The Rate Hikes Are Coming

Scott Galloway and Ed Elson assess the U. S. macroeconomic picture and whether they think Kevin Warsh will raise interest rates in response. Ed also explains why he believes we need to start reckoning with the possibility of “forever inflation.” Then, they run through some of the biggest recent AI headlines, including a viral post warning about the existential risks of AI. Finally, they discuss the iPhone Duo and what’s next for Apple as John Ternus takes over from Tim Cook. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline. That's bull spend and marketers are calling it out in. Dashboard Confessions.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had. Impressions.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 0:31Speaker 02

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

• 1:01Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents, but choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes.

• 1:28Scott Galloway?

  Today's number 95. That's the percentage of finance students who identify as straight, the most of any college major. True story, Ed. My ex-wife decided we should have an open relationship and the rules where we could have sex with anybody and we would never see each other again.

• 1:55Scott Galloway?

  How are you, Ed?

• 1:56Ed Elson?

  Doing very well. How are you?

• 1:58Scott Galloway?

  I'm doing well. It's a beautiful day here in London. I'm unfortunately heading out again on Sunday to the West Coast for my first Regents meeting, which I'm excited about.

• 2:09Ed Elson?

  Yeah, maybe explain a little bit the situation there.

• 2:11Scott Galloway?

  Oh, Ed, I don't like to talk about that stuff. I wish you hadn't brought it up. I wish you hadn't brought it up. Now we're talking about all kinds of interesting stuff.

• 2:21Ed Elson?

  Well, what are the Regents? What is that?

• 2:23Scott Galloway?

  The Regents are the Board of Directors that oversee the University of California. And what I didn't realize, and most people don't realize, is that it's a $54 billion enterprise and about $35 billion of it is the hospital system. Basically, the University of California could be fairly called a hospital system or healthcare system that offers classes. I did not know that.

• 2:42Ed Elson?

  I did not know that either.

• 2:43Scott Galloway?

  It's also the greatest economic elevator in history, which is why I'm excited to be on. Takes more people from the lowest quintile to the top quintile, I think, than, well, maybe Cal State, but it's, anyways, saved my ass. Saved my ass, Ed.

• 2:58Ed Elson?

  Are there any other famous people on that board? Who's the company?

• 3:02Scott Galloway?

  Not famous, but much more credible. Well, the governor is on the board, the lieutenant governor, Aleny Sokopoulos. It's kind of a full circle moment. My friend Aleny and I were friends in business school and she's on the board as lieutenant and governor. But it's a bunch of very impressive people who, quite frankly, are just more credentialed and substantive. Although I am pissed off, let's bring this back to me. All the media was Governor Newsom appoints podcaster to Board of UC Regents. Would you describe me as a podcaster? That kind of upset me.

• 3:33Ed Elson?

  What would you prefer to be known as? Professor?

• 3:35Scott Galloway?

  Well, I don't know. I've done a few other things other than podcasting.

• 3:38Ed Elson?

  I know you've done a lot of things, but that is what you are right now.

• 3:41Scott Galloway?

  I'm an academic and an entrepreneur, but anyways, anyways, but you asked who else is on the board? It's a bunch of, it's people from, from the finance industry. It's everyone from the vice chairman of UTA, one of the largest talent agencies, to business people, to healthcare professionals and a lot of the chancellors. I mean, they're technically the CEOs, the chancellors, so they're not on the board. They're reporting to the board, but it is an enormous board. I think it's 24 or 26 people. Anyways, I'm, I'm headed out to UCLA for my first, my first Regents meeting. What are you doing this weekend?

• 4:17Ed Elson?

  This weekend, let's see, it's my girlfriend's birthday, or it was yesterday. So we had dinner, but then we're going to celebrate with friends, which will be very fun. We'll have a little party. And then I go to another wedding. It's probably like my 100th wedding of the year, it feels like.

• 4:35Scott Galloway?

  So I'm being serious here. You know what the best gift you can give anyone for their wedding is?

• 4:40Ed Elson?

  What's that?

• 4:40Scott Galloway?

  Get ridiculously fucked up and have an amazing time, a visible amazing time at their wedding. That's all they want. They want a total party. When you go to someone's wedding, the best gift you can give them is to dance, be social, just have an amazing, that, that is all the bride and groom want. They want to have the best party. They want to be talking about what an epic party it was for years. And the best thing you can do for the bride and groom is, is just have an amazing time.

• 5:12Ed Elson?

  Yeah, that's right. Collaborative effort. Totally agree. We've got to host a party sometime, Scott. You and I, I think we know what we're doing.

• 5:20Scott Galloway?

  See, the problem is I don't like to hang out with you guys because I'm worried you'll be disappointed and nobody needs to see me having a good time. So, yeah. Do you notice how Catherine and I, at a very distinct early hour, peace out?

• 5:35Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I have noticed that.

• 5:36Scott Galloway?

  At every event? Yeah.

• 5:37Ed Elson?

  I think you're too worried about it, though. My personal take, but who knows? Maybe.

• 5:42Scott Galloway?

  You haven't seen me fucked up, Ed. Yeah, I don't know. You, you don't, you don't, you don't know where the, where the devil goes to, to drink that holy water. Anyways, should we talk about AI?

• 5:55Ed Elson?

  Yeah, we got a lot to talk about. We got to talk about AI. We got to talk about oil, inflation, interest rates, the Federal Reserve. We got to talk about Apple, John Turner, say, foldable iPhone. We have a lot to talk about, so let's get into it.

• 6:17Ed Elson?

  The war with Iran has entered its seventh month and the conflict is escalating yet again. Last week, oil hit $107 per barrel for the first time since May. The spike came after the US destroyed five Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for attempted strikes on a Navy warship. Meanwhile, concerns about persistent inflation fueled a global bond sell-off. The US 30-year yield reached its highest level since 2007. So, Scott, we always have to talk about this because it really is what's driving the markets. I mean, oil, Brent crude, breaching $105.

• 6:58Ed Elson?

  We had Labor Day gas prices at their highest levels in American history. Diesel prices have hit a record high. That impacts the rest of the economy because diesel is essential for freight and fertilizer and much more. Here are some price increases that we have seen since the start of the war. Corn prices are up 16%. Wheat prices are up 23%. Cotton, 32%. Rice, 49%. Diesel, 57%. So prices are rising everywhere. We're getting better signals as to what the inflation picture actually is, but that is now being priced in because we're seeing that bond yields are rising even further despite Scott Besse's attempts to suppress them. Your thoughts on the macro picture?

• 7:43Ed Elson?

  Oil, inflation and now rising yields?

• 7:47Scott Galloway?

  Countries don't cease to exist because they're invaded. They cease to exist because they go broke. And the way they go broke is through inflation where their purchasing power just falls and they can no longer borrow money and, and they essentially enter into this kind of downward spiral. And the inflation in the United States is pretty dramatic. It's a 40% cumulative price increase since January of 2020.

• 8:10Ed Elson?

  That's crazy.

• 8:11Scott Galloway?

  I mean, that was when COVID started. The majority of Americans have not seen a 40% increase in their earnings and their wages to compensate. So essentially this is a decline in the standard of living for the majority of Americans or the consumer. American households have taken a pay cut that they did not vote for. Their bankruptcy number is the real tell. Corporate bankruptcy is up 12%, which is the greatest in over a decade. And it's concentrated across small and medium sized businesses, which don't have the ability to, you know, hedge floating rate debt. They're kind of the shock absorbers for inflation or monetary policy and they've been, you know, the chassis has been broken, if you will, or just snapped. Whenever you have something like this, you do have winners and losers.

