Masculinity, Media, and How to Citizen – with Baratunde Thurston

Baratunde Thurston, a founding partner of the media startup Puck and an Emmy-nominated, multi-platform storyteller, joins Scott to discuss the trends in media he’s been paying attention to, his thoughts on masculinity, and what to expect in his upcoming season of How To Citizen. Follow Baratunde on Twitter, @baratunde. Scott opens with his thoughts on wealth inequality, specifically as it relates to the fact that the nation is facing an all-time low of first-time home buyers. Algebra of Happiness: Be Honest. 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.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:49Speaker 01

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• 1:17Scott Galloway?

  Episode 236. 236 is the area code serving all of British Columbia, Canada. 1936, the first helicopter took flight. I've been accused of being a helicopter parent. Actually, my father was what was referred to as a boomerang father. He was supposed to come back and never did. Why don't you love me? That's not funny. Go, go, go!

• 1:51Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 236 episode of The Prop G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Baratunde Thurston, a founding partner of the media startup Puck and an Emmy-nominated multi-platform storyteller. A multi-platform storyteller will smell Baratunde. I like Baratunde. He's a thoughtful guy, nice guy, very charming, very friendly. I ran into Baratunde at South by Southwest and he came up.

• 2:14Scott Galloway?

  With his wife and they were just, they were just lovely. Anyways, we discussed with Barrett today, the trends in media. He's been paying attention to his thoughts on masculinity and what to expect in his upcoming season of How to Citizen. Okay, what's happening? We're taking a look at a stat that caught our eye. Specifically, The Washington Post reported that nearly a third of US homes purchased in 2022 were done so in all cash deals. Think about that. One in three houses, someone shows up and plunks down all cash. We've only seen this once in recent history in 2014, following the Great Recession, when people were kind of swooping in and buying in distressed sales, which I think is a bit of an anomaly. That volume of all cash deals is just extraordinary.

• 2:57Scott Galloway?

  But what's really mind numbing is that it's coupled with a 40-year low for first-time home buyers. According to the National Association of Realtors, first-time buyers made up just 26% of the market in 2022, down from 34% the year prior. So first-time home buyers used to be one-third of home purchases. Now they are one in four. Think about this, there are more people buying homes for all cash than there are first-time home buyers. The typical first-time buyer was 36 years old, up from 33 in 2021. Think about that. The average age is up three years. That may not seem like a lot, but it is a lot when you talk about averages. You go from 33 to 36, it is a lot. The typical repeat buyer age was 59.

• 3:41Scott Galloway?

  In Naples, Florida, for example, where the average age is 66 years old, in other words, land of the walking dead, and the median household income is 125 grand, more than half, 56% of the homes were bought with cash. Think about that. The majority of homes purchased in Naples, Florida were purchased for all cash. So what do you have here? You have some very good news. People with a lot of cash can buy homes for all cash. So you think, oh, the economy's doing well. People are feeling good about their investments, are optimistic, they don't want to take on debt. I mean, there's some good things about that. The problem here is the contrast, and that is first-time buyers at a near all-time low. What does this mean? Simply put, it means we're continuing to see a massive tilting of the economy.

• 4:26Scott Galloway?

  Where revenue and advantage and quite frankly, happiness is sliding down because of the tilt from young people to old people. In other words, people who already have assets, already have stocks, are feeling very flush and can actually show up and buy a house for all cash. Whereas the number of young people who can actually afford a home has declined dramatically, is near all time lows. Housing affordability is, I think, at its second lowest in, uh, since they began tracking it. This is just a continuation of a very unhealthy trend that leads to even more unhealthy trends. And that is, if I post, uh, anything on, uh, no mercy, no malice, uh, I can't get over the number of young people that are really discouraged.

• 5:08Scott Galloway?

  They're deciding, um, that capitalism doesn't work. And then you go to a very dark place and that is deaths of despair are at record highs. We're talking about opioid overdoses, we're talking about suicide, people talking about gun deaths, and I think around about 20,000 people a year die from guns. Or, uh, homicides in the US, but it's like 30,000 people decide, you know what, things really fucking suck for me. I know, there's a gun upstairs and they go up and they end it. This is, you know, what's the point, right? What's the point if we have a younger generation that doesn't feel as if the future is bright enough or justifies the current system? And the thing I find frustrating is, well, what exactly do you think is better than capitalism? And for the life of me, I agree with Winston Churchill, it's the worst system of its kind, except for all the rest, there is nothing better.

