Unlocks and 2022's Top Geopolitical Risks — with Ian Bremmer

Ian Bremmer, a political scientist who is focused on the business of geopolitics, joins Scott for a discussion about what he and his firm Eurasia Group believe will be the top geopolitical risks to play out this year. Scott opens with his thoughts on the five major unlocks that he believes will shape our economy. Related Reading: Unlocks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:49Speaker 01

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• 1:18Scott Galloway?

  Episode 130. Warren Buffett was born in 1930. People ask me how I stay so interesting at this age. What activity keeps me alive? I say, I don't know. Ask one of my 57 children. Episode 130. Warren Buffett was born in 1930. I tell people what's the worst thing about getting older? It's having to go to the bathroom seven times a night. I always say, you're in trouble. Get it? You're in trouble. I find as I get older, I have to pee all the time. There are two types of people at my age, those that pee in the shower and liars. Or as I get older, I have to pee all the time. Supposedly, if you're stung by a jellyfish, you're supposed to pee on it. I just think that's vindictive. Episode 130. A 1930 Warren Buffett was born.

• 2:03Scott Galloway?

  As I've gotten older, my problems with urination, or constant urination, have actually dictated my musical taste. My favorite artist? Aretha Franklin. Okay, that was bad. Go, go, go!

• 2:24Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 130th episode of the Prof G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Ian Bremmer. Ian is the president and founder of Eurasia Group, the world's leading political risk, research and consulting firm, and G Zero Media, a company dedicated to providing coverage of international affairs. We discuss with Ian the top geopolitical risks that he and his firm Eurasia Group expect to play out in 2022. Those include what's to come with COVID-19, the midterm elections, and tensions between the US and countries, including Russia and China. Not a lot there. We got it. That's a big cookie. The crumbs off that cookie are things that we talk about every day. I don't know what's going with that metaphor. You know, I also get into all sorts of personal topics, including what we're ashamed of,

• 3:08Scott Galloway?

  decisions around parenthood, and the role exercise plays in our lives. Ian and I are a lot different. He was one of these kind of Doogie Howser, I think he went to college at 14 or something just weird, or 16, when I was figuring out a way to smoke marijuana behind the bungalows and barely got into college. He and I could, we had a much different experience. But anyways, a super interesting guy and considered one of the biggest brains in the world of geopolitics. I've been thinking a lot about what the new year is going to bring, and that is, what are the major unlocks? Think of an unlock as we take existing resources, and by looking at resources in a different way, and kind of etch a sketching and shaking the etch a sketch, saying, well, what if

• 3:53Scott Galloway?

  we had a different approach to how we deliver a product or service? We just rethought stuff. Is there an unlock? I'm not talking as much about innovation when we come up with something new. I'm saying, okay, what if we thought about it this way? We reorganize these resources. Using that notion, we've identified five unlocks that we think are going to play a key role in the economy. I'm trying to do this because I'm trying to be more optimistic. I'm trying to be the glass half-full kind of guy, because I'm the guy that said, it'll never fly. And when the Wright brothers actually got a plane up, I said, okay, we're going to need seat belts. Anyways, first unlock, or first, I think, really incredible potential, if we thought about these institutions in a different way, prisons.

• 4:35Scott Galloway?

  The US spends about 90 billion a year on prisons. That's more than we spend on the Department of Justice, IRS, EPA, and NASA combined. In addition, the US is less than 5% of the world's population, yet we're home to 20% of the world's prison population. Among G7 nations, the majority have between 50 and 200 people per 100,000 behind bars. And we, here in the US, have about 650 or 700. We are literally in love, or obsessed, or fetishized incarceration. And it's hard for us to lecture autocrats when we're putting more of our citizens behind bars than they are. And we are. Several autocratic nations have fewer per capita populations behind bars.

• 5:19Scott Galloway?

  The inability to socially distance, and this kind of leads into the potential they unlock, and poor sanitary conditions at prisons meant COVID spread four times faster in prisons than on cruise ships. Think about that. Everyone talks about cruise ships or nursing homes. There was nowhere. It was ripping through faster than prisons. I wonder if it's because they're not around kids and they don't develop immunities? I don't know. Different talk show. I play junior epidemiologist. Have you noticed that because people watch commercials, they think they're junior ad executives? And because everybody knows someone who has COVID, they think all of a sudden that they're junior epidemiologists? Anyways, we decided that in order to reduce the spread, the US Bureau of Prisons released 36,000-plus inmates. That was 20% of federal prisoners. Think about that.

• 6:01Scott Galloway?

  We took one in five federal prisoners and we released them to, I think it's called home, home monitoring? I don't know what the term is. States have largely failed to follow suit, but in our view, they should. When states significantly reduce their prison populations, crime rates actually fall faster than the national average. Between 1999 and 2012, New York and New Jersey downsized their prisons by 26%. And violent crime dropped, get this, 31 and 30% respectively. Furthermore, diversion and rehabilitative support programs reduce recidivism. The Federal Bureau of Prisons found that inmates who participate in correctional education programs have 43% lower odds of returning to prison than those who do not.

• 6:46Scott Galloway?

  What's going on here? I think this is one of the many sectors where the for-profit motive in prisons has perverted. The intention, I live in the rehab capital of the United States and I think that many of these institutions are not in the business of rehabilitating you, but turning you into a permanent addict as there's a profit motive and getting lifetime value from you. Similarly, we have private organizations, prison, basically prison companies or incarceration companies that have a for-profit motive to ensuring higher rates of recidivism. Last month, the Justice Department said that thousands of inmates who were released because of the pandemic would be allowed to remain in home confinement, a literal unlocking that could be the catalyst for serious progress. Among other things, it will put more desperately needed men back into lower-income homes.

• 7:31Scott Galloway?

  We're not suggesting that we put violent criminals back in homes to terrorize their families, but there are communities, lower-income communities especially, where there just aren't enough men. We need to disincentivize or discourage, but I would decriminalize the drug trade because what we've done in a lot of low-income communities is we've made the incentives so strong to go into the illegal drug trade and meanwhile, the options aren't nearly as strong. So what could we do with that? Some of that $90 billion we might save? Increase the opportunities through vocational programming such that the alternatives to going to the drug trade are more appealing and to decrease the economic incentive to go into illegal activity by decriminalizing drugs. I think that's another unlock, but a different talk show.

• 8:16Scott Galloway?

