Episode Transcript
Antifascist Dad Podcast Ep 5: Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway | A Review
[00:00:00] How many wellness brofluencer podcasters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
[00:00:05] Three. One to film it, one to sell the “Ancestral Light Protocol,” and one to warn that light bulbs are like seed oils for your eyes.
[00:00:21] I’m Matthew Remski. That was an antifascist dad joke, and this is the Antifascist Dad Podcast, episode five.
[00:00:28] Big episode today—longer than usual. No guests this week. It’s just me and my review of a new book that I believe will make a huge splash in the English-speaking world, especially among U.S. liberals and Democrats trying to figure out how to win back male voters from the Trump movement—and wondering whether they can get away with offering little more than self-help and capitalism pep talks from mega-wealthy Boomer podcasters.
[00:01:01] Yes: today I’m reviewing Scott Galloway’s *Notes on Being a Man*, published today, November 5, by Simon & Schuster.
[00:01:12] If you haven’t run into Scott Galloway, you must be blissfully offline—maybe in a cabin in the woods, unplugged from the discourse and building mutual aid networks on behalf of us terminally online folks. I salute you, because Galloway is everywhere: entrepreneur and marketing professor at NYU Stern, bestselling author, prolific podcaster, with an estimated net worth of $100 million (perhaps more).
[00:01:38] He hosts or co-hosts multiple shows, including *Pivot*, *The Prof G Pod* (with spin-offs like *Office Hours*), and *Raging Moderates*. Collectively these reach millions of listeners per month.
[00:02:04] Born in 1964 and raised by a single mom, he describes himself as a scrawny, gawky, pimply latchkey kid who seemed unlikely to succeed until he found his appetite for money, his gift for gregariousness, and his ability to tell good stories.
[00:02:25] Today he rides a tidal wave of parasocial capital as a go-to “common sense” guy for what remains of mainstream liberal news. New round of Trump tariffs? A producer has him on speed-dial. When Charlie Kirk gets murdered, Anderson Cooper brings him on to make sense of it all—as the podcast giant pivoting from business and tech commentary to troubled-young-men whisperer.
[00:03:01] Why is this book an Antifascist Dad Podcast subject?
[00:03:07] Listeners know we do a “Fashy Dad of the Week” segment, and you might wonder if that’s what I’m implying. The answer is no.
[00:03:18] Scott Galloway is not a fascist dad—far from it.
[00:03:22] In fact, on a psychological and even spiritual level, there’s a lot of solid, even admirable material in this book.
[00:03:31] But from the perspective of political economy and history, Galloway’s book will do little to challenge the rise of fascism—much as I think he wants it to.
[00:03:42] I’ll argue it eloquently, poetically, and quite unconsciously perpetuates the attitudes and assumptions that lead to capitalist crisis and, eventually, fascist repression.
[00:03:59] That’s why I put Galloway and this book in the squishy-center category.
[00:04:05] It’s just as important—if not more—to understand squish politics as it is to understand far-right politics, which are easier to identify.
[00:04:15] It’s important to ID and rip apart outright fascist sympathizers like Jordan Peterson, whose self-reliance shtick and Jungian mythology have broad appeal. But over time, the real fascists tend to expose themselves as broken clowns, limiting their influence to the right-wing echo chamber.
[00:04:42] High-quality squishes, on the other hand, fail to strongly oppose fascism while enjoying strong centrist appeal. You won’t catch them discrediting themselves with outright bigotry, anti-vax rhetoric, climate denial, anti-intellectualism, or bootlicking tyrants.
[00:05:04] They’ll acknowledge racism, sexism, and wealth inequality.
[00:05:10] But when push comes to shove—whether from lack of imagination or a desire to protect their own positions—their instinct is to defend the liberal-capitalist status quo.
[00:05:27] That’s the main work I believe Galloway’s book does.
[00:05:33] I’ve had about two and a half months with this book—time to sit with it and give it a fair reading. Worth it, because Galloway is doing something complex.