• 5:53Scott Galloway?

  But people don't think, okay, great, here I am and you're claiming it's better here than anywhere else. That doesn't work. The contrast, if you will, is what is really discouraging. And that is Instagram and Facebook will all throw in your face constant reminders of how you fucked up. Specifically, you're not doing as well as your friend at Google or some AI startup, you're, you don't have as amazing washboard abs, or you're not as near anorexically skinny, whatever it might be, right? It's that people all around you are seem to be doing much better than you. Which is mostly bullshit. Instagram is, it's like being on your first date. I described, and whenever I went on a first date, it's controlled boasting that my representative would show up. I wouldn't actually show up. It was someone representing me or creating an illusion of me, an Instagram version of me.

• 6:37Scott Galloway?

  And this is every minute of every day. You know, screenshots of people whose stock portfolio was up 15% in one trading day, whatever it might be. And the reality is much different, but you can't help but notice the certain cohort that taps into the information economy. Gets lucky, has the right certification. Life has never been better. Life has never been better for the top 10%, but it's being optimized for the top 10%, which means the bottom 90% are really struggling. And unfortunately, in America, our optimism leads to an externality. And that is, all of us believe we have a winning lottery ticket. We might think, okay, the lottery on the whole is bad. It's bad. It's a regressive tax on the poor. The lottery associations, whoever the hell they are, return a lot less money than they take in.

• 7:20Scott Galloway?

  But baby, my ticket's a winner. And people believe that about their kids. They believe that about themselves. They see that the bottom 90% aren't doing as well, but they assume, no, my kid will be in the top 10%. And I can prove to every parent out there that nine out of 10 of our children are not in the top 10%. And we're slowly but surely leaking opportunity and advantage to the top 10%. And what is the great thing about America? One, there is no nation that rewards exceptionalism better than any other country. If you're truly exceptional, you can become a billionaire here. You can become a senator. You can have a fragrance named after you. But here's the better thing about America, or what used to be the even better thing about America. You didn't have to be exceptional.

• 8:04Scott Galloway?

  You could buy a house. If you played by the rules and you worked hard, a little bit of luck, you could buy a house at a young age. I bought my first house in 28. Who the fuck can buy a house at 28 right now? Who can do that? I don't care if you work at Google. I don't care where you work. How many 28-year-olds have you met who bought a house recently? That wasn't that unusual back then. And it comes back to a lot of things. See above, leaking advantage to current asset holders and taking it away from young people who are more dependent on current income, who pay higher taxes, who have minimum wage at $7.25, which is an outrage. If minimum wage had just kept pace with productivity since the 70s, it'd be at $23 a share. And what do they need? They need education, they need housing. And what do you know, those things have skyrocketed. And why is that?

• 8:45Scott Galloway?

  Because people who have assets, the incumbents, become nimbus overnight. Once I have a college degree, I'm going to applaud the dean for accepting fewer and fewer people, despite the fact we sit on an endowment the size of the GDP of a Central American nation, let in fewer people, and that makes the value of my degree go up. Hey, I bought a house. First thing I do to celebrate me buying a house, I show up to the local review board, and I try and squash any development down the street. I try and make sure that no one gets to build. Why? We call it quality of life, but at the end of the day, you get rewarded for that because when there's less supply, anyone who's already in, your prices skyrocket. And by the way, we have a housing crisis in this nation. We need several million more homes to meet the demand side. Once I have a company, I'm going to weaponize government

• 9:30Scott Galloway?

  and try and make it more difficult for any other entrant or any other small business nipping in my heels. We have this nimbus rejectionist bullshit luxury culture that results in advantage being leaked from new entrants, I, young people, to old people and the incumbents. What is a better way of building wealth than housing? Or owning a home? Unfortunately, most of us engage in lifestyle creep, right? We make more current income, we spend it. A lot of people end up with sort of a safety net, in addition to social security, but the equity built in their homes. My mom bought a condo in Westwood for $72,000, and I think about 1973. And then she got diagnosed. Uh, with cancer, actually three times, but the third time this was kinda like, or actually,

• 10:12Scott Galloway?

