors?
Where are the healthy masculine men who are helping to guide the next generation?
Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast.
What does it mean to model healthy masculinity?
And how do we model a healthy masculinity for the next generation of young men.
Today we're gonna talk about strength, we're gonna talk about power, but not the physical kind, the mental and emotional kind.
It's a conversation about masculinity, both toxic and healthy.
This conversation is pure gold and it's coming right up, but first.
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Beneath countless problems in our society lies a sleeping giant, and that is the crisis of masculinity.
To shed light on this critical issue and offer a fresh perspective.
We welcome Scott Galloway to the podcast.
Scott is a professor.
He's an entrepreneur and an influential voice on technology and modern culture.
And he really brought his trademark insight and wit to this discussion about the challenges facing young men today.
If you have your shit together as a young man and you have the discipline to get the right certification.
The graduates in my class at Stern I teach the MBA.
Their average salary is 212000.
They go on a dating app, they're going to get a ton of attention.
Their opportunities have never been more exceptional their vacations, their ability to take care of their parents at a young age, their economic opportunity, their chance to make millions is within reach by the time of 30.
Those opportunities did not exist for our parents.
So it's become sort of a winner take most environment.
So it's great to be in the top 10, but I can prove to all of us that 90 of our sons are not in the top 10.
And when you think about it, goes back to me like what is America supposed to be And the reason I got involved here I was in that bottom 90.
I was probably in that bottom 50.
Is America about identifying the remarkable or identifying the children of rich people and turning them into billionaires?
Is that what America is supposed to do?
My view is, America is about identifying or giving everyone in the bottom 90 a shot to be in the top 10.
That's how it was when I grew up.
I was unremarkable.
I think that when I look at you, I see somebody, I mean, you're clearly passionate about this.
This is a very... mission-based, service-oriented kind of endeavor that you found yourself in.
And you're somebody who's had many successes in different areas of life.
You have economic independence.
You could choose to be doing lots of different things.
And you've chosen, through all of the ways that you show up publicly in Prof G Media and the podcasting et cetera, to really focus your advocacy around this.
It strikes me as very earnest and heartfelt.
Like this really is a mission that you're passionate about.
I don't know that much about you, Rich, but I was that guy, you know?
I didn't have a lot of money, no romantic prospects, but America loved me, right?
Free education, remarkable institution, great job, a chance to get economically viable, a chance to take care of my mother.
I would have been one of those guys today.
Angry, upset.
So I relate.
Yeah.
Your mother was an integral figure in all of this.
Yeah, look the reason I'm here with you.
Now it's easy to credit your grit and your character for your success and blame the market for your failures.
I get to come here and I get to bomb out of here and go to the Beverly Hills Hotel and do whatever the fuck I want and have an incredible life because of one the generosity and vision of California taxpayers and the Regents University of California, who said our job is to give unremarkable kids remarkable opportunity, being born at the right place at the right time and the unconditional love of my mother right.
Single immigrant mother lived and died.
A secretary, But you know, every day told me that I was wonderful.
And I think that stuck with me.
But yeah, like, I don't know what your relationship was like with your parents.
But if you think about investing, there's some basics, right?
You invest a little bit of money, compound interest is just this remarkable thing.
Most people feel that the singular relationship in their life.
If they're asked to identify the singular relationship in their life, they usually, more often than not, number one is their mother.
And it's because she made those tiny little investments in you every day. waking you up with a soft voice, worried about you, could hear you get up when you were a kid and come in and comfort you every day, just dozens of little investments.
And your mom wakes up.
And you wake up when you're older, regardless of whether you don't get along.
Maybe you don't even like each other, but it's a singular relationship.
And I think a lot about the relationship, how powerful it was for me and what was really wonderful about my mom she had the foresight to get a lot of men involved in my life.
Because if you look at the singular point of failure in a young man's life, it's when he loses a male role model.
And it's interesting because we have the second most single parent homes in the world behind Sweden.
And when we say single parent, 92% of the time, that means it's a single mother.
And what's interesting is the data shows that the daughters of single mothers have the same outcomes same college attendance, same income, same rates of self-harm.
Boys, once they lose a male role model, immediately become dramatically more likely to be incarcerated, dramatically less likely to graduate from high school, dramatically more likely to suffer from addiction.
What it ends up is that, while boys are physically stronger, they're emotionally and mentally much weaker.
Just because you say it's really important that a boy have a man involved in his life, that's in no way diminishing the superheroes that are single mothers.
But I think we have to acknowledge that it is really important that men be involved.
And that's the problem with schools now that don't have enough men, because there's an entire generation of young men that go through their lives until they're 25 with absolutely no men involved.
And if you have kids, you see that occasionally dad just plays a bigger role, his physical size, his voice, whatever it might be.
And I'm thinking a lot about masculinity.
I think the ultimate expression of masculinity is I've got my shit sewed together, I can take care of myself.
I can take care of my media family.
I can take care of my kids, the people I work with.
I pay good taxes.
But the ultimate expression of masculinity is getting involved in the life of a boy that isn't yours.
And unfortunately, Michael Jackson and Catholic Church have fucked it up for all of us and created this weird notion that if you're a guy your age and you're super successful, you might have love to give and you might see a 15-year-old boy that could use your help and it feels unnatural to get involved in his life.
And that's not true.
Yeah, the culture of mentorship, has waned to say the least.
And you know, I think it's fair to say that America was built on the idea of apprenticeship and mentorship, but that culture seems to have evaporated.
Like, where are the mentors?
Where are the sage councils and the, you know healthy, masculine men who are helping to guide the next generation?
Well, I got it from coaches, but a lot of kids aren't going to church though.
They used to get it from the Reverend or the rabbi. community-oriented programs have gone away.
What are the rates of young men in sports?
Is it the way that it was when we were kids?
Are less young men participating in sports?
And where are the other healthy outlets for the young men in need of mentorship?
So sports is like most things.
There's still the same level of participation, but unfortunately it's been crowded towards the wealthy.
Engaging in a sport has become not a luxury item, but pretty close.
Even if you look at the college athletes outside of basketball and football, it's disproportionately rich kids.
Because if your kid wants to play lacrosse, to send them to lacrosse camps or her to lacrosse camps and get them the right training and the right equipment, it's just expensive.
But I think, you know, sports and after school programs are being cut.
But going to solutions, I think there's a ton of solutions.
So starting boys a year late in elementary school, they're just less mature now.
The worst thing that happened to me, or almost happened to me, is my parents wanted me to skip a grade because it was back in the space race.
And if you were offered the opportunity to skip a grade, that meant you were going to work for NASA.
I showed up at UCLA at the age of 17 and I was way too immature to handle the alcohol and the pressure of it all.
Starting a year later, trying to create greater incentives to get more men in primary and secondary, high school and elementary school more vocational programming.
There's just A ton of jobs in the real economy for specialty construction, specialty nursing.