  The decriminalization of drug, of the drug trade, especially in other nations where we've inspired incredible violence because of the economic incentive to sell drugs into our champagne and cocaine society here in the US. Anyways, the next unlock, the grocery supply chain. Well, that's exciting. Say more, Scott. Anyways, grocery aisles have been dispersed to our homes, saving us time and reducing traffic and emissions, and we're likely just getting started. So I want to be clear, I'm an environmentalist. I'm the great endorsement. I think that after our species is gone, the earth is going to belt for about 50 years and it's going to be as if we've never been here. But I'm also a person of science and there's just no getting around the fact that the oceans are warming and if we don't come together and figure out a way to fight climate change

• 9:01Scott Galloway?

  and also give up this ridiculous bullshit notion that some kid out of MIT is going to make us all rich while solving climate change, wouldn't that be nice? It's not going to happen. It's going to be expensive and it's going to be hard and we need to get on it. But anyways, the University of Washington study found that grocery delivery trucks produce up to 75% less carbon emissions per customer than driving to the store. When they're efficiently rooted, rapid delivery companies, including Joker, Getter and GoPuff, could increase efficiency even further with their ability to e-pedal fresh produce to homes within a one-mile radius in 15 minutes. Basically, they're these dark warehouses. They pick and pack your order. Eighty percent of what you order is across maybe 10% of SKUs. So you put sort of this micro store or dark store in

• 9:42Scott Galloway?

  a high-density area. The order is picked and packed within 12 minutes and it's e-pedaled to you within 20, so 32 minutes. The need for speed, I think, speed, if you will, the future's around fast, not far, space, huge bus, but supersonic travel and last mile, last mile, if you will, or last, last mile's gonna be huge. I think there's gonna be a tremendous unlock around widespread grocery delivery, or specifically more expedited grocery delivery, because it'll do more than just save us trips to the store and gasoline. It can improve the lives and diets of the 20 million Americans who live in food deserts, defined as people whose nearest grocery store is more than a mile away. Obesity rates are really, really high in food deserts, where fast food restaurants are cheap and

• 10:25Scott Galloway?

  ubiquitous. Get this, there are roughly 39,000 grocery stores in the US versus 247,000 fast food restaurants. But however, there are 300 million smartphones. So could we disperse grocery, if you will, or food intake from fast food restaurants to our smartphones and back to grocery? Okay, let's talk about the third unlock, one that's been a recurring theme throughout the pandemic: remote work. The average commute time in the US is 26 minutes. It takes the average American 20 minutes to get ready for work. Remote work removes that commute. And with no suit or hairdryer to worry about, it likely gets the time needed to get ready in half. That's an hour every day, five hours a week, 250

• 11:06Scott Galloway?

  hours a year, a minimum of six weeks. So you're starting January 1. When you figure out a way using technology and a different approach to management to rent your human capital to the organization, you're talking about an unlock of a minimum of five or six weeks, plus the $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 your organization spends to put you in an amalgam of steel, glass and asbestos. So this is an enormous unlock for self-care, for more time with family, for flexibility, to be home. With your loved ones. I think the great resignation, if you look at it, it's happening mostly across or especially among people who can't do remote work. Because guess what? It sucks to have to blow dry your hair and put on a suit or a pantsuit

• 11:49Scott Galloway?

  or a uniform and haul your ass into somewhere, especially with housing getting more expensive. Meaning you have to, your commute time goes up. So that's where you're seeing the greatest resignation. The majority of people, two thirds of people who make over $200,000 can work remotely. Less than a third of those who make less than 60 can work remotely. But it is an enormous unlock. I mean, just incredible. I also think it's going to cause one of the greatest shifts in capital from commercial to residential real estate. But there's little rational basis for knowledge work to be structured similar to 19th century manufacturing and factory employment. And the remote work unlock will liberate us from that archetype. I also think that we need to figure out a way to take some of that productivity, whether it's through taxes, and reallocate some of that capital

• 12:32Scott Galloway?

  through stronger minimum wage laws that give people who have to go to work and don't have the flexibility to be home when their kids are at home and probably need it more than wealthy people, to figure out a way to get their wages up, to make it worthwhile. Okay, the next big unlock? Simplicity. When the virus hit, we reduced bureaucratic complexity and sent a $1,200 check to every American citizen earning up to $75,000 a year. No questions asked, no big departments, no come in and answer a bunch of questions about whether you're looking for work or not looking for work, or forums, but just said, here's 1,200 bucks. It was sort of UBI light, and guess what? It worked. And what did we also do? We cut child poverty in half. Think about that. More generally, we cut the number of Americans living in poverty in half.

• 13:17Scott Galloway?

  How, how is that not an unbelievable unlock? How can the wealthiest nation in the world have, you know, essentially any large population in poverty? So the reduction in complexity, just giving people who needed it money quickly, expeditiously, was a huge unlock. Complexity is a tax on the poor. And what we do is we create all sorts of tax policy that makes it very complicated such that people with advisors can navigate by starlight and get to the right, get to a lower Tax rate. I know this firsthand. Some of the brightest people who work for me are doing nothing but trying to help me not pay taxes or pay the least amount of tax possible. What does that do? It's a tax on the poor because wealthy people can afford to navigate by starlight.

• 14:00Scott Galloway?

  They can afford the GPS of tax lawyers and consultants. We fetishize real estate and entrepreneurs. The first $10 million on the sale, on the proceeds of a sale of a company for an entrepreneur are tax free. Real estate gets depreciated even when it's going up in value. This makes no sense. Why? Who owns real estate? Who starts companies? Generally speaking, we fetishize entrepreneurs and we fetishize rich people who own real estate. We need simplicity. I believe we should have a flat tax that's graduated. Say 10% up to $50,000, 50 to 500, 20%, anything above $500,000, 40%. And I think you'd be shocked that we could get, in fact, to the revenues we need.

• 14:41Scott Galloway?

  23% of the economy goes to the government and goes up a little, goes down a little, went up, way up in the pandemic. But for the most part, with distinctive, all the talk about reforming government, we still seem to figure out a way to spend 23% of GDP on government. So let's assume we need 23%. It's not raising tax rates. It's plugging the massive loopholes that will solve this problem. We need massive simplicity. Complexity is a tax on the poor and simplicity would be a huge, huge unlock. The final unlock, let's reshape the largest consumer sector in the world. And that is the $4 trillion healthcare sector. Pre-COVID, less than 1% of doctor's office visits were virtual. Now that's more than 30%. Think about this.

• 15:25Scott Galloway?

  What if we were to disperse the doctor's office and the hospital to our smartphones and our smart speakers? And they're like, well, Scott, you can't get an appendectomy on your smartphone. No, but you can get the consultation. You go in, you get your appendectomy, and then you can get the physical therapy. You can get the drugs. You can get things delivered to you. COVID-19 taught us that, okay, it's okay. To get healthcare delivered at home. Think about this, probably 98, 99% of the people who contracted, endured and developed the antibodies for the novel coronavirus probably never entered a doctor's office, much less a hospital. There's now testing machinery moving to our home. We're home testing. We're getting advice over our smartphone. I'm an investor in a company called 98.6. It's text-based preventive care.

• 16:09Scott Galloway?

