The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Hosted by Scott Galloway
As read by George Hahn. https://www.profgalloway.com/fame/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
2,394 words · 11 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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I'm Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice. Desire for fame is rooted deep in the human psyche. In the media age, you can be famous for being famous. Fame, as read by George Han.
Until my 40s, I was known, but not famous. Known in grad school at Berkeley, known in the e-commerce scene in the Bay Area, and after having taught 5,000 students, known around NYU's campus. Day one of fame came in 2016. The team at L2, my business intelligence firm, was headed to our weekly team lunch when, from across the street, we heard,
Prof G, we love your videos!
Two Indian men in their twenties hurriedly crossed the street to tell me they'd never missed our winners and losers videos.
I love Chipotle. I don't care about the hell scare. You could, you could produce a Zika bowl and the big dog is eating more and more of that stuff. By the way, that soy milk you've been buying is just regular milk introducing itself in Spanish.
And that I had a following in India. Then they asked for a selfie. The whole team thought it was odd and amusing that people from several thousand miles away not only knew our work, but also that the work inspired affection and admiration. Every day since then, it's grown. Messengers swerve onto the sidewalk and high five me. Women visiting from Michigan run out of restaurants and ask if I can wait a minute while they get their horrified son to take a selfie with me.
We listen to your pod together.
And today, I'll receive dozens of emails and hundreds of comments from people I've never met or been in the same room with. Fame. Fred Allen said, "A celebrity is someone who works hard to become well-known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized." I've never donned dark glasses as "I love being recognized." I can't think of a time when it didn't make me feel good, even if I was in a hurry. It has, no joke, made me feel better about the world and myself. People are so wonderful to me and almost convince me we're having an impact. The real joy is people recognizing me when I'm with my kids or friends.
Years ago, whenever anything good happened, I would call my mom and tell her first. She was inevitably more excited about my first mortgage or dog than I would ever be. The audible joy on the other end of the line made the achievement and the moment real. Even though she's gone, my first instinct whenever anything good happens is still to call her, to make that good thing real. But she's not around. So many great things feel as if they aren't real, as if they didn't really happen. People recognizing me, saying something nice, make some of the nicer things in my life feel, once again, as if they actually happened.
If I sound a bit fucked up, trust your instincts. There is a dark lining to the silver cloud, one I try not to dwell on. I read recently that for every person who comes up to a celebrity and says something, 50 other people recognize the person but don't approach. In crowded cities and locations, someone might say hi every 20 minutes. That converts to 150 additional people an hour who see me, though I don't see them. The panopticon of fame. I understand why truly famous A-list people feel they can't leave the house. Still, the saving grace is that in person, people are wonderful. Online, they're significantly less wonderful.
A non-zero percentage of online recognition is really ugly. The inevitable corollary of success is that people feel the need to take you down, and online media has tapped into that instinct like nothing else. There seems to be a cottage industry for correcting or calling people out once they have any fame. I'd like to say it just rolls off me, but it doesn't. Some of it is just downright disturbing. Recently, I've been receiving emails from purportedly young men experiencing suicidal ideation who need help, i.e. money. Not just "a Nigerian prince needs your help." These are closely tailored to my publicly stated views and concerns.
They're clearly fakes, possibly AI-generated, but still disturbing. Fame has validated for me what almost every study shows. Anything that happens in real life is profoundly better, kinder, and more human than its online facsimile.
Fame is increasingly embedded in our economy and daily lives, and thus garnering more research attention. One finding: it's about our fear of death. Empirical studies confirm that our desire for fame increases with greater awareness of our mortality. Which makes sense. The only thing that can outlive your body is the memory of you. That drive can inspire great achievements. Charles Dickens was famously obsessed with fame, and that obsession coursed through his characters. Ovid admitted his mission was for his "fame to live to eternity." Some people, though, try to skip over the great achievement part.
As Harry and Meghan subject us to their worldwide privacy tour...
I wonder what would have happened to us had we not gone out when we did. Our security was being pulled. Everyone in the world knew where we were. I said we need to get out of here.
We're not as much interested in them—both brighten up a room by leaving it— but in the hypocrisy of pursuing privacy on Instagram and Netflix. Question: Is it wrong to wish they could be mowed down by a psychotic skier who makes vagina-scented candles?
Or maybe they wish for a more modern approach to fame. "I hate fame. Look at me. Please, see how much I hate it? Look at me." Regardless, these people know we only truly die when people stop knowing who we are. Despite what Instagram and the Daily Mail indicate, becoming famous is not most people's number-one priority. In fact, only 1 in 10 Americans admit that fame is important to them. Who are the 10% who want to be famous? Ambitious, attention-seeking, conceited, and psychologically vulnerable folks. "Psychologically vulnerable" meaning they feel they have issues that fame will help them overcome. The other term for this is "low self-esteem."
