The Future of Hollywood — ft. Ted Sarandos

Live from Los Angeles, Scott Galloway and Ed Elson sit down with Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos to discuss what the future of the entertainment industry looks like. Later, they discuss the impact of inflation on consumers and whether or not they are reaching a breaking point. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets Youtube Channel Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter Order "Notes on Being a Man," out now Note: We may earn revenue from some of the links we provide. Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Send us your questions or comments by emailing [email protected] 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.

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• 1:29Scott Galloway?

  Today's number, 98%. The percentage of people in this chosen profession who do not make a living in their chosen profession: acting. Welcome to Prof G. Marcus.

• 1:50Speaker 09

  There we go.

• 1:51Scott Galloway?

  So I usually start with a joke. I was trying to think of a streaming joke. Ed, true story. I broke up with my first girlfriend because she claimed that Netflix was the lowest-priced streaming media company. And I just couldn't have a relationship with someone who was a Hulu cost denier.

• 2:14Scott Galloway?

  Hulu cost Holocaust.

• 2:15Ed Elson?

  Yeah, they get it.

• 2:17Scott Galloway?

  All right, you want a dick joke? Is that what we're looking for here? Ed, I just have this sinking feeling. My girlfriend has a dick. It's just something I feel inside of me.

• 2:44Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to Prop G Markets, live from Los Angeles.

• 2:48Ed Elson?

  That's good. So I'm very excited to get into this.

• 2:55Scott Galloway?

  Ted just was seen leaving.

• 2:59Ed Elson?

  Offstage. It's very good to be here, here in Los Angeles, known as the center of Hollywood. That's what a lot of people think of LA. But it's also the center of a very exciting new technology. And before we'd like to begin, I'd just like to share some numbers of my own. You know, I love data, Scott, on that technology and this historic city's relationship to it. So before we start, I just got to give you, share some data here. So this, today's number, the first number is 3,000. That is the percentage increase in California's GLP-1 prescriptions in less than five years. The next number is 1 in 10.

• 3:40Ed Elson?

  That is the share of Californians who currently use GLP-1 drugs. The final number is $1.6 billion. That is how much the state of California spent on Ozempic and Wegovy in one year, more than the entire State Park budget. Very impressive numbers, Scott. You know, I think maybe half of these people have probably lost their jobs to AI. But the one thing that I can see, looking at the audience, is everyone is very hot and very thin. So let's just give it up for the crowd one more time.

• 4:15Ed Elson?

  The city of Los Angeles. And then we're gonna start getting into the show. Before we do that-

• 4:19Scott Galloway?

  Can I talk about GLP-1 just for a second?

• 4:21Ed Elson?

  Please.

• 4:21Scott Galloway?

  So, seriously, I think GLP-1 is gonna be bigger than AI. And AI is basically, fear is the product. I'm so fucking awesome. I created this monster that's gonna destroy the world after I've sold my shares and peace out to the co-deser with a bunch of Russian whores. That's not helpful. GLP-1, talk to anyone who's on a GLP-1 or uses AI every day and ask them what's had a bigger impact on their life. And while the incumbents and the current seniors or incumbent industry or politicians wanna create this illusion of complexity around how difficult it would be to solve our problems, whether it's inflation, weakness, a lack of optimism for the future for young people, it comes down to our deficit.

• 5:04Scott Galloway?

  The easiest way, absolutely the easiest way to solve the deficit problem would be the following. In Japan, they spend $5,500 per consumer on, per capita, on healthcare. We spend $13.5. We spend $8,000 more than Japan on healthcare. Times 350 million people, you're talking about $3 trillion a year in incremental healthcare costs. Why? 40% of America is obese, 72% are obese or overweight. In Japan, 4% are obese. If you wanted to solve the deficit, you would go after the health industrial complex, hospital systems, kidney dialysis, statins, pharmaceuticals. And just, just to piss off people on the left, the diabetes industrial complex has

• 5:48Scott Galloway?

  tried to convince us that people aren't obese, they're finding their truth. No, they're not, they're finding a fucking ventilator. Obesity is the menace in this society, and we have, we have a way to solve it. America should put out, the government should put out an RFP for a billion doses of GLP-1 and give it free to any household in any rural area making less than $60,000 a year. You would see slowly but surely our healthcare costs go down, and for the first time, we could really significantly address our deficit. But instead, the incumbents wanna convince you that it's not a solvable problem. GLP-1 is the technology that could revolutionize the West. Back to you, Ed.

• 6:32Ed Elson?

  I think you're preaching to the choir here. So we're gonna have on this screen a QR code, if it's gonna come up in a moment. Yes, it is. And at the end of this show, we'll do a Q and A and we'll hear from your questions. So if you want to submit a question, scan that QR code and you can do that now. And now that, yeah, we've got all the phones coming out, good. We're gonna have lots of questions. This is gonna be fun. And now that we've done that, I'm gonna move us on to our first story of the evening. So we are live in the entertainment capital of the world, here in Los Angeles.

• 7:09Ed Elson?

  Movies and TV generate more than $115 billion every year and support nearly 700,000 jobs. Hollywood doesn't just drive culture here, it drives the economy itself. However, the industry is at a turning point. AI is rapidly changing how films are made. And at the same time, the traditional media model continues to erode. Last year, the combined viewership of broadcast and cable was surpassed by streaming for the first time in history. Meanwhile, short-form video continues to surge as well. So the big question that is hanging over this city is simple. What will the future of Hollywood actually look like?

• 7:54Ed Elson?

  Here to answer that question, we're speaking with the man at the center of the industry. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix.

• 8:18Ed Elson?

  Thank you for being with us, Ted.

• 8:20Speaker 11

  Thank you for having me.

• 8:21Ed Elson?

  I hope you weren't offended by Scott's jokes.

• 8:22Speaker 11

  I'm glad the joke portion is out of the way.

• 8:26Ed Elson?

  He was covering his ears.

• 8:27Speaker 11

  I was just hearing all about GLP-3s now, which is very LA that we want the next thing.

• 8:32Ed Elson?

  The next thing, the more advanced one.

• 8:35Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, is that the one that gives you a head of hair? If I had your hair, I'd be, if I had his hair with my rap, I'd be the number two leading in the polls for the Democratic nomination for president. Look at that hair.

• 8:46Ed Elson?

  Yeah, that's the problem, yeah.

• 8:51Speaker 11

  Hairline away is all.

• 8:52Ed Elson?

  Exactly.

• 8:53Speaker 11

  I sign your checks. I sign the front of your checks.

• 8:57Ed Elson?

  All right. So we're going to get into the questions here. Ted, I'd like to start with something I think is on everyone's minds, and that is the maybe acquisition, then not acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery. Just to jog everyone's memory, back in December, Netflix had agreed to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, or at least the studios and the streaming assets for $83 billion. And at that point, it started something of a bidding war with David Ellison of Paramount. There was kind of a lot of auctioning happening. And then eventually David Ellison bought the company for $110 billion. Netflix decided to walk away. So first question to you, what was the thinking

• 9:40Ed Elson?

  behind going after these assets? And then what was the thinking in ultimately deciding to walk away from the deal?

