5G, Disney+, and All Things Social Media

Sinan Aral, a professor of management, IT, marketing, and data science at MIT joins Scott to discuss his new book, “The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health—and How We Must Adapt.” We also find out why Sinan does not think antitrust is the right way to go after Facebook and his thoughts on data portability. Follow Sinan on Twitter, @sinanaral, and check out his book here. Scott opens with his thoughts on Apple releasing 5G phones and Disney’s decision to double down on streaming. This week’s Office Hours: why retailers engage in unfair partnerships, why Scott is bullish on coworking space, and what to consider when funding a startup. 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.

• 0:00Scott Galloway?

  Episode 31. My 30s were mostly about death, lost the only person I knew loved me, my mother, divorce, got divorced, and then hair loss. I am still not over these things. I'll tell you, you know what is profoundly tragic? Losing your hair. Go, go, go!

• 0:25Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 31st episode of The Prof G Show. In today's episode, we speak with Sinan Aral, a professor of management, IT, marketing, and data science at MIT, to hear about his new book, The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health, and How We Must Adapt. Well, that rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? Okay, smart guy, not a great marketer. Actually, Sinan is a colleague from NYU, and then he bolted for MIT. That bitch trader! Oh, my gosh! Anyways, smart guy, good conversation. Okay, what is happening? What's on everyone's mind? The big event from Apple. Yippee! Apple announced a slew of updated products, and most notable,

• 1:06Scott Galloway?

  the company's new phones will be built for 5G, hoping to inspire a super cycle of new phone purchases. iPhone sales peaked in 2015, and the company has doubled its stock price in the last 18 months on the back of subscription or move to subscription revenue. But at the end of the day, the company is iPhone and the seven doors, most profitable product in the history of mankind. And what do we have here? What is so exceptional about the iPhone? It's not only the market leader by market share, it's also the most profitable. So Samsung may have one phone that's more expensive, but in terms of gross margin dollars, nothing comes close to an item that garners $1,100 in the marketplace. We'll sell a quarter of a billion of those of those bad boys,

• 1:51Scott Galloway?

  and costs about 500 bucks in glass, chipsets, and sensors. This is, nothing's like this. An analogy in the automobile industry would be, all right, typically, the best-selling car are low-margin cars, right? They're great value, they appeal to the mass market, the Toyota Camry, the Honda Accord. And then you have your high-margin profitable cars, Range Rover, Ferrari, that produce substantially fewer cars. The marketplace is just much, much smaller. So what is Apple? What is the iPhone? The iPhone is really anomalous and singular. And that is, what if you had the margins of Ferrari with the production volumes of Toyota? Well, you do, and it's called the Apple iPhone.

• 2:32Scott Galloway?

  So 5G, a lot of snarky people saying, okay, we really can't take advantage of it. It's up to AT&T and Verizon in terms of your ability to actually access these blistering fast speeds. But it's important. And the perception will be this is a tangible reason to upgrade your phone versus the incremental reasons that Apple has presented, whether it's a better camera, or it's better looking, or it has new cool technology. But nothing really comes down to one thing. And that is, as an economy, we have been much more creative, much more adept at building the technologies on top of bandwidth and throughput than we have been providing bandwidth and throughput. The Economist did a survey, or a study about a decade ago, and found that bandwidth has directly correlated to GDP growth.

• 3:15Scott Galloway?

  So what can you do to inspire or catalyze growth in an economy? Simple, put in place the infrastructure investments, and they're substantial, to increase throughput and bandwidth. So this is a big deal. The thing I noticed, the thing that the dog sensed, the dog was sniffing the ground. I was listening to the opening remarks of Tim Cook.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  We also designed them to be secure and to protect your privacy, because you should be the one in control of how your personal data is used.

• 3:40Scott Galloway?

  He led the event with privacy. Now, if you were to walk around the Apple spaceship, bad timing to invest trillions of dollars in an HQ, in my viewpoint. But anyways, I think these things are just giant phallic symbols. Let's build a testament to my manhood and have it plunder, have it plunge into Mother Earth. Anyways, what we are missing here, or what is really exciting about this, or different, I should say, is that if you were to walk around the spaceship and say to people at Apple, what are you most proud of? What should we talk about in our marketing? What should we lead with? I don't think any of them would say, privacy. Let's talk about our privacy. They talk about design, or creativity, or new apps, or new features, whatever it is, the ecosystem.

• 4:23Scott Galloway?

  However, however, this is the genius of Apple, and this is probably the most genius marketing move, although I say that a lot. But one of them is that they are leading and have led with privacy. Why? Why? Why? It comes down to a basic concept we teach. And brand strategy called laddering. And that is when you make a marketing statement, when you promote a feature of your product or service, you are not only highlighting a strength, you are immediately raising that dimension for public scrutiny and thereby ideally depositioning your competition. So when you're the Democrats and you're talking about healthcare, you're not only talking about why Democrats would be better for healthcare, but you're basically trying to highlight the fact that the novel coronavirus has killed more people faster than almost any crisis in history.

• 5:08Scott Galloway?

  And you're trying to bring up the fact that the Trump administration has not been able to put forward their own healthcare plan. You're depositioning the competition and that's exactly what Tim Cook has done. Notice with the new smart speaker they're putting in your home that he led with privacy because what he's trying to do is instill a sense of fear that Amazon, like Facebook and Google, is molesting your data. Do you really want a listening device in your home? Well, if you value privacy, but you want that awesome smart speaker, go with Apple. Voice is one of the few places that Apple has really stumbled. Who was the original gangster here? Siri. And Siri has been taken out behind the gym and had the shit kicked out of her or him and basically given it away to Alexa.

• 5:50Scott Galloway?

  And this is a rare, this is probably, if there is a big misstep, if there is a giant stub toe in the history of Apple over the last decade, it's the fact that they basically acquiesced or lost voice after having first mover advantage. Anyways, anyways, anyways, in other news, in other news. Cutting the cord continues. The Walt Disney Company announced a reorganization of its business operations and is focusing on streaming video services. The company said its content will be separated into three groups, studios, general entertainment, and sports. Disney is also creating a distribution department that will be responsible for all monetization of content across various platforms and will oversee the company's streaming services. Here's what Disney's recently appointed CEO had to say.

• 6:33Scott Galloway?

