Kara Swisher · 59:31
Okay, Scott. Let's hear some wins and fails. I shall go first. I'm gonna say I was gonna talk about... There's a really great column by Mike Masnik and Tekdir talking about how... He writes about tech a lot of the time, and he he... He's he's he's written a wonderful piece about how he's now a democracy blog, and he was talking about the importance of tech reporters to really explain what's happening. And I agree with that. I think Wired's doing a great job. I think The Wall Street Journal has done a great job, New York Times has, and and a lot of publications, big and small. So I think that's the thing. But, actually, I'm going to... Actually, some... Something I watched on the plane. I binged watched it. It's called running point. Our friend Justin Theroux is in it. He's fantastic. But the star is Kate Hudson, and this most astonishing group of very funny people is about basketball. Essentially, it's about... It's a group called the LA Waves. It's about a basketball owner, and it's kind of, like, silly and stupid and a bit of an ad for how good sports is, kind of a feel good comedy. And critics don't like it because it's not mean and how terrible it is, but I loved it. And I think Kate Hudson is the most adorable person ever, and it's very, very, very funny to me. I love this show. It's on Netflix again, and I get it. I get why critics don't like it because they're snotty bitches. But I had a great time, at watching it, and I watched... I binge watched the whole thing. And, again, Justin is amazing in it among the many actors in it who are amazing. Every single person is. But he does... He wears a a... I wrote him. I said, your scarf work is excellent. He plays a bask... Basketball owner... Basketball team owner. Anyway, I love it. It's really fun. My my negative, I... I'm trying to go between... I try not to talk about people's outfits, but it's very hard this week. I'm trying to go between Elon's new haircut, which is, again, a very lesbian level haircut of... From the eighties, and Zuckerberg wearing Benson Boone's powder blue jumpsuit for his wife, Priscilla's birthday party. I I I tried, Scott, but they need to stop. These people need to stop because I can't contain myself. Think it was so performative. Everything is so performative with these people, and I want them to go away, like, go away from us and stop posting themselves doing wacky, crazy things. And it feels a lot like Rome is burning and they're they're fiddling. So that's why I think it offends me in so many ways. Besides being so awkward, it's painful. I didn't wanna see Mark Zuckerberg's chest in any way, and there it was. And it was hard to avoid. Anyway, yours, go for it.
— Predictions segment begins —
Scott Galloway · 1:02:05
I just have a a win. I'm trying just because I'm such a glass half empty kind of guy, I'm trying to focus on or having some discipline around. If you look at the world, actually, the world over the medium and long term, despite some severe hiccups in the short term, the world gets better. And so it's... Your default setting should be... Or you're... You should always have in the back of your mind what could go right. Because generally speaking, over time, the world has gotten better. And I'm trying to think, looking at this mess and how upsetting it is, what could go right? And I think what could go right here is that I do believe a real silver lining the size of the cloud here is I do think that Europe is threatening to be an actual union. And if you look at, most recently, the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, I think is unveiled
Kara Swisher · 1:02:56
say that. Go ahead.