• 9:46Speaker 11

  We looked at Warner Brothers as an asset, kind of a once in a generation asset. Pretty big section of every movie ever made in that library, a really great production company that does television production. We're one of their biggest buyers in that space. And a wealth of IP that we could develop into. Now, we're, I'm very proud of the team and very proud of what Netflix does. But we've been doing it for about a decade, and they've been doing it for 100 years. So for us, it was being able to accelerate our existing business model, our success story with or without it. And we figured out what the price point was. And one of the things that I've been doing at Netflix since the beginning is valuing content and figuring out what is it worth to us? What

• 10:30Speaker 11

  is it worth in the market? We did all the work. We came up with the price point you talked about. And we thought that's what if we can buy it for that, that would be good for the business, good for our shareholders, good for our members. And but a price significantly higher than that, it wouldn't be. And I think typically when people get into these deals, there's a lot of emotion, there's a lot of ego, and you don't want to lose, you put in a lot of work. And when they came back with this significantly higher price point, it was more than we were willing to pay. And we just, we said, no.

• 11:00Ed Elson?

  A lot of ego sounds right.

• 11:01Speaker 11

  And like I said, we have built to where we are today organically. And we have tons of headroom to keep continue to do that. And this would have just been a little quicker.

• 11:11Scott Galloway?

  So there's a scene in Star Wars where Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi says he feels a disturbance in the Force because the planet of Alderaan is literally exploded. I felt a similar disturbance in the Force in the creative community when the Ellison's got a hold of us. And that's my way of bridging into AI. I don't, I don't see on any, on any rational multiple how they didn't overpay. My understanding is you walked away because it got sort of at a certain altitude you weren't willing to engage in. You have the second largest infrastructure company in AI now owns arguably the largest media company in the world. Without speaking to specifics, you don't know their strategy, I don't know their strategy.

• 11:56Scott Galloway?

  But aren't we about to see, quite frankly, unless there's some sort of magic growth that I certainly don't see, the only way they can justify a price like this is quite frankly, to find efficiencies, which is Latin for layoffs. It feels like this space laser of AI, someone is going to try and figure out a way to reduce the creative inputs into these movies of 60, 70, or 80%. But what do you think the odds are of AI coming, not even at Hollywood, but at the creative community in general? Do you think, do you think the fear is overestimated, underestimated?

• 12:36Speaker 11

  I think it's overestimated. I think like every other technology, technology advance in entertainment and storytelling, it's made the business better and bigger by presenting more opportunity. And I think creators today are going to use it. I've seen this evolution from the beginning of friends who are writers, who said, that we're going to do everything we can to stop AI, it's going to destroy our careers, to the point where they're using Claude as a writing partner today. And they basically use it, train it to say, this is how I write, this is how I think about character, this is how I move story, here's everything I've ever written. Now, you're not allowed to write anything for me, but you can, you can bounce ideas off of me all the time, all day long. And it's been, makes him a better writer. They believe it makes him a better writer.

• 13:20Speaker 11

  It doesn't replace a writer's room, because a writer's room will come up with a couple of good ideas, a couple of interesting ideas, a couple of original ideas. AI is not built to do that, ever. I mean, the the the tool itself is built to give you the most predictable outcome possible, the antithesis of what we're trying to do when you make a TV show or a film. So will will AI help things? I look at things right now of how we're using it in production today, things like pre-vis. So even just think about the the technically working out a very complicated stunt shot before you do it, which increases the safety on set. I mean, people forget that people die on these productions all the time.

• 14:01Speaker 11

  And so these kind of things are making the business a lot more efficient with something. And again, I don't think it's meant to replace any creativity. I don't think it's designed for that. And on its best day, it won't do that. And if you somebody says, well, what about if you need a script? You don't need a script. That's surprising. You've seen these, you know, these Hallmark movies and these kind of things that they they want them to be predictable. Well, the the cost of the script for those movies is about 1% of the budget. So it's not a gigantic savings for anyone to do that or pursue that. So I'm actually much more excited about the upside and the potential of the technology than I'm worried about it's going to displace creatives.

• 14:38Scott Galloway?

  So we always make a prediction at the end of the show.

• 14:41Speaker 11

  In fact, I'm very long on human creation. I'm I'm building a billion dollar studio in New Jersey right now. So I'm very long on human creation.

• 14:54Scott Galloway?

  So at the end of the show, we always make a prediction. And two years ago, I made a prediction that Netflix would merge with a large entertainment company and become the biggest media subscription company in the world, except I predicted it was going to be Disney. I look at Disney, its stock is below where it was 10 years ago. And I see a combination between Netflix and Disney where you would take your unbelievable IP, you know, K-pop demon hunters, Wednesdays, Stranger Things, Rides, Vertical Eyes, and what is a singular parks business. And then you you would own family and adult, you'd be the largest. And quite frankly, I would want to break up. I don't think that I don't think that merger should ever happen because I think.

• 15:37Speaker 11

  You don't like these mergers. I know you don't.

• 15:39Scott Galloway?

  We're going to talk about inflation later, but corporations have been able to consolidate and charge everyone higher rents, but that's a longer talk show. But you could get it done in this administration. Thank you.

• 15:54Scott Galloway?

  But you could get it done in this administration. Would you ever consider, or let me put it a different way. Academically, do you see the industrial logic behind creating this unbelievable vertical juggernaut with your IP, their distribution with Parks, and owning subscription across family and adult? To me, that just makes all sorts of industrial logic.

• 16:15Speaker 11

  Look, I think that right now, one of the big benefits we've had as a brand from the beginning of time, we started mailing DVDs just around the US. But back then, we carried every single thing ever published on DVD. So we had over 100,000 titles to choose from on Netflix. So we were a kids' brand, we were an art house brand, we're a documentary brand. And because of personalization, we really were all those things to all those different people. So we didn't really pigeonhole ourselves. So when we say, "What's a Netflix show?", it's your favorite show. It's really not like, you know, Disney is going to have a very hard time getting broader than a family brand. They're very, very good at it. They're really great at it. But it's very difficult for them when they try to get too broad. And we are a general entertainment brand,

• 16:59Speaker 11

  just because it's in our DNA. And we got very good at serving all of those individual audiences and personalizing the experience in a way that they didn't really have to. And most entertainment companies don't. HBO has got a very specific brand. You know, people think, "Oh, it's an HBO show, it's a prestige television." That's all, but it's pretty narrow and they've never been able to get into the family business for that reason. And I think our advantage is that we are a broad, we're a broad brand. And not just casual, but we're actually, I would argue, best in class in all those categories. So I think that's helped us not need to do the things you're talking about. Now, do I want to someday be in the Parks business? I'm not sure. But we're doing right now, we're looking at, you know, we're opening,

• 17:42Speaker 11

  we opened one in Dallas, one in Philadelphia, Netflix House, which is a 100,000 square foot entertainment experience that does all those kind of things. But it's a night out, it's not where you go on vacation. And that's where we're kind of toe-dipping on some of this stuff, some of the consumer experiences. We have a live tour coming up of K-pop Demon Hunters, that kind of thing. So it would accelerate that for sure. But that's a very big transaction you're talking about. And we're really not like... We're not seeking, you know, to go out and buy things. We've built everything. We're much better builders than buyers, I think. And I think, like I said, that the Warner Brothers aside, because it was a very unique product,

• 18:23Speaker 11

  didn't have all the things you don't want in that deal, and it did have great IP. And it was if at a price point, we'd have closed on it. But just, I can't think of any other thing like it.

• 18:33Ed Elson?

  Netflix is one of the largest streamers in the world. It's certainly more popular than Disney Plus, Paramount, Hulu. There is one other, some would call it a streaming service, though, which is very popular, and that is YouTube, which is actually dominating in terms of television viewing time.