• 8:56Scott Galloway?

  This arguably is a transfer of wealth from people at the pump.

• 9:02Scott Galloway?

  To homeowners in Odessa, Texas, that have seen their home prices up 77%. Exxon, Saudi Aramco, Chevron. There are a lot of Americans making a lot of money off of higher energy prices. We are a net exporter of energy and the largest producer. But it, again, transfer of wealth from everyone at the pump. And almost every product encourages a price increase because it came to you using diesel fuel. Right? So you have, again, you have wealth transfer from diesel-dependent families, school buses, drive-throughs, to landowners sitting on the Permian Basin. And Trump trading oil stocks while overseeing the policy.

• 9:47Scott Galloway?

  You know, it's gone from a conflict of interest to a business model. He's got, I think, almost five, or registered almost $5 million in gains during a war. He's prosecuting incompetently. And then he just puts out a thing saying he doesn't actually care about the money he's making or price increases. So this is, what is this? This is a, this is a regressive tax dressed up as a foreign policy story. It'll be very interesting to see if Wersh decides to go for the kind of profile and courage and say, I am immune, I cannot be replaced, and tries to, or does in fact raise rates. But the $100 oil has all sorts of unintended consequences.

• 10:31Ed Elson?

  And it does seem increasingly like he will raise rates. I mean, if we just look at the odds of a September rate hike, which we will get the answer to this week, it is now up to 65% on Calci. Go back to June, the odds of that happening were 15%. And then, of course, we're seeing it reflected in yields, which are, I mean, the, the rise in yields this week and the week before, and the week before that, is stunning. I mean, the bond markets are literally screaming right now. The 30-year yield hit 5.35%, which is the highest level since 2007. And the 10-year has breached 4.9%.

• 11:11Ed Elson?

  And this is all despite the fact that Besant is tripling, or did triple, the bond buyback program to $6 billion. He's done all, made all these efforts to try to get yields down, didn't work. Bond investors said, no, this still isn't working for us. And I think they're paying attention to multiple things. Of course, the oil, the length of the Iran war. But probably most important is this unsustainable debt that we clearly are showing no signs of even caring about or taking seriously. National debt surpassed $40 trillion. Our fiscal deficit this year under Trump is on track for $2 trillion. We now pay $1.25 trillion in interest payments, more than we spend on national defense.

• 11:53Ed Elson?

  That's expected to double as a percentage of our federal revenue over the next decade. So eventually, we're going to be spending more on interest than anything else. I think that is what investors, the bond investors, are so worried about, and rightly so. And then in the middle of that, Trump, at his Trump-a-palooza, this midterm convention, which no one really tuned into, and which they were giving out free tickets for people to attend, he says, in fact, I've got a clip. I'll just play it for you. This is what he says.

• 12:21Speaker 06

  If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our economic, tremendous economic success, like in, in history, we've never had anything like what's happening. But because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.

• 12:54Ed Elson?

  $5,000 to every US adult, a bribe to vote Republican at the midterms, which would cost the United States $1.35 trillion, which we would add on to our existing $2 trillion deficit. This is just, I don't have the force for it.

• 13:14Scott Galloway?

  Well, let's go, let's talk about need and let's talk about the math. If there's a group of Americans, the need a one-time payment, it's not adult Americans, 10% of which live in poverty. It's kids under the age of 18, which are excluded from his proposed program, who 15% of which live in poverty. And quite frankly, it's just unacceptable that one in seven kids and one in five households have food insecure kids. That's just not, that's not acceptable in the world's wealthiest country in history. So first off, he's placing the need in the wrong place. Now, having said this, this is just fucking stupid and is never going to happen because of the math. $1.4 trillion, obviously no plan whatsoever to pay for it.

• 13:58Scott Galloway?

  So it would be, if it were to get through, which it won't, it would be deficit spending. So this is what this is. This is the equivalent of the government saying to you, say you decide to get married in the next year and have a kid. This is the government giving you a credit card that's preloaded with $5,000. But if you spend dollar one, if you, should you decide to accept this credit card, when your kid is 18, he or she is saddled with $13,000 in non-negotiable, non-dischargeable debt that stays with them the rest of their lives, regardless of whether you die or not. Would you accept that credit card? Now, smart people would say no. Unfortunately, I think the American public, who we all like to think is super smart and

• 14:42Scott Galloway?

  honorable and nice, has been really stupid around our deficits. At some point, the American public needs to take responsibility for electing leaders, Democrats and Republicans, who have been fiscally reckless and irresponsible. George Washington to George Bush, $7 trillion in deficits. George Bush to Trump too, another $33 trillion in deficits. The Democrats have been better, or less bad, I should say, than the Republicans. On average, Republicans have added 2.8% of GDP per year to the debt, and Democrats have added 2.1%. So they're less bad. But voters keep voting for the guy with the bumper sticker that says the following, "We can go to war while cutting your taxes."

• 15:26Scott Galloway?

  And it has become standard operating procedure that the only thing that passes for bipartisan cooperation is, "Wait, we want to cut taxes. Wait, we want to spend more," said Republicans and Democrats respectively. I know, let's do both and have future generations pay this off. So while this idea is ridiculous, irresponsible, if I can intimidate you into not coming to the polls, if you're non-white and I scare you with eyes of the polls, I'm going to try and bribe you with a payment if we win. While that is ridiculous and will not happen, the thing that bums me out the most at is the American public keeps signing up for this shit.

• 16:05Scott Galloway?

  And even on the Democratic side, there isn't a single Democratic candidate for president, Rahm Emanuel sort of nibbling around the edges, but not really, who has actually had the stones to put up a chart, a pie chart, present something resembling a presentation with graphs that says, okay, we spend $7 trillion, we take in $5 trillion, this is how, over eight years, we are going to begin to address it. Nobody wants to say to a public, I'm sorry, you can't have Dr. Pepper and Swizzlers, I'm trying to think of what is the worst candy in the world, and not have dinner and stay up till 2:00 AM snapping with your friends. And you don't have to go to school tomorrow.

• 16:50Scott Galloway?

  No one, no one is having anything resembling an adult conversation with the children that are the American voting public right now. No, what Democratic candidate for president has even dared to outline a policy that says, all right, we're doing away, we're going to level up capital gains with ordinary income, we're going to fund the IRS and go after that $750 billion in tax gap, we are going to eliminate 40% to 60% of the $2.25 trillion in loopholes and givebacks that largely benefit corporations and wealthy individuals, and we are going to lower Medicaid eligibility by two years every year for 10 years as a means of getting more purchasing power and bringing down our healthcare costs.

• 17:34Scott Galloway?

  And we're going to means test Social Security. And within eight years, the deficit is going to grow less fast than GDP growth. There is a reasonable path here. There is, we have fucked this up, we can unfuck it. Not that long ago, during Clinton and Gore, we were taking in more money than we're spending. This is possible. But again, leaders and elected leaders and candidates respond to a populace. So just as Michelle Obama said, when asked about running for president, the American public isn't ready for a female president, it doesn't appear that the American public is ready for an adult conversation around responsible fiscal management.

• 18:13Ed Elson?