  I think it was the second time I said, "Look, this is bad. It's time for you to stop working. You're in your late 50s. You've worked your ass off. I'm sorry, early 60s. You've worked your ass off." Or, "My mom was pulled out of school when she was 13." And by the way, young people who really think this is bad, being raised lower middle class in Britain, my father and my mother were pulled out of school at 13 to work so they could help bring home money. I mean, things have gotten better. Anyways, see above, who gives a shit? Look at the contrast. Back to, back to my mom. My mom, we decided, "It's time for you to retire." And how could she retire? One, she had a, a son who was starting to make a little bit of money and, uh, we had a wonderful relationship and I was excited to contribute where I could. Some serious virtues certainly going on right now. But

• 10:57Scott Galloway?

  in addition, my mom's condo in Westwood had grown from $72,000 in value to 300. And I'm not suggesting that people just rely on their house as their retirement, but a lot of Americans build the majority of their wealth through their home ownership or their equity. Why? It's for savings. You gotta make that goddamn mortgage payment. It's highly levered in a good way. You got low interest rates. You get huge tax deductions, right? And you can do all sorts of wonderful things with gains, whether it's 1031 or every two years, a single person gets a quarter of a million dollar tax-free, uh, deduction. Married couple, 500,000. A decent way to build wealth, if you're handy, is be smart, really understand your area, try and get together some capital, buy a home, fix it

• 11:39Scott Galloway?

  up, uh, move two or three years later, take the gain, uh, tax-free, wash, rinse and repeat. But I think we'd be shocked, how many people are counting on their nest egg, slowly but surely has become their home over decades. But what happens when young people no longer get a chance to lay that nest egg or to, to participate in what has been a great, great way to save money or wealth? This goes back to the same goddamn thing, whether it's an investment or a lack of investment in infrastructure, whether it's a tax code that benefits old people, whether it's 40% of all government funding is now going to seniors and it's about to go to 50%. Those of us who have done really well, I'm actually Gen X, but on the verge of being a boomer, those of us who have done really well in that, in that generation, want to

• 12:22Scott Galloway?

  look back on a younger generation and we want to hold them accountable. Oh, they have a bad attitude or they're expectant. Yeah, there's a little bit of that, but for the most part, they're more talented than we are. On any balanced scorecard, on any honest appraisal, they're a lot more productive than we were. But guess what? They don't have the same opportunities we do. The top 10% have much greater opportunities than we did, but the bottom 90 have fewer opportunities. And it all comes down to one question. Is that the world we want to live in? Is America about optimizing for the top 10%, right? Some people say, yeah, we believe in exceptionalism, right? And we've accomplished that. That box is checked. If you're a brilliant engineer who lived in South Africa and Canada, you started all of your companies shooting off rockets and building EVs in America, the

• 13:07Scott Galloway?

  best and brightest in the world want to come to America because if you're exceptional, you'll get the greatest rewards. I still don't think that's what America is about, though. America isn't about turning the top 10% into billionaires. It's about giving the bottom 90% a shot at being a millionaire. That's what America is. That's what's fucking awesome about America, is you don't have to be exceptional. You have to be good and you have to be a good citizen and you have to be a little bit disciplined, live below your means, vote, be a good neighbor, be a good person, save a little bit of money, be patient, and you will have a decent life. You'll be able to aggregate, maybe not billions of dollars, but millions of dollars. But what is that path right now for anything

• 13:50Scott Galloway?

  but the most exceptional young people? Let's talk about wealth distribution by age, right? In our economy, people over the age of 70 used to control 19%, 1989, now they control 25%. People 55 to 69, right, my age, they used to control 36, now they control 43. And then what happens? 40 to 54, we go younger, they used to control 33, now they control 26. And people under the age of 40, that see above, getting fucked, used to control 13%, now they control 6%. And it makes no sense. People talk about network economies. No, it's not. These are conscious decisions. These are laws. So what do we do? Stop bitching, Scott. What do we do? More freshman seats at colleges. Colleges in the right answer

• 14:33Scott Galloway?

  for everyone, but it's a decent opportunity. More vocational training. The Main Street economy is doing great. Less shaming.

• 14:41Scott Galloway?

