Conversation with Jessica Tarlov — The State of the U.S. Presidential Election

Jessica Tarlov, a co-host on The Five, Fox’s weeknight news program, joins Scott to discuss how to think about the U. S. presidential race, specifically from a strategic perspective on both sides of the aisle. Follow Jessica on X, @JessicaTarlov. Scott opens with his thoughts on the potential TikTok ban. Algebra of Happiness: Scott’s ketamine trip reflections. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Here's your report.

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• 1:00Scott Galloway?

  Episode 291. 291 is a country code belonging to the northeast African country Eritrea. 1991, the Soviet Union officially dissolved, and Disney released Beauty and the Beast. What is the thing I learned from Beauty and the Beast? Any girl can fall in love with you, given you lock her in the basement for long enough.

• 1:20Scott Galloway?

  Hey, that is, in fact, the plotline.

• 1:24Speaker 04

  Go, go, go!

• 1:34Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 291st episode of the Prop G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Jessica Tarlov, a co-host on Fox's weeknight news program, The Five. El Cinco. We discuss with Jessica the state of the US presidential election, including Biden's state of the Union, and what to look out for going forward. Okay, what's happening? The Dog is officially wrapping up in the great state of Texas. I've been at South by Southwest for five nights. I've never spent this much time in Texas, and I gotta say, I love it. I absolutely love it. This city feels modern, hopeful, youthful. Digital, just you just keep meeting all these people with a ton of options who decided to exercise their option to come to Austin. Everybody always says, oh, I don't like Texas, but I like Austin.

• 2:19Scott Galloway?

  Well, you know what? Austin is in Texas and it's a fantastic reflection on the great state of Texas. All right, I am, what have I done here? Cause you want to know more than the dog. Stayed at the Austin proper, which is very cool and very hip. And I like the bar scene here. And it's also one of these hotels that's sort of like a Disney attraction. If you see I'm staying at the proper people come meet you and I like that. Cause I like people to come to me. I've done a bunch of panels, the she media panel, the equality lounge, did a live pod recording of both pivot and prop G, which was nice at Atlassian and a bunch of fun parties.

• 2:58Scott Galloway?

  And then last night pivot was, we won the podcast for best news podcast at the I heart podcast awards beating out the daily. I can't remember who else we beat out, but Jesus Christ, what the fuck were they thinking? Quite frankly, the daily, in my opinion, is the best news podcast in the world, but it was this bunch of this incredibly cool, young millennial crowd. And then me, and I, I got the award and I think everyone was expecting me to get very serious and I got, you know, very kind of a hush came over the crowd. So of course I said, you know, I speak a lot about young men and most recently I decided to help my son or, you know, take on the responsibilities, any good father does about sex education.

• 3:43Scott Galloway?

  So I went into his room with a, like a condom and a banana. And he said, dad, what's the banana for? And I said, well, I can't get hard on an empty stomach. Boom. They were not expecting it. The Gen Z and the millennial crowd were not expecting that from the boomer. I'm actually Gen X. All right, moving on to the news, the talk of that, oh, I also did ketamine therapy. And so if I sound grateful, if I sound grateful today, I am, I'm especially grateful. I went to, I did this full on treatment yesterday at a clinic called, I think it's called Kuva or Koya. Ketamine therapy for me was something I wanted to do. It was like Burning Man. I always wanted to do it, but I always chickened out.

• 4:28Scott Galloway?

  I don't have real, I suffer from what I'd call mild anger and depression issues, but I'm not up and down. I don't feel like I need to explore anything. And I was also very worried because I have a really nice life. I have really deep, meaningful relationships. A lot of people I love, a lot of people who love me. And the last thing I needed right now was to discover that something had happened to me when I was a kid and that I had, you know, repressed it. As far as I'm concerned, whatever demons I have have, have been for the most part hermetically sealed somewhere. And I like that my shit has been repressed. And I'm not sure I need to let it out and deal with it. And that was what I was worried about. By the way, that did not happen. But I will think more about it and process it. I'm still processing it. But I'm pretty sure last night, when there was a bright light,

• 5:09Scott Galloway?

  every time I saw a bright light, I thought I saw Nana. Anyway, but it's wow, Jesus Christ, that's an experience. Whoa. I mean, they really, that shit's for real. Whew. I mean, I think I might do a special episode on it once I find the words to describe it. Okay, anyways, anyways, enough about my ketamine therapy. Let me just say I'm grateful to all my listeners. I'm grateful for all of you. You mean, you mean something to me. You mean something to me. Anyways, let's move on to the news. The talk of banning TikTok is making the rounds in the headlines again. U S House members introduced the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. Well, that rolls right off the tongue, which led to a unanimous vote of 50 to zero to ban TikTok in the

• 5:53Scott Galloway?

  U S or in the House, in the House Select Committee, I think, should ByteDance fail to divest the asset by the end of September. Whoa. I mean, this is, Congress or C-SPAN is some strange season where everyone's getting along. By the way, this, this season of C-SPAN is off the hook. The chairman of the committee behind the act says, America's foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States. TikTok's time in the United States is over unless it ends its relationship with CCP-controlled ByteDance. Whoa. Smell you, Mr. Chairman. By the way, I don't agree with that. I don't think, I don't think America's foremost adversary is China. I think it's our foremost competitor, and it is unfortunately becoming adversarial.

• 6:36Scott Galloway?