  Managing content creation distinct from distribution will allow us to be more effective and nimble in making the content consumers want most, delivered in the way they prefer to consume it. So there's a few things going on here that is really interesting. First off, they're doubling down on what is probably the most exciting part of the business, and that is streaming, and Disney Plus has come out of the gates. I think Disney is arguably the most undervalued big company or big aspirational company in the world. I don't think any company has these assets and trades at the reasonable multiple that is Disney. And I think it's a big opportunity because I think a lot of the pain they're enduring is cyclical, not structural. I think once we move back post-vaccine to some sense of normalcy, business travel has had structural demand destruction.

• 7:18Scott Galloway?

  We're just not going to be commuting as much to work. We're not going to be traveling as much on business. But I do think leisure and resort destination-based travel will likely supersede pre-COVID levels. Why? We're going to have more time, and the people who go to Disney and the wealthiest kind of upper median of households are going to have a lot more time. They're probably going to have more money, and they're going to say, all right, let's spend more time on, if we're not traveling as much for business and we have more time, let's go to Galaxy's Edge. I know kind of the first thing I'm doing post-vaccination is taking my 10 and 13-year-old boys to Galaxy's Edge at Disney Orlando. What else is going on here? Dan Loeb, an activist, basically announced that he had taken a large stake in Disney and said, which is, this is unusual, this is the unusual

• 8:01Scott Galloway?

  part, he said that he thought Disney should cancel the dividend such that they could have the additional cash flow to reinvest and double down on content for the streaming video platform. Now, what's the test here? Disney still isn't comfortable crossing the chasm, and that is, it is difficult for them to pull the content, take the content out of the original path where they monetize to the tune of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. Now, as you go into the 70-day exclusive TV theater release, then you go to the other streaming video guys, whoever's willing to pay the most, and then you put it on your own streaming video platform. To bypass all of that and not get that sugar high of hundreds of millions in revenue and then put it on, as we'll call it, a value pulse. If you go straight, Black Widow, the superhero movie starring Scarlett Johansson,

• 8:46Scott Galloway?

  which I can't wait to not see. I am so sick of entertainment being... Basically being dominated by men in tights and the occasional hot woman who we're supposed to believe is a superhero. I just don't, anyway, I just don't get it. Anyway, anyway, that's neither here nor there. It's more there than here, but it's neither of those things. Anyway, Disney has got to like, stop, stop fucking around. If Disney really wants to make cross the chasm and move to a multiple of revenues instead of a multiple of EBITDA and get away or bust out of this cycle of everybody second guessing the destruction and park attendance and really kind of command the space it occupies. They need to take all their original content and think about streaming video first. And

• 9:28Scott Galloway?

  this signals that. This signals that somebody is going to be running distribution and saying, over the long term, wouldn't we be better off? Wouldn't our share price go higher? Wouldn't we be considered a viable competitor to Netflix if in fact, we took our most valuable content and put it straight on a proprietary, vertical streaming video platform called Disney Plus and rolled all that shit up? It shouldn't be Hulu. It shouldn't be ESPN. It should be Disney Plus. It should also include a variety of other things. We've talked about this in terms of recurring revenue bundle, but we have an activist. We have a reorganization of the company realizing the distribution strategy is, is so important. They're doubling down on Disney Plus. And finally, finally, the real test is can an old economy company

• 10:10Scott Galloway?

  that is constantly heckled at from their investors, from the cheap seats who are more short-term minded, do they have the testicles to take a huge, short-term hidden revenues and earnings in order to start pulse valuing or really creating values, pulses of value around streaming video such that they can move, they can make the jump to hyperspace, make the jump to light speed and command the space they occupied with the ultimate recurring revenue bundle anchored by Disney Plus? We'll be right back.

• 10:47Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from NetSuite. They say every day your business is late to AI, you might fall two days behind. So how do you keep up with the competition when they're only moving faster? Enter NetSuite Next. You probably know NetSuite, the AI-powered business management suite that securely connects all your data. It's a unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into a single source of truth, trusted by over 44,000 customers. NetSuite Next is the next big leap in how business gets done because AI is built into everything you do. It automatically surfaces customer insights throughout your day. AI agents work alongside you to solve problems and handle routine work. And anytime you have questions about anything, you can ask, just like you're having a conversation with a colleague.

• 11:31Scott Galloway?

  NetSuite is customized for a wide range of industries, so it supports the way your business truly works. Whether your company earns millions or even hundreds of millions, it's time for NetSuite Next, where your business meets AI. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get our free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/prog. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/prog. netsuite.com/prog.

• 12:14Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Sanan Aral, an MIT professor of management, IT, marketing, and data science, and author of The Hype Machine. Sanan, where does this podcast find you?

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Well, it finds me deep in a conversation about how we fix social media, which is a deep trough to be in.

• 12:33Scott Galloway?

  Dude, I meant, where are you? Don't get all, don't get all professorial on me. Where are you?

• 12:38Speaker 03

  I'm in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Yeah. I like to keep, I like to keep the hype cool.

• 12:44Scott Galloway?

  Keeping it real. So, okay, so The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Economy, Health, and How We Must Adapt. You're sort of, you were sort of in this stuff before it was cool. So give us a lay of the land. What does your research tell us about social media, how it's destroying democracy and humanity? What is your, give us the voiceover, the Cliff Notes.

• 13:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, the hot documentary of the day is The Social Dilemma, which everybody seems to be watching and talking about. And I have to say, I'm a big fan. We need more clarion calls like this to raise our awareness of the dangers of social media. And it's obviously not the first. I mean, there was the great hack before it, and there was the book Zucked and Surveillance Capitalism. And these clarion calls are great. But my book starts where these documentaries and books leave off, which is, what do we do? And the book basically argues that we can't be armchair theorizing about how this stuff works. We really have to get under the hood of social media with science, understand how it's affecting our society.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  And as the subtitle says, it's about democracy, it's about elections, it's about our economy, our health. And so I really try to get into the science of it and get into very specific detail about what we can do to fix the crisis we find ourselves in.

• 14:10Scott Galloway?

  Okay, so what do we do?