  And a third of the people that reach out to us with a problem do so while in a meeting. This is an enormous unlock. And that is the majority of the innovation in healthcare has been focused on rich people. Why? Because 40% of venture capitalists are from Harvard and Stanford, and 90% of them have a shit ton of money. So what do they do? They fund startups for concierge services from Stanford Medical Center. Because me, as a baller white guy in Woodside, I want better healthcare for me. And I'm not, it's easy. You fund the problems that relate to you, not because you're a bad person, but those are the problems. It's just pure proximity bias. And we haven't funded where I think the real need is in our healthcare system. But the opportunity to push healthcare out from doctors' offices and hospitals

• 16:52Scott Galloway?

  and do away with the 12 people in the front office filling out the paperwork and the bullshit, such that you can spend 14 minutes with the actual healthcare provider, will be a huge unlock, not only for the healthcare provider, but also for the patient. I think the notion of dispersion is that the initial provider, the core provider of the intellectual property, i.e. the medical professional, and the end user, the patient. The end user gets lower friction, lower costs, and the healthcare provider makes more money. My doctor was legally prohibited, because of HIPAA or some other bullshit, from talking to me over text message. And then that all came crashing down during COVID. There's been a huge unlock and a huge opportunity here to not only lower costs, but to push out healthcare

• 17:35Scott Galloway?

  to the 10s or possibly 100 million-plus Americans that are intimidated, underinsured. And rather than addressing a health issue when it's still addressable, end up in the emergency room. This is the big unlock. 14 weeks of a mother's year whose child suffers from childhood diabetes is spent managing that child's healthcare. Let's give that mother four, six, 10 weeks back. Through remote, big and small tech of healthcare, such that she can spend more time on self-care, making money, or more time with that child. The big unlock here, the big unlock on our economy, is the dispersion of healthcare away from our hospitals, away from our doctors' offices, and into our homes via smartphone or smart speaker.

• 18:18Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back for our conversation with Ian Brimmer, where we discuss what he believes are the top geopolitical risks in 2022.

• 18:27Scott Galloway?

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• 19:12Scott Galloway?

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• 19:30Scott Galloway?

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• 20:51Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Ian Brimmer, the president and founder of Eurasia Group and G Zero Media. Ian, where does this podcast find you?

• 21:00Ian Bremmer?

  Finds me in my office, though with fewer people around me than last time you and I chatted, in New York City.

• 21:07Scott Galloway?

  Let's bust right into it. You and your firm Eurasia Group have identified 10 or so top geopolitical risks to play out in 22. So let's start off with a big one, recognizing you're not an epidemiologist, but you follow trends and you're facile with data. Do you think COVID-19, the pandemic, and I know you've looked at past pandemics, are you comfortable talking about the state of play as it relates to the pandemic in 2022?

• 21:32Ian Bremmer?

  We have a global health practice, so I certainly listen to the people that know what they're talking about. But I'm focused, of course, most on the political response. And the political responses to this pandemic have been all over the map. What I find really interesting in the coming year is that the political response that was the most effective at the beginning of the pandemic, which was China's, is about to become the least effective. And that's because their response hasn't changed one bit, but the pandemic has changed a lot, and that's a problem.

• 22:04Scott Galloway?

  So say more. What is it about their their approach that is not working out?

• 22:09Ian Bremmer?

  It's a zero COVID policy. It is absolute track, trace, quarantine and lockdown on the base of cases, not hospitalizations, not deaths, cases, which made a lot of sense when you had a much less transmissible variant and you had no ability to protect your population from hospitalizations and deaths. But now you've got a vastly more transmissible variant. You have lots of capacity to protect your population from hospitalizations and deaths, but not from catching the virus. And yet China's approach has been the same. It's zero COVID. They will lock down a city if they see a bunch of cases. And that is not

• 22:52Ian Bremmer?

  going to work this year at all. Not to mention the fact that they have very few citizens that have caught COVID. So you don't have many people with antibodies. And they have vaccines that really work badly in response to Omicron. Plus, they refuse to officially license the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines. They're waiting to develop their own Chinese mRNA vaccines, which we're looking at the end of the year before they can get that ramped up and jabbed in the arms of Chinese.

• 23:21Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, you tweeted that you've never been more optimistic about getting through the pandemic.

• 23:25Ian Bremmer?

  In the US and in the West, still record numbers of cases, but record numbers of cases with lower hospitalization levels, much lower ICU and death. And we've already seen the United Kingdom, which is ahead of us here, through the peak. And that's because we have much better therapeutics. We have lots of people that are vaccinated and boosted. And the rollout of the COVID pills, which are very effective, are coming very soon to a theater near you in the United States. So plus, the fact that the average American just isn't having it when it comes to school closures anymore. They want their lives back. And so the politics just have to respond to that. Put those things together. And I

• 24:08Ian Bremmer?

  think we're quite close, like within weeks, to the pandemic looking like an endemic.

• 24:15Ian Bremmer?

  Uh, in the developed world where China just can't get there. And of course, the problem, the global problem there is we still do a lot of trade with China. We get a lot of stuff from China. And so you're gonna have a whole bunch of supply chain challenges from the world's, you know, factory over the course of 2022.

• 24:36Scott Galloway?

  So a couple of thoughts there. One about, um, one about Omicron and then one about supply chain. If Omicron is much more contagious and much less lethal, you effectively have the ability to give more and more people the antibodies. And isn't this effectively a crude vaccine? Isn't it? Aren't we, uh, getting to, uh, the net effect of a vaccine? With obviously much worse outcomes, but we're gonna end up with a bunch of people with antibodies and not as much death. Isn't this, I, I like to call it the Fox vaccine, which is very cynical. But.

• 25:10Ian Bremmer?

  Depends on which, which hour of Fox you're listening to, obviously.

• 25:14Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 25:15Ian Bremmer?

  I take your point. And the weirdest thing, of course, is that President Trump, uh, not only got his vaccinations and got his booster, but I mean, he hasn't been a huge advocate, uh, but he has been an advocate and it, it just doesn't matter. All right. I mean, the genie's out of the bottle in terms of anti-vax and, and the, and the MAGA crew, which is truly unfortunate for health outcomes in the U.S. But I think you're right, Scott. And I mean, of course, in South Africa, of course, uh, you basically, I was talking to one of the advisors for the South African president, um, who basically said, Ian, don't, don't even pay attention to our numbers on cases and because we're just not tracking and tracing anymore because we don't need to.

• 25:59Ian Bremmer?

  Everyone's already gotten COVID. We have a young population and, uh, Omicron is not leading to hospitalizations in any significant number. So we're just gonna get through it. And I mean, now they have a much younger population than the UK or the United States. So I don't think we can quite go that far. But there's no question that a combination of a lot of people having already gotten COVID, a bunch of people, a lot more people getting Omicron and not having severe health outcomes, plus all of the vaccinations and the therapeutics that we have, mean that this is increasingly feeling like a flu season as opposed to a pandemic that is debilitating for the population.

• 26:44Ian Bremmer?

  And that means if you are trying to balance between opening the economy, getting kids back to school, having more risk acceptance, you you're moving much more heavily in that direction. In other words, the DeSantis policies down in Florida sound a lot more successful today than they did a year ago. And the new mayor of New York City is clearly very strongly in that camp. Thankfully, as a New Yorker, I can say that.

• 27:11Scott Galloway?

  Something you said, and I just want to pause because I think it's really, there's real insight here, and that is when you have a variant that is much more transmissible but less lethal, then we absolutely need to rethink lockdowns. That they just take on a different dimension. There's a different calculus now around lockdowns. I want to I want to pivot to supply chain. And another thesis, China makes stuff, makes atoms, if you will, that consists of atoms. We can, we make stuff that consists of bits. Their supply chain has been severely interrupted. Our supply chain, whether it's Netflix or the work that the Eurasia Group does, or McKinsey, or Bitcoin, our supply chain is fine.

• 27:56Scott Galloway?

  It's not stuck offshore. Isn't there an enormous transfer or seeding of value from China to the US coming out of COVID because our supply chain is still working?

• 28:05Ian Bremmer?