Scott Galloway · 1:02:58
She unveiled a historic $840,000,000,000 plan to increase EU defense spending, And they're now looking at going past the 2% number. They're looking at coordinating. And what they've decided is is that... And this is kind of the unintended consequence of recognizing they can no longer depend upon American consistency and the military umbrella. Wait. It really doesn't make any sense that Europe would... And they're recognizing this, that they would need to back down to the... To Russia because Russia's GDP is about 2,000,000,000,000. The combined member states of the EU is 19,000,000,000,000. You know, Germany, France, and England all have bigger economies. Russia is just barely ahead of Spain. It's smaller than Canada. Both Britain and France have nuclear arsenals. They have very sophisticated manufacturing intellectual property. They have decent AI. They have fantastic communications technology. And I believe, and this is kind of links to investments, if you look at European stocks, European value stocks on a scale of one to 100, one being the cheapest they've ever been, 100 being the most expensive, US growth stocks are at 98. And that is only 2% in history. Only 2% of of time have they been more expensive than they are now. European value stocks, big companies like Mercedes, L'Oreal, are at 2%, meaning 98 of his... Of time, they've been more expensive. I think that Europe is finally saying, okay. We believe it. We can't count on our rich, crazy uncle. He's gone just fucking insane. We can't count on him. But we as siblings are actually very strong when we coordinate. And we're a bigger economy. We have fantastic technology. And they have already stepped up. They've... They immediately called a meeting in in The UK. They're about to call another one in Brussels. And Europe is really stepping up. And my... This really goes to not only my win, but my prediction. And that is I think you're gonna see the European economy and European stocks rip. Because if you look at military spending, there really is some spillover in terms of technology. The most valuable companies in the world, Kara, are basically thick layers of innovation on top of technologies developed in the military. Apple is a function of a Cold War technology, but we wanted to make sure we could put a missile in someone's pocket in terms of GPS accuracy. All of the Internet was the Americans trying to figure out a nodeless or hubless communications network post a nuclear attack from Russia. The drone technology coming out of Ukraine could be... Could have unbelievable applications in the consumer economy, as could AI. Anyways, my win is that Europe is finally becoming a union, commanding the space it occupies. They're gonna massively increase their coordination and their military budget. And I believe the stimulus of that spending and the new technologies that'll spend over to the consumer economy are about to set European markets on a tear, and it's already happened. They're up 12% this year, largely on the back of European defense contractors that have... Their stocks have accelerated, while The US is flat. So I think this is... I think we're about to see... My win is the... Is that Europe is finally a union, and that I think it's gonna have huge economic benefits, both stimulative and in terms of technology spillover.
Kara Swisher · 1:06:30
Alright. And?
Scott Galloway · 1:06:32
That's it. That's all I got. That's good. That's good. Justin Queso. Alright. Okay. Alright. There you
— Predictions segment ends —
Kara Swisher · 1:06:36
Justin Queso. Oh my god. Are we gonna are
Scott Galloway · 1:06:39
we going to Austin.
Kara Swisher · 1:06:40
We're going to Austin. Are we gonna have a good time? That's my win. You and me in Austin. I miss you.
Scott Galloway · 1:06:44
There we go. We're gonna
Kara Swisher · 1:06:45
have fun.
Scott Galloway · 1:06:46
Having fun.
Kara Swisher · 1:06:47
We're gonna hang out. There's a party. We're gonna do a live pivot. I have to also interview Chelsea Handler, is the number one book in the country right now, and Elizabeth Warren. Yeah. I'm doing two live things there.
Scott Galloway · 1:06:59
That's two great cases I didn't see going together.
Kara Swisher · 1:07:02
They're not going together. They're separate. Although I could put them together, couldn't I? No. I'm not gonna do them. I'm doing separate. Elsewhere in the Scott and Cara universe this week, this week in prof key conversations, Scott spoke with doctor Anna Lemke, professor of psychiatry at Stanford and author of Dopamine Nation. Let's listen.
Guest · 1:07:20
Drugs in all their forms are the great human replacement. Addiction is a disease of loneliness. Even if we have a lot of great people in our lives, if we are... If we get addicted, we will isolate, and we will use our drug to replace that human connection. So... And I say that because we sometimes talk about loneliness as the cause of addiction, but more often than not, what I see is that the addiction causes the loneliness.
Kara Swisher · 1:07:52
Oh, I like that. That sounds fascinating.
Scott Galloway · 1:07:54
Can I can I go a move around here? I've been thinking about this a lot, that a lot of people came up to me at Mobile World Conference to talk about this. And there's this specific addiction that I haven't spent much time thinking about because there's not a lot of good research on it. And in the last two weeks, I've had three men, two young men, one older man. And the most recent was at Mobile World Conference. This kid came out to me, kid, he's like 34, he's killing it. Great family, married two kids, just killing it professionally. And he said, would you mentor me? And I'm like, boss, I don't mentor people who have their shit going well. The kids I mentor are really struggling and really need it. You don't need it. And he's like, well, I have an addiction problem. And three men have said the same thing to me. And I said, what's your addiction? And he said, porn. And it's really interesting. Porn is probably the least studied addiction because there's very little peer review or academic research because very few people wanna be known as a porn professor. And it's You could
Kara Swisher · 1:08:57
do that. You could fill that space, but go ahead.