• 14:12Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, the first thing we have to understand is how it works to kind of destroy our democracy, to affect our elections. And, you know, there, if you think back to 2016, you know, we were in the midst of a massive social media manipulation campaign that was the subject of, you know, a conspiracy to defraud the United States, as Robert Mueller called it. And, you know, 126 million messages on Facebook, 20 million on Instagram, 10 million tweets on Twitter, 43 hours of YouTube content. And fast forward four years, 30 days before the most consequential election in 100 years, and we're no more prepared.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  Russia is more sophisticated, and we're in the middle of a global pandemic with civil unrest and questions about in-person voting and by-mail voting. And we're no better off. And so I think we're... Teetering on the precipice of a lot of calamities that have to do with social media.

• 15:17Scott Galloway?

  Once this election is over and we do the forensic analysis on Facebook and social media's role in this election, do you think it'll be as bad, worse, or less damaging than what happened in 16?

• 15:29Speaker 03

  It will be more influential. And when we say more influential, bad or worse, a lot of the influence is going to come from legitimate political campaigning that is just incredibly persuasive and precise, very well targeted. We saw glimpses of that even back to the victory lab of Obama. And if you go back even before that, you know, it was trippy. That was helming the social media sort of advertising of campaigning. It was really the first, but the Trump administration, the Trump campaign, I should say, in 2016 was way more sophisticated than the other side. So there's a lot of influence through legitimate political campaigning.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  Then we have the influence of Russia and now China and perhaps Iran. Russia is way more sophisticated than it was in 2016. Our intelligence community is unanimous in that they have, for instance, moved their servers to the United States to avoid domestic surveillance. They've infiltrated Iran's cyber war department, perhaps to launch attacks made to look like they came from Tehran. They're nudging real American citizens to spread misinformation and propaganda to get around platform policies against inauthentic content and accounts. So I think it's going to be much more influential, both through the illicit manipulation attempts

• 16:53Speaker 03

  by foreign actors and through legitimate political campaigning that is targeted and persuasive.

• 17:01Scott Galloway?

  So I'll put out a series of theses and you tell me where I've got this wrong. Until there's a perp walk, it's going to continue.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  You mean Mark Zuckerberg and chains on the way to prison?

• 17:12Scott Galloway?

  Look, it seems to me the financial crisis, when we look back on 2008, the reason a lot of people think the reason it's kind of we're cursed to have a repeat every seven or eight years is that no one went to jail. So $450 million in advertising on Facebook, 10 times driving business, four and a half billion, 30% wealth of Mark Zuckerberg, political advertising is worth a billion dollars. And until the algebra of disincentive, until somebody gets arrested, no one's really going to be serious around trying to stop this.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, I would say I agree and disagree. So I agree completely with the current lack of incentive to change and the fact that there is a needed incentive to change. And, you know, there's a big call to break up big tech. And I think that's a misnomer because I think each of these cases is so different from the other. But in the case of breaking up Facebook, I don't think that solves our problems. I really don't because the underlying economics that creates concentration in social media is network effects. And if you break up one company, you don't solve the network effects problem and you'll just tip the next Facebook like company into market dominance.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  What you really need is data portability, social network portability and interoperability, just like we did with telecommunications, just like we did with instant messaging. Those two examples are examples in which we saw a decrease in market concentration immediately after that kind of legislation was passed. And the Access Act is pending, you know, approval in front of Congress right now. It would force all social media platforms, over 100 million users to be interoperable. And I think that that's a workable solution.

• 18:50Scott Galloway?

  So data portability, explain how it works. Give us the example of the phone company.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, so if you remember, we didn't, we weren't able to take our phone number with us if we switched from one cellphone carrier to another. And you would have to give up your cellphone number. And in fact, that was social network portability because everyone knew you by that number. That is how your network contacted you. And when we forced through legislation that the service providers allow you to take your number with you, in other words, allow you to take your network with you from one provider to another, it created a tremendous amount of competition. There's a study that shows that over the, over 20 years, when Europe instituted number

• 19:36Speaker 03

  portability in the cellphone market, it created $880 million of consumer surplus every quarter for 15 years. And it also created a tremendous amount of competition. It's crazy to think today that I wouldn't be able to call you, Scott, on Verizon from my Sprint service. And yet, that's exactly what we have in social media. Social network portability and interoperability would be where I could create a series of messaging standards, be they stories, text, video, stories that disappear, vines, reels. There would be a standard for each of those types of messages, and you could communicate

• 20:18Speaker 03

  with someone from Twitter to Facebook or from WhatsApp to the other. And that would force them to no longer lock you in to getting value from being able to message your friends on any given network. And it would force them to provide us with user interfaces, privacy protocols, security. And it would force them to differentiate and compete on those dimensions, which they currently do not have to do because they say, "You want to talk to your friends? Well, the only way you can do it is through us. And if you have a problem with that, then you can just stop talking to your friends." That's, that's not an appropriate way to create competition innovation.

• 20:57Scott Galloway?

  Is interoperability also a function of if I want to take my network, my friend network that I've created at Facebook and port it over elegantly to Twitter such that it lights up Twitter friends or Twitter followers and Twitter format? Is that also part of it? Or is it just making the formats fluid between them?

• 21:13Speaker 03

  I think it's a combination of both. I think you need to be able to have both happening at the same time. I think that it's really a better way to think about it is identity portability. I should be able to take my social media identity to any platform provider and have it be seamlessly, essentially the same for a standard set of messaging formats and content. And there might be differentiated content and formats on each of the platforms above and beyond a certain set of standard messaging formats that would differentiate one platform from another. But I would exist on social media through any device, quote unquote, platform that I would access it through.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  And I could speak to people fluidly from one to the other.

• 22:02Scott Galloway?

  And what about, so under the notion of identity, I always thought the one thing that especially Twitter, although I guess Facebook would benefit, is that anonymity gets starched. When I look at my Twitter feed, when I look at accounts that look like they're trying to create, pick a fight, or create dissent or agita between people, or trying to undermine anything I might say about Russia, I think, oh, this is a bot, this is a fake account, this is someone pretending to be someone else. It's one person managing dozens, thousands, millions of accounts that is tearing at the fabric of our society. What about the idea of verified identity across all the networks?

• 22:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, I think this is a, it's a tough question. I think that there is some need for pseudonymity, but I also think that there's a need for sorting out inauthentic accounts or inauthenticity. And so there are different ways that that can be accomplished. It's not clear that having everyone be a verified, single identity all the time.

