Office Hours: Is Nuclear Power the Future?, Is the Brand Era Over?, and What Are Scott’s Reading Recs?

Scott gives his thoughts on why he thinks nuclear energy is the future. He then speaks about the advertising sector, specifically the shift from the brand era to the supply chain era. He wraps up with book recommendations to a listener looking to fill his summer reading list. Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Pre-order "The Algebra of Wealth," out April 23rd Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:27Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the Prof G Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. Again, that's [email protected]. First question.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Hey Prof G, this is Barbra Ross from Incur BC. Thank you for all the great work that you do. Also raised by a single mom, I admire all the conversations that you have, especially the ones with Ed and Kara. My question is on energy. Seeing large companies like Amazon buying a nuclear-powered data center and purchasing components of fusion energy by Microsoft from Sam Altman's Helion, I wonder if you think we'll transition to nuclear energy in the years ahead? What do you think? Is nuclear soon, or are we gonna magically just skip it and get to fusion? Again, I love the podcast. I think you and Ed are sharing incredible information here for no charge. And of course, also looking forward to launch of Algebra of Alpha. Thank you.

• 2:28Scott Galloway?

  Barbaros from Vancouver. I'm going to Vancouver next week. I'm going to be speaking at Ted for the first time and I'm excited to not only speak at Ted, I'm also a little bit nervous. One out of a very 150 speaking gigs, I have a panic attack. I can't figure out why. It has nothing to do with size. I think it might have something to do with jet lag. That's not a good sign flying into Vancouver. But anyways, I think this would probably be not be the time to have a panic attack during a Ted talk. Anyways, my blood pressure's going up just thinking about it. Jesus Christ Barbaros, you're making me anxious. Anyways, I'm going to Vancouver. Look, I'm a huge fan of nuclear. More people have died in Ted Kennedy's car than in a nuclear power plant. I just can't figure out why on earth. We could, all the

• 3:12Scott Galloway?

  nuclear waste that's been produced by every nuclear power plant could be in a six-foot tall container that would cover, I think, one football field. To me, it just seems like a no-brainer that we should be going hard on nuclear. And unfortunately, it's really out of vogue. We've actually reduced the number of power plants in the US. Germany basically shut them down. It became very politically incorrect. And it has been a disaster for us, reducing our reliance on nuclear. So there's a massive, I think we're gonna turn to all of it. I think we're gonna use more fossil fuels. I think the price of oil is gonna go up. We're gonna have to do all of it. Why? The growing computing demand for AI. According to the International Energy Agency, since 2010, data centers

• 3:54Scott Galloway?

  have used about 1% of the world's electricity. But a researcher at VU, University of Amsterdam School of Business and Economics, says the energy required for global data centers could increase by 50% by 2027, just due to AI. Tech companies are also seeking energy solutions to address environmental concerns. For example, Amazon has said their new data centers are a part of a broader effort to invest in carbon-free energy, complementing its wind and solar projects with nuclear energy. Beyond AWS and Microsoft, cryptocurrency mining firms are increasingly adopting renewable and nuclear energy to reduce their carbon footprint, with examples including Aspen Creek's commitment to renewables and Terro Wolf's nuclear-powered mining facility. Look, I'm just a huge fan of nuclear. And there

• 4:36Scott Galloway?

  seems to be a ton of innovation, like little nuclear power plants that are the size of a container or a semi-truck that can power a small town or city. And then nuclear fusion, little nuclear backpack can power a household. So I think it's really exciting.

• 4:53Scott Galloway?

  And I think we're going to see a lot of it. And energy, I mean, when you just think about where AI is headed and just the amount of compute and the energy it's going to take is just striking. It's another reason I just have been so fucking skeptical of crypto. It's a genius. It's genius to figure out a way to create the illusion of scarcity through finite coins being minted or mined. But Christ, we created something that consumes the electricity of Argentina that was like, we invented it? It didn't? Anyway, don't get me started. But yeah, I think that you're going to see a ton of this kind of innovation. And is it going to be nuclear? Is it going to be solar? Is it going to be wind? Is it going to be thermo? Is it going to be coal? Is it going to be oil?

• 5:38Scott Galloway?

