The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
00:07:51 · Scott Galloway, David Brooks
[00:07:51] S0: You summarized... I remember after January 20, I was... I think a lot of us on the left just felt sort of flummoxed and flat footed. We did not even know how to describe or even process what we were feeling. And you summarized it perfectly. You said that you you felt moral shame, that to watch the loss of your nation's honor is embarrassing and painful. What do you think we lost that day? [00:08:15] S2: Yeah. You know, I quoted in that Atlantic essay, the first sentence of one of Charles de Gaulle's memoirs. And he says, I've always had a certain idea about France, and I've always had a certain idea about America, that we're a flawed nation that's fundamentally a force for good. We... You know, Lincoln tried to uphold the dignity of man. FDR tried to defeat fascism. Ronald Reagan tried to defeat communism. George W Bush, for all his flaws, created PEPFAR to save twenty five million lives in Africa who might have otherwise died of HIV. And so we made our mistakes like Vietnam and Iraq, but they were straight... Mistakes of stupidity, of arrogance, of naivete, but they were not out of evil intention. And when I look at Donald Trump, evil intention is part of the plan. And so when I saw him attack Zelensky in... With JD Vance in that Oval Office, I I had experienced an an a blow to my patriotism, an emotion that I hadn't really felt about America before. And then on liberation day when the tariffs were announced, I felt it again mixed with a a horror of incompetence. These are new experiences, new and shocking experiences.
00:09:23 · Scott Galloway
[00:09:23] S0: Yeah. As as... Well, I think a lot of moderates try and find their political home base. I think I've... I yeah. Think I would have been a Rockefeller Republican if I'd been a little bit older. There's a lot of things about conservatism I'm really drawn to. And I wonder as someone who's, you know, I think a lot of progressives are like, we think, okay, Democrats get it wrong a lot. We take things too far. Identity politics, I think, is out of control. But the way you describe Americans, I would describe Democrats right now. Their heart's in the right place. They're... They... But we just often take things too far. We let 250,000 people across the border in December of twenty third, inspiring an overreaction where we start basically... Start basically rounding up people with the wrong tattoos. We let DEI apparatus on campus go so far that it probably becomes unconsciously accidentally racist itself, and we inspire an overreaction. Do you think there's any truth to the notion that we on the left, quite frankly, have a tendency to stick out our chin and just take things too far and quite frankly, create space for an overreaction to some of this our fault.
00:10:30 · David Brooks
[00:10:30] S2: Oh, absolutely. You know, I would say one flaw. And now when where I position myself, I I read one of my heroes is Isaiah Berlin, British philosopher, and he said, I'm happy to be on the rightward edge of the leftward tendency. And that's where I find myself these days, on the rightward edge of the leftward tendency. I associate more with the with moderate or to the Democrats, I guess, but I am the conservative version of that. And when I look at the progressive world, I think it was just a horrible mistake to buy into an ideology that defines all human relationships into oppressor oppressed groups. It was a horrible mistake to think that a person's ideas, values, and worldviews are determined by their racial or gender identities. But the ultimate sin for me that progressives committed over the last seventy years is they created worlds in the universities and in the media and the cultural institutions and the nonprofits where there was no room for voices that were working class voices, and there was no room for conservative voices. So when I joined journalism as a police reporter, I worked around lot of high school grads. Journalism had a strong working class component in those days. And when I went to college, there was mostly progressives, but there were a lot of conservatives around. Over the ensuing forty years, that's been purged. And as far as I know, if you look at the editorial staff of the major mainstream media organizations, there's not a single Trump supporter in an editorial position as far as I know. And so if you tell half the country that your voices are not worth hearing, they're gonna flip the table. And worse, if you create a meritocratic system where the children of the rich have advantages in getting to the Ivy League schools over the children of the poor, and that goes on generation after generation, they're gonna flip the table. And one of the things that disturbs me most about American life is how we've developed a caste system. So college educated people live fifteen years longer than high school educated people. High school educated people are five times more likely to die of opioid addiction, five times more likely to have kids out of wedlock, 2.4 times more likely to say they have no friends. And so we've created this class divide on the basis of education.