• 23:06Speaker 03

  In every social network is the way to promote the healthiest communication ecosystem. There are some situations in which platforms like these can be used to resist oppression in parts of the world where, you know, a ruling authority knew that you were the one saying what you were saying on social media, that it would chill that kind of speech and that could create repercussions for the expression of minority opinions. And so there is a need for pseudonymity to allow people in those situations to be able to speak, but at the same time, there can be backend verification.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  So I think one thing to think through is the notion of applications of blockchain, for instance, that would be able to verify who's who, but also keep the information about who that person is private and secure as long as it's being verified on a backend. It's not clear to me that everyone needs to know who everyone else is on the internet at all times, as long as we have some accountability and verification at some level.

• 24:26Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, the notion that you need some anonymity, you know, people talk about the Arab Spring and how a lot of people had their identity been revealed, it would have been very dangerous for them. But I feel as if that is, granted, it's important, but I feel as if the downside of that has just gotten so huge. Do you think there's maybe an opportunity for people to communicate securely to a filter? In other words, there's anonymous filters or sources for anonymous content to come in and be parsed and for somebody to do a better job of evaluating whether it's a legitimate content, whether someone behind it is actually, it's a human, not a bot. Because it just feels like, it feels like that is, that has, the argument around the

• 25:10Scott Galloway?

  importance of anonymity for, to fight against totalitarian governments, has been the cloud cover across what I think is a great deal more damage. It feels to me that, especially Twitter, has just become a cesspool of hate. You know, just literally, just, it's starting fires everywhere.

• 25:29Scott Galloway?

  Everywhere I can, but let me move on to the to the money part. What about the idea of a tax? And that is any algorithmic ad, any ad served up algorithmically pays a tax, given that slowly but surely, people who used to make these decisions, whether it's editorial or a media buyer, the employer there paid a payroll tax. Because the algorithms don't have a payroll tax, we are not only encouraging the outsourcing and destruction of jobs, but the underlying algorithms, which are benign, but also indifferent, will ultimately figure out a way to create content that is that is most engaging, which unfortunately tends to be rage. That what if we tax these things such that there was a better move

• 26:13Scott Galloway?

  or a more economic incentive to move away from the ad model to the subscription model? Because as far as I can tell, the distinguishing feature between these platforms that really fuck up our society are ad based or ad driven. And then the ones that are subscription based aren't nearly as damaging. The New York Times and Netflix have not been weaponized. It's the underlying ad model that really is the is the tobacco that creates the cancer in our society. What about what about some sort of tax on algorithmically driven ad models?

• 26:42Speaker 03

  Well, while I agree that the business model is a big driver of the negative consequences that we see in society, I sort of see the tax policy proposals as being a broadsword, not a scalpel. When you think about the advertising economy and you really evaluate it in a in a fair way and look at all of the costs and benefits, there's a tremendous amount of consumer surplus and benefit that's created by the advertising economy. And I'm not just talking about revenues created, you know, earned by advertisers or the platforms.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  I'm talking about consumer surplus that's generated for the consumers themselves.

• 27:29Scott Galloway?

  Because people get a phone for free or they get to watch a show for free?

• 27:32Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, exactly, exactly. It's not it's not just that they get to watch a show for free, which is. So for instance, research at the MIT Initiative on the digital economy, which I direct, as well as at Stanford, shows that Facebook creates about $370 billion a year in the US alone in consumer surplus. Imagine that worldwide. A tax would be a broadsword approach that would dampen those benefits broadly across society. Another important thing to remember is that when you think about a subscription model, it necessarily creates inequality because some people can afford that and some people can't.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  And if you consider at the same time that Facebook, in a lot of parts of the world, is the internet. In the Philippines, Facebook is the internet. In parts of Africa, Facebook is the internet. It is the source for economic opportunities, small and medium-sized businesses, getting new jobs, getting meaningful human connections, getting life-saving public health information. Creating a subscription service broadly would allow the rich to have access to that but not the poor, and that is an important part of considerations for subscription models. I do think, however, that the basic point that you're making is the right one, which

• 29:00Speaker 03

  is that the incentives created by the digital advertising business model are based on the attention economy and engagement. So what do the platforms sell? They sell attention as a precursor to persuasion. They get your attention, that creates ad inventory, they sell that ad inventory, and then people can persuade through ads sold in that inventory. But I think that the true leaders of the new social age are going to be the ones that realize, and with a little help from regulation... That aligning societal values with long-term shareholder value is more effective

• 29:42Speaker 03

  long-term than getting this quick fix of short-term shareholder value because there's going to be a reckoning. There's a backlash either through regulation or through stop pay for profit, delete Facebook. These are indicators that employees and consumers are jumping off of the sinking ship. And that is not a ship that survives long-term, either because of regulation or because people delete Facebook or employees bolt in droves. I think the ones that will succeed are the ones that align a sustainable, long-term profit-maximizing business model with society's values in a wholesome information ecosystem.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  And yes, government regulation is going to be required to create the incentives that make that happen.

• 30:30Scott Galloway?

  Isn't there a way to make a progressive subscription structure though, so for Twitter, less than 1,000 or less than 10,000 followers, it's free. 10,000 to 100,000, it's five bucks a month. You know, over a million, it's 200 bucks a month or 250. It seems to me there's a lot of surplus value from corporations and famous people and people like you and me who use these things as platforms to circulate our IP that is not being captured. And the company could capture that, maintain their shareholder-driven model, while at the same time not precluding or excluding people who don't have the money for a subscription service to still engage in these platforms. Isn't there a way around it through tiered pricing?

• 31:10Speaker 03

  Maybe. I think that at its heart, it's still regressive because you're still taxing the person who finds it difficult to pay for the subscription and you're now taxing them on their reach and influence. So if they want to build a bigger business, if they want to take their small and medium-sized business, they have a great product and their audience. You know, they want to reach a great audience, or even if it's a nonprofit in South Africa that wants to encourage condom use to stop the spread of HIV, you're saying the better you do, the more we're going to tax you on it. And that is, again, a broadsword. I think that, you know, to begin with a competitive market that creates incentives for everyone

• 31:54Speaker 03

  to deliver what consumers want the most is the first step. And then, just like with pollution and with every other market-

• 32:01Scott Galloway?

