The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:36:18 · David Brooks
[00:36:18] S2: Yeah. Well, just to stick with universities, I I... In the course of American history, universities have gone through different regimes. The first regime was the piety regime. They were Christian institutions, and they were they were there to instill Christian virtues. Then in the nineteenth century, there was the humanistic ideal, which is we're gonna still create moral formation, but we're not gonna use the gospels. We're gonna use the, basically, the great conversation, the European writers from Aristotle to Shakespeare, France... To Bacon and all the way. Then in the middle of the twentieth century, the ideal shifted to the research ideal. We're a bunch of specialists here to advance knowledge. And then it shifted to the career ideal. Our our job as universities is to get kids high paying jobs. And then because those last two ideals were so morally vacuous, the social justice ideal filled the moral vacuum and said our job is to be activists and to help people who've been part of marginalized groups. And that of course is a noble activity, but it's not the right activity for the universities. In part because it turned teaching into a form of indoctrination. It turned students into a form of diplomats from their identity groups. But most... And what we're seeing now is that if you fix your university to a political party and say we're activist... We're the activist wing of the Democratic Party, well, guess what? The Republicans are gonna take it out on you, and that's what's happening. And I'm hoping the universities will realize their... A new ideal, which is to return to the humanistic ideal, which is character formation more than political activism. But then to return to a civic ideal, our universities spend and like a lot of institutions spend a lot more time helping people prosper in their private lives without thinking carefully, what's our role in our civic life? And why do we have so many universities that are blue bubbles in red neighborhoods or in red states? Because they're not interacting with the civic life as a whole. They've withdrawn to the campus walls. And so to me, universities are great institutions. They are great, great institutions that are really one of the keys to America's greatness, but they've lost their mission.
00:38:27 · David Brooks
And I'm hoping under challenge from Trump and the rest of them that they'll rediscover their mission and find out our job is really to form people and to create citizens and to be civic institutions that bind society across difference and across class difference. And that would be a noble mission and a a real recovery for American universities.
00:38:48 · Scott Galloway
[00:38:48] S0: We'll be right back. Are you tired of hearing about business, tech, and finance from the bros? We are the Tiger Sisters, a top business podcast with the Vox Media Podcast Network. Tiger Sisters releases every Monday, and we decode money, power, and love. And who doesn't love all those things? We are the Internet's Wall Street and Silicon Valley big sisters. Tune in every Monday for late night sister talk meets boardroom strategy. Check out Tiger Sisters on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Tiger fam. This is advertiser content from Yahoo Scout. So each year, I ask my students what are the most important decisions they're gonna make. A key decision is where you decide to live. I'm a big fan of moving to a city when you're young. So then the question is, well, okay. What city? So we're gonna use Yahoo's AI powered answer engine, Yahoo Scout, to try and figure out what is the best city for a young person looking to break into tech. Alright. Let's see what we got here. San Francisco. No surprise there. Unmatched density of venture capital and technical talent. New York. This is kinda surprising. I've actually read that New York in some instances is number one. Here's a surprise, Raleigh. Enterprise software, high concentration of youthful residents, and affordability. I think that's why Raleigh would probably stand out where I would suggest that it should be in the consideration set. Okay. Now let's assume you are totally unlike me. I'm the great endorsement and enjoy the outdoors and wanna find a city to live in that is great if you're into the outdoors. So it feels obvious, but it wasn't to me when I did the search. Salt Lake City. So this is interesting. A balanced career launch pads. The one that really surprises me a little bit here, Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh in the house. So I think this does what you want it to do. There's gonna be a couple points of discovery that will legitimately move into your selection set, and you may end up making, quite frankly, just a better decision because you'll have, more data points and things you probably wouldn't have included again in your opportunity set. So all this with Yahoo's AI powered answer engine, Yahoo Scout. You can start exploring at scout.com. Support for the show comes from Canva. I've seen many a pitch deck in my life.
00:41:11 · Scott Galloway
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00:43:01 · David Brooks
[00:43:01] S2: Yeah. Well, I just took a hike with Richard two days ago, so he's a very close friend of mine. I do think one of the beautiful things Richard has accomplished is to make sure this is not a zero sum game. And he emphasized this over and over again that what's good for males is not bad for females. Females. And that should be obvious, but Richard struggled to get the pub... Book published years ago because a lot of people had this zero sum thinking in their head. And I think the the crisis of masculinity is in part a system, as Richard says, where the schools are not designed for boys. But I think it's it's primarily that loss of purpose, that loss of sense that how do I express... There's a British philosopher named Shirley Robin Letwin who wrote a book about the vigorous virtues that we wanna be... We want people who are loyal to friends, tough on foes, dynamic, risk taking, courageous, brave. And these virtues, some of these virtues have been shoved aside in the effort to create a more compassionate society, and that's a beautiful effort. But people wanna be courageous. They wanna do things on behalf of some moral ideal that requires courage, force, strength, and frankly, self mastery. And I look at all the podcasters who are now like gigantic buff ripped guys, and they look like they swallowed a weight machine. And... But and... But that's discipline. It's something you can relate to, and I'm not a buff guy by any means, but you see why young men want that because it gives them something that's hard. And it fills the urge to self improvement. And we went a few decades by saying the things a lot of guys want, not all guys, obviously, those things are toxic or those things are bad or those things are aggressive and destructive. But they're they're aggressive and destructive only when used to serve evil ends. But to serve noble ends, the idea of self improvement, the idea of being aggressive, the idea of being strong, is something, we should celebrate and give people avenues toward. And just, you know, I hope I'm not violating privacy, but Richard has a a tradition of taking a camping trip on New Year's Eve, and it can get cold in that 10, nine degrees. And that's what... That's the kind of love of adventure that not only boys want. Girls want that too. And we...
00:45:28 · David Brooks, Scott Galloway
We've we've reduced the ways, young people can experience adventure, in part because of all the helicopter parenting. [00:45:36] S0: You talk about things around community and comity of man and care for your neighbors. I don't hear you talk about your own family a lot. And to the extent you're comfortable, I'd just be very interested to know we have a lot of young men who listen, a lot of new dads, a lot of new husbands. Curious, know, we're... Look, we're on the back nine, right? And hopefully we've learned some stuff that we can impart on other people, or share our mistakes so other people don't make the same ones. What advice would you have for new dads? And what have you learned about being a dad?