The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Raising Young Men, The Case for College in the AI Age, and Relationship Red Flags
27 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What insights does Scott share about raising young men?
Welcome to Office Hours of Prop G. This is the part of the show where we answer questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehoursofpropgmedia.com. Again, that's officehoursofpropgmedia.com.
Or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode. Our first question comes from LeftInvestment1759 on Reddit. They say, If you were facilitating this discussion with our group, what would you want to hear from us? Or what question do you wish more moms asked after reading it? Thanks for all you do. Oh, thank you.
It's funny, it's like the questions you should expect are the hardest ones to answer. What do I want moms to think about? Well, one, so my mind immediately goes to the following. Some of the differences between boys and girls, if you were to reverse engineer when a man or a boy comes off the tracks to one single point of failure, it's when he loses a male role model.
So what happens in homes where there's, we have more single parent homes now than any nation in the world. And depending on which survey you look at, it's either 82 or 88% are headed by a woman. And what happens with girls in single parent households is while there are some, they might be more likely to be depressed.
They oftentimes are more promiscuous because they're looking for attention, male attention in the wrong places. They have similar outcomes on educational attainment, on future income, on actual suicide. So you could argue that they actually do okay. It's an entirely different experience with boys.
The moment a boy loses a male role model through death, abandonment, or divorce, at that moment, he becomes more likely to be incarcerated than to graduate from college. He becomes twice as likely to kill himself, twice as likely to be a substance abuser.
So it ends up that boys, while being physically stronger, are neurologically and emotionally much weaker and much more susceptible to the absence of a male role model. So in terms of what I, my advice is more for single mothers, and that is make sure that you have males involved in the boy's life. And even saying that five years ago was, well, what, Scott? Women can't raise good men?
Yeah, of course they can. I was raised by a single immigrant mother, lived and died as secretary. I didn't have, my dad wasn't very involved in my life. But it's really important that, one, you have men involved in the young man's life. What else would I suggest? Gosh, a recognition that they just mature later. I try to, I mean, dumb stuff. I try to roughhouse with my boys.
I try early on to set up guardrails. This is more parenting advice. I love what First Lady Obama said. You've got to be an asshole now such that there are not assholes later. What I have found as a parent, and this is probably more advice for the man, I thought that being a dad would be a series of Hallmark commercials where I did something and I got more love back.
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Chapter 2: How does the absence of male role models affect boys?
Good things sort of happen to me, but they don't really because my first inclination is to call my mom and boast and have her cement it. This is all a long-winded way of saying the investment you're making now, the frustration, sometimes the lack or the unrequited affection, effort, and love, trust me on this, it comes back to you. The relationship I especially think between
a single mother and her son, I just think it's singular. It's the defining relationship in my life. I'm friends with a lot of men who were raised by single mothers, and there's the rest of the world, and there's our mother. Full stop. That's it. We may not even like each other, but this is what we protect at all costs, is our mother.
So if you're spending a lot of time on effort that you don't feel is rewarded raising your son, If you don't feel like you're getting nearly the love or regard back that you're investing, just trust me on this. He comes back to you. Question number two comes from Christian Robin on LinkedIn.
They ask, in a world where AI makes knowledge and skills basically free, what's the real value proposition of higher education now? I just think this narrative that AI is going to destroy higher education is such ridiculous bullshit. Effectively, what you have is, and Justin Wolfers, the economist, said this, that AI can be a substitute or it can be a complement. So...
Technology was a substitute for secretaries. My mother was a secretary. And now basically there are no more secretaries. There's word processing and manual dictation or whatever it is. But at the same time, the number of bank tellers has actually gone up because technology has become a compliment.
And now they, instead of doling out money, because ATMs can do that, they say, would you like a mortgage? Or can we talk to you about single premium variable life? Or should we be talking about your financial planning? So it ended up being a compliment. So
I believe that college higher education, if it's reasonable and you get into a decent school and you're cut out for it, is still kind of the ultimate compliment to your life. One, you're going to learn a lot, even if it's how to use AI or not use AI or how to write thoughtful prompts.
Two, you rise or fall to the level of your peers, and college kind of scoops off the highest level gene pool foam. And that is... So athletes who manage to study, who manage to be able to work in groups, who don't have mental illness, who maybe have matured at a decent rate, quite frankly, who come from wealthy families oftentimes.
And that's sad to say, but oftentimes they're better prepared for the world. And you'll make, you know, a lot of my friends were wealthy at UCLA and I benefited from that. It was aspirational and they had contacts. If that sounds unfair, yeah, it is. It's called capitalism. At the same time, capitalism reinvests.
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Chapter 3: What advice does Scott give to single mothers raising sons?
Okay, fine. It's not for everybody, but if you have the opportunity and the economic wherewithal to go to a decent slash good school, Few things in life. If we had a pharmaceutical that made you twice as likely to get divorced, half as likely to kill yourself, half as likely to be obese, 10 times as likely to run for political office someday, okay, would we hoard that drug?
And this is on us in the academic industrial complex. The key isn't making college more valuable to people, it's making it a better value. And that is expanding the aperture, the throttle, in terms of access and lowering the cost. That's what we should be talking about, not whether AI is gonna change education.
And just to wrap up here on my rant, the head of Dartmouth, I was at the Atlantic Festival and the president of Dartmouth was talking about AI in education. Fuck that, here's an idea. You got an $8 billion endowment, you let in 1,100 freshmen, you're in the middle of fucking nowhere, let in 11,000 and stop all this mental masturbation and distraction around AI.
Here's an idea, just let in more kids. We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for Prop G comes from AMP. AMP is a sleek, minimalist home fitness device you actually want in your house. That means no cables, no clutter, no nonsense. You just walk up, turn one smart dial, and you're working out in under 15 seconds. And full disclosure, I love this piece of exercise equipment.
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