Anyone who's renovating a house knows that a roofer makes really good money, much less a plumber.
And stop shaming those jobs.
Start elevating them.
I think we have to level up young people in general.
There's been an enormous transfer of wealth from young people to old people.
Specifically, people under the age of 40 used to control 19% of the GDP in terms of their wealth.
It's been cut to 9%.
The average 70-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago.
The average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy.
And that affects women and men, but it's disproportionately affecting men, because men are fairly or unfairly evaluated from a mating perspective based on their economic viability.
The best example of, I think, that depicts this.
The greatest innovation in history wasn't the iPhone or a semiconductor.
It was the American middle class.
Fought wars, pushed back on fascism, paid an enormous amount of taxes, was innovative, came up with DARPA, came up with vaccines, came up with GPS.
And where it all started was 7 million men returned from World War II and they demonstrated excellence in uniform.
And the government said we're gonna make a massive investment in them in terms of the GI Bill and the Highway Construction Bill.
We're gonna give them jobs, we're gonna give them economic viability.
And quite frankly, they were just very attractive.
And they had an easier time finding mating, finding a house, two-car garage, and it set off the baby boom.
And it set off a generation of confident, loving kids who were comfortable and said all right, it's time for civil rights.
It's time to bring women into the workforce.
It's time for women's rights.
And it just set off this kind of post-World War II liberal, progressive society, the likes of which we've never seen, that type of prosperity before.
But the middle class is an accident.
It doesn't self-sustain.
The incumbents and people on the far right will claim that the middle class is a self-repairing organism.
It's not.
It's an anomaly.
Middle classes have never existed in society before.
We figured it out.
But unless you have economically and emotionally viable men, you can't have a middle class.
So the question is how do we level up young men?
And I don't think you can just have affirmative action for men.
I think that's too political.
But I do think we have to put more money into the pockets of young people who have seen a transfer of wealth.
And I'll touch a third rail here.
Every year we transfer one and a half trillion dollars.
The greatest economic transfer in history happens every year from young people to the wealthiest generation in history senior citizens and it's called social security.
And it just is insane that this group that is consistently seeing their wealth and, on an inflation adjusted basis, their livelihood go down and down and down, transfer money to the wealthiest population in the world.
Up next is me and John Price, who is a depth psychologist, and basically this mystic, this modern myth maker.
So yeah, we're going deep today.
Let's do it.
We're in an era in which, you know, community is fractured, community centers are no longer.
We're lacking in those spaces and gathering places that used to be part and parcel of every village and every town and every city, and those have sort of vanished.
The path is being dictated by the mores of Western capitalist society, which says your value and your entitlement to be loved and accepted is indelibly tied to your ability to produce achieve, distinguish yourself.
And that's a poisonous, noxious message where you feel like your self-worth is only in so far as you're able to, kind of like, acquit yourself in this material world.
Like there's a violence to that.
And the teachers who can disabuse you of that and set you on a different course are few and far between.
You're not gonna find them in the public schools and you're not gonna find them in the community centers that no longer exist.
And occasionally, that coach will come along or that special one person that makes a difference.
But it seems to me that there's less and less of that.
And that's a greater challenge.
My sense is that this is noxious for the culture and for all people, but I think it has an outsized impact on men, and particularly young men.
And when you share the story of the crying boxer.
That's sort of the encapsulation of this whole dilemma that so many men are facing right now, who are more or less because they don't have a teacher, they don't have a path and they don't have a community.
A thought about Two things.
I was thinking in that when I worked in that inpatient residential center.
Sorry to every therapist out there in the world, but the thing that people remember the most is not the therapist.
It's not some interpretation the therapist made and it's not some theoretical orientation that created some skills-based approach, that they learned how to do X, Y or Z When people are asked about what mattered the most.
It is an event like the lady behind the counter at the cafeteria saved the favorite dessert of the person.
It's these very loving, very relational, very kind, connected moments.
And the other thing I wanted to address is, as you're talking about men and certainly the development of young men.
Richard always brings up this one image of these elephants that were in India or somewhere, that were just ransacking the town running, rushing people, stepping on cars, doing things that elephants tend not to do.
And they bring in this behaviorist, this elephant expert, and says, what's happening here?
And they're like, oh, I get it.
They're three adolescent male elephants that the father and grandfather generations have been poached.
And so they are without initiation.
So they said, not funny, but I love the solution.
They bring in two granddaddy elephants.
And if any of you know Richard Rohr, I love him when he does this because he says these elephants just kind of move their ears around.
And the adolescent young ones are like, well, what is that?
And we see that in gangs, for example, that the same spells that we need for healthy initiation and community process are utilized and co-opted by what I would consider to be uninitiated people, or people, at least, that are using the spells in service to some kind of harm to culture, as opposed to the opposite.
And so Just a full disclaimer.
I don't want to get into necessarily a conversation that seems to paint capitalism or free market enterprise as negative.
Again, it's just incomplete.
When the enterprise doesn't recognize that there are people being left out by this equation and do the things necessary to bring along those who are being lost or forgotten.
That's the problem.
So if you're going to have whatever kind of economic or philosophical or political orientation okay, run the experiment, see if it works.
All over the world, we're going to do that.
But any orientation is going to create some kind of neglect no matter what you're doing.
And so if you're not doing things, I think, to nourish and nurture those who are left, then that's the problem.
So-
I think, when it comes to men, the statistic that really came out as you were beginning your question or thought about men is that men right now have 50 less friends than we did 20 years ago.
And I could give you statistics all day long about suffering of men, but to me that's the most important because I think it's the catalyst for all the others.
I think, in the absence of real, genuine connection intimacy presence, the experiential process of bumping up against another human being, of being known, of being seen and witnessed, of being held accountable, of being beholden to relationships and forces that are outside of your own desires,
I think that's a real travesty in our culture, and men all over are suffering the burden of our issue.
What is your sense of what's driving this loneliness?
Well, I think that See kind of item number one around a culture that doesn't have initiation.
We're telling it's back to the spirit of the depths.
We're telling men how to be producers, but we're not telling men how to be in relationship.
One of the things we do at the Center for Healing Arts, the Integrative Wellness Center that my wife and I have, is we look at the human as biological psychological, social and spiritual and really try to address all these levels of the ways in which we show up.
And the social is one of those levels.
And we don't teach men how to be social, how to be connected, how to be in the mix with other men.
And I do think that when you're not beholden to a community and really known deeply, differently than you are with a romantic partner, whoever it might be,
But with a community of men.
I just think that there are elements of our psyches that get untethered.
And I don't know how you measure that necessarily, but I certainly know that I work with it a great deal.
And the kinds of addictions and depressions and alienations and isolations that happen as a result are paramount.
And there's a reason why in our prison systems, which I could be deeply critical of, There's a reason.
In our prison systems, the worst consequence that you can give to somebody is isolation.
It says something about our needs.
And if we're creating a culture that is essentially knowingly, because we know the consequences, with men that are disconnected from each other and feeling more and more isolated, that's a problem.
