Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Yogababble - with Prof Scott Galloway

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Jane and Fi discuss economics, prison, immigration and how to help the younger generation with Scott Galloway, New York Times best-selling author and Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business.His new book, Adrift: America in 100 Charts is out now.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Emma SherryTimes Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Off Air with me, Jane Garvey. And me, Fee Glover. And we are fresh from our brand new Times Radio show, but we just cannot be contained by two hours of live broadcasting. So we've kept the microphones on, grabbed a cuppa, and are ready to say what we really think. Unencumbered and off-air. Hello and welcome to Off-Air with her, Jane Garvey, and me, Fee Glover. Thank you. So we're in on a Monday. We're a little bit hyper by now because we did a bit of travelling this morning. Last night we were in Shrewsbury.

Well, then we were in Birmingham. And we hot-footed it to Birmingham. We got up in Birmingham. We missed a train. It got cancelled. We got on another train. That got delayed. We zoomed home in order to dump our bags. I've managed to wash my hair, though. I changed the cat litter. home in order to dump our bags. I've managed to wash my hair though. I changed the cat litter. And then we came into work here at Times Towers and we've done a show and now we're doing a podcast. And it's rather beautiful because of course it's dark now

and all the big, big buildings, I think they're called skyscrapers, along the banks of the River Thames here at London Bridge. They look rather spectacular with their lights on. The NatWest Tower has got a pumpkin at the top of its, at its pinnacle this evening. Will you go home and be answering the door with some creative Halloween treats for your neighbours' kids? What I've done is when I went quickly home before I came to work, I did go to the local supermarket and I bought five Halloween chocolate lollipops. So the fifth, the sixth caller to my house tonight, Unlucky, there'll be nothing for you.

But there are three young children who live next door to me and they will each get a chocolate lollipop. Can I say that is one of the most parsimonious trick or treat anecdotes I've ever heard. Because you don't answer the door at all. Well, I think it's all or nothing. Because I think if the first person who answers the door may be impressed with your five Halloween lollipops,

but the second, third and fourth... I mean, the person who answers the door and is offered a choice of two Halloween lollipops is going to feel a little bit cheated. Or they could have an easy peeler. I've got some of those I want to get rid of. How much do you hate the family who only offer fruit and maybe some fresh walnuts? No, I think I'm just doing rid of. How much do you hate the family who only offer fruit and maybe

some fresh walnuts? I think I'm just doing my bit. Oh dear. Anyway, so no, I don't do anything at all, but that's because I've got a zoo of pets at home. So we do have to turn off all the lights and pretend not to be home. And as a result, last year our house was egged. Oh, was it? Yes, it was. Oh, happy Halloween to you too. Can I just mention a story that I think I've seen in the Telegraph, might be in other newspapers today, but this chimes with me because I particularly, the lit up pumpkin on top of the NatWest tower is very pleasing. Pumpkins IRL really, really annoy me for reasons I've never really been. I remember going to America once at this time of year and there are these pumpkin patches everywhere where kids go and choose their pumpkin. I mean, I just think it's madness. But anyway, pumpkins, when I was growing

up in the north of England, it was turnips. You used to stick a little candle in a turnip. So I don't really understand the pumpkin thing. But anyway, this is a very serious warning, actually, because there's going to be an epidemic over the next couple of days of pumpkin dumping in woodland, because apparently people have been advised to do this very thing on social media. Well the Woodland Trust said it was concerned about this rise in social media posts advising people to leave their pumpkins out for wild animals to eat. This is actually not a good thing to do says Paul Bunton, Engagement and Communication Officer at the Woodland Trust.

Pumpkin flesh can be dangerous for hedgehogs and also has a really detrimental effect on woodland soils, plants and fungi, he says. We cannot leave dumped pumpkins to rot, so we end up with an orange mushy mess to deal with at many of our sites. Pumpkins are not natural to the woodland, says Kate Woolen, assistant ecologist at Forestry England. Feeding pumpkins to birds, foxes, badgers, deer and boar can make them unwell and spread disease. Do not dump your pumpkin in woodland. But I feel very sorry for the bin men and women because the food recycling... There aren't any bin women.