  I would argue that Russia and Russia and Iran are our foremost adversary, except, except our biggest adversary, quite frankly, is our optimism, or specifically that we are letting foreign actors and letting our polarization and algorithms turn a small but not insignificant number of Americans against each other. I think that the biggest, let me brag for a moment. I got called by the White House to talk about AI. And they, of course, want to talk about misinformation and it becoming sentient and, you know, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, no, no, no, you're missing it. The biggest threat of AI is the following. There are millions of young men who feel as if they have very few economic prospects, almost no romantic prospects, and are increasingly turning

• 7:21Scott Galloway?

  to the need or fulfilling their need for relationships to algorithms and screens. They think that they can find friendship on Reddit and Discord, that they can find productivity or money on Robinhood or Coinbase, and they think that they can find sex on YouPorn or something resembling a relationship. And I think they're going to move that desire for a relationship and sex AI girlfriends. And if I were a foreign adversary, I would find millions of young men who fit this profile and start trying to tempt them or seduce them into a relationship with an AI girlfriend or some sort of AI relationship, and then weaponize them against their own country. And I think there are a lot of very vulnerable men, a shocking number of which are in our military or serve at our soft tissue of our ports,

• 8:01Scott Galloway?

  specifically our transportation infrastructure. Anyways, I think that is the biggest threat of AI, that it will have the ability to create content and these kind of reasonable facsimiles of relationships that weaponize some domestic terrorists in waiting. I also think it's the biggest threat in terms of just general depression and anxiety among young people, specifically young men. So what do we have here? What do we have? TikTok? Is on the verge of being banned because they started sending messages out. They didn't even get any of these to their phones saying, stop a TikTok shutdown. And it basically said, Congress is planning a total ban of TikTok. Speak up now before your government strips 170 million Americans of their constitutional right to free expression. This will damage millions of businesses, destroy the livelihoods of countless creators

• 8:46Scott Galloway?

  across the country and deny artists an audience. Let Congress know what TikTok means to you and tell them to vote no. Call now and it geolocates you, connects you with your local representative's office. Okay, now, here's the issue, and it's summarized by the following. I did not get this. However, my 13-year-old son did get it. Okay, so first off, why is my son getting shit I'm not? I don't like that segmentation to begin with. Granted, he has much different tastes than me, thank God. But I do not like the CCP, or a company that is CCP influenced, if not controlled, turning my 13-year-old son into a foot soldier against Congress. I just, I'm not down with that. And what happened?

• 9:31Scott Galloway?

  It's really interesting. Uber did the same thing and it was effective. They had people who were using Uber call the New York City Council or the mayor and their office was flooded with calls from angry New Yorkers. It was an election year and boom, they withdrew or they pulled back this new tax on Uber. And it was effective. And I thought TikTok executives thought, we'll do the same thing and we'll weaponize our unbelievable massive audience and user base. Except it didn't. It backfired. Why? And this is kind of funny. Supposedly tens of thousands of minors, like 13, 15 and 17-year-olds called Congress and had no idea what they were talking about, but just said, you're going to take my TikTok away?

• 10:16Scott Galloway?

  This supposedly stiffened the back button. It supposedly totally backfired and really pissed off our representatives. And this looks like it's going to get through the House. It looks like the less certain, the less certain vote will be in the Senate. But the Senate tends to be more reasonable. I think it'll be reasonable to ban this and the president has already said they would sign it. Now, what's going to happen here? What's going to happen? Presidential candidates are saying that Biden supports the ban, as we said. Trump has had a change of heart and no longer thinks we should ban it, though he was the one that tried to ban it initially and then carve it up like a birthday cake and give it to his friends. He's now decided. That it's bad because anything Biden says, he decides to take the other side of thinking that as long as I can continue to insult the president, I mean, this guy really is,

• 10:59Scott Galloway?

  whatever you think about him, I can't get over his followers. I love that everybody feels a real need to empathize with his followers. I get that progress or prosperity is here and it hasn't been distributed equally, but folks, the guy's a rapist and I'm not, a jury of his peers decided he was guilty of sexual abuse, which in any other language in the real world is called rape. He's an insurrectionist. He built a nice golf tent to, at a bar to enjoy viewing like a fucking polo match, an insurrection, which he inspired and organized. And now he's decided, I mean, he has absolutely no moral base whatsoever. There's no, there's absolutely no consistency. I'm kind of just fed up with trying to figure out, understand and empathize with people who want to support a rapist and an insurrectionist.

• 11:43Scott Galloway?

  Anyways, he's decided that on true social, that in fact, Facebook is the true enemy of the people. I sort of agree with him. Anyways, this legislation I think is actually going to go through and granted, I have been wrong on this so far, but it feels like it has a lot of momentum here. But here's the thing, this is what's going to happen. This is what's going to happen. Words matter and the pro ban TikTok contingent, including myself, has used the wrong word. It shouldn't have been ban TikTok. It should be regulated. And there are a lot of companies and a lot of organizations. Did we ban Fox News? No, we said, listen, Rupert Murdoch, if you want to own Fox and Fox gets to a certain size, you can't be an Australian citizen because we have rules around foreign ownership of

• 12:27Scott Galloway?

  media, at least traditional media. So he became a US citizen. Media is regulated. We want to regulate TikTok and say that anything with this type of influence can't be foreign owned or specifically owned by a small number of bad actors or states that we see as contrary to our interests. I think the list is North Korea, Iran. And China, and there may be one other, I forget. Anyways, it's regulation, and this is what's gonna happen. On the eve of the ban, they're going to, they being ByteDance in the United States Congress or White House, are gonna come to some sort of agreement and some sort of accommodation that gives the US some sort of comfort that this isn't in fact the propaganda threat that it is in fact, or security or defense threat, which it is. And they will spin it to US interests, and this is what's gonna happen. You're still gonna have your

• 13:11Scott Galloway?

  TikTok. And the people who own ByteDance, a lot of investors in China and Chinese, the Chinese government, and also US investors, including Sequoia Capital and General Act Partners, are gonna make a shit ton of money, because here's what's gonna happen. TikTok is a phenomenon with 1.7 billion users, and it's growing much faster than Meta, which trades at about five or six times the valuation. So what gives? What gives is the cloud of uncertainty due to a potential ban has suppressed the value of the company. And once, on the eve of the ban, money will win. Money will win. And once the Chinese or the CCP decide, okay, the jig is up, we no longer have this incredible propaganda tool. Okay, fine, but we'd rather also not lose a third of a trillion dollars or a quarter of a trillion dollars. We'll

• 13:55Scott Galloway?

  come to some sort of accommodation, we'll spin it to Western ownership. And then, what do you know, overnight, the shareholders, the shareholders of ByteDance are gonna increase the value of their shares, of their holdings, by 50 to 100%, because the only reason this thing's not worth 500, 600, 700 billion right now, is this cloud of uncertainty that hangs over them. And once that is solved, you're gonna see the value of this thing absolutely skyrocket. So what is this? This is a win for American security, this ban, or as I like to call it, this regulation. It's a win for consumers. You're not gonna lose your TikTok. Money wins. Money always wins. There's too much money here. There's too much money on the line. They're gonna figure it out. And then finally, finally, the shareholders of

• 14:37Scott Galloway?

