Are We Reliving 1929? Parallels to Today’s Market Mania — ft. Andrew Ross Sorkin

Ed Elson and Scott Galloway are joined by Andrew Ross Sorkin, editor-at-large of DealBook at the New York Times and co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box, to discuss his new book, “1929,” and the striking parallels between the great crash and today’s markets environment. He delves into the lessons we can learn from past financial crises, shares his insights on the upcoming New York mayoral race, and offers expert tips on the art of compelling storytelling. Order Andrew’s book Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter Order "Notes on Being a Man," out Nov. 4 Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 2:00Scott Galloway?

  Today's number 11. That's the percentage increase in Halloween candy prices this year compared to 2024. True story. Last Halloween, I went dressed as a chicken and I met a girl dressed as an egg, which answered the age-old question: the chicken.

• 2:20Speaker 07

  Markets are bigger than us. What you have here is a structural change in the world distribution. Cash is trash. Stocks look pretty attractive. Something's going to break. Forget about it.

• 2:30Scott Galloway?

  I actually think Halloween and Valentine's Day are very similar. They both involve candy and I pretend to be something I'm not.

• 2:38Scott Galloway?

  Pretend to be thoughtful, caring.

• 2:40Ed Elson?

  Two bangers in a row.

• 2:41Scott Galloway?

  Two bangers. Let's talk about Halloween. What are you doing?

• 2:44Ed Elson?

  Uh, I'm going to a party. I'm going to dress up as Inspector Clouseau and my girlfriend's going to be the Pink Panther. I do have another Halloween story, actually, and that is I went to a party last week that for some reason I thought was a costume party. It was my friend's birthday dinner and I convinced my girlfriend that it was a costume party and she was just assumed that I was right. I was like, yeah, it's definitely, we want to get dressed up. We show up as cowboy and cowgirl with cowboy hats and it is a regular dinner party. Everyone is dressed completely normally. Uh, so it was quite a shocking experience for us.

• 3:24Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, if that's the most embarrassing thing that's happened to your girlfriend being your, having her, you as her boyfriend, she's, she's got a world of surprise coming her way.

• 3:34Ed Elson?

  She's going to deal with some more.

• 3:35Scott Galloway?

  Ed, ask me what I'm doing. Ask me what I'm doing. What am I doing? What are you up to, Scott? What's going on with you?

• 3:39Ed Elson?

  What are you up to, Scott? What kind of parties are you going to?

• 3:42Scott Galloway?

  Well, Ed, I don't like to talk about this kind of thing, but I'm going to Toronto tomorrow. Now you say, why are you going to Toronto?

• 3:46Ed Elson?

  Ah, why are you going to Toronto?

• 3:48Scott Galloway?

  I'm, um, accepting an award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Spirit of Hope Dinner, uh, for our advocacy and protection, I think of the Jewish people and it's me and Van Jones, which is one, a very big award and two, shows you how deep into the barrel you have to go because so few Jews are actually speaking out. But anyways, going to Canada to get an award.

• 4:16Scott Galloway?

  This is a very serious topic, Ed. Don't laugh. Don't laugh. What's so funny? Let me guess. You just got back from voting for Mom Donnie. Let me guess.

• 4:25Ed Elson?

  No, I just love the, I love, I love how, I love the setup. Just, I don't know if we're gonna have this in the edit, but the prompting.

• 4:36Scott Galloway?

  It's a true story.

• 4:37Ed Elson?

  I know, it's a true story.

• 4:38Scott Galloway?

  I'm going to Toronto tomorrow morning.

• 4:39Ed Elson?

  I know, I'm very excited for you. We're gonna be back in New York and we're gonna, we're gonna have, I think, a few meetings, right? They go over how, how the business is doing.

• 4:48Scott Galloway?

  Can I just say so far, I think this is our most cringey opening and that is not easy. I brought in Judaism, Toronto, Halloween. There's a, this is, this is a, this is a fruit salad of weird. Yeah, we're doing our team meeting. I like to, I like to encourage everyone to work harder. And we're gonna go over the business. Business is rocking, by the way. I mean, markets is a drag on the business, but.

• 5:16Scott Galloway?

  That was good.

• 5:17Ed Elson?

  This show needs some work.

• 5:19Scott Galloway?

  Yes, no, this show needs some work. No, the business is going really well. Right place, right time. Who would have thought podcasting?

• 5:24Ed Elson?

  We're gonna get the first full picture of what it's like doing this show five days a week. Cause people, people forget, we only started doing this very recently. So this is our first full quarter. But we're gonna review the financial performance of doing this show every weekday. I personally am very excited to see how much money we're making off of this thing.

• 5:42Scott Galloway?

  You're my, I'm gonna give another reference that only Drew, our technical director, who's, he's the only person over the age of 40 on this call. That only he will write, you're my Fernando Valenzuela. Do you know who Fernando Valenzuela is?

• 5:53Ed Elson?

  I don't.

• 5:54Scott Galloway?

  He looks scared that I'm gonna say it's some sort of like Norwegian porn star or something. Anyways, it's Fernando Valenzuela.

• 6:02Ed Elson?

  You've told me worse.

• 6:03Scott Galloway?

  Fernando is arguably one of the greatest pitchers of all time. He played for the Dodgers in the eighties and Tom, Tommy Lasorda had a fairly weak team, or I don't know, someone will come in the comments, no, they were a good team. Anyway. He was this amazing pitcher, couldn't speak a word of English and. Uh, he was amazing and you're not supposed to, I guess, use a pitcher more than once, maybe twice a week as he throw out the arm. And Tommy was pitching him three times a week and basically turned his arm into like a rubber band, just totally overplayed him. Anyways, you're my, you're my Fernando Valenzuela. We went from once a week, we get a few positive comments. I'm like, let's go to twice a week. We got it twice a week. The thing does well and Claire is very ambitious. She's, she's got a wedding to pay for at

• 6:48Scott Galloway?

  some point, hint, hint. And then I, and we go, let's go to five days a week. So you guys are my Fernando Valenzuela. I'm literally throwing your arm out.

• 6:56Ed Elson?

  I love it. I'm young. I've got a lot more throws left in me.

• 7:02Scott Galloway?

  I agree. I agree, young man. All right. With that, should we get to the headlines?

• 7:06Ed Elson?

  Let's do it. We are speaking with Andrew Ross Sorkin, editor at large of Dealbook at the New York Times and co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Box. And he is just out with his new book, 1929, which we cannot wait to get into. Let's bring him in. Good to see you, Andrew. Uh, Scott, ready to go?

• 7:21Scott Galloway?

  Hey Andrew, just quick before we get started, is it okay if I mock your interview with Leslie Stahl or is that gonna upset you?