00:12:40 · David Brooks, Scott Galloway
And it was mostly progressives who were in charge of our educational institutions so that fixing that problem is one of the things I think progressives have to have to work on. [00:12:51] S0: Yeah. I think a lot about this, and the way I describe what you just described is this magic drug that does all the wonderful things you're talking about if you take it. And yet we as progressives who run these institutions have decided to hoard this drug through artificial scarcity, that America has become a rejectionist kind of LVMH exclusionary culture. That once I have a house, I get very concerned with traffic and show up and make sure no one else can build a house because the incentive is to see the value of my house go up. Once I have a college degree, I kind of enjoy hearing that the admissions rate has gone from seventy six percent to nine percent, which is my alma mater, UCLA. Do you think that there's this virus that infects Democrats and Republicans where we've decided once you get there, pull up the bridge behind you. There were more LVMH than what was originally envisioned for America.
00:13:41 · David Brooks
[00:13:41] S2: Yeah. I I mean, I would say the the the one little activity that personifies what you just said is my daughter did okay in her SAT scores, and she started getting brochures from colleges. And she got big, expensive, glossy brochures from schools like Harvard. There is literally no student in my ZIP code who can get into Harvard who doesn't know about Harvard. And so why did they send these fancy brochures in order to induce students to apply so they can reject them? That way, they can say we are rejecting 96% of the kids who are applying to our school. And so that's a bit of the cynicism of creating... Not only creating scarcity, but bragging that you've become a rejection academy, rejecting 96% of the kids who apply. And so that to me is a bit of the segmentation. And then recruiters from the banks and the consulting groups, they recruit at various few schools. Somebody did a study of looking at who works at media, entertainment, corporations, law, science, and 54% in these various diverse fields went to the same 32 elite colleges. And so we have created a segregation system based on SAT scores and grades that divide society at a very early age. And a lot of kids know by age eight or nine because they're tested so often whether the system thinks they're dumb or smart. And the dumb ones are alienated, and they think the system is rigged against it, which is accurate. I had an interesting call with a friend of mine who lives in Ohio who's an electrician, And he he said, you know, David, I I saw you saying nice things about institutions, that you really were through some really wonderful institutions that made you a better person, and I would include my summer camp, my high school, my college. He said, I've never felt that way about institutions. That was such a novel thought for me because every institution I've been a part of is like a jackboot in my face. And that's just a very different attitude than those of us who were fortunate enough to, well, to do reasonably well in these elite institutions.
00:15:41 · Scott Galloway
[00:15:41] S0: We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for the show comes from Nutrafol. Upgrading your routine doesn't mean you have to change everything. Sometimes making just one meaningful change can make a huge difference. So if you've been thinking about your hair health, you might wanna check out Nutrafol. Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand, and it's the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists. Because hair growth isn't one size fits all. Nutrafol offers different formulas for both men and women at any age or stage of life. And now, the Nutrafol women's formula has been upgraded to its most advanced version yet. It's a 100% vegan, biotin free, and comes in a smaller capsule size to make your daily routine easier. Nutrafol's hair growth supplements are peer reviewed, NSF certified for sport, and clinically tested. Adding Nutrafol to your daily routine is easy. Order online, no prescription needed, with automated deliveries and free shipping to keep you on track. Plus, with a Nutrafol subscription, you can save up to 20% and get added perks like a free headspace membership to support your hair health journey. You can see thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in just three to six months. Now is offering our listeners $15 off your first month subscription and free shipping when you visit nutrafol.com and enter promo code prop g. That's nutrafol.com spelled nutrafol.com. Promo code, Prof G for $15 off. Be sure to use our code to support the show. Support for the show comes from Apollo. The world's leading companies don't need off the shelf financing solutions, whether it's funding growth, modernizing operations, or strengthening their balance sheet. CEOs and CFOs need more than capital. They need a financing partner with scale, flexibility, and certainty to help them execute. That's where Apollo comes in. Through its integrated global platform, Apollo provides access to long duration capital and a broad range of financing capabilities, helping companies develop customized financing solutions designed around their strategic objectives and structured at an efficient cost of capital. Custom made, investment grade. Learn more at apollo.com/capital. Apollo global management, capital provider, asset manager, wealth and retirement solutions.