  ByteDance are gonna see the value of their stakes go up. So what's the buy right now? You can buy TikTok shares or ByteDance shares, and this is not financial advice, this is a prediction. You can buy shares of ByteDance, it's somewhere between 200 and 250 billion dollars on secondary platforms, and my guess is, within three or six months, they're gonna be trading. And a much greater valuation, once again, this overhang of insecurity around the adversarial relationship is over. I think this is a really interesting case study in foreign ownership. The reason why I think this legislation will pass court muster is that it's much simpler and it doesn't take a First Amendment or it doesn't run afoul of First Amendment. The approach they take is it's simple trade asymmetry.

• 15:18Scott Galloway?

  That B D Y, the car company, should be allowed into the U S Y because they allow Tesla, right? That makes sense. Okay. Shein should be allowed in because they, the Chinese, allow North Face into China. Okay, fine, trade symmetry. There's no trade symmetry here. American media companies are not allowed into China. And as a result, just basic trade policy, we have the right not to allow their media companies into the United States. By the way, 62% of folks 18 to 29 say they use TikTok. Isn't that crazy? And then among people 65 and older, it's 10%. And what do you know? Young people feel much differently, much differently, even normalized for traditional variance in age or variances in age, because the frame through which they evaluate almost everything

• 16:02Scott Galloway?

  is a CCP controlled or influenced property. What could go wrong? What could go wrong? In sum, in sum, America is doing its job here. I think the White House, the House Select Committee, it's so nice to see something bipartisan 50 to nothing. And the bottom line, the bottom line is China and the CCP should not have the ability, the ability to weaponize my 13 year old and turn him into a foot soldier. That is not cool. I have not signed up for it. It is absolutely time to pass this bill. And guess what? Guess what? You're still going to get your TikTok. It's going to be a win, win, win. We'll be right back for our conversation with Jessica Tarlov.

• 16:45Scott Galloway?

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• 17:45Scott Galloway?

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• 18:30Scott Galloway?

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• 18:52Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch-up. When audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. The regentic trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400 plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools, including Claude or Cursor. Want proof?

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• 20:08Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Jessica Tarlov, a co-host on The Five, Fox's weeknight news program. Jess, where does this podcast find you?

• 20:18Jessica Tarlov?

  I'm home in New York.

• 20:20Scott Galloway?

  Nice. So let's bust right into it. It's been a week since Biden's State of the Union. What have been your biggest takeaways? Not only in terms of the talk, but the reaction to it?

• 20:32Jessica Tarlov?

  I guess the biggest takeaway is how hungry the American public was for Biden to seem like he can do the job. Like, everyone was kind of waiting with bated breath for will there be this moment that could put Ezra Klein's concerns aside? And a lot of their own concerns about his age and his mental fitness. And you're asking a lot of someone in that age bracket. I know you've talked about this before, to give you five more years of the hardest job on the planet. And I think there was this collective sigh of relief. We've seen a little bit of a bump in the polling from it, but more just everyone's psyche is a little bit lighter about it. When you talk to people, they're like, okay, we can do this.

• 21:13Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it feels like he spoke with a vigor and a strength that's totally unbecoming an 81-year-old. I mean, just, just, uh, just, just while you said on the five, that you, you know, the address went well because, quote, "The Republicans would have used the age attack" and are now basically saying that he's an aggressive partisan. What leg do you think, or what will be the Republican go-to now?

• 21:36Jessica Tarlov?

  I think that they'll continue with, "He doesn't have the temperament for it." So we'll switch from that. Like, he vacillates between "old man" and "old man's, you know, get off my lawn." They're calling him, like, "Old Yeller," for instance, I've, I've heard tossed around. We'll get a little more of this. Does he take Adderall? Some people going so far as the cocaine bag in the White House was actually his. Adderall's completely legal. If he is taking Adderall, I really don't mind at this point. But I think that they'll, and we'll see the fallout from special counsel Hirsch's testimony, which is going on about Biden holding classified documents and that he didn't charge him because

• 22:18Jessica Tarlov?

  he's a nice elderly man, or something like that. And people will play around with that, but above all else, I feel like they won't go to the issues, which is really where they have the highest chance to win. And that's where Democrats can make up a lot of ground by just focusing on that for the moment.

• 22:35Scott Galloway?

  See, you actually have a background in data and consulting, and I want to see if you agree with this thesis and then ask a specific question. My thesis is the national polls, especially now, are literally meaningless. That they're fun to look at, but they just mean almost nothing. If you look at, you know, I think Herman Cain was polling at the top at this point, 12 or 16 years ago. It kind of comes down to five states. Have you done any research, or do you have any thoughts around what is or is not happening in those, actually, small number of counties in those swing states?

• 23:08Jessica Tarlov?

  Not necessarily on the county level. I think it's a little early for that, but definitely it's kind of five to seven states that decide all of it. And you know how important it is from where everyone is going for their early campaign stops, right? Like, they're showing up in Pennsylvania, they're showing up in Georgia, they're showing up in Wisconsin. They're raising money in New York and California, but we're really only good for dollars, right? Otherwise, if you want to be persuadable, you're going to the place where there actually are persuadable voters. And in terms of focus, let's say, on the big cities, that shows the Democrats are concerned, as always, with turning out their base. What will black voters do? What will Latino voters do? What will young voters do? And Donald Trump is holding his campaigns in more rural areas, for instance, where his

• 23:52Jessica Tarlov?

  voters tend to be. So you can see the beginnings of it, but I wouldn't say that the polls are totally meaningless because trend lines matter, right? Like, we look back to 2020, and a lot of the kind of big honcho pollsters, like the Nate Coens of the world, the Nate Silvers of the world, have been referencing the fact that Biden never trailed Trump in 2020. So we are seeing a little bit of a difference in terms of how the electorate is responding to these two four years later. And I think that that is meaningful because you need to change your behavior as a result of it. It doesn't mean Joe Biden's going to lose, but if you see enough polling that says, for instance, he's a little soft with X demographic, like, black men, for instance, is something that always comes up. Black women?