  At the same time, though, in defense of the American public, they have been lied to by, largely by Republicans. I mean, there is, there is this idea that the Republicans are fiscally conservative. And in a lot of cases, that is part of their platform. It was part of Trump's platform, that he wanted to be fiscally conservative, he was going to get spending under control, he was going to balance the budget. As I always say, that was the statement that received the largest applause in his congressional address last year. And he did the exact opposite. So to be fair to the American people, they were told a lie. Now, where I start to blame the American people is when they continue to eat up those

• 18:56Ed Elson?

  lies and continue to believe that Trump is this guy who he says he is. He clearly isn't. He has lied too many times. At a certain point, you need to be keeping track of these things and keeping score and recognizing, okay, this guy is talking out of his ass with every single speech he gives. I'm not buying it anymore. So to anyone who still believes that Trump is the fiscal conservative, or who still believes that the Republicans are the fiscal conservatives, to those people, I now do blame you. I blame you now. I don't blame you from before because I understand that you were lied to and that we had this little bit of a psyop that was negotiated and figured out by the Republican Party and then by Trump. But at this point, the evidence is very, very clear.

• 19:40Ed Elson?

  And if you want the example, if you want the example of people realizing this, then yes, take a look at the bond markets, take a look at US Treasuries, which, by the way, long-dated US Treasuries have now posted their worst decade in more than 100 years. And if we look at the inflationary debt spiral, which is clearly getting out of control.

• 20:01Ed Elson?

  We look at the Fed's target, which is 2% inflation. That's what they've been saying that they're trying to get to. We have been trying to get to that target now for five and a half years. We have been above target. That is the longest continuous stretch of more than 2% inflation in 40 years. The amount of time that we have not been at the Fed's target of 2% is equal to 5% of the time that the Fed has ever existed. You look at 10 years ago, inflation was 1.3%. Now we're at around four and we'll see how it plays out over the next few months now that oil is rising too. But I think that one thing that we can, in terms of takeaway is like, what do we do about this? Obviously, we know what the government needs to do about it.

• 20:43Ed Elson?

  But on an individual level, I think it is time to start reckoning with this possibility of forever inflation. Just, we're gonna see 3%, 4%, 5% inflation in the United States for a sustained period of time, possibly forever. Because it's not just the problems we're seeing now, but we're looking at leadership's response to those problems and they don't seem to really care. They seem to think that the way we're going to get out of this debt spiral is to keep, is to spend our way out of it, to spend all the money on the bond buybacks to get the yields down, which of course, over the long term, makes the problem even worse. And so when I think about what that means as an investor, on the one, I mean, one takeaway,

• 21:26Ed Elson?

  bond investing is in a lot of ways dying. Because if you have this level of inflation, I mean, yields are gonna have to rise a huge amount for bonds to be worth it. Because the amount of inflation that we're gonna see is gonna be eating into the value of every interest payment that you get back on those bonds. So, bond investing as we know it, I think the game has changed. Honestly, I think the only solution here, you have to invest more aggressively in stocks than ever before. Because your purchasing power is going down and the only asset class that is actually being rewarded is equities.

• 22:07Ed Elson?

  And of course, I get worried about bubbles in that scenario, but I don't see, I don't see how there's any other choice for investors.

• 22:16Scott Galloway?

  I would push back a little bit and that is, a lot of people are actually looking at the debt markets because for the first time, they feel like they're being rewarded for the risks they're taking. And that is, you are getting, you are getting not, not serious money, but if you can buy a corporate bond that looks very healthy, including, you know, and get a 6%, 7%, 8% return, you know, that's not bad. And keep in mind, the debt, so it's almost like, my investment strategy right now is not to get rich, it's to not get poor. The way you don't get rich, you know, you not get rich, but you don't get poor is with bonds. Because bonds typically, credit has real teeth. They're not as volatile typically.

• 22:59Scott Galloway?

  And with a company like Apple, unless shit gets really real at Apple, like unimaginably real, it's hard to imagine they would not have the assets and the cash flow to pay the interest on their bonds. Right? So I do think, and by the way, I have never been a big debt investor. I don't understand it. I've never been interested in it. I've always deluded myself into thinking I can outperform what feel like fairly paltry returns. But I do think still a mixed portfolio of stocks and bonds makes sense. Just going back to the markets, we said that there's always a transfer of wealth in winners and losers. Some of the winners with 100 plus dollar oil, Shell's up 27%, ExxonMobil 34%, Chevron 37.

• 23:40Scott Galloway?

  Norway's Equinor is up 84%. They supply 30% of all the natural gas consumed in the EU. Home sellers, okay. Home prices, as we talked about, up 2% nationally, up 77% in, in Odessa, Texas. And then railroads, which are much more efficient from an energy standpoint. Canadian Pacific, Kansas City plus 21%, Union Pacific 23%, CSX up 34%. So, a transfer of wealth from consumers who have to pay higher prices at the grocery store and at the pump.

• 24:23Ed Elson?

  And whose wages are now trending negative because the wage growth is being outpaced by the inflation. Just to your point, consumers, but also earners, people who are making their money, making their living through income.

• 24:35Scott Galloway?

  Here's a stat I just never, I never contemplated. 15 to 30% of grocery costs are diesel fuel. Groceries are heavy and that, the vehicle that brought them there is powered by diesel fuel. 90% of the nation's school buses run on diesel and 40% of the school districts are consolidating their bus routes and 20% are, are limiting non-required trips, including field trips. Think about this, $100 oil is going to start reducing the number of field trips that kids, kids take. Drive-throughs, a $1 increase in gas prices means roughly six fewer customers per day at the average drive-through.

• 25:16Scott Galloway?

  That might not sound like a lot, but for a location averaging 300 transactions a day, that's about $22,000 in lost annual sales. In sum, energy costs, and something else I found was just fascinating, there's now, I just saw a huge investment in data centers in Finland. And the impetus was that Finland has its own sources of renewable energy and it's cold. So whereas the AI market used to be chasing GPUs, it's now changed, it's now chasing climate. So, people have said just for a long time, that if you want to understand the world and geopolitics and economics and how societies, you know, rise and fall, it kind of comes

• 26:01Scott Galloway?

  down to energy. Some people are making, making or putting forward the thesis that now it's coming down to compute, which is the new energy. But it's still, you still need the energy for the compute. So, but you're, the inflation here, I think it's gonna be fascinating to see what worse does. What is your bet? Do you think by the end of the year, interest rates, he increases interest rates?

• 26:27Ed Elson?

  Yeah, 100% by the end of the year is my view. And I, I've said that on this, I mean, I said it in June, that I thought it was inevitable. And I think I've, we'll see if I got it right, but I think I'm gonna have gotten it right. And that was back when people were saying that it was basically a coin toss as to whether we would see rates. I mean, think back to the beginning of the year, when the markets are pricing in rate cuts. And remember that, those were the conversations you and I were having, was what it means to be in a lower interest rate environment. That was what we were sort of, what investors were all expecting. It's just remarkable how quickly things have flipped and how bad things have gotten on the inflation front. And I do, just to your debt point, I think it's true what you're saying.

• 27:11Ed Elson?

  I think that, you know, what we are seeing now is that the debt markets are actually rewarding investors for the risk that they're taking on when they're buying these, these bonds. But I just think it's very important to think in your calculation about what inflation might look like and the extent to which it will eat into your yield, eat into your returns. And how sustained do you think this inflation will really be? I think at the very least, and a lot of other commentators have talked about this and investors have talked about this, at the very least, it does call into question the 60-40 portfolio of 40% bonds. Because at least in the past decade, that portfolio structure has not been rewarded at all, even on a risk-adjusted basis.