  Less shaming. If your kid, specifically your boy, isn't good at school, which a lot of boys aren't for a variety of reasons, then guess what? Get them into an apprentice program to be an electrician or a plumber. Any electrician, any electrician with their salt. In Florida right now, I'm down here and I'm renovating a house, is gonna make 150 grand by the time before they're 30. And if they're smart and hardworking, they're gonna make more than that into their 30s. And guess what, parents? Stop shaming your children if they don't end up at an Ivy League school and don't end up in the information economy. The information economy, specifically big tech, is about 10%. Well, there's a big wide world of the other 90% over there. And I am guilty of this. I'm one of these tiger dads that really wants his kid to end up at a great school, but

• 15:26Scott Galloway?

  I'm coming to grips with the fact that there are other ways to be happy other than slipstreaming into the information economy and trying to become a billionaire. We also need to make infrastructure investments. We need massive vocational programs. What's the key to happiness? What is the absolute... Every study on happiness comes down to this. We talk about the economy, we talk about GDP. Okay, that's all a means to an ends. What is the ends? The ends is living a rewarding life, being happy. And what is every study on happiness across ethnicities, demographic groups, across geographies? What does every study on happiness say? It all reverse engineers to the number of deep and meaningful relationships. And in a capitalist society, the number of deep and meaningful and non-stressful relationships

• 16:11Scott Galloway?

  all reverse engineers to economic security. I'm not suggesting you have to be a baller or a billionaire, but you have to have a certain level of financial security. Otherwise, what are you morally prone to have in your life? Obesity, depression, opioid addiction. The majority of divorces are instigated or can be reverse engineered. Most people think it's infidelity. It's not. Most marriages survive infidelity. What most marriages don't survive is constant economic stress. It's simple. Do we want a better America? Do we want to optimize for the top 10%? Is that what America's about? Or do we want to give the 90%, the bottom 90, a shot at being in the top 10%? We need to make more investments in infrastructure, education, vocational programming, level

• 16:53Scott Galloway?

  up young men so they're more economically and emotionally viable mates, and we need to go back to where America is. Simply put, we need to fall back in love with the unremarkables. That's what America is, not this bullshit optimization of the top 10%. That's not America. That's the fucking Hunger Games.

• 17:11Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back for our conversation with Baratunde Thurston.

• 17:17Scott Galloway?

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• 18:19Scott Galloway?

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• 19:36Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Baratunde Thurston, an Emmy-nominated, multi-platform storyteller.

• 19:45Scott Galloway?

  Baratunde, where does this podcast find you?

• 19:47Speaker 03

  This podcast finds me in Los Angeles, California, on a beautiful, sunshiny, brisk day.

• 19:52Scott Galloway?

  Nice, nice. And so, let's jump right into it. Tell me about Puck.

• 19:58Scott Galloway?

  You're a co-founder and, I don't know, journalist there?

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Founding partner and writer. That's, uh, those are the appropriate terms. Yeah.

• 20:09Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, my friend Bill Kona is with you. Tell me about the basic premise of Puck and how it's going and what it's like working in a startup.

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, the premise of Puck is that you've got no strong individual writer personalities, underserved by traditional media journalistic institutions. So, they could all spin out on their own and do the Substack thing. But there's strength in numbers and there's a power of being a part of a team. And there's still value to like editors and shared back office. And so, what if we united forces, became a sort of Voltron, and flew under the same flag, you know, still maintaining some individual personality, but also sharing leads, sharing tips, sharing promotion and marketing resources. That's, that's the basic structural premise.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  And then the editorial premise is that Puck covers power. Our coverage is anchored in the four, so far, power centers in the US. Washington for politics, New York for finance, the Bay Area for technology, and Hollywood for entertainment.

• 21:15Scott Galloway?

  So, I think of you as sort of a social commentator. What are you paying attention to right now? What is it that you find interesting or that you think that the traditional media isn't paying enough attention to?