• 24:37Jessica Tarlov?

  No problem. They're showing up, they're jazzed about it, they're ready to vote for Biden-Harris. Black men, there have been all of these, quote, "barber shop tours," focus grouping, where they're hearing, like, "I don't know, what has he really done for me?" Kind of the Charlemagne the God argument, which basically says Donald Trump is an insurrectionist. I'm not interested in that, but I really want to see the brass tacks of what Biden has delivered. And so you know, because that's showing up in this early polling, that that's a soft area for you and you've got to pay attention. So that's where I think that it's meaningful, just like a snapshot of time. You know, mid-March, these are our issues. Mid-April, these are our issues. Mid-May, et cetera. And then you hope by September, October, that you don't have those issues anymore.

• 25:23Scott Galloway?

  Let's talk a little bit about demographics. My sense is, I mean, we take for granted, we think that the nation is a static organism, and it isn't. The populace and the nation has changed since 2016. A lot of people have died, and there's a lot of new voters. And my sense is, and again, I just might be talking my own book or engaging in confirmation bias, but don't the demographic shifts favor Biden in that the people who've died are mostly older, white, mostly conservatives, whereas the new voters are going to be mostly non-white and lean left? Don't the demographics foot well to Biden right now?

• 25:59Jessica Tarlov?

  They definitely do if everyone is engaged. I mean, it's like the stupid truism about elections. It should go this way if everybody turns out. But we know that that's the biggest threat, certainly that the Democrats are facing. Kamala Harris gave an interview a couple of weeks ago where she said, "We're not really afraid of Donald Trump, we're afraid of the couch." Right? That it's bad weather that day and you're just going to sit at home. I was in Iowa for the caucus, was it like a month ago, a month and a half ago? And it was the coldest day in, I don't know, 50 years. They had really low turnout. Now, it didn't matter on the Democratic side, it really only mattered for Republicans who are actually having a competition, but you saw really depressed turnout as a result of that.

• 26:42Jessica Tarlov?

  But overall, yes, about the demographics, but we are seeing this uptick in a little bit of conservatism, especially like if you look at an issue like Israel-Hamas, which we've talked about before, where you can see minority voters leaning a bit more to the right than you would expect or that I would like. And that's something that the Democrats really need to work on catering to.

• 27:07Scott Galloway?

  And so you're advising, they say, "All right, Jess, you're data-driven, smart, pragmatic. We want you to advise us on the two or three core messages of our platform. Do that for the Republican Party right now. Do that." You're a hired gun. I mean, even with the billion, billion of bucks each party is going to raise for the presidential race. They have finite capital and they have to zero in on a couple of messages. What do you think those messages are for each of the candidates?

• 27:34Jessica Tarlov?

  I think for the Democrats, and I hate to say this because it's such an important issue and one that really matters to me, I think we really got away, get away from talking about saving democracy. That January 6th isn't something that works for people anymore. That's kind of baked in that they think it was an insurrection, attempted coup, et cetera. And you have to talk about these frankly, really boring things. My friends run a very cool polling firm called Slingshot Strategies and they're doing all this work for Reid Hoffman. And they've found that talking about things like preserving social security and Medicare, you know, creating good jobs, protecting a woman's right to choose bodily autonomy, that's really what you have to be talking about.

• 28:14Jessica Tarlov?

  And if you are not focused on issues that matter for everyday people, like it's a privilege to sit around saying like, oh, do you, do you remember this exact detail of what happened on January 6th, or can you believe Trump said this at a rally? People, real people glaze over, right? They're still in the phase where they know that their prices are a bit up. They're going down, they're going in the right direction. But I said the other day, you know, having a campaign slogan of we've had the best recovery in the G7, it's just not sexy, right? No one is putting that on a bumper sticker. So the real brass tax kind of stuff, again, the entitlements are huge, not just for older voters, but matter to younger voters.

• 28:56Jessica Tarlov?

  It's interesting also how much the debt and deficit ranks as important things that people want to talk about. No one actually wants to rein them in, but people love to hear that kind of stuff. So I would like a campaign that was pretty boring.

• 29:12Scott Galloway?

  Entitlement reform, you know, or protecting entitlements or, or ensuring, you know, they always couch entitlement reform and let's put it in a lockbox and make sure that it's around for a long time. At the same time, you know, we're spending six and a half trillion or $7 trillion a year and we have $5 trillion in receipts. So people are concerned about debt and deficit, yet the two don't square up, right? And do, do you think that you, these are talking points? Or do you think that the nation is ready for the hard truth about, uh, do we need to raise taxes or cut, cut entitlements? The answer is yes. I mean, all roads lead to the same place with this level of deficit spending. Do you think that the public is ready for that type of?

• 29:52Scott Galloway?

  You know, straight talk, or it's more just jazz hands, talk about the debt, but also say, we need to save social security. To me, those are just diametrically opposed.

• 30:02Jessica Tarlov?

  It's interesting. They're ready to talk about it when they're polled on it. So my old boss actually did a ton of work for the Simpson Bowles Commission, which is probably the most sensible commission that we've had in decades. And people are willing to give a little if it means saving on the other side, right? They are genuinely concerned about the debt and the deficit. I understand there has to be some personal sacrifice, whether that's means testing, for instance, or just rich people saying like, I should forego this. There's no reason that I should get a couple thousand dollars from the government when I live in Malibu and everything is great, for instance. That does not work in an election. It's like all morals go flying out the door. And voters then don't want to hear it. It's

• 30:47Jessica Tarlov?

  a very select group that can continue to have these very sensible conversations when they're actually picking their candidates. So you are completely correct, and it will never change in an election year, that people want to hear, like, nothing will ever be taken away from you. And, you know, if we have to print more money, it's worth it. And stimulus is the way to go. And the Biden administration has a pretty strong argument for it, actually, that the investment in the country has really benefited us.