  I think I agree 75% with that, Scott. I mean, it's very clear that they, the Chinese, are much more heavily dependent on stuff that is made with atoms.

• 28:18Ian Bremmer?

  Uh, but I also think, uh, and it helps that the United States is an exporter of food, an exporter of energy, and China's an importer of both. So in terms of raw materials, they have that challenge as well. And that's hurt them in terms of the disruptions in the last couple of years. But when we talk about bits, um, in many aspects of the bit economy, the Chinese are at parity today with the United States. They're about two to three generations behind us in terms of semiconductors. And that's one of the reasons why the Chinese government is, uh, pushing away from consumer internet where they think it's kind of a waste of time and not so productive and potentially undermines Chinese Communist Party authority.

• 29:03Ian Bremmer?

  And more towards the hard science of semiconductors, for example. But when you think about artificial intelligence, when you think about supercomputing, when you think about, um, the, the consumer digital economy today, I would argue that China is every bit as robust with their top companies as the top American companies are today. And of course, the scale of their data economy is much greater than ours because there are more people on the internet. They have no privacy whatsoever and their data is consolidated on a smaller number of super apps.

• 29:38Scott Galloway?

  What do you tell people around investment opportunities in big tech in China?

• 29:43Ian Bremmer?

  Uh, I think you tell people that if they are engaged in behaviors that could be seen as anti-patriotic, as anti-communal. I mean, this whole Xi Jinping notion of common prosperity, which is his, you know, sort of driving, uh, motivation for the changed economy in China. You know, China today is more unequal economically than the United States, which for an ostensibly socialist economy is not where you want to be. And Xi Jinping's common prosperity is kind of the equivalent of a Chinese foreign policy for the Chinese middle class or make China great again. It's Chinese authoritarian populism. And so that's why, I mean, if you were an investor in video games in China, you said, oh, great discount.

• 30:28Ian Bremmer?

  And then they say a few months ago, yeah, but if you're a teenager, you get two hours a week within the following hours to be on video games. And if you don't use them, they don't roll over. My God, that suddenly doesn't look like a good buy anymore. So the willingness of the Chinese government to intervene. In the activities of companies that are seen as problematic for Chinese civil society as they define it, has massive risk attached to it. Other tech firms, I mean, if you're looking to build smart infrastructure, a smart grid, a smart city, autonomous cars, if you're looking to to build semiconductors in China, you have access to investing in those companies, I would say those companies are going to be extraordinarily successful in China.

• 31:13Ian Bremmer?

  The hard science.

• 31:14Scott Galloway?

  Uh huh. You said that you actually believe that the relationship with US and China, the tensions there are overestimated, and you're much more worried about our relationship with Russia. And you've you've written, open quote, "on the verge of precipitating an international crisis." Give us a sense of why we overestimate the tension in US-China relations and underestimate the problems or the the risks with Russia.

• 31:40Ian Bremmer?

  China is the most important national security threat to the United States. They're the most important strategic competitor to the United States, but they're also economically indispensable to the US, and that's mutual. And we both recognize that. So the likelihood of a near-term crisis between the United States and China precisely because we know how much we need each other. It's why we didn't boycott the Chinese Olympics or even the companies that are going to sponsor the Beijing Olympics. We only said we're not sending diplomats. There is an enormous buffer that prevents us from getting into a big fight with the Chinese, and the Chinese also understand that they don't want a crisis with the US, at least in the near term. So it's not like I'm saying they're not a problem. It's more like I'm saying for now, they're not a crisis.

• 32:25Ian Bremmer?

  If you ask me where I would spend most of my time if I were a US policymaker, it would be on Beijing, it wouldn't be on Moscow. But the likelihood of a near-term crisis geopolitically with Russia is real.

• 32:36Ian Bremmer?

  And in part, that's because we don't need them. It's because we can threaten to sanction them in ways that would be kind of existentially problematic for China. No skin off our back. You know, if we completely cut them off in terms of sovereign debt, if we go after all of their major oligarchs, we don't, we don't trade with Russia. We don't need their energy. Right? And Putin senses weakness. He senses that the Europeans are much more dependent on the Russians than the Americans, especially this winter with energy prices spiraling and people potentially facing shortages, gas that they get from Russia. The Nord Stream two pipeline, which has just been completed, but is not yet operational.

• 33:20Ian Bremmer?

  They know that they care a lot about Ukraine, but the United States refuses to let them into NATO. They saw what we just did with Afghanistan. This Putin sees that there is an opportunity to shake the branches and see if any fruit falls off. And we've responded by saying, well, if you invade Ukraine, the Americans and Europeans are going to do all this nasty stuff to you, even though we won't put troops on the ground to defend Ukraine. So he probably won't invade Ukraine. He won't roll tanks into Kiev and overthrow the government. But, but Putin has said in the past few weeks that the Ukrainian government is committing acts of genocide against Russian citizens living in the occupied territory of Donbass.

• 34:05Ian Bremmer?

  This is Ukrainian territory that the little green men have taken. They've declared their own independent republic. Now that's, what he has said is not true, but he said it. He said it to the Russian people and the media is, is beating that drum. Now, what happens if Putin says, well, I have to defend my citizens from genocide, as any president would. And so he says, I'm going to have to send troops into the occupied territory of Donbass. I have to defend that territory. Is that an invasion of Ukraine? The Americans, I think, would say yes. I don't think the Europeans would. I'm not sure that we would get a collective response from NATO against the Russians in

• 34:46Ian Bremmer?

  that scenario. And I think Putin knows it. So I think, let's see. The fact is that there's a lot of stuff that could happen that could divide the transatlantic relationship, could really embarrass Biden. If it goes badly, you could easily see the Russians up their disinformation campaigns in the run up to the 2022 midterm elections in the US. How are we going to respond to that? There's a lot at play that could get really ugly with the Russians.

• 35:15Scott Galloway?

  So let's, let's go domestic for a minute. What are your thoughts on the midterm elections, things powering, powering of the big influences around midterms and any thoughts on what might happen?

• 35:28Ian Bremmer?

  Well, I mean, my thought on the 2020 election was it was the worst election of our lifetimes. It was considered illegitimate by a majority of the Trump supporters. And since then, Trump's popularity and his level of control over the Republican Party has only grown. I mean, Devin Nunes leaving his congressional seat to go and run the social media campaign for the former guy, you know, Trump doing a big press conference and with all of his supporters leaning in on January the 6th and engaged with Steve Bannon and all the rest, the investigation into 1/6 being completely polarized. People considering the woman that

• 36:12Ian Bremmer?

  was, that was killed, the violent protester in the Capitol, a martyr, and comparing 1/6 to, you know, the CHAZ occupation or the George Floyd riots. I mean, this, this country has learned nothing from what happened in response to the last presidential election. And all of that implies to me that 2022 will be the most important midterm of American history. It it looks to me, I mean, you've got Republicans very likely to win the House. A lot of key governor and state legislature positions open in swing states that will determine

• 36:57Ian Bremmer?

  the certification of the 2024 election. So if Trump decides to run for president, and I would assume that he's going to get the nomination if he does, his ability to contest and even break 2024 on the back of 2022 becomes significant, and the potential for a constitutional crisis becomes significant. So I think we have a really significant problem, and it's clearly why the Democrats are pivoting to voter rights as opposed to Build Back Better, which has been the top priority for Biden this first year, because they understand the importance and the danger of this. But it's unclear to me if any of that is remotely adequate to derail the problems that are building.