• 7:26Speaker 09

  No, you can, you can say whatever you like. Throw the ball as hard as you want, my friend. That's, that's what the Canadians would say. They would say, do what, do what you like to do. But I'll tell you this, I want you to know, we got a copy of your new book, Scott, just arrived yesterday. And my wife and I looked at it and we said, instant bestseller.

• 7:50Scott Galloway?

  Thanks, man.

• 7:51Speaker 09

  You could just feel it. By the way, the, the cover is beautiful. The approach to the whole thing is beautiful. I didn't get a chance to fully read it. I mean, we were just sort of going through it quickly, but it, you could just feel what you're trying to do in those pages. And hats off to you. And I just can't wait for it.

• 8:05Scott Galloway?

  It's just unfair. He's so fucking likeable, isn't he?

• 8:09Ed Elson?

  See, this is how Andrew is so successful is how he avoids roasts.

• 8:13Scott Galloway?

  How do you not like this guy?

• 8:14Speaker 09

  I'm not trying to pander to you. I'm not, I'm just telling you, the thing shows up, the thing showed up at our house yesterday and we have a whole conversation about this cover. Whoever made that cover, it's gorgeous.

• 8:25Ed Elson?

  Scott, enjoy, enjoy roasting him now.

• 8:27Speaker 09

  Read him in. Read this wonderful, read this wonderful, intelligent man in.

• 8:32Ed Elson?

  This is our conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin. Andrew, good to have you on the show.

• 8:39Speaker 09

  It's great to be here. I'm ready for the roast. I'm ready for the roast.

• 8:45Ed Elson?

  I can't wait to, but I'm going to start off because we want to get into your book here, 1929, which I'm actually holding right here. You can go buy it now. Currently number two on the bestseller list. It is outlining what happened in 1929, the stock market crash, which led to the Great Depression. Let's just start with the basics here, Andrew. What did happen in 1929?

• 9:10Speaker 09

  Well, I mean, you probably have to go back even before 1929 to get fully there. But, you know, the 1920s, people talk about the go-go 20s and this sort of remarkable period. It was probably one of the most transformational generations of our time from a technological perspective, automobiles, telecommunications, radio. And the other magic ingredient was credit, the opportunity for people to get loans to go buy stuff. And originally it started with buying cars and appliances from, you know, all sorts of different stores and things like that. And then Wall Street caught on and started offering people loans so you could go buy stock. And that was really what changed everything in terms of how stock trading in

• 9:55Speaker 09

  America became almost like a national pastime. So you had the, a market that just sort of roared in the craziest way from 19, beginning in 1928 to September 1929, it was up 90%. And this was like free money for most people. And then, of course, the crash happens. And it wasn't just that the market crashed, it's that everybody was so levered that they were literally selling their homes, mortgaging their houses. And that's what really took the confidence, almost generationally scarring a whole group of people, and was the first domino in a series of dominos that then led to the Great Depression. And it wasn't preordained. There was a lot of things that happened in Washington. And I think when you get into the story of who these people were and what they were doing, and their motives and their

• 10:39Speaker 09

  incentives and everything else, you can really see how those dominos fell.

• 10:42Ed Elson?

  There have been a lot of stock market crashes throughout history, throughout American history. Why did you choose this one? Why was this one, why was 1929 in particular so significant?

• 10:52Speaker 09

  So many people would come up to me after I wrote Too Big to Fail and say, well, how does 2008 financial crisis compared to 1929? Truth is, I didn't know. I'd read a lot about the period, but I'd never gotten inside the story, the characters, who they were. I loved books like Barbarians at the Gate and Den of Thieves and, you know, books that Eric Larson had written where you felt like you were in the room with these people. And I thought, could I go do that?

• 11:17Scott Galloway?

  Well, one of the things I really appreciate about the book is that you bring some of the characters that we don't hear about or aren't on the tip of our tongues to life. Talk to us about your favorite one or two characters that you researched and if there's sort of a modern day analog.

• 11:31Speaker 09

  Oh goodness. So my two favorite characters, the reason I think I wrote this book and the reason, I think the moment I knew I could even write the book was when I really got to understand a guy named Charles Mitchell. They called him Sunshine Charlie. And Charles Mitchell ran a bank called National City, becomes Citigroup. By the way, lives, if you know New York City, lives in what is now the French consulate on Fifth Avenue between 74th and 75th Street. That was his home. And he was the guy who really created this idea of lending people money to buy stock. He used to say that stock should be sold the way neckties are sold, that there shouldn't be mystery around stock. He believed in this idea of democratizing finance. That was a big theme for him in terms of what he thought

• 12:15Speaker 09

  would power America, getting, getting the masses, the ordinary investor involved in the capitalistic system. Charlie Mitchell, in his time, was like the Jamie Dimon of his time. I mean, he, he was on the cover of magazines. This was really the first time CEOs of big banks were showing up on the cover of magazines. I mean, before this was Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh and, you know, actors and actresses. All of a sudden, these bankers are on the cover of magazines as like cover stars. And so, maybe he was like Jamie. I think in some ways, he might've been a little bit like Michael Milken, actually, in terms of what he ultimately did, in terms of the credit piece of it. And then on the other end of the story is a guy named Carter Glass, who I think a lot more people know

• 13:00Speaker 09

  because they know about Glass-Steagall. This is the bill that broke up the banks in 1933. Carter Glass was like Elizabeth Warren. He was the Elizabeth Warren of his time. He was actually from the South. He was a senator in Virginia. And he was really, frankly, he was a racist Elizabeth Warren. And he was screaming from the rooftops about this thing called Mitchellism and how he believed that Charlie Mitchell and Wall Street were going to upend America because of this sort of rampant speculation that needed to be tamped down. And I think once I understood that there was this fight, this battle between these two powerful individuals, I thought, okay, from a character story perspective, that can really be the driving spine of how this this goes.

• 13:45Scott Galloway?

  I mean, some of the things that people may not know, and I didn't know until I read your book, was the 1929 or the, you know, the Great Depression or the crash, it wasn't as much of a crash as it was a slow bleed, right? It kind of played out over three years. It wasn't like Black Friday or one day. At one point, they thought it was done and over, but it just kept hemorrhaging. And by the time we were in, I think, 32, the market had lost 90% of its value. But it was like, it was kind of a slow moving train wreck, right?