• 27:56Ed Elson?

  But I do take your point. It's like, okay, well, yields are rising now. So, is it worth it? And perhaps it is. I think we'd probably want to see yields rise even, even further to reflect the level of inflation that we might be seeing over the next few years. It's fascinating stuff and we'll see what Kevin Walsh does this week. It'll be interesting.

• 28:21Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend and please follow us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 28:37Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Framer. Your website is often the first place people encounter your work or your business. It has to make an impact. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit and publish in one piece at a whole new pace. It's an enterprise-level solution powered by agents that provide premium hosting, enterprise-grade security and 99.99% uptime SLAs. With Framer, agents and humans work in tandem. Agents bring speed and scale. People bring taste, judgment and control. Framer's agents solve the gap between AI-generated ideas and production-ready website work. They work alongside teams to streamline collaboration on the same canvas, build custom code components, create and manage CMS content,

• 29:21Scott Galloway?

  optimize SEO settings, audit for issues and ship everything all in one place. That's why leading brands including Perplexity and Miro build their websites in Framer. Learn how you can get more out of your side from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/markets for 30% off a Framer pro-annual plan. That's framer.com/markets. Rules and restrictions may apply.

• 29:52Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from SoFi. Education can be one of the most valuable investments you can make in yourself, but figuring out how to pay for it is a huge financial decision. The good news is you have options at every stage of that journey. That's where SoFi comes in. Whether you're getting ready to head off to school, already enrolled, or looking for a better way to manage the student loans you already have, SoFi offers lending solutions that are designed to help you move forward with confidence. If you're paying for school, SoFi private student loans can help cover up to 100% of your school-certified costs, including tuition, books, housing and more. You can check your rate online in minutes and there's no fees required, including origination or late fees. And if you already have student loans, refinancing with SoFi could save you thousands

• 30:34Scott Galloway?

  in interest, reduce your monthly payment and help you pay down your loan sooner. You can also consolidate multiple loans into one simple monthly payment and checking your rate just takes a few minutes online. Head to sofi.com/profguestudent to explore your options and get started today. SoFi student loans are originated by SoFi Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891. Please borrow responsibly.

• 31:05Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from V C X, the public ticker for private tech. For generations, American companies have moved the world forward through their ingenuity and determination. And for generations, everyday Americans could be a part of that journey through perhaps the greatest innovation of all, the US stock market. It didn't matter whether you were a factory worker in Detroit or a farmer in Omaha. Anyone can own a piece of the great American companies. But now that's changed. Today, our most innovative companies are staying private rather than going public. The result is that everyday Americans are excluded from investing and getting left further behind while a select few reap all the benefits. Until now. Introducing V C X, the public ticker for private tech, now available wherever you buy stocks. V C X by Fundrise gives everyone the opportunity to invest

• 31:48Scott Galloway?

  in the next generation of innovation, including the companies leading the AI revolution, space exploration, defense tech and more. Visit getvcx.com for more info. That's getvcx.com. Carefully consider the investment material before investing, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at getvcx.com. This is a paid sponsorship.

• 32:20Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. As we head into the fall, we have two blockbuster IPOs on the horizon, OpenAI and Anthropic. Both companies are reportedly preparing to go public and they could be the largest IPOs ever. But before either company even hits the public markets, there is plenty of news that is shaping the discourse around them. So Scott, we are going to go through some of the biggest headlines from the past couple of weeks in AI. And we'll discuss what they mean for the company and the narratives that they are now contending with as they prepare to go public. And the first headline that we clearly have to talk about is this tweet from a now former Anthropic researcher

• 33:02Ed Elson?

  who tweeted about how he resigned from the company. He said, "I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pre-training research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly." He went on to say that "the people building AI believe that it could, quote, 'kill us all by the end of the decade.'" That was an extremely viral tweet that got more than 100 million views on Twitter or on X. But it was then endorsed by a current Anthropic researcher, this guy Evan Hubinger, or Hubinger, I don't know how to pronounce it. But he is the Alignment Science Lead and he said, "Jacob is correct.

• 33:44Ed Elson?

  We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans. I personally think it is a greater than 10% chance within the next decade." Jacob Coxon, the guy who put this tweet out originally then did kind of a media tour. He went on CNN. He went on Fox. He went on all of these different outlets. Let's just listen to what he said to Anderson Cooper on CNN last week.

• 34:06Speaker 07

  What's just crazy is to look at the rate of progress and there is a very real possibility that in the immediate future, these are years that like next year, the year after, recursive self-improvement will happen and we'll enter the phase of Evan's post where he argues that there's a chance we could all die. Like that is coming soon.

• 34:25Ed Elson?

  We could all die, apparently. Scott, your reactions?

• 34:28Scott Galloway?

  Well, we need to bifurcate or separate the existential risk of AI or threat to humanity and the IPO or the financials. The...

• 34:41Scott Galloway?

  So exhausted by all that is said. If in fact, you were to believe that this was more powerful, the nuclear bombs are more dangerous and there was a greater than 10% chance of a wipeout of humanity. All right, let's take them at their word. We wouldn't let Oppenheimer form an LLC, raise money from Andreessen Horowitz and go public. We wouldn't let Oppenheimer reach out to bankers from JP Morgan. So, okay, you win. Government needs to take control of these companies and put in place massive regulation and have all sorts of safety checks. I still don't understand why we wouldn't have, at a minimum, have, and this is a failure of the Trump administration,

• 35:23Scott Galloway?

  and I do believe the companies are earnest, saying they do want some form of regulation that can help set rules such that it isn't an out-of-control race to the bottom or to some sort of existential threat. Having said that, I do not buy it. And that is the following. Atoms don't decide to run into each other and release energy and create, set the atmosphere ablaze on their own. Someone decides to build the bomb. Someone decides to drop it. Someone decides how to detonate it. And for me, it all comes back to an incentives and a fraternity. Now, what do I mean by that?

• 36:05Scott Galloway?

  In college, I was president of the interfraternity council, king of the jarheads. And during rush week, the local community said, "We have to do something around noise. The music is playing till 1:00, 2:00 AM. You have to stop it at midnight." And I said, "There's nothing I can do. I can't go to each of these fraternities and they're just going to ignore me if I ask them to turn off the music." And so we met with U C P D and U C P D said, "I have an idea." And I said, "What is it?" And they said, "We're not going to tell you. You'll just learn about it." And the next night of rush week at 12:01 AM, they went to all the houses that were still playing music and they arrested the president of the fraternity and put him in jail for the night. And what do you know?

• 36:48Scott Galloway?

  The next night at midnight, it was dead quiet. There is always a wizard behind the curtain. And what the media gets wrong and what these companies are doing in their leadership is absolving them of any responsibility by claiming these things are sentient. If you said to Sam Altman, you are liable for anything these things do, and you started putting these people in jail, if in fact, they started stealing IP or doing anything that causes harm, I would bet they'll figure out a way to plant narcs and detectives as some of these bots hanging out by the water cooler, trying to come up with different ways to hack companies.

• 37:30Scott Galloway?

  If these things can be trained to jump, jump the lab and go and find ways to hack into other organizations, they can be trained to narc on each other and alert the humans when things are getting spicy. And so this notion somehow that they're sentient and that there isn't a wizard behind the curtain, which in my view, there always is, and a lot of philosophers will disagree with me. But my view is the moment you create incentives that say you're responsible. There was a woman who was a gay activist in San Francisco who was mauled and killed by two vicious pit bulls that were off leash. And the owner of those dogs was convicted of manslaughter.