• 37:39Scott Galloway?

  And what do you call it? Do you think everything I read is that Republicans have the momentum here? Do you think it's going to be a landslide? What are your thoughts on the mood of the nation, what it means for the for the election?

• 37:52Ian Bremmer?

  I think it's probably a landslide in the House. I think the Senate's much closer. But that itself is enough to make this a really serious baseline risk, that you don't have a stolen election as a possibility, but you could have a broken one. You know, you look back to 1876, when you had two different slates of electors that were brought to certification, and there was no agreement. And so they needed an extra legal political compromise to determine who the president was. A deal had to be struck. And in the interim, there was no president. In the interim, the federal government took a big whack. I think that that is an absolutely plausible scenario for 2024. It's not yet baseline, but we're heading in that direction.

• 38:34Ian Bremmer?

  I think this is, but when I when I first, I started Eurasia Group back in 1998. And we've been writing these top risk reports ever since. The United States never used to be on this list. There was no question about the legitimacy, the viability of US political institutions. Not at all. American allies knew where the Americans stood. American antagonists knew where we stood. We weren't always popular. We didn't always do things that looked great. But there wasn't a question about the fundamental values and stability of the American system.

• 39:11Scott Galloway?

  How did this happen? What do you think? I realize it's a number of factors, but what? It feels like it just flipped so fast.

• 39:19Ian Bremmer?

  I mean, a lot of people have believed that special interests in the United States, money in the United States drives politics in a way that just does not happen in other countries. You remember the Citizens United ruling?

• 39:35Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 39:36Ian Bremmer?

  Right? I mean, you know, you saw that and you said, this is not the way a democracy should run. The ability of big moneyed interests on the right and on the left. I mean, I'm talking about lawyers and teachers and police. But I'm also talking, of course, about bankers and energy companies and big tech. But their ability to write the rules and ensure that they do better. And a winner take all philosophy that increasingly doesn't trickle down to the average American. And then when you add to that, the identity politics piece of this, you know that, you know that the US is going to be minority white by 2045.

• 40:23Ian Bremmer?

  And so you have a lot of undereducated white men that see that they are losing status. And you also have a lot of structural racism that a lot of blacks and others in the US feel is not being addressed. And those positions are becoming calcified. And and people think that their fundamental enemy is not China or Russia or North Korea or Iran. They think it's another American. They think it's someone across the aisle. And when that starts happening in your country, your democracy starts to unravel. And so I don't I don't think it's reasonable to speak about the US as a representative democracy today. I think it's increasingly kind of a hybrid system.

• 41:07Ian Bremmer?

  And that's that's why I brought up this really uncomfortable question. The US is, we have record highs in our stock market every day. The economy is on fire. They're incredible entrepreneurs and new technologies that we are dominating and driving. There's no place I would rather invest or have my capital in the world than the United States of America. And I have put my money where my mouth is all the way through my career. But politically, it is not clear to me that the US coming out of COVID is in a better position than China. So this is a these are really interesting questions between how well the economy is doing. Structurally, what the trajectory looks like and what the politics look like. It's a really tough question for us.

• 41:54Scott Galloway?

  Coming up after the break.

• 41:56Ian Bremmer?

  I'm someone who believes that nobody gets to have everything. So if you have like, if you're a really successful at a job that you love and you're passionate about it, and you've got a really solid relationship and you're in good health and you take care of it. Well, you know, you try to have kids, something else is gonna, something is gonna break. You don't get to do every, you don't get to be super person.

• 42:18Scott Galloway?

  Stay with us.

• 42:23Scott Galloway?

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• 43:30Speaker 01

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• 44:00Scott Galloway?

  I know so little about you and outside of your professional life. Are you, do you have a partner? Are you married? Do you have kids?

• 44:06Ian Bremmer?

  No kids. I have a partner, I have a wife, and it's a great relationship, 10 years now. Live, I grew up in the projects in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Went to college at Tulane down in New Orleans. They gave me a scholarship. Went to Stanford for a master's and PhD. Taught there for a couple of years, then came to New York and started this company. Play jazz piano, chess, tennis, and I bowl really well. I like poker, and I like to make cocktails.

• 44:38Scott Galloway?

  There you go.

• 44:39Ian Bremmer?

  There you go. What's the thing you're most ashamed about in your background, Scott?

• 44:45Scott Galloway?

  That I should have been more kind as a CEO.

• 44:48Ian Bremmer?

  Oh, really?

• 44:49Scott Galloway?

  I mean, well, I got very serious right out. Yeah, no, I wasn't, I wasn't as, I should have been. I grew up thinking that to be harsh and hard driving and holding everyone accountable every day was leadership. And it was probably the right strategy economically, but I look back and think, Jesus Christ, I was just such a fucking asshole.

• 45:12Scott Galloway?

  Anyways, how about you?

• 45:14Ian Bremmer?

  I couldn't, I couldn't stand being younger. I was pushed ahead. I started college when I was 15 and I was enormously embarrassed about it. I wanted to just be normal socially and emotionally and not be seen as a little brain. So I lied about my age. I just pretended I was 18. I was really small.

• 45:31Scott Galloway?

  But wasn't that, I'm fascinated by that. Wasn't that part of the space race? Didn't that happen to you? And that is, to a lesser extent, my mom was very proud because when I was in the third grade, I'd go to the fifth grade for math and English. And I showed up to UCLA, not you showed up, it sounds like when you were 15. I showed up when I was 17 and that was considered in the space race as sign of success. And now all the studies say, especially with boys, whatever you can do, hold them back. Because I was just too immature to show up to college. But it sounds like you had sort of this Doogie Howser thing, don't you? If you had kids, would you push them to go as far as fast as possible as kids? Or would you say, hold back?

• 46:11Ian Bremmer?

  I, I mean, I loved sports and I love sports today and I couldn't play competitive sport. I was too small. I mean, 17 is one thing, 15, and 15 at Tulane, where it was, you know, dominated by fraternity life and drinking ages. I mean, look, I, I actually, they were going to take away my scholarship. I had a 1.9 GPA my first term and I, I was hung over during my physics midterm, my physics final, I think it was, and didn't show up for it. So I got an incomplete.

• 46:39Ian Bremmer?

  It was, it was insanity. It was insanity. I barely remember my first year at Tulane.

• 46:45Scott Galloway?

  And as you think about your relationship and coming through COVID, do you have any thoughts on being a good partner?

• 46:53Scott Galloway?

  Or how you approach relationships, both at work and with your partner, coming out of COVID?

• 46:58Ian Bremmer?

  Going to work every day is important.

• 47:02Scott Galloway?

  I'm going to New York tomorrow and I don't need to go.

• 47:06Ian Bremmer?

  You know, no, I think that it's really important that you you actually don't just love the person you're with, that you like the person you're with.

• 47:15Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 47:15Ian Bremmer?