"I just read the last paragraph and feel seen." This may explain why young people are especially interested in fame. Compared to 2% of Boomers, more than 1/3 of 18- to 24-year-olds say fame is important to them. Becoming a celebrity is akin to sitting at the cool kids' table. It's the "perfect balm for the sting of social exclusion."
The social media cocktail stirs into this follower counts and like buttons, escalating young people's emotional tumult to dangerous levels. If fame is a treatment for feeling inadequate, it's likely not a good one. It turns out fame, like power, is an addictive substance. Many famous people report feeling fearful they'll lose their notoriety, and when they do, the transition out of the public eye creates a psychological burden. As with heroin, getting hooked is the easy part. Actors, singers, musicians, and athletes, on average, die younger.
Kurt Cobain was the lead singer of the group Nirvana, another casualty of success.
The world has lost a dynamite performer and an all-around super lady. I had a chance to meet Selena at the opening.
Wallace, also known as Biggie Smalls, was shot from a. The death of another rock musician was disclosed today. Jim Morrison, 27 years old, lead singer of The Doors.
The upside: they cement their fame. Neither James Dean nor Marilyn Monroe was that talented. Kurt Cobain would still be famous, but I digress. Fame is a drug increasingly laced with the fentanyl of fame itself. Almost any position or attribute is a positive if you can be famous for it. Whether it's homemade porn, catastrophizing on Twitter, or mocking the disabled, if it makes news, you've won. And in an attention economy, you can monetize that. The wheel spins. By the way, it's the dealer who wins. I have just the right amount of fame.
On a regular basis, someone approaches me and says something nice about our work, and it's rewarding. At the same time, I can eat at a restaurant bar alone and feel mostly anonymous. Knowing that some people likely do recognize me triggers the Hawthorne effect. I am now more conscious of my actions as I assume I'm being observed. Probably a good thing.
I'm a high-functioning fameaholic. I love alcohol and THC, but I'm not addicted. Neither gets in the way of my life, and I don't crave them. I am, however, addicted to the affirmation of strangers. I hope that makes me more like Dickens, less like a Windsor. I've accepted I'll never be a serious scholar. Because as Zhuangzi noted, "He who pursues fame at the risk of losing himself is not a scholar."
I don't do peer-reviewed research, as almost nobody reads it. But I believe the work we do makes a difference in other ways.
The allure of fame takes some people to dark places. So it matters where the void that people try and fill with their fame comes from. For me, I believe that void is that, growing up, I was invisible. Not a good or a bad student, neither a loner nor especially social. Athletic, but not talented, funny, but not hilarious. At big public schools, it was pretty easy to blend into the ecosystem as a defense mechanism against predators who were more popular, mean, or even violent. An especially bad acne week? Rejection from a person or group beyond my social reach? No problem, just retreat and go invisible.
Our research on struggling young men largely distills to one determining factor: the presence, or lack thereof, of a male role model. I had one. My handsome, sharp-witted dad was the most impressive man I knew. But he moved away when I was eight, and often didn't seem that interested in me. And why would he be? I was barely there. And if my dad didn't see me, why would anybody else? So my limited fame fills a hole. An old fear that I'd never amount to anything. I'd remain invisible and alone. The hole leaks, though, so it never fills up.
Recognition from strangers, as you age, feels increasingly like empty calories. The affection people have for you is for your public representative. It's not really for you. They don't know you. And if they did, they'd likely be disappointed. I believe the last sentence illustrates what people call impostor syndrome.
I'm fifteen seconds past my fifteen minutes and still trying to determine how, regardless what demons inspired my pursuit of fame, to turn chicken shit into chicken salad. So we highlight the work of other academics, catalyze the conversation on important issues, help people feel more connected to each other and the country, and, most important, call attention to others' achievements. Fame, like compassion, is not a zero-sum game. It's so easy to share and means so much to people. Fame and atheism go well together because the only thing that survives death is living people's memory of you and if or how it influences their actions. In fifty years, I'll be gone.
When I think about that, which is often, I am reminded that I don't need the recognition of strangers to make me immortal. There are two men who will then be sixty-two and sixty-five, who lived with me the first eighteen-plus years of their life, who will remember me. They'll remember how intense, yet goofy, I was. I'd also like to believe they'll be more kind and secure than I was, as every day their father confirmed they were wonderful and immensely loved. They won't remember my books, the TV networks I helped kill, or any other accomplishments. They will feel me, though. They'll tell stories about me. I'm certain of it.
I'll be famous. Life is so rich.
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Page updated September 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