  And you said data interoperability, that was the first step.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And then, as with every other market failure that we've realized and addressed, you know, we have to have regulations.

• 32:13Scott Galloway?

  Regulation and taxation, yeah.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, so for instance, you know, pollution is a negative externality that companies don't internalize the costs of, so they pollute because, you know, they can't fully internalize the costs of pollution to society on their own bottom line. The same is true of misinformation, because they can't fully internalize the costs of the impact to democracy on their bottom line, say, if they're Facebook. And as well, for instance, when we're talking about food that we consume at the grocery store, it's extensively labeled with calories and trans fats, and if it's produced in a facility that produces wheat and peanuts, because it's regulated, it's required to label. Why isn't the information

• 32:57Speaker 03

  we consume labeled? You know, why isn't the veracity or the source scrutinized and labeled in the same way? Large-scale experimental evidence shows that when you nudge people to be reflective of the information they're consuming, they're less likely to fall for fake news and less likely to share it. If you ask them every once in a while in their feed, is this headline accurate? It not only scales crowdsourced labels of accuracy, but it nudges them to be reflective, which reduces the spread and belief in fake news.

• 33:28Scott Galloway?

  You mentioned a number that Facebook creates $330 billion in surplus value. Can you break that number down?

• 33:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it's 370. And the way that this is a fascinating story of research that's told in the book, actually, you know, the problem with regulating Facebook is that nobody pays for it. And so all of our antitrust conversations since, you know, Bork all the way through the Chicago School of Economics are all about prices. Monopolies charge higher prices. That's where we get harm, consumer harm. But obviously, Facebook and the rest of these free services are free. So how do you measure the benefits of a free service if you can't measure what people are willing to pay for it? Researchers at Stanford and

• 34:11Speaker 03

  MIT offered to pay people to give it up. And they did this at scale on very large-scale discrete choice experiments online. And they estimated, well, how much is it worth to people every month if we paid them to give it up? And based on those individual assessments, they created a demand curve for these products. And then they were able to estimate the consumer surplus, the additional benefit that consumers got over what they paid for the service, which is nothing. And from that, they aggregated it up to the economy. And in the US, that was worth about $370 billion per year.

• 34:54Scott Galloway?

  I mean, it's, I definitely see the contrast. It strikes me that, looking back, we're going to think that when something weaponizes our elections, when something perhaps, even if it didn't elect an illegitimate president, creating doubt around our elections, teen depression, job destruction, tax of, it just, it feels like we're going to look back and think, for God's sakes, I mean, weren't we just sitting on our, our hands here? It feels like we're, I don't know, just, and I worry, and I'm curious if you've looked at regulation or lobbyists, I worry we've been overrun that it's too late, that with more Lobbyists in DC than there are working for Amazon than there are sitting US senators.

• 35:37Scott Galloway?

  And when the Facebook PR and communications department is larger than the newsroom at the Washington Post, that we've just been outgunned, that we're just kind of, I don't want to say it's too late because the world is what we make of it, but it feels like this has gone on far beyond where our head is reached before we moved in with previous companies, whether it's oil or big tobacco.

• 35:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, in some sense, you're telling the story of the book. I don't want anyone to get the impression that I try to paint a rosy picture of social media. I certainly lead with all of the catastrophes that we're all experiencing every day. And that's true. And I try to do that, not in a hyperbolic sense, but in a here's the data, here's the actual evidence. I mean, you know, I started researching social media before Facebook was founded. And so I try to lay out, lay out all of the scientific evidence for both the harms, but also remind people of the benefits. In terms of is it too late and the lobbying, I couldn't agree with you more that yes, there is a problem of regulatory

• 36:41Speaker 03

  capture, where we have big corporations spending so much on lobbying. And people immediately talk about that. And the first weapon or quill they go to in the, in the quiver is antitrust. But antitrust is a horrible solution for.

• 36:59Scott Galloway?

  Oh, that hurts. That's my go to, Suneet. That's my go to.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  Put that one back in the quiver because that really politicizes antitrust, which is really run by the executive branch. I mean, imagine the corruption that's created by using antitrust in that way. The real way that we do, that we do this is campaign finance reform. It's legislation. It's HR1. It's really getting serious about reducing corporate influence in politics. And we could do that, but we should do it through the correct means, through the ways that aren't going to create more, you know, corruption than it will solve.

• 37:37Scott Galloway?

  So connected to, I understand the arguments around getting money out of elections.

• 37:44Scott Galloway?

  But what, link that to how that will fix some of the externalities of social media?

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, today, we have the social media platforms spending tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars each on lobbying to get their way on laws that are regulating them. And that money could be much better spent helping us, and it's being put to reducing our ability to control the harmful effects of social media in society. And so, and, and social media isn't the only place where corporate money and politics is creating harm in society. I think it's a much broader problem that

• 38:29Speaker 03

  we've dealt with for a long time and have been unable to really come up with an effective solution for. But I think that it's something that we really need to, to address more broadly.

• 38:40Scott Galloway?

  So why did you call this book The Hype Machine? Everything I've heard you say, wouldn't, wouldn't a better title be The Rage Machine? Because I, I read The Hype Machine, and I think it's some good, some bad, that I should read this if I'm in PR and I want to leverage these platforms. Why did you choose that title?

• 38:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, the reason I chose the title is because the business models are based on engagement in an attention economy. And the way that they engage us is they hype us up. And they hype us up with good and bad. And the, the message of the book is that there is tremendous promise in social media and the potential for tremendous peril. So yes, I do want to make sure not to overlook the positive benefits of social media on society. And yes, you're correct, that a lot of our research has shown that, for instance, fake news travels farther, faster, deeper, more broadly than the truth because it is

• 39:37Speaker 03

  rage inducing, and because it's salacious, and it gets our blood boiling. So The Rage Machine was a, was a close second in the titles that I was considering. But at the end of the day, it does hype up positive things as well as negative things. In addition to, you know, I mean, there's a lot of- For instance, social movements, you know, from Black Lives Matter to the snow revolution to Hong Kong, Ukraine, the Arab Spring. These are all examples of positive effects of social media and as an accelerant. You know, like, as much as people like to make fun of the ice bucket challenge, it did raise a quarter of a billion dollars with a B in eight weeks for ALS research.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  The tremendous power of social media is also evident when you research it for 20 years. And so the, the point of the book is to say, social media has the potential for tremendous promise and tremendous peril. The book is about how do we achieve the promise and avoid the peril? And I, and I do, I really do think that we have to get past the debate about is social media good or evil? You know, I think

• 40:48Scott Galloway?

