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Episode 7: The Future is Here - Professor Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business
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In this Season 1 Finale episode of From the Horse’s Mouth, host Phil Fersht engages in a direct, uncompromising dialogue with Scott Galloway, NYU Stern professor of marketing, co-host of the “Pivot” podcast, and host of “The Prof G Show.” Known for his candid takes on media, the economy, and technology’s sweeping impact, Scott unpacks the tensions underlying the 2024 U.S. election, the power and responsibilities of Big Tech, the rising challenges of loneliness—especially among young men—and why America, despite its divisions, still has abundant potential.
Scott also addresses his evolving views on AI, national service, and what’s needed to restore trust and unity in a fractious world. In a world grappling with political friction, concentrated wealth, and rising loneliness, this episode offers a candid assessment and a hopeful call to leverage resources, regulation, and personal connections to steer society toward a more stable, inclusive future.
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Transcript
Introduction to Scott Galloway
00:00:12
Speaker
You're listening to From the Horse's Mouth, intrepid conversations with Phil First, ready to meet the disruptors who are guiding us to the new great utopia by reshaping our world and pushing past corporate spin for honest conversations about the future impact of current and emerging technologies. Tune in now.
00:00:35
Speaker
I'm delighted to have Scott Galloway. He's a very famous known entity in the world of podcasts. He's also a professor of marketing at NYU Stone School of Business. ah He's mentored many great marketeers and business leaders.
00:00:52
Speaker
in his time and he's very famous now for his Prof. G and Pivot podcasts. I think many of you will be familiar with Scott.
Economic Appointments Under Trump
00:01:01
Speaker
um He's been talking a lot around media consolidation, um what he's termed as the testosterone election and um the podcast election and some of the high anxiety that's caused a lot of the mayhem in 2024. You were talking the other day on your part about you know what you think is going to happen after the election. And you said something around Trump and outside of the big clown show, um he's not going to fuck with the economy. And can you expand a bit more on why why you why you said that and why you think that? Well, just based on his tips, I feel like the majority of his picks in a bad episode of Dancing with the Stars. But if you look at his picks around the economy, they've been adults, they've been very preval
00:01:49
Speaker
All right, impressive people. So it's almost as if you decide, in one place I can't, I gotta be serious, it's around autonomy. And I think the folks who picked, I would be surprised if you left FTC chair commonplace. um I think Chairman Powell, last year, if Taylor Swift was times person of the year, that's ridiculous. The most consequential person in America.
00:02:11
Speaker
made it a world last year other than Putin or Zelensky was probably Jerome Powell, who took inflation down in the West. But I feel, and I think most people on both sides of the aisle, there feel that Trump's picks for Treasury Secretary, Commerce, just appear to be very solid, confident picks, which stands in stark contrast to some of the other picks.
00:02:34
Speaker
Fantastic.
Loneliness Among Men and Workplace Impact
00:02:35
Speaker
You also mentioned at the beginning one of our biggest issues, particularly impacting young men is loneliness. We picked up a bit yesterday, I think loneliness is impactful in the corporate setting. And 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, it didn't matter if you hated who you worked with as long as you got the job done. You did a job, you went to the office, you did your stuff, you went home.
00:03:00
Speaker
Now, most people spend most of the time stuck at home, got the dog for company, whatever. um You kind of got to like who you work with. right You kind of have to get on with people. It's becoming an increasingly important part of the job. but Everyone's saying, hey, I've got all this time freed up because I'm using AI. What do you do with that free time? and you know I think part of our take is Talk to your colleagues. Get to know them better. Embrace them. you know everyone is Everyone is lonely. and And I think it's broader than just maybe young men. I think loneliness is something that's impacting everybody. Yeah, it's especially hard on men. One in four men don't have a best friend. One set of men can't name a single friend.
00:03:42
Speaker
And men have a much more capable time maintaining kind of social fabric without a relationship. It's usually your life. You're often forcing you to go to that Christmas party or make plans with neighbors. When men don't have, aren't in a relationship or aren't working, they become just totally isolated.
National Service Proposal for Unity
00:04:02
Speaker
You know, I find loneliness, our superpowers of species is our cooperation. And it's hard to cooperate and build things I think remote work is a disaster for young people. I think it's an enormous unlock for caregivers. If you're taking care of kids, or your parents, or your own health, or you can't afford to live near the office, I think special accommodations should be made for remote work. But the young people like that. I told them, for God's sake, get into the office before you have dogs and kids. That's where you're going to meet mentors, friends, potential mates. HR doesn't like to talk about this, but one in three marriages started to work.