• 18:54Ed Elson?

  How do you think about YouTube? Do you think of YouTube as a competitor? And if so, what is your approach to competing with them?

• 19:03Speaker 11

  I look at anyone who you pick up your remote control and decide what you're going to watch as a competitor. And I think to your point, if people are watching YouTube on television, I think we compete with them for that time. And I don't think we compete with them directly for that type of content or that kind of engagement, but definitely for that time spent. And I think the beauty of every advancement of entertainment is it keeps ratcheting the bar up and everyone's got to compete for the next thing. So if people are interested in this, you got to get good at that and you have to keep doing that. I think if you think about how back when broadcast television, it was just broadcast television. And then there's cable channels, and then there's cable originals, and then there's premium paid channels, and there's premium originals, and they keep kind of ratcheting up on each other.

• 19:49Speaker 11

  By the time we got into it, the likeliness that a streamer was going to produce a HBO caliber show like House of Cards was pretty unthought of. So the, but I think this is kind of the same thing. Will people step into YouTube because it's a very easy entry point to develop their storytelling skills? And will they find that that the monetization there is not quite what they want it to be if they've got bigger ambitions? And will they go out and look for other things? Netflix perhaps, or another streamer, another network? All those things will happen, and it's all just part of the landscape of how people are watching. And it's not, I'm frankly fascinated by watching, like for me, if I watch Saturday Night Live on Sunday morning on YouTube,

• 20:32Speaker 11

  am I watching NBC? Am I watching YouTube? Or am I watching Saturday Night Live? So are we competing with them? I'm sure we could. If I was watching NBC, of course, we're competing.

• 20:43Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Speaker 11

  So I think so. We're trying to constantly win those moments of truth. When you sit down on the couch and pick up the TV, press the button to choose what you're gonna watch. I've got to entertain you.

• 20:54Ed Elson?

  One thing you didn't mention on that point, you're competing with YouTube when you pick up the remote and you turn on the TV. Increasingly, people aren't even doing that. They're taking their phones out and they're scrolling on their phones. And for young people, for Gen Z, we're spending around eight hours a day on our phones. To me, that's eating into content time. That's eating into watch time. And something we've been talking a lot about on the show is the idea that clips seem to be taking over. Short form content seems to be kind of king at the moment. Do you? Those are obviously dominated by basically Instagram. You could argue YouTube Shorts kind of and TikTok.

• 21:38Ed Elson?

  Do you think of Meta and TikTok as competitors as well?

• 21:42Speaker 11

  If they're doing it on the TV, I do. And I would tell you this, I think that people, what's really remarkable. If you look at the consumption of professional content, TV series, films, on phones. It's that consumption's been remarkably flat for about seven years now. So you are seeing a lot more video on mobile. But the professional content on mobile is about 2% and it's been steady. And what's more amazing is through the entire advent of the internet and tablets and phones and YouTube and all these free options even, that television consumption and movie watching on bigger screens is remarkably stable too.

• 22:26Speaker 11

  So people are multitasking. There's all these, to describe this, to make it make sense, you have to think, well, how is that possible? Well, they're doing it at the same time. And so, and I do think that there's one of those things where you say, well, people don't have the attention span for TV anymore. Well, wait till the new season of Wednesday comes out. And people sit in front of their TV, watch eight hours of Wednesday. It happens every season.

• 22:48Scott Galloway?

  So the good news is in 2008, I bought Netflix stock for $12 a share.

• 22:54Speaker 11

  Here we go.

• 22:55Ed Elson?

  Yeah, but wait. Now, now you're listening to everything he says.

• 23:00Scott Galloway?

  So it's, I think on a split adjusted basis, it's now at 700. The bad news is I sold it three months later at 10 bucks a share for a tax loss.

• 23:08Scott Galloway?

  I literally want to find a time machine so I can go back, find, track my ass down, kill me, and then kill myself. Anyways, just think to that. Your stock is up, I think, 850% in the last 20 years. The last five years, it's kept pace with the S and P, but it hasn't outperformed. And the last year's been, not a tough year, but you're CEO of a public company and it's very much, what have you done for me lately? And I think the general sense is, and you tell me if this is not correct, is the clip economy that, that Ed is talking about is just eating. I mean, the fear is that people our age is we don't know what we don't know. And what I see with my kids, and I think unfortunately, right now, the most powerful force in media, I would argue, is probably Instagram reels.

• 23:51Scott Galloway?

  And that is our brain, we have a generation of people being wired to consume content in 60 and 90 second format. You now have, including debt, the acquisition you passed up, you technically, after I heard you were passing, I texted him, I'm like, you got $112 billion to go play in traffic now. It feels like you do need to inspire some more growth. You're, you're still growing, but I doubt you think of yourself as a mature company. And your growth, your growth is still solid, but not the growth it once was. With that $112 billion, where are you going to find growth? Is it continuing to do what you do? Or do you have, do you have other ideas about new businesses you're currently not in?

• 24:35Speaker 11

  Well, look, we're about 9% of total TV watching right now in the US in our most mature market. We're about 45% penetrated in our addressable markets. And growing, that penetration and growing share in what we're doing is a big, is a big business. You know, this, this first quarter of this year, we grew our revenue by 18%, uh, we grew, or 16%, we grew our gross margin by 18%. We've got a guide up this year, you know, for this year to be 12 to 14% of growth. And thirty one and a half percent margin. We also have a doubling of our ad business to three billion dollars this year. So we've got a lot of growth on the horizon of what we're doing because we've just barely scratched the surface in what we're doing.

• 25:16Speaker 11

  You know, it's remarkable to me in some of these TV markets around the world that we're, you know, we're still in our infancy in a way. So we go out and see, and if I worried a little bit about what you're saying, I obviously we follow consumer trends. We see what young people are doing and then having tried to distinguish what will they do when they have more money and less time, which is generally how these things evolve. And it's part being part of their media landscape is really important. And they may use, they may use the phone to get excited about something. You saw that we just redid our TV UI, but we also redid our mobile UI and added vertical video, not to compete with TikTok, but to be more discoverable in a format that's more native to younger people.

• 26:00Speaker 11

  When they use their phone to find things and the ease of use of going from this, you know, from the vertical video on the phone to the actual presentation on your TV is really where we're focused and there's a lot of growth there.

• 26:12Scott Galloway?

  But you don't, you don't see a need or an opportunity to take your content and slice it up in some sort of new, using new technology and create or play in the short form video space?

• 26:21Speaker 11

  I, I mean, we can, but I think, like I said, I don't know. There's a lot in on the phone, there's an enormous amount of competition for your attention on that phone. And a lot of it is free, it's almost all free. So what I'm looking for is the most valued moments of truth. I'm looking for that entertainment worth paying for. You know, when we first started back on before, you know, from DVD into streaming, our big mantra was we, our content has to be better than free. Yeah. Because at that time piracy was the, was the competition and we had to be better than piracy. We had to give people a reason not to steal because it was so easy to download back in those days. So that was always been our focus. We have to be, we're a super consumer focused business. Internet, we constantly are looking at how we're entertaining people.

• 27:06Speaker 11

  We look at our qual, the metrics into our internal metrics, how we grade ourselves on how we're entertaining people on things like, you know, how do they complete? How fast do they go from season one to season two? Do they tell a friend? Do they post about it? Do they give it two thumbs up? All, all this internal is always focused not on the quantity of watching as much as the quality of the watching. Because it has to be good enough to pay for.