  The answer is yes, is what you're saying.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Exactly. The answer is yes. And the much more important question is, what do we do? What can we concretely do? And that is the point of the book is to, is to get past the sort of techno utopianism that we had for a decade, followed by the techno dystopianism that we've had for a decade and really ask, what can we do?

• 41:10Scott Galloway?

  Sanan Aral is a professor of management, IT, marketing and data science at MIT and the director of the MIT Initiative on the digital economy is also a founding partner at Manifest Capital. Sanan's book, The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy and Our Health and How We Must Adapt is out now. He joins us from his, his millennium man cave in Brooklyn, which if he knew Sanan, he was easily the coolest professor at Stern. Low bar, low bar, but nonetheless, he had that crown. Sanan, stay well, my brother. Congrats on all your success.

• 41:45Speaker 03

  Thank you. So, so great to talk to you, Scott. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

• 41:50Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 41:53Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Upwork. Trying to scale your business? At some point, you're probably going to hit a point where you need some help. Sometimes, the best way to break through that is bringing in the right talent at the right time. Upwork can help. Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across more than 125 categories. Whether you need specialized skills for a single project or extra support to keep up with demand, it's easy to connect with experienced professionals, review their work, and find the right fit. You can move faster without taking on the commitment of full-time hires. And for businesses that need the very best talent, Upwork Business Plus provides access to the top 1% of freelancers on the platform. AI-powered matching connects you with qualified candidates in under six hours, cutting down the time spent searching.

• 42:37Scott Galloway?

  Upwork also takes care of contracts, payments, and other administrative tasks, so you can spend less time managing logistics and more time focused on what's next. Visit upwork.com/profg right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com/profg to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com/profg. Upwork.com/profg.

• 43:04Scott Galloway?

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

• 43:49Scott Galloway?

  Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Rider, 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.

• 44:21Scott Galloway?

  Okay, it's time for Office Hours, the part of the show where we answer your questions about the business world, big tech, higher education, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. Roll the first question. And by the way, I have not heard these questions before. The element of surprise, the element of electricity, it's a dog in the jungle. Roll, roll tape.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  Hi, Scott. I'm Patrick, coming to you from Nashville. My question for you involves retailers trying to compete with Amazon on last mile delivery, specifically with Instacart. Many retail brands, both regional and national, have partnered with Instacart to handle the shopping and delivery experience. Instacart claims they serve more than 500 retailers in 40,000 locations. The problem? Their model erodes brand loyalty as Instacart doesn't share their customer data with the retailers they've, quote, "partnered with," unquote. And it was announced this week that they just closed on another round of funding, and their valuation is now almost $18 billion. It's widely assumed that Instacart will soon open their own dark stores to provide specific products and brands for their customers, cutting out their retail partners and impairing

• 45:30Speaker 04

  the retailer's profit margins. So my question for you, big dog, why do retailers continue to make this short-sighted decision and engage in a parasitic relationship with Instacart? And does it make more sense for these retailers to band together to develop their own solution? Or find an alternative partner that's not a potential competitor?

• 45:49Scott Galloway?

  Thanks for that. That was a thoughtful question. So Instacart, an American company, operates a grocery delivery and pickup service in the US and Canada. They allow customers to order groceries from participating retailers, with the shopping being done by a personal shopper. Okay, so Instacart, so this is about, everybody wants custody of the consumer, or specifically, everybody wants custody of your data. If you can control the browser and the search engine that gets your data, if you can control the e-commerce platform that gets your data, whoever is the service provider to the person that owns the customer relationship and gets the data, whether it's the cable company that didn't let HBO know who was watching HBO, they ultimately, over time, especially in a data-driven age where you can start leveraging

• 46:32Scott Galloway?

  that data, putting some limited AI on top of it, and establishing a stronger relationship with the end consumer and all the leverage, you're going to win. Now, the question is, okay, theoretically, it makes no sense for people to engage in that relationship, except, except the promise of owning that custody of the consumer and the promise of ultimately getting to a point of being that platform means that if you have the vision and the execution and you make progress against that vision, you can raise capital at such a cheap rate that, quite frankly, you can offer your retailers and those grocery stores a level of technology at a price that is really attractive. There's a lot of people, small retailers aren't stupid to go on Amazon. The grocery stores partnering

• 47:17Scott Galloway?

  or using Instacart aren't stupid, but if you're some regional grocery chain in Idaho and you don't have the $200 million to invest in technology, you're overwhelmed just managing your unions and your labor force. You can't figure out how to, how to create, how to transport lettuce and figure out cold storage. And then Instacart shows up and says, for just 8% or 12% of revenues, we'll do this for you. And you can flip on, you can literally turn on a switch and have home delivery, or you can sit on your hands and try and go find this type of capital as we blow by you and as Amazon blows by you. Sure, it's, it's incredibly hard to resist. I think it's, it makes a lot of sense. You can absolutely

• 47:59Scott Galloway?

  see why they do it. If you're a small beauty brand, you don't have the capital to build stores. It is, it is prohibitively expensive to drive enough traffic to your site as Facebook, Google, and Amazon begin sequestering all traffic on the internet. So what I call capital-light distribution, capital-light innovation is incredibly attractive. The problem is, is that it'll deal with the devil over time, that slowly but surely you put these players, this platform, in a position to be so dominant that they turn back to you and say, hi, we're going to go from 8% to 12% to 15% to 18%. And, and... We're going to sit on top of that data set and start figuring out what products are high margin, what products are profitable. We're going to see how people interact with

• 48:41Scott Galloway?

  your products, what type of SKU size they're going to learn on your dime and then offer their own private label. And this isn't anything that retailers haven't done in the past, whether it's JCPenney's learning from Levi's sales so they can offer Arizona jeans, which became a billion dollar denim brand, or Sam's Cola. The difference is with data now, you can just do it at scale, much faster, whether it's Amazon figuring out that batteries are a homogeneous product, that Duracell and Energizer were getting ridiculous margins on, they understand how people, what sizes they want, what SKUs they want, and boom, overnight, they introduce Amazon Basics or Amazon Elements, I forget what the branding is, and boom, they have a 50, 100, 200 million dollar high margin battery business. And