• 38:14Scott Galloway?

  We are now holding parents liable if they have semi-automatic rifles in the household and a minor who has been diagnosed with mental illness and they do not secure those weapons. And what do you know? People now keep their pit bulls on leashes. By the way, pit bulls are actually get a bad reputation. They're actually a very lovely, friendly dog. And I think people are finally or hopefully starting to get serious. And there are a lot of responsible gun owners, but there need to be more, that if you are not a responsible gun owner and someone in your house kills someone, you are responsible. I believe this whole notion that they're sentient, that these CEOs don't have control is nothing but continuing excuses for them to run unfettered, be totally focused on shareholder growth

• 38:59Scott Galloway?

  with absolutely no admission, no adherence, no tethering to any social responsibility.

• 39:05Ed Elson?

  I also don't buy it. I think that we've heard this kind of thing many times before. We've heard it from Sam Altman. We've heard it from Dario Amadei. There was that viral blog post, something big is happening at the beginning of the year, which said that we were going to see an apocalypse, not in human civilization, but in, in basically the job market, that everyone was going to lose their jobs imminently. And then that was sort of the beginning of the SaaS apocalypse. And we had that crisis which unfolded. There has been statements from Dario Amadei saying that there was a 25% chance of civilizational destruction. And every time they say this stuff, and then eventually it gets walked back as we start to realize, okay, that seemed like a little bit hyperbolic, didn't really make sense.

• 39:48Ed Elson?

  And they were kind of stoking some panic and some fear and creating a lot of buzz and headlines around their technology. And then eventually they say, yeah, like that, that wasn't exactly right. But still, you know, there are these caveats and these nuances, et cetera. So I've heard the story over and over again. And so when I see this tweet, I'm like, yeah. And it's another guy saying that AI is going to kill us all. And yeah, it's another guy who works for one of these companies or did work for one of these companies. At the same time, though, as you point out, it would be very stupid if we were to not take it seriously because if we're wrong, then we're risking the lives of millions of people. So we kind of have to take it seriously. I think the thing that kind of pisses me off, it's one thing for a former Anthropic employee

• 40:31Ed Elson?

  to come out and say this and basically be the whistleblower. It's another thing for a current Anthropic employee, the alignment science lead, to come out and say, yeah, this is true. And yeah, we all think this within the company. We all think there's a 10% chance that our technology is going to destroy the world, destroy civilization. That to me is a corporate communication. That is a message coming from within the company by a representative of the company saying, hey, we're very worried about this technology. And if that's true, then we need to, we have to take it seriously. It's not just a tweet by a random tech bro who's saying something online. That is something for the company, which means that now we need to investigate the company. Now we need to hand the company a subpoena

• 41:16Ed Elson?

  and tell them, okay, you think that you're going to destroy America? Show us the documentation. Show us the evidence. Give us everything available at your disposal to walk us through exactly what the problem is. And if we find out that they were just being alarmist or not being alarmist, but bullshitting us and being hyperbolic and perhaps trying to get everyone hyped or worried about this technology, such that they can have a very, very explosive IPO, maybe even dry up the stock price. Well, then we, we need to start talking about different issues like securities fraud. We need to talk about issues about public deception. Because then you're misleading the public and it is material public information and that stuff matters. But this business of just like, oh, just, just listen to us.

• 42:01Ed Elson?

  We know what's best because we're the AI guys and this stuff is really scary. And then expect that we're not going to take it any further, that we're not going to investigate them, that we're not going to use the federal government to actually understand what exactly their claims are, bring them in front of Congress, have a congressional testimony, testify, et cetera. That's where I start to get lost on this issue. So I'd rather us either not take it seriously or we take it fully seriously and we actually start to investigate these people. That is my take on the situation.

• 42:34Scott Galloway?

  Well, the question I would have is, assume, let's say, let's imagine the CEO of Boeing saying that there's a 10% chance that any 737 MAX will crash. What would we do? This is a company offering a product. And what if one of their lead engineers said, yeah, there's about a 10% chance these planes are going to crash? The FAA would say, okay, ground all planes.

• 42:57Ed Elson?

  Ground them.

• 42:58Scott Galloway?

  But the difference here is, well, but wait, this might be a $2 trillion IPO and they're claiming if they aren't, if you don't let our thoroughbreds run free, China's going to surpass us, that China's going to build, or Airbus is going to build a better plane that creates more shareholder value. As far as I can tell, we have decided to ignore these existential risks because they might be worth $2 trillion and because there's absolutely no regulation or it appears to me, nobody within the Trump administration who actually has the domain expertise to even begin to talk about Thafer. I mean, why on earth wouldn't we have a kind of a blue ribbon panel that there's a 90-day waiting period for any new product?

• 43:39Scott Galloway?

  It takes a drug to get, a decade to get through the FDA. Why wouldn't we have a 90-day waiting period where some of the most talented people in the world bang the shit out of the new model and test it and ask it to create a bioweapon and see if it coordinate, I mean, just do all sorts of shit before letting anything into the marketplace? I mean, that, that's, that's to me just seems like step one.

• 44:06Ed Elson?

  Well, the argument that a lot of the, a lot of people make is because we need to get, we need to beat China.

• 44:12Scott Galloway?

  Right.

• 44:12Ed Elson?

  We can't put these regulations on AI because then China's going to run ahead of us and then China's going to take over the world, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think it's necessarily a bad argument. The thing that they're forgetting, though, is that China has some of the strictest AI regulations in the world. It's 100 times stricter than ours. I mean, they have restrictions on all forms of AI-generated content and information. You have to register before you create it. They have labeling requirements. They have ID laws on who can actually use deep fake software and what can be produced. They have very strict child protection laws against virtual relationships, something we talk about all the time. They're doing a lot to regulate AI, to restrict AI and to protect its people from the harmful consequences of AI.

• 44:56Ed Elson?

  And by the way, it shows in the poll then because 33% of Americans say they're not excited about AI and 83% of Chinese say they are excited about AI. So there's a completely different vibe when it comes to AI over in China. And I think it's because they are strict and aggressive when it comes to regulation. But we've decided that that is a reason why we cannot do it because we're so afraid of the Chinese, despite the fact that they're doing exactly what we're advocating for right here.

• 45:24Scott Galloway?

  That would be tantamount to Ford and General Motors saying, you should not regulate us or force us to have airbags because it's going to make us less competitive against Chinese companies that aren't forced to have airbags.

• 45:36Ed Elson?

  That's exactly right.

• 45:38Scott Galloway?

  No, we're going to have regulation. And by the way, American automobile companies made those arguments around emission standards. They said, okay, so European and Asian companies aren't going to have emission standards. They're going to pull out way ahead of us. They're going to be able to offer a better product for a lower price. This has, this whole catastrophizing, I don't know how seriously to take it. I'm, I'm very skeptical of it. One of the things I still hold to is the shit you're most worried about does not happen. It's the shit you're not expecting. Planes slamming into a skyscraper or a virus jumping the lab. It's the things you're not expecting to get you. And that's what leads me to believe that AI becoming sentient and turning us all into paperclips

• 46:20Scott Galloway?

  or data centers ruining the quality of life in America, I, I just don't buy it because I find whenever there's hysteria or worry about something, that means it's not going to happen. Because it means you start preparing for it and looking out for it and you're just incredibly paranoid about it. And it just, you know, it doesn't happen. So I find all of this, to your point, though, they should basically sit these guys down and say, all right, Anthropic, oh, you're not going public unless you tell us, A, what is going on here?

