The Post-Pandemic World Economy

Dambisa Moyo, a global economist and bestselling author, joins Scott to discuss the five trends she believes will define the post-pandemic world economy. They discuss all sorts of topics like the private sector, deglobalization, and public policy. Dambisa also explains what board members can be doing better. She is a trusted advisor on macroeconomics, geopolitics, and technology themes and serves on a number of global corporate boards including 3M Corporation, Chevron, and Condé Nast. Follow her on Twitter, @dambisamoyo. (13:29) Scott opens with his thoughts on the big IPO week and how Airbnb achieves three hurdles: differentiation, relevance, and sustainability, while DoorDash does not. He also explains why he believes WarnerMedia’s decision to release its slate of 2021 films in theaters and on HBO Max the same day is a baller move. This week’s Office Hours: the future of the podcast industry and whether CrossFit could take on Peloton’s business model. Have a question for Scott? Email a voice recording to [email protected]. Algebra of Happiness: advice for giving care at the end of a loved one’s life. Dambisa’s book recommendations: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli 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.

• 0:00Scott Galloway?

  Episode 39, the number of signers to the United States Constitution, the atomic number of yttrium. My son was asked to write 1,000 words on the periodic table. I remember when I was asked to write 1,000 words on acid and what happened? I tried, but my pen turned into a rainbow colored giraffe and then the death melted. Let's make this podcast your melting giraffe. Go, go, go.

• 0:32Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 39th episode of the Prob G Show. In today's episode, we speak with Dambisa Moyo, a global economist and bestselling author. She's a baller, not only a great author, but also serves on several corporate boards and sort of a clear blue flame thinker and has an incredible personal story and talks about how the economy will shift and trends that will define the post pandemic global economy. Okay, what's happening? It's a big week and frankly, a big year for IPOs. Bloomberg data reflects that IPOs on US exchanges have already raised a record 156 billion in 2020. And this week, both DoorDash and Airbnb are expected to begin trading and

• 1:15Scott Galloway?

  both have increased their target share prices. And some, their boards have said, we're sick of giving a pop or unearned return to the institutional clients of Goldman and Morgan Stanley, and we want you to raise our ranges because all these IPOs have been going out and getting huge pops, which is nothing but a transfer of value from existing shareholders to new shareholders who, quite frankly, probably don't deserve it as they have been investing in the company for very long. By the way, what a victory for humanity today. Quick tangent, first vaccine given to a citizen, a nine-year-old woman in the United Kingdom. Go humanity, go vaccines. Anyway, anyway, DoorDash, DoorDash, in my view, does not clear all of the hurdles. What are the hurdles?

• 1:55Scott Galloway?

  Tonight is my last class of my Fall Brand Strategy Course, 280 students paying 7,000 each, 1.96 million, or about 166,000 per class. Is the dog worth it? No. But is the certification they get and their ability to have that currency of an NYU Stern MBA stamp or tattoo on their forehead worth it over the course of their lifetime? Yeah, still is. But anyways, anyways, doesn't mean it's not morally corrupt. However, however, one of the gangster concepts we go through, and this is something I have held on to my entire business career is you want to look at every strategy, every capital allocation decision, every company product or service through the lens of, does it clear three hurdles? Trace hurdles, mis amigos, trace.

• 2:37Scott Galloway?

  The first differentiation, number two, relevance, third sustainability. Differentiation. Brand, the term brand is synonymous with differentiation. Is your product a 10x product or service differentiation? Is the only business strategy at the end of the day that is sustainable differentiation? Two, if you're fortunate enough to figure out a way to carve out something different, does anyone care? These two are in conflict with each other. Okay, we're going to be the internet business school, Berkeley Business School, Haas School was actually contemplating this in the 90s. That would be highly differentiated, but the problem is it probably wouldn't be that relevant to that many people. So the more differentiated, the less relevant. A niche doesn't have that broad a distribution. So these two are in conflict with each other.

• 3:20Scott Galloway?

  I would argue you want to go differentiated or you want to offer differentiation, you want to be really specialized, develop a very loyal following and grow from there. Is it relevant? Okay, yes. DoorDash, is it differentiated? I don't think it is. We have Grubhub and Uber Eats. I think these are substitutes. I don't think it's singular. I don't think it's that differentiated. Is it relevant? Yes, it's relevant. Why? More and more people having food delivered. And then finally, is it sustainable? I don't know. I don't know what moats you can put around this company other than so much capital that you buy out the competition and ultimately end up in a duopoly. That's somewhat sustainable. Now let's look at Airbnb. Is it differentiated? Oh my God. Get out the painted giraffe or the acid induced business analysis here. This company isn't a word. Singular.

• 4:04Scott Galloway?

  Nobody says, oh, I got a booking.com. No one says, oh yeah, we got an Expedia. Everybody says, yeah, we're just going to get an Airbnb. This brand is singular. Is it relevant? Yes, travel, renting apartments, short-term stays, all relevant. And then finally, let's look at the sustainability. Again, I don't think there's any substitute here. I really don't. I think this company has built a moat the size of the Nile. How have they done that? Think of all the other hotel brands they compete against. Four Seasons is globally relevant, but only relevant to a luxury consumer. Singapore Airlines is not relevant to that many people. And Marriott is relevant only to people in Europe and the United States. Airbnb is truly globally relevant, if you will. Well, what about Expedia or booking.com? Yes, yes, they are relevant, but what does Airbnb have?

• 4:49Scott Galloway?

  It has supply, global supply and 7 million. Properties across 4 million hosts. You want to talk about moats? You want to talk about differentiation, singular, relevant, increasing travel, people thinking about renting homes as opposed to hotel rooms, a better value per square foot. Oh, and by the way, more COVID free and, and these ultimate network offense moats. Boom, boom, boom, hurdles, one, two, and three. So, so what are we going to see here? We're going to see big pops on day one, even when the increase ranges, because everybody wants into the innovation economy and there's a ton of capital. The market is awash in capital because investors have never had more cabbage. And retail investors who are the tail of the whip here have stimulus money. Savings rates have never been higher. That's going to pour into the market.

• 5:32Scott Galloway?