00:04:40
Speaker
And where are people supposed to meet and fall in love and find friends, mentors, business partners? One of the recommendations I made when I talked to Barris administrations is I think we need mandatory national service. I was just in Israel and I met with an Italian, an IDF Italian, 160 kids, average age 19.
00:05:02
Speaker
fit outside all day, learning how to handle semi-automatic weapons. You get the sense they've died for each other. All serving as an agency have something bigger than themselves, and that was their country. And I think some of the things that they lost in additional loneliness, the lack of appreciation for just how wonderful America is. And I think a way to restore that would be to give some different economic, sexual orientation, ethnic backgrounds, a chance to meet other great Americans and serving in the agency of America. If you look at government, this is the most unproductive legislative session in history. And the most productive where they got along was the 50s, 60s, and 70s, because in the joy of our elected leaders, it all served in the same uniform. And they saw themselves as Americans before they saw themselves as Republicans and Democrats. So I think it's so crucial for young people to get it together. i meanll I'll give you a more unconventional approach. I've had Andrew Huberman and Peter Alte on my podcast.
00:05:57
Speaker
who are the same as serial scientists at doctors all the time. And the medical community is sort of declarable on alcohol. You they see drunkenness of young people, I see togetherness. I advise young people, and this is a bit time and cheap, to go out more, drink more, and make a series of bad decisions in my payoff.
00:06:19
Speaker
So you mentioned about, at length, and you gave some fantastic examples about the insane wealth and power of Big Tech. I mean, it is it's getting to the point where you know you hear about Elon having conversations with Putin and things like that. How much of an impact do you think this is going to have on ah global stability? The second point is,
00:06:46
Speaker
Let's talk about big tech needs to be broken up more, but can it? Is it so powerful at this point? It's got a hold on government and this is just the way the world's going.
Breaking Up Big Tech for Competition
00:06:56
Speaker
I'll take the last and first. So I've been predicting a break up of big tech for five years and I've been wrong for five years, but it does look like the DOJ is pretty serious. It's already been a case saying that Alphabet should be broken up and they're looking at remedies now. Chairman McConnell has not been intimidated by a new A new president and has already announced a new investigation.
00:07:20
Speaker
you know I'm a capitalist. I'm in stocks and all these companies, except for Meta. And I believe I'll make money on break up. If you would look back on every break up, it's hard to point to whether it was bad for shareholders. Essentially, consumers win because there's more competition.
00:07:37
Speaker
ah Salaries go up because there's more companies who want to rent your labor. Taxes go up because, generally speaking, there's more economic growth. If you look at AT&T was broken into seven baby bills within 10 years, each one of those seven companies was worth more than the original AT and&T. so Breakups are a fantastic way of vaccinating the economy. It seems to be a bipartisan issue. so I'm quite hopeful that we're going to see either some pro-galactic spends or an actual breakup. There's way too much concentration in the economy.
00:08:07
Speaker
and the result of the lack of competition. Think about your Google search. Has it really changed much in the last 10 years? So you think about the tax we're paying in terms of our kids and social media. There was more than one social media company. I think they would be more inclined to try and figure out child safety, a little bit more responsive to concerns around elections and with misinformation. And so there's just not a competition where we're hugely overdue for additional regulation and a breakup of these companies. And what was your first question? um How much of an impact do you think it could have on global stability?
Wealth Concentration and Societal Stability
00:08:45
Speaker
So much wealth being concentrated among such a small number of individuals. Well, and to follow yourself, perhaps that's the good news. The bad news is the means of correction are usually war, famine or revolution.
00:08:59
Speaker
And generally speaking, when 1% of the population gets to a certain level of control of wealth, the bottom 99 decides that the fastest way to triple their income is to kill those people who are telling them to pack up and leave. And this is what has happened in Central America and Cuba over and over. And in Russia, I mean, this happens all the time. And I would argue we're kind of having a series of mini revolutions. And that is people are reminded 210 times a day that it seems as if everyone around them has a boyfriend with ripped abs or friends who are flying on private jets.
00:09:28
Speaker
And they hear about the market's hitting new highs, but the majority of our prosperity has been crammed into into the top 1%. If you took out the top 1% income earning households in America, we have grown our economy slower than France the last 20 years.
00:09:43
Speaker
So, similar to what Gibson said about technology, technology is here, or the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. In America, prosperity is here, it's just not evenly distributed. Two-thirds of economic growth over the next year, hello, is going to come out of the US. Unfortunately, more and more of it is being crammed into a smaller number of households. And the question is, at what point is there a breaking point? I would argue that's kind of already happened, and that is people are just so incredibly dissatisfied ah with America that almost no incumbent can survive. I think that the people, I go on TV a lot and say, what happened to Harris? I mean, it's simple. The Cape was bad. She's the incumbent. No incumbent was going to survive in an economy where so many people are not doing as well as they were doing and are reminded every day that they're really doing poorly because of the wealth born shoved in their face via social media algorithms every day.