• 46:51Ed Elson?

  What the fuck is your employee saying?

• 46:53Scott Galloway?

  Why you think this might end humanity? And, and if it is, we're going to, you, you need to work with us. But congratulations, you've convinced us that there's a 10% chance you're going to end humanity. By the way, can I get in your friends and family share purchase program? I mean, this literally is sort of, we've decided we monetize healthcare in the United States, we monetize loneliness, and now we've said, I know, let's monetize the end of the species. Let's make the threat of the end of the species sound so dramatic that it connotes power of this technology and creates a hunger to invest.

• 47:33Ed Elson?

  Or if that's not true, then they need to explain why it's not true. They need to give us an explanation and the responsibility lies with Anthropic, which means that the responsibility lies with Dario Amade. He has to say something. It is, and the ball is in his court right now. They think that the ball is in our court, like, we need to react to what his employee said and we need to do that. No, he needs to explain what his employee said. He needs to do something about it. I doubt he will because he hasn't really been doing any media recently, and I think it's because he's been sort of not doing a very good job. I think that Anthropic is sort of seeding ground when it comes to the public perception of the company. But this guy works for Anthropic. He's said something

• 48:18Ed Elson?

  that is extremely inflammatory, extremely insane, in my view. It's on Anthropic now to explain exactly what he means. And if the guy was making shit up, well, then maybe they need to fire the guy, or maybe they need to adjust the way that they deal with corporate communications. But you can't have these AI researchers going around on Twitter saying these ridiculous things, or if they're not ridiculous, saying these extremely inflammatory things about what the company is doing and how it might literally end civilization. It's just, it's getting out of control. Going on to some other AI news, we learned in Deal Book last week that OpenAI is projecting to spend $750 billion in compute through

• 48:59Ed Elson?

  2030. We didn't get much new context, other than the fact that the number used to be closer to $1.4 trillion. We didn't have a real timeline for what that would be, but the point being, it appears maybe OpenAI is bringing down their compute spending, which I think is honestly a really good sign for the business, because as we know, AI so far is incredibly unprofitable, at least on the frontier end of things. OpenAI said that their Q2 revenue grew to $6.7 billion, which disappointed investors actually, because the quarter-over-quarter growth was only 18%. And in the AI world, these people want like triple-digit growth every quarter, but their operating loss widened from $9.3

• 49:42Ed Elson?

  billion in Q1 to $12.3 billion in Q2. So these are incredibly unprofitable businesses. Anthropic is saying that they have hit adjusted operating profitability, which is a good sign, but personally, I don't really believe it. It's not really clear what adjustments they're making, and my instinct would be that it is kind of BS accounting. But we will find out when the S1 is released, which I'm hearing is going to be very, very soon. And I think that that document is really going to be the pivotal moment in the AI story. We will finally see what the economics of AI actually look like, and that will be

• 50:23Ed Elson?

  sort of the watershed moment, I think. So that's where we are in the AI business landscape. Scott, do you have any thoughts on the Anthropic S1, what we might see, the profitability of AI from the data that we are aware of, the AI business at large?

• 50:39Scott Galloway?

  For better or for worse, I get it wrong a lot, but I usually have a view where I think I'm mostly right and mostly understand what's going on. As it relates to the revenue numbers, the IPO, and the shareholder value increases, I look at the existential threat posed by these things. I look at the capex, which is just so extraordinary, that the numbers I've heard is so far, the total revenue of AI is about $150 to $200 billion they're spending. And their capex means it needs to get to two and a half trillion, which is bigger than all the revenues or greater than all the revenues of tech. And I think, okay, this is like every other technology. It's exciting. The technology will persevere. It will result in incredible productivity and incredible companies, similar

• 51:21Scott Galloway?

  to railroads, the electric grid, the internet, we're going to have an enormous correction down. I can make an argument for that narrative. And then I hear that OpenAI, in seven months, has increased its ARR from $9 billion to $65 billion. I mean, that's just extraordinary. And when you hear them say that actually, on, you know, quote-unquote adjusted EBITDA, when you think about the gross margins they have, you think, wow, maybe this, maybe it could be worth $10 trillion. Depending on what day you talk to me, I'm more, because I think I have more bias towards being a bear and a bit more glass-half-empty kind of guy. I'm more the, this is, this looks more like the railroads and the internet,

• 52:05Scott Galloway?

  and that is the technology will survive these valuations. But these valuations are going to have real volatility, which is Latin for there's going to be an enormous correction. But then you do hear that I have friends who have invested in these companies who have access to their numbers, and they've said, the numbers are just absolutely staggering and show no slowing. When I say the numbers, the revenue numbers- They always focus on the revenue. -are staggering and show no signs of slowing. So I think the S1 is going to be fascinating. What will be interesting about the S1, though, is that you can bet that the S1 will have been battle-tested a million times. And what I mean by that is they will have uploaded the S1 to every LLM and say, please distill this. And they're going to write the S1 to

• 52:47Scott Galloway?

  make sure that when AI distills it down to a series of bullet points, it reflects well on the valuation. So it's, no matter, you know, I'm, I merely think, well, once the Anthropic valuation gets out, I'm going to Claude and I'm saying, is this a good or a bad idea? Please summarize this 400-page S1. You can bet that that distillation has been run a couple thousand times every which way, but loose by the folks at good, the folks at Anthropic. So I, anyway, I'm, regardless, I am fascinated to see the S1 here. For me, it's going to be a lot of analysis around what the gross margins are, because WeWork was growing really fast, but the faster it grew, the more money it lost. And is there

• 53:27Scott Galloway?

  a tipping point where capex costs begin to come down, the gross margins go up because they have so much pricing power, and they're selling so much into business, which tends to be more price-inelastic. And once these things go profitable, if they maintain anything resembling the growth rates they have, they're going to be the most profitable companies in history within a few years. There's a scenario where that is viable.

• 53:52Ed Elson?

  I mean, so far, the arguments that I've heard from, I guess, the bears, the arguments that I've heard about why the AI economics don't make sense have been very, very justified, backed up, and compelling, particularly the arguments made by, that Ed Zitron has been making. The arguments that I've heard as to why the AI economics do make sense have been, in my view, not very compelling at all. Usually, it's just talks about ARR that is growing into the future, but not actually acknowledging the elephant in the room, which is that they're paying more to get that revenue, and it's growing every day. I mean, the losses continue to expand. I also hear people say, no, but Anthropic has figured it out. To

• 54:35Ed Elson?

  me, I'll believe it when I see it. I'll believe it when I see in the S1 that the economics actually do make sense, the unit economics of being a frontier AI lab. But so far, I haven't seen any evidence of that. And I would have thought that if people really wanted to put the bears to bed on this and to end this profitability question, if Anthropic supposedly does have operating profitability, or adjusted operating profitability, then why wouldn't they just show it to us? Why wouldn't we actually see it? Why wouldn't those investors just say, yeah, this is what they've got? I mean, they seem to be very happy to gloat about these other numbers, but they're very high, very silent, hush, hush, about certain other numbers. So to me, I think this profitability question is

• 55:18Ed Elson?

  enormous. So far, I believe that neither company is even close to profitable. That's my personal belief. We don't really know, and we'll have to see when we get that S1. The only thing we do know about the S1, according to the Wall Street Journal, is that Anthropic is going to tell investors that their total addressable market is $30 trillion, which would be higher than SpaceX's total addressable market claim of $28.5 trillion, which they said was the largest in, quote, "human history." $30 trillion, that would be roughly equal to the GDP of America. That makes me think that what we might see in this S1 is a lot

• 56:03Ed Elson?

  of massaging of numbers and frankly, a lot of BS. And it's disappointing, because I actually want to like this company. I think that compared to OpenAI, they have executed AI quite well, from the business side and from the technology side. But then I hear the stuff like that. I'm like, can we give it a rest with the pumping and the BS? Can we just state truthfully what actually is going on with these businesses? But we'll see. We'll see when it comes out. Hopefully, it comes out soon.