  Long term, long term, this is definitely Airbnb in my view over DoorDash. Business Insider reported that equities analyst David Traynor believes DoorDash's IPO will be the most ridiculous IPO of 2020. What does he mean by ridiculous? Holds no value beyond bailing out private investors before unsuspecting public investors realize the business is not viable in its current form. Hello, Mr. Traynor. Don't hold back. What else is going on? What else is going on? Warner Media CEO made the baller move last week that will shake up, shake up the film business and it's never going to be unshook. We are taking this Etch A Sketch called Films, we're shaking that bitch and we're going to have to draw new lines. Wonder Woman 1984,

• 6:16Scott Galloway?

  which by the way, is getting great reviews. And all 2021 Warner Media films are coming directly to our screens. That includes Dune. I think it's Top Gun's in there and a bunch of baller movies. The company announced that all 17 films will be released in theaters and on HBO Max the same day at no extra cost. They're not pulling kind of the Disney Milan 30 bucks. They're saying boom, it's on HBO Max for the first month of each film's release. The company said in a statement that, open quote, "The hybrid model was created as a strategic response to the impact of the ongoing global pandemic." Now, why was it created? Because AT&T has lost the narrative. Stock prices used to be a function of two things, or they still are, the narrative and the numbers.

• 7:01Scott Galloway?

  The numbers, EBITDA, growth, margins, the narrative. What is our vision for this company? What is the business model? Boom, kind of 70, 30 numbers to narrative. It has flipped. It has flipped. It's now about the narrative. All right, the narrative of Tesla is dramatically better than the narrative of Toyota, Daimler, or Volkswagen. And by the way, and by the way, despite producing 400,000 cars instead of 24 million, is worse more than those three automobile companies combined. It's now all about narrative. And AT&T, the $180 billion firm, has lost the narrative. Why? Because it has a great $150 billion business called telecommunications that has been queered by the $30 billion Time Warner acquisition. And the narrative, quite frankly, right now is this acquisition didn't work and there

• 7:46Scott Galloway?

  is no synergy. That is the narrative. They are taking back the narrative. They are taking back the narrative. And they are going to say, I know, I know, we are going to become the largest subscription revenue company in the world. They're absolutely going to have to renegotiate the contracts with all their talent that they promised a piece of the backend. But think about this. Think about this. $180 billion in revenue, approximately $360 billion in enterprise value. What is enterprise value? It's your market capitalization plus your debt minus your cash. AT&T is actually the most indebted company in the world with about $160 billion in debt plus their $200 billion market gap. Boom, $360 billion in enterprise value, $180 billion in revenue, meaning, meaning,

• 8:30Scott Galloway?

  they trade at two times revenue. Let's look at other great recurring revenue companies. Netflix, Apple, only 24% recurring revenue, but it's moved from 10 to 24. So it has been recast. And then Microsoft, the ultimate recurring revenue company, B2B through Microsoft Office, also trades at approximately nine times revenue. So Netflix, Microsoft, and Apple, nine times revenue.

• 8:54Scott Galloway?

  AT&T, two times revenue. If they can use that pulsing value and push Wonder Woman 1984 into the homes and take their HBO Max really anemic subscriptions and renew or recatalyze growth and start to capture back the narrative. Hi, I'm John Stankey. I am the CEO of the largest recurring revenue company in the world. I am the baller subscription firm of all baller subscription firms. There is huge headroom, huge headroom in between that two times multiple and the nine times multiple that the other subscription revenue ballers are getting. And so, okay, they give up $1.2 billion at the box office. That sounds like a lot of cabbage, and it is. But it's currently worth about $2.4 billion to the company.

• 9:38Scott Galloway?

  And if they can just get that multiple up, that multiple up on their 180 billion revenues, if they can just get it up one basis point, for every one basis point they get it up, they get another $1.8 billion. If they can go from two times revenue to 2.1, if they can take back the narrative, they get another $18 billion in stakeholder value. There's a lesson here. There's a lesson here. The most accretive actions of the last 10 years. Accretive is an insecure academic's way of saying, basically, how do they add or increase shareholder value? The most accretive actions have been a move from transactional to subscription business model. And if AT&T can recapture, can take back, take back the narrative and say, we are the largest subscription company in the world, not a company that made the dumbest acquisition

• 10:23Scott Galloway?

  of the last 10 years since Time Warner acquired AOL. Funny that probably two of the 10 most disastrous acquisitions both have the terms Time Warner in them, but that's a different talk show. If they can recapture the narrative and say, we are the baller subscription company, and just take their multiple from two to 2.1, much less to nine, this is an incredibly accretive move. Prediction, prediction. AT&T stock, which has been down every year for the last several years, hits 40 bucks in 2021. It has its best year. In the last five years, we are not going back to the theater. We are not going back to the office. There'll be a short term sugar high. The world has shifted. AT&T has done what any company needs to do to move to subscription. They have crossed the valley of death.

• 11:05Scott Galloway?

  They have shown real leadership here and it is going to pay off in spades. The baller move, there is no free lunch. A move to subscription, a move to recognizing dispersion, any big change in your life. There is no getting lucky without taking a big risk and putting yourself in a position to be really lucky. Stay with us. We'll be right back for our conversation with global economist Dr. Dambisa Moyo.

• 11:31Scott Galloway?

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• 12:16Scott Galloway?

  You can download the Built app and join the membership for where you live at joinbuilt.com/propg. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com/propg. Use our link so they know we sent you. 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,

• 13:01Scott Galloway?

  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? Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Rider, 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 prof G for $1,000 off.