Scott Galloway · 1:08:59
I'm not sure that's a good idea. I am doing a lot of research. It's brand.
Kara Swisher · 1:09:03
It's on brand. Go ahead.
Scott Galloway · 1:09:05
But it really is something that we don't talk about a lot. And I could see all three of these men when they said it to me. There was real shame in their voice. And there's much more shame. If you say, I have an addiction to alcohol, it's kind of like, okay. If you say you have an addiction to porn, people are little bit scared of you. Yeah. Treat you. Keep their kids away from you. Anyways, the... And I've been thinking a lot about young men. And where I go to around this is I think that... And this is more advice. Is that I think the best thing in life, hands down, economic security, relevance, that's all important, but it's a means to an end. And the ends, in my view, are finding someone and having kids and having a loving, prosperous family. That is the whole shooting match. And that starts with, in my view, for for a lot of men, with wanting to have sex. And and I think that's a wonderful thing. And I think we've pathologized it. I was thinking, I wouldn't have graduated from UCLA if I didn't think there was a nonzero probability I might meet someone on campus and eventually have sex with them. And I know that sounds crass, but it was the truth. That was a big motivator for me to get out of the house, take risks, endure rejection. If I'd had porn on my phone and on my computer, I'm not sure I would have gone on campus every day. That's what young men are dealing with, and that is a total loss or near total loss of mojo and risk taking to develop the skills they need. Here's the problem. You don't know. What you know is is that your son and young men and some older men aren't getting out of the house as much, aren't taking risks, aren't developing skills, humor, kindness, demonstrating excellence. And as a result, it's this low risk, low entry means of a reasonable facsimile of a relationship called porn.
Kara Swisher · 1:10:53
I agree.
Scott Galloway · 1:10:54
And it creates unreasonable expectations on women. It creates an illusory vision of what a relationship actually is.
Kara Swisher · 1:11:00
That's my worry.
Scott Galloway · 1:11:01
Yep. You don't... And I think about it. I spent so much time enduring rejection from women and developing skills such that occasionally, I could get lucky and taking risks. And guess what? Those skills have served me well my entire life.
Kara Swisher · 1:11:14
It's also... You know, it is. And it's another thing I've been talking about here. It's frictionless. Right? It creates a lack of friction, and friction is good for... And tech people constantly talk about frictionless experience. They want everything frictionless so that you just sit there and and don't go anywhere. And it creates growth for them, and it creates... Friction is the best thing that can happen to people. Like, problems, friction, mistakes,
Scott Galloway · 1:11:39
and stuff. Thinking of... Just just speaking of Kate Hudson, the reason romantic comedies are two hours and not fifteen minutes is this shit is hard, and it's worth it. And where I end up with is where I tell young men, modulate... I can't tell young men not to engage in porn, but modulate it such that you have the fire to develop the mojo, the effort, the skills, willingness such that you can make your own bad porn. That's the key. Porn is great as long as you're involved with another being.
Kara Swisher · 1:12:04
Great. Is it great? No. You know what
Scott Galloway · 1:12:06
I mean. Sex. And we have and love sex. A certain extent, we've sort of we've sort of demonized or chastised or pathologized young men wanting to have sex. That's a great thing. Want sex.
Kara Swisher · 1:12:19
I'd rather have them have sex than have porn. That is absolutely true. Anyway, here we are. Anyway... And Kate Hudson's adorable. She really is. Okay, Scott. That's the show. We will see you in Texas in Austin with a live pivot. We'll be back on Tuesday with more pivot. Please read us out.
Scott Galloway · 1:12:35
Today's show is produced by Lara Nayman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, miss Severio, and Dan Shulan. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. Can You subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business care. I will see you in the great state of Texas.
[Ad break]
Scott Galloway · 1:14:30
for details.