• 31:19Scott Galloway?

  And now do Republicans.

• 31:20Jessica Tarlov?

  Well, the messaging that they are going to go with is definitely this border security issue, which is the number one issue now across the board and for a lot of independents. I was surprised to see how many Nikki Haley voters, I'm just kind of moderate Republicans and independents, were into that. Same thing happened in 2018. Remember when the caravans first came around? And then they miraculously disappeared the day after the election. I don't know how that's feasible. But they're going to go, and they probably should for what their base wants. Talk about border security and crime and policing. And then the economy. The problem is with the economy is that they're really struggling to make the metrics work for them right now. And a lot of

• 32:03Jessica Tarlov?

  Republicans who are maybe being more honest about it, like even Larry Kudlow, who worked in the Trump administration, has given some of the more enthusiastic two thumbs up for what we're seeing in terms of the economy with job reports, with wage growth, fighting back inflation, et cetera. So I think it's a difficult road. I think for them, they need to stay away, though, from all social issues. They can't even touch them. If they're not willing to revise their platform and say things like, "Climate change is real," or maybe "Kids don't deserve to die while they're sitting in a classroom," or maybe "Heartbeat bells are a little archaic or ridiculous," they're going to get pummeled.

• 32:42Scott Galloway?

  I gotta ask, what do you make of the Republican rebuttal by Senator Britt?

• 32:47Jessica Tarlov?

  Oh, my God.

• 32:48Scott Galloway?

  Go on.

• 32:49Jessica Tarlov?

  I was stunned. Well, it was like, the Democrats' night, we thought it couldn't get better. And then Katie Britt comes on.

• 33:00Speaker 06

  First of all, we see you. We hear you. And we stand with you.

• 33:09Jessica Tarlov?

  I was like, is this heaven? Have I gotten there? Am I about to defend my life with Albert Brooks up here? I don't understand, because she's actually very competent and very smart. I've seen her give a bunch of interviews. She's charming. She's exactly what the Republican Party needs, right? Like, she's 42, I think, has two kids, she's married to a strapping football player, Alabama values.

• 33:35Scott Galloway?

  Central casting, yeah.

• 33:38Jessica Tarlov?

  And whoever coached her, because they must have sent someone in to do that, did her a grave disservice. And then it comes down to the basics. And they just, they gave her a bunch of junk to say. I mean, the story about the poor woman who was sex trafficked through Mexico that she made it out.

• 33:58Scott Galloway?

  During the Bush administration.

• 33:59Jessica Tarlov?

  Right, 20 years ago, which does not make it.

• 34:03Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 34:03Jessica Tarlov?

  Any better, I guess, or worse.

• 34:06Scott Galloway?

  How's it Biden's fault? Yeah.

• 34:08Jessica Tarlov?

  Right. And now you have that woman speaking out against her. And it totally deflated the sails out of the Lake and Riley story, the tragedy out of Georgia, where the young nursing student was killed by an undocumented guy, or I should say illegal if I was Biden, though now he has backtracked on that. And, you know, everyone's talking about that. And then we're all watching SNL and thinking Scarlett Johansson is funnier than Colin Jost and, you know, she's the savior of all of this. And, I mean, I don't know if the reports are true, but apparently internally, the Republicans are really freaking out that that's what they put up there on a night where Biden also looked so strong.

• 34:55Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

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• 35:29Speaker 02

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• 35:59Scott Galloway?

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• 37:07Scott Galloway?

  I want to talk about you, Jess. You're, this is going to sound very sick of him. I think you're a fantastic role model for young women. I would just like to know, like, how, give us the Cliff Notes on your career and what kind of the biggest influences were on how you got to where you are at such a young age.

• 37:27Jessica Tarlov?

  So I moved to London after college. I did my junior year abroad there, moved back to London and went to the London School of Economics and did a couple of master's degrees and a PhD that was focused on the impact of political scandal on politicians' careers. It all started from a love of Bill Clinton. I have since revised a little bit in the Me Too era, my level of adulation, but I'm...

• 37:57Jessica Tarlov?

  Very in the Clinton camp in terms of what they were able to accomplish and what kind of politician he was, you know, someone who really just excites you. And that's something, you know, obviously, he and Obama have had. And I think part of what Joe Biden's struggles are, right, is that he's not a generational talent in the same way. But I thought, oh, if I could figure out a formula for what you have to put into an apology to get out of a jam, like the one Bill Clinton was in, I would have like the coolest consulting firm of all time. So I was going to create this apology matrix.

• 38:33Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, crisis management.

• 38:35Jessica Tarlov?

  Anyway, it didn't work out. There aren't enough examples to do it that way. So I did a big quantitative study, which is the beginning of my data background, looking at two different UK parliaments. I finished up, I went to work on a political campaign, actually for Boris Johnson. He was running against Ken Livingstone, who, if you know London politics, he was the mayor of London, a crazy anti-Semite. And obviously, what conservative and liberal mean over there is very different than here. So I did that campaign, moved back here and went to work in political polling, mostly on issue campaigns,

• 39:14Jessica Tarlov?

  like for Mike Bloomberg. And then I started going on air in about 2014, 2015. And my old boss, who was Bill Clinton's pollster in the 90s, actually pushed me to do more conservative media. Not only does it kind of sharpen your skills, he said, they need good people out there representing our point of view. And so I started going on Fox and they liked me and I liked them. And I have been there formally since the 2016 election and became the co-host of The Five a little more than two years ago.

• 39:52Scott Galloway?