[00:05:49] Shout-out to the Simon & Schuster publicity department for the early review copy—
[00:05:56] —even after I picked apart the reactionary nostalgia, blind spots, and gender essentialism of the podcast project that beta-tested this content. This past summer, Galloway co-produced a limited series called *Lost Boys* with Anthony Scaramucci. I reviewed it on two *Conspirituality* episodes, “Galloway and the Mooch: The Lost Boys of Capitalism.” Links in the show notes.
[00:06:29] The good news: the book is a lot better than the podcast.
[00:06:35] Maybe because it’s not co-written with Scaramucci—sorry, Mooch, you were the dead weight on that pod.
[00:06:43] The bad news: the book is a lot better than the podcast.
[00:06:53] To start, I’ll summarize the text using Galloway’s core hook.
[00:06:59] The “notes” in the title number 44, distributed as crystalline points of wisdom over 10 chapters that mix memoir, pop sociology, and evo-psych takes as Galloway recounts his Don Juan-esque journey toward capitalist tycoonship—through disillusionment, depression, and shame—toward paternal wisdom.
[00:07:29] His philosophy and personal story are so integrated the title could have been *Notes on Being Scott Galloway*, which tracks with his branding-expert credentials.
[00:07:45] To give you a taste, here are the first three notes.
[00:07:53] “There’s no such thing as ‘toxic masculinity.’ That’s the emperor of all oxymorons. There’s cruelty, criminality, bullying, predation, and abuse of power. If you’re guilty of any of these things—or conflate being male with coarseness and savagery—you’re not masculine, you’re anti-masculine.”
[00:08:17] That’s on page three, bruh.
[00:08:21] He basically opens with a straw-man diss on feminist discourse. I’ll say more in a bit about what it tells us about his sourcing.
[00:08:32] Note two: “I’m still learning.”
[00:08:36] There’s a lot of self-deprecation here. Galloway struts his accomplishments but also confesses his sins.
[00:08:47] He touts his workaholism but pins it on insecurities.
[00:08:54] He strokes his own ego but periodically dissolves into Zen-like humility.
[00:09:00] As refreshing as the transparency is, it allows him to plausibly deny he’s setting himself up as a guru when—well—he kind of is.
[00:09:12] Note three: “Most boys come apart when a male role model leaves. If there is no father present, the son is more likely to be incarcerated than to graduate from college.”
[00:09:26] Stark—but he provides no citations.
[00:09:34] On “most boys come apart when a male role model leaves,” there are studies—but unsurprisingly more research focuses on boys and male role models than on children of any gender losing role models of any gender.
[00:09:57] On the second: father incarceration correlates with sons’ incarceration more than college graduation. But in other instances of paternal absence—divorce, sickness, and (in the future) kidnapping by ICE—the correlation is weaker.
[00:10:22] He doesn’t define the reason for absence; “leave” makes it sound voluntary.
[00:10:30] The two-part note packs a punch because the “absent father” trope is a cultural trigger. But rhetoric over nuance obscures the mirror case: boys raised by a single father, where the mother is absent through incarceration, sickness, or death, also typically see lower educational and mental-health outcomes than those raised in intact nuclear families.
[00:11:07] This reveals Galloway’s reductive technique: mash complex human problems through the meat grinder of gender anxiety.
[00:11:21] My copy is full of underlines, marginalia, and “FC” for fact-check. Strong claims abound; endnotes are thin.
[00:11:43] I chose not to run a full fact-check because Galloway admits he lacks credentials in sociology and gender, and because his arguments will be valued for affect more than rigor. But given the absent-father passage, how much he leaves out, and his reliance on Richard Reeves—also not a trained social scientist—I hope someone audits the claims and citations more thoroughly.
[00:12:24] Those first three notes form the book’s backbone. Taken together, the 44 notes boil down to five themes:
[00:12:49] A reframing of masculinity not as inherently dangerous but as distorted when corrupted by cruelty or power abuse. This pushback against feminist discourse is common in manosphere-lite spaces, but Galloway avoids outright reactionary rhetoric by stressing kindness, fatherhood, and responsibility.
[00:13:02] A hymn to meritocratic liberalism: work hard, fail fast, take care of your body, manage trade-offs through grit and self-help.