• 21:24Speaker 03

  I mean, climate, climate, climate is always the top of that list. I think traditional media doesn't pay attention to Experiments in democracy and self-government that are actually working. And my wife calls CNN the crisis news network. Because if you just look at that, you think there is nothing good in the world and there is nothing we can do about the bad that's in the world. And so I think overall, media has an addiction fed by, you know, human and reader addiction, but it becomes this vicious spiral where you only feed people what they click on, and then they only click on what you feed them. And it kind of lowers the discourse for all of us. So that's a big flag for me. And I think the media is catching up on,

• 22:09Speaker 03

  but still not quite in line with, you know, technology isn't technology anymore. It's everything. And it's an interface to all the stuff we actually care about. It's this reality shaping medium. You know, it is an intermediary between us and the life we experience. And so that's been rising, the whole like tech accountability, who's in the room, who builds these things? What are the incentives? But I still find that there's a lack of deeper questions. You know, the technology we make is still largely the result of a handful of very, very rich people trying to get very, very much richer. And that isn't enough of an incentive structure

• 22:52Speaker 03

  to design reality for the rest of the world. I think that's just too narrow a lens. So those are some of the things. And, you know, I'm black, so race is always, always on the table, sometimes exhausting. And so I'm also like, you know, how do we find new ways to approach this old challenge of ours? Especially in America.

• 23:12Scott Galloway?

  Do you think over the last decade, race relations have gotten better or worse?

• 23:15Speaker 03

  I love binary questions because the answer

• 23:18Scott Galloway?

  Or somewhere in between.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Is a spectrum. Our awareness of the challenges has gotten better, so our perception of the reality is that it's worse. That's a thing. I think there's a lot of data to support, you know, income and wealth inequality being two particular indicators, health outcomes, life expectancy, where it's tangibly worse. I also think, you know, I think at an almost deeper spiritual energetic level, it feels like everything's falling apart, like we just can't do this thing right. And I remain hopeful that that is a sign that we are exhausting this old story we've been in and that we're ready to kind of step into something new, something different, something a bit more inspired. And I see signs of that, too.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  They're not the prevailing story, but I think they could define the prevailing reality if we stick with it. So it's hard. It's really hard and we have a lot of impatience on the part of folks who have not been subject to our racialized power structures that, okay, it's time to move on to the next thing. Like, we talked about your DEI stuff. We have a political party in the US which is just flagrantly uninterested in liberty and justice for all. And so wants to shame efforts to tell our true story and our full history. It's such a narrow, weak view masquerading as strength. It's the guy who talks tough but doesn't know his own emotional state.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  And so you're projecting one thing, but inside a whole nother thing is going on. And I think that dynamic applies to race. I think Prince Harry has been on my mind a lot, him and Meghan, having digested their Netflix series and just finished his book yesterday, in tears. Here is someone who has gone through many levels of awakening, and in particular, a racial awakening with his partner, and had to flee his home country because of it, and is working to reconcile, you know, his own experience with what he's inherited and with the lives around him that he cares so much for, and is willing to acknowledge it and still move forward.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  So I think there's an immaturity to the conversation about race and to the experience of race, where we have a lot of folks who are afraid of what they'll find out if they look.

• 25:39Scott Galloway?

  Well, there's, I mean, there's a lot there. And let me acknowledge that I've always thought that kind of the best or easiest piece of evidence that

• 25:49Scott Galloway?

  Just hits you square in the eyes. That reflects that systemic racism is just alive and well in the United States. The average wealth of a Latino or black family in the US, I think it's around $23,000. And a white family, I think it's about, it's either 130 or 150. So to think that racism is not still fully baked into our society, you're just ignoring, in a capitalist society, money is power, money is privilege, money is opportunity. And right now, on an economic level, one group of people appears to have about seven and a half times the opportunity. I thought that was a very interesting bridge to Harry and Meghan. And I want to be clear, I take a much more cynical view. I see that, you know, him being forced to flee from his country, to go to LA,

• 26:30Scott Galloway?

  buy a Porsche, own Soho House, and make $15 million to accuse his family of being racist. I don't see it as some big awakening. Illuminate me as to how Meghan and Harry's behavior is illuminating.