Because we're taking a pretty aggressive part of our species and creating a pretty aimless culture.
Yeah, that's gonna go out into the world and like those elephants.
Yeah.
You know, just stomp cars.
Wreck shit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And again there's this ethnobotanist named Mark Plotkin that I interviewed once, who spent a lot of time down in South America working with all these different tribes.
And he said, you know, really with the shaman, like it's all the same spells.
You know, they're all reading from the same spell books.
Whether you're doing what could be considered dark magic or light magic, same spells.
It's just your intention.
And so gangs use the same spells that we might have in a community that creates rites of passage, that creates kind of in-group inside jokes, markers of being a part of the group, processes to go through together, to bond each other closely.
I mean all kinds of dynamics that we need, that gangs will capitalize on, that the military capitalizes on.
But for everybody that is not called into those arenas, we're without a process of moving through.
I mean, I think in the best rites of passage, this is really hard for people to hear a lot of times.
My favorite rite of passage, which seems really kind of messed up, is a process down.
I believe it's in Colombia where they take tends to be young boys at about 12 years old And they take these bullet ants.
Have you heard of this before?
Bullet ants.
So bullet ants?
Are these ants that are given the name bullet ants because their bite feels like a gunshot?
And what they do to these kids is they smoke all these ants out so they're stunned.
They weave these palm gloves and they weave the ants inside the palm gloves so that when they wake up they begin to sting or bite the children.
So you see these images of these children that have these palm gloves on and for 10 minutes they're to sit there and take it.
And then 24 hours, it's gone.
I mean, it doesn't last.
Can you endure this?
And it's an experiential process where you're saying, I've done hard things.
I've done hard things.
And, most importantly then, those hard things that I've done created in me a community of connection, and the community conspires.
They want you to be a part of this.
They wanna fold you in.
They're supporting this.
And they fold you in after you pass this test, so to speak.
And they give you all the ethics and moral dynamics and all the cultural accoutrement of being a member of the tribe.
You can then be in relationship.
You achieve something important.
You know, when you talk to a young person, you're like, what are your rites of passage?
You know what they'll say?
I mean, take a stab.
I mean short of a bar mitzvah or you know, being on a sports team, I suppose on some level or going through, you know the process of what do they call it when you're trying to get into a fraternity or like.
These are very like low hang, you know, like very low grade versions of that.
They're almost like vestiges of, you know, this ancient practice that has existed for, you know, as long as humans have congregated and formed communities together.
But this is kind of all that remains.
That's it.
The culture doesn't conspire, right?
Arguably the fraternity thing does, but still you might argue that a kind of immature sorry guys, but a kind of immaturity is running the show there.
Yeah, there's no wise elder.
Like lording over the rite of passage and making sure that everyone understands like the greater purpose here or what the aim is.
So most people that I talk to when I ask them questions about rites of passage, they will say the first time they drank, the first time they had sex and when they got a car.
And fine.
But those, again, aren't supported.
You're not having the celebration of your community and your elders and your family, because now you're a part of something and you can fight for the community and you can serve the community.
Um, the stakes are.
I mean, i think in a lot of ways we're warriors that don't have a war and don't have a process to.
I mean that spiritually.
I don't mean that about going out and hurting other people again i'm masculine in that way and that this spiritual war of working through your own impulses, your own tendencies, your own hedonism, your own desire to retreat and isolate your own narcissism and your own self-indulgence.
That tension is something you must fight against.
And so no, I'm not a tribal person in South America, but I do need a marker in my life to say I was once this way and now I am this way and I've achieved something great and I've learned that I can do hard things.
We got a lot more to come.
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Right, people.
One of the world's most compelling and iconic public figures, the singular Arnold Schwarzenegger, shared how he reached the pinnacle of success in three very different careers.
We also discussed why he believes adversity breeds character, as well as lessons from his book Be Useful.
These experiences obviously were formative and made you who you are.
And I know you have a lot of gratitude for them, but what's the other side of that?
What is the pain point?
Like when you look back on that, what is your relationship with that past when you're not on a microphone and there's cameras?
A lot of things we don't choose.
I mean, I don't choose how I feel.
I happen to be fortunate that I don't have one ounce of negative thinking about my past.
Not one ounce.
And I don't know why.
You know, it's just not there.
I just have you know I remember the tough times, but I also remember very clearly the sweet times, the gentle times that my father showed, that my mother showed.
You know how wonderful they were and how supportive they were in the schools and the sports field, with everything, even though they were not kind of like the American parents.
It's so different.
My parents have never, ever watched me in a soccer game never, ever watched me in a basketball game or track and field shot.
Put championships chaplain, throwing championships, anything like this that we did in school never ever, because no one did.
There was no parent hanging around and saying, oh, let's watch our kids like we do over here.
Yeah, in the documentary there's the one where they actually do show up at that one bodybuilding competition, and you were confused.
Well, they showed up because my friend, Freddy Gerstle, that I met very early on, invited them and he was a very respected kind of a man in town and They did it for him.
I think because he invited them and so they took it seriously.
Oh, this must be something special.
And then when they saw me up there on the stage, I mean, it's just like, they couldn't believe it.
Even though, I have to say, my mother sewed for me my bathing suit because I found some bathing suit was just too big and I wanted to have it cut down.
So she was sewing, we just sewing machine the day before the competition.
I told her I'm gonna go into a competition and I need a small bathing suit.
And so she was sewing it and I was trying it on for her and it was doing the fitting and all of that stuff.
So it was very sweet of her.
I mean, how many mothers do that?
But I mean, so there's that side, but they just, it was not the style then to go and to watch kids.
The only competition that my parents ever watched was that one competition in Graz and then one competition in Essen in Germany, when I won Mr Olympia for the third time.
And then right after that, my father passed away.
So I was fortunate that he saw that.
There's this resistance or just refusal on your part to in any way be a victim.
And we're in a culture right now where victimhood, we have a different relationship with victimhood.
I'm sure that drives you insane.
And this book is really speaking to that on some level, like positivity as an antidote for the lack of agency that a lot of people feel, or the indulgence with an identity around victimhood as powerlessness right.
And this is all about calling people to action, to take responsibility for their lives, and giving them tools and a roadmap.
That it's straightforward advice in this book, right.
But it's very direct.
And because it's from you, it's so palpable.
So I guess what I'm asking is how do you think about the way that our culture now thinks about mental health?
And- and our relationship with this idea of powerlessness?
I think that, in general, I think what the book is trying to do is to say to people you need to work on yourself.
If you just try to be pampered, and if you're trying to be soft, and if you're trying to be the victim of those, you're not going to go anywhere.
We need to get stronger.
We need to get bossier.
We need to get tougher.
We need to not be afraid of failure.
We got to go and do the work.
We got to face adversity.
Adversity breeds character.
The strength and fighting and resistance.