00:10:37
Speaker
i And along those lines, how broken is the US at the moment after a very battering, bruising election? It's caused divisions within families. It was a big discussion around people coping during Thanksgiving with half the cut families blue, the other half's red.
00:10:57
Speaker
And now there's a conversation around, what can we trust? What information is real? How broken are we, Scott?
U.S. Political Climate Post-Election
00:11:03
Speaker
And is this going to heal, or are we just going to go through cycle after cycle now of this type of politicking? As broken as we might think, we are a harm. There's 190 countries. 189 would change places with us. We have so much economic growth. We still have the best universities. We have the best technology. We have the best media.
00:11:28
Speaker
I would like to think we're getting our act together in terms of recognizing that these companies do not have our best interests of hard and required regulation. I also, apparently, which doesn't mean I'm wrong, but I think that our adversaries cannot beat us economically, they cannot beat us militarily, so they weaponize their social media platforms to devise. And I think we're starting to get a hip to that, and we're going to put in place some regulations. I think it's finished TikTok to US entities is a smart idea.
00:11:53
Speaker
But, umm you know, I'm ah i'm long going to Bill Clinton and that is there's something wrong with America that can't be fixed with what's right with it. We have a hard part figured out in four minutes post the close of the market into the earnings top India. It adds two hundred and fifty billion dollars in market cap.
00:12:11
Speaker
The hardest thing about solving these problems is resources. And we have the hard part figured out. So I would argue that we have the resources. I think we kind of have to hit rock bottom, but I do think there's a, I think America at its heart is a very generous, loving people. yeah And I think we have tremendous resources and it seems like we should be able to use both of those to vastly improve or kind of solve the problem. If America was a horror movie right now,
00:12:37
Speaker
It's the call assuming from inside of the house. If you look at this relative to other nations, we have the lowest inflation and the strongest growth. It's almost impossible to pull off. The shareholder we now constitute 50% of all value in the stock market is contained within our nation is finally having 5% of the population. We still have a democracy, women are doing really well. and There's a lot lot to point to here that where things are really strong. The the problem is, is that we don't like each other.
00:13:06
Speaker
So I think institutions, whether it's religious institutions, nonprofits, mandatory national service, taking the heat down, holding social media accountable for creating a discourse that is increasingly coarse. But like I said, I don't think there's anything, any problem we have that can't be fixed with one of the blessings of the assets we have. That's a great answer. I think a lot of people here appreciated that.
00:13:31
Speaker
um I think it's getting to the end here.
AI Boom vs. 1999 Internet Bubble
00:13:34
Speaker
um You made a comment earlier around the pop, the AI bubble isn't going to be as bad as the one we went through with the internet um because the fundamentals are better. What are what are those fundamentals from your perspective?
00:13:49
Speaker
Oh, just revenue and earnings for it. So Cisco, basically what you have is, in 1999, people said, I can't understand who the winners and losers are. We know people have probably gotten out over the sheets in terms of valuations of internet or e-commerce companies. So all of that's in the steel on the ground, the infrastructure of Cisco. And Cisco's price and earnings multiple went to 120.
00:14:11
Speaker
And within video, it might be 35 or 40 or 50, but its underlying earnings and revenue growth has been really dramatic. So in sum, that massive increase in valuation is more more justified based on underlying business dynamics as revenue growth and earnings.
00:14:29
Speaker
than just a mood or a frenzy or a stare at a Bible or AI. So does that mean they're not overvalued? No, I don't know. But I can tell you that the revenue growth and the earnings are much more robust and real than they were in these companies in 1999. Wonderful. Well,
00:14:51
Speaker
um I think this has been an absolutely wonderful hour of your time and to yeah hear many of your thoughts that many of us have been listening to on your part, Scott. So I wanted to personally thank you. I love listening to your part every week or every other day at the moment. So and I'm sure everyone here in the audience appreciates you too. So thank you very much.
00:15:17
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to From the Horse's Mouth. Intrepid conversations with Phil first. Remember to follow Phil on LinkedIn and subscribe and like on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite platform for no-nonsense takes on the intricate dance between technology, business and ideological systems. Got something to add to the discussion? Let's have it. Drop us a line at From the Horse's Mouth at hfsresearch dot.com or connect with Phil on LinkedIn.