The food recycling, there must be somewhere. I bet there aren't. The food recycling bins must be so heavy this week and next week, as whole massive great big pumpkins thud into them. Well, tough. I agree. I mean, that's why I tip my bin men. A seasonal conversation, but I always tip my bin men precisely,

not entirely because of the sheer weight of pumpkins this time of year, but it's a tough job and i wouldn't like to do it i wonder whether there are any bin women in britain there might be but i think we've had been women on our bin service before we probably should just be saying bin person i don't want to start some kind of terrible uh argument if that's okay and also i really don't want to annoy my bidman, person, woman, and help. Right. We love hearing from you all. So please do continue to get in touch on email, janeandfee at times.radio, or you can tweet us at Times Radio using the hashtag Jane and Fee. And don't forget to follow us if you can and it says here leave a review of the podcast wherever it is you're listening to us right now. As a person

who really hates being asked to give endless feedback I mean so far today I've been asked to give feedback on the hotel that we stayed in, the taxi that we took from there to here, the taxi that we took last night and something else popped up as well. And I just don't really, I don't have enough kind of bandwidth to even know what I think about any of those services. So if you don't rate and review us, I don't mind personally.

Do you want to do the gorgeous email that came in from Roseanne? Yeah, because this is about last week's guest, Nick Grimshaw, in his memoir, which I really enjoyed. I know you liked it too. He reveals, but wasn't something we talked about in the interview he reveals his mum has got three kidneys and Roseanne

wants us to know that she was catching up with the podcast and she has three kidneys along with three urethras sorry if that's TMI she says not for us Roseanne it's our meat and drink this sort of thing I discovered this in my early 20s when I was spending my second year uni summer in Hong Kong, as you do. I shan't insult you or your listeners ears by describing the illness that led to the hospital and me having to ingest what was probably the most toxic mixture, which was so bad that my body sent straight to my kidneys for immediate expulsion. At the critical moment, they took an x-ray whilst the heavy metals or whatever it was were still in my kidneys and discovered that I am as no one suspected special on the inside at least. This knowledge has been of no use or relevance in my life since

apart from when playing that game where you tell truth and two lies about yourself and people have to guess the truth. The strangest thing is that once the truth is revealed people always want to know why i haven't given one of my kidneys away or two yes because you do actually only need but it seems roseanne that's tough isn't it far from being impressed as frankly i am um all people can say to you is very uncharitable get shot of one of your kidneys then blimey people are so judgmental aren't they um but anyway that's that's quite a quite a discovery three kidneys three urethras um best of luck to you rosanna thank you very much for the email i'm fascinated by that really really fascinated because i think i i think it maybe isn't as rare as people would

imagine to have three kidneys it's just you don as people would imagine to have three kidneys. It's just you don't ever discover that you have three kidneys until something like this happens. Yeah, absolutely. There might be a lot of people walking around with a plethora of urethras. I've always found one is more than enough. But there can be a flaming nuisance, though. Here's another lovely email.

Dear Jane and Fee, as a happy, fortunately fortunately fan I'm pleased to be able to listen to you daily now I'm loving your freewheeling live style I was surprised kind way of putting it I was surprised though to hear today Jane's reaction to Adele's plans to study English online

we talked about this on our Times Radio show last week of course online study can't be by definition the same as face-to-face, but sadly, online learning got a bit of a bad name during the pandemic when face-to-face courses migrated online in rather a panic. But when study is designed to be online, it's a different experience and it opens a world of learning for people who can't attend a face-to-face university. Whether that's for cost reasons, probably not Adele's constraint in fairness,

caring responsibilities, needing to keep working alongside study, or perhaps having various disabilities that preclude the usual going to university. We have more than 50 years of incredible outcomes for our students at the Open University and over 200,000 students at the moment. Plenty of them are working, caring and managing to work towards degrees at the same time. And they are really incredible. I would love for one of us to fill you in on how we do that. And much more importantly, for you to hear from our students about how that experience has transformed their lives.

Take care. All the best from Mimi, who is a doctor at the Open University. So I volunteer you to do that particular one. You can go and learn all about online learning. Come back and tell us about it. Yeah, well, we should perhaps talk about the Open University on the programme. That would be nice. I'll be presented with that opportunity. Mimi, thank you very much.