[00:13:17] Heavy use of capitalist productivity metaphors: boys must learn to produce “surplus value” and gain “momentum” using “forward-looking indicators.” He transplants business terms into personal life—a hallmark of his crossover from MBA classroom to mass self-help. With some exceptions, Galloway’s inner world seems colonized by capitalism.
[00:13:50] Pro-family traditionalism: lots about the role of fathers, marriage stability, and male protection of women.
[00:14:02] Love and kindness as counterweight to alpha tropes: a repeated refrain of love, affection, kindness, and making others feel safe—distinguishing him from harder-edged manosphere influencers.
[00:14:22] I’ll spend most of this review unpacking the politics of these points, which unfortunately overshadow straightforward advice sprinkled throughout. This is a feature of men’s self-help writing: no-brainer best practices most people agree on take little space, so they’re padded with social commentary that carries political messages. Reasonable bits get hidden like Easter eggs—convincing readers that the egg hunt was the point.
[00:14:59] Who can argue with Jordan Peterson saying “Clean your room”? It’s the stuff around it that’s the problem.
[00:15:06] Here are Galloway’s main bits of advice, boiled down:
[00:15:11] Cultivate physical and mental strength: exercise, prioritize health, build resilience; the goal is confidence and the ability to protect others.
[00:15:25] Prioritize genuine relationships: seek unconditional love, foster strong friendships, and actively engage with family—happiness stems from deep connections.
[00:15:52] Find your talent and work diligently: discover what you excel at, apply consistent effort, take calculated risks, and learn from failures.
[00:15:57] Practice “surplus value” and generosity: give more than you receive, acknowledge your privileges, create opportunities for others, and act as a protector for family and community.
[00:16:09] Limit addictive digital consumption: reduce excessive screen time—especially social media and porn—to avoid isolation and nurture real-world skills and interactions.
[00:16:25] All solid advice.
[00:16:37] Why this book, now?
[00:16:41] Galloway announces in the introduction that he’s trying to punch back against Trumpian patriarchy and its influence on young men. He writes: “I believe the 2024 election was about struggling young people, especially struggling young men. If your son is in the basement vaping and playing video games, you don’t really care about trans athletes or territorial sovereignty in Ukraine—you just want change; that is, chaos and disruption. Seeing this, the Trump campaign flew into the manosphere with coarse language, crypto, Rogan, UFC, and Hulk Hogan. Donald Trump gained 16 percent with young men in 2024—the biggest pivot from Democrats to Republicans of any age group. Another big shift was among women aged forty-six to sixty-four, who, I believe, are the mothers of struggling young men. The election was supposed to be a referendum on women’s rights. It was instead a referendum on failing young men.”
[00:17:52] This signals how Galloway might be positioned by Democratic consultants for 2028—and who he’s writing for, while ostensibly “for everyone.”
[00:18:12] He’s describing a parent I’ve never met: an erstwhile or cultural Democrat so disgusted with a boy’s vaping and gaming that they vote for Trump—because Trump will motivate their son?
[00:18:31] How’s that working out? Is it motivating to watch immigrants black-vanned, or missiles fall on Iran?
[00:18:40] I suppose a $50,000 signing bonus to join ICE is motivating.
[00:18:46] For Galloway it’s personal. He doesn’t mention it in the book, but on the *Lost Boys* podcast he says he’s got a son in the basement vaping and gaming.
[00:19:01] He hasn’t said who he voted for in 2024, but he endorsed Harris during the campaign and has been a consistent Trump critic.
[00:19:11] Whoever’s son we’re talking about—maybe the vaping, gaming kid is depressed or frozen by the state of the world, and the last thing they need is more chaos and disruption.
[00:19:27] He also describes a parent with no global concerns, no climate terror, no solidarity commitments, who doesn’t clock attacks on trans people—maybe the kid in the basement is gender-curious and afraid of the world as it is.
[00:19:53] He’s writing for a crowd for whom the genocide in Gaza is so off-radar he doesn’t mention it, or Israel’s political influence, while leaning on U.S. geopolitical power as something readers should be grateful for—and their sons should develop patriotism to protect.
