Noam: Hey, everyone. I’m Noam Weissman, and this is Unpacking Israeli History, the podcast that takes a deep dive into some of the most intense, historically fascinating, and often misunderstood events and stories linked to Israeli history. This very special episode recorded live in London, England, Is generously sponsored by Carol and Adam Reich, who are huge fans of Scott Galloway, not me. To sponsor an episode or just to say what’s up, reach us at noam@unpacked.media.
Tonight’s episode is special for three reasons. One, we’re live in London. Two, it’s a conversation I’ve wanted to have for long time. And three, it’s a conversation I’ve specifically wanted to have with one very special person. That very special person is none other than professor, author, podcaster, provocateur, called the most honest man in business. Millions of followers, a few podcasts, and that is the part his followers might not know.
He is, and this is the part that you might not know. Scott is also proudly Jewish. More on that later. Welcome to the pod, the man, the myth, the legend, and the guy who has repeatedly told young people to drink more and go out and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off, Scott Galloway.
So excited to have you here.
Scott Galloway: That’s great to be here. I’m just thrilled. What a beautiful venue and thank you so much for, I have just so much, I just want to share this clear blue flame emotion I’m having. Total imposter syndrome. And also I do want to share, my mom used to, when she was five, mother’s maiden name Levine would have to sleep a couple nights, probably more than a couple nights, in the tube station because of the blitz. And I always say if it wasn’t, I tell my boys this, if it wasn’t for a seven or, excuse me, a 12-mile strip of ocean, the brain, the brawn and the blood of the British, the American and Russians respectively, and an attempt to push back and make huge sacrifices to push back on fascism, my mom’s life would have ended with a train run. And I usually don’t get emotional until later in the podcast. My mom would be so proud of me right now, so thank you.
Noam: Listen, I don’t fawn over people. It’s not my style and I’m not particularly excited to meet people that I listen to or read often. Except there are three people. Three people and I just mentioned this to you backstage, Scott. The first is Bill Simmons, sports guy. Love, love, he is my rabbi when it comes to sports.
Micha Goodman, Micah Goodman, when it comes to philosophy. And Scott, you, you’re my third guy. Thanks, man. You’re the third guy that I, besides my father, that I look up to, and my older brother, that I look up to, I really look up to both of them a lot.
But I look, I don’t want to make this weird for you, but I, I’m a Jewish educator with a microphone, that’s really all I am. But you have been such a massive influence on my life without having met each other without knowing each other, but, and I’ll get into specifically why, but I just wanted to thank you for being a big part of my journey.
Thank you.
Okay, you’ve built a career telling stories everyone is afraid to tell. I’ve built a career trying to tell one story everyone seems to get pretty wrong. Tonight, I want to find out what happens when those two things collide. You ready? Yalla. Let’s do this.
Noam: Okay, Scott, your work covers markets, tech, higher ed, masculinity, but many won’t be super familiar with your origin story. So before we get into things that are Israel related, I wanna start there. On October the 7th, I, who have been following you for a long time, and maybe I didn’t listen or read carefully enough, but I had zero clue that you were Jewish until October 7th.
And there’s this concept that many of you out there might know about called the October 8th Jew. There’s also an October 8th professional or an October 8th philanthropist that I’ve found. But for people like me, and I was just alluding to this before, hearing your voice not wither after the 7th of October or be mealy-mouthed about the tragedy that fell upon Israelis, the Jewish people, Western civilization, it was empowering for people like me, and I don’t want to say people like me, I want it to be real, me, me. Why did you feel a need or a responsibility to say something?
Scott Galloway: Well, you’re being generous, so I would, and I like to just be as transparent, or I aim to be as transparent as possible. October the 6th, if someone had asked me what the state of antisemitism was in America, I would have said it doesn’t exist. I just never felt it. It might be because my last name’s Galloway, but I never really, it wasn’t, in my opinion, an issue, and people complained about it, I thought were being over sensitive…And then as an academic, when I went down after the events of October the 7th, it felt like for about 48 or 72 hours, it was empathy. Then all of a sudden, it felt like there was this underlying theme of across academia and students, well, maybe they, Hamas had a point. And it felt like everything just went so incredibly strange.
And at my alma mater, UCLA, they were passing out wristbands to non-Jews. And then you had to have a wristband to access Royce Hall, the main center of campus. And if I had, in the 80s, when I was in my fraternity, ZBT at UCLA, if we had decided that we had a problem with gay people, and by the way, back in the 80s, I want to be clear, we were wildly homophobic. I had a roommate die of HIV of AIDS, and he was closeted because you could not be outwardly gay in the 80s at UCLA. So I want to be clear, it’s not like we were very evolved or progressive, but if we had started passing out vans to white people and then it did any, for about five minutes tried to sequester non-whites from the main campus of UCLA, they would have called in the National Guard.
And this went on for a few days at UCLA. And then I saw faculty members. I cut a lot of grace to an 18-year-old who’s pushing the limits of his or her thoughts. If a camera had been following me around when I was 18 or 19, that would have been bad for me. So I think we need to afford young people some grace. But when I saw my colleagues and faculty members, protesting and being what I felt was an apologist for this type of depravity, it was just, I say a lot of things, I’m provocative, and then I lack certainty around most of the things I say, which I think is healthy, but for me I have moral clarity on this. And that was the following. I think an easy way to decide who to side with is the following.
Imagine they were in charge. They were in charge. So, Israel gets control of our Congress, our heavy artillery, and our nuclear weapons and our media. We still have no cruel and unusual punishment. We have jury trials. We have education. We have bodily autonomy. We have civil rights. We have no child labor. Jury trials. I don’t think we’d really notice in America if all of a sudden Israel were in charge. I don’t think we’d really notice the next day.
I think things would be much different in America if Hamas were in charge. And so that gave me moral clarity around who we should support. And I come at this not as someone who feels a great deal of divinity for Judaism as a religion. I’m a devout atheist. Atheism gives me tremendous power. I believe at some point I’m gonna look into my son’s eyes and know our relationship is coming to an end. And it helps me live my life out loud. It helps me be more expressive of my emotions, it helps me take more risks because everyone I’m worried about being embarrassed in front of is gonna be dead soon and so am I. So I find it actually quite liberating.