• 13:50Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Ambisa Moyo, a global economist and bestselling author. She's a huge influencer and key decision-maker for strategic investments in public policy and serves on a bunch of very high-profile boards. Dr. Moyo, give us five things or some things that you think will kind of define the post-pandemic economy. What are the enduring changes to our economy?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  So from my vantage point, and really based on looking back in history, in particular to the Gilded Age and the years and decades after the period of 1870 to 1900, the five things that are going to define the macroeconomy, I believe, are really characterized by the overarching view of a more progressive world, one in which the government is more important. So first of all, I think we will see bigger government. And by that, I mean larger debts and deficits, if you can imagine such a thing, given where debts and deficits are today. Part of that is really the government's role as a provider of welfare, I think, will continue.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  The second point is that government will become bigger, much more important in terms of being an arbiter of capital and labour. We've already seen signs of this, and by that I mean much more important in terms of employment, much more important in terms of supporting businesses. So, for example, the fact that the Fed in the United States have been buying sub-investment grade debt to support certain corporations, and also we've seen in the UK where there've been massive furlough schemes, which I think will be more needed over the long term. I think that's a second thing that we'll continue to see. The third thing that I'm sure to see, which is a corollary of government getting bigger,

• 15:40Speaker 02

  is that I think the private sector will get smaller. And in that respect, we've already seen some of these trends. Over the past decade, according to Wilshire and other data sources, the number or the proportion of publicly traded companies in the markets has gone down by about 50%, and I think that is a trend we'll continue to see, partly as there's much more consolidation and M&A in the markets, but also as many companies shy away from the sort of heavy regulatory scrutiny and burden, both from institutions and regulators, but also from society more generally.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  The fourth area that I think is really important is that we're going to see more taxation and much more regulation. Again, this was very much thematic in the period post the Gilded Age, followed by the crash in 1929, where you started to see much more antitrust legislation. We've started to see hallmarks of that, especially as many of the largest sectors, banking, airlines, pharmaceuticals, technology, etc., are now dominated by just a handful of corporations globally. So we've ended up with oligopolies in many of these key sectors, essentially organically, but I think there'll be a greater push from governments

• 17:05Speaker 02

  to really be much more aggressive in the antitrust perspective. And then, fifth, one area, a fifth area... That I think is going to absolutely define the post pandemic era, which was actually something, a trend that was happening before COVID hit in earnest in this year 2020, is there will be greater deglobalization. And just as an umbrella concept, deglobalization is about trade, it's about the movement of capital for investment, it's about the movement of people in terms of immigration, it's about the commonality around standards, such

• 17:44Speaker 02

  as intellectual property, and it's also very much about institutions that govern the global monetary and sort of trade and commerce environment, such as the Bretton Woods institutions, which were established in 1944, such as the World Bank and the IMF. I think, in fact, I know there was already trend lines showing that that, the deglobalization, reduction in trade and capital, stronger and more aggressive anti-immigration policies, the risk of a splinter net, that you'll have a US-led and a China-led versus a China-led

• 18:23Speaker 02

  type of intellectual property war in technology space, and really, the rise of alternative multilateralism. I think all of these aspects of deglobalization will gather momentum in the period post the pandemic. So those are the five things that I would say would highlight the post pandemic era.

• 18:43Scott Galloway?

  A couple of these things. When government's getting bigger, private sector getting smaller. My traditional capitalist DNA says that that results in a lower levels of output and productivity, and that is a bad thing. Where do I have that wrong? What are the good, what are the upsides and the bad sides of a shift to more resources to government coming out of the private sector?

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Well, I think you're not wrong on the superficial level, but I think there's an important caveat and I should say an important assumption that you're making when you make that claim, which is to say that government is acting inefficiently or ineffectively. You know, we have had periods, and I should say, I'm like you, I'm very much a sort of red-blooded capitalist. I really do believe that the private sector needs an important central role in driving innovation, growing the GDP pie, improving livelihoods, and really driving human progress. So that is very much what I believe. But I also think that we oughtn't to forget

• 19:45Speaker 02

  that when you look back in history, and even recent history, in the United States, for example, the government has been a key player in a whole host of areas that have helped to drive the success of the private sector, whether it's through the Manhattan Project, or DARPA, or development of Silicon Valley, or even go back further in history. Exactly, touche. But also going back further in history, the notion that somebody, somewhere, with the help of state and ultimately federal government, thought about high schools, developing a program or a template for education that could be broad-based. I mean, these are elements, and of course, infrastructure, are just a handful of elements where government,

• 20:30Speaker 02

  which acts on the data-driven, forward-leaning, measured outcomes, and in a non-corrupt way, can be incredibly catalytic for economic success.

• 20:41Scott Galloway?

  When I hear, so I'm going to use the S-word, socialism. But I also want to acknowledge it's not necessarily a bad word. Seven of the 10 countries that report the happiest citizenship are socialist. So I want to use it just as an economic construct. It's not an insult, it's not a warning sign. I find a lot of people in the media are using socialism as some sort of cautionary tale, like, oh, no socialism. But when I think about socialism, I think it's okay when the state controls the means of production and how its spoils get divvied up. And it sounds like what you're predicting in a post-pandemic world is, roughly speaking, we're moving towards a more socialist construct.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Well, I think, again, really depends, very crucially, on how those governments operate. If you end up with a government that is not really interested in growing the pie, but is more interested in redistributive approaches, I think, yeah, that is an outcome that we ought to all be dissatisfied with. That is not to say that we should be blind to concerns around income inequality getting worse, social mobility down by 50% in the United States over the last several decades, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, those are, you know, we have to be led and policy should be driven and curated based on the facts, which is that, you know, there are certainly losers, winners and losers in a more globalized, capitalistic world.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  But, you know, I don't have any objections to socialist quote-unquote states that, where you see a bigger pie. And again, I'm using your terminology, that I know, in this context, the notion of socialism meaning that government is much more involved as an arbiter of capital and labor, as opposed to one in which the spoils are just, you know, they're just there to redistribute. I don't think that that is an environment that we should aspire to. And one example of work that I've done, my first book, which is now over 10 years old, was really a critique of these large aid programs, which on paper seem very attractive.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Oh, we want to help the poor and the best way we should help them is through the aid transfers. But, you know, what I was arguing, that that is not the best way and you actually create dependencies that are longer-term deleterious for economic progress and ultimately for human progress as well. So, that's where I stand on this. I'm all for government providing public goods such as infrastructure, providing public goods such as education and national security. I have deep, deep reservations around governments that only see themselves as, you know, essentially being short-term in their thinking and very focused on redistribution and not much in terms of long-term thinking.

• 23:29Scott Galloway?