[00:20:27] The ARC shipped with a letter from Stephanie Frerich, VP and executive editor at Simon & Schuster.
[00:20:36] The house is betting big. Frerich sets the tone for how the book will be read and deployed: “My greatest hope is that *Notes on Being a Man* inspires a larger conversation around masculinity, gender, equality, and how patriarchy harms men, too. With Scott’s guidance, I believe we can rise to the challenge so that everyone can thrive.”
[00:21:12] A few flags. “Inspiring a larger conversation” is classic podcast talk. Not bad, but the podcast world (myself included) can drown in talking and hand-wringing. For a business prof concerned about material conditions for young men, the talking overshadows the fact that the book advocates only two concrete policy suggestions: a $25/hour minimum wage and better housing infrastructure.
[00:22:01] Frerich nods to bell hooks with “how patriarchy harms men.” If you don’t know hooks: “The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves… If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.” (*The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love*, 2004).
[00:22:53] Galloway doesn’t talk much about patriarchy explicitly. “Patriarchal” appears once. He’s clear about male privilege and critiques emotional rigidity in masculine conditioning.
[00:23:11] But he doesn’t quote hooks or any feminist writer.
[00:23:15] His references are mostly pop science, evo-psych, policy, pop economics, health, and internet news.
[00:23:25] He’s transparent about his lack of expertise; he’s curating his own common-sense vision.
[00:23:35] This goes further than overlooking sources. Back to the first note: “There’s no such thing as toxic masculinity…” “Toxic masculinity” is a structural critique of patriarchal conditioning—and in many ways (especially late in the book) Galloway rails against it. So he’s co-opting the substance of a cultural critique while misreading its source.
[00:24:26] He does it with a verbal trick: masculinity must, in his thinking, be a transcendent, eternal good. Therefore “toxic masculinity” can’t exist because “masculinity” can’t be bad. That ignores that “toxic” is a qualifier inside a category. It’s dodgy stuff for an NYU professor.
[00:24:52] I’ll return to the straw-man problem, because it’s a feature—not throughout, but in the framing of why he’s writing. The whole thing hinges on “boys are in crisis,” which hinges on inventing ways boys are uniquely overlooked or held in contempt.
[00:25:20] If my thesis holds—that this book will stand in for policy in the Democratic quest to “Speak to American Men”—we’ll see liberal sources doing citational labor on Galloway’s behalf to make him sound more progressive than he is: implying fluency in feminist discourse while avoiding basic conclusions of feminist politics around unpaid labor.
[00:25:59] Liberal-centrist capitalism needs punditry that acknowledges, as Galloway does, that unpaid caregiving keeps capitalism alive—but answers not with pay, universal healthcare, or childcare, but with men cooking more and saying “thank you” to partners. Be honest about contradictions everyone can see, then offer crumbs that boil down to bootstraps pep talks.
[00:26:47] That’s the moral hook of liberalism: implore people to behave better so you don’t interrogate the exploitative logic.
[00:26:58] I predict the people who “hooks-wash” the book will be liberal or progressive women—because they know the material and want Galloway to be saying what he isn’t. The generous read: they’re trying to Trojan-Horse a centrist book into a richer conversation. I don’t buy it.
[00:27:29] Similar dynamics appear in the racial politics. He rues casual racism at Morgan Stanley and notes how wealth inequality hits Black men and boys harder. But there’s no history—no origins, redlining, or reparations. We’re left with “individuals should try to be less racist.”
[00:28:05] His two policies—$25/hour and more housing—would help generally. But the bibliography is overwhelmingly white, mainstream, policy/health-oriented, with only a handful of race-conscious sources and no CRT texts or major works by Black and other marginalized writers. It’s the familiar liberal-Democrat posture: talk about racism enough to signal you see it; offer little material repair.
[00:29:01] Frerich’s note matters here. My read: this is a Boomer-written book that will track best with Boomers and centrist Gen X, but it needs Millennial buy-in—especially from women.
[00:29:36] Referring to “Scott’s guidance,” first-name familiarity—that’s the parasocial hook. The elder-guru persona is locked in.
