Pod Insights The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway Why Podcasts Are the New TV, Careers After 50, and Divorce With Kids About this episode Scott Galloway breaks down why podcasts are becoming the new TV, offers practical advice for navigating career disruption later in life, and reflects candidly on divorce with kids — including the lessons he learned the hard way.
Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [email protected] , or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript 5,268 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them? That's bull spend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.
0:09 Speaker 01 I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't.
0:17 Speaker 00 Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.
0:31 Speaker 02 This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents, but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes.
0:58 Speaker 03 A payday candy bar is miles and miles of peanuts. Salty crunchy peanuts, sweet, sweet caramel, raving you up with every bite. Enjoy the tasty journey, my friend. Payday Peanut Caramel Bar.
1:16 Scott Galloway? Welcome to Office Hours of Profty. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehoursofproftymedia.com. Again, that's officehoursofproftymedia.com or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit and we just might feature it in our next episode.
1:44 Scott Galloway? Question number one. First question comes from SolarSurfer7. Right on, dude. On Reddit, they say, I just had an epiphany that podcasts are moving to video, not because people want to watch full-length podcasts on video. Because it gives you short clips that can go viral on apps, including TikTok and Instagram, and thus landing more subscribers. Do you agree with this take? Have you seen a higher growth on the podcast after moving to video format? Thanks for the question. So just some data. According to Spotify, 42% of podcast listeners discover new shows through social media channels like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. So word, the clips on video platforms are fantastic means of marketing. That's reason enough to do it on its own, but it's not the primary reason. I'll come back to that. Consumer surveys show that almost half of users on Instagram,
2:29 Scott Galloway? TikTok, or YouTube Shorts watch podcasts through short clips. The same study found that 1/3 of consumers engaged with podcasts by watching video clips on social media. An industry report by Edison Media found that 80% or 4/5s. Isn't that amazing? I can do that in my head. 80% or 4/5s. What a guy. What a guy. Anyway, so Gen Z podcast listeners discovered new shows via TikTok. But even beyond short clips, there's also evidence that people are engaging more with podcasts visually. Roughly half of Americans aged 12 and over, 51%, have watched a podcast. Spotify reports that 1 in 3 US monthly active users engage with video podcasts. Okay. Every year, I like to have, for the business, a strategic mandate. Our strategic mandate in 2025 was the same as 2024, and that was, in one word, video.
3:15 Scott Galloway? There are 600,000 podcasts that put out weekly content, 1.5 million podcasts in total. I bet the top 600 are the only ones that are economically viable. I'm not even sure that 500th most listened to podcasts is economically viable. The top 100 are amazing businesses because, once you get beyond a certain point, the gross margin or the incremental revenue is almost all margin. These things aren't that expensive to produce. If you look at the top 100 podcasts, you're going to see or have seen, just in every 12 or 24 months, 50 rotate in and 50 churn out. Essentially, the problem with Hollywood is the following. It's the means of production has become too expensive. And that is, if you want to film a series, and I'm doing this right now. We're doing this original scripted drama on Netflix. Jesus Christ, between unions.
4:00 Scott Galloway? Talent, the caterer, the phone supervisor, the food design spec- Oh my God, it is a lot of money. And I'll use Colbert as an example. I think Stephen Colbert is one of the great talents in media. His show supposedly costs a hundred million to produce and make sixty million because fewer and fewer people are watching late night television. The amount of people watching late night television is off by ninety percent. People aren't watching linear TV. They're not watching the clips as much. They buy- actually, that's not true. They'll watch the best sixty seconds of any of those shows. But that's not enough to sustain the business model. Basically, the business model's been starched by those video players you're talking about. And they do get something back in terms of what you're talking about, in terms of marketing. But the churn in and out is, the arbiter of that churn is who has the best video game.