• 49:24Scott Galloway?

  the brand that trusted them to be their partner is kind of shit out of luck. So, look, what they should do, what they should do is these grocery chains should start a cooperative and start investing in their own technology and create their own independent company that they each own a piece of, similar to what the content guys did with Hulu. That's actually kind of the model for how people, different parties, play nice. The problem is, is that Vons and Albertsons and Wegmans, they all think a cooperative is a great idea as long as they're the lead dog. And that is, they all want to play nice as long as they're in charge, and they are the majority shareholder and the majority of the board seats. So, the best way to defeat an enemy is when the enemy gets atomized, and that

• 50:06Scott Galloway?

  is, they don't join together, they don't cooperate. And I think you could argue that's probably the biggest start to the world right now, is that we're no longer cooperating across the North Atlantic Treaty, but that's another talk show. Anyways, easy to understand why people would participate in what is an unhealthy, long-term ecosystem. They get cheap distribution, cheap innovation. But yeah, you're right. If the grocery guys had any real vision, they'd figure out a way to put ego aside and create a cooperative or a separate company such that they could pull a Hulu and all go on one platform and ultimately not become beholden to the much better capitalized Instacart. Thanks for the question. Next question.

• 50:43Speaker 05

  Hi, Professor Galloway. My name is Amanda Lee Barber, and I'm reaching out from Bethesda, Maryland. We're coming up on the year anniversary of the wheels falling off WeWork. In fact, listening to your cutting remarks on Wondery's WeCrash series is how I've become such a big fan of yours. Anyway, my question is about the current state of the coworking industry. After the pandemic, is there still one to speak of? What do you think of WeWork's attempt to focus more on business services? It seems like coworking is going to make it through, albeit with the marketplace getting reduced due to the pandemic. Would love to hear from the OG who predicted WeWork was a house of cards. Love the show. Thank you for your thoughts.

• 51:25Scott Galloway?

  Well, Amanda Lee Barber, so you demonstrate a very easy lesson, and that is when someone is nice to you, when someone likes you, you immediately like them. And I think that, and there's a lesson here, and that is if someone has the confidence you have, if someone is as generous as you are and is willing to articulate admiration or say nice things about someone, if you don't act on those positive feelings, you are really missing out. Because immediately, Amanda Lee, I like you and I want good things to happen for you. So anyways, thanks for the kind words. And the lesson is if you are, if you feel good things or impressed by people or like their work, have the confidence that Amanda Lee has and tell them that and you immediately have friends. Anyways, that's not, that's not why you phoned in.

• 52:08Scott Galloway?

  So WeWork, at its peak or its trough, depending how you look at it, was flying a Bombardier Global Express into a mountain every week. They were losing about 70 to 100 million dollars a week. This thing made absolutely no sense. And supposedly, they wanted to take it public, or Goldman was going to take it public at a value that said it was worth more than the entire automobile industry. This, this shit just made no sense. And people often say to me, how did you know? And it's, I brought this incredible skill called math to the party. This thing made no sense. Now, what about coworking now? Amanda, Amanda Lee Barber from Bethesda, Maryland. What about coworking now? I actually think coworking has a bright future. In a post pandemic world, we are absolutely, you want to talk about a reconfiguration?

• 52:52Scott Galloway?

  You want to talk about rivers changing direction? Let's talk about office space. So many of us have rethought or reconfigured our relationship with commuting and with office space that it just makes sense that a lot of companies are going to say, you know what? One, two days a week, we need to get together. Hurting is still important. Ideas, the electricity of people bumping into each other is still important. But do we really want to spend? I was spending 70 or 80 grand a month on office space. Think about that for 9,000 square feet because I made the same rookie move that a lot of entrepreneurs make when I started section four, my online learning startup that, okay, we're going to be 100 people within six months and I, I'm fortunate and then I don't have a difficult time raising capital. What a stupid fucking move. What a stupid fucking move.

• 53:35Scott Galloway?

  Anyway, anyway, where we'll go from here, like a lot of small businesses is I think it's important that we get together on a regular basis and we'll probably just do coworking. And that is either get a static space or just rent space in a cool place with reclaimed wood and frosted glass and IPA beer and, you know, cool coffee. And we'll pay a premium, but we, on the, on the whole, we'll pay a lot less and have a lot more flexibility. So I think coworking actually does well. Why? One of the reasons WeWork has significantly evolved the space. Coworking used to be bad cherry wood desks and stupid plastic plants that were expensive, like Regis. Ugh. I think WeWork, the amount of cheap capital they literally burned through, absolutely evolved the space.

• 54:17Scott Galloway?

  And at a valuation of $3 billion, I think WeWork makes sense. With a CEO of Sandeep Matrani, the guy who used to run General Growth Properties, a very bright guy, the exact opposite of Adam Newman. I think WeWork actually has a decent future and I think the future of coworking is actually pretty bright despite the debacle that was WeWork. WeWork will go down as more spectacle than historic. The markets did their job. They shut the fire door. The people who registered the losses were PIF, Mubalaba, the investment fund out of the Gulf, SoftBank and WeWork employees. But the markets, unions, institutional investors, retail investors didn't lose any money because the markets did what they did. The SEC did what it was supposed to do.

• 55:02Scott Galloway?

  The media did what it's supposed to do, and the dog did his job. The dog ran after that ball and started barking. Thanks for the question. All right, one more.

• 55:13Speaker 06

  Hey Scott, Connor from Alabama here. I was wondering if you have any advice on how to find funding for a possible business? I'm only 25, and while I do have a significant amount of money in assets, investments, and various other things, I don't feel that I have the money needed to completely fund this business. I've been trying for like a little bit, but I don't think I have the connections. Do you have any advice? Also, do you want to hear it out, Scott? Keep up the good work in the dog pound, buddy.

• 55:36Scott Galloway?

  Connor from Alabama, that's a good rap. Connor from Bama. Connor from Bama, I just like that. So Connor, first mistake entrepreneurs your age make, or the ones I made when I was your age, is believing that expenses make a business, that if I can raise money and spend money, I'll build a business. No, they don't. I don't know the business you're trying to build, but unless it's a really capital-intensive tech company, most businesses, most businesses can bootstrap on a small amount of capital. And that is the key to a small business is not expenses. It's not raising money and building infrastructure, it's revenues. So if you have an idea, the ultimate litmus test to the business is to go find revenues, or specifically go find that first client.