[00:30:18] So what’s Guru Galloway’s core thesis on being a man?
[00:30:24] Right after the bit about mothers of boys voting for Trump, he writes: despite the age gap with his sons, there are certain givens about being male that don’t expire. Masculinity is a three-legged stool. In answer to “Why are men here and what do men do?”: men protect, provide, and procreate.
[00:31:03] Branding expert at work: a tagline to launch a thousand memes. Not just alliteration—three “pro-” words, engineered for maximum hookiness.
[00:31:21] On TV, he stays relentlessly on message, always coming back to toxic social algorithms and unfair intergenerational wealth transfers. In the book, he’s equally disciplined: the triad recurs every few pages. Most readers won’t slow down enough to examine it—so let’s do that.
[00:32:16] Protect. Galloway makes a lot of hay out of testosterone—the “holy molecule”—which he says he now supplements in his mid-60s. Muscle and virility to be enhanced in the gym and exercised on the dating scene. But T’s ultimate purpose is to protect the vulnerable. “A man’s default setting should be to move to protect, in any situation.”
[00:32:53] This instinct, he says, tracks to being raised by a single mother on a secretary’s salary, with poverty hunting them like a ghost. A key moment: protecting her health and peace of mind by staying out of trouble. Later, when she’s ill with cancer and he has money, he can protect more: “It was one of the first times I remember feeling like a real man.”
[00:33:44] His core model for protection is his mother—i.e., mutual aid. Do for her what she did for him. Later, in learning unconditional love for his children, his mother is in the background again.
[00:34:16] Provide. The pattern repeats. He writes eloquently about his partner, Beata—a high-earning professional—being everything to their son: “She’s his world, his ibuprofen, his Neosporin, his shock absorber, the patch to his busted rowboat.” He can turn a phrase.
[00:35:14] Economically, he recognizes women are increasingly primary earners and sometimes men need to get out of the way. He tracks the data while nursing an anxiety that if men don’t feel the reward and status of providing, things will fall apart.
[00:35:49] So what is this really about? His thorny journey to self-esteem. There’s retconning: the man now worth nine figures reaches for an evolutionary rationale for amassing wealth—even as women around him provide as much or more.
[00:35:53] Procreate. Men are here to procreate. What does this have to do with gender? What if you don’t want kids? Not much here beyond hackneyed “young, dumb, and full of cum” vibes.
[00:36:15] At one point: “Men have more than double the brain space and processing power devoted to sexual drive.” Then: for women, desire consists mainly of wanting “to be wanted.” No citations; just as well—both claims are sexist, pseudoscientific nonsense reinforcing men-as-horn-dogs/women-as-passive stereotypes. If that’s “what women are,” then of course you must protect and provide for them.
[00:36:47] To be generous: he ties sex—along with protection and providing—to loyalty in relationships. He’s not a monogamy moralist, but he’s committed to sexual compatibility and loyalty as foundations of the family bonds he wants for young people.
[00:37:31] Repeated throughout—reparative in relation to his charismatic but disloyal father—is the claim that the best thing a father can do for his sons is treat their mother with love and respect. The book ends on it. The perennial grace of the mother may obscure the sexual politics.
[00:38:13] If the 3Ps don’t hold water as a gendered thesis, what’s he doing? Holding up basic human drives as masculine aspirations for men he thinks aren’t living up to them? A persuasion technique: these generally good human qualities will also make you “manly”?
[00:38:44] Maybe partly. But I think he’s a true believer in the gender binary. The giveaway is the resentful framing: “Why are we so averse to identifying and celebrating what’s good about men and masculinity, and why does it matter?”
[00:39:15] Who’s he asking? A small contingent of online leftists blunt about patriarchy and misogyny? Aren’t men elevated, validated, praised, and given power, publishing deals, and podcasts all the time?
[00:39:34] He continues: we won’t prosper if we convince boys they’re victims, or that they needn’t be persistent and resilient, or that their perspective isn’t valuable—otherwise we’ll have a society of old people and zero growth.
[00:39:56] (There’s the 3Ps ping again: without bodily strength and economic confidence, men won’t want sex; no babies.)
