Podbit · On Purpose with Jay Shetty
Treat people the way you want to be treated. Simple, ancient, and apparently forgotten. Towns argues that somewhere along the way humans started adding stipulations to this basic law — and that removing them is all we really need.
Where this was said
At 1:07:20 · chapter starts 1:06:48
Shetty asks about Mac Miller — Towns's self-described all-time favorite artist and genuine friend. Towns recalls Mac showing him unreleased music and asking a deceptively simple question: everything sounds good loud, but how does it sound in silence? [1] — Karl-Anthony Towns "Mac Miller showed Towns unreleased music and asked: 'Everything sounds good loud, but when there's no noise, how does it sound?' Towns rein…" 1:03:40 Towns didn't process it as a life lesson in the moment, but sitting here now he interprets it as the defining question of character: are you the same generous, authentic person when no one is watching, nothing is being reported, and there is no upside to being good? The Final Five rapid-fire questions land a series of memorable answers: the best advice is 'live in the present because the future's not guaranteed'; the worst is 'you can't do this without me'; money doesn't bring happiness — people do; he thinks too much about what he can't control; and the one law everyone should follow is the golden rule. The episode closes with a Gatorade gift of guava lemonade — Towns's favorite flavor, introduced to him by Jada Pinkett Smith — and a mutual, heartfelt appreciation.
Towns used to believe money would solve problems and bring happiness. Then COVID took his mother and eight family members. All his wealth couldn't save a single one of them. The people were always the source of happiness — money was just how you brought them together.
Towns says he used to believe money would bring happiness, but losing his mother proved that wealth couldn't save the people who mattered most.
Social media feeds men and women the absolute worst caricatures of each other while stripping away the everyday, imperfect relationships that would calibrate their expectations. Combine that with smaller families and fewer cross-sex friendships, and you get a generation that talks about the opposite sex constantly but almost never to them.
The 'would you rather be alone with a man or a bear' debate went viral not because men are objectively more dangerous than ever, but because an entire fear industrial complex of influencers and safety products had already primed women to feel that way. Once the algorithm identifies you as worried about personal safety, the content and the scrunchie drink-covers never stop.
Women feel less safe not because danger has increased, but because trust in institutions — police, churches, schools — that used to enforce safety norms has collapsed. Young women are far less likely than older women to believe those institutions will handle sexual assault responsibly, leaving them with only individual self-protection as a fallback.
Even self-identified feminist women consistently told Daniel Cox in interviews and surveys that they want men to open doors, pay for dates, and show demonstrable care. The internet noise around 'benevolent sexism' drowns out this widespread, quietly held preference.
In focus groups in Philadelphia and Raleigh, every single hand went up when participants were asked if parents discussed financial stability and education. Zero hands went up for marriage or parenthood. Parents are shaping their children's ambitions with total silence on the experiences that matter most.
American families are smaller than ever, with roughly 1 in 5 children now growing up as only children. Without the daily friction of siblings — shared bedrooms, shared bathrooms, resolving disagreements — young people enter adult relationships without the negotiation muscles relationships require.
Online dating optimises for your existing preferences rather than expanding your horizons. People who meet online give bad first dates almost no second chances; people who meet through mutual friends are far more forgiving. The disembodied, checklist-driven nature of apps removes all the social cues that actually reveal character.
A split-sample survey found that men judge male and female cheating identically harshly, and women judge male cheating the same way men do. The outlier: young women are dramatically less likely to call female infidelity morally wrong, suggesting shared-fate thinking and personal experience of being cheated on are reshaping the moral calculus.
The monk mode trend encourages men to withdraw from social life to work on themselves — but this is precisely backwards. The research is clear: close friendships are the single most powerful predictor of whether a man dates, commits, and becomes his best self. Self-improvement without social reintegration is just sophisticated avoidance.
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