  So, the rescue package, the stimulus, the CARES Act, PPP loans, grade our response so far, our economic or fiscal or monetary response to the crisis. What did we get right? What did we get wrong?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Well, it's very hard to say. I think, you know, one of the tendencies people have is to throw a sort of peanut gallery, commentating on things that we don't have a full understanding of. You know, I happen to serve on the boards of a number of large, global, complex organizations. And one thing that I can assure you is that the optics from outside of when, you know, boards are dealing with certain issues is quite different from the reality. And I'm often struck by something that President Obama said, which was, by the time something hit his inbox, it means it was extremely difficult. Because if it were easy, somebody else would have solved it. And I think that, you know, if it were easy to resolve the pandemic,

• 24:25Speaker 02

  it's in no one's interest for us to be now, whatever it is, nine months in, sitting at home with the aggregate demand shock that has left the economies, our global economy incredibly vulnerable. I mean, who's benefiting from that? I don't think anybody could be that short the market. But, you know, what we're learning is that this is a multi-dimensional problem, and it's a multi-period problem. And I think, just again, outsider peering in, I think the original approach across the world was three things. I think it was one, it was not multi-dimensional. I think everybody interpreted it as being a healthcare problem first, and that all the advice came from

• 25:06Speaker 02

  healthcare experts. It was very little sort of, let's bring a bunch of experts around the table, whether they're economists or socio-anthropologists, et cetera, which I think that was one era. A second era is I think we didn't really view it as a long-term problem. I think there was a lot of a sense that it would be quickly resolved. We couldn't imagine that it could take on. Yeah, that we just couldn't imagine. We were not, we have not planned for something that could happen for another couple of years. And even with the evidence that Spanish flu was from eighteen twenty, excuse me, I beg your pardon, nineteen eighteen to nineteen twenty, we still assumed, you know, with technology and knowledge, we'd be speedily out of this situation. And yet, here we are.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Now we have to face all the distribution issues around the vaccine, et cetera. The third thing, which I think we could have done better is, this is a global healthcare problem. And yet, we've all gone to our respective corners to solve it unilaterally. So I think there, for me, especially somebody who's quite a globalist. I think that that's a failure in a lack of coordination. Very emblematic of some of the deglobalization points that I raised earlier. We're in a world where people think that the world should be more balkanized.

• 26:23Scott Galloway?

  Well, say more about that because you predict a deglobalization. And to your point, Taiwan with the same population of New York. It's had, I think, twenty eight odd thousand deaths. And then Taiwan has, I think, sixty infections and six deaths. And it seems to seems that we've decided that our superiority or exceptionalism, or we make excuses for why we can't learn from them. Doesn't deglobalization, isn't that really a step backwards?

• 26:50Speaker 02

  Oh, from my vantage point, absolutely. But I mean, see, I am very much a big believer of what's offered or been proffered in textbooks around globalization. I think we should all produce in the world what we're best equipped to produce. That's the fundamentals, comparative advantage or competitive advantage, however you want to to describe it. And unfortunately, for a whole host of reasons, we've ended up in a world where places that should be doing certain things, and you know, I'll give an example of my home continent of origin, Africa, which is largely subsistence farmers, largely agricultural. It has the largest proportion of untilled arable land left on the planet. That economy, those economies really should be at the forefront

• 27:35Speaker 02

  of feeding themselves as well as the world. But you have subsidy programs which are very rational in some respects, more political respects than economic respects, because politicians want to win the state of Iowa and Idaho, et cetera. So they've got to pander and protect the markets of their farmers. And similarly, through the common agricultural policy in the European Union, they want to protect British farmers and French farmers. And so they lock out African and South American food producers. And as a consequence, we move away from from globalization. So I understand the rationale on paper, but you know, we're all poorer for it.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  You know, I wish we'd been a much more coordinated global world. But you know, it's a far cry. The reality is a far cry, what I'd call real politique is a far cry from what is in textbooks.

• 28:30Scott Galloway?

  When you look at our economy and our policies, if there were one or two structural changes you would like to see implemented, what would they be?

• 28:37Speaker 02

  It's a great question. I actually published something on LinkedIn recently. I won't go through all of them. It was sort of three things we should start doing, three things we should stop doing, and three things we should keep doing. And this is for the for the United States. I won't go through all of them, but it's certainly the case that for the United States, for me, the biggest vulnerability is the political environment. It's far too short term. President, you know, elect Biden is not even in office, and yet we already got two, two years before the midterms, another two years before the next presidential election. As you know, takes two years of campaigning. So really, we're in a situation where the political infrastructure in democracies is misaligned from a lot of the long term problems

• 29:22Speaker 02

  that the global economy and the US economy faces, whether it's technology and the risk of a jobless underclass, demographic shifts that are leaving people unemployed, concerns about the environment. These are all long term. Income inequalities, these require deep thought, and they require long term solutions. But our politicians are rewarded for short term thinking. The other thing, which is to me very obvious, and it's been frustrating to see decade after decade not really resolved with any gusto, is the is the sort of boosting the infrastructure. America's infrastructure is graded D plus by the American Civil Engineering Corps. You know, this is just not the the sort of backbone

• 30:05Speaker 02

  of a successful economy for the 21st century. And similarly, you know, education remains incredibly weak. Look at the OECD, PISA statistics, in mathematics, reading, science, American students are now, they used to be in the top three. Now they're in the bottom 30 of the world in terms of rankings. And as you probably know, this generation of Americans, for the first time in the history of the country since 1776, will be less educated than the preceding generation. I mean, this is just not a formula for success, no matter what caveats people might attach to them. I think we really have a lot of work to do.

• 30:43Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, the short term thinking here, there's just so many examples, I think, of the H1B visas. If 50% of doctoral candidates are immigrants, and we've decided to take our secret sauce. And and and stop it at the border, right? And then I but the ultimate manifestation, and I would be curious to get your view here because mine, I'm a glass half empty kind of guy, is is our our skyrocketing deficits. We show up and we say, I know, we won't have to tax the rich more because they're my donors, and we'll throw bread and circuses at the populace, and we'll borrow money against future generations. I mean, at what point do my understanding is where we have the budget this year that we were projected to have in 2044, we've exploded our deficits.

• 31:28Scott Galloway?

  At what point do the deficits begin to register a toll on our our current abilities? We we know that long term, it's someone's got to have to pay this money back. But at what point does, you know, it's not a problem till it is a problem. When does it become a problem?