  Because you don't want to be bored. And I the people I know that have had real problems during COVID are people that aren't fundamentally friends with their partner. Um, because you just run out of things to talk about. You're just not interested in having a conversation and actually going about the living of life uh with another person. Um, I think having a dog really matters. I think also having personal space really matters. I look for me, I I'm not someone who feels like I need to be a billionaire. I've never been super hard driving. I have a lot more money than I ever thought I would have. The thing that made me stop worrying about money was having a really nice house. Having like space that felt like, okay, I'm done. I own this. I don't need to worry anymore. They can't take it away from me. Doesn't have a mortgage. Fuck it.

• 48:00Ian Bremmer?

  And as a kid who grew up in the projects where you could hear everyone coming into the breezeway and all the abuse and the yelling and screaming and alcoholism and everything else, um, I I just don't have to deal with that shit. And to say that in New York City is an enormous uh an enormous benefit uh and one that a lot of people just don't have. So I mean, again, if you have a firm in New York City, who are the people that want to come into the office? They're people um that also don't have a problem being in New York City. A lot of people for whom, I mean, you live in a tiny studio and during COVID and I can't even imagine what those first few months were like. That was just shit for people.

• 48:41Ian Bremmer?

  So you and I, we just don't have the ability to complain, which also just makes me more of an optimist because I just, I I know if my mom were still alive, she'd beat the crap out of me if she saw where I was today and she saw me whinging about it, given everything she went through. Just not reasonable.

• 48:55Scott Galloway?

  So this is a personal question and we will, we won't publish it if you're not comfortable answering it. What, when and why did you decide not to have children?

• 49:03Ian Bremmer?

  I don't think I decided. Well, no, actually, it's an easy question. It's because every relationship I had when I was younger was a disaster. My mom had panic disorder and other kind of emotional slash mental disabilities. And every relationship I had when I was younger was with someone who quote unquote understood me. In other words, they also were emotionally kind of screwed up. And what I realized as I got older is I didn't need to be understood. What I, I needed to be, if, if someone was going to be a little unhinged in a relationship, it should be me. I don't need additional problems in my life. And I think it took

• 49:45Ian Bremmer?

  me too long to come to that decision. And I'm also not someone who's interested in having some 20 year old. One other thing that I would say is I'm someone who believes that nobody gets to have everything. So if you have like, if you're a really successful at a job that you love and you're passionate about it, and you've got a really solid relationship, and you're in good health and you take care of it. Well, you know, you try to have kids, something else is gonna, something is gonna break. You don't get to do every, you don't get to be super person. It's easier to be Superman than Superwoman because Superman doesn't bother and do any housework. But I mean, the reality is that that means that you're giving up on being a decent partner at home. So I mean, you're just giving up

• 50:24Ian Bremmer?

  on stuff. And I think, you know, being conscious about making those trade offs is a useful place to be. Do you disagree with that? What, what piece of that do you disagree with most, I'm wondering?

• 50:37Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I think life is trade offs, trade offs. I think a lot about kids because I didn't want kids. And I, a lot of what you said resonated. I've always been very drawn to To what I'll call impressive women. And the kind of love of my life was a surgeon who was also bipolar. And what I decided was if I'm going to have kids, having all of these moving parts around someone, two very ambitious people, someone who suffered from severe mental illness and I've had, I struggle with anger and depression. And I thought, okay, just all of that under one household might just be a lot. You know, that just might be a lot.

• 51:20Scott Galloway?

  And I ended it because I thought, you know, I do, at one point I thought, okay, what if, I didn't want to be closed to kids. And I met someone that I just fell very much in love with. I would, I would have liked to have stayed single for a lot longer. I enjoyed it, I was good at it. But with me, I fell in love and, and, and she said, we're having kids. And I said, well, I don't want to get married. And she said, she called my bluff and said, we don't need to be married to have kids. And what I've had since, discovered since having kids, it's kind of the first time for me where I feel sated. And then I'll, I'll put this as a question back to you. And that is my whole life, I've wanted more money. Like, it sounds to me like you're, you're more self-actualized around money. I have a lot of money and it's never fucking enough for me.

• 52:04Scott Galloway?

  I think about money all goddamn day long. Really? And, yeah, I do. I think about money a lot. I think because I grew up financially insecure like you, but it seems like you got to a certain point of satisfaction. So I still think about that a lot. What do you want more money for? Well, and now I'm virtue signaling. Every year I give away more money than I spend. It's, I, I track everything very close. And now that I have economic security, I think anything above a certain amount is just hoarding. Yeah. And that you should either spend it. I think spending money, there's something to the kind of Downton Abbey of enjoying it, putting it back in the economy, or I give it away. So I, the way I regulate my spending is I commit to giving more money away every year than I spend.

• 52:44Scott Galloway?

  But it's, it's deep inside of me, like that fear of not having money. So I just, it's something that can never be sated. I can never be sated with experiences. I always want to be at the hotter, more important conference. I want to be around more and more interesting people. The only time And I've ever felt sated is kind of when late at night when I'm with my dogs and my boys are upstairs asleep or my kid reflexively throws his knee over mine like kids, kids and dogs to a certain extent, the only time I've ever felt like, okay, I don't need more like I finally have checked a box like is it for you. Does that check come from professional

• 53:25Scott Galloway?

  achievement? Like, where do you feel most kind of like, okay, this is it?

• 53:30Ian Bremmer?

  I think two to barbell, two completely different experiences. One is when I just take a step back in whatever environment I'm in at home or out with friends or running or playing piano and I just breathe. I just take a second and breathe and that is enough to just get me in my old headspace and say, you're good. You're fine. You don't need to worry about any of this. Just let it go. It's, you know, your own little meditation. You do those figure eights in your head and you breathe in and out eight or 16 times and that's enough. And I do that a few times a day. There's no problem. So that's one way. But the other way is flow state for me. And this is something that I, this is the one

• 54:12Ian Bremmer?

  thing I really have missed during the pandemic is, I mean, everyone has a superpower. If you really make it in society, there's something that you're really good at, uniquely good at. It may not be something that is your, it may not be the thing that you pretend to be really good at, but it's, it is something that matters. In my case, the superpower is public speaking in front of a big audience. You put me in front of 5,000 people. I don't need notes and I can crush it. And I love doing that. It makes me feel so in the moment, so connected to this, to these people and feeling like I'm making a difference, feeling like I'm helping them actually get less crazy about politics in the world around them is something that really feels aligned with my purpose, with my mission. I mean, at the

• 54:56Ian Bremmer?

  end of doing that in an evening, I'll kick my feet up. I'll have a drink and feel like, wow, you just, that's, I, I've had a great day. I've just, I've mattered in the world. And unfortunately, as much as I love doing this podcast with you right now, Scott.

• 55:12Ian Bremmer?

  You know.

• 55:13Scott Galloway?

  Here it comes.

• 55:15Ian Bremmer?

  Well, it's not even in person, for Christ's sake.

• 55:17Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 55:18Ian Bremmer?

  You know, it would be better if it was in person and even better yet if it was in person in front of a big audience. But no, I'm missing that. That's something that just has, it's it's almost gone away over the last year and a half. And I can't wait that because it's coming back soon. And I really can't wait for that to happen.

• 55:34Scott Galloway?