[00:40:21] “If we can’t convince young men of the honor and unique contributions inherent in expressing what makes them male, we’ll lose them to rabid online niches.” He cites the Empire State Building, the Hoover Dam, Normandy, the Bulge.
[00:41:21] “When Germans or Russians are streaming over the border or firing from the beach, big-dick energy isn’t just a nice idea, it’s mandatory.”
[00:41:31] He loves a big-dick-energy sentence.
[00:41:37] He reframes mid-century prosperity as a state-enabled reward for veterans’ “masculine excellence”: GI Bill, FHA loans, highways, marriage, family formation—“Peak Male.”
[00:42:16] He omits uneven distribution: Black veterans routed through segregated facilities, facing violence at home.
[00:42:35] It’s a Stan-Lee/MCU cartoon vision of history—with Tom Hanks seasoning.
[00:42:52] On the Hoover Dam he notes heat deaths and poisoning. True—but is that bravery and sacrifice unique to masculinity, or desperation produced by the system he praises?
[00:43:27] On the war stuff: has he missed Hollywood’s vast WWII canon centered on men? Also: why Russians at the Bulge? Regardless, weren’t all those soldiers in hell?
[00:44:03] Peak-Male bravado looks like battlefield luck amplified by oil and machinery. Postwar prosperity enforced by Cold War militarism.
[00:44:39] Two more straw men, both pushing the “parents are too soft” line.
[00:44:49] First: college. “A recent American theme is that our kids don’t need college… a blatant lie parents tell themselves… Find me someone who tells a child ‘You don’t need college,’ and I’ll show you a parent who’d eat their own legs if their kid got into Harvard.”
[00:45:18] He oversimplifies legitimate concerns about affordability and necessity, and there’s hypocrisy: he repeatedly cites his free ride to UCLA, calls tuition “indefensible,” but proposes no universal tuition or debt cancellation.
[00:46:00] Second: participation trophies. He argues a “phony feel-good school ecosystem,” with less fitness emphasis, leads to “the eighth-winningest kid” getting a trophy—“actively bad for young men.” It tells them nothing is their fault, they’re responsible for successes but not failures, and they can sit passively and still win.
[00:46:35] Really? Any sources beyond Matt Walsh or Ben Shapiro? No citations. It caricatures inclusion and self-esteem work and ignores balanced approaches. It’s part of an implicitly ableist thread—he never engages disability or neurodiversity as facts of life requiring social accommodation.
[00:47:36] Who is this book for? Not my sons—even if they’re white like Scott’s and share some references (Steam can be a surprising class-leveler). We’re not in unimaginable wealth. He drops casual flexes—flying the kids to Scotland, Paris, Barcelona for football matches. Around here, if we pick apples and the van doesn’t break down, that’s a win.
[00:48:38] Even without the wealth gap, my kids would find little of use: no acknowledgment of neurodiversity’s gifts and challenges; no challenge to the assumptions of capitalist education. The world is the world; boys must adapt and comply.
[00:49:00] Chapter Six’s health advice largely ignores ableism and social determinants of health.
[00:49:26] I’ll say something harsh: no one should presume to write about parenting without some encounter with caring for a child with high support needs. Not because it makes you better, but because nothing shows you who our society is built for like watching a neurodivergent child navigate it—and then recognizing your own lifetime of compliance.
[00:50:15] Ultimately, *Notes on Being a Man* is written for well-off parents of mainly white, able-bodied, straight boys—seen as struggling but deserving competitors in American meritocracy. Expect sympatico interviews with six-figure hosts sharing Galloway’s class zone.
[00:50:42] He is wise enough to say this about meritocracy, recalling his service jobs: “In the United States, the concept of meritocracy has a dark side… My co-workers saved money by living together and sent most of their paychecks home… They worked harder than me and spoke better English. But I was born a white, straight man in Laguna Niguel… Life in the United States isn’t a meritocracy or even close… Service work is an anti-meritocracy vaccine.”
[00:52:05] It’s great—and sounds like a polished Democratic politician who “feels your pain.” But policy-wise? Minimum wage and housing—no universal healthcare or broader socialization of services.