  The answer is yes, all of the above. Just like we've always figured out, our ability to innovate around apps that can soak up all the additional power offered by additional processing power, we will hands down, I believe, our demand for new sources of energy will outstrip not only new sources of energy, but our existing sources of energy. Quick fact, I didn't know this. Number three producer of energy globally or of fossil fuels is Russia, two is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, number one, the good old US of A. Anyways, thanks for the question, Barbaros. Question number two.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Hi Scott, Matt here and a big fan of your podcast. I've followed you for a while and one of your enduring takes has been that advertising and building brand through paid media is a dying business strategy. Outside of some companies seeing hypergrowth without big media budgets, mainly in the tech sector, most major firms continue to increase budgets and those tech companies are now some of the biggest advertisers in the world. Even Tesla, famously averse to advertising, is now paying for media to try to differentiate versus the growing EV market. As someone who also follows this closely, there's been a golden age of advertising effectiveness research from professors like Byron Sharp showing the value of paid media. I'd be curious how much of your successful Prof. Media business, Prof. G Media business, is supported by advertising.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  I work in this space, so I'm obviously biased, but curious if you've amended any of your opinions here. Thank you for all you do, and go Gunners.

• 7:08Scott Galloway?

  Go Gunners. I love that. Look, I make these provocative statements that if you're advertising, it means your product sucks. And I've also said, and this is, I think, more true, if you constantly are having dinner with strangers, it means you're selling an undifferentiated product. So if you're in the services business and your job is to have these faux relationships with people, it means you're all selling the same damn widget and you're dependent upon relationships. One of the things I loved about, I started a brand strategy firm, and basically, we were good at what we did, but there were a lot of good firms out there, interbrand, doing brand strategy. And the way we got business is I would develop sort of these proxy father-son relationships with the CMO or the CEO. And I found it just fucking exhausting. They were really interesting, wonderful men, and they were all men.

• 7:50Scott Galloway?

  This was in the 90s, but I'm an introvert and I just found it difficult. I vacationed with clients. I mean, it was just so much, but anyways, I do think advertising is sort of a tell for a company that doesn't have a truly differentiated product. And I would push back that the tech companies, yeah, they advertise a lot, but as a percentage of their top-line budget, they don't. And Netflix uses, I met with Ted Stranus, the CEO of Netflix, and I said, why wouldn't you start a TikTok competitor? I still, by the way, think they should partner with an AI firm and buy a hopefully divested TikTok. But he said, no, we use TikTok as free advertising. It's amazing. We give them a certain number of clips and it's fantastic marketing for us. And they don't spend a lot of money, I don't think, on marketing.

• 8:34Scott Galloway?

  I think the companies that the companies have had had the most shareholder value over the last 10, 20 years have a few things in common. One, they're typically asset light. Why build a factory when you can just design the chip Nvidia? Why invest in expensive real estate when you can just create a platform and take fees? Airbnb? Why buy and maintain cars when you can just create software, a thick layer of software on top of them? That's Uber. They have tend to have recurring revenue streams that are more predictable, like a, you know, a software company. But also I have found they tend to be less reliant on advertising. And the thing about advertising, one of the reasons Google killed, largely killed the traditional ad business, and I think it has, Google loses or gains the value of IPG,

• 9:17Scott Galloway?

  WPP, Publacy, and Omnicom every day. Those guys used to be the big swinging dicks and now they basically work and they beg for the crumbs off of the Google and Meta cookie, if you will, is that those companies have difficult times finding attribution or building it. Basically, all the research that Condonast or IPG does all leads to one place. You should spend more money on our advertising, right? And it's kind of bullshit and it's kind of a model where the lack of attribution was both the sin and the opportunity in the sense that brand building is difficult to reverse engineer to specific sales. So there's been a dearth of it, which probably means it's going to offer higher ROI. And direct response advertising, specifically Meta and Alphabet with their unbelievable

• 10:02Scott Galloway?

  targeting. I mean, well, you only have 70% of your, you know, your budget in digital marketing. It should probably be more. I mean, every year, these companies just take more and more share of an industry. Advertising is a weird industry. It's almost like one and a half percent of GDP. It doesn't go below that. It doesn't go above it. So this is not a growth industry, but you have some companies that are growing 20 and 25% a year. Everyone from Meta and Alphabet to TikTok, which means they are sucking the oxygen out of the room for the other folks. Does that mean traditional based advertising and brand building is going to go away? No, but it's going to be a shitty place to work or invest. If you're absolutely in love with it, or you're scaling and have senior level sponsorship, or you're rounding third, then by all means, stay there. But if you're younger, don't love it.