  You represent a new trend, and that is typically when there's these group Or panel media shows, what they would do is if they were conservative, they'd bring on what I would call a foil or someone who made them look good. Like, remember Hannity, Combs? Whatever you think about Sean Hannity, he's smart and he's charismatic. Sean Combs was not. I remember The View had Cindy McCain, and I thought Cindy McCain just helped them make their points. And what I have found interesting, and it's a testament to Fox, is, and a testament to The View, is I think of, and I think Alyssa Farah is of the same generation. They've said, you know what? When we bring on smart people to push back on us, it just makes the whole show better. Anyways, your thoughts?

• 40:36Jessica Tarlov?

  Well, I

• 40:37Scott Galloway?

  You agree.

• 40:37Jessica Tarlov?

  I don't want to, you know, people who have sat in the seat prior,

• 40:44Jessica Tarlov?

  I have a tremendous amount of respect for, and they also, you know, built these brands that have become so iconic and that I'm benefiting from. But I think that there was definitely a trend towards having either someone more shrill or someone more moderate, you know, in the seat where there could be a lot of kind of nod and smile, I agree with what you're saying, or shying away from a fight. And I think that part of the reason that it works and that Alyssa does such a good job, and I totally agree with you about that, is there's also some intergenerational fire. And that's something that's really important about what's going on right now, that you have a lot of older people still in positions of power

• 41:26Jessica Tarlov?

  that are telling younger people what they should think about X, Y, or Z issue, right? And it's important to represent the ethos of a generation, to be able to speak authentically for people who are in their 30s. Though I just turned 40 last weekend, so I have a whole new decade to speak for. But I think that that's part of it. And then it's also the balance between, you know, what kind of environment you want to create for your audience that might like to live in a safe space versus also what rates and what expands the bubble. And that's a lot of the internet clip culture. Like, I know, for instance, that The Five, the show that I co-host, has the highest share of Democratic viewership.

• 42:10Jessica Tarlov?

  It's about 22, 23%. But also, that majority of people who, quote, "like me," right? Or think that I do something cool or important are not traditional Fox viewers. And they're accessing me through TikTok and YouTube and Instagram and, to some degree, Twitter or X, whatever we're supposed to call it. And that gives what, you know, what we're doing right now, and I should say that Harold Ford Jr., the former congressman, also, we share the seat. So we do it, um, half the week as me, half the week as him. And I think it's great for the viewers to get to see more of like a blue dog Democrat and then also like a more kind of modern Democrat, um, out there representing the point of view.

• 42:54Jessica Tarlov?

  But people are just not ingesting TV in the same way. Even with The View, you know, it's 11:00 a.m. How many people can be sitting at home watching The View? Mostly people who are stay-at-home or retired. I mean, the average cable news, uh, viewer is, what, 66 to 69?

• 43:13Scott Galloway?

  There, there. I heard Fox is 69. Oh, wait. I did the math on this once. Maybe it's 63. So every 43-year-old who's watching Fox, there's an 80s, there's an 83-year-old. CNN brags, because theirs is like 55. It's really, it's shockingly old.

• 43:29Jessica Tarlov?

  Isn't that young? Oh, I would still think it was kind of later 60s. It could, I mean, it could be, but also, the numbers aren't that fantastic as well. So, um, without doing kind of a ratings brag, um, you know, people are, and I think that it loops back to the conversation we were having about politics and the independents and the moderates deciding the elections. People are not interested in the kind of circle jerk conversations that we're having. They don't want to see the fights. Remember at the beginning of the Trump era? It was all like Anna Navarro, and I forget who she was always paired with, and they were like yelling at each other.

• 44:07Scott Galloway?

  That was crossfire.

• 44:08Jessica Tarlov?

  Yes. But like louder and more aggressive. And I don't think that that works for people anywhere. They actually want to see a conversation. They want to know that the people that they're watching are being thoughtful about it and prepared. Um, and I think that that's a big shift.

• 44:26Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, you definitely, you definitely, you and Alyssa both bring, I think are great role models for young people, thinking about how to disagree in not only a civil way, but an effective way. Because whenever I see you respond to what I feel are just kind of ridiculous statements by your co-hosts, you don't ever make it personal, you don't ever get loud, you just respond with facts and data and a view, and they all look like they were just caught, you know, stealing something. They all just look, oh, God, we've been exposed in the middle of, of doing something that's clearly, clearly not accurate. So a couple of things as we wrap up here, you're the mother of one, is that right?

• 45:07Jessica Tarlov?

  Mother of one until mid-April and then?

• 45:11Scott Galloway?

  And you're expecting?

• 45:12Jessica Tarlov?

  Yes.

• 45:13Scott Galloway?

  I knew that, but I've been told unless you see the head crowning, you never say anything about someone who's expecting. So I was, I was setting up for you to say that.

• 45:20Jessica Tarlov?

  That's, that's good advice.

• 45:22Scott Galloway?

  If and how has being a mother and someone who is expecting changed your view, if at all, on politics, what's important to you, in how you approach your job? Having kids for me was the most fundamental change in my life. And it wasn't like instant, I mean, actually it was instant when my first child was born, I immediately freaked out that I didn't have my money, but it also-

• 45:47Jessica Tarlov?

  That definitely happens.

• 45:48Scott Galloway?

  Oh, my God. It's like, oh, shit, I'm successful and I need to make a lot more money. Anyways, talk to me about how it's changed your view of the world at large and, and specifically how you think about politics in our country.

• 46:03Jessica Tarlov?

  Well, it makes you more forward-thinking, right? Like you're, before we were expecting, you know, you think about like, what amazing vacation are we gonna take next year, right?

• 46:15Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, who are we having brunch with? I call it that, how come I, I call it the how come I weekend be more fabulous? That was my focus before I had kids.

• 46:22Jessica Tarlov?

  Oh, my God, totally. And you're like, young, living in New York City, you have enough money for any brunch you want and like any great trip. And suddenly your retirement means something. You're being swarmed with information about 529s. You start to think about all of these things that we did, like higher education. I mean, I'm one of the more overeducated people, certainly even in my friend group. And I went to private school in New York City. And I'm thinking like, well, what if she wants to do a PhD, right? What if she wants to go to med school? What if all these things need to happen? What do I need to do? The being more successful part, but also what does the world look like for her?