• 14:14Speaker 09

  It was such a slow moving train wreck. I mean, I think a lot of people have this impression that there was like one great crash. People talk about like Black Thursday. Sometimes people talk about Black Tuesday. Well, guess what? There was a Black Thursday. There was a Black Monday. There was a Black Tuesday. Interestingly, at the end, so from October to November 13th of 1929, stock market was down about 49%. But by the end of 1929, the stock market was only down 17%. In fact, the New York Times used to keep a list of the most important stories of the year that they published at the end of the year. The

• 14:53Speaker 09

  crash was not on it. So it had this psychologically scarring effect on some Americans who had basically been just taken out because they had borrowed so much money and, by the way, couldn't benefit when the stocks recovered at all because they were basically on margin to begin with. And then as 1930, 31, 32 go by, there's just a number, as I said, of sort of policy errors. The tariffs, by the way, Smoot-Hawley tariffs, 1930, that created a problem for the country. The Fed, as we mentioned, didn't really do much of anything for the most part. And by the way, you also had Andrew Mellon, who was the Treasury Secretary at the time, working for Hoover, saying that, you know, he was a true capitalist. His view

• 15:37Speaker 09

  was, you make money, great. You lose money, great. Didn't care. And so they almost were like not really looking at the problem. They almost Hoover used to talk about it as a psychological problem and that the stock market was divorced from the real economy. But by the time you get to 1932, as you said, the market was down 90%. You had unemployment in this country of 25%. Think about that 25% of unemployed people. And then all of a sudden you had about 9,000 banks effectively fail.

• 16:07Scott Galloway?

  After researching this crash, are you more or less confident that we're on the precipice? So we know the correction is coming, but we don't know if it'll be a soft correction or when it's coming. Are you more or less confident that there will be something resembling, if not a crash, a significant destruction in value in the markets?

• 16:30Speaker 09

  So I'm more convinced that there'll be a destruction of value in the markets, but probably more akin to something like 1999 than 1929. Because the other thing to remember is back in 1929, there was no SEC. There were no bank capital requirements. There was no Bank Act. There was nothing insider trading, that the ability to truly manipulate things was what happened every single day. I like to believe that we've learned from that moment. And so that if we do have another crash, if you will, that it is not as deep and not as sustained. What I think I don't know about today is I think it's harder to fully understand where

• 17:14Speaker 09

  all the leverage is today than we used to know. You know, after 2008, so much of the loan market in this country moved to private credit. We don't really know all the disclosures about that. Some of that's connected into the insurance industry now. So there's a lot of sort of questions that I have. And I also think this AI boom, which is sort of the euphoria. I mean, it's back then RCA was the Nvidia of its day. Now it's Nvidia. How much of? That whole boom is being powered by leverage. So not to say that you look at Meta and Google and all the big tech companies are obviously throwing a lot of their own cash at this problem, but also they're taking on some debt, but they're also now partnering with all sorts of private credit funds and doing all sorts of other things. And we're not just talking about the data centers themselves, we're talking about the

• 17:59Speaker 09

  energy companies that are providing electricity and the construction and real estate. There's all sorts of other component parts of this ecosystem that are being powered by leverage.

• 18:09Ed Elson?

  Yeah, and if OpenAI is going to spend a trillion dollars over the next five years and they need 900 billion to come up with, they can only borrow. That's one of the things we've been talking about on the podcast.

• 18:19Speaker 09

  Well, you guys have been talking about all these circular deals, right? These sort of round trip transactions. That's just another sign to me of a sort of euphoric moment where there's not really an ROI, there's sort of a religion about where this is all headed directionally. And by the way, they're probably right directionally about where our whole world is headed, kind of like the internet, but some of the spending is indiscriminate.

• 18:41Ed Elson?

  Right. It feels as though we're going to enter the leverage phase where we're on the precipice of that phase. Just when you look through the circumstances of the time, 1929, and you really paint this picture in the book, you know, this is coming off of an incredibly prosperous time, post-industrial, gilded age, all of these wealthy billionaires who, as you say, are not just rich people, but influencers, they're now on the covers of magazines, they're on Forbes and Time. You also talk about the tariffs, the fact that tariffs were an important issue that were being debated. There's this tension between the relationship with Wall Street and also Washington and

• 19:22Ed Elson?

  the amount of influence that could be bought by people on Wall Street in Washington, people beginning to talk about that. What is so striking about the book, and that I think is so resonant for so many people, is the extent to which it is a mirror of today. I mean, all of the characters, all of the conversations, you can pretty much draw a direct link to what is happening in America right now. I'd love for you to just say a little bit more about that, how it was such a similar time and all of the connections that you feel you made when writing this book.

• 19:57Speaker 09

  I try not to be prescriptive in the book because when I started this book, I thought I was really just trying to write a story about a particular moment in time. And as I was writing it, And obviously, all of these things are happening in the news that we're reporting on every day. And we're reading about in the pages of the papers and talking about on TV and on your podcast and everything else. It started, you know, there were these like alarm bells going off, oh, my goodness, this is parallel to this and this is parallel to that. So I just want to sort of say upfront, that wasn't, it wasn't the goal. The fact that the book is coming out now is it's only a function of the fact that I finally finished the book. Much to my, much to my family's delight, frankly, because they were. Eight years, right? I went into it thinking I could pull it off in maybe two or three years.

• 20:41Speaker 09

  And of course, then it dragged on, but it was, it was a labor of love. You know, you talk about different characters being so similar. There's a guy named John Raskov, who I actually think may be the most interesting person in the book. He is the Elon Musk of his era. He was sort of a philosopher king. One of the, would have been if there was, if there was a Forbes list back then, he would have been on it. He ran General Motors, was the one who actually decided to start lending people money to buy cars. That's actually what, by the way, changed the way people even thought about credit for the first time. So it was a moral sin in this country, in large part, prior to that, to even take on a loan of any sort. And, and he sort of made that available to the masses, then tried to create a mutual fund that would have been levered effectively.

• 21:26Speaker 09

  He used to say, everyone ought to be rich.

• 21:30Speaker 09

  He built what was then the SpaceX of its time in the Empire State Building. He was, he was the single individual behind that. At one point, he, by the way, gets into politics. He actually had been a Republican, switches to be a Democrat in this case, to try to take on Hoover, working with Al Smith, loses. By the way, then spends a lot of his money paying off journalists and, you know, if he owned Twitter, oh, my goodness. You know, really trying to undermine the reputation of Hoover secretly for years. In fact, I would argue Hoover's reputation, even to this day, was damaged by this guy, John Raskov. And then John Raskov very cleverly came up with an idea that actually, I would argue, changed America in a large way. Which is today, we work only five days a week. Back then, we worked six days a week.

• 22:15Speaker 09

  The stock market was open on Saturdays and he had this idea. She wrote about in November of 1929 that, you know what, we should have a five day work week because, not because he wanted to be nice to people, because he thought that if you actually had an extra day during the weekend, it would create a bigger consumer economy, more people would have to buy cars, they'd have places to go, they'd buy gardening equipment and everything else. So again, you sort of see these people in this sort of parallel like universe.

• 22:41Ed Elson?