• 26:44Speaker 03

  I think the first thing that I have recognized with those two is that they're human beings and that they're people. And it's been very easy for me to dismiss anyone with massive amounts of resources and attention as a celebrity undeserving of kind of a basic consideration that I would extend of a person I actually know. So they, I think they did a good job of establishing that. I think he is emerging from a level of captivity and lack of agency and choice in his life that is very extreme, something that I didn't really grok and I definitely didn't sympathize with. You can't choose your mate, you can't choose your living, you can't choose your job. You're bred to be dependent on your father until that father dies.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  That's different. I think the racial awakening piece is, you know, Harry was someone who had this fraught, traumatic relationship with the press because of his mother's tragic death. And he was already kind of working his way through that relationship. I think seeing the relationship between this palace that he's a part of and this much more aggressive British press and its racism. Brain down on the one person he felt like he could be himself with, just broke something open. And I don't think he would have taken the extra steps in his journey if he wasn't forced to go through that with Meghan. I think she kind of showed up to help him complete these steps that he was already taking. I think the, the deep history of the British Empire,

• 28:15Speaker 03

  which I have encountered directly, you know, in my tours of that nation, sometimes beautiful, sometimes racist and grotesque. They all land in this couple's story. You know, here is this brown woman who's outshining other members, who could make the whole institution more relevant for another generation at least. But they can't handle it. They can't handle the sense of competition. They can't handle the newness. They can't handle the change. It exposes too much of their stagnation. And so they, they shame it. Then they mock it and, and they aid and abet the othering of it, which is how Britain became the Britain we know. You know, the dehumanizing of a bunch of black and brown people around the world

• 28:59Speaker 03

  to just extract the resources and, and have sugar and diamonds sit in fancy houses without acknowledgement of where those things came from. So there's, there's some ancestral historical stuff in their story. There's some human, like self-agency stuff. There's a power of love, which is kind of corny and mushy. But I think, you know, my deepest respect, I don't know Meghan's story as much now that I've read Harry's book. This is a man, you know, who has taken a deep look inside himself and said, I didn't cry about my mother's death, but one time right after the funeral for like 20 years. And so he's just, he had a demonstration of vulnerability for a military guy as well is such a unique combination of attributes. And I just thought, okay,

• 29:44Speaker 03

  you are, you are growing really beautifully, in my view. And there's a lot of other men out there with a lot of attention who don't grow so beautifully in front of us.

• 29:56Scott Galloway?

  So you, you, you touched on something I want to double click on. And that is, I think a lot about, and I'm trying to work my way through what masculinity means for a younger generation of men who are getting oftentimes conflicting signals around what it means to be masculine. What are your thoughts on masculinity in modern America?

• 30:16Speaker 03

  Oh, man. One, I, I think it's just important to acknowledge that.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  Men, you know, we are in a tough spot as well, right? We have unresolved things. We have limited practice at acknowledging and healthily expressing our emotions, even identifying them to begin with. I think it can be, it's a very confusing time for men. And when I, you know, think about the race type of lens I have and the work I've been doing, then I think about the gender, you know, experience I have. There's conflicting overlap there. I'm always ranting against the white power structure. I am a part of a male power structure. And I've been practicing acknowledging that to see if it destroys me. In the same way that I encounter a lot of white people who are afraid

• 31:07Speaker 03

  that acknowledging any privilege associated with race would undo their whole lives. And it turns out it doesn't. I'm still here talking to you, you know? I'm okay, but it can be a challenge. So I, I think, you know, men are beginning a journey that we, you know, didn't have to take. We, we didn't have to contend with a lot of this stuff. And we built a structure and inherited for most of us. Some, some of us more actively maintained than others, but we all kind of were born into the system that gave us a lot of access and seeming power, but also stole from us an internal access and, and a different sort of power.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  The power of self-knowledge, the power of being aware of weaknesses, the power of softness, the power of our own feminine. And told to suck it up and never express pain and be aggressive instead of vulnerable. You know, use aggression to shield vulnerability, which doesn't serve us. You know, we bottled that stuff up and it comes out, you know, sideways. And there's a movement of more awakened manhood that's emerging. And it doesn't mean you can't be strong. It doesn't mean that there's no role for men and for women and people in between. It just means we've got to do a bit of a reset.

• 32:34Scott Galloway?

  I mean, I really struggle with this because what you're saying resonates, but a lot of it feels like essentially there's a belief that.

• 32:45Scott Galloway?