4:44 Scott Galloway? And this is what's happening. Colbert will eventually move to podcasting and all of the band, the union players, will probably get on the arc to podcasts. And he'll be able to have an amazing podcast, not doing a hundred million, but maybe doing ten or twenty million with six people instead of the two hundred people that currently work on a show. And it's going to make, you know, ten million in profits off that twenty million because he's such an extraordinary talent. But basically, what are podcasts? Podcasts are eighty percent of television shows in terms of products and production quality for ten percent of the price. That's what podcasts are. And that is a really well-done podcast, feel like television,
5:26 Scott Galloway? but they don't need to make forty, sixty, a hundred million dollars to be sustainable. They need to make a lot less because the means of production are so less expensive. And let me get, I'll use Pivot as an example. Pivot is between our audio listens, about three hundred thousand, and our video views, a hundred thousand. So four hundred thousand impressions. We'll get a blended, you get a lower CPM for the video views. Audio creates more intimacy and advertisers like it more. We get a blended CPM, probably about thirty to forty bucks, forty-five bucks for the audio. CPM's thirty bucks for the video. So call it blended a forty. CNN right now is getting fifteen. Why? The average age- I think of a CNBC viewer is now well into their 60s. So what do we have? What's the advantage of podcasts or a pivot?
6:10 Scott Galloway? We have, whereas cable news, 30% are in the core demographic. That is 25 to 54 year olds who advertisers love because they're stupid and they buy high margin Range Rovers and coffees and go to movies still. They love those and 30% of cable news now is in the core demo. 70% of listeners to pivot are in the core demo. So if we do 400,000, we're getting about 280,000 in the core demo. The average CNN program is lucky if it gets 40 or 60,000 people in the core demo. So what are you getting here? You're getting the great taste of more people in the core demo, which advertisers love with the low calories of a much lower means of production. So if pivot does 12 to 14 million dollars this year in top line revenue, which would be a modestly successful TV show, not, not a successful one.
6:55 Scott Galloway? But the difference is eight or 10 of that will drop to the bottom line. Now we got to pay Vox some money to sell our ads. But as you can imagine, it's a very, very profitable business. But it's a little bit like the NBA in the sense that there's a couple of million kids and not playing high school basketball. And I think only five are still in the NBA after three years and they make an extraordinary amount of money, but your chances are like almost the same like getting to go into space someday. Podcasting somewhat similar. The numbers I use, the analogy I use is a crew at UCLA. There's been 2,800 oarsmen and oarswomen in the history of UCLA crew. I was one of them. Thank you very much. Easily the worst varsity athlete in the history of UCLA. But anyways, 2,800 people have rowed crew at UCLA. 10 have gone to the Olympics.
7:40 Scott Galloway? So what is that approximately 0.3% conservatively, not conservatively generously, 0.1% of podcasts make money. So at UCLA rowing, I was three times more likely to go to the Olympics than I was to have an economically viable podcast. So mama, don't let your kids grow up to be podcasters. If you want to get into podcasting, do it, but use it as a means or start out initially thinking of it as a means of marketing another core product. For example, our videos initially at L2 were meant to raise awareness among our client base and we did an amazing job of them and it ultimately led to a newsletter that we Turned into a media company, see about property media. But right now, if you're going into podcasting, you should be doing it for personal consumption
8:21 Scott Galloway? or to market another product because the economics or the likelihood of breaking through to the top 100 are again, sort of like your kid may be an amazing basketball player, which means there's like a one in 5,000 chance that he will end up with a sustainable income in the NBA and podcasting is somewhat similar. Anyways, the clips, yeah, fantastic marketing. But generally speaking, more broadly speaking, podcasts are becoming the new TV with a strong audio overlay. So we're all trying to raise or the smart ones are investing more and more in video. You're going to see more and more podcasts on TV screens and you're going to see more and more visual graphics, production values, lighting, all that stuff to try and level up. Anyways, thoughtful question. Thank you.
9:06 Scott Galloway? Question number two also comes from Reddit. Dwayne Dolback asks, with the average tenure of a job being about four years, how can those of us in our early to mid 50s who have been impacted by layoffs, but cannot yet retire convince companies to take a chance on us? If I hear you're overqualified once more, I'm going to shove a TikTok of some millennial Snapchat. Yeah. So the, what you're feeling is real. There's some data here. The job stability and the disruption is being felt by people, I want to say older mid-career. A major 2018 study found that more than half of workers in their early 50s who had long-term jobs were laid off after age 50. Many others struggled to find steady work again or saw their pay drop by 50% or more for years. So first off, ask yourself a question. Can you not get a job or can you not get the job that you expect that you should have right now?