It doesn't only make the muscle grow, but it makes also your head grow, makes you a stronger person.
We have to be willing to go through hardship, through suffering, through pain, through crying periods, all of that stuff.
Don't shy away from any of that, because it just makes you stronger.
And I think today a lot of times our youth is so into kind of, oh, let's make him feel good.
Oh no, let's be more sensitive.
Well, I totally agree with you to be sensitive about things, but I mean, there's also a sweet spot.
Can we go too far?
You know, it's like when someone says, well, today I just need to sleep in.
It's that bullshit.
You don't need to sleep in.
This country was not built on sleeping in.
So let's get up in the morning and let's get on that bike and let's do some exercise and don't even think about it.
Don't look at your email or anything like this.
Let's just get going.
Boom, boom, boom.
Let's get going.
Let's start building.
And so that's the idea is just not to be overly soft and overly kind of sensitive and everyone is the victim, kind of a thing.
I just don't buy into that.
But you have to understand that every person has to be approached also differently.
It's like the mind is just like the body.
I cannot give you exactly the same training routine that I had because your body is different.
You're a much leaner person, you need kind of to do maybe less reps.
And what this, you have to have a different diet if you want to bulk up and all this.
So I have to be aware of that that even within my family one of my daughters had to be approached differently than my other daughter.
One son had to be approached differently than the other son.
So you have to be sensitive about those kinds of things.
But overall, it was discipline in the house.
You don't turn out that light, I will unscrew those light bulbs and you will be going into a dark room at the age of three and you will be scared.
So you better start learning to turn off those lights.
You have someone else make your bed.
Okay, I'm going to take the mattress and throw it down the balcony.
And then you carry it upstairs and you make your own bed again.
So this is the way that my kids grew up.
You know, and there was like, there was crying there.
Or when I burned their shoes.
When she left, my daughter left her shoes for the three times in front of the fireplace.
I said, the third time it goes in the fire.
The third time it did go in the fire, right in front of her.
And she was crying the whole night.
Yeah, those things happen.
But now she does the same to her daughter.
And now she says, that was great that you did that.
You see what I'm saying?
So now my kids were crying on the ski slopes.
I want to go in.
I want to go hot chocolate.
There will be no hot chocolate.
You know, the usual kindergarten cop kind of a thing.
There will be no hot chocolate.
They said, we're going to ski four runs, and then there's a hot chocolate.
I said, not after the first run.
Yeah, but I'm cold.
They said, so am I. So what?
So what?
So now let's go be cold and then go skiing.
And I said, the more we ski the bumps and the more we ski the powder, the warmer we get and the more we warm up.
I said, let's get going.
And so now today, when they come up to Sun Valley with their friends, they get up after the dinner with their wine glass and they say I want to toast daddy because he made us good skiers.
And that's why we're here today.
That's why we enjoy skiing with all of you.
You see, that's the thing.
Yeah, I understand.
You got to just kind of figure it out, you know, how to do that.
But, you know, it's not easy.
I'm not a psychologist.
I'm not an expert in this.
But one thing I know for sure, I can help anyone to go and be a little bit better.
Up next is John Pearson.
And John has the very interesting distinction of being the original person. male supermodel.
In this conversation we discuss mental health and modeling healthy masculinity, which are the themes that underscore John's very cool lifestyle and self-improvement digital magazine, which is called Mr Feel Good.
I think the idea, like young men, like it is a more confusing time.
Like we grew up in an analog world, right?
And that we're one of the last generations of people to kind of traverse from analog to digital.
But our formative years were pre-computer completely, right?
And now I think we're in a confusing state for a lot of men, where there's expectations for them to, you know, be strong, to kind of like, inhabit the traditional sense of what it is to be masculine.
And yet also to be the sensitive person, the person who goes to all the school events on weekdays at two o'clock in the afternoon and who is caring and like somebody who has to fire on all cylinders right.
And there's an expectation level that I think is difficult for anybody to, live up to essentially.
And when you kind of step down into even the younger generations who are dealing with how to date and that's all digital now with these apps and all that kind of stuff.
And this is something Scott Galloway talks quite a bit about like, I think it's really hard, right?
And we're at a certain age where we don't have direct experience with those sorts of things.
So how do you think about lending a hand or being a mentor, or communicating helpful information to that person who is trying to navigate all of those landmines?
It's tough.
It's tough.
I think our sons have to, and their tribes have to learn to be vulnerable and be connected as a community and to not have too many expectations, because there are a lot of expectations on them.
It is a different world.
I think it's very difficult.
I think they're also very smart, a lot of them, and they can figure it out.
And things that I worry about for them they aren't even worrying about, because if they're focused, if they're fortunate enough to have something they love to do, have a purpose or a goal or be passionate about something,
I think that helps them a lot to direct the focus and to move forward as they go into life as a young adults.
But you can't manufacture that for anybody.
No.
Especially your kids.
No, unfortunately.
You can expose them to lots of different things and just hope that something connects with them and lights them up in that way.
Yeah, it's true.
I mean, it's a work in progress and it's, I think, all we try and do is be open but provide a safe space where they can explore those kind of feelings and worries and advise them on what we know and what we've experienced in an ever-changing world, where they can then sort of bespoke it if they're able.
And all my kids personally.
Our kids, you know, they're pretty the greatest, really one of the greatest things of my life is that my kids know who they are.
And I think that's a lot more than I did at that age.
I think the French say , comfortable in their own skin.
That's like you're on the 10 yard line if you have that.
Yeah, and I'm really I stand back and I watch them and I observe them in company and the way they sort of address the issues of the day, their own personal challenges.
And I feel really just so grateful that they've got that.
And I think it probably comes from my wife's family's side.
But I think that's a marvelous thing.
That's a real blessing.
I think it's tough out there.
I really think it's tough out there.
And I by no means have an answer for you that's eloquent or rooted for you yet all honesty.
But i also want to engage and as we grow younger people into mr feelgood, i want to bring them into their sort of fold and have them right for me and a couple of them do already and just sort of the idea of having sitting around a table with these kids, you know, 12 men i want you to do this with me at some point but 12 really interesting men who can sit around and we can talk and we can listen, and i think community, when you build community, and especially of men, You know, I think that's a really powerful thing.
I think to sit and to be listened and to be heard is a really powerful thing.
And especially in a circle of men who are trying to do the right thing, who are trying to calibrate this ever-changing sort of world.
I think that's really vital.
But I certainly don't have the answers.
But I'm determined to try and help and contribute in some way.
Yeah.
I mean, vital is the right word.
I mean, I've been lucky enough to be parts of groups like that, you know, through recovery and also through other therapeutic modalities.
And it's been absolutely transformative for me.
But I'm also aware that it's not the experience of most people, most men.
Right.
And I think a lot of men suffer in silence and they just carry on and push it all down until something one day breaks or explodes.
And I think that's the more typical experience.
And to the extent that there are solutions for people who are in that state like I, wanna be participating in that because I think it's chronic, honestly.