But at the same time, I look back on some of the Jewish values I got culturally from my brothers at ZBT, an appreciation for education, an appreciation for success, ambition, trying to be protective of vulnerable groups, an obligation to leave the world a better place. And those values had very much, I think, benefited me as a man. And also, just as I referenced before, nodding to my mother. And I saw this as an attack on American values. I don’t approach this through the lens of Israel. I approach this through the lens of being an American man who wants to be a good father.
And I have a test for my boys, I would say I have these tests. What does it mean to be a man? This is what a man does. When visitors show up, a man goes and grabs their luggage and takes it to the room. A man, when he’s in the company of women, pays for everything. And that triggers some people, and let me take you through the math that I just took my 18-year-old through. Like, dad, what a boomer, right? One, a woman’s fertility window is 10 to 20 years, yours is 70. Makes no sense.
She has to pay two or three hundred bucks to show up on a date. You have to splash water on your face. The downside of sex is much greater, or the potential downside of sex is much greater for a woman than it is for a man. And every mammal in the world has a mating routine where the male tries to demonstrate excellence, whether it’s a bird flopping around or making weird noises. And three, just very practically, and I don’t want to filter my comments, fine, send her a Venmo request, just know she will never kiss you the rest of your life. A man pays for everything. And then I talk about what does a Jewish man do? Shows up, is honest, tries to leave the world a better place.
I know this is all paying off, as all my kid the other day, my kid just got into college, I don’t know how many of you are going through the greatest manufactured process of stress in history, you this college application. But my son got into a great school, and we’re just over the moon, and I’m like, all right, I’m like, what kind of person sends thank you notes to everybody? He’s like, I know an American Jewish man, so I know it’s paying off.
But on October the 8th, I was so, that following week, I was so horrified by what I saw, that it was just really easy to say something. And one of my role models is Sam Harris. And Sam always says, if you have economic security and people who love you unconditionally, you have an obligation to speak out or to say what you’re thinking. Because what we have in America and also in academia, unfortunately, is there’s an orthodoxy and algorithms and a far left of which I consider myself a part of that tries to get you to sign up for an exact narrative. And if you veer from that narrative, you might be shunned. And shame is really powerful, because until the last 50 years, if you were expunged from the community, you would die. You were out on your own, you would die. So shame is very powerful.
And what I thought is, for the first time I feel like I have real moral clarity on an issue, and I have an opportunity to be a strong voice here, one, because of my platform, and two, people think of me as Jewish-ish. So when I talk about something, people have a tendency, I think maybe to take it a little bit, I don’t know, to be less judgmental. Their screens don’t go up as much. So I saw it finally as an opportunity to do something that I had moral clarity around, and that where I thought I could make a difference.
But this has been easy, and it makes me feel closer to the community. So this has been an easy, rewarding thing to do. It hasn’t been much sacrifice at all.
Noam: So let me ask you just, and I’ll be pithy in this question, you said it’s the Western values in many ways, the United States of America protecting that aspect that has led you to where you stand.
Can you just, in a minute, can you give me a brief Jewish origin story of Scott Galloway? You know, I’ve read a lot about it in this, you know, amazing book, Notes on Being a Man, which I highly recommend to everyone, especially, I said to Scott before this, I view this book as the antidote to the manosphere, if you know about the manosphere, I view Scott’s approach to being a man as the best antidote out there to that sort of world.
But I want to know from your perspective what your origin story is in Judaism. Is it you’re an atheist? Yes, but you know, here’s a little secret. Many Jews are. You’re not that unique or original in your garden. Yeah, many Jews are. So, but are you, are you, what is your origin story? Is it, did you feel Jewish growing up? Was it something that was background noise? How would you describe it?
Scott Galloway: Yeah, it’s remarkably unremarkable and it’s not that inspiring. My dad’s been married and divorced four times. So I got a lot of different religions. Presbyterianism, Unitarianism. I played sports on the Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, wonderful people. had introductions to a lot of religion where Judaism at all came in was all of my friends were getting bar mitzvahs and I said to my mom, I’d really like a bar mitzvah.” And she said, why? And I said, look at all the merch, right? she said, that’s not the reason why you’re to get bar mitzvah. I went to Hebrew school twice. I got kicked out for selling bubble yum at a markup. True story. True story. And never bar mitzvahed, no real connection to any religion. And I would say the thing I remember is we used to go, I think it was Temple Isaiah, and I used to enjoy, I used to enjoy the rabbi there, some of the things he would talk about.
But really, my Judaism is, it’s not even, October 8th Jew is a perfect way to talk about it. And that is, I had a lot of Jewish brothers in my fraternity, was predominantly a Jewish fraternity, and just some of those values that came through have stuck with me my whole life. But I feel like I’m 110% more Jewish as opposed to October 8th. I never, I mean, this is the silver lining here. I guess there’s a lot of silver linings. I do think it’s activated a number of us who didn’t feel like we needed to worry. I think a lot of us took for granted that our culture and should we ever want to peace out to Israel, that the diaspora would be fine and that Israel would survive. I think I just took all of that for granted, not recognizing the threats that were out there and the investment required to make sure that this religion in Israel survives.
So I think that there’s been a tremendous awakening. just didn’t, quite frankly, to be blunt, I didn’t connect with this community on October the 6th. So it was a little bit from my college experience and my Jewish friends, but mostly what I saw is a moment in history where it just became very clear to me that so many people have sacrificed so I could have such a wonderful life and that those values across every special interest group are under attack.
Noam: something that you’ve said is that if you want to make people owners, then they have to have equity. Having equity means having skin in the game. And maybe it’s the case that on October 8th, there’s a reason you started off the show in an emotional sort of way. This is my take. Maybe you’re part of something, part of this community, part of something that you said you would make your mother proud. Right?
Scott Galloway: Yeah, but my attempt to lean into my emotions is from the age of 29 to 44, I never cried once. I didn’t cry when my mom died. I didn’t cry when I got divorced. I didn’t cry when my business went out of business. I just kind of forgot how. And some screwed up sense of masculinity, I thought that men don’t cry. We bury our emotions, and I literally fell out. I lost the ability to feel emotions and cry.
And then I recognized you hit your 40s and all of a sudden you realize time is going really fast and you don’t have that much time left. And I’ve done a lot of reading and thinking about how I purposely try to slow time down because it is going way too fast. I mean, think about it. Weren’t we in college yesterday?
Wasn’t it yesterday when you’re married? Wasn’t it, literally wasn’t it yesterday where your kids were crawling into bed with you on a Sunday morning and boom, here we are, right? I’m 61. That just makes no sense. It absolutely makes no sense, which means in less time, I’m gonna be at the end. So the means of slowing time down, and there’s research around this, one diversity of your life. If you want time to go fast, just get into a routine and never step outside your comfort zone, never meet new people, never travel anywhere new. Just do the same thing every day and you will barrel towards the end. And then the second thing is to register emotions. And it’s a practice and it takes time.
When I see something, I saw what I thought was a fairly interesting painting, I thought, that’s cool. But I stopped and I thought, why do I find that interesting? What is it about this that inspires me? What is it about this person that what they just said that I find funny? I try to laugh out loud now. And when something upsets me, I try to let it bubble up and I try to let myself cry. And now I can’t stop crying. I well up twice a day. But what I would say to any man in your 40s and 50s, if you feel like life is going too fast, lean into your emotions because I’ll remember what slow time for me there was thinking about my mom sleeping in the tube, right? It slows time down when I lean into, quite frankly, sometimes my anger. Just lean into your emotions. So for me, it’s just an attempt to live a little bit longer.
Noam: I want to transition us into storytelling. And I view storytelling as the most critical talent skill set that we have available. And I got this quote from you that I want to read. It’s from No Mercy, No Malice, newsletter, May, 2023.
You said, one query I get often is, what class or skill would you suggest our kids take or learn to compete in the modern economy, or some such? I don’t think that’s what you said, but it’s okay. I think most expect me to say computer science, STEM courses, or some bullshit about the wonders of a liberal arts education that foments curiosity. But hands down, the skill I would grant my boys is singular storytelling. And then you say, the arc of evolution bends towards good storytellers. Communities with larger proportions of skilled storytellers experience greater levels of cooperation and procreation. Their evolutionary fitness is buttressed as storytelling translates to more efficient transmission of survival relevant information.
Storytellers themselves are more likely to receive acts of service from their peers, and among men, being skilled in storytelling increases attractiveness and perceived status to potential long-term mates. My dad used to tell me that men get turned on with their eyes, women with their ears. Turns out his theory is backed by science. We are about to enter a Jewish holiday at the time of this recording called Pesach, or Passover. You know what Pesach means in Hebrew?
It doesn’t mean Passover. It’s a different translation. Pesach means two things, actually. There’s a great Aramaic translator who actually points out that the word pesach means compassion, that God had compassion on these specific homes. And it wasn’t passing over. It was actually a different word called compassion. But it’s also something else. It’s a combination of two words in Hebrew. This is the value of Hebrew school. Peh, sach.
Noam: My mouth speaks. The whole holiday of Passover, of Pesach, is about what’s called in Hebrew, sipor getziat mitzrayim, the story of Egypt, the story of the exodus from Egypt. So I want to ask you, beyond what I read, this holiday that we’re about to celebrate Passover, Pesach, is about Sippor, Yitzchia Mitzraim, telling over the story of the exodus of Egypt. Why is storytelling so important, and what is the key to a good story?
Scott Galloway: So if you think about our superpowers as species, it’s cooperation. But the means of cooperation and inspiration is storytelling. You draw, I’ve been listening a lot to Jimmy Carr, who’s like my new kind of intellectual Yoda. I he’s just brilliant. And you drop one person into the forest, they’re eaten by bears or they starve. You drop 10 people into the forest within a few generations, they’re the apex predator. And it’s because of our ability to cooperate. And the means of cooperation and inspiration in figuring out the pecking order and who we follow and who we lead and who we cooperate with and who we fight with is mostly through storytelling.
And remember 10 years ago what we were telling our kids to do to be successful in expensive schools in New York, take Mandarin and computer science. How did that work out? But the one thing, the root, think about the most overpaid, I always go to business, the most overpaid people in any organization are the salespeople.
The people who can take people out and convince them to do stuff and establish a connection through great storytelling, they’re the most overcompensated people in your organization and the people everybody hates. The majority of CEOs are amazing storytellers. They can tell the street of story on convenience, selection, and speed. Jeff Bezos’ 1997 shareholder letter, you read that letter, you don’t care how expensive Amazon stock is, you’re like, take my money. So the ability to storytell right now is the ability to track cheaper capital, over invest and run away. Basically our economy right now is run by a group of small people who are outstanding storytellers who can attract the cheapest capital. If you see somebody with more friends, anyone who is more successful than their intellect or their character would connote, unless they were smart enough to be born wealthy, it’s one of a couple things. But it’s usually the following.
It’s one, they are willing to endure rejection. I think that’s probably the number two reason for success. Your ability to endure, no. And I’ll come back to this, but this is the skill that is most in decline and eroding amongst our young people is the ability to endure rejection, to mourn and to move on. But the number one skill is storytelling.
If you can tell a good story about your background, you can get into a better school than you deserve. If you can spin an interesting story about why your background makes you uniquely qualified to get this job, you’re gonna get better jobs than your average bear. If you can approach someone and make them feel special and wanted and express romantic desire while making them feel safe and tell a story that lightens up their senses through humor, the fastest way that, I’m gonna divert, why are women attracted to men?
There’s three reasons. The first is your ability to signal resources. We don’t like to talk about it, but it’s true. Women are worried at some point during gestation they’re gonna need someone more powerful than them in a capitalist society. That comes down to money. You don’t have to have money at the time, but have to have a plan. I’m in vocational school, whatever it is, you have to be, don’t be the dude that’s up till four in the morning partying. Send a signal, I have my act together, I’m going to have resources.
Number two is intellect. The person who makes better decisions for the tribe, the tribe survives. Fastest way to communicate intellect is humor. And just so I can offend everybody, this is my interpretation of a woman, impersonation of a woman. I’m laughing, I’m laughing, I’m naked. If you can make a woman laugh, people are looking around like, is it okay to laugh? If you can make a woman laugh, she will have coffee with you. Humor is the fastest way to connote intellect.
And then the alchemy of all of that is the ability to look at data, read the room, understand somebody’s unique needs and personality, and then craft a story that inspires them to put you in a room of opportunities when you’re not in that room.
And they think, you know, this person has it going on. This person is talented. And on a very base level, storytelling takes on so many different factors. I was just at a party in LA and I got the chance to meet Mick Jagger, who’s with a much more interesting, attractive person than I think he is. But Mick Jagger’s an unbelievable storyteller. I mean, that’s storytelling too.
So if you want your kids to develop any skill, you wanna put them in front of people, you wanna get them to learn how to write well, you wanna encourage them to find mediums where they can craft a narrative arc and communicate and inspire people to action. But if you’re a great storyteller, everything’s gonna work out. Chemistry, I don’t know, I have no idea, right? Computer science, maybe, we’re all guessing. That is the enduring skill of storytelling.
Noam: I like that you mentioned the ability to endure rejection. Just when I think about there’s a movement within Judaism called Chabad and one of the things that they do is they send a lot of their young people out to try to put on Tefillin and they put phylacteries on men. I’ve seen that. You’ve seen that. Yeah. And what they try to do, they’re constantly rejected. They’re constantly rejected and they still go, they still try to do their best to put on Tefillin on people. And it’s just like, it’s an example of like, if you’re going to be able to get far in life, you have to be able to withstand that and endure rejection.That’s what I think all about.
Scott Galloway: Just want to riff on that for a second. Anybody who’s punched above their weight class, they have one core competence, and that’s no, and that is their willingness to endure. I ran for 10th grade president, 11th grade president, 12th grade president, lost all three times, and based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president, where I went on to wait for it and lose. And guess what? Two, three days later, I was fine. And so what I learned is that you can go, I can’t tell you the number of schools I applied to. I got rejected from UCLA, then I finally got in.
I applied to probably 40 jobs. I finally got a job because the head of the department at this one firm had rowed crew and I had rowed crew. I can’t tell you the amount of rejection I’ve endured from women and that is my superpower. As I have realized, you know what? It just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. And so when I coach young men, we do go through a series of exercises, but one of the things I demand is that they put themselves in the agency of strangers, and they pursue rejection.
I want you to go up to someone you think is more impressive than you and see if they want to go to a football or watch a ball game with you, whatever it is. Find a dude that you think is more impressive than you because you become the average of your five closest friends, but I want you to find impressive men and express friendship and say, hey, do want to get together for a beer? Right? That’s the first thing we’re going to do. Next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to find someone we’re sort of attracted to and we’re going to ask them out for coffee. And this is the goal. The goal is no.
The goal is no. It’ll be polite, but it’ll likely be a no, right? And this is what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna call you the next day, I’m gonna say, how are you doing? you’re going, oh, I’m bombed. I’m gonna call you 40 hours later, and you’re gonna realize, you’re okay and they’re okay. Anyone who has punched above their weight class economically or romantically has one thing in common, a shit ton of no’s. That is the secret. That is the secret is your willingness to endure rejection.
And my fear around young men, with a frictionless economy that’s giving them ChatGPT that never disagrees with them, or never makes them feel bad, or porn that never says no, or crypto that gives them the illusion that working, can make money without really hard work and a bunch of bullshit in any corporate environment, or that they can have friends on Reddit or Discord without going through the pecking order. We’re teaching our young men that life is frictionless and that it doesn’t involve rejection.
The only real victory in life, the only real victory in life involves one thing, a massive amount of rejection. And unfortunately, young people are avoiding it. And then when they get to NYU and they get their heart broken, or they get their first D, they freak out. We as parents, this isn’t just social media’s fault. We are using so many sanitary wipes on our kids’ lives that they’re not developing their own immunities, and we are evolving a new species of asocial, asexual males that are not resilient at all. And a lot of it, quite frankly, is our fault. And it’s really hard, but when my kid calls me and says, Dad, you sent me to the wrong place because you ordered the wrong Uber, I force myself to say, you got a smartphone? Figure it out. Figure it out. And he starts calling me every 30 seconds. And I’m like, no, no, no. And then I sit there and my wife breaks down and I call him back.
But we’re getting there. We’re getting there. Sorry, back to you.
Noam: And so that’s enduring rejection. But I want to get to specifically now a country that’s had to endure lots of rejection, the state of Israel, throughout history. I’m going to do the Unpacking Israeli History part of this throughout history when you look at the wars that Israel has fought 1956 the Sinai war they won the war kinetically, but they lost it mimetically. They were viewed as siding on the wrong side of history with colonial powers England and France.
In 1967 Israel nearly quadrupled in size But they won the kinetic war lost the mimetic war because after that they started having displacement of people in the West Bank today in Samaria and they lost that narrative in 1973. Did a remarkable job militarily, encircled the third army of Egypt. Kinetically, they won that war easily. Mimetically, Egypt felt that they had an opportunity to finally have honor and they could actually shift the conversation. Continue on, 1982, to continue on, 2023, the 7th of October, it is very clear that Israel won the war kinetically, but mimetically the telling of the story Israel again lost.
After the 7th of October, a month after, you wrote a piece where you basically said that the hashtag Stand With Palestine was 10 times more ubiquitous than Stand With Israel, something like 3.2 billion compared to 340 million on social media. And a question that I’m constantly thinking about is, the game rigged and therefore not worth playing? Is it possible that Israel could ever even win the mimetic war? And if Israel is to try to win the mimetic war, how should Israel go about it?
Scott Galloway: I thought a lot about this, which isn’t to say that I have the answer, I try to understand. Yeah, I think we’re definitely losing right now, the memetic or the perception. And I think I would distill it down to three things, at least on campuses in the Northeast.
The first is, and I don’t ever want to change my comments because of the crowd I’m in front of. I don’t think Israel has draped itself in glory. I think there’s a certain reality to the perception of over settlements, an administration that has had bigoted elements of it, and it has not been as empathetic as some of the core values of Judaism. And this is a difficult conversation to have as a Jew, but when I grew up, what I remember about Judaism was Entebbe, Munich. It’s a longer conversation around reality, but the perception, quite frankly, is we’ve gone from being the good guys to not the good guys. And I would argue that America, in short order, has gone through the same transition, unfortunately. I think the erosion and the fall in the American brand over the last several years has been historic. Anyways, first thing, right? I think we have to have a hard conversation around our perception and the role that the leadership in Israel plays. And as someone who cares about Israel, I think it’s important we have thoughtful, honest conversations about that.
Two, across campuses that dominate our culture, our media, we have engaged in a zeitgeist of oppressor versus oppressed. We’ve come to grips with some of the dark spots in our history. That’s really important. But what we do is we outrage kids by the time they get to school and they go on the hunt for fake racists. They’re outraged. They’re kids who have never, I can tell, experienced any form of discrimination, nothing but privilege, are outraged. And they go on the hunt for a hapless English professor who says something stupid and try and get him or her fired. And they go on the hunt. And the easiest way, the easiest shorthand for quote unquote the oppressor is how rich and how white you are.
And unfortunately, Jewish people have been conflated with the ultimate wealthy and white cohort. boom, we have our immediate shorthand for who the oppressors are.
And then third, and this might sound paranoid, but it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. If I were the GRU or the CCP and I could not beat us kinetically and an aircraft carrier costs $7 billion, I would rather take $200 million, weaponize an Albanian troll farm and start dividing us digitally with poorest platforms that are so shareholder driven they can give a shit about whether the fabric of America or the West is being torn in half. And Judaism and Israel and October the 7th have become the ultimate cudgel.
Some of it is antisemitism. I think most of it is an attempt just to divide us because if you can’t beat us kinetically, you can’t beat us economically, then just get us to hate each other. Americans are now more worried about their neighbor than Russian soldiers pouring over the border in Ukraine. They think their neighbor with a Trump or a Harris sign is a bigger threat than the CCP. And if you looked at videos on TikTok, there were 53 pro-Hamas videos for every pro-Israel video. And you’re like, well Scott, younger people are more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. I get it, but that is not representative of what’s going on in the US. And the question I would have is, wouldn’t the CCP or the GRU be stupid not to be weaponizing these platforms and getting us hating each other and angry? Because this is the reality in America. I don’t feel as if I know the UK enough. I’ve been here three and a half years, but I live in a bubble in the UK. But I feel like I sort of know America. Americans actually aren’t that divided, but we’re being divided by social platforms that have an economic incentive in dividing us and pitting us against each other. Incendiary content gets a lot more comments, another Nissan ad, more shareholder value, and you have outside actors who have a very strong motivation to divide us.
So one, I think some of the actions of the Israeli leadership have not played well amongst, at least amongst the American public in the West. Two, I think at universities we’ve created this very unhealthy oppressor versus oppressed dynamic which has resulted in antisemitism. And three, I think there are very sophisticated actors who have weaponized poor social media platforms to divide us. Somewhere about two thirds of people my age support Israel. It’s less than one third of young people. That is frightening. As you go down the age spectrum, the support for Israel is inversely correlated. And it’s no accident that those are the people who spend the most time online.
Noam: The storytelling though, is, mean Scott, I every reason that you gave, it’s not that I disagree with number one, I think that number one, that’s a huge part of what’s going on, but the response to that is that when there was a different Israeli government in place, it was still the reality that many people didn’t have a strong connection to Israel and they were still losing that mimetic war. But putting that, what I’m wondering is every example you gave of why it’s challenging to win this quote unquote mimetic war is something that it sounds like none of us in the room have control of. Is there something that we could do within an internal locus of control with the ability for us to be telling our stories that could change that dynamic?
I’ll give you a very quick story. Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel in early 1980s, he was going through a very tough time. It was Sabra and Shatila, it was the first Lebanon war, and Israel was doing something that many people had major issues with. They weren’t the ones that committed the massacre against, in Sabra and Shatila, but they were the ones who were passively on the side. And Menachem Begin was approached by a very wealthy American funder who said to him, he flew to Israel, and he said, Prime Minister Begin, I am here to present to you $50,000, which was a tremendous amount back then, U.S. check every single month to have a retainer fee to make sure that we could tell the story of Israel differently, that we should have a PR campaign about Israel to tell the information war. You’re getting slaughtered out here, not kinetically but mimetically. Menachem Begin then looked at this American funder, this American philanthropist, apparently tore up the check and said, what I want you to do is spend your $50,000 monthly amount that you have and instead of working on the information war, I want you to give that money to Jewish education. Every single month, make sure young Jewish people actually know their story, actually can tell their story, actually own their story and bear their story and bear their story. And he said, I don’t want that money. What’s much more important is that young Jewish people actually have an education about their story because there are gonna be things about Israel that they’re not gonna like. And that’s part of running a country.
I tell this story often. I love this story, but I’ve never done this. I’ve never asked someone like you, Scott. Do you agree with Menachem Begin at that moment or no?
Scott Galloway: I do, look, I get asked a lot, how do we tell, how do we improve the brand Israel right now? And we’re gonna need a bigger boat, but I had a conversation with a friend who’s a Jew who runs an investment bank. And I just said to him, why aren’t you speaking out? Quite frankly, I’m disappointed more Jews aren’t speaking out. And it’s because there’s a general sense, just stay below the radar. What’s the point of all this success and getting to these levels? I mean, how many prominent, really prominent Jews have used their platforms to speak out? And we’re just being overwhelmed because it’s become fashionable to speak out on the other side. And I don’t know if it’s because we’ve been trained to just keep quiet and not brag and that you’re a target if you highlight or if you speak up, but I have been shocked that more Jews with platforms have not been more vocal publicly about what they feel is going on and their views on this.
Two. I think there needs to be a stronger identity around American Jews, the diaspora, that connecting Judaism and Jewish culture to American values. think there’s huge overlap in those values such that people don’t immediately have to immediately decide, connect everything. I would like, there’s seven million of us, is that right in the U.S.?
Noam: I mean, depending on who’s counting, between 5.8 million to 7 million, depending on who’s counting. And there’s a crazy statistic on this. There are 20 million American Jews who have a, 20 million Americans, I’m sorry, who have a grandparent who is Jewish, though. 20 million Americans who have a grandparent who is
Scott Galloway: That’s a terrible stat, right?
Noam: You’re better at math.
Scott Galloway: Yes. That means in another two generations we’re at two million. Don’t have a silver bullet here. I think it’s a real issue because if you look at this new generation of civic business and military leaders, it is ugly in terms of their viewpoint. I feel as if at some point I’m exhausted because I’m getting so much shame online.
Have you seen my comments on my videos? I can do a comment on dogs. I can post pictures of my dogs and there’ll be 15 comments calling me Professor Genocide. And quite frankly, it’s exhausting. I’d like to say I don’t care. I care. I read the comments. I’m not that self-involved yet. And so I think unless we have more people give them the cloud cover to speak out or quite frankly put pressure on them to speak out, but I’m just shocked. Why am I here, right? Because there’s so few people with a platform actually speaking out. I mean, I’m articulate, but I’m not a genius at this. I don’t have a fraction of the knowledge you have, but our community is so desperate for people with a platform to speak out that you immediately rise to the top because there’s this general sense of we just gotta ride this out and stay below the radar. Uh uh.
We have to push back. We have to be very aggressive online. We have to be thoughtful, empathetic, listen. That’s why think Dan has been so powerful because he’s articulate. He lets people finish their points. He’s not emotional about it. But we are losing the war in social media. And two thirds of Americans get two thirds of their news from social media. So if I were really serious about storytelling, I would try and find– I was at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto with Van Jones. There are just so few of us actually speaking out that are considered moderates. So whatever the story is and the branding, that’s a longer conversation, but at a minimum, I think that we have to be more willing to, you know, run into the fire, if you will.
Noam: Scott, I wanna go to lightning round questions with you, then we’ll do Q and A. 30 second questions, ready for this? I mean, 30 second answers, quick questions. Best piece of advice you give your sons besides storytelling, 30 seconds.
Scott Galloway: Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. When you’re doing well, realize most of it is not your fault and be humble. And when you really screw up, look yourself in the mirror, tell yourself you could add a lot of value to a company, that you can make someone very happy, and that you’re a good man. Nothing’s ever as good or as bad as it seems.
Noam: Number two, do you feel more Jewish when things are good or bad?
Scott Galloway: When things are bad. Yeah, hands down. Yeah.
Noam: Want to say more about that?
Scott Galloway: Look, I’m finally confident enough. I struggle with anger and depression, so everyone gets on the stage and they say, I’m an optimist. I’m a pessimist. I see the glass as half full. I see everything through gray colored glasses and I constantly have to remind myself and ask myself the following question. What could go right? Because there’s an economic incentive to catastrophizing. I have made an exceptional living telling everyone the world’s gonna end, and this is why AI sucks and this is why big tech is terrible and this is the problem with young men because if you were honest about the data, this would be pretty much every speech. You know what? The distillation of all data in the world boils down to one basic premise and observation. Everything’s getting a little bit better every day.
That doesn’t get you invited to speak anywhere. It’s boring, it’s not interesting. So there’s an economic incentive in thought leadership and academia to be a catastrophist. And also it fits me really well, because I can see above struggle with anger and depression. So I constantly have to remind myself what could go right. I think there’s a lot, I think we’re coming through a very strange period in the Middle East. I think a lot could go right. I think there’s an incredible chance.
Noam: And pessimists, and you lead into that. Well, here’s my question. Is the future of Israel optimistic or pessimistic?
Scott Gallowa: I would argue it’s optimistic. think that there’s, spent one of the things about being in London is I spent a lot of time in Gulf states. I would argue and have said this, I think there’s less antisemitism in many Gulf states than there is in northeastern campuses of the US right now. I think that a lot of moderate Gulf states are looking capitalist and looking to Israel to normalize relations. I think this could be an incredible unlock.
If an amazing Persian culture becomes less theocratic. I just think there’s an extraordinary opportunity for an unlock in the Middle East. So I’m very optimistic. And also the reality is the hands of the proxies for the number one terrorist state, 42, mean, just think whether think of Trump or whether you think of these actions were correct or not. For 42 years running, State departments under vastly different administrations have all labeled Iran the number one sponsor of terror globally. 42 years running. They’re 42 for 42. So cutting off the hands of their proxies and basically neutering their ability to register terror across the world, I don’t see how that’s not a really good thing over the medium and the long term.
So, and I’d like to think that after the two biggest economies, the Kingdom and Israel, I believe there’s real incentive to normalize relations. I think the relationship between the US and Israel is strained, but there’s a lot of goodwill there that they can call on. So I actually think that in three to five years, things are gonna be better. I think there’s huge opportunity in the Middle East right now.
Noam: What do you think the world does not understand about Jews? 30 seconds. What does the world not understand about me and you, Scott?
Scott Galloway: That when the black community was being oppressed when gay people did not feel comfortable living their lives out loud when Japanese were set behind barbed wire, central to liberating and advancing the rights of all those people were Jews. And that this can’t be a one-way street. When we cross that bridge, it can’t be one way. That we were there for you, you need to be there for us. But I wonder how many of really realize we were there for them.
Noam: Question of education and again, I’ll make that plug nonstop. We have to teach the history seriously in all of these schools and all of the different media outlets because history really does matter to understanding the present. Last question that I have for you before we get to Q &A from the audience. I wear a kippah outside. My mother told me, she’s in Baltimore, my parents told me when you go to London, make sure to take off your kippah.
Scott Galloway: Yeah.
Noam: when you’re going on the streets. I said, yes, Mom. I call her Ema. I didn’t listen to her. I wore my kippah out in the street. My question to you is, should we be wearing our kippot, our stars of David, our chai’s, or should we say, you know what, let’s, at a time of fear, maybe we should be putting away our identity? What would you recommend to someone like me?
Scott Galloway: I think that’s such a deeply personal question because it’s easy for me to be courageous with your physical safety. So I think that’s just a very personal question around the values and the risks you’re willing to take. I spoke at Goldman Sachs Israel here and I noticed that everyone put on hats to cover, and I thought, wow, that is really disturbing that they don’t feel safe. But I just, don’t feel like I’m in a position to be generous with, with the risks you take. I think that’s a deeply personal question.
Noam: if you were on my mom’s side or mine. I haven’t figured it out yet. You know what? One last question before Q &A. One last question. Security or peace, which should Israel prioritize in the next decade?
Scott Galloway: I think the two are the same. I think the most precise anti-terrorist activity took place against Hezbollah. I think the strength, I think the military operation. You want to talk about pushback? I said the real recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize should be the IDF. I think the IDF.
I think through precision, valor, investment, is going to absolutely result in a massive decrease in death, disability, and disease across the Middle East and the world. And I actually think over the long term, the Israeli brand, the brand association of strength, and quite frankly, don’t F with us, is a really good brand.
It has to be matched with a perception of empathy. And we can argue about whether that perception puts to the reality or not, but that’s where the brand is really suffering. But I don’t absolutely opt for security. And I want to be honest, when I went after the events of October 7th, I went to the Gaza envelope and I was at one of the affected kibbutzes. And I thought I was gonna feel overwhelmed with emotion of being sad and upset. You know what I felt? I felt rage. I can’t believe we let that happen. I thought, why on earth weren’t there helicopter gunships here within about eight minutes? That’s what I felt. I think there needs to be a reckoning internally. How did this happen? There were 1,500 SIM cards switched 24 or 48 hours before in Gaza. Why would they? So, while I salute the IDF, I also used to be very blunt. I was there and I’m like, how did this happen? How on earth did we let this happen? And then the storytelling, the analogy I’ll leave you with and the thing I’ve been talking about, I think is the right story or what I try and communicate to people is what would we do? So imagine a jihadist cartel had been elected democratically in Mexico and then incurred into taxes and said these white Christian nationalists are just awful to us. And so we’re gonna spend all of our aid on tunnels and rockets and we’re gonna go in and on a per capita basis, these are the right numbers, we’re gonna butcher the entire population of the University of Texas Austin, the faculty, the students, everyone, we’re gonna butcher them. And then on the way back to Mexico retreating because they’re a superior military power, we’re gonna take the freshman class at SMU hostage and hide them underground in Monterey, Mexico. What would we have done?
it’d be the great Sonora radioactive parking lot, formerly known as Mexico. So I think we need to have these analogies and stories with data that get Americans to respect the fact, they respect strength, long-winded way of saying absolutely, there’s never gonna be a peace in Israel unless it absolutely, 100 % secures its own security. I just think it’s naive to think we can have peace without security.
Noam: Thank you, Scott. We have Q &A from the audience. Before I let you go, London does want a word. We’ve pulled some audience questions, which we’ll go through right now. We’ll do a couple of these. Scott Galloway: All right.
Noam: Well, you kind of addressed this, but still, Israel is often seen as a geopolitical issue rather than a brand. Do you think Israel has failed to build a coherent global brand narrative? And if so, what would a strong brand strategy for a country even look like? A strong brand strategy for a country like Israel. Maybe you kind of addressed that with the strategy of strength.
Scott Galloway: Yeah, I think it’s gotta be a combination of strength and empathy. The perception is our reality, we’re running low on the empathy. And I have an easier time talking about the British brand. The thing that’s really struggling with the British brand, I’ve been here three and a half years, is risk. And that is when people ask me to distinguish between Britain and the US, I say it’s easy, you’re the ones that stayed.
If you look at, AI was invented here. And I speak at Cambridge, and they’re like we invented AI. And I’m like, how come you haven’t been able to make any money off of it? And I’ll tell you why. Because all the risk takers moved to the US. And there’s something about being under existential threat that creates risk taking. And the fastest growing tech economy outside of the Silicon Valley is now in Tel Aviv. So the risk gene is so important. And unfortunately, in the UK, I think most of the risk has left. Most of the real risk takers, capital formation, venture capital, there’s $5 million for every startup in the US thinking that is risk capital. There’s only $1 million in venture for any European company. I think it’s somewhere between two and a half and three and a half in Israel.
The key term around a brand that I think is really powerful in Israel and in the US is risk, a willingness, a risk appetite. Let’s think big, let’s think really large. What is possible here?
Noam: Scott, one of the things that I find fascinating about you is you say a lot of ideas are actually so Jewish. And I don’t even know if you know that the origin is so Jewish. You talk about having a stake in the future, sacrificing countries like Singapore and Israel that service is central to their identity. And that’s a deeply, deeply Jewish idea that the more you give, the more you get.
The word for love in Hebrew, actually, the root of the word is hey vet, which means to give. And the way to get love is actually by giving. If you give, if you sacrifice, then you get something in return. You speak about ownership and having equity and that sort of thing. Also, deeply, deeply Jewish idea. You said this one idea, this is my question, I’m taking host privilege here. You’ve said a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they’ll never sit.
You know who else said that? The Talmud. The Talmud says that, it tells a story about a guy named Choni, the circle drawer, or Choni ha-Ma’gal in Hebrew. He says the same idea. He’s asked, why is he planting a carob tree? It’s gonna take generations till it’s seen. But he’s like, well, I’m planting it for the next few generations. That’s what I’m doing. That’s the whole concept. That’s what you talk about. Your ideas are often deeply rooted in our tradition. So if you’re planting one tree for the Jewish people right now, that you won’t be able to necessarily see in your lifetime, the fruits of that labor, what tree for the Jewish people should be built, should be planted?
Scott Galloway: It’s a generous question so by the way I stole it from the Ricky Gervais show Afterlife. That’s a great line in a series and I wrote that down. Look, this goes back, I wrote a book basically about masculinity. I think progressives need to have an aspirational form of masculinity that’s not just, act more like a woman.
And the far right says masculinity is coarseness and cruelty, and the far left says act more like a woman. I don’t think that’s helpful. I think that we should celebrate femininity and the ascent of our sisters and our mothers and our daughters, but we also need to celebrate young men and testosterone and what it means to be aggressive, what it means to be initiated, what it means to be a hero, what it means to be strong.
I used to think that…well, I think a decent definition of masculinity is this term coined by Richard Reeves, who’s one of my intellectual role models, and that is surplus value. And I’m trying to communicate that to my boys. I tell them, I’m like, you’re negative value everywhere in your life. You go to this amazing school, all these incredible teachers, administrators, so much money, so much time, people pouring value into you. You’re giving very little back. Me and your mom are investing so much, we’re investing so much more in you than you’re investing in us. Occasionally there’s a hallmark moment, but you’re never up at 2 a.m. wondering where I am, right? Worried about me, right? You’re not sweating over whether you get into UVA, you’re just not, it would be impossible for you, despite what life insurance commercials tell you, to in any way for me to get a real ROI on our relationship.
Where you become a man, I think, is not around a bar mitzvah, it’s not a religious ceremony, it’s not an age, it’s not making money. I think it’s when you can honestly say I’m adding surplus value. And that is I’m creating more tax revenue and jobs than I’ve absorbed. I listen to more complaints than the complaining I’ve done. I notice people’s lives and don’t feel like I need to be performative and have them notice my life. Right?
And then the ultimate expression of masculinity, and this is a call out to the men in this audience, the ultimate expression of masculinity is to get involved in the life of a child that’s not yours. Because this is where young men are falling off the tracks. If you were to reverse engineer to where boys come off the tracks, by the way, go into a morgue, five people have killed themselves, four are men. We don’t have an opiate or a homeless crisis, we have a male opiate and a male homeless crisis. Three out of four men.
Right, six out of seven gambling addicts, 12 times more likely to be incarcerated. The single point of failure, if you think of young men coming off the tracks as an air accident, they reverse engineer to a single point of failure, it’s when a boy loses a male role model. When a boy loses a male role model through death, divorce, or abandonment, at that moment, when that household becomes a single parent household, that boy becomes more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college.
What’s interesting is that girls in single parent homes, of which America has more than any nation in the world, have similar outcomes as girls in dual parent households. Same rates of college attendance, same rates of self-harm. What it ends up is that while boys are physically stronger, they’re mentally and emotionally much weaker than girls. Here’s a scary stat. Two 15-year-olds, a boy and a girl, both sexually molested. Neither crime is any less or more heinous than the other. The boy who’s molested is 10 times more likely to kill himself later in life. 10 times more likely.
So here’s the callout. There are three times as many women applying to be big sisters in London and in New York than there are men applying to be big brothers. If you think of yourself as a successful man, right, you take care of yourself, you get strong, get economically viable. You take care of your family, you take care of your kids, you take care of community, you contribute to your temple, the ultimate outer ring with the greatest circumference of masculinity is you get involved in the life of a boy that isn’t yours. Put another way, if we want better men, we have to be better men. Get involved in a boy’s life that is not yours.
Noam: Very powerful. I love that line about if we want better men, have to be better men. I think about it, we were talking about I have a 13-year-old son, and I think about that often. If I want him to be a certain way, then I have to role model that, and he has that in the house for another five years, and then that’s really it. I want to end with this very last question from the audience. You chose to plead the fifth when Noam asked you the question about Jewish identity externally. What would you say to a young Jewish person who’s embarrassed to be a Zionist right now? And the way we’ll define Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. You’re honest about everything. What’s the thing about Israel you find maybe hardest to defend or as someone who seemingly came out late with their Jewish identity, what do you wish that you had known?
Scott Galloway: I feel as if the more people we get to Israel, the easier time we’re gonna have. If I could, in terms of resources, you go to Tel Aviv and you just think, this is more America than American cities. I think there’s gonna be a very strong connection with people in the West if they spend time in Israel. I think the perception, the reality of Israel is so, it was just such a good time. People, there’s definitely a live for today, the foods, it sounds pretty lame, but the ultimate, kind of the ultimate, if you will, exchange program to try and get as many people to Israel as possible. And also, I can just go back to where I was, just be loud and proud about your Zionism, and it’s just hilarious. People call me a Zionist in my comments as if it’s disparaging. And I respond, yeah, I’m a raging Zionist or proud Zionist. It’s like calling someone an American. Yeah. Be an American. So I think we need to just be a little bit, I don’t know, for lack of better term, louder about it. I don’t think there’s anything, I think we have to take Zionism from being a bug to a feature, right? Yeah. Thank you, yeah. Happy to be a Zionist.
Noam: Well, I want to say if you haven’t listened to this podcast before, now you do. One of the things that we always do is we end every episode with five fast facts and one enduring lesson as I see it. Every episode is what we do.
So tonight I’m gonna give you five fast facts of what you heard tonight, which our producer has been furiously typing away backstage, because they now appear on my laptop, which I so appreciate. But let me give you the five fast facts.
Number one, Scott’s superpower beyond storytelling is his ability to not only accept but welcome rejection, a lot of it, over 60 plus years. And it seems to have worked out pretty well for him. And perhaps it’ll pay off for Israel someday.
Number two, Jews are so desperate for people with a platform who can speak out. We have to be more willing to quote run into the fire.
Number three, Scott feels more Jewish when things are bad. But if you’re honest about the data, things are actually getting better. But there is an economic incentive to be a doom and gloom guy.
Number four, what should Israel’s brand strategy be? The quote, don’t F with us perception of Israel needs to be matched with the perception of empathy. I love that one.
And number five, the future of Israel and the Middle East looks bright. Take it from the guy who spent a lot of time in the Emirates and has the data to back it up. An extraordinary unlock is in the works. Listen back to this episode in three to five years.
And I’ll add one more. Turn Zionism from a bug to a feature.
I was also typing as you were speaking, some of you may have noticed. And here’s one enduring lesson as I see it. Scott.
You once said the arc of evolution bends towards good storytellers. That’s true, but here’s the Jewish addendum. The arc of Jewish survival and Jewish purpose bends towards honest, incredible, and empathic storytellers. Not comfortable ones, not ones who only tell the heroic parts, the ones who are willing to sit with the footnotes as well. Ultimately, if storytelling really matters, then all of us need to learn the art of storytelling.
David Brooks recently wrote a book called How to Know a Person. And he shares a lot of the same wisdom as you, Scott. Here is what he says. You can’t know who you are unless you know how to tell your story. You can’t have a stable identity unless you take the incoherent events of your life and give your life meaning by turning the events into a coherent story. You can know what to do next only if you know what story you are a part of. And you can endure present pains only if you see them as part of a story that will yield future benefits. That’s the enduring lesson as I see it. That’s how I want to end the conversation with you tonight. That’s what Unpacking Israeli History is. That’s what tonight is. And I’m grateful to you, Scott, for the conversation. That was truly such a privilege to have had with you. Thank you.
Scott Galloway: Thank you.
Noam: Thank you to our very special evening chairs, Natalie and her fellow de Boton and the entire steering committee. You are the reason we’re all here tonight, Scott and me included, so thank you. To the sponsors of tonight’s episode, Carol and Adam Reich, who are not here, they’re in New York. They told me to tell you specifically, they are funders of ours and they said they fanboy over you and fangirl over you and they’re tough people. So it’s pretty cool to hear that from them. So thank you so much on behalf of Carol and Adam. To the folks at 116 Paul Moll for hosting us, thank you. They don’t get a clap? going on here. To the OpenDor Media team, to my colleague Andrew Savage, Ryan Rabinowitz, and the whole OpenDor Media team, those of you who are here, thank you so much for making this possible. Thank you, thank you.
And finally, finally, finally, finally, Scott Galloway, you have made such a huge impact on my life and so many others. Thank you so much for making tonight such a meaningful conversation.