Conversation with Bradley Tusk — The Intersection of Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, and Politics

Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist, and writer, joins Scott to discuss the current state of venture capital, the upcoming presidential election, and his novel Obvious in Hindsight – which is a satirical look at how capitalism, politics, and entrepreneurship intersect. Scott opens with his thoughts on concentration in the stock market, how the specific crowds out the general, and whether regulators should be going after companies for “addictive design.” Algebra of Happiness: be there for your kids. 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

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:00Scott Galloway?

  Episode 288. Route 288 is a north-south highway located in New York. In 1988, CDs outsold vinyl records for the first time in the US. My mate's Battlefield Galactica CD won't eject from my 320GB dual-processor PlayStation 4 NSFW.

• 1:20Scott Galloway?

  Okay, now that all the women have stopped listening, does anyone know any good porn sites?

• 1:35Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 288th episode of the Prop G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist, and writer. We discuss with Bradley the current state of venture capital, the upcoming presidential election, and his novel, Obvious in Hindsight, which is a satirical look at how capitalism, politics, and entrepreneurship intersect. I like Bradley Tusk a lot. He's very insightful. He's this sort of, he was the deputy governor of Michigan, and then he ran the Bloomberg campaign, I think in his 30s, for mayor, the successful campaign. And now he has a venture capital firm and kind of offers this unique... Value proposition, and that is he goes into highly regulated industries like or appeals

• 2:17Scott Galloway?

  to highly regulated companies in highly regulated industry like an Uber or DraftKings, whatever it is, and he helps them. It's a lesson in the specific crowds out the general. I think when you're starting a company in a very large sector, you need to kind of focus or specialize or own a niche. As a matter of fact, let me, let me back up here. I did an analysis when I was, when I started L2, I got this study from, I think it was from Deloitte, and they looked at all the private market transactions. They looked at all the acquisitions of private companies, and they looked at the multiple on revenues that was paid for those companies, and it divided them into quintiles, and it tried to suss out what were the common features across the companies in the top quintile that went

• 3:01Scott Galloway?

  for quote unquote irrational multiple. And there were several things. One, they dominated a niche. They were known for a specific, a specific competence, or they addressed a specific small part of the market, the specific crowds out the general. Two, they had recurring revenue. Companies that have recurring revenues are valued at a multiple of revenues as opposed to companies that are transactional. Like a software company has recurring revenues, a retail company has transactional episodic revenues, and the ones with the recurring revenues are valued at a multiple of revenues. The ones with transactional revenue were valued at a multiple of EBITDA. Three, they were very technology-focused. They leveraged technology, or they were in the technology business. Obviously, software continues to eat the world, and generally speaking, companies in the tech sector get

• 3:44Scott Galloway?

  a higher valuation. And then four, and this shocked me, they were international. Why? Because being international gives you a certain diversification of revenues. And if you have a company that appeals to, or if you have a product and service that appeals to companies across border, it means you have something that has probably greater chance for scale and growth, and it also Smooths out the rough patches. So when I started my last company, L2, I said, okay, we're going to focus on the luxury sector. We're going to move from a consulting transactional model to a yearly annual recurring revenue model. We're going to use technology. The reason why I raised $17 million from General Catalyst was to make a huge investment in scraping and software technology such we could go pull data and have the largest data set across our index. And I opened a London office probably sooner than I would

• 4:27Scott Galloway?

  otherwise such that we could have a strong base of European clients. And we ended up selling for eight times revenues. My first company profit was transactional, it was consulting fees. We had some international clients, but not a lot. It was not technology-focused. It was very human-focused. It was super bright people trying to help big corporations sort through their brand issues. And we sold for 2.8 times revenues. Anyways, anyways, long-winded way of saying the specific crowds out the general. I am back in London after a week in the Maldives, but not for long because I'm off to Lisbon and Madrid this weekend. I am going to Madrid for the first time in a long time. I had dinner with a guy last night who is the owner of Atletico Madrid. And talk about thoughtful. This guy's

• 5:11Scott Galloway?

  a total baller, total baller. And he took the time to get a signed shirt, a signed jersey and kit for my 13-year-old. I put it on my kid's bed this morning. He woke up, he put it on, he wanted to wear it to school. He just couldn't have been, just couldn't have been happier. And not only was it nice to give this to my son, but it just, it really cemented like my fondness for this man. I thought this guy went out of his way and was really thoughtful and thought my son would love it and was thinking of me. And I thought, you know, the, I just saw this study on who's the most popular kids in high school. This is a bit of a segue, but stick with me. And generally speaking, the kids that are most popular in high school aren't the best looking, they're not the

• 5:54Scott Galloway?

  most athletic, they're not the best students. It's the kids who like other kids the most.

• 6:03Scott Galloway?

  It's the kids that are friendly and not intimidated and generally show affection and wanna be friends and are nice and like other kids and are impressed by other kids. And they express that admiration. They have the confidence to be nice to other people and like them. And it sounds so basic, but I have found this to play out through life. And that is the easiest way to get someone to like you is quite frankly, just to like them. It's to show an interest in their life, to pay attention to what they're saying. When they make a joke, you know, to lean in and laugh and make them feel good about themselves and to express affection and to compliment them. The greatest underleveraged asset in the world, simply put, is good intentions. What do I mean by that? All of us think nice things about other people.

• 6:47Scott Galloway?

  We think, wow, that guy or gal is impressive. And then something gets in the way, especially with men, where we think, well, it would diminish my macho, it would diminish my masculinity, or they're so impressive, they don't need to hear that. Or somehow it's a zero-sum game, where if I give them a compliment, somehow it reduces my qualities as a person. What bullshit. If you want to be liked, if you want to be appreciated, then demonstrate that affection and appreciation for other people. That has almost nothing to do with the Maldives. The beginning of the vacation, the beginning of the vacation was great. Really supportive. We're all getting along well. The kids are great. You know, can I stay up late? Oh, no problem. Can I go on TikTok? Sure, you deserve it.

• 7:29Scott Galloway?

  By the end of the vacation, and I said this before, it's a supermax prison where I'm gonna tase their ass if they don't, if they don't eat their goddamn lunch. So enough vacation. I am long family. I'm glad to be back and work. Going to Madrid this weekend with a couple guy friends. I'm leaning into my guy, I'm leaning into my guy relationships. I'm going with my friend Orlando Moishant, who I've known for 20 years. And he and I are going to, where are we staying? I don't know where we're staying. I think we're staying at the new Rosewood. Hello, privilege. Hello. And we're going to go out for dinners that will involve a lot of ham and a lot of, they should be wine, but it'll just be a lot of alcohol, but it's going to be great. I've been to Madrid in a long time. Anyways, hola, me, soy coming to Madrid to rejuvenate.

• 8:14Scott Galloway?