  And yet, the opening quote, or the epigraph in the book, which I think is so good, is this quote from Albert Einstein. He said this in 1929, three days before Black Tuesday. He said, quote, "The ordinary human being does not live long enough to draw any substantial benefit from his own experience. And no one, it seems, can benefit by the experiences of others. Being both a father and a teacher, I know we can teach our children nothing. Each must learn its lesson anew." And I think that is kind of the crucial point here, which is, you're describing a situation that looks very similar to what is happening today. We know what happened in the aftermath. We know that there

• 23:24Ed Elson?

  was a stock market crash that led to a period of depression. But you also open the book and by saying, you know, we have to learn our lessons ourselves.

• 23:34Speaker 09

  We do. And by the way, let me just say, here we are being very depressed. It's very depressing to think, oh, everything's going to go off a cliff. The truth is that, you know, over time, the market goes up. You know, a lot of people, by the way, since this book came out, they said, oh, Andrew, you know, you're calling for a crash, it's all going to end terribly. What are you saying? And the truth is that you could have all the Cassandras in the room, you know, saying the sky is going to fall. But over time, things have gone up. And I do think that's worth noting because being a professional optimist has been a better business than being a professional skeptic. Again, over time. That's not to say, you know, if you need the money in the moment of crisis or a panic, you have a problem.

• 24:19Speaker 09

  But if you can, if you, if you don't, things will get better. And one other piece that I've grappled with a lot, actually, writing this book. I've actually come to the conclusion that actually speculation in some way built America. You know, we all think that speculation is this dirty word, but whoever did bet on Elon Musk when he was doing Tesla, and it seemed like an absurd idea, that was a speculation unto itself. And, you know, so much of the sort of generational change technologically and otherwise came from speculators. Now, the problem with speculation is you're trying to thread some kind of crazy needle, which is you want some semblance of speculation in the system, but you don't want it to go overboard. And that's, that is the million trillion dollar question. How do you do that?

• 25:04Ed Elson?

  I mean, as someone who studied that time, what lessons can we learn such that when or if, but I think we probably all agree, when the stock market corrects, it's not as painful and as destructive as it was back then?

• 25:18Speaker 09

  Well, the first piece is what do you do on the front end to try to avoid a crash? And that might be, by the way, raising interest rates if you're, if you're the Federal Reserve, even in the face of some of these other issues around employment and the like. When you look at an AI boom that's taking place in our country today, I mean, right now, the, the problem is we, or the challenge, I would argue, is we're such an imbalance in our economy. I don't know if you guys read Jason Furman or Harvard just wrote this paper. If you literally take out all of the money that's been funneled into sort of the data center build out in America, you would have basically flat GDP in our country. You know, maybe a point one percent or something like that, I think he concluded. So that's a very complicated scenario.

• 26:03Speaker 09

  How, how do you cut off what seems like a speculative sort of fury? And you want that innovation, but, but you also, and now especially because, because of the concentration, you don't want to sort of tip over the rest of it. So I think part of it's what do you do on the front end? And then on the back end, what do you do, which is, and the answer typically is you flood the system with money as politically unpopular as that is. That's going to become increasingly more complicated because of our fiscal imbalances, which is to say, back in 1929, for better or worse, we had a budget surplus. This country hardly had any debt. The more you start to flood the system with money now, you create all sorts of other new problems for yourself because at some point, bondholders in US treasuries are going

• 26:48Speaker 09

  to raise their hand and say, you know what? We don't really like this that much. We're happy to lend you money, but you're going to have to pay us a lot more for that risk.

• 26:56Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break. If you liked what you heard, hit follow and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more.

• 27:11Speaker 00

  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 light 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.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Blowing 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.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  I remember telling my boss, "It'll be good for the brand," when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  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.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine. Fifteen or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 28:17Speaker 05

  Botox, Ottobotulinum Toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS-LuGarek's Disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 29:15Speaker 09

  We're back with Prof. Markets.

• 29:17Scott Galloway?

  The way this reminded me a little bit of your book Too Big to Fail is you're very good at putting people in the room. There's a couple of meetings or scenarios in both books where you feel like you're literally in the room. And what I would ask you to do is put us, if someone said, put me in the room in October of 2025, you see the markets every day. You're literally someone who's taken the blood pressure and the, you know, taking in the pulse of the markets every day. You see it and you've been doing this a while. If you tried to remove yourself from this age and objectively look at what's going on and you wanted to put someone in the room, the markets today, how would you describe it?

• 30:03Speaker 09

  Okay, so if I could write about today, what I would want to do is try to recreate the scenes where Sam Altman is putting together the transaction, not with Jensen Huang, but actually maybe with Lisa Su, who runs AMD. Because you would see both of them either on a phone call or probably on a Zoom, maybe in a room together. I don't know the specifics of how it all happened, but I think you'd get to see the conversation. You'd get to understand the motivations that Sam desperately wants this build out, feels like he really needs, you know, to buy all of this compute. You have Lisa Su at AMD desperate to get

• 30:43Speaker 09

  into this sort of chip game, which she's losing to Nvidia. And so her motivations are, I need to get into this. How are they going to make a deal? In this case, they create this sort of odd circular transaction where, you know, OpenAI gets, you know, warrants in AMD, knowing that if they announce this deal likely, I'd love to see that conversation, we think that the warrants are going to be worth a lot more because of this connection between the two. And then that's going to create value which OpenAI can use effectively as cash at some point to pay for the chips that it otherwise couldn't afford to buy.

• 31:24Speaker 09

  I would want to see that conversation and then I would want to see some conversation after it where, you know, Sam is briefing, you know, President Trump and Scott Beson on it and then maybe the breakfast that Scott Beson has with, you know, Powell, you know, once a week they have lunch together or breakfast together. So yeah, I would be trying to tell those stories as a way of sort of bringing you inside of today's economy and trying to understand, you know, how much anxiety all of these individuals really have or don't have in these moments.

• 31:59Scott Galloway?

  Those circular deals, that would be an interesting room. I'm curious and obviously my political leanings are going to come out here. I'd love to be in the room where he's basically saying to Mark Zuckerberg or Sam Altman or give me a hundred million bucks and I'll, I will pass AI legislation that lets you molest every piece of IP out there. It strikes me that this age and I'm putting forward a thesis that will mark this age economically is this orgy of corruption and flat out grift. Your thoughts, Andrew?

• 32:29Speaker 09

  Look, I think that there unfortunately is a lot of grift in this moment. And by the way, maybe that grift will ultimately look like the kind of grift that we had in 1929, but just in a different form. Right? I think that's, that's possible.

• 32:44Scott Galloway?

  Was it on this scale or was it worse? And I asked that sincerely. Was it on the same level as this or worse, better?