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you know, frankly, it becomes a problem when the people who are holding your debt no longer want to lend to you. And as you know, China, if it's not number one, it's usually number one or two, sort of the vibe for the first and second position between China and Japan. China is the largest foreign lender to the US government. I mean, this is just a vulnerability that to me seems so stark. You know, how can you have your biggest lender be in many many respects, your biggest rival? You're being very harsh in terms of trade, in terms of security, intellectual property, etc. But on the other hand, they're holding the largest amount of debt, which they can very easily put the squeeze on on the US.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Now, some people say, well, we're a reserve currency. Well, you know, I really do think that the world is changing incredibly quickly, and there needs to be a better recognition of what is at stake, and I worry that that's not the case. The other reference that to your to your question is have a look at the book that was written a number, a couple of years ago, a few years ago, by Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, two economists I really like a lot. They wrote a book called This Time It's Different. And they basically looked at 900 years of government debt, and they concluded that, you know, when government debt to GDP ratio goes over 60%, it becomes an incredibly dangerous, precarious place, not only because of what I just said, who's, you know, who's lending

• 33:10Speaker 02

  to you, but also Because your economic growth starts to slow considerably.

• 33:16Scott Galloway?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  And, you know, just as a way of thinking about growth, you need to be growing at three percent per year in order to double per capita incomes in one generation. That's a generation being about twenty five years. So if you're growing below three percent and for governments that have sixty percent debt to GDP ratios, you're really growing at around two percent. You have enormous vulnerabilities, which could be anything from income inequality problems, but can very quickly seep into civil unrest and more deep seated challenges to the sort of viability and stability of an economy. Perhaps the last thing I would just point out is, as you know, the US debt to GDP ratio is now a hundred percent debt to GDP.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Globally, debt to GDP is around three hundred and twenty percent. So, yes, you know, to your question, you know, where are we on this? I think it is a pretty precarious place, which is part of the reason I think, you know, I can see on the surface why the optics of a new president in the White House is appealing and attractive. But I think in terms of what can really be done, I think there are very few levers left, if any, for the United States if they're not really sort of embarked upon in a very aggressive way.

• 34:34Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I think of Japan. I mean, I remember business school is the ultimate luxury item. And I remember the dominant cohort in my business school class in nineteen ninety two in Berkeley was Japanese kids. And because the economy was so strong there. And now I think about how their economy, it feels like it's just gone sideways the last twenty years. And it's, to your point, it has that incredible debt to GDP ratio that it seems to have hamstrung them. What about, so if you think about, or gosh, even thinking about the Suez Canal, didn't we, didn't we force the British to do what we wanted? Because we held their debt. I mean, we are very vulnerable right now, aren't we?

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Well, it would seem so to me. I mean, I um was born and raised in Zambia, Southern Africa, which is one of the poorest countries in the world. And you may have seen there, they now have the somewhat non illustrious title of being the first country to default because of Covid. Um. And they've been basically under, uh, this this happened in the last couple of weeks, but um, under immense pressure, enormous squeeze um from China, who bought their their the government's debt in the secondary markets, um, and were were really reluctant to uh to engage or to uh to, you know, to do what generally happens when you need to restructure your debt, you extend the maturity, you change coupons, um, and they were just, they've just been reluctant

• 35:55Speaker 02

  to do that. So you force the government to default. And so, you know, do I think that the United States is going to default? No, I don't think so. Um, not certainly not in in the next, you know, period, but there are a number of other vulnerabilities that are second order effects of having a government um that is so vulnerable in terms of its debts and deficits, such as the cost of capital. Um, you probably are aware that twenty percent of American companies are now considered zombies. By that, I mean, they don't even generate enough cash flow to pay the interest, just the interest of the debt that they hold. Um, you know, there are other aspects. You start to see massive trade offs in how governments allocate capital. Uh, we've talked about some of the weaknesses that governments have, uh,

• 36:40Speaker 02

  certainly in the United States around the la- uh, poor investment in education, lack of investment in infrastructure. Well, that's because something has to give. So they have to pay the debt back. Well, that means there's other areas that will suffer. So, you know, I think these these things are already, the die is already cast, if I may use a cliche. I think we already are familiar with a many, many of these uh trade offs. Perhaps we haven't uh aligned them as being part of the debt problem, but I think they really are.

• 37:07Scott Galloway?

  And you serve on a bunch of corporate boards. I know you're interested or have written about corporate governance. What do you think are the one or two structural changes? Or what would you, how would you like to see boards of directors of public companies change?

• 37:19Speaker 02

  So, you know, just to give some context, I do have a book coming out in the spring 2021 called How Boards Work. I think that there is a lot of a sort of a blind spot by a number of people, even even our own employees, about what the mandate for the board is, what levers boards have to influence change. Boards have been around since around 1674. And, you know, by and large, we haven't changed that much. I mean, on the margin, there have been some changes, but really fundamental change hasn't really been the case. I say that really with part temerity and part humility, because I think there's something to be said about a good governance structure. But on the other hand, I don't

• 38:00Speaker 02

  want to claim or to assert that other boards didn't have challenges. I mean, try being a board member in the middle of World War I or World War II. It must have been incredibly difficult. So, you know, it's, it is challenging, yes. However, I do think there are some specific opportunities. I think boards need to have more visibility around ethical issues as one area. So, you know, there's some companies that are going as far as thinking about having ethics committees on the board. And this is largely because we have a lot of ethical issues around data privacy, use of data privacy. You know, we all want a vaccine. In fact, we all want a cancer cure yesterday, basically as soon as possible. But, you know, what

• 38:40Speaker 02

  freedoms are we willing to sacrifice in order to to speed that up? Do we want our pharmaceutical companies to do trials in a place like China where jurisdictions where the use of data is perhaps not as managed or policed as aggressively as the West? So that's a fundamental question. I mean, there are other questions such as ESG broadly defined, and I'll pick climate as one example. How do we think about climate and ESG compliance being, you know, is it is it comport with being an investor in China? Or is it against being an investor in China? I mean, this is, these are questions that I think ethics committees on a board