  By the way, Madrid is supposedly one of those places that has an incredible lifestyle arbitrage right now. It's a super cool city, is still sort of reasonable. Supposedly, a lot of people in Latin America who have money are moving to Spain, specifically Madrid. So I'm really excited to go to Madrid. Anyways, from the Maldives, back, back for a few podcasts and then off to Madrid. If I sound like I live a privileged life, trust your instincts. In other news, by now we know the magnificent seven, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla dominate the financial markets, but by how much, you may be asking. Por cuanto mucho, profesor Galloway, son el perro Deutsche Bank recently reported that

• 8:55Scott Galloway?

  the profits and market capitalization of these seven firms outpace all listed companies in nearly every G20 country. Think about that. Think about that. These firms basically are bigger than almost any other market, other than US markets. CNBC reported that the combined market cap alone would make the magnificent seven the second largest stock exchange in the world. Microsoft and Apple, for example, each have market capitalization similar to all the combined listings of companies in France, Saudi Arabia, and the UK. Think about that. Think about that. Microsoft and Apple, right? Each of them bigger than huge developed stock markets. I believe that Apple is bigger than every, every company listed on the footsie here in the UK. These things are just, they're just extraordinary.

• 9:39Scott Galloway?

  And I think it speaks to, you know, I write a lot about the, what ails America, and there's some things about America I don't recognize anymore, but there's just no getting around it. And the biggest new wealth creator in the world is AI. And where is AI? It's not only in America. It's not only in one state. It's sort of in a 10-mile drive of San Francisco International Airport. And for all the shitposting about America, California, and San Francisco, what is it about that community that continues to attract the kind of people in the alchemy of risk-taking, technology, capital, vision that brings together these companies that build a market capital? Nvidia is worth more than every Chinese company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Index. Think about that. I mean, there's definitely something unique

• 10:22Scott Galloway?

  about not only America, but specifically California, specifically San Francisco.

• 10:28Scott Galloway?

  Is the concentration good? No, it's bad. It shouldn't be called the S and P 500. It should be called the S and P 7. And I'm a big fan of antitrust. I'm not suggesting you want to break up OpenAI. But does Microsoft, is Microsoft getting to the point where DOJ scrutiny is somewhat warranted? Don't know, don't know. Six of the seven magnificent seven, their fourth quarter earnings changed from a year earlier, averaged 62% to the upside. Get that, right? The other 495 S and P 500 companies had an average decline of 9%. In some, it's basically the S and P 6, and then the rest of the market sucks. So what does that mean? There's this misperception that the markets are healthy right now. There's this misperception that the markets performed well last year. But here's the thing, if you didn't have one of those seven stocks, you're fucked. Basically, you're flat to down.

• 11:13Scott Galloway?

  What does that mean? It speaks to the importance of an investment strategy where you go for index funds and ETFs. Because if you went into an index fund, then guess what? 33% of your capital is invested in these seven companies. Why? Because these seven companies make up 33% on a weight adjusted basis of the S and P 500. So what do you want to do? You don't want to be a hero. Give up the notion that you're some sort of genius around stock breaking and buy low-cost ETF and index funds. Okay, moving on. Two companies that are in the news for alleged addictive behavior, TikTok and Match Group, filed by six plaintiffs. There's a class action lawsuit against Match Group, the owner of Hinge, Tinder and The League, which argues that these dating apps participate in predatory business practices and push

• 11:58Scott Galloway?

  for compulsive use. The complaint states that the gamification of these platforms transform users into gamblers locked into a search for psychological rewards that Match makes elusive on purpose. Over in the land of TikTok, the EU is investigating whether the firm's addictive design exposed children to harmful content. As a reminder, the EU with its Digital Services Act has been all over social media companies that spread misinformation. The act allows for fines of up to 6% of a company's total global revenues if they fail to prevent the spread of harmful content. This act is particularly concerning with protecting children's well-being. Okay. Here's my take. I don't see how you're going to find a company guilty of promoting addictive behavior. We knew nicotine was addictive, but that, you know, ice cream is addictive.

• 12:43Scott Galloway?

  I'm addicted to working out. Does that mean Equinox is guilty of figuring out a way that my norepinephrine gets released and they're should be guilty of my addictive behavior to working out? Should Maker's Mark or Diageo that makes the capa be guilty because there's something definitely addictive about alcohol? I don't think that works. What I think works is the following, and that is if you're essentially using these techniques to get people under the age of 18 addicted to a platform that then doesn't put in place the safeguards such that they don't end up not only having suicidal ideation, but you increase those thoughts around suicidal ideation, and then you send them emails with images of nooses, pills and razors, and a 14-year-old kills

• 13:27Scott Galloway?

  herself, as she did here in the UK, then the platform, then the platform should have liability. We should remove Section 230 protections for things like harm of children, anyone under the age of 18, things to do with the election, spreading misinformation, the results in what we'd call, I don't know, I think they just have more of an obligation around telling the truth, even when they know they're spreading misinformation. What should we do if these addictive mechanisms, which quite frankly, every company and every app builds into its app, I don't see how you're gonna, I mean, you're gonna go after everybody if you start going after people who try to make them addictive. But what kind of harm does that addiction levy on people? If your nicotine is addictive and

• 14:09Scott Galloway?

  then you know that the actual combustible to deliver that nicotine is giving people cancer, and you go out of your way to delay and obfuscate those findings, and you knew it was giving people cancer, then boom, you're liable and a plaintiff's attorney or a class action suit should hit you hard. So if Match is making dating addictive, okay, but what's the harm? These are adults. They're not children. They're not children. If they put up fraudulent profiles, and supposedly they've been doing this, that say, okay, there's more opportunity here. Then there really is such that we get you to sign up and renew, then that's fraud. I think they're going down the wrong path here, trying to go after companies by saying they're guilty if they implement addictive designs. I have an online education company section. We want it to be addictive.

• 14:53Scott Galloway?

  We want people to get used to, or we want them to be on the site and have an experience on the site and experience with our classes where they think, wow, I feel a lot of self-esteem. I feel like this camaraderie, right? Hopefully that's addictive. A 2022 paper by the American Economic Review revealed that roughly 31% of social media use comes from the lack of self-control. And this brings us up to our post from last week on gambling or gaming. I believe the fastest growing industry in the world, over $10 billion, other than AI, is, wait for it, gaming, or specifically gambling. And just as putting banking applications on smartphones and giving people the ability

• 15:34Scott Galloway?

  to transfer their funds from Silicon Valley Bank to JP Morgan in about seven minutes, and then when a bunch of incel panic broom weirdos libertarian, tech libertarian in their 50s decided to try and get fame by saying that there were going to be lines around the block for banks, and everyone thinks, well, what's the downside of transferring my money out of SVB? Boom, you'll have a bank run. That was an unintended consequence of the lack of friction that smartphones present. The same is true of gaming, which is a kind of a fancy word for gambling. Also, also, as with many of these apps, it specifically targets young men, right? Think about Coinbase, right?