• 32:50Speaker 09

  Well, so in the stock market itself back then, you literally had all sorts of like demonstrable insider trading and manipulation going on where literally the specialist on the floor was oftentimes organizing what was called an operation, a pool operation, where they effectively were almost like actors where, you know, one person would say, I'm up for, you know, I'm buying a 120, then 140, but they all knew exactly, they were all in it together. That is happening today in crypto. That's happening in the meme stock arena. I told a story on 60 Minutes about this and it was such a wild situation for me personally. Back in January, somebody created something called a Sorkin coin. I happened to be on TV with Larry Fink and he mentioned that he joked there should be

• 33:35Speaker 09

  a Sorkin coin. Somebody actually created one. All of a sudden, millions of dollars are trading and, and I kept getting invited into these Telegram accounts, sort of chat rooms and Signal chat rooms and they're all talking about how they're actually going to manipulate. The coin and pressed it up and they all were trying to, they wanted me to be involved in it because they were trying to, they thought if I endorsed it, it would go, go up. In fact, one of them reached out to one of my sons, uh, online on social media, found him and was, was offering him, I think $50,000 or $100,000 worth of Sorkin coin to try to get him, uh, to somehow, I don't know, do something. I had to call my son and say, "Look, you cannot talk to these people. I beg you, we're all going to go to jail. You

• 34:18Speaker 09

  cannot, please do not reply." And of course, my son said to me, "Dad, I'm leaving a lot of money on the table."

• 34:24Scott Galloway?

  That's what Trump probably said too. I think of you as being, like, if I was asked to have five people to sort of embody New York to me in different angles of it, different complexions of it, you would be one of those people. I just think of you as the consummate New Yorker. Talk to me about Cuomo versus Mondami. I'd love to just give, looking at it through the lens of the markets, I know you talked to and are, you're, you're both young enough to, I think, understand the appeal of Mondami, but also you talk, you speak to every day to some people, some market players who are very, seem vehemently opposed to him. What do you think this says about the moment and says about the moment in New York?

• 35:05Speaker 09

  Oh goodness. Look, I think what it really says about the moment is that the Democratic Party has struggled to find the best possible candidates to actually put up on the board. I mean, I think that's, that's why this is, to the degree that people are questioning, how did this happen? Obviously Mondami, it felt like came out of nowhere. Cuomo is a, um, it's complicated for people to support him, uh, for lots of reasons. And I think you know a lot of those reasons. I don't even have to spell them out. And I think it's very complicated for a lot of other people to support Mondami, in part because he, he is, he's not a democratic socialist. He actually is a socialist. If you go and

• 35:50Speaker 09

  listen to what he talks about, I mean, he is, he does demonstrably talk about seizing the means of production. Like, he says that out loud. He has said that.

• 36:02Speaker 09

  And so I think that those sort of, the idea of a city that's built on capitalism, being run by somebody who demonstrably does not believe in it, and not just doesn't believe in it, but wants to fundamentally change it, is a fascinating development in our city. I think the bigger questions, though, that are animating the likes of, you know, some of the hedge fund managers and some of the most outspoken Wall Streeters that you hear, actually have nothing to do oddly enough with, you know, free buses and, you know, free groceries. I don't think that's what this is about. I think that this is actually about something very different. I think this is about policing and safety in the city

• 36:43Speaker 09

  and whether he is going to not just keep, you know, Commissioner Tish in charge, but, you know, how he's going to reallocate resources around policing in this city. And I think we have lived in this city and had lots of problems over the last five years. The pandemic really exacerbated it. We also had a lot of laws changed that made, you know, common thievery, you know, something that doesn't even get prosecuted in large part. So I think there's a big question about that. I think it starts with that. I think there's this question about antisemitism, to be honest with you, is a real question. I think that's like a real legit question that people, I'm Jewish, that people have in this city about

• 37:25Speaker 09

  what does he actually believe and how is that going to manifest itself over the next couple of years in the city. And then I, and then I think, you know, I know people talk about taxes and people think he's not going to be able to raise, the tax thing, I think is almost a red herring to sort of just a larger question about can he manage the city. I think that's actually another big piece of this, which is say, he's a young man, he's 33. A lot of people are super excited about him as a politician and what he's, what he represents and speaks to in terms of the big ideas around affordability and the like. But when it comes to actually the practical day to day of actually managing

• 38:07Speaker 09

  a city, when it's pretty clear that he's never done anything like that, and to the extent that he's managed things in this role as an assemblyman, that he wasn't even like doing the job half the time. I think a lot of people look at that that are in the business of Wall Street. I'm here at the NASDAQ today. I think those are the issues they're thinking about.

• 38:26Scott Galloway?

  The mayoral race is an executive or operational position and it's about making sure the MTA works and that there's policing. So to a certain extent, his views on Israel are, I don't want to say they're not important, but I feel like we have bigger fish to fry in terms of where we expend our political capital. And I think it's just as it's going to be hard for him to raise taxes because the logistics of the having to get the governor and the state legislature on board, you know, his views on Israel or on Jews, I see why it's meaningful, but I don't think it's profound here. And I think I do think there's been some Islamophobia.

• 39:04Speaker 09

  I think that's probably true.

• 39:05Scott Galloway?

  Because the Cuomo campaign gets desperate, you know, they running ads and or affiliated parties running ads of the, you know, the planes slamming into the Twin Towers. I just think that's that shit's ugly. Um, you know, I mean this sincerely, Andrew, I'd love to see you run for office, but it feels very, it feels like more of a statement on our politics. So you kind of think, wait, this is the best we can do?

• 39:28Speaker 09

  Well, that's the saddest part. Nobody wants to take these jobs. I mean, that's the thing. And I don't know how we change that. By the way, that's not just a New York, New York City mayoral problem. That's a problem around the country. Nobody wants, with very few exceptions, I don't want to say nobody wants these jobs, but I don't know, what would it take for us to get you Scott to, to run for something?

• 39:51Scott Galloway?

  If I was your age, I would do it, Andrew. It's just that I'm barreling towards death and I want to go to Ibiza and hang out with my friends. And I would absolutely do it because I'm a narcissist and I'm wealthy, which are the two primary qualifications to run for office. But no, I think a guy your age, I'm hoping Ed someday decides to get involved in public service.

• 40:11Speaker 09

  Ed, you want to run? You want to get dragged through the mud, Ed? You don't want to get dragged through the mud every day and have people on TikTok saying this crazy stuff.

• 40:19Ed Elson?

  I want to make the money first.

• 40:20Scott Galloway?

  But you're right. Your point is.

• 40:23Speaker 09

  Unless we start, uh, stop these on the left purity tests and unless on the right, we, they stop being, in my opinion, just so fucking crazy and coarse and cruel, who the hell's got, who, who with any options and has a nice life and isn't a total megalomaniac is going to want to do this shit?

• 40:40Ed Elson?