• 56:36Ed Elson?

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

• 56:53Speaker 08

  The new LinkedIn Hiring Pro can't undo your last hire. The no show. Who set you back because they didn't show up on day one? Or day two, or ever again? And now your product launch is delayed because you're talking to alien abduction podcasters to track them down. But LinkedIn Hiring Pro can help make sure your next hire sticks. In fact, businesses who use LinkedIn are 24% less likely to reopen a role in the next 12 months. Hire right the first time with LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Post a free job today at LinkedIn.com/quality.

• 57:25Speaker 02

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

• 57:54Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks. Made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks. Now made with no artificial dyes.

• 58:27Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. A new era is underway at Apple. John Turnis has officially taken over as CEO. And last week, he introduced Apple's latest major product, the foldable iPhone. It is the biggest change to the phone in nearly a decade and one of the first major signals of what Apple might look like under John Ternus. So as he takes the reins, let's take a look at what is next for Apple. And it starts with the foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo. Scott, this device costs $2,000 at the low end, $3,000, more than $3,000 at the high end. It is the size of a passport. It's 80% larger than the iPhone 18.

• 59:11Ed Elson?

  What do you make of the iPhone Duo?

• 59:14Scott Galloway?

  I like it because some people call it multitasking, but I like to think of it as ignoring two responsibilities at once. I like the idea that I can scroll and ignore my emails at the same time. By the way, I don't even check my emails anymore.

• 59:27Ed Elson?

  I've noticed. Yeah. We've got to call you to get your attention.

• 59:29Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. So even texting, it's a fucking Charles Schumer calls me with one more urgent request for $5 and I'm going to have had it. Look, I don't, so right now it's super interesting. It's a niche market. Your, your point's the right one. This has nothing to do with Ternus. Maybe he was involved in it, but anything that happens for the next 12 or 18 months is basically remnant, remnant decisions made by Cook. This is exciting. I think that this was good of Cook. I think it shows his responsibility as a leader. I mean, just think about the ego. He might, he might have, he could have easily negotiated, I want to be around, I want to announce this and leave in a blaze of glory, right? But he said, no, it's more important for the company to have a new innovative product

• 1:00:13Scott Galloway?

  under the auspices of a new exciting announcement about a new CEO. So the first thing I thought about was this speaks well to Cook's ego. I think most CEOs would have wanted to stick around and made this their swan song because I do think it's an exciting product. One of my colleagues at NY Stern, a guy named Peter Goldner, who's now at the Tuck School, had this really, really, what I felt was a remarkable insight and it's changed the way I've thought about the term innovation, which is overused. Innovators almost always lose money. And that is the true innovator, the one that's first, ends up with mud on their face and arrows in their back. And Apple was not first in MP3s. They were not first in laptops. They were not first in touchscreen. They were certainly not first in smartphones. Foldable phones have been out for seven years.

• 1:00:58Scott Galloway?

  It's a niche market, but what Apple typically does is they are the world's best, most profitable second mouse in history. And that is they wait, they watch, they learn, and they come in and they make something more elegant, more utile, more aspirational. And people weigh in and did do what I tried to do last night. I tried to buy one and I was all pissed off and thought it was sold out. And then someone reminded me they're not available. You can't buy them for another two weeks. But that didn't stop me from spending an hour on the Apple side, thinking I could figure out how to order one. I think this product, I think Samsung is just going to be so pissed off because I think Apple is going to come in and sell more foldable phones in the first 60 days that have been sold in the last seven years across the entire market.

• 1:01:42Scott Galloway?

  I told you in the editorial call, I want you and Claire and Mia to do sort of a no mercy, no malice product review. But the way I see it is everyone is saying $2,000. This is too expensive. The way I see it is it's less expensive than your iPhone and your laptop. And I think the vision of this thing is that it combines the two. It obviates the need for both, that with one of these, you'll no longer need your laptop. And so I think it could be, I think Apple does just such an amazing job with hardware. I think this could be a hit for them. I also think it signals innovation.

• 1:02:24Scott Galloway?

  So I, you know, if I had to bet, I'm not, I'm not a product review person. I was saying on Pivot with Kara, it's too bad that Walt isn't still active. It'd be very, I'd be very curious to get a true product review from, from somebody more thoughtful than me about hardware. But I think this is a, I think it's an interesting move. I think, and my bet is, just as I was, I was way more bearish. I mean, I thought the mixed reality headset was just, which is fucking ridiculous. And we got that one right. I am cautiously optimistic about this one. Your thoughts?

• 1:02:56Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm less optimistic. I just think it looked, I think it's too large and too cumbersome. And I don't, I mean, they, they've called it the most, they've called it, quote, "the most transformational iPhone experience since the original." It feels as if they're, they're trying to present this as like, this is the Apple future. And I just don't find it cool or compelling enough. Having said that though, I have been publicly kind of bearish on Apple for a while. Last year I said, I thought that the stock was going to have a sluggish outlook and potentially even go down. And that isn't what we've seen. Apple has been the outperformer of big tech, up 19% year to date, up 40% over the past year.

• 1:03:41Ed Elson?

  And, you know, I have been wrong about this so far, but I, I mean, I've told you this before, I look at their growth prospects and their technological innovation. I don't find it that impressive. And when you look at this company trading at 36 times earnings compared to the S and P at around 26, yes, they are spending less money on capex, significantly less, $11 billion compared to, say, Alphabet spending more than $200 billion on capex because they are joining the AI race. You know, that's good, but it's like, okay, well, what else are you building? What are you taking those savings and doing with? What are you, what are you doing with those savings that you are collecting in that war

• 1:04:26Ed Elson?

  chest that you are building by not joining the AI race? And if it's, you're building a foldable iPhone, I'm not impressed. I would be more bullish actually on building a data center than selling a foldable iPhone, especially considering, as you point out, this has been done for a long time. Samsung did it. Motorola did it. I think Google did one as well. I mean, people have been doing the foldable, foldable phone. It's a thing that exists and it hasn't really taken the world by storm. I think it's been like a mildly successful product. So I, I'd want to see more from Apple. I'd want to see something that really blows me away. And to be honest, this, this doesn't, this doesn't really do it for me.

• 1:05:08Scott Galloway?

  Well, I don't know if you heard, but John Ternus speculates that there's an 11% chance that the folding phone will destroy humanity.

• 1:05:16Ed Elson?

  That would be interesting. I mean, that would get my attention.

• 1:05:19Scott Galloway?

  That'd make you sit up and buy more stock.

• 1:05:22Ed Elson?

  Exactly. I want to hear how you're going to crush society and ruin the world.

• 1:05:27Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, that's what real leadership is.