  Men should, quite frankly, it's the feminization of masculinity. And I, I still believe there's a role for being aggressive, being physically strong. That there is, masculinity and toxicity have been incorrectly conflated. And there is a role, for lack of a better term, for that big dick energy. And I don't, and that is not a, it's a dangerous thing to talk about. But when I talk, when I hear sort of a lot of people talk about the modern view of masculinity, it just sounds to me like we should be more feminine. And I'm not sure that's, I'm not sure that's right either.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  I think that there is a, there's a new balance to be discovered. It integrates all of that. You know, our aggression is more meaningful when it's paired with something quieter. You know, our externalizing is more powerful when we have some internalizing. Our giving, you know, when, when we let ourselves receive, we can give. Light makes more sense when there's darkness in the world, right? So there's a lot of metaphors to say the same thing a thousand times. Everyone being the same thing doesn't serve us.

• 34:02Speaker 03

  But I think we've been over indexed, you know, as men on just a small piece of our potential. And so we're swinging in this other direction. And it's, it's pretty scary and it's pretty exciting to be like, oh, I can, I can express this too. I can be sad. I can engage in conflict without it becoming physical. So I'm, I'm not, you know, I don't think, I think I agree with you. We don't need masculinity to become femininity or vice versa. But we do need to allow space for us all to experience both.

• 34:42Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 34:45Scott Galloway?

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• 35:30Scott 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 prof G for $1,000 off.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior-like beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 36:23Scott Galloway?

  Let's switch gears. In 2023, you predicted we'd see a shift in investors' attention from the crypto web three space to AI, which obviously you nailed that. And that's, you know, it's playing out in spades. Can you tell us more about your thoughts on AI?

• 36:37Speaker 03

  Excited, terrified, annoyed. You know, what I, what I don't, the terror and the annoyance come from... Industrializing human experience. Kind of reducing every problem down to maximizing output, increasing throughput, efficiency to make a line go up and to the right. And so when you take something like ChatGPT as one popular example of the moment, and it's like, this is gonna make everybody be able to write essays and every copy, you know, copyrighters we put out of business, because the robot can just draft all your ad copy. And screenwriters can just crank out scripts. And it's like, okay, cool.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  So what are we gonna do with 10x scripts? What are we gonna do with 100x pieces of ad copy? What are we gonna do with like 500x real estate listings that all kind of say the same thing? What's the point? And so I, some of this energy and this innovation has questionable value for human experience. It's interesting. It's like mathematically interesting. It's kind of Lego wise, like, oh, I could build that with Legos. But do I, am I gonna live in that thing that I built? Or is it just like a thought experiment manifesting momentarily? On the exciting side, though, how we might, you know, when I think about some of the stuff I've had ChatGPT do,

• 38:04Speaker 03

  and you can imagine iterations, like, explain what's in this congressional bill. Identify the kickbacks, you know, in this contract. Find inconsistencies in the application of law in these counties based on the race of the defendant.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  You know, there's, there's great value to be had in these systems. But the ability of, the tendency of these tools to be declared the future by a small handful of people without any kind of small D democratic process to decide like, how are we gonna use this stuff? How are we gonna attribute the original artists and creators who involuntarily trained these machine learning language models or illustrative models? We, you know, we have to take some pauses and milestones along the way to make sure we're creating a world we actually want to inhabit.

• 39:01Scott Galloway?

  You've had some thoughts on TikTok and specifically what might happen to the creator economy if TikTok were to be banned in the US. What do you think are the odds it actually gets banned in the US? And what do you think the impact would be?

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Odds I still think are low, though it feels like this inevitable creep, but I think a full ban is gonna be really hard. The reaction, you know, will have, you know, Gen Z storming the Capitol. I think that's the day one it'll make the Taylor Swift hearings on Ticketmaster look like a walk in the park. And it's gonna be very awkward for the elected officials who, you know, issued that decree. After that, it's gonna be a scramble. The immediate winners will be those who kind of catch that usage and demand. It'll be Snapchat will get a boost and Instagram will get a boost because Instagram is just a copy of TikTok at this point anyway. A copy of TikTok plus Snapchat because Facebook Meta doesn't really build

• 39:58Speaker 03

  new things anymore. They overpay and hire a bunch of people and they force it down the throats of their users and then they say, oh, look what our users are into because you changed the algorithm to make us be into it. But they'll benefit quantifiably. And then I have a fuzzy crystal ball about what happens after that. I think fragmentation to smaller communities will continue. I think you see hints of it in Mastodon posts, you know, more less top-down owned systems, more federated systems, but there's also some exhaustion to that. So I'm not gonna fully predict that the whole world's just gonna run their own email servers. I don't think that's actually the future.