  Andrew, you, you speak a lot with the business world. You have kind of like a direct line of communication with all of the top executives, the people on Wall Street, the business community at large. And it's interesting to hear that there are concerns in New York specifically with Mamdani about the policing in general. But socialism at large, you know, you mentioned the, the strangeness of the, the capital of capitalism being run by a socialist. However, at the same time, this is spreading across the nation, actually. You've got 46% of Americans saying they don't support capitalism or they have a problem

• 41:19Ed Elson?

  with capitalism. You've got support for socialism at an all time high in America. So yes, it's strange, but it's actually increasingly not strange. The extent to which socialism is being embraced by people and people are losing faith in the capitalist system, which to me is going to be kind of the great referendum of our time. Do we like capitalism? Do we like the system that we've inherited or do we not? I would love to get your sense of what the business community thinks about this question and also if they are concerned and also taking it seriously. Do they think that this is a real problem?

• 41:58Speaker 09

  So I think they're concerned. I don't think they're taking it seriously, though I'm not sure what it would take to take it seriously, I mean, what they would be doing. And what's so unique, by the way, in this city in particular, and I, I recognize the polls suggest otherwise in terms of just the view about socialism. If you ask most, at least the experience that I've had of, and this is anecdotal, people who are voting for Mamdani, they say, well, he's not really a socialist. They'll say, actually, no, he's not a socialist. He's a democratic socialist. That's a very different thing. So I don't think they actually think that their way of life is going to fundamentally change, in part because they think they don't think he can actually change it, given,

• 42:40Speaker 09

  you know, the roles, responsibilities and powers that a mayor has. But I do think there is this larger question about capitalism versus socialism. In the same way that I think there's this question, I think this actually came out of 2008 and the financial crisis, a complete and utter rethinking about experts, expertise, institutions, all of that sort of was put up in the air as a question. And by the way, I think that's almost a straight line to President Trump winning in 2016. I think those questions were raised again, by the way, in the context of the pandemic. And so, you know, it's one thing to scream from the rooftop and say, guys, look at history. Capitalism is the

• 43:25Speaker 09

  thing that actually works. Socialism is the thing that actually doesn't work. Because they look at you and they say, I don't believe you or I don't care because I'm trying to find, you know, I believe in my own truth.

• 43:38Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back. And for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter at profgemarkets.com/subscribe.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  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 light 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.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  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.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand, when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 44:54Speaker 03

  I get so many headaches every month.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 45:02Speaker 05

  Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease, Myasthenia gravis, or Lambert Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 45:47Speaker 04

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 46:00Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. This has been fascinating, but I want to hear more about the book, specifically your process. One of the things I admire about you is the fact that you do everything. It's kind of insane. I mean, you're on, you're the anchor on CNBC. You started Dealbook at the New York Times, you're writing for Dealbook. You're doing all of these different things and you're writing books. By the way, not to mention the shows, the fact that you wrote and produced Billions.

• 46:33Ed Elson?

  How did you, what was your process? Like, I know that you went to the libraries and you were filing through all these documents. Like, tell us about what it took to actually write this book while juggling an extremely demanding career.

• 46:46Speaker 09

  So the truth is, I did think I was going to be able to do this in two or three years. Obviously, I couldn't do that. And part of it was, I did have, you know, these other responsibilities that I needed to make sure that I was attending to every single day. I would do this on weekends. I would do it on nights. I would do it in between things. You know, for the first couple of years, I was researching like crazy, just trying to find lots of different material. That actually, there were some stumbling blocks along the way. Then, by the way, the pandemic happened. And actually, at one point, I thought I thought the pandemic might go on for a very long time. I didn't even know what I was going to do. You couldn't even get inside some of these libraries around the country. I actually almost created like a black market. I would call up, I, along with a researcher

• 47:31Speaker 09

  that I was working with at the time, we would call up archivists, ask them what students were allowed in libraries, because certain students who had like a dissertation due or a thesis due were allowed in. And I would pay those students, I'd find them and pay them to go through boxes for you. So I'd say, Box 152, I need you to actually, with your iPhone, take a picture of every single page and send it to me. Now, in the end, I went back to actually most of those libraries afterwards, because I did feel the sort of tactileness of seeing it. But it was really like a mystery. It was like putting a puzzle together, in a way of trying to find all the material and also to think through these different characters, to figure out what were their motivations and what was, what

• 48:12Speaker 09

  was the chip on the shoulder? What was the hole that these people were trying to fill? Because I always think, and you guys actually talk about this, I think what drives a lot of, a lot of people, especially at the top, is some semblance of insecurity, actually. And so trying to understand what that insecurity even is, so that when you actually see them making decisions, even when you think the decisions are completely irrational, or make no sense, or the wrong decisions, or immoral, you say to yourself, ah. But I, I remember I reading earlier in the book about what, what was happening with this guy as a kid, or as a this, or that. And all of a sudden, it makes it at least relatable or understandable so you, so you can appreciate why these things are happening.

• 48:54Ed Elson?

  Why are you so industrious? This is kind of a broad question. Why are you so ambitious? Yeah, no, seriously.

• 49:01Speaker 09

  Because I have a hole that I'm trying to fill.

• 49:07Ed Elson?

  But can you, I would like to hear, like, just going inside the mind of Andrew Ross Sorkin. You are this superstar and you're reaching out to, I mean, imagine being a college student. You get a DM from Andrew Ross Sorkin asking for a photo. I mean, what drives you?

• 49:23Speaker 09

  I was driven to write this book because of my own curiosity about the topic. But, you know, I think part of it was, could I do it? Like, I honestly think part of this, I think actually a lot of the things that I do is like trying to prove to myself that I'm capable. Like, could I pull it off? You know, when I wrote Too Big to Fail in 2008 and nine, it was like lightning in a bottle. And I think if you know me well enough, you know that I sort of have thought for a long time like that. Maybe that was just like a lucky thing. And I don't know, maybe I got the timing right and the this and the that.

• 50:04Speaker 09

  And so I think, you know, to some degree, I think for me, I'm always trying to push myself to see, well, could I do it again? Was it luck? Was it not luck? You know, I think I probably have the same insecurities, frankly, that a lot of, that I think most people have to some degree. And so I, I think, I hate to say it, but I think that that probably drives me more than it should.

• 50:30Ed Elson?

  I think what we've learned about you as well is that you are an incredibly good storyteller. I mean, for those who read the book, it's kind of, I said it should be a movie because it's kind of insane how much it feels like you're watching a movie. I mean, the same could be said about like Harry Potter as an example. You read the page and it's like, you can see everything that's happening in front of you. And so what, that is really the remarkable thing about this book. I'm just, would love to hear, you know, we want to tell great stories on this show. It's an incredible skill. We think it's one of the most important skills in the age of AI. What is your advice for how to tell a great story? And how did you get so good at storytelling?