And I'm sorry if I said something crass. I'm afraid it won't be the last time. Now, let's hear this interview that we did with Scott Galloway. We ought to big this guy up because he's a professor of marketing at NYU, University of New York, Stern School of Business. And he's got this new book, Adrift, which it sounds very dry to say it explores America in a hundred charts, but just expand on that for you. What does it actually do, this book?

So he uses pure data to tell the story of post-war america and that's everything from trickle-down economics to tax efficiency to gdp but then glorious things as well about how lonely people have become how much people are using their phones where where people go to find love. Just every single thing is explored just through these really brilliant graphs. So you don't have to read anything about it. There's no great kind of polemic. He's not making any assumption about your previous knowledge of American history. You can just look at these graphs and see the facts of America since 1945. I think it's a brilliant book, Jane.

Well, we started our conversation by asking him to extol the virtues of explaining history in this way, in pure data. One of the things that ails us is we don't want to rally around a truth. And I think the closest thing we have to a truth is science and data. So for me, if you can say things with data, you're less likely to have a partisan conversation. And also, if you can turn it into an image, we interpret image 60 to 60 times faster. So data-driven conversations expressed in charts, I'd like to think give us an opportunity to have a conversation around the issue as opposed to immediately going to our partisan corners. How frustrating do you find it living in a modern media world where the data does not come first?

I spent a lot of time looking at what I think the biggest issues are facing America and to a larger extent the West. And I think the biggest problem is, is that if the West was a horror movie, we would say the call is coming from inside of that house. And that is geopolitically, I think the U.S. and to a lesser extent, Europe are stronger than we've ever been in the U.S. We're food independent. We're energy independent. Smartest, most ambitious people in the world still want to come to either Europe or the U.S., but we don't like each other. A third of Americans in each political party think the other political party is their mortal enemy. Fifty four percent of Democrats don't want their kids to marry a Republican. Twenty five percent of Americans would now be happy with an autocrat as long as it was his or her autocrat. What's brilliant about your book is the horizon that you take us across.

So it's everything from love, money, houses, cars, kit, immigration, children. It's the whole nine yards, isn't it, of human existence. I wanted to start with trickle-down tax plan on page 14 there, Scott, because that's of enormous significance to us in the UK at the moment, because we have just lost, in inverted commas, a prime minister who was extolling the virtues of the trickle-down tax remit and theory. And I wonder whether you can tell us a bit more about the findings in America, the truth about the trickle-down effect.

Yeah, well, I don't know if you know this, but I literally moved to London six weeks ago. I moved to London, the queen dies, the pound crashes, and Prime Minister trusts. Is it your fault, Scott? No one wants me as their citizen. I'm not going to be able to get a visa to anywhere. But look, when I heard about the economic plan of the prime minister, it was sort of deja vu that

the 80s was calling and wanted its tax plan back. And generally speaking, the notion that lower taxes at the top rate is supposed to create more money for investment and our most productive citizens, quote unquote, which is Latin for rich people, would be able to allocate the capital more effectively in government. And what we found in the US is that those individuals invest the money, which is good in some senses, but it drives down interest rates. It drives up asset values. But the people who benefit most from that are the people who own stocks and own real estate. And 90% of real estate and stocks is owned by the top 1%. So it creates an upward spiral effect of wealth across the 1%. And what we also found is it's not good for the economy

because you put money in the hands of wealthy people, they invest it. There's some good things, some bad things there. You put money in the hands of lower middle income people. And the wonderful thing about that is they spend it all. So there's more of a multiplier effect in the economy. And also I think the market swiftly responded to this notion that you guys would start to head down the same path as us, and that is massive deficits. That put us in a very vulnerable position when this kind of increase in interest rates. And the difference between the US and the UK is that because the dollar is the default currency, we don't run the same risks of the markets abandoning our debt if we create too

much debt, because we can keep printing money and people still have an incredible and social appetite for dollars. That's not true in the UK. So I think the market swiftly said, we've been to this movie before except we're not in a position to pull it off. And obviously the results were pretty staggering and pretty swift. Scott, can we cheer ourselves up by talking about prison? Sure.

There's a really clear illustration in your book about incarceration rates. And it's so stark. So 629 out of every 100,000 people in the States were in jail in the August of 2021. And in Japan, the figure was 37. The UK, incidentally, is 132. Is Japan a crime-free place? Well, there are some societal things. There isn't as much crime, but more than anything, the delta is that we lock people up. We lock them up for minor drug offenses. We had a crime bill. It's a kind of a bipartisan movement.