9:51 Scott Galloway? You might have to take a cut in pay, boss. Even college educated workers were hit at similar rates, so in the risk cuts across education levels. And just back to the notion that can you get a job or can you just not get a job you want? No one ever thinks they're overpaid. Nobody at Prop G thinks they're overpaid. And let me tell you, they are. I'm on AI. I try to pay people between 30 to 50% above market, but no one thinks they're overpaid. They just say, oh, okay, I won't leave. But no one, no one sits around and says, hey, mom, I'm overpaid. No one ever feels overpaid. And just statistically, and I can prove this to you, 50% of the time in your career, you were overpaid and 50% you were underpaid. And almost 0% of the time. Where is it calibrated exactly?
10:32 Scott Galloway? And going to the next job, the natural kind of progression or instinct is, oh, I should make next the same amount or more at my next job. Maybe not. I think the workplace has become increasingly ageist as I sit here with a swollen face from my just having my eyes done. And it's really strange. A lot of times when people like my content, they reference my age as a means of being critical. And I remember at L2, I hired a systems engineer who was, I think in his 40s or 50s. And the vibe was, dude, what happened? I think if you're in technology and you're a male and you're in your 40s or 50s and you're not running the place, you're not already a multimillionaire, the general view is like, oh, my God, you fucked up. I think you're just going to see a boom in cosmetic surgery and botox and all that
11:15 Scott Galloway? shit amongst men who are feeling the same ages and women have had to endure for a long time. You're in a tough spot. I don't want to sugarcoat it. And I also think that the hard part about looking for a job in your 50s is you're not willing to eat as much shit. My companies right now would be more successful if I were more aggressive and less arrogant. And my arrogance has been a bit of a function of my age. And that is, I think I could go out and get a million dollars in incremental advertising if I was willing to go have dinner or not play golf, but socialize with ad buyers or brands or same. I see them as retail to me all the time. Let's get together. I'm like, I don't want to hang out with you. I'm hanging out with my kids.
11:58 Scott Galloway? And I don't feel, I don't do pre-calls. I don't, I don't, I don't take advantage of 90, I know, I know I'm boasting right now, but it's true. I don't take advantage of 98% of the opportunities thrown my way because I'm at a point in my life where I'm like, I'm just not willing to hang out with some 35 or 40 year old that I don't want to hang out with. I find that the key to getting a job is how social you are. Study done at Google. They put out a job opening, 200 CVs within like 60 minutes. They shut it down. They bring in the 20 best candidates and 70% of the time, the person they end up hiring has an internal advocate. So one, a boss, if you're in your 50s, it doesn't matter if you're in your 50s or your 20s, the advice I would give your 22-year-old self, you gotta make a bunch of calls, you gotta get
12:42 Scott Galloway? out a big spoon and eat shit, call people you don't want to call, follow up, which sucks when you're older, which means you're bothering people that don't want to hear from you, be willing to ask other people for help, reach out for copies, hey, do you know anyone? I'm looking, but also be as social as possible because what I have found is that when I hear from a friend that they're looking, that my antenna go up and I start trying to, I need to do a better job of this, of identifying potential opportunities for them. When I see them recently and they call me and say, hey, do you know anyone at Salesforce? I'm interested in this position. I'm more inclined to return the email or leverage one of my contacts to try and help them. And, you know, it's like finding a, finding a boyfriend or a girlfriend or friends, or it's like, kind of like finding a job, it's a little bit,
13:28 Scott Galloway? it's a lot of it is serendipity and you want to create serendipity by putting yourself in a position around as many other mammals as possible. So it sucks to be in the position where you, I'm sure you've been good at what you did, you think at this point your momentum and your skills would open doors. I've found even the most robust economies, it's never easy to get a job, but I think you have to do whatever it is to make yourself feel, you know, build your self-esteem because every day, boss, every night, you gotta write down a list of three or six things you're doing the next day when you grab that spoon to eat shit. Emailing people, going on LinkedIn, going out, networking, I do just think it's a numbers game. I don't think there's a silver bullet here. Also, some of the ageism you might be feeling, some of it's real, but some of it's also probably self-inflicted and that is, it's probably not as bad as you think, you're just, you just start to get
14:13 Scott Galloway? self-conscious about it. Unfortunately, you're in a bad part of the cycle. The way you described the labor market right now is no hire, no fire. Companies, the whole AI tsunami of layoffs has not really happened outside of tech where the early adopters here, does that presage more layoffs? Probably, but also firms aren't hiring because they want to see what happens to the economy. It's like the housing market right now, there's just a lack of transactions. There's very few buyers and very few sellers and the labor market right now is kind of no hire, no fire. So yeah, it's bad, but it's been worse. And again, I just go back to the same things. Get ready to eat shit and be as social as possible.