• 27:30Ed Elson?

  On this idea of, I mean Netflix is sort of the premium product. It's better than free. I think everyone agrees on that. But there was a controversial decision that you made back in 2022 that I think you did not support, which was that you launched ads, you launched advertising. It seems to have been an enormous success. Ad revenues on track to double to $3 billion, more than 250 million ad tier viewers. Talk about the decision to implement advertising in Netflix. A lot of people said, no, this needs to be a premium product. We don't want advertising on our platform. But at the same time, a lot of people use it and a lot of people seem to like it.

• 28:13Speaker 11

  Well, I, one of the things I figure out as we go is people are, have completely different opinions of what's, what they want and how they want it and what's premium to them. And how they define it. And the one part of the audience that we were not addressing was the one who wanted a lower price point and didn't care about ads. And there's a lot of them, it turns out. And particularly if you're talking about young people who grew up mostly watching ad interrupted content constantly.

• 28:39Ed Elson?

  Yes.

• 28:40Speaker 11

  So for them, it wasn't completely, it was a completely different thing. The reason we were so not in the advertising business at the beginning was it was kind of a classic counter position move. You know, when we first got into DVD, our competition was blockbuster video stores. What did people hate about video stores? Late fees. So we were the no late fee company. We were total, total counter positioning. So we get into streaming, we're in the TV business. What do people don't like about TV back then? What were they complaining about? Advertising and having to wait till next week for an episode. So no advertising, everything at once. Great counter position. And over time, how does that evolve? And we always fancied ourselves a choice company. We wanted to give people unlimited choices. Well, one choice was I would like a lower price and I don't mind, and I don't mind advertising. And we were not offering that. So that's why we got into it.

• 29:25Scott Galloway?

  What do you think people are complaining about now that you need to solve?

• 29:28Speaker 11

  Over time, I think if you give, it goes down the path you guys are talking about. I think people will be complaining about AI slop in a few, you know, pretty soon. Cause I think they'll look at things, you, if you see it already, now people pick apart a movie poster on Reddit with every little, you know, glitch in the, in the, in the system.

• 29:46Ed Elson?

  Right.

• 29:46Speaker 11

  That because it was, because it is AI slop. And I think it's gonna, I think people will, a bunch of I think will, will turn on the AI slop and they'll really more, even more value quality production.

• 29:56Ed Elson?

  Netflix recently launched video podcasts, which is exciting for us.

• 30:01Speaker 11

  Who would do a video podcast?

• 30:04Ed Elson?

  Lame. You've struck deals with iHeart Media, Barstool and many other podcasts. And I just saw today that you just signed a deal with Jay Shetty. Who's going to be bringing his podcast over to Netflix. Talk a little bit about getting into podcasting. Why is that the move now?

• 30:23Speaker 11

  Look, I think it's a great evolution of the format. So we tried talk shows over and over again. And I think the format itself has kind of given way to podcasting. I think the internet has kind of stratified things. Everything. Movies are either gigantic or tiny. You know what I mean? And there's that kind of nothing in the middle anymore. And I think with podcasts, it's kind of the same thing around people's appetite to hear an interview with their, someone that they're interested in. They really want to hear this long, free form interview that with their no makeup and guard down. Just a real casual conversation and they're not really, they don't care how long, you know, they'll spend three hours on these things sometimes. Or they want the 30 second clip of it.

• 31:08Speaker 11

  What they don't want is the overproduced seven minute couch interview on the talk show that they used to tune into. You know, when I was growing up, 45 million people at night used to tune into Johnny Carson and watch. And so the whole country was into that. Today, as you see, late night ratings are not what they used to be. It gets chopped up into clips and people are mostly watching it in social anyway. So when I look at this and say, well, what we weren't doing was this new generation of talk shows. And I think we're seeing we're very small in it today. We're moving very rapidly on it. Jay Shetty was kind of the big deal today because it's moving from YouTube to Netflix and Spotify. And the, what we're seeing in the very early days, that's very promising, is that people are watching.

• 31:51Speaker 11

  And they're watching during the day where they tip, where streaming usually doesn't take place much. And they're watching more, more mobile than they're used, than they're, than we're used to seeing on other, on other kinds of programming.

• 32:02Ed Elson?

  Well, if you ever want to acquire a podcast with a strained professor and a guy with a weird accent.

• 32:08Ed Elson?

  You'll have to work on that Hulu joke before you come over.

• 32:13Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I think your insight on podcasts is just genius.

• 32:18Speaker 11

  Remember the old like podcasts were now video podcasts. Now when you ask someone to be on the podcast, they gotta, they gotta get dressed up, they gotta go.

• 32:25Ed Elson?

  It's turning into talk show. Everything's turning into TV.

• 32:27Speaker 11

  Everything's a talk show, yeah.

• 32:28Ed Elson?

  Exactly.

• 32:28Speaker 11

  I'm glad we don't, I don't want to eat hot wings to sit here. It's nice.

• 32:32Scott Galloway?

  So you could live anywhere you want. I mean, you could be the co-CEO of Netflix from anywhere, given the way your industry is set up and the dynamic and the kind of the currency you have in the marketplace. And you choose to live in LA and I find, I don't know because of social media, but I find all the shitposting of cities on the West Coast is just so overdone. I was in San Francisco yesterday.

• 33:04Scott Galloway?

  I was in the hellscape of San Francisco yesterday and just kept thinking, this place is beautiful. And then, yeah, and by the way, it's added the GDP of Europe since World War II in the last 18 months.

• 33:19Scott Galloway?

  And then you come into LA, you fly over to Pacific Coast, you go to In-N-Out Burger, you see this collision of creativity, the Uber drivers are hot.

• 33:31Ed Elson?

  Interesting insight there, yeah.

• 33:35Scott Galloway?

  Everyone is so hot here. Anyway, you, you choose to live in LA. So I'd love to hear just your views on why you could live anywhere and despite the very real problems that LA faces, you choose to live here. And also just what advice, and I'm sure you've been asked by the governor and other people, what do you think LA could do to ensure, I mean, the creative community, I don't want to say has been gutted here, but there's now more spending in production in Vancouver, in Toronto, there is in LA. So one, why do you personally choose to live here, continue to live here? And two, what advice would you have for city officials and government and federal officials to try and? Re even recapture some creative creative juice here.

• 34:20Speaker 11

  Yeah, look, I I've been I've lived here for going on close to thirty years. California is a great state. Los Angeles is a beautiful city, has a lot to offer. It's a little broken. It's very broken, actually. I'd say that we've been very slow to recover from COVID. I think we've had this kind of over the last decade or so, this kind of pull away from production in Los Angeles. And the a lot of the creative culture that is here, because people are here creating, they're here making. California has not been competitive for production, not competitive with other states, not competitive with other countries. Los Angeles is a very difficult, very expensive place to work.

• 35:01Speaker 11

  If you're making a movie or making a TV show, and I'm telling you that firsthand, because we've have thirty productions in California this year, mostly in LA. I have a two hundred million dollar movie here that a big chunk of it is because we're doing in LA that costs that much. And I think that whoever is going to be the next governor, whoever's going to be the next mayor, has got to invest in competing for production in California, please.