Nixon was angry at people of color for not voting for him. So he implemented what he thought would be some populist anti-drug laws that ended up increasing incarceration, especially among people of color. And then Bill Clinton's crime bill, the famous three strikes bill where you three felonies and you're in for 25 years. America, a black boy born, has a one in three chance of ending up incarcerated. We spend more money on prisons in the United States than Russia spends on its military. We spend more than every nation bordering Russia spends on its military. So we spend more money locking up our citizens or protecting each other from other Americans than we are spending right now. But it is, it's an industry, it's a business in America, isn't it? That's exactly right. There's a for-profit motive. And here's the thing. When you make money at something, you become good at it. And this industry needs to get good at figuring out ways to pass laws to put more people in prison. And the sad part is whether there's more crime, less crime, it's not effective. During COVID,

there were some prison release programs. And in the regions that had the greatest number of prisons released into the neighborhoods, crime actually went down. Because in the U.S., we're suffering from an absence of men. There are entire neighborhoods with no men. And when a boy does not have a man in his life, he's twice as likely to become incarcerated. And the effect you have when you let out

nonviolent criminals is they actually play a fairly productive role in society, especially among discouraging recidivism or crime amongst their siblings and their nephews or their sons. So I believe that if we were really serious about another big theme, family young men, is we need to have more men in neighborhoods. And I think a prison release program would not only be smart fiscally, but I think it'd be the right thing to do societally.

We can genuinely cheer ourselves up with the story of immigration in America, can't we? I mean, often immigration is a story that's told in a very minor key. But you point out that over the past 30 years, immigrants to the US have started businesses at greater rates than American born citizens. In 2020, the rate of new entrepreneurs amongst immigrants was 0.59%, nearly double the rate among those born in the US. And also you point out that some of the hugest, most important tech companies are co-founded by immigrants, Google, eBay, PayPal, and Tesla. It's a completely different story to I think if you blindfolded somebody and asked them in this country to tell you, I don't know why you'd have to blindfold them, ask them to tell you the story of immigration,

it wouldn't be one of success. Well, it is one of success in the U.S., except we don't tell that story. We've decided to change the narrative and demonize immigrants. And if you look at Microsoft, Adobe, MasterCard, Google, they're not only run by immigrants, they're run by Indian immigrants. An Indian, a child of an immigrant, is twice as likely to move up the

income ladder than the child of an American. And if you're dealing with inflation, one way you would attack inflation is to dramatically increase immigration to put pressure or relieve some of that upward pressure on wages. If we're a football team or we get the top draft choices from every university in the world, people still want to come to America. And yet we've decided we don't want that. It just makes absolutely no sense. So it's not only whether you argue about the morality of open borders or immigrants, it's just economically deciding to holster your super weapon. And our super weapon has been that the most talented, hardest working people in the world who are very entrepreneurial, who are very risk aggressive, we've decided we don't want them.

It just it makes no sense. Full stop. So this is our interview that you're listening to with Scott Galloway, who has written a book called Adrift, Exploring America in 100 Charts. And I thought what he said about migration was just superbly demonstrated just in a graph. And it's when you see a topic like that, that can be surrounded with a lot of emotion, a lot of preconceived prejudice, and you just see the facts about how much wealth America has benefited from through embracing immigrant populations since the end of the Second World War. You cannot argue with it, Jane. It's really,

really good for taking down prejudice, I think. Well, let's hope people do look at the graph and think that way. We also asked him lots of questions about some of the other graphs that he has put in the book, including some really interesting ones about how we could help young people based on the evidence that we have about how they've been behaving over the last 50 years? I think that there's a lot of things we could do. One, for example, I'm a big fan of national service. I think it would help young people, especially young men, to get in the agency of other people from different income levels, different sexual orientations, different regions, different backgrounds, and start realizing that we're Europeans and Americans first before we're conservatives or liberals. I think we need investment in third spaces and those spaces where young people can hang