• 39:21Speaker 02

  or an ethics lens on a board will have to consider. The other one, another example of something I think would need to change, I mean, is in some respects obvious, but in other ways not. And that is really We do need to have better understanding of trade offs. Um. I fear that there's a lot of campaigning, a lot of very aggressive policing of, you know, twenty first century capitalism boards specifically. I mean, there's campaigns to defend companies, but there's just a lack of understanding about the importance of corporations and their role in the world. And if I may give you a very quick example, on the one hand, um, you know, we are all, I mean, I think there are very few people who are climate change deniers.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  I think the evidence is pretty clear that human beings are contributing to the heating of of the world. But, you know, on one hand, we have to do something about climate change. On the other hand, we can't be so reckless as to just turn the lights out when there are about, you know, one point five billion people on the planet who don't have access to energy in a cost effective and sustainable sort of stable way. This is a problem because, you know, we might solve one problem, i.e. we turn out the lights, um, because we want a sort of more sustainable energy approach. But on the other hand, we leave a lot of people incredibly impoverished, no access to education, um, and you create another problem because then you have mass disorderly migration.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Um, you know, I like to to encourage people to think about right now. We spend so much time on Zoom screens and really heavily dependent on on virtual and electronics, as you and I are doing right now. Um, but the truth is, if you're sitting in a in a place like my home country of Zambia, you know, for seventeen, eighteen hours a day, you don't have any, you know, any electricity because of load shedding. And it's same is true in places like South Africa. So if you have, and I know this to be the case, if they have wonderful students from Africa who got into the best schools in the United States, they've gotten to the Harvards and Yales of this world, into the Ox Bridges of of the United Kingdom, and they went home in March because of the pandemic.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  And the classes have started on Zoom and they have no access to to, you know, because of unreliable energy, have no access to the classroom. And all of a sudden, they're being left behind. So it's a very specific example, but it's a very generalized problem that we cannot and boards should not be in a place where they're being forced to answer questions without thinking more generally about trade offs and broader concerns for society.

• 41:57Scott Galloway?

  So to wrap up two things, I want to do a lightning round with you, but I want to give you the ability to pass because some of these questions, someone as thoughtful with your credentials doesn't want to just want to give a three or five second answer. In a decade, global superpower, China, the US, or other?

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Could it be both of them? Or what does what does other mean? Somebody else?

• 42:17Scott Galloway?

  I was thinking somebody else, but say more, say more.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  I think that it will be finely tuned. I think that both economies will be important players in different in different areas, and there's going to be forced cooperation, 50/50.

• 42:32Scott Galloway?

  Well, that's optimistic. I think that's actually probably a decent outcome.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  That's what my portfolio says.

• 42:38Scott Galloway?

  And do you, stock market, NASDAQ, up or down next, call it, next 24 months?

• 42:45Speaker 02

  Up.

• 42:47Scott Galloway?

  Up?

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:49Scott Galloway?

  Number of households that are food insecure in the US, up or down over the next five years?

• 42:54Speaker 02

  I'd say up. I think the number is one in seven in the US. I fear it's going to be higher. Yeah.

• 42:59Scott Galloway?

  And do you think that we, as a nation, become less or more polarized?

• 43:03Speaker 02

  I'm afraid it's probably going to be more polarized.

• 43:07Scott Galloway?

  So let me just add to that. If there's more food insecurity, which sounds like more income inequality, if we become more polarized, isn't the risk of revolution much greater over the next five or seven years in the US?

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Well, I would say, in principle, risk of anything, yes, is rising. But I think at the same time, the institutions in the United States are becoming more transparent, more inclusive. I think what needs to be done is is greater conversation. And, you know, I've been reading this book, I'm actually rereading a book called The Art of Thinking Clearly, which came out a number of years ago. But it's really interesting because we make, there's so many fallacies, so many assumptions made about what, quote unquote, the other side think. And so I think really public policy's duty, and the next, you know, certainly generation, but certainly the next five years or so, is really to try and bring people together, having proper conversations about what America means, what it's supposed

• 44:02Speaker 02

  to be, and how it's going to get to that place, as opposed to pointing fingers. And I talked about this. I think one of the weaknesses in the country, which I really love living in America, but one of the challenges has been it's been too easy to blame someone else. It's always China's fault or it's globalization's fault and there's no real acknowledgement that we've made some catastrophic errors that need to be rectified. So I'm optimistic about the US because I think they're very quick to solve problems.

• 44:29Scott Galloway?

  And last question, advice to your 25 year old self or specifically, we have a very young viewership on the podcast here, what advice would you offer them?

• 44:38Speaker 02

  I would say two things. One is things take time. Don't try and be clever. You know, we've all looked for shortcuts. They don't exist. So you've got to do your time, basically. And the other one is no doesn't mean never. It just means not now, which I think is really important. People, they get told no, and they think it's the end of the world, when actually it just might mean that you need to work a little bit harder or differently. And so you really shouldn't be discouraged. It just doesn't mean never. It just means not now.

• 45:06Scott Galloway?

  Dr. Dambisa Moyo is a global economist and bestselling author who influences key decision makers in strategic investment and public policy, a trusted advisor on macroeconomics, geopolitics, and technology themes, and serves on a number of global corporate boards, including 3M, Chevron, and Conde Nast. She worked at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs for nearly a decade and joins us from her home. And where are you, doctor? Where are you right now?

• 45:30Speaker 02

  New York City.

• 45:31Scott Galloway?

  In New York, greatest city in the world, greatest city in the world.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  So nice. They had to name it twice.

• 45:37Scott Galloway?

  There you go.

• 45:42Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 45:46Scott Galloway?

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• 46:04Scott Galloway?

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• 47:02Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. It's time for Office Hours, a part of the show where we answer your questions about the business world, big tech, higher education, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. Question number one.

• 47:17Speaker 03

  Hi, Scott. Ben here from Colorado. You mentioned placing a recent investment in CrossFit. What do you think about them pivoting to more of a Peloton-type business model? Instead of just franchises, they could also sell a home gym in a box with a TV and live-stream classes. They already have the celebrity trainers with massive social followings. Crossfitters love real-time leaderboards, and it plays well with the home renovation wave and what is often the most overlooked room in the house, the garage. Curious to hear your thoughts. Also, what do you bench?

• 47:45Scott Galloway?