• 16:15Scott Galloway?

  Think about, think about even a Netflix, think about a Reddit, a Discord, think about, many of these apps either target young women or young men. Why? Why? Because in our nation, it's open season on young people. Specifically, it's open season on young men. If there were 100,000 seniors dying with adult diapers imported from China because they weren't, they had some type of allergic reaction to a illegal plastic being put on these diapers in order to make them cheaper, do you think we would put up with that shit? Oh, my God, Congress would move so fast. Why? Why? Because Congress is the fucking land of the Golden Girls and the Walking Dead, and they don't protect young people. They specifically don't care about young men. Why? Because the most powerful companies

• 16:59Scott Galloway?

  in the world target this bias or this proclivity towards addiction because their brains aren't fully formed yet. Why? Because these people don't care about them. Why? Because anthropologically, we see men as disposable. In addition, they have no representation in Congress. The average age of an American is 38. The average age of our elected representative is 64. Jesus Christ, just look at the ridiculousness of our presidential election right now, where we have dead versus debtor running. Jesus. Have we gone fucking insane? Have we gone insane? It is open season on young people, and specifically, open season on young men. And the lack of regulation, the lack of education around gaming just cements this. So what should we do? I don't think you're going to penalize young men. If you can go to war at the age

• 17:44Scott Galloway?

  of 18 and kill yourself, if you can just decide to sit and eat ice cream and sequester from friends and eventually get diabetes and die of depression, that's your ride. And the best regulation is life lessons. But we need more education. In high school, we need lessons. We need health. We need adulting courses, whatever you want to call it, that teach the difference between men and women and say the male brain is more prone to addiction. 85% of people who get in trouble with gaming are men. Are men. And this is a terrible addiction. And what does that mean? What does that mean? You have to be cognizant of the risks. And also, let's look at the data. If you gamble for long enough, you're just going to lose. There's just no getting around it. So think of it as consumption. And by the way, I love gambling. I love it. It's a ton of fun. And here's a general rule.

• 18:29Scott Galloway?

  If I'm going to gamble with 100 bucks, I expect to lose it all. And that way, if I lose it all, I'm fine. I'm fine. But let's be clear. It's time to close down the season. It's time to reject the permits that our nation keeps offering to people to have open season on our youth and specifically, our young men. We'll be right back for our conversation with Bradley Tusk.

• 18:52Scott Galloway?

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• 19:37Scott Galloway?

  Find out why Nutraful is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at nutraful.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com, promo code PROP G. That's nutraful.com promo code PROP G. Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch-up when audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. Their Agentic Trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down.

• 20:22Scott Galloway?

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• 21:02Scott Galloway?

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

• 21:47Scott Galloway?

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• 22:19Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist, and writer.

• 22:26Scott Galloway?

  Bradley, where does this podcast find you?

• 22:28Bradley Tusk?

  I am at my office on 20th and Park.

• 22:31Scott Galloway?

  Let's bust right into it. Most people know you as kind of a political operative slash player, but you're also a venture capitalist and you're raising, what, your third fund?

• 22:40Bradley Tusk?

  Raising our fourth, investing out of our third.

• 22:42Scott Galloway?

  Oh, good for you. So, give us the state of the union or where you think the atmospherics are around venture capital right now.

• 22:49Bradley Tusk?

  So I mean, I think that we're hopefully towards the tail end of a period where there's been a lot of lack of liquidity, not a lot of M and A, very few IPOs. You know, I think if interest rates are cut, and that should happen at some point according, you know, in the next 12 months, that will probably open things back up. If you were me and you're a VC, you haven't enjoyed the last few years because you haven't made any money. However, from a macro standpoint, it was probably pretty good for venture capital technology and the economy overall because we had way too many startups valued at way too much money. We had way too many venture capital funds who really had no reason to exist.

• 23:33Bradley Tusk?

  And what this is doing is A, it's going to get rid of a lot of the stuff that shouldn't have existed, and B, it's going to right-size valuations. So rather than a company going public at 70 billion and then being immediately cut by the public markets by 80%, things will be where they should be in the first place.

• 23:49Scott Galloway?

  And isn't the tail that wags the dog the IPO markets? We need a half a dozen to a dozen monster venture-backed IPOs to inspire liquidity and froth and kind of the animal spirits. And we kind of had a head fake in Q3 of last year. A couple of firms got out, but they're broken IPOs, or many of them are. You see that coming in the back half of this year?

• 24:11Bradley Tusk?

  Yeah, I mean, I think so. I mean, there's definitely talk about it. I have one company circle that I think this is public has said they filed their S1, they're big in the crypto space. So yeah, I think so, but I still think that, like you said, it's almost everyone's waiting for someone to go first. And I think generally people are waiting for Powell to go. But at the same time, if some IPOs got put on the books and they did well, then I think everyone else would follow suit pretty quickly.

• 24:41Scott Galloway?

  What do you think? Okay, so there's Circle. I saw that Shein filed, which is a monster and, you know, that's a big one. What, do you know anything about Shein? What are your thoughts there?

• 24:51Bradley Tusk?

  Not really. I mean, it's, it's an interesting company and seems like they've sort of built a good model between kind of physical and digital. But, you know, look, all the, if, if they can launch a monster IPO and that loosens up the marketplace, like, great.

• 25:07Scott Galloway?

  And give us your state of the union regarding the crypto space.

• 25:11Bradley Tusk?

  I think that overall, there was clearly a major decline. There's decline in two ways, right? So there is the financial decline, which we saw as, as the prices of Bitcoin, Ethereum fell. There's been some rebounding recently in terms of that. And then in my world, where I tend to focus on the regulatory aspects of tech, there had been this kind of internecent battle between the CFTC and the SEC for who would be the kind of primary crypto regulator in the US. Crypto community prefer the CFTC. The traditional bankers prefer the SEC. I think when Sam Bankman-Fried happened, that kind of threw the game over to the SEC, right? That all of a sudden that discredited the sector enough that Gary Gensler was able

• 25:55Bradley Tusk?

  to kind of make his case that, that he should be the one to be cracking down on crypto. And so that, I think, has sort of been accepted at this point. But with that said, you know, they've, they've filed suit against companies they think are doing things wrong, which is totally what they should be doing. But overall, there hasn't been as much proactive crackdown by the SEC against crypto as I would have expected. And then, of course, all they really have is the, not all, but it's the power of their rulemaking and their enforcement, because they're not getting anything through Congress. No one's getting anything through Congress one way or the other. And then, look, if Trump wins, who knows? I don't even know what his views on crypto are. He doesn't know what his views on crypto are. So like, he could appoint, it certainly won't be Gary Gensler, but he could appoint someone around the SEC who's wildly pro crypto

• 26:40Bradley Tusk?

  or anti crypto. Like, you know, with Biden, it'll presumably be a continuation of what we have, but it's possible in 12 months that, like, everything's different.