out together in person. I think we need a massive investment in increasing freshman seats and vocational programs to get more people out of the house and make them more economically viable. And I think as parents, we need to ensure that our kids get out of the house every day and do something in the agency or their kids get to do something in the agency of others, building something bigger than themselves, whether it's a sport team or church or education or working in a nonprofit or doing social national service. But the number of teenagers who see their friends every day has been cut in half. We're a social species. And the next

crisis, if you will, I think that we're going to talk more and more about, is going to be loneliness. One in seven men say they don't have a single friend. We're a social species, and when we're alone, we literally just begin to die. And do you know what happens to that point exactly to the rejected men, the ones who aren't in the high enough percentile to get any kind of action from a woman? That's the correct question. The most dangerous person in the world is a lonely, broke man, a young man. You've got a graph to prove that as well, haven't you? Well, the gentleman who attacked Salman Rushdie on the stage, that wasn't about the fat wall.

That was about a man living in his mother's basement. attacked Salman Rushdie on the stage, that wasn't about the fat wall. That was about a man living in his mother's basement. If you look at the most violent, unstable societies in the world, they all have one thing in common, and that is they're producing too many of these young, broken, alone men. And in the U.S., we're producing way too many of them. It's become a situation where men don't mature as quickly. Their prefrontal cortex literally doesn't develop as quickly. And when they don't have jobs, when they don't attach to school, you hear about a mass shooter and you know who it is before you know who it is. It's a young man who isn't attaching to anything. And it's not only, and I want to be clear,

I don't want to stereotype or reduce every introvert or young male that has no, you know, it's getting no interest from women as being a mass shooter. But when these men become isolated, they become much more prone to misogynistic content. They become much more prone to conspiracy theory, less likely to believe in climate change. They just become poor citizens. And once they get past a certain point of isolation, they don't develop any EQ, any social skills. And one in three men in America under the age of 30

have not had sex in the last year. And you hear the word sex and your mind fires a bunch of different places, but I just think of it as a key step to the elemental foundation of any society and that is a relationship. Young people, especially young men need guardrails. And if they're not getting guardrails

because they don't have to come into work and put on a clean shirt and blow dry their hair, if they're not having guardrails in a relationship, which is fantastic guardrails around behavior and what's required to maintain that relationship, they literally lose all sense of societal norms. They stop improving and they become resentful and angry. I think it's a big problem. Yeah. And there are dark places that will welcome them. We've got to end it there, Scott, but I just wanted to read out before you go some of your fantastic examples of yoga babble, which is a term that you coined a few years ago to describe

the nonsensical pontification that's replaced English in tech unicorns' mission statements. Are you ready for this? Go on. Zoom has a mission statement to make video communications frictionless. Your bullshit rating, Scott, was? It was one out of ten. I was pretty low there. It was, yeah.

I thought that was pretty low. Spotify to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by these creators. You've given that rating 5 out of 10, so it's kind of not bad. Here comes Peloton, though. Bullshit rating 9 out of 10. On the most basic level, Peloton sells happiness. And in at number 10 uh rivian if our planet is to continue to sustain life and enchant future generations we must change this is where rivian's potential lies i don't even thought it

was a truck yeah i was gonna say i didn't even know what it was what the company does it's a truck it's a truck and i make a big pickup truck. Okay. Of course it is. It's a pickup truck. That was Scott Galloway, a professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and the author of this book, Adrift America in a Hundred Graphs, which is out now. Now, tomorrow's guest is Bryony Gordon, who's an author, rather a different sort of individual to Scott Galloway, but actually really fascinating. I've interviewed her before, and she's written about, well, she had that very funny memoir, which is also rather sad in places, but actually really fascinating. I've interviewed her before and she's written about, well, she had that very funny memoir,

which is also rather sad in places, The Wrong Knickers. Do you remember that? I do. She was one of the first people to really throw open an underwear drawer of emotional anecdotes. And then she got into running and she really credited running with helping her mental health. And now she's written a novel for young people,

which I think is interesting. It's sort of Rapunzel-like, but with very contemporary undertones and overtones. I'm looking forward to that. Lots of tones. Lots of tones. Right. Good night from us. Have a very good evening.

And remember, don't dump your pumpkin in woodland, please. Remember the hedgehogs. And don't come and egg my house. You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought,

hey, I want to listen to this, but live, then you can, Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio. Embrace the live radio jeopardy. Thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon. Goodbye.