  Thank you, Ben from Colorado. It's a really interesting question. I am an investor in CrossFit, and I've had one conversation with the CEO and some of the board members. But I wouldn't say I'm really informed around their future strategy or what they're going to do. And the nice thing about it being a private company is that you can talk about it openly, or I'm not on the board, so I don't have any risk of going to jail by disclosing secrets or my cousin hears me on this podcast and starts trading the stock. Anyways, connected fitness, whether it was Lululemon's $550 million purchase of Mirror or Peloton, skyrocketing stock price. Absolutely, it's a trend. CrossFit has the

• 48:25Scott Galloway?

  brand equity. They have the trainers. They have the dispersed workforce. The issue is, is that a connected device is no easy task. I would imagine that Peloton has spent several hundred million dollars in probably a couple of years and probably has several dozen patents on their bike. A piece of hardware like that, that is connected, that it's durable, is no small feat. This is, this requires a certain level of industrial engineering, technology and software talent that quite frankly, I don't think CrossFit has right now. So the question is, do they build it? Let's assume you're right. It's about connected fitness and something in the home or specifically in the garage. Yeah, absolutely. It's a good

• 49:06Scott Galloway?

  idea. I wonder if they'd be better off partnering and being the operating system or a branded content provider, or if they in fact took advantage of their human capital and that is probably the 10,000 plus CrossFit coaches or trainers they have and figured out a way to get that person in your garage or helping you or doing group workouts in your backyard. I have my CrossFit trainer, personal anecdote. I worked out at the CrossFit in Delray Beach. COVID hit and I hired the guy who owns the gym. He decided to sell his stake in the CrossFit Delray because it is challenged in an era of COVID. And now he comes to my house four times a week and he trains me in my backyard. If that sounds like white

• 49:50Scott Galloway?

  privilege, trust your instincts. I'm blessed. I have the resources to have this wonderful trainer, Sean LaFlock of LaFlock Fitness, come to my house and train me in the backyard or in the garage, as you pointed out. There's got to be a way to distribute that type of expertise, whether it's through an app, whether it's through YouTube videos, but you're absolutely going to see a dispersion. I just don't know if it involves hardware. What can I bench? I'm scared to do Max now because I'm all about injury prevention. When I was young and crazy and on creatine and thought that lifting weights was a sign of your masculinity, at one point I could bench about 315 pounds and I weighed 180. Things have changed dramatically since then. I weigh

• 50:34Scott Galloway?

  the same amount, but the weight has been redistributed. Isn't that odd? Anyways, thank you for the question, Ben from Colorado. Question number two.

• 50:42Speaker 04

  Hi, Professor Galloway. My name is Heather and I live in New York City. I have been following you for a while and I love your work. In light of your new podcast, I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on the podcast industry. It seems like podcasts are now competitive territory for original content. I'm curious about your thoughts on what the future of the industry looks like, especially for small, independent producers. It seems like the current primary ways to directly monetize with podcasts are through sponsorships and subscriptions with a partner like Patreon. Since podcasting has a low barrier to entry, there are tons of independent producers out there trying to release new shows.

• 51:24Speaker 04

  My question for you is where do you see room within the industry for innovation and perhaps new ways to monetize?

• 51:32Scott Galloway?

  Heather, thank you for the thoughtful question and the kind words. So I'm not here with a message of hope. I think almost every industry, including podcasting. I mean, so there's some wonderful things about it. There's a dispersion of creativity and you get to bypass the, kind of the old guard. So it's no longer about trying to impress a creative executive who works for Jeffrey Katzenberg such that you can get budget to be on Quibi. Fuck that. You got an iPhone, you're creative, you do a video and boom, you're on TikTok. And ideally, there's a way to monetize it. However, however, most of these platforms do a really good job of ultimately starching out all of the margin and then only the biggest players really make a lot of money. And there's just an incredible crowding of the majority of spoils to fewer and fewer players. That's just a function of our network economy, whatever you'd

• 52:16Scott Galloway?

  want to call that. And the same is happening in podcasts. There are now over a million podcasts. I would bet less than 200 or 300 are self-sustaining, maybe 1,000, maybe 1,000 podcasts. So you're talking about Kind of essentially a 99.99% unemployment rate if employment is defined by making your sole living from that endeavor. The ecosystem, though, is pretty productive and that is, I think there's a better future in the technology and the engineering in the production of podcasts because a lot of podcasts are being used, they're being used to market another business which is more easily monetized. So McKinsey and Harvard will have great podcasts to promote other products.

• 52:59Scott Galloway?

  Andreessen Horowitz has a bunch of podcasts to raise their awareness and increase their deal flow. Salesforce will have a bunch of podcasts that say, hey, we get IP. Hey, small businesses, love us, touch us more so that we can sell you cloud-based CRM software. These are difficult businesses to run as standalone businesses. Is there a silver bullet? No, it's just really hard work. It's hiring really smart people. Greatness is in the agency of others. If you have the resources, there's a reason I thank Caroline and Drew at the end of every show, mostly because it's written in the script, but beyond that, I recognize that they are the ones that make this happen. A platform or a distribution partner is, really helps because you need marketing, you need awareness, but more than anything else, it's about trying to do great work

• 53:44Scott Galloway?

  and have an original distinct voice. And even then, even then, it's pretty much a shitty business economically. However, however, this is what's going to happen with podcasts. Podcasts have an asset and the asset is when somebody comes up to me and high fives me and says, "Prop G, you're the man." I know they've seen one of my videos where I'm sort of outrageous. When someone comes up to me and grabs my hands and wants to have a long conversation with me about their mom or something that's happened to them or being a dad, I know that they've read one of my blog posts on No Mercy No Malice. When someone comes up to me and starts talking to me as if they know me. I know they've listened to one of my podcasts. Being in people's ears creates a relationship and an intimacy and a level of goodwill that

• 54:29Scott Galloway?

  translates to something in the business world called NPS. And basically, deeper-pocketed companies that can better monetize NPS are going through industries and buying high NPS products. So, think about this. Think about this. Hollywood has very loyal followers, the content makers. At the same time, cable companies have really low NPS. So, what did Netflix do? It started creating a lot of content that had high NPS and bypassing the low NPS gatekeepers. What is going to happen with podcasts? You're seeing it now. Wondery is being acquired. Wondery, which kind of is the HBO podcasting, is being acquired by Amazon for 300 million. Joe Rogan goes to Spotify. Why? Because podcasts have very high NPS, very high loyalty, not great monetization.