[00:52:35] He does suggest: “Every young man should work a service job at least once… You gain empathy.”
[00:52:54] Solid on its face—but it spotlights the narrow audience: kids with parachutes, encouraged to do a bit of labor tourism, then go back to the cottage. No injunction to pursue social justice.
[00:53:46] It reminds me of Simone Weil—autistic, antifascist, mystic—who spent a tween holiday talking to hotel staff about working conditions and unions instead of playing croquet.
[00:54:13] He also turns the poverty tourism outward: “Send a hundred college sophomores to the worst, most embattled parts of the world… Most will be on the first flight home.”
[00:54:45] Packed with rationalizing foreign wars, brushing up against “shithole countries,” and the old Cold/Gulf War line that U.S. troops protect domestic rights.
[00:55:06] Patriotism is core to his code. It pings throughout. Oddly, he cites no military experience, friends, or family. It feels like FOMO or pandering—one moment that sounds like plotting a political run. In his closing letter to his sons, he urges patriotism and a vow to protect the country. Not blood-and-soil—more “this is where I got lucky.”
[00:56:07] Another political tell: historical naïveté. On *Lost Boys*, Scaramucci praises Henry Ford’s “social engineering,” omitting Ford’s union-busting “Service Department,” admiration for Hitler, and trucks for the Reich.
[00:57:24] Galloway isn’t that simple-minded, but he defaults to cringe resources when appealing to disciplined masculinity: Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts—colonial officer, racist and antisemitic slurs in his books; *Scouting for Boys* as imperial propaganda. He quotes Kipling’s “If,” written just before “The White Man’s Burden.”
[00:59:03] I’m not saying Galloway harbors colonialist attitudes. He’s carrying big chunks of his culture, unquestioned: a liberal habit of laundering history to cherry-pick inspo. It shows a dim radar for fascism’s roots.
[00:59:43] Back to contradiction.
[00:59:53] The majority of the book encourages young men to follow his workaholic path and deploy capitalism tips for fun and profit.
[01:00:05] The minority tells men how to spiritually recover from capitalism’s moral injury. Detox before retox.
[01:00:12] Advice on surviving—not changing—the system.
[01:00:17] From his origin story: “Both my parents took huge risks coming to America… This is capitalism: prosperity for the smart, hardworking, risk-tolerant.”
[01:01:14] Later: “Many of you will have a gag reflex at my Boomer capitalist mentality or some such bullshit. No, it’s America—a platform to deploy skills and grit to add value and accumulate resources.”
[01:01:21] That’s the majoritarian voice: bootstraps exceptionalism.
[01:01:25] Then the teaspoon of sugar. In the love-and-marriage chapter: “Love received is comforting, love reciprocated rewarding, and love given completely is eternal… To love someone completely is the ultimate accomplishment… You are still just a blink of an eye, but the blink matters.”
[01:02:17] Ten-out-of-ten—no notes.
[01:02:30] In his closing letter to his sons: “Let yourself be happy. Be less hard on yourself than I was. I’ve wasted years focused on what I missed or screwed up. Be me + better. As a favor to me, evolve our family DNA and embrace the moments of your life as you experience them. It’s all we really have; the here, the now.”
[01:03:13] If he’s honest about his story, he earned those lines: the single mom who raised him; the harm to a former wife he admits; the impatience at home.
[01:03:58] The curse of being a branding expert is that no one—besides close people and a therapist (he admits he’s never gone)—can be sure how much is spin. But there are clues he’s learned real things—either via good modeling or examining his faults.
[01:04:06] In the love chapter, he advises: when you go out, pack energy bars and a shawl that can double as a pillow. Hard to fake caregiving detail like that.
[01:04:23] In the parenting section he offers grounded notes on physical affection with young boys anchoring a parent in the present.
[01:04:43] He says he got crucial advice from friend Sam Harris (because all titan podcasters are friends): “Rather than trying to parent, cajole, discipline, or guide your children, your real purpose is just to love them.”
[01:05:05] That’s the best one-sentence parenting advice you could give. It hurts to credit Harris—whose Islamophobia has paved liberal-centrist apathy toward genocide—someone incapable of applying that same advice to other people’s children.
[01:05:35] That paradox is the book: domestic wisdom that’s great, paired with blindness to broader social implications and moral demands. Honeyed aphorisms in the mouths of priests who never hear the universal call.
[01:06:07] Which is why the book will be so attractive—and so useless—unless it inspires readers to dig deeper into capitalism’s inequalities that Galloway treats as destiny.
[01:06:30] Deleuze and Guattari’s *Anti-Oedipus* (1972) argues that capitalism’s contradictions mandate a “schizophrenic” experience of life (apologies for the dated term): entrepreneurial freedom dissolves old rules, while productivity and debt restrain desire—turning potential breakthroughs into breakdowns.
[01:07:52] Or go with Marx’s simpler contradictions shaping Galloway’s background: we produce collectively; profits are privatized. Production serves profit, not the common good. The profit motive chases limitless return, driving ever-greater exploitation. It’s a mess with no exit beyond collective action.
[01:08:44] Absent a mass movement, people need coping mechanisms. Marx focused on religion as consolation and social control.
[01:09:13] Galloway says he’s an atheist with softening edges: skeptical, “scientific,” once disdainful, now respectful of religion’s comfort, community, compassion. He quotes Seneca and laments the void left by the absence of congregation. He’s older, wants to serve others, be part of something bigger; he mentors young men. “Is that enough?”
[01:10:27] I don’t think so. With millions of followers and thinly veiled political ambitions, the opportunity to organize young people around fairness and equality is right there. He’s a systems thinker hamstrung by American individualism, so his fatigue seeks private resolution in reverie.
[01:11:12] In the homestretch, he offers religious relief from capitalist chaos—domestic ritual and familial love. Chapters 7–10 deliver legitimate paternal wisdom: a prayer for forgiveness and atonement after the adventure of navigating capitalism.
[01:11:55] It’s the strongest part—and the most likely to distract readers from political limits.
[01:12:06] Peak spiritual quote: “Supposedly each of us has in us bits of every material present at the dawn of the universe… our matter will be present in galaxies, stars, planets, and organisms birthed trillions of years from now… So the question is… how do you make people feel? Do they feel insecure or inspired? Cold or comforted? Do you bring joy, harmony, love?”
[01:13:06] Great personal questions. Expand the scope: Did you work with others? Serve the poor? Risk to overthrow injustice? Repair the planet for the next seven generations?
[01:13:38] In five years of *Conspirituality* work, I’ve studied how MAGA is aided, abetted, sometimes driven by White Christian Nationalism—escalating into Christofascism. That alliance could make Trumpism more robust than earlier fascisms with more ambivalent church ties. Trump’s grift gets a soul from Evangelicals.
[01:14:30] Liberals, centrists, “raging moderates” use spirituality differently: not to authorize policy or mask aggression, but to console themselves inside a bubble of peace floating through a world they’ve given up on changing. You can write beautiful sentences in that bubble. You can connect.
[01:14:58] There are lines here—like healing the family DNA by being present—that connect with me. I can imagine coffee with Galloway or a walk. And I’d ask, in good faith: you know capitalism top to bottom; you’ve mastered it. Surely you can figure out a way to turn it inside out?
[01:15:47] Because he likes stories, I’d remind him how many revolutionaries became class traitors: Engels, son of an industrialist; Alexandra Kollontai, a general’s daughter; Kropotkin, who gave up aristocracy to develop mutual aid and write “An Appeal to the Young” (1880)—addressed, like Galloway’s book, to privileged youth struggling with capitalism’s contradictions.
[01:16:19] To the young doctor who learns health depends on not being poor; to the young lawyer sickened by suing peasants for landlords. He assumes privileged youths are free-thinking, compassionate, justice-yearning; he urges continuous action by committed minorities to bring transformation.
[01:17:09] “To rise from the ranks of the working people… and not to devote oneself to bringing about the triumph of socialism is to misconceive the real interests at stake, to give up the cause and the true historic mission.”
[01:17:30] Thanks for listening, everybody. See you back here on the main feed.