And there is an epidemic of mental health disorders that it's not unique to men, but I think there is something about men where it's not talked about to the extent that it should be, and getting help is not as permissive as it should be.
And it should be, and we should all, we should take time to reach out to our community and put the effort and the energy into building these sort of creating these situations where we can all exchange, where we can sort of feel safe to talk about.
I mean, the whole vulnerable thing, That's a really sort of mysterious one for me.
I know it's important and I know it's valuable and I never really recognized my own acute vulnerability until I started doing Mr Feelgood.
I had episodes, but consistently being accountable and having to do this after having had an agent who just said this is the flight, this is how much.
There you are, you know?
And I'm still really curious about the whole vulnerable thing and you know when to be restrained, when to be open.
What value will that give the person I'm sitting with, you know?
And I still, my Yorkshire roots are like, no, man up, man up, you know?
Don't talk, don't be soft, you know, and all that stuff.
But you won't survive.
You won't survive.
You'll be a, you know.
You'll self-medicate, you'll drink you'll, whatever your drug of choice is, or you'll just implode.
Yeah.
And you'll freak out and you'll do something stupid.
And I think we have to change that.
Maybe it's an education.
You know, maybe it's having people like you and Scott myself, perhaps you know, going in and talking about this, actually delivering, you know, lessons on this sort of thing.
You know, actually going into the education system and, And I do think, doing retreats with fellas, with men, is really good young guys and older guys.
And I think there's a lot to be said for taking sage advice from those who came before us, even though they lived in a more closed off sort of or a more one dimensional idea of masculinity.
I was brought up to respect my elders and I was lucky because when my parents divorced I go and see my father And he'd always do meals on wheels.
And he'd take me around delivering food to the elderly.
And most of these guys had just come out and ladies had come out of the Second World War.
They were the last.
And it was fascinating to engage with their sort of stoicism and their dignity.
And I think, you know, I learned a lot about listening to people then.
And I think we have to do something about it.
I think we have to engage.
I think we have to sort of join forces and, you know, create something that really does, because the important thing is, a lot of people sort of start doing these things, but it's being there for the long ride which is important.
And especially in this day and age when everything's so disjointed and quick and we're overcome with sort of information, I think to be consistent is really a great quality to have.
And I think, you know, if you're mentoring someone, you're in it for life.
You know, you should be and you'll reap benefits, but really, you can't just do it for a day.
You can't give a bit of advice and think it's done.
You have to be consistent.
Yeah.
I want you to pause for a moment, because I want to tell you about my friend, RJ.
Now, you might know this guy as the founder and CEO of Rivian.
He's certainly that, but he's really so much more.
He's one of those rare people who actually walks the walk.
I've watched him over many years and i know him to be this incredibly deeply committed person, committed to preserving wild spaces while also inspiring people to explore responsibly.
And that's basically rivian in a nutshell.
Their mission keep the world adventurous forever comes from this understanding that adventure and a healthy planet, these are not separate things, they're the same thing.
Here's what gets me.
Every generation deserves wild places to roam, to climb higher, to run farther, to be changed by the journey.
But obviously that's only possible if we're not destroying those places in the process of getting there.
So yeah, Rivian builds electric vehicles.
But really, they're building something bigger.
Momentum toward a future where exploration does not come at the expense of nature, but actually inspires us to protect it.
It's like Why create the ultimate adventure vehicle if we're not protecting the adventures themselves?
And that's why I'm so proud to align forces in partnership with Rivian.
This isn't just about transportation.
It's about building a world worth exploring for our kids, for their kids and for generations to come.
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Movement is so much more than just exercise or training or motion even.
Movement is a language.
It's a way of connecting body, mind, and environment, movement as a way of being.
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Okay, next up is star of screens, big and small, Terry Crews, who joined me on episode 676 of for a long-form exchange on overcoming toxic masculinity, transcending obstacles, confronting your past and stepping into your truest power and most actualized self.
Maybe talk a little bit about masculinity and how you're thinking about it.
What was wild is that I remember having to fight my way into school.
It was the gangs, the drug dealers.
The people that were around me were always looking at me suspiciously.
They would say things like, you talk white.
And I'm like, what is that?
And what was happening is, remember, I was kind of sheltered is what it was.
I mean, I was religious and I was in this thing where it wouldn't allow us to do anything.
So I would go into my hole and I would draw and draw all day.
I would draw what I wanted to see.
And it was an introspective, very nerdy world.
I became this nerd, but then when I came outside, I was always challenged on it.
Like, oh man, back in the day, they called you a square.
And it was like, but then athletics coded black, coded hardcore.
So I said, all right, so I have to be that.
And I knew... that I had to be big, strong, fast, athletic, and they would leave me alone.
It's like I knew when I got some traps that they would think twice about it.
They'd go, well, he's probably gonna do some athletic stuff, so they leave him alone.
But the skinny kid, he had no choice.
They would beat him up.
It would be crazy.
It would be violent.
They used to beat up my brother.
He was smaller than I was.
He's my half brother.
And I remember these gang members threw him in the rosebush.
He was just hurt.
We went home and he was in tears and I was just like pulling them out of it.
But they didn't mess with me.
But that coded black and it coded hardcore.
You know what I mean?
But it's almost like this shield, this armor that you built around yourself simply to protect that artist within you.
So he could still do his thing quietly without being bullied or taking the task.
I always knew that I was what you would call weird, you know, in that respect.
Because people were always, you know, they would just tell me, man, you weird, man.
You know, and I'm, hey, you know, whatever.
I don't, I would just kind of blink it off.
And this is another thing is that I would, I would fake it.
You know, a lot of my acting ability, you know, one thing I used to do is dumb down.
It was, oh, man, I don't know what y'all talking about, man.
What you doing, man?
Yeah, you know, and you just learned to mirror the lingo and I would mirror people so that they wouldn't be suspicious.
You know what I mean?
Like just get along to go along.
And then go home and then all of a sudden find somebody who or even be at school and find somebody who had we had the same, you know, interests.
And it was like, oh man, I could go all in on this.
You know what I mean?
And it was funny because even when I met my wife she said He said I thought you were the biggest nerd and I saw you with your friend and you talked a whole different way.
And I was like, ah, that's kind of how I've been doing my whole life.
You know, I knew, because she was like here I'm thinking you're this nerdy black guy, and then I turn around and you're with these guys, your friends, and you're talking, all cool.
And I was like, it's like two people.
And I was like, yeah, it's had to be that way my whole life.
But this idea blossoms into this notion that-
This is the case for all men.
Don't all men have two lives?
The secret life that they hide from everybody else, and then the way that they show up in the world.
That's right.
That's just the way it is.
It is.
I believe that.
I believe that.
That was definitely the case for me.
Yeah.
So, without any kind of healthy role models for yourself as a young person, you strike this vow with your friend, which I think is super interesting.
It's almost like a survival tactic.