• 51:14Speaker 09

  Thank you. I don't know if I'm a great storyteller. I think I, I love the story of people more than anything else. I mean, it's interesting because people have written about 1929 and have done very well writing about 1929. But they typically write in the context of. Economics and cycles and systems. And I'm fascinated by people because I ultimately believe people make decisions, good and bad, that ultimately impact and create those economic cycles and systems. And so I'm always looking to tell the story through those people. And I feel like that's the most relatable way. And frankly, for me, the way I even understand the world. You know, I'm not trying to be humble or something by saying I'm not that smart.

• 51:59Speaker 09

  I'm not that smart. Sometimes I hear people talking about things in these sort of very, to me, it's very confusing. I actually don't understand what they're talking about when they talk about certain things. But when you tell me the story through a person and the way they were feeling and then why they were doing what they're doing, and then connect it to the economic cycles and systems and all those things, then for some reason I get it. And so I find myself writing that way.

• 52:24Ed Elson?

  I think that's the way we try to talk about markets on this show too, which I think there's a void in the market, which is like, it's all people running society. So if you understand the people, then you'll start to understand why things are happening and the reason that things unfolded the way they did. What is very interesting and a little bit crazy to me about this book is you're describing people who are not alive, who you've never met before. And I assume you had to kind of fill in the blanks. How did you get to know all of the characters in 1929, considering the fact that you don't know them?

• 53:02Speaker 09

  I mean, this is literally reading the diaries, reading the letters, reading the transcripts, reading the memos, reading all sorts of materials, reading what their friends were saying about them in those moments. You know, some of the material I found wasn't just in the moment, it might have been from 10, 20, 30 years, even later. You know, I found materials that some of their kids had written about some of the characters. And so again, I think I was just trying to figure out who they were. And I think I try to put myself in their shoes. I mean, I think I try to do this today with people who are alive. I try to think to myself, well, if I was so and so, even when I disagree with them, why do they think what they think? And so I think. I tried to do that in this context, but everything you read, if you see a quote

• 53:45Speaker 09

  or an emotion, or it came from somewhere, there's hundreds of pages of end notes in this book to really, so you can actually see where the material came from. It's not that I had to really craft it in my head, though I will say, having covered the crisis of 2008, I think that actually helped me a lot understand sort of the emotional state of humans in those moments and sort of like what they do and who they call and what happens in those moments. So I was, I think I was purposely looking for some of those things as I was going through the material.

• 54:19Ed Elson?

  Just on that point of getting to know people, I think you're good at it, at figuring out what's going on in their head. I'd like to throw out a few characters, see what you think is going on in their head. Sam Altman, he says we're going to spend a trillion dollars. He's cooking up these deals with Lisa Su. He's going to Larry Ellison. Everyone's saying it's a bubble. Everyone, many people are calling him Scam Altman. What do you think is going through his head right now when he comes out with these deals that a lot of people believe are dangerous, that he's playing with fire? Do you think he recognizes that? Do you think he ignores it and believes that we just have to build AI no matter the cost? What do you think is going on in his head?

• 55:04Speaker 09

  I don't want to speak for Sam. I've known Sam for a while. I think, and I've covered, you know, a lot of what they've done over these past years. I think that he believes in his heart, there's, that there's an inevitability to this technology. It's emergence and ultimately to AGI, that he believes that there is a straight line to that and that whether he does it or somebody else does it, that's, that's the end state. And so as a result, I think he's thinking, I want to be the one who gets there first. And while I do believe he's concerned to some degree about the implications of these

• 55:48Speaker 09

  things in terms of safety and the like, and the implications on our society, I think because of that sort of sense of inevitability that he is convinced of.

• 56:00Speaker 09

  If you believe that too, these other issues oddly do sort of fall to the, to the wayside.

• 56:06Scott Galloway?

  If you were going to start a media company from scratch right now, what would it look like?

• 56:10Speaker 09

  Maybe some, it would be a combination of what you're doing mixed with what Alex Cooper's doing, no joke. And by the way, I admire what the TB, uh, TBPN guys are doing. I mean, I think it would be, you'd be sort of a combination of sort of podcast meets video, uh, probably meets product and selling certain types of products. I think you could do, I mean, what's so interesting to me, this is a much longer conversation, is just how the audience has shifted in terms of what you think the sort of traditional rules should be in the context of most people who are involved in sort of this new podcast realm, you know, are venture capitalists or this or that, and they have all sorts of stakes and different things. And for whatever reason, the audience, I think, doesn't care. So maybe the world has changed. I don't know. But I think those are some real questions.

• 56:55Speaker 09

  But I think once you crack that, then I think the whole, whole thing opens up into doing all sorts of interesting things.

• 57:01Scott Galloway?

  I was asking this when you're on, and I'm, uh, I think people, anyone who knows, he knows you're a pretty soulful guy. Any thoughts for a guy like Ed, who doesn't have kids or a wife yet, on your learnings as a dad and a husband? Be straight with me.

• 57:16Speaker 09

  I'll be totally straight with you. First of all, and I think Scott said this, I think professionally, when you're young, before you have kids, do everything. Do everything you possibly can do. Because I do think one of the great conundrums and challenges of being a dad and being a father and having a professional life is the complication of trying to do both well, and it's hard. And I tell myself all the time, Scott, that, you know, if I write this book and they see me working hard on it and they see me care about something, hopefully they're going to care about something. I worry that, you know, they're going to, um, they could have a, you know, there could be a backlash. Interestingly, I'll tell you about my own father.

• 58:00Speaker 09

  My father was a lawyer and he worked so hard. I mean, he worked, he acted like a first year associate till he retired. And I thought to myself, I'm never going to work that hard. This is crazy that he's working this hard. Why is he, he's working on the weekends all the time. What's he doing? This is insane. And

• 58:21Speaker 09

  Yet here I am. And what I realized, I do think is true. I think if you love something, I'm so blessed to have found something I love. I'm hoping, I'm praying that if they see me love something as much as I do, and as much as I love them, not to say that I love them more, I mean, I love them more, and I hope they know that, but that they will hopefully be able to find a passion or understand that you could find something that you could love to do that much. Again, these are all things I tell myself, and we'll know in 20 or 30 years when I get, you know, the bill from the psychiatrist for the kids. So you tell me.

• 58:56Ed Elson?

  We're gonna be billing you. Any marriage advice?

• 58:59Speaker 09

  Find somebody who you could talk to forever. That's the thing. For me with my wife, I could talk to her forever. I just, we never get sick of each other. It's the craziest thing. When I first met her, I was actually scared to date her because I felt like, I felt like I'd known her so long. It was like a weird connection thing. I was like, this feels weird to me. So yeah, if you can find that, that's a pretty, pretty special thing.