14:55 Scott Galloway? And also, I literally, when I was younger, used to stand in front of a mirror and say, "I know I can make someone happy." You know, because I was constantly single and really wanted a girlfriend. "I know I can add value to a company." I was constantly starting companies, failing. "I know I can add value to a company." You know, I was always trying to like manifest and tell myself that I had value. And I think that, I think that's really important. And also, if you're feeling any anxiety, action absorbs anxiety. Write down a list and just start sending out emails and making appointments and calling on people. Sorry for the word salad here. Thanks for, thanks for the question. We'll be right back after a quick break.
15:42 Scott Galloway? Support for the show comes from Bilt. Most of us work hard to earn our keep, but usually there's no one around to hand you a cookie when you successfully pay your monthly housing bill. No one except Bilt, that is. Bilt has expanded from their original rental rewards program, and they have a lot more going on for members now. For example, members can earn points on mortgage payments, too. Every housing payment gets you points that get you a lot more than baked goods, such as flights with top travel partners, including United and Hyatt, Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases, and much, much more. Here's another benefit of Bilt membership. You also get access to what they call a neighborhood concierge. You can make restaurant reservations, book fitness classes, and find new local spots, all while rewarding you at more than 45,000 merchant partners. It's simple. Being a renter and now owning a home feels a lot better with Bilt.
16:27 Scott Galloway? You can download the Bilt app and join the membership for where you live at joinbilt.com/propg. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com/propg. Use our link so they know we sent you.
16:42 Scott 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?
17:27 Scott Galloway? Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash profg for $1,000 off.
17:48 Scott 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?
18:33 Scott Galloway? Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash profg for $1,000 off.
18:58 Scott Galloway? Welcome back onto our final question.
19:01 Speaker 06 Hey Scott, I'm a big fan of yours. Thanks for all the insight and information and entertainment. I'm reaching out because I'm in my early 40s and I've heard you talk about how this is a really hard time of your life and I agree. I'm about to enter a divorce. We have a young child and it's a lot of grief and sadness and just confusion. And I think that you've been divorced and you've got kids and just lay it on me. What, what should I know? What would you have told yourself as you
19:41 Speaker 06 were starting to cross the Rubicon? Thanks so much and hope to hear from you.
19:48 Scott Galloway? First of all, I'm sorry. I can just hear in your voice how sad you are. And let me give you bad news and good news. The bad news is you're, you're in for a rough ride for at least, you think you feel better after 12 months. I found after my divorce, I didn't really feel, start feeling normal again till after 24 months. And maybe you need to double that because you have kids. I didn't have kids when I got divorced and I think kids just are, I would imagine, rub salt in the wound. So there's just no getting around it. This is a shit sandwich and you should be able to mourn and I would lean on your friends and talk openly about it and feel the sadness and the grief, but also recognize you're going to wake up in, I don't know, six, 12, 24 months, maybe 36 months. You're going to go, I kind of feel normal again. Like I'm okay again. Okay. So just some thoughts.
20:32 Scott Galloway? The first is, and this comes from experiences as a child divorced parents, whatever you do, do not weaponize the kids in the divorce. Oftentimes in divorce, there's a lot of anger on both sides or on one side, and it's very tempting to weaponize the kid. No, you're late. Don't pick the kid up. A complaining about your ex spouse to the kid. This is no joke what happened to me. Let's bring this back to me. My mom used to tell me when my dad would come pick me up every other weekend when he was still living in LA, "Tell your father," I was eight, "tell your father if the child support check isn't here by Tuesday, I'm calling his boss and telling him that he's a deadbeat dad." I would digest my entire stomach the entire weekend knowing I had to tell my dad this, and I would finally wait till the last five minutes before he dropped me off and I'd tell him.
21:17 Scott Galloway? My dad would fucking freak out and say, "Tell that bitch I'm not sending the check." And I'd have to walk back into my $200 apartment with my mom in Tarzana in the valley and say, "Dad said, tell the bitch that he's not sending child." I mean, it was just, I mean, my parents had a lot of good qualities, but sophistication and understanding the nuance of divorce and kids was not one of them. Do not weaponize your kids. And even going beyond that, I think, I don't know if you have a daughter or a son, I guess it doesn't really matter, but especially for sons, I think one of the best things you can do for sons, especially sons, is treat their mom really well. I think it just sends the right signal around their approach toward women.