• 26:50Scott Galloway?

  And so you're raising a fourth fund. You're small. You've raised kind of your bite size, if you will, as you raised. Your first one was 35 million and 70, then 139 for Fund III. How much are you trying to raise in Fund IV?

• 27:02Bradley Tusk?

  Target is 200.

• 27:03Scott Galloway?

  Okay, so 200 million is real money, but in the world of VC, it's

• 27:06Bradley Tusk?

  Small.

• 27:07Scott Galloway?

  It's a pecking on the elephant. So in order to do that, you have to, you know, you have to have a niche. You have to specialize. What is your pitch? What value add do you bring as opposed to just investing in general catalyst?

• 27:19Bradley Tusk?

  Yeah, I mean, we are, as far as I know, the only venture fund that handles all of the regulatory, political, media work for our portfolio company. So I spent the first part of my career, as you know, working directly in politics. I was Michael Burris Campaign Manager, Reformator of New York. I was the Deputy Governor of Illinois. I was Chuck Schumer's Communications Director in the Senate. And then pivoted to tech by running the campaigns to legalize Uber and ride sharing all over the US. Did it again with Clear to get them to airports. And then it finally hit me that there was a nexus between tech and regulation that I hadn't realized before and launched an early-stage venture fund that in many ways were like every early-stage venture fund. We're looking at the founder, at the TAM, at the underlying concept and technology.

• 28:03Bradley Tusk?

  But we ask two questions that I think are unique to us. First, is there a gating regulatory issue or opportunity that if it were solved can really drive growth and valuation? And if so, can we solve it? And when the answer is yes to both, that's really to make sense for us to invest. So our first deal ever was FanDuel. Then we legalized fantasy sports betting in 16 states. Our second deal ever was Lemonade. Got them their insurance license everywhere. Roman legalized prescription via text and so on. So, you know, we are useful if you are a founder where your company is either taking on entrenched interests that are regulated, who are going to try to use the political process to keep you out of business or put you out of business. Or if you're in a white space entirely, whether it's crypto or AI or autonomous vehicles, and there's no regulatory framework at all, and you've got to create one that works for

• 28:48Bradley Tusk?

  you and for your industry, that's when we tend to deploy capital. And the sales pitch is pretty simple. You know, meet with the founder and say, okay, if you succeed, you're going to have the following six regulatory and political problems. You have two ways to approach them. Way one would be hire a bunch of different lobbyists, political consulting firms, pay them millions of dollars. Hopefully, they'll solve the problem for you. Or I can give you 5 million bucks and do it for free. As a result, we tend to win most of our deals.

• 29:16Scott Galloway?

  In terms of an actual space, other than a company that might need some help on the regulatory side, are there specific industries or sectors that you're most bullish on?

• 29:24Bradley Tusk?

  Yeah, so digital health, I would say, is our number one sector because it is, one, so big, right? Each individual category is a massive industry unto itself. Two, so fragmented. Three, so regulated. And four, so screwed up that there's tons of opportunity for us to be involved. So, for example, we invested in Roman, which is a men's health company. Now they've pivoted to GLP-1s. And for them, it was, can you legalize retribution via tax? Because no one knew. For Alma, which is a mental health company that does all the back office work for therapists, so the billing and scheduling and insurance and all of that, it's about cross-state licensure and making sure the therapists in one state can treat patients in another online.

• 30:06Bradley Tusk?

  For Wheel, which is a telemedicine staffing company, it was about ensuring that when California and other states tried to declare all sharing economy workers as full-time employees, that nurses and nurse practitioners stayed out of that legislation and weren't part of it because that would have totally destroyed the business model. So what we found is there's just so many different ways that we can play in the space. So that's kind of become our number one sector. Fintech after that, transportation, gaming. And we can really do anything that is regulated, but obviously, the more and more we learn about a particular sector, the more valuable our expertise becomes.

• 30:40Scott Galloway?

  So I'm just curious to get your take. Well, actually, let's go meta first. You wrote a book called Obvious in Hindsight, which is a satirical look at how capitalism, politics, and entrepreneurship intersect. Give us a sense for what you think, after spending so many years in politics, what was now obvious in hindsight?

• 30:59Bradley Tusk?

  What I have found is people in the tech and venture world fail to understand how people in politics and regulation think, and people in politics and regulation fail to understand how people in tech and venture think. And once you sort of understand the core motivations of each, even if they're different, then a lot of the decisions they make are actually obvious and predictable, or more importantly, in my real life, of running a venture fund, things that we can influence and change, right? So this story is about a campaign to legalize flying cars in New York, LA, and Austin. On one side is the flying car startup and their vicious political consultants. The other side is Uber and Taxi united against it, the Audubon Society, the socialists, the transunions, and the Russian mob.

• 31:43Bradley Tusk?

  And it's a hysterical novel, but ultimately it's really about how do the politics at the local level work where flying cars are clearly on their way to becoming a thing, but it's going to gore a lot of people's ox, right? Whether it's the Audubon Society worrying about sort of the destruction of birds in the sky, or taxis worrying about the value of their medallions, or transit unions worried about self flying cars. And, you know, the book is really how does the startup and their consultants navigate the process so they make the political process work for them, and so they're able to convince the people they need that doing what they want is more likely to help them result in getting reelected? Because that's really all it ever comes down to in politics. If a politician thinks that you can either help them win their next election, or you could cost them their next

• 32:27Bradley Tusk?

  election, which in reality is just the primary because of the gerrymandering, they'll work with you and they'll do what you want. And if they don't think you can have an impact on that, you are completely irrelevant. And so the book is really, how do you, how do you hold those levers of power?

• 32:41Scott Galloway?

  So you struck a chord there, because I've always thought, it enrages me that it takes me anywhere between 27 minutes and two hours to get to LaGuardia. At some point, and helicopters seem somewhat inefficient, or strange, loud, dangerous, the VTOL space, whatever you call it, it strikes me that someone's going to win there. Do you, I'm just curious, and I know this is a bit of a digression, who do you think, or what are the dynamics there? It sounds like you think it's going to happen, and who do you think will be the winners and losers?

• 33:10Bradley Tusk?

  Yeah, so I do think, if now I think it's going to happen, it is happening. And I think in a lot of ways, what EVTOL is today are quiet helicopters, right? So the challenge with helicopters from a political standpoint is they're really loud and noisy, and no one in Queens, when you're trying to take your helicopter from wherever you are in Manhattan to LaGuardia or JFK, wants it going over their house, because helicopters aren't that high up in the sky. EVTOL, the first, the E stands for electric, so as a result, it's silent. So the first piece is, you know, is that enough to make the politics work? I think the answer is yes. So Joby, for example, is a company, I don't have any investments in the space one way or the other, but that did an event here in New York with Mayor

• 33:53Bradley Tusk?