Like, hey, no one's showing us the way, like we gotta help each other out.
Yeah.
I remember coming to my friend, my best friend in the world.
His name was Darwin.
And I said, hey, man.
I said, dude, no one is telling us anything.
And we had nothing but questions.
And we would try.
We would ask.
The men wouldn't give it up.
They would literally, you're going to find out.
Hey, let me tell you something.
You're going to find out on me.
And you're like, oh, man.
And it's like, dude, I'm 11.
Can you please just give me some clues?
And then...
What was wild is that we would get all this erroneous information.
The things they did volunteer was like hey man, look what you want to do.
You want to take these girls, tell them you love them, get the draws and then bounce.
And I was like, but what if you do like them?
No, no, you don't love them.
You can't love them.
And you're like, what are you talking about?
Because I had this vision of actual love, like I mean the picture, like even in the movies, like there's people falling in love though right,
They're like, no, man, what you want to do?
You got to have like four or five and you got to keep them on.
And you got to always keep them on a leash and then call them and then don't call them back.
I mean, and the whole phrase was called game.
And it's still talked about even now, you know?
And it was like, you got to have game to run this thing.
And then you can have all these girls.
You got to have 10 girls.
And the more you had, the more of a man you were.
And I was like, and that's, again, the message of what masculinity was, was that you were a pimp.
And that's what I grew up with.
And it was like but I said, but I don't, I just, you know, and I had a really really hard time because I said I don't really want to lie to people.
But, and then I escaped into porn.
And that was the only because my parents, my father to this day, has never had a conversation with me about sex, ever.
And my mother was so religious.
She was like, are you having sex?
And I'm like, no, no, I'm not.
Don't do it.
I'm trying, listen, you know you go to hell, right?
And they're like, okay, back to hell again.
And so I totally avoided that conversation.
But so everything I learned was at nine years old, when I went over to my uncle's house, opened up his chest and it was full of pornographic magazines.
And you know a lot of people.
You know what's wild about that is that everybody says well, you know, pornography is great.
It's totally acceptable when people are over 18, the whole thing.
But I don't know anybody that ever encountered pornography at 18.
No.
Yeah.
You know, you always encounter it in school or whatever, when someone's showing you and you're like six seven eight nine, I mean, and it's damaging.
It's damaging.
It really is.
And we, you know, we grew up in a time where it was, you know, in a box that your friend's dad had in the basement somewhere or buried in the woods or some shit like that you know, and now it's like ubiquitous and so readily available and unlimited.
And it's fucking crazy.
I can't listen, man.
The thought of what kids are possibly looking at right now it sends chills down my back.
Chills.
And because I know what path it set me on.
And again man, you know people have said well, you can't, I don't think you can be addicted to pornography and the whole thing.
But my problem was is that, hey man, if day turns into night and you're still watching it and you say you don't want to and you keep doing it, I don't know what else to call it.
And.
But I thought even as a young kid.
What happened is when I discovered it, it took all my problems away.
I mean, I was when I opened that magazine, I didn't even know what I was looking at.
Mind you, I didn't even know how to have sex, but I just knew oh my God, this is mind blowing, you know, and I was totally numbed out.
And I forgot about the violence.
I forgot about my dad and I forgot about the religiosity.
And then what happened is I would get shamed and you feel like, oh Lord, I know I'm going to hell.
I'm going to hell.
And so you would say, I'll be good.
I'll be good.
And I became a performer.
I became this person who wanted to keep peace in the house.
I was going to be the best, most Christian kid.
And I was going to be the best, most great kid for my dad, you know, and do whatever he says, right?
And it just, but I had no say of my own.
Like what I wanted was always fourth thing down the line.
You know what I mean?
And I was taught that, like literally like, it don't matter what you want.
You better listen to what we're saying.
You better listen to what's going on here.
And so the neighborhood had pull, the gangs had pull, my parents had pull, but I had no voice.
In episode 827, we welcome the brilliant social psychologist Jonathan Haidt to the podcast to explore his groundbreaking research on social media's impact on youth mental health, which is the subject of his seminal book, The Anxious Generation.
Haidt's insights into how digital technology is reshaping adolescents made this one of our most impactful episodes, though here is an excerpt from that conversation.
At what age could you ride your bicycle around and go visit your friends?
I mean, super young.
Second grade, third grade, seven, eight?
Yeah, out all day, be home by dinner.
That's right.
That was the universal thing.
And you and I grew up during a crime wave.
There were drunk drivers, there was crime.
In the 90s, things got really safe.
Crime plummeted, drunk driving plummeted.
You know, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, we locked up the drunk drivers.
So when you and I were young, and this goes back, you know, literally millions of years...
Kids are not in adult supervised programs.
They're on their own.
And that's absolutely crucial for developing independence.
We want our kids to be self-supervising self-governing, so that they don't have to have someone telling them what to do.
But in the 90s we began locking them up, supervising them, saying we can never let you out alone because there's a microscopic chance you'll be kidnapped.
But it looms very large in my mind because I just read a story in some newspaper about it which is called The Availability Bias in Psychology.
And it's on the side of all our milk cartons.
That's right, that's right.
The book is focused on the great rewiring, which is 2010 to 2015.
But there's a really important backstory, which is the more gradual loss of childhood independence, loss of trust in children and loss of trust in each other.
That turns out to be one of the main reasons we locked up our kids was we started thinking every adult is a potential child molester.
I can't trust my kid with anyone.
I have to supervise or just, you know, very limited number of people that I'll trust.
Whereas when you and I were growing up, during the crime wave adults generally had the sense that if a kid falls off his bicycle, you know and is hurt, and you see it, you would call their mother.
You'd say, well, you know, what's your phone number?
We all knew our phone numbers.
And that kind of went away in the 90s as we lost trust in each other.
And that's part of why we clutched our kids so close that we don't let them develop.
And the irony being that we're hyper or overprotective of our kids in physical spaces and completely underprotective in this digital space, which is we're learning, we're discovering is far more dangerous than the imagined threat in the physical world.
That's right.
And that's why I started off by talking about the incredible techno optimism that we all had in the 90s and the 2000s, because we thought this stuff is so amazing.
And we saw that even back in the 80s, kids who played with computers and we called them geeks and nerds.
Wow, they're starting companies now.
They're doing amazing things with this new technology.
Hey, there's my kid playing with an iPhone.
Maybe he'll grow up to start a company.
Maybe he'll get smarter and more technically skilled.
But that didn't happen.
We have all this techno-optimism.
We think computers are good for our kids.
We think, oh, we need to get computers to every kid. you know, in the 90s or early 2000s.
Oh, it's terrible that the rich kids have computers, but the poor kids don't have them.
We have to have every kid have a computer.
And, of course, the tech companies.
You know they want to come in.
They want to give kids a Chromebook, get them using our operating system.
So we let this happen because we thought, well, it looks like it'll probably be good for them.
And there was no data on that.