• 47:03Jessica Tarlov?

  And it sounds like a cliche, but it just changes. And you start to reimagine lives purely based on what will be better for these little people. Like, we could make it work from anywhere. I mean, you're said, I don't know exactly where you are right this second, but you have a very international life. I don't know if you're in London or New York, or you're still in Austin.

• 47:25Scott Galloway?

  Austin, Texas.

• 47:26Jessica Tarlov?

  You're still in Austin. Right, and you're hooked up and you're doing this and you don't have to miss a beat for your lives. But your boys have a whole ecosystem that matters to them, from their friends to their academics, to the kind of culture that you want to raise them in. I thought a lot about, how do I get back to Europe? I still think that it's better to raise children there. You know, on the weekend, like, do I want to go to Paris or do I want to go to Philadelphia? I love Philly, but.

• 47:54Scott Galloway?

  That's a tough one. That's a tough one.

• 47:57Jessica Tarlov?

  If you want a cheesesteak, I guess you have to go with the Philly option. But then you do think about, like, I'm not some climate change radical, but you do think about the quality of the earth. I think a lot about, obviously reproductive freedom. I'm going to have two daughters. You know, what happens if they go to college in a state that's not going to let them get the care that they need? You know, girls sometimes get pregnant in college and they sometimes don't want to have that baby. Or something terrible happens, you know, and family plant. Anyway, I don't need to give you a whole Dobbs recitation. But everything becomes more forward looking and everything becomes less about you. I have never cared about myself less in life than when I've had a child.

• 48:41Scott Galloway?

  Hundred percent. It's the way I describe it is. For the first time in your life, you are legitimately, instinctively and naturally more concerned with something else, more so than you. And I found it actually quite, it's, there's a lot of anxiety, I gotta make more money. If I fail, I fail for this thing too. But it's actually quite liberating and I find, I find it relaxing. It's like by Thursday, I was like, how do I hang out with more fabulous people, have more relevance, make more money? And now it's like, well, I know what I'm doing. I'm going to soccer practice and taking them to some, it's just, it's somewhat liberating you're, to think about something else just automatically. It's like your life is redefined in a pretty positive way.

• 49:24Scott Galloway?

  It's hard the first couple of years, especially if you're like me and you're selfish. There's so much that you're saying that's, that I relate to. I lived in New York with my partner and kids. And I remember when our second one came along, I'm like, well, we want to send them to Grace Church or First Presbyterian because we're narcissists and we want to be able to tell our friends at birthday parties that, oh, we're First Presbyterian or Grace Church family. It was $58,000. Plus in the interview, they ask you if you're philanthropic, which is code for how much money are you going to give us?

• 49:52Jessica Tarlov?

  Are you giving to me, not to other causes?

• 49:54Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, they don't care about Planned Parenthood. They're like, how much money are you going to give us at the auction? And so I thought, okay, pre-tax, I'm going to have to make another quarter of a million dollars a year or $200,000 a year to have two kids in this city. And I moved to Florida and I did it for a lot of reasons. Our grandparents are there, but some of it was economic. I decided, okay, if I can have a remote lifestyle, and I can, I'm blessed with that. I can, my cars, my house, my plane travel, everything can be paid for in tax savings. And it, and then in terms of Europe, the reductive analysis I've made is I think you should stick, I'm really good at living other people's lives, Jess, so call me anytime you want me to tell you how to dictate your life. But America is still the best place to make money. Europe is the best place to spend it.

• 50:37Scott Galloway?

  Although the, the real gift with purchase of living in London is that. You know, school shootings, trans rights, a woman's rights. These aren't even conversations in London. They're like, well, of course a woman should have rights to family planning. Of course, we're not going to have a assault. It's not even a conversation. They're like, they look at us and they kind of cock their head and, but also to be clear, seven of 10 companies have gone public in the UK in the last 10 years are below their offering price. The UK hasn't grown in five years. There's just, money matters and there's not the same opportunities for economic security there are in the UK. So my net advice is keep killing it, bank some money in the US, move to a low tax state,

• 51:22Scott Galloway?

  bank more money and then move to London. Boom, you see, it's all figured out, Jess.

• 51:26Jessica Tarlov?

  I'll just go on the Galloway plan.

• 51:28Scott Galloway?

  There you go. There you go. Right, ride that train.

• 51:30Jessica Tarlov?

  You've solved all of my problems. If you could also give birth for me next month, that would be great as well because that's pretty icky.

• 51:36Scott Galloway?

  You know, a few more ketamine trips, I might try. So, last question, and I know this is something near and dear for both of us, and I'm, I'm having trouble, I'm going to talk about Israel. I'm having trouble reconciling how to thread the needle, speaking openly and honestly about how I feel about it, while recognizing the very real concerns that, quite frankly, it's turned me off the far left. It's, it's almost taken me from center left to center right. It's created really strange bedfellows here. But I'm curious, one, if you're willing to talk about it personally, how it's impacted you personally, but also, how do you think it plays out in the election?

• 52:18Scott Galloway?

  I can't tell if this is going to help Biden or Trump. What are your thoughts?

• 52:24Jessica Tarlov?

  So, two-part answer, I guess. I'll start with the election part of it first. So I think it's basically a nothing for Trump. I, I don't think he's actually touched the issue. I expected much, much more actually out of him. He came, came out of the gate pretty terribly criticizing Bibi, which I, I am myself am very critical of him, but to the people who would support Trump because of Israel, that was a major no-no. And he, he doesn't really talk about it anymore at all. In terms of for Biden, my hope? Is that this is not an issue that we are talking about because whatever hostages

• 53:05Jessica Tarlov?

  are alive, and I have very low expectations for how many of them are still alive or in kind of any sort of good working condition. Obviously, the reports from the child psychologists to the general practitioners of what they have seen on these hostages that have been freed are so harrowing that you, it makes you wonder if these are lives that are going to feel worth living for these people. And that's a total heartbreak. But I don't envision it being what we're going to be talking about come the fall. If Netanyahu can, you know, continues with kind of what he's doing with the settlements and making this about other

• 53:45Jessica Tarlov?

  things besides October 7th, he should be out by then. And you have seen this kind of sea change in the administration, not that there isn't a support for Israel, but that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has gotten so enormous that Biden cannot afford to just stand there and say, Israel, you do whatever you need to do anymore. So I don't foresee it being, being a thing at this particular moment, you know, in Dearborn, Michigan. Is it a thing? For sure. Is it going to be when you see those two candidates' names on the ballot? I just don't see it.