• 35:31Speaker 11

  And and more than that, in Los Angeles, you've got to streamline the systems. If if I get in a car to film a scene and drive from Venice to Beverly Hills to Los Angeles, which without traffic, you might be able to do in twenty five, thirty minutes. I need three different permits with three different schedules, three different fees, three different deadlines of when I have to file for them. It's it's all that it's that times everything you do here. And as an example of a counter example, we're investing, we're building a big studio in New Jersey. They they put up the probably the best production incentive in the world, not in the country, in the world.

• 36:11Speaker 11

  To and and that pulled a lot of work back from international production back into the United States, kept jobs in America. Our our our productions in the last ten years have created one hundred and fifty thousand jobs. So it's three hundred and twenty five billion dollars of economic impact from our original productions, just Netflix. So this is a real industry and being able to compete with those industries. If I was coming in and doing anything else at that scale, creating that kind of employment, having that kind of economic impact. Municipalities would be knocking each other out to get that business. But in California, I think we probably just took it for granted that the crews were here, the talent was here, everything was here. And they let the infrastructure get pretty long in the tooth.

• 36:56Speaker 11

  And they let Georgia and other places get really good at crew building. So you're not really taking a sacrifice to make it somewhere else. That appetite, that hunger to stay in the game, I don't know why it dissipated, but it did. And like I said, the next governor is going to have to address it. And I think the next mayor has got to not only look at everything that makes it hard, just really sit down. I hear everybody complaining about everything that's wrong about working in this city. And I've had very few discussions with the decision makers that had to fix it. And I'm happy to do it. I ask for it all the time. I offer it up all the time, but I haven't seen much change.

• 37:34Scott Galloway?

  Trying to be, without thinking it through too much, this is not an investor question. You don't have to think about the stock price. Whenever I talk to you, I try and pitch you on starting a TikTok competitor and you just sort of like humor me. And then we end up talking about your kids.

• 37:50Scott Galloway?

  What advice would you have in terms of what you've gotten right? And what you've gotten wrong or the learnings trying to be a good partner, good husband and a good father?

• 38:00Speaker 11

  We're brought up to be, find this thing called life work balance. To figure out what's the exact amount of right balance between how much time you have to dedicate to your wife and to your kids and to your house and to your job. And the truth of it is, there is no such thing as life work balance. There are times that you have to be intensely in the game at work. And people, and you have to realize that when you do that, you have, you create tension at home. And then you're going to have to, you have to come back and reinvest in that. And make sure that people know that you had to go away, but you're still here. And you're still here for supporting them and loving them and hearing them. And that, but I'm going to be really tied up for a couple of weeks.

• 38:44Speaker 11

  Or I'm going to be really tied up for the next couple of days. And understand that it's a, you have to make deposits in all of those things all the time. And don't kill yourself trying to create this thing, which is a myth, I think, which is that there's any such thing as life work balance.

• 39:02Scott Galloway?

  Ultimately, we always end up talking about kids. Thoughts on?

• 39:06Speaker 11

  You know, you want to be a good dad, right? Yeah. Like, learning's there? Your kids are watching you all the time. And I think they really are, even if you think they're not paying attention, they are. And they're picking up the good and the bad. And they're picking up the things that you celebrate. They're picking up the things that you value. And I'll tell you, my wife was very, uh, very helpful for me when my kids were younger of saying, teaching me to say, just to say things like, um, those are not our values. Because when kids always want to constantly tell you that, well, so and so could do it. They could do, oh, this isn't fair, whatever. You can just say, yeah, that's just, those are not our values. And it was a revelation of a thing to hear, and it's such a simple thought. Uh, but kids really need to hear it.

• 39:50Speaker 11

  And they deeply, deeply want boundaries. And I, like many, as a, you know, went through a period after, after our divorce and being a single dad where, um, I wasn't always able to provide those or, or chose not to maybe because it just was hard. Uh, and I think that, um, Nicole was really great for me and for my kids in introducing those ideas to us. It's a good place to end.

• 40:16Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Ed Elson?

  Ted Sarandos is the co-CEO of Netflix.

• 40:21Speaker 11

  Thank you so much.

• 40:28Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back.

• 40:36Speaker 12

  Here's your report.

• 40:38Speaker 13

  Oh, thanks, Jane. I wish I could hire someone just like you.

• 40:41Speaker 12

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• 40:57Speaker 13

  Let's do it. You're irreplaceable, Jane, but another you would be great.

• 41:01Speaker 12

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• 42:12Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. So, if you haven't noticed, gas has gotten very expensive.

• 42:20Ed Elson?

  Sounds like they have noticed. In the state of California, gas prices have risen to more than $6 per gallon. And here in Los Angeles, it is even higher. It's $6.12. Unbelievable. But higher prices aren't just a California story. Across the US, inflation is accelerating at a historic rate. National gas prices are rising at their fastest pace since 2022. And the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index, which is the Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation, that just came out. It just hit 3.8%, which is the highest number in almost three years. Consumers are now feeling it. The Consumer Sentiment Index just dropped to an all-time low,

• 43:04Ed Elson?

  worse than the Great Recession, worse than the COVID-19 pandemic, the lowest score we've ever seen. And the big question for investors now is, are consumers reaching a breaking point? That's the question to ask yourself if you're invested in the market. Scott, I'm just going to rattle through. Some of the inflation data here. So PCE inflation, I said it hit 3.8%, highest since May 2023. CPI, 3.8%. PPI, this is the producer price index. This measures wholesale prices. That just hit 6% inflation year over year. Services inflation up 3.3. Shelter inflation 3.4. Energy inflation 17.9%.

• 43:45Ed Elson?

  Gasoline inflation up 28.4% year over year. I don't know if it's just me, but I think it is fair to say at this point that inflation has officially gotten out of control.

• 44:00Ed Elson?

  Or maybe, or maybe I just have Trump derangement syndrome and I'm just reading into it too hard. Maybe I'm just political. What do you think, Scott?

• 44:10Scott Galloway?

  Inflation brings down societies or starts revolutions. People think when you're unemployed, you're depressed. But when you're, actually what causes a revolution or a change in a society is when you're working two jobs and you're still hungry. And if you think about inflation, it really has been fairly pernicious. If you're not making more, if you're not making 25% more than you were in 2000, between inflation and a lack of strength in US dollar, you're behind. What you essentially have is a transfer of wealth from earners to owners. Because if you're making $100,000 a year, working as a makeup artist in Hollywood,

• 44:54Scott Galloway?

  and you aren't making 120 with, by, within five years, your quality of life has gone down. But meanwhile, the person who owns assets, owns a building, owns real estate, in fact, they're just fine. So again, it's another transfer of wealth from the earners to the owners. Now, the problem is, well, okay, great. What do we do about it? It's the boring stuff that moves the needle. And we don't want to have an adult conversation about what's required to reduce inflation. We're spending $7 trillion on 5 trillion receipts in our government. Essentially, inflation is too many dollars facing too few products. And when you're spending 7 trillion on 5 trillion, you're just going to have inflation.

• 45:38Scott Galloway?

  It's reeling in government spending, which is going to cause a lot of pain. And quite frankly, it probably means kissing and making up with China and figuring out a way to have the, probably the biggest tax cut in history. Would be if one, um, we kissed and made up with China, um, because you're gonna see, I mean, eighty-eight percent of our toys under the Christmas tree are from China. Uh, these tariffs are just, it would be, it would be difficult to think of a more elegant way to raise prices across the board than tariffs. That's just literally, I taught macro and microeconomics, uh, uh, when I was at graduate school in Berkeley, and we used to use tariffs as an example of how just fucking stupid they were a hundred years ago.