21:58 Scott Galloway? You know, I really try to defer and show a lot of respect for my son's mom, and I never, I always have her back, even quite frankly, when I think she gets it wrong, and constantly talk her up to her kids. And by the way, I think the same is true in divorce. I think that you are always complimentary and supportive, and even when it hurts, even maybe when it's not true, of talking up their mom and showing a great deal of respect. Kids remember. And unfortunately, what happens unless you're doing the whole co-parenting thing, Austin, I think they call it nesting now, where they have the kids stay in one house and the parents rotate through the house. You have to have resources to do that. I don't know if you're doing that, if it's logistically possible. But oftentimes, what happens is the parent who has primary custody becomes sanctified, think dad's the bad guy.
22:43 Scott Galloway? Sometimes it can go the opposite way because dad is scarce and he gets romanticized, but usually it's one is the bad guy and one's the saint because they have trouble processing just what the fuck happened and think there must be a victim and there must be an oppressor here. So hopefully, you and your wife have come to an accommodation that has said, okay, What is our first priority here? Our first priority is to ensure that our kids are healthy, emotionally stable, and feel a source of love and support and consistency from us, both of us. What does that mean? It's not only about our relationship with them, it's about our relationship with each other. And let me know if there's anything I can do, but I need you to do it as well. We need to be model parents post divorce. And what does that mean? It's showing love and affection for our kids,
23:28 Scott Galloway? but it's showing a great deal of respect and generosity for each other. Because that's just, there's just no way to get past the trauma or not forcing the kids to sanctify or demonize one or both of you if, for whatever reason, you give in to the hurt and anger of a divorce. I do remember I demonized my father because he did, in fact, leave and he was financially very, very difficult with me and my mom. He immediately went on to upper middle class. We immediately dove to the lower middle class and I was in it for a long time. But I also, as I got older, realized that he tried. Just remember that everything you do right now, everything, every little thing, whether it's when you drop them off. My dad would drop me off. My mom wouldn't come out to the car because she didn't want to see his car. I would have to walk to the front of my apartment complex alone
24:13 Scott Galloway? because she didn't want to see his car. That's how bad it was. They will remember when they're older, everything you did and everything you didn't do. And how you handled, there's kind of moments of truth. People remember how people behave in stressful, emotionally charged situations. And just keep in mind, the next 12 months, your kids are going to have a memory of your behavior to a greater extent than the following 12 months. Anyways, I'm going to try and summarize here. One, I'm really sorry. This is a shit show, especially with kids. It's ugly. It's awful. There's no getting around it. You are going to get past this. You are going to get past this. Half of people who get married end up divorced. This is nothing new. Nothing new.
24:56 Scott Galloway? Two, do not ever weaponize the kids. That's, that's the easy shit. What's harder is demonstrating affection.
25:05 Scott Galloway? To the extent you can, respect and admiration for your ex, even when it really hurts and you have to swallow hard. And also just keep in mind, every ounce of incremental effort you make with your kids now, they're going to remember. They're going to remember. But let me just circle back to, I think it was point number two. Trust me, this brother, at some point, you're going to wake up and you think you're going to think, you know what? I feel okay.
25:34 Scott Galloway? That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected] . That's [email protected] . Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode.
25:54 Scott Galloway? This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our associate producer is Laura Genere. Kami Reek is our social producer. Drew Rose is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from Prop G Media.
26:14 Speaker 07 Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order.
26:42 Speaker 08 1-800-CONTACTS. For a limited time, you can get a Big Mac meal for just $8. That's a burger, fries, and a drink. They don't call it an extra value meal for nothing. Get a Big Mac meal only at McDonald's.
26:57 Speaker 03 Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.
27:00 Speaker 09 Looking for a simple way to thank your clients or recognize employees for a job well done? A Starbucks card is more than a gift. It's a pick-me-up, a break in their day, and a reminder that you appreciate them. Whether you're shopping for digital or physical cards in bulk, Starbucks cards are the perfect gift to brighten anyone's day. Share the joy of coffee and connection when you give the gift of Starbucks. Shop Starbucks cards in bulk now at starbuckscardb2b.com.
Previous No Mercy / No Malice: License to Intervene Next China Decode: Inside Xi’s Shocking Military Purge Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated