The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Mind the Gap

Episode Date: April 2, 2020

Scott Galloway discusses caring for family, the impact of our population’s health on the economy, and an MBA in a post-corona world. He also sits down with Matthew Frieman, Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Maryland, to discuss the state of play of COVID-19 and the development of therapeutics and a vaccine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

in the midst of any crisis a voice emerges a voice of truth the voice of honesty a voice that provides comfort even if it's from a podcast i am not that voice episode three great trilogies that probably the one that stands out is the godfather so here we are number three in the midst of the coronavirus what can be learned a lot can be learned i think american exceptionalism is going to come under tremendous fire. I think our exceptionalism can best be visualized by a makeshift morgue that is a refrigerated truck somewhere in Queens that our narcissism, our fetishization of state and local authority that has resulted in no coordination, self-absorption that's led us to believe, and I was guilty of this, that it was a China virus and that they were somehow more prone to this stuff. This is where the flu started and ended,

that it wouldn't get here. And despite the fact that we've had all this time to prepare, despite the fact that we've had all these warnings, despite the fact we spend more on healthcare than anyone else in the world, despite the fact we're supposedly the wealthiest nation in the world, let's be honest, we have fucked this up in such a huge way. We knew this was coming. The president has a 48 or a 49% approval rating. Okay, that means nothing. That means he's doing a shitty job. People have a tendency to rally around the flag and their leader in times of crisis. The military government in Argentina had a huge surge of popularity when they decided

to reclaim or repatriate that all-important strategic asset, the Falkland Islands. When 9-11 happened, the approval rating on George Bush of W post the Twin Towers coming down and how he handled that, his approval rating was 93%. So America is catching on to the fact that we have to look in the mirror here and recognize that Italy, who is not known for what we would call competent government, was at a better point or a better place than we were at the same point in this crisis. That Asian cultures that are known for being more compliant, which is our way of excusing our narcissism. Compliant has sort of a negative connotation to it. They don't have their heads up their asses. They realize I have friends in San Francisco who are distancing and staying at home because they have underlying health conditions.

Well, guess what, everybody? We all have underlying health conditions, meaning that if you have any empathy for anybody else, you have an underlying health condition. Because even if you don't have asthma or you're not in the midst of chemo from throat cancer, as one of my friends is, you go to the store and you will feel confident. You'll feel like, I'm fine. You won't see any symptoms. You're around other people. You feel this cold comfort. You're likely to pass it on to someone who is vulnerable. It just feels as if this is laying bare some of the really ugly underbelly of the U.S. We screwed this up. So here to tell us how badly we screwed up and give us sort of a greater understanding of what's going on here is Matthew Freeman. Matthew is an associate professor of microbiology and immunology

at the University of Maryland, where he studies immunology and obviously microbiology, and is working in a lab there trying to find therapeutics and vaccines. I find Professor Freeman to be compelling, concise, gets to the point, and we had him on our other podcast, Pivot, but I wanted to check in with Professor Freeman and get a sense for state of play. Anyways, with that, here is our conversation with Professor Matthew Freeman. Professor Freeman, how are you? I'm very good. How are you, sir? I'm good. Where are you? I am in my office in Baltimore, Maryland at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. And around us is not very many people

anymore. Everyone is quarantined at home. And we pretty much have the building to ourselves these days. So give us the state of play here where every day things change a bit. But give us your sense of where the hot zones are, what this looks like in terms of when, if and when, we might start to flatten the curve by region, if and when it burns out. What's the state of play here? So right now the U.S. has somewhere in the order of 165,000 cases with now over 3,100 deaths, with more cases obviously accruing every day as it spreads around the country. So the really important part for all of these responses is testing. So as much as we can test people, the better.

That's been a really big problem in the United States to get testing throughout the country in a widespread area with validated and useful tests that is now picking up and we're doing the different hospitals and different healthcare centers around the country are doing tens of thousands of tests a day, which will really give a better idea of where this virus is. And that's really why we're seeing so many more cases because they really were already there before. People are now, the only people are getting tested generally are people with severe disease in hospitals. There are drive-thru clinics around the country, but that's a minority of places. Most of the cases are more severe patients, and that will keep going. We're going to see a lot more people being positive for quite a while in the United States.

I think that the problem areas are really where the hospitals are going to be crushed, where there's going to be a huge surge, as we're seeing in New York City, and that's going to continue around the country. And I really worry about not just the large metropolitan areas, but the smaller areas where they may not have 2,000 hospitals like New York City has, but they have one or two hospitals, and they can easily become overwhelmed with a small number of patients that are coming in. I think also the key is that the population has to listen to people, all the doctors who are telling everyone to stay inside, to minimize your exposure and to get food delivered as much as you can, to really minimize your contact with your neighbors and your community, which I realize is very, very difficult, but is really important for really slowing down the spread of this virus. Out of the 350 million people in the United States, there's big questions and models about

how many people are really going to be infected with this and have severe disease. And the numbers are not very optimistic at the moment. And that's because people are not heeding the call of staying inside. I don't know what people are thinking, but I think that there is a really big problem with people listening to the healthcare community that's telling everyone to stay inside. And just as New York is a hotspot, does that mean on the other end of this, distinctive the surge and obviously the problems it creates there, does that mean at some point New York actually becomes a sanctuary where there's some sort of herd immunity that develops and people start going to New York because you're less likely the spread gets cauterized, if you will? Do these places come out the other end with herd immunity that makes them attractive, the ones that had the most damage early on? I think that's a really good point. And I think that the cities and the areas that are hit the earliest now will be the

ones that are clearer earlier, obviously. So there's two versions of this, right? One version of the model for kind of the herd immunity side is that you want everybody to become infected right away. And yes, we'll get a massive amount of deaths. This was the UK version early on. We'll get a massive amount of deaths of the elderly, you know, sorry, grandma, but everybody else will get infected with mild disease and we'll be fine. And that's pretty problematic because you're throwing your elderly population to the wolves basically. But what we're finding now is that if you're young, if you're 20

and 30 and 40 years old, you're not completely immune to this thing in the front end. You're still getting very severe disease and we're getting a lot of deaths in that population actually the u.s is seeing more as many deaths under 50 as there is of over 50. and so you know there has to be a balance here and and the best way to go forward is to really minimize the amount of contact you have even if over time we get the same percentage of people infected uh the the least the lower numbers of people that are immediately going to hospitals, the better as we can, as we can spread this out further. And this is really this idea of flattening the curve, which, you know, it sounds cute. No one really understands it. But the idea is that you want to, you want to, you might elongate the process of people being

infected, but it lowers the amount that are really going to go in the hospitals at one time. So that's an interesting point, because I would argue, or I would think that one of the things we've learned, if you will, or one of the big learnings is that we took cold comfort, at least those of us under the age of 70 took cold comfort that, oh, if you're under a certain age, you don't have to worry. And that appears to not be the case. Is there a certain genetic makeup of people, or has it kind of come down to fitness where this just goes after someone regardless of whether they're 35 or 75 or is this largely just a function of how quite frankly how robust you are?

So there's definitely a lot of variables that go into how someone gets disease and those are going to be figured out over in the future. There's probably some genetic component, there's definitely some immunology component as well to who gets a good response versus a not good response to the early infection and how they come out at the end. So, I mean, just because you're a healthy marathon runner with super good lung function doesn't mean that you're going to get out of this unscathed and you could easily have severe disease versus other people. But the clear most susceptible population is going to be elderly, obese, diabetic, people with other underlying health conditions that are going to make them

much more susceptible to this virus and much more susceptible to severe disease. And those people are the ones that are going to fill hospitals the fastest and be hardest to treat because they're not going to respond incredibly well to a lot of the medications that are being tested in trials. And is there anything you can do proactively? Let's assume somewhere between 20 and 80% of America at some point gets the virus. Is there anything you can do prophylactically to strengthen your system or your immunity such that you have a better chance of not being one of those people that needs to be hospitalized? I mean, on the short term, I don't, I mean, I think, you know, it's not something who is someone who is not fit

is going to now start, you know, running every day and going to protect themselves from this. I mean, I think in general, being healthier is going to protect you at some level. There's a lot, I think the good, the really positive aspect of all this is that there's a lot of FDA approved drugs that are being tested right now in centers across the United States and the world that we will know in a very short window how well they work against in disease. And then that's a really big positive. I think that's a huge, huge benefit from all of this, from this outbreak is that we will have a lot of drugs that are coming out at the end of this that are going to work. And these are FDA-approved drugs that are already cleared for human use, and we know how to dose them.

We know what concentrations to give. We know the toxicities. So those studies are ongoing. And then new drugs are being developed now, labs around the country. It's one of the things that we're doing in my lab, as well as testing antibody therapeutics and vaccines. So all of these things are coming online. All of the new things have to go through trials, but those clues will be sped up as safe as they can be so that we can really find things that are going to work. And especially for the short term. But even if this family of viruses comes

back every year, then we can have now therapeutics that are for the next wave and the next wave. And so we get coronaviruses every winter. They're a seasonal cold virus. And one of the big questions is whether this, whether COVID-19 is going to come back as a yearly seasonal virus, like during the winter, like regular colds do. And the models say that it probably will. So all of the testing and the therapeutic development now is for really getting everything going for other waves of this pandemic. And what's your general mood? You're seeing this, you have insight into the actual pathogen, if you will. Do you feel, relative to where we were, say, a month ago, or relative to where you were a month ago, are you feeling increasingly pessimistic and maybe a little bit frightened?

Are you optimistic that we have the full force of our innovation and our supply chain and the immunology community attacking this? And while there'll be some, there'll be obviously a tremendous human toll that we're going to get out ahead of this or in front of this, or is this every time we peel back the onion, it gets more frightening? I'm concerned both as a human and a scientist and a, you know, a dad and a husband. I'm, I'm super scared about what this is going to do to the United States and our communities and the world population. I think early in January, when we talked on Pivot, there was clear reticence of the U.S. government kind of believing that this was happening, which I thought was super strange then and's super strange now. There's still populations in the United States that basically say, I'm not China.

It's not going to touch us. And then across the state line, there's a massive outbreak going on. I mean, that's insanity. And I think that people are now realizing that on a day-to-day basis, it's getting broader and broader understanding of what this is really going to do to their community and that they really have to take it seriously. So I think that's, I think that it's going to have kind of a lasting effect on the human population in general, but especially in the U.S. I hope that this is, that kind of increases the amount of science awareness and health community connectedness, which I think is, you know, kind of, we draw these borders around our communities, not thinking that anything's

going to touch us. But clearly, you know, this goes all directions on this. Yeah, the virus doesn't appear to respect state lines. Do you think they're, I mean, the obvious advice here is to stay at home. Do you think we should have a national lockdown? I don't know. I mean, I understand that. I think that I really think this is a local question. I think that people need to do this on their own. They need to stay home. I know it's hard. I mean, I my wife. Hi, Jill. My wife, Jill Farner is a clinical geneticist at Hopkins. She has a lab and patients. They're doing telemedicine now. I have two kids that are 10 and 7. They're out of school for two weeks and now out for another month. They've shut down. They're trying to work at home, doing some type of schoolwork. I know this is incredibly difficult for all of our communities to do this. have to be as conservative on our connectivity between our neighbors right now as possible. We all have cell phones. We all can FaceTime and Skype and Zoom and WebEx and however we do our

business. I think that we just have to really, really hunker down for a while and limit our contact with our neighbors. I know it's really hard. Trust me, my kids are super stir crazy, but if we really want to protect ourselves in the short term, we really have to pay attention to this. Well, it seems as if it's a pretty basic form of citizenship at this point, right? That for 99% of us or 95% of us, the worst thing isn't contracting the virus, but contracting it and then giving it to someone vulnerable. Professor Matthew Freeman is an associate professor of microbiology and immunology. Matt, stay well and thanks for your good work. Thank you, sir.

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you had to help out during the AIDS epidemic, 9-11, and the 2009 financial crisis, but felt like you never really took action. And I'm wondering if in the midst of the coronavirus crisis we're dealing with right now, you've had any personal revelations about how you might have an impact. More specifically, as business and tech professionals, are there ways that we can leverage our skills to serve the community right now? Thanks. Ryan from Denver, that's a thoughtful question. So before I bust into all my virtue signaling here, I haven't done as much as I would like. I'm constantly have imposter syndrome that the person I claim to be on this podcast or amongst my friends or on MSNBC is not the person I am. That quite frankly, I'm incredibly full of shit. That's a huge fear of mine that on my tombstone, it's going to say

full of shit. And I try and remind myself of that as a motivation because I don't want to be that guy. For some reason, my content over-indexes on males. Somewhere between 80 and 90% of the people who read my blog or watch my videos are men, and we tend to skew younger. So the first thing is, quite frankly, Ryan, is I think this is an opportunity for young men to make that transition to manhood and start thinking about concentric circles. And the first is, in your immediate circle, who can you help? Make sure that your parents, make sure that your family, make sure that your mom are doing well. Reaching out to them, ensuring that logistically they're

sheltering in place, that they're safe, providing comfort. I'm trying to call my dad every day. I usually only call him once a week because I can hear in his voice he's a little bit scared that he's going to die alone, quite frankly. He's not sick, but he's 89. Reaching out to my sister on a regular basis, who is fine, but I think understandably stressed, and also demonstrating appreciation and affection to my wife, who as always is taking on a disproportionate amount of responsibility around the house. So first concentric circle is just keep your shit tight. Make sure that the people around you are fine. The next concentric circle out is friends, and especially those who find themselves either alone for whatever reason

or in a position of economic hardship or generally are just more prone to what I call freaking out and checking in, making sure they are fine, and then putting yourself hopefully in a position to start playing offense, and that is getting off your heels and on your toes. And there's a few ways you can do that. One is I contacted the local food bank here and said at a very basic level, can I just start delivering groceries? Jump in my car, go there, pick up groceries, get addresses of seniors.

And to be clear, I haven't done this yet. I called yesterday and they said they'd get back to me and they're trying to pull together the logistics for it. But is there a way just to use your skills and some resources and some time to just try and help others? I think a pretty decent definition of character is doing the right thing when no one's looking and helping people you will never meet. And if you're in a position to begin to start helping people you will never meet, I think that's a true test

of your success and your charity and your character. Also, and this sounds sort of crass, I'm trying to be a baller. Now, what do I mean by that? I am tipping large everyone in my life. When I was in college, people used to give me 10, 20, 50 bucks. I was a box boy. I was a barback. I parked cars.

I was a mover for a while. And occasionally, some generous person would tip me 10, 20, 50 bucks. And you know what it was? It was life-changing for me. It meant that I could go to Sizzler that night. It meant that I could go on a date. It meant that I could gas up my car. I remember I used to put gas in $5 increments into my car. And the idea of having a full tank of gas was a luxury for me. So it was literally life-changing for me. So in a period like this, you get economically scared and you have a tendency to say, all right, I'm going to just pull in the reins. And I'm going to be, I don't want to say cheap, but frugal because you have a protective instinct around

your family. But for those of us who are fortunate and have some money, I think this is a time to be a baller. And that is, I've been tipping large. Anyone I come in contact with, I give money to because I want to make their day. I want to change their life that day. And whether it's leaving money for the FedEx guy, tipping the guy who dropped off my CrossFit equipment, giving money to the person giving me food at curbside pickup. Be a baller. It sounds crass. It sounds weird, but I think you can change people's life just by spreading a little bit of money around. So I think it starts at home, making sure that people close to you are doing fine. I think then it goes to your friends. I think then it goes to people you've never met

and trying to do even basic things. Don't think that you're above delivering groceries, which is what I'm going to try and start doing this weekend. And also spread a little money around because I think it can change people's lives right now. But Ryan, you're thinking the right way. And the honest answer is I haven't entirely figured it out around how to have a big impact here. Thanks for the question. Hi, Prof G. My name is John and I'm a former naval officer turned tech worker based in California. In these very challenging and serious times, there's been discussions around trade-offs between saving the economy and saving people. Personally, I argue that saving human life at the expense of the economy is absolutely the way forward. While the economy consists of transactions,

credit, debt, goods, and services, it is fundamentally powered way forward. While the economy consists of transactions, credit, debt, goods, and services, it is fundamentally powered by people. You can always restart the economy. You can't restart a human life. Healthy people surrounded by their loved ones can always rebuild and press on. There are quite a few more compelling arguments for people over the economy. Which are your favorites? And have you heard any good arguments for the converse? Thanks. I hope we all stay safe. Take this time to reassess our values and come out of this stronger as individuals and as a civilization. So, John, thanks for the question and your service. We have this wonderful thing at Stern where we have essentially a GI program where the

Fertitta brothers from the UFC, the Ultimate Fighting Championship League, donated $10 million to Stern to underwrite scholarships for service people. Anyways, I've come in contact with a lot more service people. And what I generally find is that having the opportunity at a young age to serve something bigger than yourself gives you a level of maturity and perspective and discipline that most of us just don't get until we're much older, if ever, in life. Anyway, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. So the narrative is the following, that economic strain raises your blood pressure, creates tremendous hardship, and that the cure, the distancing, that we might be going too far, that ultimately the treatment is worse than the disease, which

is just total bullshit. Because just pragmatically, logistically speaking, the fastest way to get the greatest economic engine in the history of mankind firing on all 12,000 cylinders again is to make sure that we have the gas and the spark plugs, and that is a healthy populace. If Dracula was walking out of town and we had injured him, we wouldn't say, well, let's wait till he gets back. We'd hunt him down and put a stake through his fucking heart. And that's what we should hear, such that we can sleep easier at night. We can be focused on business. We can be focused on our loved ones. So I don't, this movement towards A, B, and C cities is, in my opinion, just stupid. And we have a sociopath in the White House.

There's absolutely no empathy for other people. I just don't think he gives a shit who is dying. I know that's a terrible thing to say. I stand by it. I don't think this is someone who cares about the long-term prospects of our economy. I think all he cares about is where the Dow is when we head into the voting booths. That is it. Full stop. This narrative coming out where they keep giving V-day speeches instead of D-day speeches is dangerous. Anyone with any integrity, including Vice President Pence, Dr. Fauci, anyone with any

integrity, you see them literally wincing and cringing in the background. It is the height of irresponsibility, of a lack of comedy of man to begin telling people that the economy here is more important than our safety. The reason why we want to be economically secure is such that we can establish deep and meaningful relationships with people. And it's hard to have a deep and meaningful relationship with someone who is either sick or deceased. So full stop, full stop. Any narrative around the economy getting back before it is entirely safe is nothing but a false, hollow, reckless, ass-clown, stupid narrative. So John, you strike me as a very thoughtful person, and I appreciate the question. Stay well, and please stay in touch. Griffin, next question.

Hi, Professor Galloway. This is Govil from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Congratulations on Strategy Sprint. I was one of the students in the first cohort. My question to you is, applications to MBA schools have been declining over the past few years, including the top 10 business schools, and that has partly been because of a strong economy up until now. Given that we are now headed into a recession and the fact that the education industry is the most ripe for disruption, one, do you see this trend in MBA applications and admissions changing in the next couple of years? And two, do you see the market value of a fresh MBA grad from a top 10 business school changing in the next few years? I'm curious to know what you think is the future of the MBA. Thank you. So, Govel from Ann Arbor. First off,

congratulations. Ann Arbor is a wonderful place to live. So, the future of graduate business education in a time of corona. So traditionally, and there's a lot to unpack here, traditionally business school benefits from a recession because graduate school is a great place to take refuge from a recession. What's strange is it's incredibly, strikingly unfair how important it is when you come out of college. So kids that graduate both undergrad and grad during recessions typically fall well behind their peers and never get momentum. Your economic and professional momentum in your 20s in terms of having opportunities to be exposed to senior level roles and get momentum and do interesting things at a young age at an interesting company are just so important. People talk about your 50s and 60s being your prime income earning years, but that's largely

a function of the base and the trajectory you've set for yourself in your 20s and 30s. So business school is a great time to take refuge in recession. This feels like it would be, quite frankly, very good timing because it's, say you're applying for the fall, you go in the fall, you come out of the fall 2022, it's likely we'll be emerging or have emerged from whatever's about to happen. So yeah, you're going to see an uptick in applications because of what we'll call the corona effect. Now, having said that, having said that, there are other factors at play here, and that is the surplus margin from graduate education has been too great for us to resist. What do I mean by that? When I went to business school in the 90s, my total tuition each year was, I believe, $2,000. So there was massive surplus margin there. They could have charged me 30 or 40. And that massive surplus margin has been starched out by bloated administration, professors that want to make more money, universities that don't ever want to talk about cutting costs, tenure, which is essentially welfare for the overeducated. I work with one of the best faculties in the world. A third of them

should be put on an ice flow. They not only cost way too much, but they become disruptive is because as they sense their irrelevance escalating, they decide one way to bark for relevance is just to be disruptive, obstructive, and generally pains in the asses. So every university would benefit to a certain extent from an economic crisis, although I don't know if this one will be deep enough to actually change the construct. But what we have done is we have raised prices faster than inflation. Meanwhile, a lot of companies are deciding that their best human capital doesn't need to go to business school. The smartest people that I work with that come out of undergrad don't need to go to business school because if you do your job and you promote them fast enough, they're going to end

up in a position where if they go back to business school, you'll be replacing them with someone who's getting out of business school. So business school has essentially become the place for the elite and the aimless. And that is smart people who are very good, great educations, but don't know what the fuck they want to do. And that perfectly described me at 25. All I knew is that I didn't want to be an investment banker. So yes, you'll see an uptick because of corona, but we're going to continue to see a structural decline because we have priced, we have starched all the surplus margin out of the MBA. It used to be a no brainer. I worked at Morgan Stanley for two years of the analyst class of 80, I think 78 of us went back to business school. I bet it's less than half now because it's no longer an obvious

trade-off. When you take income off the table, when you put tuition in, you're talking about graduate schools now can be a half a million dollar price tag. So we've priced ourselves out of the market. In terms of your last point, top 10 schools, that's a key point. If you don't get into a top 20 school, NYU Stern, for example, is what I refer to as one of the 15 top 10 schools. And that is all of us, about 15 of us claim to be top 10. There's Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford, which are in a league of their own because of their badge value. Then there's the 15 top 10, and there's kind of the top 20. Don't go anywhere else. It's just gotten so expensive. We're a cartel, so the cost to go to, I don't know,

the Kelly School or the Marshall School at USC, which are both good schools, but I would argue not great schools, is the same price as to go to Stanford. So it's really important where you get in. We live in a caste system. We're very brand sensitive. If you get into MIT, it's just an entirely different, your prospects are just entirely different than if you get into graduate school and become school at the University of Texas. I would argue, unless you get into one of the top 20 schools, don't go. It's not worth it unless you have wealthy parents and you're just looking to hang out for 24 months.

But yes, corona will increase. We'll get a blip in applications, but it won't compensate for the structural decline in the value of an MBA as whores such as myself continue to charge people more and more because we can. We love your questions. Please submit them to officehoursatsection4.com. Again, that's officehoursatsection4.com. Ask us anything, anything at all. issues should you ultimately watch out for. And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Algebra of Happiness, week three. Mind the gap. Mind the gap is a term that's meant to draw attention to the space between typically a vehicle or a mode of transportation and the platform

indicating there's some sort of danger or something to be cautious of in between those two. What is the gap between your intentions and your actions? Or simply put, who are you? Are you a generous person? Are you an appreciative person? Are you a brave person? When asked if you're a loving person, most people would think they'd pause and they'd say, I am a loving person. Well, why are they a loving person? Because they love other people. But what does that mean? Do you feel good things about other people? Do you have a tremendous amount of regard for their well-being? Does that make you a loving person? It doesn't. Loving people express their emotions. Loving people demonstrate their concern and their regard for others. Are you an appreciative person?

Well, that's not enough. You need to appreciate others. You need to indicate that you, in fact, do not take them for granted across small and big things. You need to not keep score. You need to demonstrate how important they are to you with your action. There is who we think we are, and then there is who we are. The majority of recognition and medals in military services across the world are a function

of your grace under fire or simply put your behavior when shit gets real. For the first time for many of us, shit is getting real. And that is we're facing a crisis that is both economic, which lends us or encourages us to be somewhat selfish and even feral and begin hoarding and not be as generous as we might otherwise be with our time, with our money, with our services, with our products. We're also supposed to be brave in times like this. When enemy fire is taken, medals are given out to people who put their own well-being on the line to help other people. They're brave. Who is it you want to be? Who is it you think you are? Who is it you want to be? It's not your thoughts. It's not your intentions. It's your actions.

You are, simply put, the sum total of your behaviors. Are you loving other people? Do you express your appreciation? Are you putting yourself out there? Are you self-aware? Are you asking for help when you need it? That is a form of bravery. This is battle. This is that time to shine. Your tombstone will be etched, or at least your memory will be etched largely around

the sum of your actions through your whole life, but the indelible ink across that outline will be your behavior during times of stress and crisis. And we're in one of those now. The gestures don't have to be huge. In my neighborhood, there's a guy who comes out every night around 6 p.m. and he plays the bagpipes, adding a little bit of joy for all of us. He's decided that he is a somewhat whimsical person who likes to express joy and make other people happy. And more than just believing that, he is doing that. So again, who are you? Fine. Then be that person. Our producers are Griffin Carlberg and Drew Burrows. If you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe.

We're off to a great start. Please help us maintain the momentum and subscribe. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you next week for another episode of The Prop G Show from Section 4 and the Westwood One Podcast Network.