• 46:20Scott Galloway?

  I mean, we were just, so inflation is literally how you start a revolution, and I think it's already happening. I think we're having a small, a number of small forms of revolution, but it requires an adult conversation around long-term policy planning, which America, and to be blunt, American voters just don't want to have, but this is how societies fail.

• 46:46Ed Elson?

  And at the same time, you're protected from inflation if you have, if you're earning more money because you can decide to downgrade your purchases. And this is the other big problem that we're about to see. If inflation is rising, then you could decide and you're making a lot of money, okay, maybe I won't eat out tonight, maybe I won't order the beef tonight, maybe I'll go for the chicken, maybe I won't take that vacation. You can really adjust your lifestyle in accordance with inflation. For the lowest earners in society, you're already at the floor of the spending, and you can't downgrade any further. The floor just continues to rise, and that is exactly what we saw in 2022, where for the lowest earners in society, inflation actually rose eight percent faster than it

• 47:29Ed Elson?

  did for the rest of us, than it did for the average of the CPI, again, because they couldn't make any lifestyle adjustments, they couldn't do that. Now, on the policy point, you make the good point that there are a lot of, you know, complex and important discussions that we could have on how to reduce inflation, how to prevent this. And most of the time, I'm in agreement, we need to get people together, we need to get a think tank together, get all the expert economists and figure out what are we gonna do about inflation? On this round of inflation, I have two ideas on what we could do. One, what has been the most inflationary thing that we've seen in our economy today? It's been one thing, it was tariffs that added one percent, one percentage point of inflation.

• 48:13Ed Elson?

  We were at two percent, you added one percentage point, you got us up to three percent. Very easy fix there, get rid of the tariffs, done, policy solution. One of the easiest solutions ever. And then what was the second thing that this president did? The second thing that he did was in February, he decided to launch this war in Iran. He did not plan on how he would execute it. He did not plan on what he would do about the Strait of Hormuz. He wouldn't plan on what he would do about the fact that gas now cannot get out of the Strait of Hormuz. And now, gas prices are up 50%. And what did that do? It added, again, one percentage point to inflation. So we were at two, tariffs took us to three, Iran took us to four.

• 48:58Ed Elson?

  The Federal Reserve's target inflation rate is 2%. I have two ideas to get us back down to two, back to where we were supposed to be. Get rid of the tariffs, get out of Iran. Those are the solutions.

• 49:13Ed Elson?

  And it's unbelievable how we have manufactured this problem for ourselves. We talk about the inflation that we saw during Covid, which was really bad. And we should recognize that. And we had eight, nine, 9% inflation at one point. But the reason that happened was because there was a pandemic that showed up, which gunked up supply chains. And then we had to figure out what to do about the fact that we couldn't get together in person, that we couldn't physically interact with each other. That's why you saw those prices rise. That was the problem. And it was something that we couldn't do ourselves, we couldn't address it ourselves. This one is all our own doing. And as I said to you before, this reminds me of Brexit. This is exactly what happened in Britain. Just decided, you know what?

• 49:57Ed Elson?

  We're going to put up barriers and make life harder for ourselves. Those are the policy solutions for me.

• 50:02Scott Galloway?

  Ed, you give me hope. I think you're wonderful. That was perfect, I have nothing to add to that.

• 50:07Ed Elson?

  Well, one thing that we should also think about then is what are investors thinking about this? Because we've talked about on the show inflation is a problem for the economy, but the economy isn't necessarily the stock market. And investors so far haven't been so worried about this inflation problem because ultimately stocks go up. So at this point, how are you thinking about inflation as it relates to the equity markets and how it could affect stock prices going forward?

• 50:39Scott Galloway?

  America is now a giant bet on AI. And that is effectively 93% of GDP growth and now 40% of the market of the S and P is based on the capex of 10 companies that have made a giant bet on AI. And they're not subject to tariffs. They are, I mean, it's obviously an unbelievable technology. They have access to capital. But the reality is the majority of us or the majority of Americans aren't aren't participating in the uplift of of the NASDAQ or the S and P. And going back to the notion of revolution in this country, I think that when you see people traveling 100 miles to protest a data center, data

• 51:22Scott Galloway?

  centers are essentially become a vessel or a physical manifestation for income inequality. And people are just incredibly angry because what they see is, all I hear is that the NASDAQ and the S and P are going up. All I hear about AI companies going public at a trillion dollar market capitalization. And I'm trying to figure out, you know, I'm sitting there and I'm one of the 40% of US households. You want to hear what's criminal about the United States right now? The S and P is at an all time high. You know, housing prices here, the average house has gone up, I don't know, I think 40% pre COVID. And 40% of American

• 52:03Scott Galloway?

  households have medical or dental debt. And so you translate that down to a household, that's, that's a single mom whose 15 year old daughter wakes up and screaming tooth pain and has to go to the emergency room or emergency dental visit and has to borrow the money to get a root canal for her daughter. I mean, think about, think about the, the shame of that, right?

• 52:29Scott Galloway?

  And we don't, but we don't track medical and dental debt. Quite frankly, who the fuck cares if the Nasdaq's at an all time high? When, when our team, so these, we, we need different metrics and we need a dip. Once a metric becomes kind of universal, it, it ceases to be relevant or important. But the general senses are my senses is that we are really, I mean, effectively, we're returning to where the world usually is and where economies, most economies have been for 99% of history.

• 53:10Scott Galloway?

  And that is a small number of hardworking, talented, fortunate people who sometimes garner a lot of the resources, resources to inheritance, create regulatory capture, invest money. We do it through Citizens United and the government and start allocating and aggregating more and more capital. And they basically run away with the game. So I, but I do think we're at a breaking point here. I think when six families own more wealth than the bottom 50%, we've decided we're no longer about America. And where I am, and I'm a capitalist, I believe in private property. But the greatest economic growth, the greatest positive sentiment in America was in the 60s,

• 53:52Scott Galloway?

  70s and 80s, when incremental tax rate above a certain amount were 60, 70 and 80%. And where I am is that I think we need, absolutely need to move to a point, and I'll wrap up around happiness. I think a lot about happiness and trying to optimize it. And there is a relationship between money and happiness. Money can't buy you happiness is a lie. It can. That's the bad news. The good news is according to Daniel Kahneman, an Israeli-American psychologist and a role model of mine, did a lot of research on the relationship between money and happiness. And it tops out at a certain point. Where you can own a home, healthcare, take nice vacations, absorb an economic shock.

• 54:35Scott Galloway?

  That supposedly in America is around $150,000. I think in LA, it's probably more like $800,000 or $900,000.

• 54:42Scott Galloway?

  But above that, above that, you get no incremental happiness. So then the question becomes, and what I would put forward, is why wouldn't you have, say, pick a big number, over $10 million, over $3 or $10 million in income? Why wouldn't you have incremental tax rates of 70% or 80%? Because here's the thing. The key to tax code is having taxes that are at least taxing. If you taxed healthcare, food, and, I don't know, healthcare, food, and say you taxed education, those taxes would be really taxing because people would become less healthy and less educated and more depressed. But if you get no reduction in happiness, making $7 million a year instead of 12,

• 55:26Scott Galloway?

  but that incremental $5 million can provide, say, universal, or say, childcare for 500 homes, their incremental happiness is enormous. So I have become a little bit socialist on this. I think it's time we have an alternative minimum tax.

• 55:48Scott Galloway?