  Adams a couple of months ago where he was touting and saying this is something the city would want to promote because we need ways to get people to the airports faster because building trainings to the plane hasn't worked and would cost tens of billions of dollars. And if you could use EV instead, that would make a big difference. So the first piece is can you get through the regulatory on the FAA side, they are issuing certifications that that vehicles are flight worthy. I mean, there's making progress on the local regulatory side. The fight is just starting. That's what the novel is about. But I think we have seen politicians like Eric Adams embrace it. And then the other question becomes the time for you, right? So you're right that the trip to LaGuardia is super variable. You also know that you could take an Uber to Battery Park

• 34:39Bradley Tusk?

  and from from your apartment and then a blade to LaGuardia. But there's multiple segments there, right? So the reason I never do that is because I got to get the Uber to Berry Park, then I got to get out and wait for the blade and the blades got to take off me a time and land at LaGuardia, then I got to get to my terminal. It's kind of a pain in the ass. Why don't I just sort of I can if I get in a car in front of my apartment or my office, I can just be on the call, be on calls and work the whole way throughout. And so I always land on that. They've got to get the point of predictability where the friction is reduced enough that you and I say, okay, I'm going to have multiple moving parts because I know it's only going to be 23 minutes guaranteed total as opposed to up to two hours. They're not at that yet.

• 35:22Scott Galloway?

  It's funny because I'm living in London and I want to be supportive. So I'm thinking about making some investments in startups. And this is not a startup, but the company I've actually been looking at and it's publicly publicly traded. I think it's a broken SPAC, but I just like the company is Vertical Aerospace. Is this like a winner take all thing where there'll be one company that gets a contract from, I don't know, or gets an investment or Boeing? Or do you think there's going to be multiple winners here?

• 35:50Bradley Tusk?

  No, I mean, first of all, there's like, I think over $8 billion has already been invested in the space. Some of it from the strategics like Boeing or Airbus or whoever. Some of it from venture capitalists who focus on this area. And there's different segments, right? So like, you know, there are some that just focus on cargo, right? There are some that are self-flying. There are some that have pilots. There are some people that envision a world like the Jetsons, where you just have your own self-flying car and hop in and drive, you know, and go from point A to point B. Other people see it more like a bus, where there's a pickup and a drop-off location. So there's a lot of different competing visions for it. So I don't think it's winner-take-all. And I think that we don't really know yet which vision is going to win. Like, I think back to the early days when we did Uber,

• 36:32Bradley Tusk?

  we started off with the black car service and it was successful, but the market was somewhat limited. It was only when we shifted to Uber X did the whole thing really explode. But in the very, very early days of Uber, Travis didn't know that that's the direction the business was going to go in, right? So I think people are going to try out all of these different models, and some of them are just going to work for consumers and some of them are not. Some are going to work politically, some are not. But yeah, I think you have multiple winners.

• 36:57Scott Galloway?

  So I appreciate you indulging me there. Let's get back to your bailiwick. You were and are a player in politics. Give us your no mercy, no malice view of the election right now, the handicap, the presidential race, what you think is going on. And then more specifically, I would just love to get your commentary on the most recent public flogging of the big tech firms.

• 37:20Bradley Tusk?

  Yeah, sure. So on the first one, look, I think that we may be entering a world of one-term presidents, governors, mayors, because the public is fundamentally unhappy, right? So a few things. One is, social media, I would argue, is basically the unhappiness machine. It does two things. It forces you to compare your life to someone's fictional life, so you feel inadequate immediately. And then it shows you everything bad happening everywhere in the world, all at once, compounded by the views of a million idiots. So you feel bad about your own life, you feel bad about yourself. And the next step is existential risk. So when you and I were kids, there was one major existential risk, which was nuclear war. That risk still remains. It's probably worse right now because the proliferation

• 38:05Bradley Tusk?

  of nukes is getting there. And eventually Iran's going to have it, North Korea has it. But now you layer on top of that, climate change, the risk of a real, serious pandemic. I mean, COVID- Had a major impact, but while it was highly transmissible, it wasn't that lethal. But I am sure that a version of COVID that is much more lethal exists in a lab in China, or the US, or Russia, or Israel, or the UK, or somewhere, or more likely all of them. And so the risk of any of those getting out. And then with AI, like, I'm a believer in AI, but none of us, too early for any of us to really know yet what it's going to be. So the amount of existential risk has increased significantly. And then the third bucket would be, a lot of the choices that we made in the 1990s, which is sort of the last time that we had a period of real kind of world peace and

• 38:47Bradley Tusk?

  coordination, was to embrace, you know, free trade and globalization and the birth of the internet. And globally, that's worked really well. Billions of people are better off than they were 20, 30, 40 years ago, where there's fewer people living in extreme poverty, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, higher literacy rates, all of those metrics. But those tend to benefit the people who were the worst off to begin with. And when you take a market that's closed and open it up, then people who are succeeding in the closed market aren't going to do as well, and a lot of those are Americans, right? So when Donald Trump does a MAGA, America First kind of platform, I don't really think that him saying or doing these things is going to change the underlying economics of anything, but I understand the political appeal to it, which is people who felt like

• 39:32Bradley Tusk?

  a generation or two or three ago, they were guaranteed a certain level income, a certain lifestyle, and now that no longer exists. And then you layer in the opioid crisis, terrible public schools, wildly expensive healthcare, you know, guns, immigration, everything else. And like, it is no surprise to me that people feel scared and upset and unhappy. And every politician runs for office promising to fix all of these problems. And the problem is, between low voter turnout, gerrymandering, dominant special interests, and tons of extremism and polarization, they can't really do anything. So everyone fails all of the time. The public gets angry, they want blood, so they hold the incumbent accountable, and the incumbent loses.

• 40:15Bradley Tusk?

  So Trump was a one-term president, Biden very well maybe as well, and we may have five more of these until things right the ship.

• 40:21Scott Galloway?

  So when you say that Biden may very well be a one-term president, I mean, although I'm a moderate, I think of myself as fairly sane, which means I'm for Biden. I know we're all supposed to understand and reach out to the other side. I think to reelect an insurrectionist just makes no fucking sense to me. So. The fact that someone who's much more in touch, and quite frankly, I think you're better regulating your emotions than I am, sees that there's a decent chance that Trump will be reelected. If you were advising the Biden campaign, and for all intents and purposes, maybe you are, what do you think the message needs to be?

• 40:54Bradley Tusk?

  Yeah, so there's two things. So the first question is, I mean, what he should really do if his interest was the public good and not his own good, and he's a politician, which means his interest is his own good, is not right, right? Because when the election is a referendum on Trump, which we not only saw in 2020, but we saw in the midterms in 2018 and 2022, Trump loses. There are more people that choose not to have him than have him. But when the election's a referendum on both Trump and Biden, the incumbent president, in a time where people feel really unhappy, then all of a sudden, the math changes a lot, and it gets a lot better for Trump. So the best thing I would argue Biden could probably do is not run at all. And you let, like a total cipher, like a Gretchen Whitmer, someone that just no one has any opinion on, let them be the nominee, because the point is you want to make the

• 41:39Bradley Tusk?

  entire election just about Trump and nothing else.

• 41:43Scott Galloway?

  Do you still think there's, I mean, we've all secretly hoped that, I mean, deep down, I wish he'd picked what I would think is a VP that better resonates with the US, and then stepped aside and said, I'm going to go down in history as the greatest president ever, best economy in the world, more jobs created exponentially than anyone. I saved you from this orange nightmare. Now I'm handing the reins over to Governors Newsom, Whitmer. Is there still time for that?

• 42:09Bradley Tusk?

  Two things. So one is, is there any human nature in history that would say this is possible? The only real example I can ever point to is George Washington, right? Otherwise, everyone clings to power no matter what. Yeah, and so in a weird way, I think the best the Democrats could do would be not to put a new person forward until the convention in July, because you want the shortest general election possible, because you want it to be just about Trump, not about Trump and the Democratic nominee. And so I actually think the less time the public has to get to know and start to dislike whoever the new person is, the better off you are. So, you know, at the convention, Biden could step down, and then there would be a Giant fight. What would be cool about it is the whole world would be watching because it'd be like

• 42:52Bradley Tusk?

  the first time since the 50s that a convention actually picked the nominee. America loves a winner. And even now in our totally artificial conventions, you still come out of it with a three or four point bounce for a little while. And then you have a much shorter general election with a lot more attention being paid to it. So I think he could, but I don't think he will. Right? So then the question becomes, what's the winning message for Biden? And I'm an independent at this point. I hate, if you think I hate your favorite party, I do. But what Democrats keep getting wrong is they just keep insisting that if the people only knew about one more terrible thing Trump said or did, then they would finally wake up and get it and nobody would vote for this guy and he would lose. They get it. When 47% of voters are telling NBC News, we prefer Trump over Biden compared to the

• 43:36Bradley Tusk?

  42% who are picking Biden. They know every bad thing Trump's ever done. They know he's been indicted on 91 different felony counts. They know all the horrific things he's said and they have still made the decision that in their mind, their life was tangibly better off under Trump than it has been under Biden. And therefore that's what they care about. And what you've got to show those people is actually your life under Trump would be a lot worse. So like, for example, if you take Trump's own advisors that they're worried about their plans if he were to win, dismantling the federal bureaucracy sounds great, but let's use air travelists, we're talking about that as an example. If you cut the number of TSA agents in half, that means the line is twice as long. And if you cut the number of air traffic controllers in half, that means ultimately the number of flights that can run at any given time are only half as many, which means

• 44:21Bradley Tusk?

  flights become more expensive and a lot less frequent. Like I said to people, okay, if you'd like to spend now three or four hours at the airport because of Trump's changes and have to pay twice as much for your flight, which now is only going to run every other day instead of every day, then vote for Trump. And I think that there are corollaries to that in almost every single sector where you've got to show people your real life is going to get worse in these very specific ways. Just taking this guy at his word for what he and his team say they're going to do. If people feel like, oh, I don't want that. And so I do think that there are tangible policy arguments that you can make to people, but people ultimately are voting on what's best for their pocketbook, what's best for their family, what's best for their life, not for democracy as an institution.

• 45:06Bradley Tusk?

  And the left just never seems to understand that until you can pivot to a message of, here's how your life would be worse. I don't think they can win.

• 45:16Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

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• 45:51Speaker 01

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• 46:20Scott Galloway?

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• 47:28Scott Galloway?

  Do you think ultimately the undecideds, the only people that matter here, generally speaking, my view is they don't care about politics. It was like me in my 20s and 30s. I could give a shit about politics until the day before I voted, and then I thought about it and went and voted. If those people determine those 100,000 soccer moms in those five states, whatever it is, don't you think at the end of the day, and again, I'm talking my own book here, don't you think at the end of the day they go, you know, the economy, maybe it's not as good as they're claiming, but it's not bad?

• 47:57Bradley Tusk?

  So I hope so. And by the way, that number can be as small as 45,000 soccer moms. So we're really talking about six states and maybe 30 counties total that matter here. Look, before Trump, no US president who was governing over, presiding over a good economy, and we were not engaged in a ground war with our own troops, ever lost reelection. And then Trump, now COVID obviously made everything even especially weird, but the economy had generally been pretty good. We weren't in a ground war with anyone, and yet he lost because he's Trump, right? And so I think the script has just been flipped, and people's unhappiness now kind of overrides everything else. And you're right, there is a cognitive dissonance

• 48:39Bradley Tusk?

  where all of the economic metrics on job growth and the stock market, and even inflation now, don't line up with how people feel. I mean, consumer spending is tremendous, despite the fact that people tell pollsters that they feel bad about the economy. So the hope is that those views start to rebound. But the reality is the main metric people seem to vote on is inflation, and the real thing there is gas prices and food prices. And those two are still a lot of risk. I mean, every time the Houthis send up a missile and take down a tanker, you know, gas prices go up. And so I'm not sure that's going to fix itself in time for the election. And I just think, generally speaking, we're in this era where things feel so bad that even if they're not that bad, like, I don't know,

• 49:23Bradley Tusk?

  you know, you're in London most of the time now, but like, New York City. The actual crime metrics are not that bad. If you compare crime to the last couple of years, it's it's safe. However, we live in a world where there's 5,000 illegal weed shops that are just allowed to operate, and that just makes you feel lawless. Like, who's in charge here? There's scaffolding on every block that no one ever bothers to to remove. There are junkies whacked out on track, falling asleep on the street. Every time you go to CVS to get a tube of toothpaste, you now have to get someone to unlock a case for you. And so it feels bad. The city feels unsafe. Eric Adams, our mayor, is at a 28% approval rating in the latest Quinnipiac poll. That's the lowest recorded approval rating of any mayor in New York City history.

• 50:05Bradley Tusk?

  And the reason isn't because the city is substantially that bad. It's because the perception is bad, and that's reflecting how people feel.

• 50:14Scott Galloway?

  So I want to, I'm gonna ask you about your 50 reflections of 50, but first, just to wrap up on politics. Whenever I go to Washington, I'm actually, I actually end up feeling better about America, strangely enough. I meet with senators and congresspeople, and on both sides of the aisle, and I generally find that they're either very good actors, or they seem like smart people trying to do the right thing. And, you know, I'm really impressed with senators Warner, Klobuchar, Bennett, people who just strike me as moderates and smart and are trying to do the right thing. Senator Blackburn, who I'm not a fan of, I think she's trying to do the right thing on social media. I don't, I look at Senators Cruz and Graham, and I think they're just total fucking whores pretending to give a shit.