• 10:48Scott Galloway?

  I just think it's going to get more and more difficult for the traditional advertiser/brand building complex. And this is from someone who made a really good living preaching about brand. I think things have generally changed. I think we've moved from a brand era, and I don't want to call it an innovation era, to a supply chain era. Most of the big, big advances in shareholder value, in addition to being asset light, recurring revenue, lack of advertising, have been supply chain. So, you know, my brother, I just, and I'm a professor of brand strategy. I think the era of brand, the sun has passed midday and Don Draper has been drawn and quartered. Thanks for the question.

• 11:27Scott Galloway?

  We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.

• 11:32Scott Galloway?

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• 12:13Scott Galloway?

  And its AI chat is available on the side of your browser and it's always ready. No new tabs, no switching apps, no losing your place. This is AI that works with you, not on top of you, so that you have the time and brain space to solve the problems that matter. Check it out. Find out more at superhuman.com.

• 12:35Scott Galloway?

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• 13:20Scott Galloway?

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• 13:42Scott 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. The regentech 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?

• 14:27Scott Galloway?

  Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash profg for $1,000 off.

• 14:50Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Question number three.

• 14:52Speaker 04

  Hi, Scott. I'm currently finishing up my first year at business school and I'm starting to think about my summer reading list. I'm looking for some advice on books to read outside of the assigned books in cases I've been reading in school. What's on your reading list? Anything you recommend? Love the show. Thank you.

• 15:10Scott Galloway?

  It's so funny. My producer put in some books because she knows I don't read a lot. So I'm trying to be more transparent. I don't read a lot. Oh, that's not correct. I read a shit ton. I don't read a lot of books. I wait till I know a book is, everyone says is amazing, and then I'll read it once and I'll highlight stuff and I spend a lot of time on it. It takes me three months to read a book because I try and cement different things about the book and make them part of my narrative and really learn from them. But I don't read a lot. The books that my producer thinks I would like to recommend to you are The Way of the Champion: Pain, Persistence, and the Path Forward by Paul Rabel. I know Paul. Paul's a wonderful guy. I don't know if the book's any good, but he's like this incredible guy. He's basically the Michael Jordan of lacrosse, kind of the

• 15:52Scott Galloway?

  greatest lacrosse player everywhere. According to my producer, the book is a guide to embodying a winning mindset with memorable stories and lessons for how to be a pro in all areas of life, in sports, business, and relationships. If you met this guy, you'd want to figure out what is the secret sauce to being Paul Rabel. He's an impressive man. The Anxious Generation. Oh, my God, we haven't talked enough about this. How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt. Jonathan is the most influential scholar in the world. If you have kids, this is a must read. I'm going to stop there because everyone's already bought this goddamn thing. It's number one on every list in the world. I did get a book the other day and I've started actually reading it, which is unusual for me. And it's called The Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria. It's fantastic. And I'm already

• 16:37Scott Galloway?

  sort of, you know, parroting some of Fareed's thought leadership. Look, some books that kind of changed my life. The Winds of War by Herman Wook. I'm just fascinated with World War II history and it gave me a perspective for how just brutal and important war is and has been to shaping our society, specifically World War II. That's probably not light reading for somebody. The World According to Garp. I just thought it was so strange and it gave me an appreciation for how just weird and wonderful people are. Just that people are just so fucking strange. I think John Irvin kind of changed my life. It just gave me an appreciation for The eccentricities of people. What else have I, what have I read recently?

• 17:21Scott Galloway?

  Sapiens, it's just, that's one of those books that I read a couple of times because it just, I got so much insight from it. If you're interested in management theory, anything from Peter Drucker, I loved Observations of a Bystander. I thought that was just super interesting. But there's just so much good shit out there. What else have I read recently that I really, really enjoyed? Oh, and another book I'm rereading, just because I saw the movie is Dune. I remember, it's really interesting. Books from here like music. The ones I read in high school and college are kind of cemented in my brain. Anyways, a ton of good stuff out there. And let me know what you come up with. Post it and we'll, we'll write a review on it. But what a nice problem to have. What books am I going to read this summer? That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected].

• 18:06Scott Galloway?

  Again, that's [email protected].

• 18:18Speaker 05

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• 18:26Speaker 06

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