  I'm sounding very, I realize I'm sounding very AOC here, but I've come full circle on this. I do think there's something to the notion of massively increasing an alternative minimum tax above a certain amount of money. We also need to start shaming people who hoard wealth. I just don't think it, I just don't think it, there's, there's just no reason people should be worth what nation states are. It's not going to make any happier. Anyways, that's my, that's my rant.

• 56:13Ed Elson?

  It's probably a problem if you've got inflation rising at 4% to your point, 1 in 10 Americans still living in poverty. And at the same time, this is the year, if this SpaceX IPO all goes to plan, we'll see, $2 trillion valuation, I don't really buy it. If it all goes to plan, we are going to be the world, the world's first generation to witness the world's first trillionaire in Elon Musk, who, we ran the numbers on this, we looked at how much money he's going to have. Again, if the IPO goes to plan, we'll see. He's going to be worth 3.2% of US GDP.

• 56:51Ed Elson?

  The richest American in history before Elon Musk existed was John D Rockefeller. John D Rockefeller, at the height of his wealth, was worth, wait for it, 1.5% of GDP. So Elon Musk is about to be more than double as wealthy as the wealthiest American that has ever existed in John D Rockefeller. And at the same time, we're experiencing this inflation. And at the same time, we still have huge numbers of Americans who are struggling, who are struggling to put food on the table. And then I think about my generation and why young people are so upset and why young people are going to these data centers and protesting them. And the fact that half of us don't even believe in capitalism anymore. They prefer socialism instead.

• 57:36Ed Elson?

  And this is essentially what this entire podcast is about, is capitalism. It's about markets. And increasingly, we have decided that we no longer believe in that system. We just want to opt out of the whole system itself. The fact that those two things are true at the same time, to me, at some point, you have to, you have to acknowledge the elephant in the room. You have to call it quits at some point, acknowledge this is a problem, we cannot continue on this path. So I think that you're probably correct, that we're moving in something of a difficult direction and probably reaching a breaking point. Stay with us.

• 58:52Speaker 15

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• 59:56Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. Our first question is from Shane, who is in seat H320. And Shane has a question about independent media. Where is Shane?

• 1:00:11Speaker 09

  Hi. Jesus. Splasiba.

• 1:00:15Ed Elson?

  The voice of God.

• 1:00:17Speaker 09

  Hi Shane. Hi honey.

• 1:00:18Ed Elson?

  Shane, could you stand up?

• 1:00:20Speaker 09

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:21Ed Elson?

  So it turns out it's Shane Smith.

• 1:00:22Speaker 09

  Shane Smith from Vice.

• 1:00:24Ed Elson?

  Of Vice Media.

• 1:00:25Speaker 09

  Yeah. Hey Shane. Longtime listener, first time caller. Just back from Iran, right? Just back from Iran. Uh, it's fucked up.

• 1:00:36Speaker 09

  So, as one of this sort of poster children for the... I saw a podcast that you guys did, it was amazing, about the sort of death of independent slash new media, of which I get kicked in the face a lot for. So I'd like to say, it feels like we're heading towards a world where a handful of companies control what gets made, what gets seen, how it gets distributed. And in that world, independent media doesn't have a meaning. So what do you guys think is the future of independent media and is there one? And it's sad that Ted's gone because I'd like to hold his feet to the fucking fire.

• 1:01:17Ed Elson?

  Yeah, he would be the guy to answer that. I don't know what Scott's thoughts are. My, I've made my thoughts pretty known and perhaps I should have made it known to Ted, which is I think the future of media is one word and it's clips. That's it. I simply look at the amount of time that young people especially are spending on our phones. It's coming out to around eight hours a day at this point. If you actually annualize it, if you count up the days over the course of a calendar year, the amount of time that we're spending on our phones, it comes out to 118 days per year looking at the phone. And we spend 122 days asleep, which means that we have 125 days left over to do everything else with our lives,

• 1:02:01Ed Elson?

  to meet people, to establish relationships, as Scott has talked about, to establish a network. People wonder why are young people underperforming? Why can't they get their act together? Something that I often say is like, we're operating with 40% less time than our parents did. We just don't have as much time to live our lives because we are addicted to the phones. To me, that means that the only opportunity in media, you have to go as hard as possible at social media, as hard as possible at the phone. Ted mentioned that he's thinking that integrated vertical clips, that is going to be sort of the, the way to get the, the marketing material to get you to watch the show. My view is the vertical clips, that is the main content. That's where people are spending their time. That's where you need to be invested.

• 1:02:46Ed Elson?

  So that's how we've thought about it with our business. I mean, we do this podcast and it's really fun to be here, but honestly, a lot of me is thinking, what were the best clips from this, from this podcast show? How are we going to get it out on social media, on Instagram, on TikTok? To me, that is the future. And if you're a new independent media brand, you need be thinking about how do I dominate the algorithm? Because if you don't do it, someone else will. And the people who have been dominating are not the best role models, not the best people we want influencing the minds of young Americans. So that would be my advice, clips.

• 1:03:19Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I don't, look, I don't, media is obsessed with itself and wants to go back to the good old days. I was called today and asked about CBS. I'm like, who cares about CBS? Like, the average age of a CBS viewer is dead. I mean, it's just.

• 1:03:36Scott Galloway?

  Seriously, the average age of CNN viewer is 64, Fox at 69, CNBC at 64. And I see a lot of incredible alternative independent puck, Semaphore, Axios. The guys at Bulwark are doing a great job. I'm very open about our economics. We will do 20 million this year at very strong EBITDA margins, growing 20 to 30% a year. I do think there is probably a need for a BBC-like tax where there is an attempt to have just straight up news that just calls it as it is and attempts, attempts to just,

• 1:04:18Scott Galloway?

  and it's hard to do, but attempts to call it, you know, straight down the middle, if you will. But I don't, media tends to have, I wish the Washington Post would just die already. I'm sick of talking about it. And I think a lot of those really talented reporters are going to find really good work in independent media companies. We tend, the media tends to think of itself as so precious and so self-obsessed. There is, I think that there's just a ton of startups, people now, really talented people. I interviewed a woman who just wrote a book called Sex extinction this morning, Deborah So, she's a genius. And her ability to reach consumers now, and, you know, the ability to start a media company,

• 1:05:02Scott Galloway?

  you basically just need, you know, two turntables and a microphone. Heather Cox Richardson, who's one of my role models on Substack. She's not only a role model because of democracy for me, she's going to make 12 million bucks a year on Substack this year. Right? So, you know, good for her. And she'll hire people. So, I don't, the death of traditional media, yeah, it's going away because it's fat. And I go into Rockefeller Center to go on NBC and I see these huge buildings. Podcasts are essentially 80% of a television show for 10% of the price. It's an arbitrage of the means of production where you can offer the vast majority of ABC

• 1:05:46Scott Galloway?

  News nightly, I'm not as good-looking as that guy, but we can be unfiltered and we cost. 3%, 5% of what it costs to produce that show. But I think media is actually, I don't want to call it in a golden age. But I think there's huge opportunities for independent media. And if you love, if you love to write, if you think you have a different view or spin on things, fire up a podcast, fire up a Substack. I think that you can make a, you know, it's, it's really hard. It always has been hard, but you don't need to be as good looking, which is, which is nice. Anyway, Shane, I'm actually excited. Shane, you've got a great podcast. I've been on your podcast a couple of times.

• 1:06:29Scott Galloway?