• 50:59Scott Galloway?

  Anyway, the, give us some hope here. What politicians would you want to bring some sunlight to that you think are willing to risk reelection to try and do the right thing?

• 51:10Bradley Tusk?

  So, the risk of cynicism, first of all, the three people you named, Minnesota, Virginia, Colorado, those are all effectively purple slash swing states.

• 51:20Scott Galloway?

  Purple, yeah, moderates.

• 51:21Bradley Tusk?

  Right. So as a result, they have the freedom to be reasonable because they're less hostage to the crazies in their party. Look, as you know, I was Mike Bloomberg's campaign manager when I was mayor of New York. Mike, at this point. Is is too old term for president, but in my view, he would have been the ideal person. And he's the only politician I've ever worked with in my life that genuinely said, and it helps when you have all the money that he has. But nonetheless, genuinely said, every decision is based on what I truly believe is best for the city. And you could disagree with his assessment of something, but it was truly how he decided absolutely everything.

• 51:57Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, if not, I'll go back to my life of private jets and St. Bart's. I'm gonna be just fine.

• 52:02Bradley Tusk?

  Right.

• 52:02Scott Galloway?

  I don't have it. I don't have any trouble getting reservations in restaurants without without the political title.

• 52:07Bradley Tusk?

  Right, or everything else. So, um, you know, there are some people like that who are exceptions to the rule. But or my, this is now pure nepotism. My brother in law, Josh Gottheimer, is a member of Congress. He's from New Jersey. He happens to be in one of the remaining 25 30 swing districts. He is the chairman and founder of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which is a bipartisan group that actually does try to get shit done. Josh is what we should absolutely want. And Josh is actually on bills like infrastructure and cops. You know, he's actually helped move some stuff forward in a meaningful way. But Josh too, you know, has the luxury of representing a swing district. He had to beat a seven term Republican to win the seat. But once he did, you know, yes, he gets a crazy primary from the far left every time.

• 52:53Bradley Tusk?

  But in his district, the the concern of them winning is low enough that Josh can ignore that and just focus on.

• 53:00Scott Galloway?

  Who would you like to see president? And it can't be someone related to you.

• 53:03Bradley Tusk?

  I mean, I think of the to me, of the people who are least talked about right now. Whitmer probably is the combination, I don't even know her personally at all, of someone who seems well qualified, has a good record in Michigan and also is a cipher. Because again, as we discussed, you want to make the election solely a referendum on Trump. So Gavin Newsom has done some really good things. I mean, the stuff he did around housing and and actually kind of making it possible to build in California, I think, was was excellent. But can you paint him as the typical California liberal, smug, whatever it is? You could, so arguably, the election becomes more about him. So the more it's about someone that everyone's like, yeah, fine, which probably that was Biden in 20.

• 53:47Bradley Tusk?

  Nobody had any, but everyone's opinion about it was like, yeah, fine, whatever.

• 53:50Scott Galloway?

  I think Newsom and you as his campaign manager, president of the fifth largest state, most Nobel Prize winners, reelected with 62% of that recall vote, he got 62%. My sense is, and I want to get your response to this, that this is all about contrast. Because you're right, everybody hates the incumbent. You put Nikki Haley on the, on the, on the stage next to Biden, I think she, she kills him in an election.

• 54:12Bradley Tusk?

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 54:13Scott Galloway?

  I think you put Newsom, quite frankly, it's his youth versus tired, tired old people. You put Newsom or Whitmer on the stage with Trump and people look at Trump angry and breathing hard and looking like he's going to have a stroke when he's injecting himself with a Govee and they go, you know, I think I'm going to go with that Whitmer. It just strikes me that the parties would be so much smarter to put up someone under the age of 100.

• 54:40Bradley Tusk?

  Yeah, but, but again, this gets back to the underlying point of our conversation, which is behavioral input, say, policy outputs, right? Whether it's economic or political, who are the people at the parties? They're the people who stand to gain the most if Trump or Biden are the president, right? They're lobbying firms, they're friends, they're everything. It's not like there are these independent mechanisms that just say, we just want to do what's best for the party and the country and we don't care about what the person at the top of our ticket wants. They're totally dependent on that person. If Trump doesn't want Ronna McDaniel to be the chairman of the RNC, she's not going to be the chair of the RNC, right? And so fundamentally, yes, you're right. But, you know, and this is why I kind of keep pushing mobile voting, which is we all

• 55:22Bradley Tusk?

  keep banging our heads against the wall and saying, why can't they be better? Right? And the answer is they're not capable of it. The kind of people who run for office are desperately self-loathing, insecure people who can't live out the validation of holding office and they're never going to pick the public good over their own personal good. And that's true throughout politics, which is why you can't ever get better people. What you can get are better incentives where you align the things that we want to see happen from a policy standpoint with the, with the underlying politics that actually makes sense for the news. That's why people that you cited like Klobuchar and Bennett and Warner, they can actually get away with that, right? You know, you got to align inputs and outputs. And if you don't do that, you know, all of the frustration and outrage in the world isn't going to change it.

• 56:05Scott Galloway?

  So just to wrap up here on a more positive note, for your 50th birthday, and I love this, you published a list of 50 reflections. Can you distill them down to your top three pieces of life advice?

• 56:16Bradley Tusk?

  Yeah, sure. And by the way, a lot of it is, you know, lessons that I've learned the hard way over the years, and you can find it on Medium if you're interested. Look, I've spent a ton of time studying happiness science and behavioral economics and behavioral psychology, and fundamentally, this is the way I see it. I don't believe in reincarnation. I don't believe in an afterlife. This is the one shot I've got here, and it's going to be at most 100 years, which is a blip of time in a 5 billion year old earth. And nobody owes me anything. It is my responsibility to make the most of my life that I possibly can. So number one is, you gotta be proactive. You gotta make shit happen. You gotta take risk. You gotta put yourself out there. You have to be willing to fail. And I fail

• 57:01Bradley Tusk?

  all the time, because you can't succeed. If you're never failing, you're not taking really enough risk in the first place. So the first thing is, you can't expect anyone to do it for you. It's on you. But the second thing is, we do have kind of a warped view in this society, in this country, as to what produces happiness, right? So what at least all of the data says is, two things produce happiness: relationships and fulfillment. If there are people in your life that you really count on, and you know they're going to be there for you and support you no matter what, and vice versa, that really matters. And if you do things that you find fulfilling, and it doesn't have to mean working at a soup kitchen, just things that are intellectually engaging and fulfilling for you, you know, make you feel good about the work that you're doing in some way, whatever it is, that could be through your work, it could be through your hobbies, your faith, whatever it is,

• 57:46Bradley Tusk?

  if you have those two things in your life, you're gonna be happy. You know the grand study that Harvard did?