• 55:14Scott Galloway?

  But if Joe Rogan can sell a few million more subscriptions to Spotify, that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and makes acquiring him for 100 million bucks an incredible value. If Wondery can make Amazon Music more interesting and more differentiated with original vertical content, then Amazon only needs to go up 0.0001% and boom, the acquisition was wildly accretive. So, what are you going to see? Take the top 100 podcasts, or better yet, take the top 10 podcasts in every category. Look at the ones that are still independent, and a third of those are going to be acquired over the next 12 months by bigger players who can monetize it by selling paper towels or handsets. What does this all mean? Podcasting, I think, is like acting. I think the unemployment rate is really high, and I don't want to discourage you, but it

• 55:59Scott Galloway?

  typically needs to start out as a side hustle because it is difficult to make a standalone living in podcasting. And you're going to see a flurry of acquisitions in the podcast realm over the next 12 months. Thank you for the question, Heather from New York City.

• 56:19Scott Galloway?

  So this is the 39th episode. And whenever I hear the number 39, I think of when I was 39, because I am a narcissist would be. It was a pretty important year in my life. Specifically, it was the year I lost my mother. I am a only child, and I was raised by a single parent. And I had, like most only children of single parents, a very strong bond with my mom. I didn't have a family. I wasn't even in a relationship. So it was basically me and my mom against the world. My mom was diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer, metastasized from breast cancer, which she had survived twice. And she was basically given three months to live and asked me to help her die at home. And I get a lot of letters. I write a lot about my mom.

• 56:59Scott Galloway?

  I get a lot of email from people asking about advice for end-of-life or giving care. And so I just wanted to spend a moment providing some advice. Roughly speaking, I hear from people who are grappling with how to best balance work-life with taking care of a sick parent. And there is no script here. There is no user's manual. A lot of it comes down to situational, the relationship you have with that parent, the resources you have, whether you work for an organization that will give you time off or flexibility. But a few of the things I learned, and I would advise anyone who is in the position of taking care of a parent or a loved one towards the end of her life.

• 57:42Scott Galloway?

  One of the learnings was to care for the caregivers. There were, my mom, you know, there were just certain things I couldn't help her with. And so her sisters, four of them, took shifts and came from Britain to help take care of her. Her best friend helped take care of her. And I used to spend a lot of time, not just taking care of my mom, but taking care of the caregivers. And the people that are taking care of that person make sure that they have some time off and some enjoyment. Really try and embrace the media that your parent is into, whether it's music, whether it's photographs, whether it's watching. I used to watch Jeopardy and old episodes of Frasier. And Everyone Loves Raymond with my mother, but that was, it sounds kind of, you know,

• 58:26Scott Galloway?

  boring or passé, but it was really enjoyable for us. Spend a lot of time going through pictures. Let him or her relive their life again. Also, a learning for me is to have your own boundaries. There were three or four times where I would hear from either my mom's sister or the woman handling her hospice care, and they'd say, "It looks like this is it." That happened about four times. And when I say "this is it," this was supposed to be the weekend where my mom was going to pass. And what I had decided was that I would spend Monday through Thursday, living with my mom and helping manage her healthcare. But every Thursday afternoon, I would go back home to try and maintain some semblance of a life.

• 59:08Scott Galloway?

  And I pretty much stuck to that schedule, even when there was some difficult times or moments to leave. And I'm glad I did. Another learning: leave nothing unsaid. I think that it is impossible to tell your mom or dad how much you admire them, or how much you love them. It feels good. There's no regrets. Death is final. So find that courage. Try and cut through the bullshit of whatever's getting in the way of that. And leave nothing unsaid. I used to sit next to my mom, I remember this very vividly, and I would hold her hand. And sometimes I would just sit there and tell her how upset I was that she was sick. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but I think she enjoyed hearing

• 59:53Scott Galloway?

  it. Another learning is that a lot of people in your life will surprise and disappoint you. It was strange. It was as if some people in my mom's life thought that her cancer was contagious and she had, who had been very close friends, just not call her, much less come see her. At the same time, her boss from 10 years, a decade earlier, who was 20 years younger than her, used to get on a plane once a month, come to Las Vegas, rent a car, drive to our house, and sit with her and talk to her for an hour as she sat there on a couch, every 10 minutes throwing up into a bucket. Basically, stomach cancer

• 1:00:34Scott Galloway?

  is a very, is just an awful illness. And he would ignore it and talk to my mom for an hour, and then come back the next month. His name is, I always like to say his name, his name's Bob Perkowitz. He's a very successful businessman and a very decent man. Another learning is that sometimes it's the illness speaking. My mom was remarkably generous and loving through her final months, but occasionally would get mean, not terribly mean. And it was, it was easy for me to handle because I'm 39 and, and I'm pretty thick skinned. But there, this does happen a lot at end of life. And that is people can lash out and they can be mean. And just try to, if you can't ignore it and try and remember that is the illness speaking. Again, all of this is very situational.

• 1:01:19Scott Galloway?

  The one thing I do know, the one thing I do know is that where you die or where you spend your last moments is really the most, one of the most important things. And that is most people do not want to die under bright lights, surrounded by strangers. So if you're in a position to help your mom or dad die at home and around loved ones, that is an enormous victory. And that's obviously one of the most tragic things about some of the death that's taking place across America with COVID-19 is that many can't be around their loved ones. I think at the end, I would like to think, or my experience is at the end of their life, parents want, want two things. They want to know that their parenting resulted in a loving, responsible and productive

• 1:02:02Scott Galloway?

  son or daughter, and they want to know that they're loved immensely. And your ability to participate, be a competent provider of care at the end of their life and just providing that care checks both boxes for them and makes their exit much easier. So circling back, as we discussed, I ended up on one of those weekends when I came back home, I ended up meeting someone and having children of them, two sons. And my, one of my son's middle name is Sylvia, named after my mom. And he absolutely has her laugh. She would have just, she would have just loved that.

• 1:02:43Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Chagrin and Drew Burrows. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening. We'll catch you next week with another episode of The Prof G Show from Section 4 and the Westwood One Podcast Network.

• 1:03:04Speaker 05

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