And we weren't really collecting any data.
And we just let the devices take over childhood.
And it was only just before COVID that we really began to notice.
But then COVID came and confused us all and we lost a few years.
Now that COVID has receded, now I think everyone sees the wreckage.
And that's why you opened by talking about how it feels like things are changing, everyone sees it.
Yeah, now that COVID has receded, we all see the wreckage.
Yeah, I'm trying to remember the feeling that I had when the internet was brand new.
And there was this sense of possibility and this excitement.
And it's hard to judge ourselves against the optimistic promise that the internet held at that time.
Like how could it be a bad thing to connect everybody and to have access to information in this way?
This can only make the world a better place.
That's right.
The irony being that that hyper-connectivity driving loneliness and depression and self-harm and suicide and all the like.
So in this thesis, around this great rewiring like what are the?
I mean you've identified kind of four key harms that are at play here.
Yeah, yes.
So this started off.
I was gonna be focusing, I thought, on social media and girls, because that's where the data is clearest.
But as the story unfolded, as I went more into childhood, I realized I need a separate chapter for girls.
I need a separate chapter for boys.
But there's a bunch of things that are hitting everyone and adults as well.
So I ended up calling the four foundational harms.
They are social deprivation, sleep deprivation, cognitive fragmentation and addiction.
So just very briefly, American kids now spend five hours a day just on social media.
That's mostly TikTok, YouTube shorts, it's the short videos.
Also longer videos on YouTube.
And it's also Instagram and a bunch of other things.
So five hours just on social media.
And then another three to five hours depending on the study, another three to five hours on other screen-based activities.
And none of this includes homework.
This is all just leisure.
So, you know, eight to 10 hours a day on their devices.
That pushes out almost everything else, or at least it minimizes.
Think of all the good things you did as a kid, or think of all the things you'd want for your children today.
Would you want them to have any hobbies?
Would you want them to read books?
Would you want them to go play outside?
Like everything that you could want for your kid.
Cut it by 90 because they have to spend all this time servicing their network connections and keeping up with what's on TikTok.
So you cut out all that stuff.
What really matters?
So the two that are foundational, the two that just we know are just really important for mental health and for child development, are time with other kids and sleep.
Like who could argue with this?
And the data on social deprivation is just stunning.
A couple of my favorite graphs in the book.
Favorite in that they're kind of horrible but they're dramatic.
One is the amount of time that Americans spend with each other.
So these are studies, the American Time Use Survey, I think it's called.
They ask people to fill in detailed records.
What were you doing at this time, this time, this time?
And when you look just at time outside of work and school, how much time are you spending with your friends?
And for older people, you know, in their 30s or beyond, It's less than an hour a day because people are busy.
They're married.
But for teenagers, it was always like two and a half.
It was a lot.
They spent a lot of time with their friends.
Like, you know, you and me, after school, you're just out with your friends.
So that begins dropping in the 90s and 2000s as kids get more, you know television time and more internet time.
It is dropping.
But when you hit 2010, 2012, it plummets.
It falls really fast.
And one shocking finding is that, you know, for the older generations, you see it drop with COVID.
Like you see it goes from like, you know, 40 minutes to 20 minutes.
Like we really were locked away.
You really see a drop.
But for teenagers, what you see is, the drop from 2019 to 2020 after COVID restrictions was no steeper than the drop from 2018 to 2019.
Oh, that's interesting.
In other words, they were already socially distancing so fast since 2012 that COVID didn't even speed it up.
Yeah, you would have thought that COVID would have been this pattern interrupt that we didn't recover from, and that would be particularly acute for a teen, but to understand that it was already at a plummeted state at that point and hasn't recovered, right.
That's right.
Has it plateaued or does it continue to go down?
So I don't know because it takes a while to get the data.
So here we are in 2024, I don't have data for 2023.
We have data for 2022.
Some data is coming for 2023.
So we can begin to see the rebound from COVID.
But on the time you study, I haven't seen it.
But right, that would be an interesting prediction.
If adults went down and then they go up a little bit, that's what you'd expect.
So my prediction would be that teenagers who went down so far, they're not going to bounce back up because it's not as though oh, COVID's gone.
Hey, after school today, how about if I come over to your house?
Like, I don't think that's going to happen.
Because they've acclimated to a different way.
They've acclimated.
And for boys, they literally can't go over to each other's houses if they want to play video games.
Yeah, they have to be in their own pods.
That's right.
They have to have their own equipment in their own house.
So these technologies that are supposed to bring people together, they end up making them physically separate.
So the social deprivation piece, the sleep deprivation piece, they're relatively self-evident.
I would like to know a little bit more about this attention fragmentation idea, this idea of being constantly distracted and having to kind of toggle switch your brain because things are happening so fast.
That's right.
You know, we all think that we can multitask, but the research has shown for decades and decades, if you try to do two things, you'll do each of them less than half as well.
Like there's a net loss from the transfer cost.
So multitasking is a bad idea.
With our phones, the temptation is always to multitask.
That's just one piece of it.
The even worse piece is the notifications and interruptions.
So when the iPhone came out in 2007, there were no push notifications.
There was no app store.
It was just a set of tools that you could pull out when you wanted.
As you said before, you get the retweet button, the like button.
Things get much more viral.
Now it's like urgent thing.
This thing's blowing up.
You need to know about it.
Apple introduces I think it was called software development kits, which allowed any other company to create an app.
And this is transformative because what now happens is Kids are now carrying this thing.
You know, beginning by 2010.
Kids are carrying a portal by which any company can reach your child.
Any company can send them notifications.
I mean, if they've downloaded the app.
Just once they download an app, it's like they're giving permission to this company.
Hey, you can interrupt my child whenever you want.
Oh, you think there's breaking news?
Oh, you can get 10% off on this thing?
Oh, you know, somebody said something about you?
So we've created these incredible interrupting devices which all of us are struggling with right.
I mean we adults.
I don't use my phone that much because I'm always at a computer and I've shut off almost all notifications.
That's really crucial.
You have to shut off almost all notifications other than like Uber.
You know a few things you need to leave on.
But it's hard for me to focus because if I'm doing something which is hard, part of my brain says what's the weather going to be.
Oh, let me go check that.
Yeah.
Okay.
Finally, my guest is musician Toby Morse.
He's a long time hardcore punk rocker, vegan, straight edge, role model dad.
His son, Max, is a great drummer who goes on tour with his dad, following in his footsteps.
He's really quite charming.
So let's do it.
You truly are one of the most positive people in my life.
And I've watched you in the world interact with people.
Everybody you meet, you meet with love, compassion, non-judgment.
You meet people where they're at.
Like you like all different kinds of people, especially like when it comes to music, where it's like you're only allowed to like this kind or that kind.
Like you like everything, you love Coldplay.
Like you like to, you know, all the bands that are not supposed to be cool.
Like you're the first person to say like, you know, these guys are amazing or whatever.