• 1:05:31Scott Galloway?

  Tell us how you're going to end humanity.

• 1:05:33Ed Elson?

  Exactly.

• 1:05:34Scott Galloway?

  Do they, do they make that dress for a man?

• 1:05:38Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I don't.

• 1:05:40Ed Elson?

  It's a strangely accurate statement that you're making.

• 1:05:43Scott Galloway?

  Apple feels like a Disney film compared to this fucking AI shit right now. It's like, oh, we're going to end humanity. Oh, it's a foldable phone.

• 1:05:51Ed Elson?

  Foldable phone.

• 1:05:52Scott Galloway?

  I'll buy a foldable. Actually, as I think about it, I'm hoping it wins. I like the idea of watching Friends and Neighbors and Euphoria and Sydney Sweeney on two screens while pretending I'm taking pictures of my kids versus a 1 in 10 chance that humanity ends.

• 1:06:12Ed Elson?

  That's Apple's future. Well, on that point, John Ternus, this is his, the beginning of his tenure. We don't really know that much about him. He hasn't spoken publicly very much, so I think it's hard for anyone to tell really who he is or what he's going for. But, you know, it's early days, but he's taken over a $4.7 trillion company. He's leading the second most valuable company in the world. He has some very big shoes to fill following Tim Cook, who was arguably the greatest operator CEO in American history. And then before him, Steve Jobs, who is arguably the greatest visionary in, I would say, maybe modern American history.

• 1:06:53Ed Elson?

  On that note, let's just take a look at some of Apple's most iconic moments from their CEOs over the past several decades. Here is a little compilation that we're going to play.

• 1:07:03Speaker 09

  So iPod, 1,000 songs in your pockets. There's been nothing like this before. And I don't think there's another company that could do this. What we want to do is make a leapfrog product that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been and super easy to use. This is what iPhone is. Okay?

• 1:07:31Speaker 09

  So we're going to reinvent the phone. What would happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up?

• 1:07:40Speaker 09

  Well,

• 1:07:43Speaker 09

  this is the result. It's one of the most amazing things we've ever created. It is our new MacBook Air, and we think it's the future of notebooks.

• 1:07:56Scott Galloway?

  We have one more thing.

• 1:08:00Scott Galloway?

  Apple Watch is the most personal device we've ever created. We set out to make the best watch in the world.

• 1:08:10Ed Elson?

  John Ternus has a lot to live up to. Scott, what do you think his legacy will be? Will he make up? Will he live up to the legacy of his predecessors?

• 1:08:21Scott Galloway?

  Oh, you know, I don't know, but the odds are no. Because he's filling the biggest shoes that were filled by the biggest shoes in history. Two people, so Steve Jobs sort of changed the world, kind of defined this era of the idolatry of innovators. Tim Cook added more shareholder value to a company than any CEO in history. When he took over Apple, I think it was a three or $350 billion market cap company. Now it's what, four or five trillion? So I think he's sort of neck and neck with Jensen for who's added the most shareholder value. He also just acquitted himself really well. You just knew that you weren't going to find Tim Cook in the Epstein files. He just wasn't that, he just, he was restrained. He was dignified. He did not shitpost or criticize other people.

• 1:09:06Scott Galloway?

  I think he fucked up at the end, being a little too obsequious to Trump, but you know, the 34, the 34 frames of the 35 millimeter film here of Tim Cook is unprecedented. So it's just unlikely that you have what was largely considered the greatest innovator in history. Then you have the person who's added the most shareholder value in history, that you hit a trifecta with a third CEO who's able to do anything resembling the first two. It's something, just taking it to private investments. I was reviewing my private investments. I haven't made much money in the last two years. And a lot of my privates have just, I've just not done well.

• 1:09:46Scott Galloway?

  And what I have determined, I was trying to go through, it is very rare to, that a founder hits two wins in a row.

• 1:09:57Scott Galloway?

  I, I have yet to invest in a guy who had a big win and then his next company, he's able to raise a lot of money for his next company and almost always never works. So many moons have to line up for the kind of shareholder gains and the kind of success you need for success in technology, that just the likelihood it goes from 300 billion to four trillion and then continues to roll from there. I just statistically think the deck is a bit stacked against him. And, but having said that, he's sitting on top of what is the world's greatest consumer brand in the world. I would argue MIT and Stanford are the greatest consumer brands in the world, but in terms

• 1:10:36Scott Galloway?

  of what people would qualify as a true consumer brand, it is, it is, in my view, unprecedented. What Apple has done, and people get it wrong, they say it's a tech product, it's not, it's a luxury product. In that is iOS identifies you or signals that you're one of the billion most worthwhile or worthy mates in the world. If you're carrying an Android phone, it means things haven't panned out for you and that your, your, your DNA should probably, that branch should probably, and you should probably not be allowed to reproduce. iPhone says, I'm creative. I'm so good at what I do. I make enough money to spend three months of the average Turkish household salary on iOS. You can basically get an Android phone for free.

• 1:11:21Scott Galloway?

  This product is wildly overpriced, but the brand itself, iOS, sends such a strong signal. Yeah, I think they're going to sell a lot of these things for pure signaling. I think a lot of people are going to be excited to be at dinner and fold out their new Apple phone and have everyone go, ooh, you're creative, you're an innovator, and you have, clearly have $2,000 in disposable income to drop on a foldable phone. But going to Ternus, his legacy? This is a company that has an incredible bench. I am sure he's a talented guy. I'd be shocked if he didn't acquit himself well. The likelihood, if you look back in history at the most valuable companies at that moment, they very rarely go more than one or two decades. General Electric was the most valuable company.

• 1:12:06Scott Galloway?

  Walmart was the most valuable company. Saudi Aramco, for a while, was the most valuable. It is very rare that you stay at the top of the heap for very long.

• 1:12:16Ed Elson?

  All right, let's take a look at the week ahead. All eyes will be on Kevin Warsh as he delivers his next interest rate decision on Wednesday. On Cowshy, the odds that he will raise rates are currently above 60%. Scott, any predictions?

• 1:12:31Scott Galloway?

  I think he's going to raise. We'll see. I think, I've heard some weird brumblings about him personally, but I, I come back to,

• 1:12:43Scott Galloway?

  it's a 12-year appointment. There's not a lot that Trump can do. Trump will be batshit furious, but I don't see what he can do. And this would be a profile and courage moment. I'm worried about inflation, oil's over $100, I'm going to raise rates a quarter of a point. I think he would be hugely lauded in the marketplace if he raised rates. And I think his ego and the kevlar of a 12-year appointment, what, what did Chairman Powell prove to us? That as angry as Trump is, as powerful as he is, he can't remove the Fed chairman. So I'm going to say, I think he raises.

• 1:13:23Ed Elson?

  I was going to do the same. I think he raises. I'm honestly very tentative about it because I also think this guy likes to surprise people. I think if not this month, then the next one. But I feel very confident that it happens in 2027. I mean, I think the thing, I mean, the midterms are obviously a big, a big question mark and the extent to which there's going to be a relationship between the two. But if he is a independent Fed chair, if he truly cares about Fed independence, if he truly cares about interest rate policy, monetary policy, as much as he says he does, then I think the only answer here is raise. So I mean, I tentatively say I think so too.

• 1:14:08Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Jorge Carti. Our research team is Dan Shalan, Chris Nudonahue and Mia Silverio. Jake McPherson is our social producer. Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on the markets.