  You talked about flow. What role does substances play in flow for you? None or exercise? Like, do you use any sort of external stimuli? I love to drink. I think I've, I always say what Winston Churchill said, I've gotten more out of alcohol than it's gotten out of me. I'm good at drinking. I'm social. I'm nice. I'm a better version of me. Hasn't damaged my relationships or my health. I think I do it in moderation. I take edibles, you know, once or twice a week. That doesn't help me write, but sometimes alcohol helps me write. I'm kind of embarrassed to say that, but I'll have a couple of drinks and it makes me more fearless. And I find that's the key component of my writing. What role do external stimulus, whether it's exercise or substances, help you get to flow?

• 56:15Ian Bremmer?

  It's definitely exercise. And I mean, I, I think I have missed a workout four days in the last 15 years.

• 56:25Scott Galloway?

  You work out every day?

• 56:27Ian Bremmer?

  Every day. I, I run a minimum of 5K and then I do 30 to 45 minutes of weights and stretching and the rest.

• 56:33Scott Galloway?

  Wow, that's great.

• 56:34Ian Bremmer?

  And, and when the gym closed, I was doing that outside in New York. And when it was 15 degrees last January, February, my legs would ache for a few hours afterwards, but it didn't stop me from doing it. It's the first thing I do in the morning. So I would say that's the thing I do. If I drink, I drink at night and I fall asleep. And you know, it makes me convivial, but I certainly doesn't make me productive and that's fine. I've never smoked pot in my life because I was not cool enough to be asked when I was in high school. And then it was kind of the pointed past and I've, you know, microdosing sounds interesting and Sam Harris clearly has made a living with it. But I, I don't

• 57:16Ian Bremmer?

  feel any need. I think when I'm like 80, I'll try LSD for fun, just because it seems the people that I've read that have been on it feel like they, they have experiences that may be worthwhile. And if spice were a thing, I'm sure I would try it to, you know, for a good Dune reference. But no, I have no, I'm not really, piano.

• 57:39Scott Galloway?

  Not your thing.

• 57:40Ian Bremmer?

  Definitely piano. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

• 57:43Scott Galloway?

  Makes sense.

• 57:43Ian Bremmer?

  It's an interesting question. No one's ever asked me that question before. I do feel uncool in the fact that I've never tried any recreational drugs before, but I'm also 52, so I don't need to be cool anymore.

• 57:53Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I would say on a risk-adjusted basis, that's probably a good move. I'm like you, though. I'm thinking towards the end, I'm definitely gonna find heroin or give that a

• 58:01Ian Bremmer?

  No, you're gonna look strung out. That's horrible.

• 58:04Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, at that point, well, I'm already there. At that point, I think it'll be worth it. So last thing.

• 58:09Ian Bremmer?

  So you work out a lot, though, because I see pictures of you frequently in various states of undress, and I can't understand why exactly you do that.

• 58:17Scott Galloway?

  You do it? It's called the midlife crisis. Remember that?

• 58:19Ian Bremmer?

  Is it though?

• 58:20Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. Um, I'm a very, I love exercise. I'm, I'm vain. There's a strong string of narcissism, and I try to be-

• 58:29Ian Bremmer?

  So on a scale of one to 10, in terms of looks, how would you rank yourself, Scott?

• 58:34Scott Galloway?

  Uh, God, that's an interesting question. Um, I think I'm like literally 5.01. I think I'm just

• 58:40Ian Bremmer?

  No, I don't think you post photos of like yourself like that if you thought you were really 5.01.

• 58:44Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. Well, it's all adjusted. Against a curve of other 57-year-old males, I'm a nine without my shirt on.

• 58:49Ian Bremmer?

  A nine? Okay, so that's why you take your shirt off, obviously.

• 58:52Scott Galloway?

  That's exactly right. That's my best look.

• 58:54Ian Bremmer?

  You do your podcast with your shirt on. There's no reason for that, really.

• 58:56Scott Galloway?

  It's just because it's cold in here.

• 58:57Ian Bremmer?

  So you don't think, you don't think your face is physically handsome?

• 59:00Scott Galloway?

  This is getting uncomfortable.

• 59:02Ian Bremmer?

  Well, no, you're asking me all the questions I'm asking.

• 59:04Scott Galloway?

  I'm down. I am down. Uh, I am, I am down with my physical appearance, but I, the thing I really enjoy is strength. Uh, I like demonstrating. I think physical strength, I tell, I coach a lot of young men. I'm like, lift heavyweights and run long distances in your mind and in the weight room. I think everybody should be able to walk into any meeting as a young person and feel as if shit got real, they could kill and eat them or outrun them. I think that's a feeling of power and safety that instinctively we should all try and own. And increasingly, as you get older, it's more about outrunning everybody.

• 59:38Ian Bremmer?

  Is that philosophy kind of like path-dependent from having been too much of an asshole when you were CEO?

• 59:44Scott Galloway?

  Not so much that, just I was an athlete when I was younger and I struggled with body dysmorphia and I was painfully thin, so I associate good things, whether it's power or confidence or interests from the other sex, all about physicality and being strong. So a lot of it's in my head and I'm constantly worried about my physical being anyways. But it's a big, for me, I think, I think something we share, it's my antidepressant. If I, I'm not as disciplined as you, if I'm on the road and I don't work out, I start getting upset and quiet and introverted and angry and depressed and drinking too much and not working out. And it's just like a downward fucking spiral.

• 1:00:27Scott Galloway?

  And I start turning into a real asshole to the people that matter to me. And I just got to snap out of it. Exercise for me really is.

• 1:00:34Ian Bremmer?

  I think I'm scrappier than you are. I think that makes a difference.

• 1:00:37Scott Galloway?

  I wouldn't think. Because you have to be.

• 1:00:39Ian Bremmer?

  Exactly, exactly. I've decided scrappy is my thing, you know? But if you're scrappy as fuck, like, and over 20, 30 years, it gets you places eventually, you know? You pull the scraps together.

• 1:00:49Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, Tulane at 15 in Stanford, yeah, it seems to be working for you. So last thing before we let you go, some media recommendations. Music, Netflix, books, just some media recommendations, some things you've seen lately. The sillier the better, or they can be very deep.

• 1:01:02Ian Bremmer?

  The better. I love that piece, I think it was in The New Yorker, about whale crap that blew whales.

• 1:01:15Scott Galloway?

  About carbon?

• 1:01:16Ian Bremmer?

  It was incredible. They just, the fact that we blew away like 90% of the whales in one generation of whales and it turned out that they just shit an enormous amount and that was what got you the plankton and the krill. And if we just gave, brought that back, we could get whales and then we could rebalance whale shit globally. That was, that was pretty cool. Uh, it's probably not where you thought it was going. Um, let's see, from a music perspective, I have been, uh, listening to a lot of Marcos Vaya recently.

• 1:01:44Scott Galloway?

  Dude, you're way too fucking cultured. Last thing you streamed, last thing you streamed on TV.

• 1:01:49Ian Bremmer?

  I don't.

• 1:01:49Scott Galloway?

  Do you watch TV?

• 1:01:50Ian Bremmer?

  I don't have a streaming. No, I watch a lot of sports. I don't have a streaming service.

• 1:01:53Scott Galloway?

  You watch sports? What's your team?

• 1:01:56Ian Bremmer?

  I definitely am a, have become a Brooklyn Nets fanatic, even though the Celtics are my team. I'm, I'm from Boston and Boston originally, and Boston is a crazy sports town.

• 1:02:05Scott Galloway?