• 54:26Scott Galloway?

  Jessica Tarlov is a co-host on The Five, Fox's weeknight news program. She also offers political analysis across FNC and Fox Business Network's FBN programming. Jessica is also the vice president of researching consumer insight for Bustle Digital Group. She joins us from her home in Manhattan. Jess, I was asked by my, my superiors at Vox, if you could co-host a podcast with anyone, who would it be? And I said, the woman who showed me up on Bill Maher. I started out, I started out not loving you. Jess was the, the other panelist on my fourth experience on Bill Maher. And To be blunt, I've always done really well on that show and I love going on the comments and YouTube and getting, you know, hearing people say how wonderful I am, except when

• 55:11Scott Galloway?

  I was on with you, it was all, she's amazing, Jess, your president. I meant what I said. I think you are such a fantastic role model for young women and young people. You work hard, you're data-driven, you are incredibly courageous, you do not back down, but you're, you have this nice thoughtful caring demeanor about you. You're making a shit-ton of money, you're successful, you're married to a big handsome dude, you're having kids. I just think you're a wonderful role model for young people and an inspiration. And I just, it's so gratifying to see someone like you, this new generation of leadership, just ascend the way you are ascending. So, well done and, and, and go, girl.

• 55:51Jessica Tarlov?

  You go, girl. Thank you so much. I think you're fantastic. I was so excited when we got paired on Bill Maher. I did not read the comments, but I doubt that it was all about me. Certainly, for everyone on my side of the fence, they were like, what is Scott Galloway like? Tell me.

• 56:07Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it was. It was. Trust me. Anyways, Jess.

• 56:10Jessica Tarlov?

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 56:11Scott Galloway?

  Have a great rest of the week. Thank you. I know.

• 56:24Scott Galloway?

  Algebra of happiness. So ketamine therapy, I'm gonna do an entire episode on it, I think, because I want to understand the drug itself and its background and just be more thoughtful about it and try and... It's a pretty, pretty intense experience and I want to be thoughtful about it. And I, right now, I'm just kind of struggling to really find the words to encapsulate the experience. But I'm gonna make just a few comments. What kept coming up for me during the hour-long experience was I just got these two images. Each of my boys, actually three images. The first two were these, these exact, crystal clear...

• 57:03Scott Galloway?

  Like almost better, high definition images of these, my favorite picture, I have these two favorite pictures of each of my boys. And they were just right there. And I felt this sense of impossibility, that it would just be impossible for them to ever know. You know, how much they mean to me, just the depth of, I don't know, commitment and affection and just just raw love I have for them. And but the word impossible is the wrong word. In the sense that impossible makes it sound frustrating or not within your reach. And I think of it as like, in this instance, it felt like a good word. They could just never know.

• 57:45Scott Galloway?

  And, and then my partner, uh, she would pop into my mind. And I would feel the sense of like, like surprise, like, oh my gosh, that's my partner. Like, how, how the fuck did I land her? Like, what? Like, it's like, almost like shocking and I was in a bit of disbelief around that I get to hang out with, have kids, experience things, have sex, build a life with this person. It was like, so it was very, it was very, um, in, in that way, just sort of, just like through this, like these massive feelings in my face and images that made me feel sort of very grateful. And, I don't know, unsatisfied, if you will.

• 58:30Scott Galloway?

  Uh, I also, I just think, I think a lot about death, but for me, it's a, or the and I should say, and for me, it's very liberating. Or it gives me a sense of the finite nature of life and I, I think it makes me more fearless. Uh, makes me a little less insecure and a little less anxious. I have very, I have strong fears about being shamed or canceled or doing something stupid and disappointing people. I'm somewhat addicted to the affirmation of others and something that's comforting for me and helps is sort of my. What's it called, Narcan or methadone that helps people get off an addiction? My methadone for my fear about strangers whose opinion matters way too much for me of their opinion dramatically diminishing is that the following, in a hundred years,

• 59:15Scott Galloway?

  everyone you and I know is going to be dead and what they think about you really doesn't matter for very long. It really doesn't matter. And no one's going to remember me in a hundred years and I'm not going to remember them. So why wouldn't you just kind of live out loud and take risks and also forgive yourself when you do something stupid because it really doesn't matter at the end of the day in terms of the, you know, the really the big picture, the universe, the universe is indifferent to what people think of you or what, what you think of, you know, yourself based on what other people think of you. There's somewhat of a release, but the only kind of visions I had as it relates to death, which I'm not obsessed with, but I find very interesting and very empowering for me, is that I have permission to go and I'm not planning to go. I want to live another 40 or 50 years.

• 59:58Scott Galloway?

  I don't want to live much longer than that. But I felt sort of permission to go because I, my ticket has been, my ticket has been punched, if you will, and that I have, not, not that I have people who love me, but I have these things, these humans that I have achieved, you know, the ends, right? There's a means and there's an ends, but I have the ends now. And that is I have these, these entities, these organisms, these things, these people who I just feel this, this sense of such deep commitment, such deep obligation,

• 1:00:40Scott Galloway?

  such incredible regard that takes me out of myself. Like my ticket has been punched. When it is the end, I'll know, I'll know that I was here and I had purpose. I think all of us have purpose and that's to plant the seeds of trees of which the shade we will never sit under. I just know my kids are gonna, for whatever problems and issues they face, they're gonna have an easier time dealing with them and they're gonna provide comfort. As they get older, even after I'm gone, they will begin to sense that type of, that type of regard and love I felt for them. My, my ticket has been punched.

• 1:01:19Scott Galloway?

  This episode was produced by Caroline Shager. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly market show.

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