• 56:16Scott Galloway?

  Profit, red envelope, L2, section four, actually, the last one's a lie, I raised a bunch of money because I could. But with all those companies, I raised a very small amount of capital from friends and family, or no capital at all, and I threw around nickels like they're manhole covers, and I tried to validate the concept, and then use client money to fund the business. Now, once you prove the concept, then you should have the ability to go raise money. It is very hard to raise money on a brand-new concept. Also, at the age of 25, I'd be careful about putting too much of your own capital into it. It's easy to enter into consensual hallucination with yourself, that it's worth it and it's your dream. So see if you can bootstrap the thing, get some proof of concept initially, and I say that without having really knowing, without knowing the business.

• 57:01Scott Galloway?

  There's things like Kickstarter, there are some angel networks you can tap into, there is a lot of capital out there, but despite the fact there's a lot of capital out there... Less than 1 out of 1,000, I think it's even less than that, like maybe 1 even like 5,000 startups ever raise institutional capital. And if you watch CNBC and you read the Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch and Recode every day, you would think everybody was raising tens of millions of dollars and that you, Connor from Bama, are a loser unless you can raise tens of millions of dollars. No, you're not. You're 99% of entrepreneurs and you need to go out there, maybe raise a small amount of money from friends and family and tell them most likely they will lose it all. Small businesses are very risky and that way you won't want to kill yourself if in fact it doesn't work out.

• 57:44Scott Galloway?

  Like, most of my businesses, or at least half of them, have not worked out. Start small, find revenues. Revenues make a business. Find a client or try and sell, get a prototype and try and sell one of whatever is you're trying to sell into a company and see if you can self-fund until you have proof of concept. But Connor, Connor, at the end of the day, the way, the best way to predict the future is to make it. OSB Shipping, if you want to be in a services business, start offering that service, build a prototype if you're in a product business, and then, and then see if you can get to proof of concept and then raise the money. Thanks for the question, Connor from Bama. Keep sending us your questions.

• 58:23Scott Galloway?

  Again, if you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. Algebra of happiness. What does it mean to be appreciative? What does it mean to take, stock your spoils? What does it mean to actually be the person you want to be? So many times, I have not lived up to my own expectations and the gap between my intentions and what I did was just enormous and it's something I'm embarrassed by. When 9/11 happened, I thought, I'm going to go down to the pile and help. And of course, I didn't. When Katrina hit, I thought, you know what, why don't I just run a fucking motor home and go down there and find some people who need help and get them out of there, give them a little bit of money, get back on their feet. And what did I do?

• 59:07Scott Galloway?

  Absolutely fucking, really nothing. And I've decided in this pandemic, I'm going to try and be the man that my kids think I am. And I think there is a strategy. And first off, there's a very dirty secret around the novel coronavirus. And that is, despite the fact that I believe 7 million Americans, I know about 212,000 have died as of today, I think it's about 7 million infections. The majority of us, you know, the majority of us, what is that, seven of 350? That's what, that means 97 or 98% of us have not experienced novel coronavirus. Not only have not experienced it, but if you're one of the 97% and you're saying the top 10% of income earners, and maybe you're old enough to already have established relationships, already have some economic security, maybe you're fortunate enough to have enough economic

• 59:52Scott Galloway?

  security where you're invested in stocks, this is where you are. You're not commuting. You have more time with your family. You have more time with Netflix. The water is cleaner. The air is crisper. You are living your best life. This is accelerated. If you are on the right trajectory, if you kind of made the jump to light speed in terms of your relationships and your economic situation, everything's gotten just fucking disco cocaine wonderful. If you're young and trying to establish yourself, if you're trying to make a living, if for whatever reason you're out of work, if you are economically strained, if you had comorbidities in your life, you didn't have good relationships with people, you were struggling with mental illness, you were struggling economically, then shit's gone from bad to worse.

• 1:00:35Scott Galloway?

  This has taken every trend in the economy and every trend in your life and just extrapolated, just poured fuel on it. And if you had a good life going into this, you're living your best life. And if you're struggling, you are really enduring hits. And so what do you do? What do you do? Do you want to bridge the gap between your intentions and your actions? And I think the methodology is the following. You have to affix your own oxygen mask before helping others. And that is an honest appraisal of where you are in your life and whether you need help. And if you do need help, do you have the courage? Do you have the self-awareness to reach out for help? Then go to the next circle, and that is the people around you, your family and friends, the people you know the best, the people...

• 1:01:19Scott Galloway?

  Who you can kind of sense if something's wrong. And then having the grace and courage to reach out to them and make sure they're all right. And doing it in a way where you're not. A lot of times I think expressions of help are humble brags. You know, people who want to show how just fucking awesome their life is. And do you need help? And people are embarrassed sometimes to take help because they don't feel it's like a real offer of help. It's more like schadenfreude of people relishing in your misfortune. I know that's a terrible thing to say, but make sure when you present help, that you really present it in a non-judgmental, humble way. And then if you're fortunate enough to A, have your own life going well, to have the people around you, the circle around you doing well, then that's where you really get off your heels and on your toes.

• 1:02:03Scott Galloway?

  The ultimate, the place in heaven that is reserved for people who are generous without any recognition and also help people they will never meet. I've just gotten there in my own life. I'm still such a fucking narcissist. And when I give money away, I want recognition. If I give money to a university, I want to be in the alumni magazines so all my classmates can go, oh, what a baller, you know, isn't he cool? But the real, the real grace, the people are going to get into heaven first are the ones that figure out a way to help people without any expectation or recognition. And if you're in a position to do that, I think you'll look back on this period and think, you know, my intentions, the person I am, really met who I want to be.

• 1:02:48Scott Galloway?

  It all comes back to the similar theme. Be the man you think you are. Be the man your kids think you are. Foot your intentions to your actions. We are in a crisis. People need help.

• 1:03:02Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Carolyn Shagrin and Drew Burrows. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you next week with another episode of The Prof G Show from Section 4 and the Westwood One Podcast Network.

• 1:03:23Scott Galloway?

  Daddy's on fire. Daddy's on fire.