• 59:30Ed Elson?

  Andrew Ross Sorkin is a financial economist for the New York Times and the editor-at-large of Dealbook. He is also co-anchor of Squawk Box, CNBC's signature morning program. His latest book, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation, is available now. Andrew, this was fantastic, as always.

• 59:50Speaker 09

  This was a lot of fun. Thank you, gentlemen. Really appreciate it. You guys do such a great job.

• 59:53Ed Elson?

  Thanks, brother.

• 1:00:04Scott Galloway?

  Ed, what'd you think of the Canadian spot? You know that, right? You know he works for the Canadian intelligence service. Anyone that nice, he's definitely, he's definitely funneling back. Trade secrets to Canada.

• 1:00:16Ed Elson?

  There's something wrong. He's too successful, too humble, too kind. Yeah, it's this, I, there's something off with him. There's gotta be, right? What'd you think?

• 1:00:26Scott Galloway?

  I'm fond of Andrew. I don't know him well, but I know him and I like him and I want him to succeed. And I find that he's actually quite, I think because he has such a powerful seat at CNBC, he's actually, he gives it to you pretty straight. He's not afraid to push back or I, I, I really enjoy really speak, uh, speaking to him, also his books. If you write books, you see how hard they are and within 10 or 12 pages, you can usually tell if A, they wrote it and B, if they did the work. And Andrew does the work. It doesn't, it doesn't surprise me. That book took him seven or eight years. Like when he writes a book, he really takes it on. He does a lot of research. He really goes deep. And so I, his, his books kind of, like I said, they put you in the room and they, they put you in the period and they put you in that time.

• 1:01:11Scott Galloway?

  A very talented guy. He, nice family man, good friend. Yeah. Just kind of, one of those guys kind of has it all. I would love to see Andrew, uh, run for office. I think he's very pragmatic, very likeable. I think he'd be a great mayor of New York. I think he'd be, I think he'd win. And he's got a blend of the kind of empathy and humanity that you want in someone in public service. But at the same time, I think in New York, you have to have someone who understands finance and markets. And he gets those things. Your thoughts?

• 1:01:42Ed Elson?

  I'm struck by the book. I'm struck by his ability to tell a story. I'm struck by his work ethic as exemplified by the amount of work that he does on all of his different media outlets and the amount of work, the insane amount of work that he had to put in to produce this book. I mean, if you read the book and you read sort of like the prologue about how he did it, it's, it's, it's kind of unbelievable. The thing that I am most, um, impressed by with Andrew, I think is his humility and his kindness. And I know that sounds kind of mushy and whatever, but I, I really am. And, you know, when we had him on the show for the first time, I, I've been a fan of his for, for a long time.

• 1:02:27Ed Elson?

  And I, you know, I reached out to him to, uh, get coffee and, and chat.

• 1:02:33Scott Galloway?

  And get a job. Is that what you're telling me? Wait, hold on. Just by accident, you decided to have coffee with another financial media personnel? Yeah.

• 1:02:44Ed Elson?

  I don't.

• 1:02:46Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, just you just wanted, you wanted him to, you wanted him to mentor you. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Memo to self, interviewing with competitors. Okay, great. Sorry, go ahead.

• 1:03:00Ed Elson?

  Well, it doesn't matter what I thought. The most important thing, he doesn't need to meet with me. I'm like a pipsqueak compared to him. He doesn't really get much out of it. But he was so willing, so interested, so kind, you know, met with me for a long time, was very honest about the struggles that he's had in his career, what he thinks he's good at, what he thinks he's not good at. A level of humility coming from a person who is so successful is just always striking. I mean, the way he kind of was telling me, you know, here's what I think I got wrong. I think this is what a lot of people appreciate about you.

• 1:03:43Ed Elson?

  But I think my learning from it is, I think kindness and generosity is not only a good thing in and of itself, but it also gets you very far. And when you talk to anyone about Andrew Ross Sorkin, when you ask anyone about, you know, what he's like, the kind of man he is, everyone's review, it's a glowing review of how kind he is as a person. And I do believe that it is not all of his success. I think it's a big piece of his success. It's, it's why people want to work with him. People want to have him on their show. People want to represent him. I think he is a really good example of what kindness can do

• 1:04:27Ed Elson?

  for your career and the way it can actually be quite powerful in terms of your career ambitions.

• 1:04:34Scott Galloway?

  I think there is a lesson there. We've said this a couple of times on the show that there's a cartoon of very successful people that they're Monte Burns, that in order to be that successful, you have to crawl over people. And I think unfortunately, that's a common theme among the far left.

• 1:04:51Scott Galloway?

  And I think where the right has gotten right is they celebrate success, whereas I think sometimes on the far left, we're suspicious of it. And what I have found is that exceptionally successful people, generally speaking, over-index on kindness. They're generally good people because one of the keys to success is being put in a room of opportunities when you're not physically in that room. And the way you get there is through kindness and doing things for people where there doesn't appear to be any, you know, expectation of reciprocal benefit. And you just kind of memo to self, I'd really like to do this person a solid someday.

• 1:05:23Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I think, I think there are different ways to do it. I mean, I think you can, you can find examples of very successful assholes, one of which would be Trump, another of which would be Elon Musk. But I think to your point, there, there are several different ways to be successful. And I think there is an image that is being projected that if you want to be rich, if you want to be influential, you've got to be an asshole to people, you've got to steamroll over people. And that actually is not true. And there are many examples, as you say, of people who actually got to where they are because they formed connections and friendships. They were generous, they did people favors, and it all comes back to them in, in the form of career karma, let's say.

• 1:06:05Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I also just, I can't help be triggered by whenever you mention Donald Trump and Elon Musk. You also have to define what success is. You're talking about one person-

• 1:06:13Ed Elson?

  Yeah, it's true too. Those guys are not happy.

• 1:06:16Scott Galloway?

  Sleeps with a loaded gun next to his bed, is radically addicted to ketamine, and is in custody fights with two different women over custody of a child that he has not seen. I would not describe that as success. And Donald Trump's wife wants nothing to do with him. The East Wing used to be with the first, used to be the first lady's residence, and they quickly figured out she doesn't need it. Have you, I mean, literally, has anyone heard from the first lady? She wants nothing to do with her husband, nothing to do with him. And he's raising a bunch of nepo kids who, anyways, different, different, you're more successful than either of those people, Ed. All right, let's move on.

• 1:06:54Ed Elson?

  Clip it.

• 1:06:56Scott Galloway?

  Clip it.

• 1:06:57Ed Elson?

  Clip it.

• 1:07:03Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our research team is Dash Lahn, Isabella Kinsel, Chris Newdonohue and Mia Silverio. Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on markets on Monday.

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