• 57:51Scott Galloway?

  Grand study, of course.

• 57:52Bradley Tusk?

  Yeah, so like, just for the listeners, basically Harvard took a group of sophomore, sophomores in like 1934, I think, or 38, and then a group of working class young men in Boston the same age, followed them over their entire lives, studied them, met with them constantly, and then said, who was happy and why? And it was the people who had really good relationships and had a job that made them feel good about themselves. You have to figure out the Highest ROI for yourself. And despite what sort of Instagram tells you, it's not really status and wealth. Those are good things to have for sure, but it's really relationships and fulfillment. And so if you can construct your life as much as possible, or I'm trying to maximize for relationships and fulfillment, from a purely selfish standpoint,

• 58:35Bradley Tusk?

  that will generate the most happiness, the best life for you. So if that's really, to me, that whole piece about turning 50, that was the point.

• 58:43Scott Galloway?

  Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist and writer. He is the founder of the political consulting firm Tusk Strategies, as well as the co-founder of Tusk Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests solely in early-stage startups in highly regulated industries. Bradley is also the author of The Fixer, My Adventure Saving Startups From Death by Politics and the novel Obvious in Hindsight. He recently opened a bookstore, podcast studio, event space and cafe called PNT Knitwear on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He's also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Bradley, I always learn from you. I find you take a lot of the things I feel strongly about and are able to distill them down to more kind of actionable. And I'm just, I'm just a, I just admire the way you think

• 59:28Scott Galloway?

  and the way you acquit yourself. Anyways, thanks so much for, for coming on and congrats on, on the bookstore.

• 59:34Bradley Tusk?

  Sure, thank you. Thanks for having me.

• 59:46Scott Galloway?

  Algebra of happiness. I have a friend going through divorce and I was thinking about all the different downsides of divorce. It's financially very stressful. It's emotionally very stressful. It's also very hard on the kids. It's especially hard on boys. When you look at single-parent households, girls have similar outcomes as girls in dual-parent households. It ends up that they're likely to attend college. The amount of money to make, they're Their likelihood of some sort of self harm isn't that much greater when dad is no longer in the picture. And when we're talking about single parent households, we're usually talking about single, single mother, because usually it's the, it's the mother gets custody of the children, which is a whole other talk show. But men kind of are young men,

• 1:00:30Scott Galloway?

  if you were to point to a single point of failure, when men sort of started downward or young boys started downward spiral, it's usually when they lose a male role model. And there's some wonderful people who oftentimes step into that. But what I would, what I was coaching my friend about, and also I know his wife and soon to be ex-wife, is that everyone needs to take responsibility for trying to ensure that that male role model is still really involved. Now, obviously, the real responsibility comes down to first the man, the husband and the wife. You know, it's more than just about you. Marriage used to be a commitment. Now it's considered sort of a lifestyle enhancement. And once it's no longer working for the, the man and the woman, they oftentimes decide to split

• 1:01:13Scott Galloway?

  up. I think mature couples decide that, okay, it's more than just about us when they have kids, especially boys. Not to say that they should be more prone to divorce if they only have daughters, but it does seem to be especially hard on boys. I think there's really additional incentive to figure it out. If you can't, if you can't figure it out, then what I would suggest is it's up to, there's a real onus on the father and the mother. The dad needs to sacrifice professionally, logistically to stay involved. When my parents got divorced, and granted, it was the seventies and my dad didn't have a lot of male role models, but he immediately got offered a better job in Ohio and moved right away. It was a different age. I don't think most people would do that now. But my dad basically was like, I was

• 1:01:58Scott Galloway?

  living with my dad and within like two months, my dad was living in a different state and I saw him twice a year, maybe three times a year. And quite frankly, I've never forgiven him for it. I'm, you know, intellectually and theoretically, I have, but there's just a certain level of lack of connective tissue there that'll never be restored because I just can't help but think, you know, when I was 80, sort of decided to abandon me, to be blunt. Also, I think there's some onus on the mother to not poison or contaminate the kids with a hate dad. And my mom did that for me. When my dad would come pick me up every other weekend when he was still living in Southern California, you know, I was eight years old and we lived in a big apartment complex. I would go down at night and she

• 1:02:43Scott Galloway?

  wouldn't go down with me because she didn't want to see his car. And I think most parents nowadays know better, but I think it's very easy to, or very difficult, I should say, to not let your emotions and your herd infect the kids one way or another and turn it into sort of an us versus them. And almost always, almost always, the kids are going to side with, with the mother because that's usually who they're dealing with. And society has a tendency to believe in any divorce, that it's the woman who's the victim and the male who's the perpetrator, even though data shows that 70% of divorce filings are, are by women, usually after some sort of economic strain on the family. But both dad and mom have

• 1:03:24Scott Galloway?

  an obligation to ensure dad can stay involved in the kid's life. Here is a very scary stat. One in three men, after six years, or six years after the divorce, one in three men have absolutely no contact with their children. And, you know, we wonder why young men are coming off the tracks. Well, it's pretty simple. There aren't enough men involved in young men's lives. Men need male presence. They need male energy in their lives. And divorce tends to be this construct where if people don't make a real effort, it's easy to not have male involvement. In addition, kids, as they enter into their teen years, need to be, in my opinion, and this is a tougher one to count people on, a little bit more forgiving and to realize that life is complicated and there probably isn't just one guilty

• 1:04:07Scott Galloway?

  party here, and be more accepting. I'm, I'm heartbroken by a friend of mine who just got divorced. And quite frankly, his daughters want nothing to do with him. And he's a, he was a wonderful dad, and it's not because they don't love him, but it's because their friends and their mom kind of has priority on stuff and They can't imagine their weekends with their dad and quite frankly, they just make no effort. And maybe that's understandable for teen girls, but I really feel sorry for the father who seems to be trying everything he can. The divorce was not his idea. Divorce is ruining us on so many levels. But one thing you can't adjust for, and I do see a lot of parents that try to do this, let the kids stay in the house, trade off, and

• 1:04:50Scott Galloway?

  really make sacrifices financially, logistically, bearing your own emotions, your own resentment, your own anger, and recognize, recognize that when you get married, it's not only a commitment to that other person. And if even if that commitment fails, your real commitment is to the kids. And so you got to try and put some of that shit away to ensure that the kids have a healthy relationship with both parents.

• 1:05:15Scott Galloway?

  This episode was produced by Caroline Shageran. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly market show.

• 1:05:41Scott Galloway?

  It's not easy to have a flat stomach for a great day. It takes a lot of work, very strict diet. It's very, but it's hot. Ooh, it's hot. She's got this little English spanner, this little cocker spaniel who's just, ooh, can't keep, can't keep his eyes off of her. Welcome to dog erotica. I'm your host, Scott Galloway.

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• 1:06:47Bradley Tusk?

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