  I think that, I think it's a great business to be in. And I think there'll always be, right now, I think there'll be a, there's still, the future's bright for great content and people who are fearless and hold, you know, neither fear nor favor around power.

• 1:06:50Ed Elson?

  We have another question from Rabbi Steve Leder.

• 1:06:54Scott Galloway?

  Rabbi Leder.

• 1:06:57Ed Elson?

  In row triple E. And Rabbi Steve has a question about striving for the greater good.

• 1:07:05Speaker 13

  I'm really happy to be here tonight.

• 1:07:06Ed Elson?

  Thank you for coming.

• 1:07:07Speaker 13

  And thank you for your leadership and enlightening us. My question is, in a society, in a culture and in a nation like ours, whose DNA is individuality and autonomy and volition, and whose politics are petty and coarse, what are the mechanisms, if any, by which we can strive for and hopefully achieve greater unity and the common good? What are the tools that exist in a culture essentially built upon individuality and autonomy and volition?

• 1:07:50Scott Galloway?

  So we're going with the easy stuff first.

• 1:07:54Scott Galloway?

  Do you want it? Like.

• 1:07:58Ed Elson?

  I know the answer. I'll just let him do it.

• 1:08:03Scott Galloway?

  So, by the way, I'm a big fan of the rabbis. He's been a source of inspiration and calmness for me through COVID and through.

• 1:08:15Scott Galloway?

  So, obviously, a very heated topic, but I'm what Dan Cienar calls an October the 8th Jew. I have no connection to Judaism, no connection to Israel, and I've become 110% more Jewish, in large part because of some of the things you've said. I'm an atheist, but I do think we need more religious institutions and more church and attendance at temple and mosques. I think getting together and serving in the agency of something bigger than yourself, especially for young people with shared values and a code, is really important. And I say that as someone who... I don't have an invisible friend, I believe in one less God than you. But I just think it's been a real shame to see attendance to religious institutions

• 1:09:00Scott Galloway?

  go down. The policy fix I would love to see across our nation, if there was one policy I could have, and have a magic wand, it would be mandatory national service. Is, is, as screwed up, as screwed up and as many problems as we have in this country, I don't think young people really have any sense that the best thing and the smartest thing they could have done was to be born in America. And I think that, even still, and I think the way we create a sense of unity, and some of that character you're talking about, is giving young people the opportunity to spend

• 1:09:44Scott Galloway?

  time with people from different religions, different political backgrounds, different ethnicities, different incomes, and just see how incredibly wonderful other Americans are. Because I think social media basically says, "What's your identity? What are your political beliefs?" And then go to that corner, and the enemy isn't Russians pouring over the border in Ukraine, or income inequality, or climate change. The enemy is your neighbor who doesn't share your political beliefs. So there needs to be a unity, a greater unity around, between all of us as Americans. That's where I go.

• 1:10:24Scott Galloway?

  Thank you for the question, Rabbi.

• 1:10:26Ed Elson?

  I would also add, just on that, I think we're starting to see signs that that might actually be happening naturally. If you look at church attendance among young people, among Gen Z specifically right now, it's actually started to go up. And I was walking through the streets of New York, and I was in the West Village, and I looked and saw a church on the side, and I saw a line of young people going around the block and extending for two blocks just to get into church on Sunday. And I think what we're starting to see, I mean, I felt for a long time that we needed to institute some sort of policies to get us out of our screens, get us off of our phones, get us in rooms together with one another like we

• 1:11:07Ed Elson?

  are today. And I still kind of believe that we need to sort of push that along, perhaps with some sort of policy. But it might be happening naturally. And we're even seeing this, I mean, we talked the other day about the attendance and these in-person sauna raves, and young people getting excited about going out to these run clubs and getting together. I wonder if the pendulum is starting to swing back, and if we can get to a place of community and being with one another naturally versus having to force it. Probably what we want

• 1:11:50Ed Elson?

  is to do both. But I feel optimistic about it. Let's move on to Adelaide on floor two in row D. Where is Adelaide?

• 1:12:03Speaker 16

  Hi Scott, hi Ed. My name's Adelaide, I'm 10 years old. Ed, great to see you again.

• 1:12:09Ed Elson?

  So I just wanted to interrupt you.

• 1:12:11Scott Galloway?

  Adelaide, can you come into the light? Everybody wants to see you.

• 1:12:15Ed Elson?

  Adelaide, I got on a Zoom with a few months ago. Adelaide is 10 years old. She's come all the way out to Los Angeles with her dad. Adelaide, I'm so glad you're here. I just want to give you a round of applause. And please, continue with your question.

• 1:12:33Speaker 16

  Thank you very much, Ed. Scott, you and Ed represent two completely different generations. For someone my age, looking ahead, what is the biggest advantage my generation has over older generations? And what is the biggest trap we need to avoid?

• 1:12:56Ed Elson?

  Can I start with the trap?

• 1:13:01Ed Elson?

  It's great to see you.

• 1:13:04Ed Elson?

  I think the trap, and this theme has recurred throughout this conversation, throughout the night. The trap for your generation, for my generation, for both of us, it is the screen. It's the phone. It's technology. The amount of time that we are spending in person with our friends has plummeted over the past two decades. And people keep wondering, why is that happening? Why aren't people hanging out with each other? It's because we're not spending enough time with our friends, which has been overtaken by the amount of time that we're spending on the phone. And so there's a reason why one in five Gen Z'ers today say they have zero close friends whatsoever.

• 1:13:47Ed Elson?

  The loneliness numbers are really bad throughout America, but it's especially bad for younger people. And it's because of the phone. That is the trap. That is the thing that you have to avoid, in my view. I hope Scott has talked about this. We've talked about this. I hope that maybe we can create some social policy, some age gating rules, such that we can keep that out of schools, keep young people off of social media as much as possible. But it has taken over our lives. And your superpower could be to not let it take over yours. So I just want to start with the trap. That would be my recommendation to you. And it's so good to see you. Thank you so much for coming.

• 1:14:29Scott Galloway?

  I got the hard one. I feel like if you're here, it means you're here with your dad. I think that means you have engaged parents.

• 1:14:40Scott Galloway?

  You're clearly an incredibly impressive young woman. I don't know. I feel like you should be mentoring me.

• 1:14:49Scott Galloway?

  There's, and I'll just end here because I don't have a...

• 1:14:53Scott Galloway?

  I think your, this is gonna sound trite, but I think your ability to potentially be in service of others has never been greater. I think that young people can have such an impact on other young people and people they've never met. With all of these new mediums and opportunities to communicate and get involved in other people's lives. I wish I'd learned when I was your age how rewarding service is. I didn't figure that out until older. And with technology, you can inspire their kids and communicate with them. So I would say, it sounds trite, but service. But let me go back, let me just indicate, or out, my generation. The way you express, there's something called your love language.

• 1:15:35Scott Galloway?

  And it's acts of service, acts of affection, gift giving.

• 1:15:42Scott Galloway?

  Dudes in my generation and men my age used to do this to me. My love language is money. Can I give you a bunch of money to take your dad out to dinner while you're here?

• 1:15:55Ed Elson?

  The answer is yes. You should say yes. I'm just telling you, you should.

• 1:15:59Scott Galloway?

  It was thirty-four dollars.

• 1:16:03Ed Elson?

  Thank you, Los Angeles.

• 1:16:06Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Procter Media. Thank you for joining us live in LA. Make sure you're following us on YouTube, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. We hope to see you again soon. Good night, everyone.

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