• 40:39Scott Galloway?

  And what's next? So you got the TV show, you got Puck, anything, anything sooner we should be mindful of?

• 40:47Speaker 03

  Yeah. How does Citizen, season four? In this season, we are focused on how you create an actual culture of democracy. What's the, what's the little stuff you can do at home, in your actual community? It's, we do one episode on voting with Nsay Ufod of the New Georgia Project. We talk with a former psychologist and psychotherapist who has a whole different healing modality about citizening within yourself. And we, as always, we give people things to do in each episode. So overall, this, you know, project is Citizen as a verb. We can all do something, not Citizen as status and immigration status in particular. And, you know, how do we all live together?

• 41:30Speaker 03

  With all this difference in a way that we can all thrive.

• 41:34Scott Galloway?

  Citizen is a verb. I like that. Baratunde Thurston is a founding partner of the media startup Puck and an Emmy nominated multi-platform storyteller and producer operating at the intersection of race, tech, democracy, and climate. He is the host and executive producer of the PBS television series, America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston, and the creator and host of How to Citizen with Baratunde. He joins us from his home in Highland Park. Baratunde, it's always good to hear from you and hear about what you're up to. It sounds like you're killing it. Well done.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Thank you. I am growing like the rest of us, hopefully. And I appreciate you having me on. I love what you do with your voice and your platform. And whether it's on Pivot or here on the Prof G Show, or too much Twitter and post social media activity, I like what you're putting out into the world. So keep it up and I look forward to hanging again.

• 42:36Scott Galloway?

  Algebra of Happiness, do you want to be more interesting? I love these little cartoons, these animated cartoons. I should know what they are, but there are all these animals saying these very philosophical things in a very sweet and gentle manner. And I think it was the fox said, "I just don't feel like I'm very interesting." And the horse says, I think it's the horse says, "You know, being honest is the most interesting thing in the world." And it really struck me that there's a lot of truth to that. And that is, when I was younger and still now, I was watching myself talk all the time. And that is, I wasn't saying oftentimes how I felt, or what I thought the reality was. I was trying to make stuff sound more interesting. And my thought around what was more interesting.

• 43:22Scott Galloway?

  Was exaggeration or boasting, you know, not speaking honestly about just how mundane or boring stuff is, or my own insecurities, or where I have fucked up. The reality of the situation, being honest, or telling people hard truths. By the way, I don't think you should always be 100% honest. I think that's bullshit, too. I don't know why I thought of this. I remember I was a grocer, or a box boy at a grocery store, a westward hoe, and the cashier was this nice woman, and she'd been in an auto accident and had cosmetic surgery on her face because she'd hit the steering wheel so hard. I know that sounds weird, but this is back in a time when they didn't have airbags. And she sat me down, I mean, I'm like 16 at the time, and said, I need you to be honest with me. She said to me, you seem honest, and she said, can you tell I've had all this surgery on

• 44:06Scott Galloway?

  my face? And you could tell she was very self-conscious about it. And I sat there and I said, if you look really closely, you can see, but for the most part, you know, anyone who looks at you is just gonna see that you're a nice-looking woman and not notice. And I could see like this wave of relief come over this cashier. And I remember thinking, and by the way, that was not honest. That was not honest. So this notion that you should be honest all the time is total bullshit. You just don't, there's just several instances where you don't need to be honest to spare someone's feelings. Anyways, that took me way the fuck back 40 years ago. I think that being honest and appraising or giving your view, a sober view, thoughtful,

• 44:50Scott Galloway?

  calm view, reflective on what you think is actually going on in a situation, that's just interesting. People are drawn to that person who looks at the world. Most of us have the ability to perceive the world pretty accurately. Where we get in trouble is trying to figure out what positions us or the world in a more interesting and impressive light. And we're not as sober or honest in the way we describe situations or our personal feelings. In sum, you want to be a more interesting person, just be very honest.

• 45:21Scott Galloway?

  This episode was produced by Caroline Shager. Our associate producer is Jennifer Sanchez. Drew Burrows is our technical director. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prof G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday with No Mercy No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly markets show.

• 45:42Speaker 04

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