Like there's just a really beautiful kind of welcoming energy that you have.
And I, you know, it's, it's clear that like you've just been a fantastic dad.
Like I look at Max, this kid walks into a room and just owns it.
Like he's so like charismatic and sure of himself in a healthy way.
Like he knows who he is.
He'll look you in the eye.
He talks to everybody.
He's not intimidated by anyone.
And he just has this like really kind of joyful spirit about him as well.
And I was like, man, You guys did a good job.
Thank you, man.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
I mean, the communication is key.
My son traveled with us since he was very, very young.
We've always had an open relationship with my son, talking about everything he wanted to talk about and unconditional love.
And probably, you know, for me, I didn't grow up with a dad.
So everything was new to me, just learning along the way and stuff.
And my wife's an incredible mother.
And yeah, he's just a very well-rounded, open-minded.
He's been all around the world, seen different cultures, you know?
He's been everywhere.
And I grew up around a lot of awesome musicians and people and I'm a very lucky man, especially a kid growing up in Hollywood too.
Yeah, I know.
There's so many different things, temptations, there's all kinds of stuff.
Yeah, all around, right?
All around.
Like, he went to a big high school, too.
Like, it could have gone any number of different ways.
Yeah, yeah, it's true.
He went to Larchmont for a while.
Then he went to Hamilton High, which is a great school music program.
The guys, the interrupters went there.
The three brothers.
They have like a whole like sort of recording studio.
I think that high school has its own label.
Yeah, they do.
Yeah.
My son's band.
Okay.
My son's band Ren was on that record label.
Wow.
It was signed to the label.
And then one of the students was their manager at the school.
That's crazy.
It's like an Adidas sound lab there or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's what I was thinking of.
Yeah.
So yeah, it's a really great school.
He learned how to play the piano really well.
He knows how to read music.
It was a really wonderful movie.
He was, kind of sheltered in the Larchmont world.
And he's like, I want to go.
He basically said eighth grade, I want to go to a school where there's bullies and lockers.
That's what he wanted.
So I went to a real school.
Yeah.
I mean, Hamilton, Hamilton is that, you know, like that's a big place.
It's a really big campus, man.
And there's kids from all around the whole city that would go there and stuff.
And yeah, man, really happy.
He's really good kid, man.
And how did he end up in the band?
Like, what is it like?
I know he's like modeling.
He wants to be, is he's pursuing acting?
Yeah, he's doing all that.
Yeah.
So the band just happened.
I mean, my, uh, He would play one song with us really long time.
He played a song called Nothing to Prove.
He'd come up on stage since he was like nine years old.
And then fast forward, my drummer, Todd Friend, shout out to Todd Friend.
He had a problem with his shoulder.
He had a couple of surgeries where it was hard for him to perform.
And the timing just happened with my son to jump up and play a gig with us because of that.
And it just continued.
It's been continuing since that for like two years now.
And we still see my drummer.
He comes out to the show in New York.
He sang a song with us.
It's all love.
It's It's perfect, man.
Yeah.
So I don't know how long it's gonna last.
Right, you just take it while you can get it, right?
Like what a cool thing to like play music with your son.
Yeah, I'm gonna be cool next year.
I don't know.
He might join another band.
There's nothing you can do to be cool for your kid.
It doesn't matter.
You confront like a cool band or whatever, it's still gonna be, you know.
We'll always be cool, I hope, you know?
No, I mean you'll be cool with each other.
But you always think, like I mean I can't imagine a cooler dad than you.
But like, no matter what you do or who you are like, your kid is always gonna on some level and it's supposed to be this way.
Like you're not as cool as you think.
Yeah, that's definitely true.
And it's meant to be that way.
Yeah.
Cause they're the next generation and they got their own ideas about what's cool.
He'll check me once in a while on different things.
It's stupid or that's cringe or that's silly, something I say.
Yeah, what do you do that's cringe to him?
I don't know, I don't know.
You said that to me before, that about something, or something, or even before.
If I post something I was like you sure wanna post that.
They could check me on stuff.
I like that though.
There is a certain thing when you're that age where most people like in their early 20s, it's all about like kind of cynicism and irony.
Like nothing's cool, everything's lame, all of that.
And you're a very earnest person.
And I feel like Max is pretty earnest.
Like he doesn't strike me as, that person who's like everything sucks or all those bands suck.
No, no, no, no.
He's pretty enthusiastic about the world.
Yeah, he is.
He has a good life, but you better definitely have that enthusiasm.
He's definitely had a wonderful life.
He still lives at home.
He's 20 years old.
It's awesome.
How long is that gonna go for?
I don't know, man.
There's a lot of kids now.
It seems like to be like in this generation, they're still living at home kind of late.
It's interesting.
They don't go to college.
It's so expensive.
I don't know where he would live in Los Angeles.
Yeah, I mean...
That idea I mean our generation.
It was like get out the door and it doesn't matter if you have to go into debt or run up credit cards like you're not staying at home.
But to me, that's insane.
It's so expensive out there.
And I don't want my kids to be running up a bunch of debt or spending money unnecessarily if they don't have to, because that then ends up sort of impinging on the decisions that they can make about their life and the freedoms that they have.
And if I can provide a buffer, by just like, they can hang out at home a little bit longer.
Are they still at home?
I'm more than happy to do it.
Well, our boys had moved out.
They were living in Echo Park doing the music thing.
And then when the pandemic hit, I was like, don't pay rent in a tiny little apartment that you're stuck in, like just come home.
So they're still home and that's fine.
And they're working and they have their own lives, but I'm not in a rush for them to leave.
It's like, stay as long as you want.
I don't care.
I like having them around.
You know, it's not gonna last forever.
Empty nest syndrome.
They're gonna be gone.
And then you're gonna be like, oh, wasn't it great when they were there?
Like, I'm trying to enjoy it for everything that it is.
Me too, man.
I can't imagine like an empty house, like walking by his room.
Like it's an empty nest syndrome.
Our two younger ones are both gone now at school.
So it's the older ones that are around.
Yeah, it's hard.
Yeah, it's hard.
I mean, I'm happy for them.
You're an emotional guy like me too, though.
Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely- I'm super emo, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know if I'm as emo as you, but I can get pretty emo.
But this thing about him being gone, it's like freaks me out, dude.
Stay as long as you can.
I'm not gonna pay rent where he works right now.
It's impossible.
You're gonna blink and he's gonna be gone and doing his own thing and you're gonna be proud of him, but you'll miss that time.
So to be able to be present with it and appreciate it for what it is now.
And to play music with me, it's like- Oh, that's incredible.
What a gift.
Who gets to do that?
I know.
Okay, we did it.
I hope this was valuable and helped you on your journey, or could be used as a way of helping a loved one.
And if you have been personally inspired, please consider visiting the full, in-depth conversations with these esteemed guests.
You can find links to each episode posted in the YouTube description or in the show notes at richrollcom.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for watching.
Until next time, peace. life.