  So something to be helpful for your career or a point of connection for anyone you meet globally is Premier League soccer. I find everyone is obsessed with soccer.

• 1:02:12Ian Bremmer?

  I don't like soccer.

• 1:02:13Scott Galloway?

  Oh, God, heresy.

• 1:02:15Ian Bremmer?

  I know. Well, you don't like Brazilian jazz. What's wrong with you?

• 1:02:18Scott Galloway?

  Oh, my God. Anyways.

• 1:02:20Ian Bremmer?

  You came to my house and I was making a cocktail and there's some Brazilian jazz in the back and you go, wow, that guy, he's not so bad.

• 1:02:24Scott Galloway?

  There you go. We'll do it in Miami. Ian Bremmer is a political scientist who is focused on the business of geopolitics. He's the president and founder of the Eurasia Group, a world-leading political risk research and consulting firm, and G Zero Media, a company dedicated to providing intelligent and engaging coverage of international affairs. He's also the author of 10 books, including the New York Times bestseller, Us Versus Them, The Failure of Globalism, which examines the rise of populism across the world. He joins us from his office in New York. Ian, stay safe. I look forward to seeing you at Pivot Miami in February.

• 1:02:55Ian Bremmer?

  I love this podcast of good-looking men. This is fantastic.

• 1:02:58Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, that's us.

• 1:02:58Ian Bremmer?

  Good stuff, Scott.

• 1:02:59Scott Galloway?

  And you like this one too, right? All right. All right, brothers.

• 1:03:02Ian Bremmer?

  Very good.

• 1:03:03Scott Galloway?

  Stay safe.

• 1:03:03Ian Bremmer?

  You too.

• 1:03:14Scott Galloway?

  So Algebra of Happiness, we were talking about unlocks. Let's talk about our own unlocks or our opportunity for unlocks. This is an opportunity to take pause and say, all right, what is my unlock? What, how do I re-approach the assets and the opportunities and relationships in my life in a different way? What have I learned? From COVID, what could, what could change because of technology? And what would be a big unlock for me? And I thought about this in the end of the year, and for me, it's simple. In 2014, I track everything I do pretty closely. I'm obsessed with data. When my boys were four and seven, I spent 211 days on the road for business.

• 1:03:55Scott Galloway?

  Pre-COVID, the idea of charging someone to do a virtual talk, attend board meetings, or teach a university-level class remotely was nearly unthinkable. I just had no choice to make the living I want to make and to feel relevant. I had to be on the road all the time. I basically communicate for a living. And what people were willing to pay you was a function of proximity. And that is, the CEO of a Walmart, or the chief digital officer of LVMH, wanted me in the room with them. And technology and a new approach to communication, or intellectual property, or whatever the fuck it is I do, all of a sudden, proximity was no longer required.

• 1:04:38Scott Galloway?

  It was no longer possible for a while, so we got better at accepting it. And now, I teach a class of 280 students at NYU, and 1,200 students online, all online, at Section 4. I do a ton of virtual talks. I just did a hologram piped into some billionaire's yacht in Antarctica. That's a great way to spend my life, really helping a lot of people there. But also, do a hologram into a big public university to talk to their students there. So there's just all kinds of innovation, where we're talking about the death at distance. And that has really unlocked tremendous mental health prosperity in my life, because I've decided that the unlock of my life is moving forward.

• 1:05:23Scott Galloway?

  I am not going to spend more than 50 days away from my family for professional reasons. I'll spend time away for fun, but I'm just not going to be away from my family more than not, ever again. I also want to recognize that is a big function of my privilege. A lot of people don't have that opportunity. But I'm just deciding, that's it, I'm done. That's my learning. Technology has reshaped what I do. I'm going to lean into it, show some discipline, and I have 50 days away from my kids, and that is it. Because, I'll tell you, they showed up yesterday, but I can already feel it, they're gone tomorrow. My kid is already talking about boarding school, we're already talking about. College, I mean shit, where did, god, time marches on. Anyways, what is your unlock?

• 1:06:08Scott Galloway?

  As we register our losses, can we also find the creativity and the courage to be more expressive and loving with the people who matter to us? That's an unlock. Have you lost someone and recognize that it would be an unlock to, to spend more time with people or be more expressive while they're around? Can we command a better sense of the finite nature of life and forgive ourselves for our mistakes, not be so hard on ourselves? I would say a huge unlock is to find forgiveness for yourself and others. We resent people or we hold grudges. And also, I think the most damaging grudges are the ones we hold against ourselves. A bad investment or bad career choices, just beating ourselves up nonstop. One of the biggest regrets people have at the end of life is they wish they'd been less

• 1:06:53Scott Galloway?

  hard on themselves. Life is not about what happens to you, it's about how you respond to what happened to you. Is there an unlock to try and say, look, it's pretty clear, life is finite, and I'm just gonna be more forgiving of others and myself? Can we no longer take our liberties for granted and acknowledge that to enjoy these freedoms without contributing to our freedoms and our democracy, that that's just plain infantile? This notion that we've conflated liberty with selfishness is really dangerous, that these incredible opportunities and freedoms afforded to us came at a huge cost, and are we contributing to the, to the till? Or are we just barking at the moon at the night and during the day, pissing in the well? It, it is key, I think, that all of us, and I'm thinking a lot about this, decide that

• 1:07:36Scott Galloway?

  for every criticism we have of our government, we decide to contribute to it. Can we demonstrate more grace? Can you just be more forgiving to, to people you know and not know? Someone cuts you off in traffic, look, it's not about you, or it's probably not about you. Someone gets in your face about something, you need to make the world right and get back in their face. Can we all demonstrate more grace? What is your unlock? What is your unlock? Greatest moments of prosperity, greatest eras of prosperity, coming out of crises. Make this a moment of prosperity and an opportunity for prosperity, for self-worth, for grace, for forgiveness, for more time with family, opportunities to make more money, opportunities to be kinder to others and kinder to yourself. What is your unlock?

• 1:08:23Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Shager and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our assistant producer. Also, we didn't know this. We're writing another book and Claire's been asked to write. Claire is our best writer. Oh, my God, that's going to piss everyone else off. I said it here. We're a meritocracy. Claire Miller, best writer, best writer. I'm probably going to edit this out because as I'm saying this, it probably means people are going to start recruiting her or poaching her in this war for talent. It's a war out there. Anyways, as a reminder, we answer your questions about business trends, big tech, entrepreneurship, career pivots, and whatever else is on your mind every Monday on the Prof G Pod. If you'd like to submit a question, please visit officehours.profgmedia.com. I feel like we've read this about nine times during this episode. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe.

• 1:09:07Scott Galloway?

  Thank you for listening to the Prof G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week on Monday and Thursday.

• 1:09:21Scott Galloway?

  That is a very optimistic view. And that's exciting to hear. And what about when you think about the markets?

• 1:09:29Ian Bremmer?

  You're one of the least excitable people talking about something being excited to hear that they've ever encountered.

• 1:09:34Scott Galloway?

  Well, here's the good news, Ian. I hate my life and the world less and less every day. Yeah, I just, look, we needed optimists like you to invent the plane. We needed pessimists like me to make sure there were seat belts. So I think we both have a role.

• 1:09:45Ian Bremmer?

  That's good.

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