Each year, we review/make predictions re the past/coming year. Most years, we hit more than we miss. But we do miss — if we made 10 predictions that all came true, that wouldn’t be predicting but stating the obvious. The caliber of a prediction is a function of what it reveals ab … | Continue reading
The full scope of how the Covid pandemic changed our world may not be clear for another generation. The deluge of official inquiries, political brawls, think pieces, and books (I wrote one) that have come out in the past few years are first drafts. They’re also reminders of how c … | Continue reading
The full scope of how the Covid pandemic changed our world may not be clear for another generation. The deluge of official inquiries, political brawls, think pieces, and books (I wrote one) that have come out in the past few years are first drafts. They’re also reminders of how c … | Continue reading
After a disastrous day of congressional testimony, Penn’s president and board chair resigned, and the presidents of Harvard and M.I.T. are under intense pressure. The cause is easier to diagnose than the mechanics of the firing. Over the past several decades, universities have mo … | Continue reading
Humans have been writing for five thousand years — and drinking longer. Archeologists recently discovered a 13,000-year-old beer in a cave near modern-day Haifa, Israel, and there is archaeological evidence of alcohol consumption around the globe by 5000 BCE. Alcohol’s draw is a … | Continue reading
I just paused my Hulu subscription — pretty sure that means I’m blackmailing Bob Iger. The real tragedy of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s interview with a co-founder of OpenAI is that ketamine addicts deserve a better spokesperson. But that’s another post. The collapse and rebirth of the V … | Continue reading
There was controversy this month involving Kanye West. You can catch up here; I won’t reiterate it. I believe Kanye is ill, and I’ll return to ignoring him soon after this post. This post is about Adidas, Gap, CAA, and his other corporate partners. It is about the moral obligatio … | Continue reading
The tsunami of private capital that crashed against digital innovation after 2008 shaped a new economic entity: the unicorn. Among the private companies valued at over $1 billion, the two that marked the era were Uber and WeWork. Uber was the second tech company to breach a $50 b … | Continue reading
I spent the first 30 years of my life not worried enough about things I could control. And the last 10, too worried about things I have almost no control over. That’s accelerated over the past few weeks, but there’s a silver lining: I’ve been so fucking freaked out over the Middl … | Continue reading
Fifty-one percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 believe the Hamas attacks of October 7 “can be justified by the grievances of the Palestinians.” That’s not how most Americans feel, and the disparity in sentiment is correlated with age. This is not unique to the Hamas attack. The old … | Continue reading
Despite receiving scant coverage, the biggest business stories last week were Netflix and Meta’s quarterly earnings. The numbers were striking: NFLX profits hit $1.6 billion (up 20% from a year earlier) and the platform added 9 million new subscribers. Meanwhile, the company is r … | Continue reading
Listening is underrated. Unlike vision, hearing works in the dark and around corners. We hear 20 to 100 times faster than we see, and what we hear stays in our heads longer, often evoking strong emotions — just listen to your favorite band from college. However, for many of us, w … | Continue reading
We receive dozens of thoughtful emails each week from people (mostly young men) asking for advice. They all deserve a response, but the time/space continuum gets in the way. So we’ve set out to leverage AI to develop a digital twin capable of answering questions in my voice. Prof … | Continue reading
A source of capital has morphed to a source of entertainment. A reality show, minus hot people and Andy Cohen. The charismatic carnival barkers on CNBC serve up a steady diet of SPACs, social media, and space, and would have you believe that’s the center of the economic universe. … | Continue reading
Last week, after five months of striking, the Writers Guild (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) reached a tentative agreement. “We can say, with great pride,” the WGA wrote in a statement, “that this deal is exceptional — with meaningful gain … | Continue reading
What has been the most significant change in the American experience over the past century? The internet, civil rights, antibiotics? The transition from a manufacturing to a service economy, or rapid urbanization? Right up there, I believe, is the displacement of religion from th … | Continue reading
“The notion that power should be limited so that no person or institution can enjoy unaccountable influence is at the very root of our democracy.” —Tim Wu Capitalism is the most powerful system so far devised for the elevation of the human condition. Its oxygen is innovation, wh … | Continue reading
For decades, America has predicted — arrogantly and repeatedly — the imminent fall of a nation. The doomed nation, according to Americans? A: America. In the ’80s, we decided Japan was doing to us economically what they couldn’t do militarily four decades prior. My second year … | Continue reading
A lot can happen in 18 months. Last January, the Nasdaq was fresh off an all-time high and venture funding was smashing records. We were birthing two unicorns (startups worth more than $1 billion) per day. Then in 2022 the music stopped. Tech stocks — some falling by as much as … | Continue reading
Then AI and steady leadership at the Fed grabbed the stick and pulled out of the dive, markets came back (again led by tech). Now the hype machine has clicked back to 11. It’s a good time to recall our tendency to put aside our skepticism when times are good. Some of today’s prop … | Continue reading
This week on No Mercy No Malice, we’re featuring a guest post from Richard Reeves. Richard, a writer and a scholar whose work focuses on what I believe are pressing issues, has become my Yoda regarding the conversation concerning failing young men. We hosted Richard on the Prof G … | Continue reading
This week on No Mercy No Malice, we’re featuring a guest post from Mo Gawdat, an Egyptian entrepreneur, former senior executive at Google, and bestselling author on human happiness. We had Mo on the Prof G Pod a few weeks ago, and his message deeply resonated with our team and li … | Continue reading
I don’t know, nobody does. However, I believe it is increasingly likely Donald Trump withdraws from the race for president as the result of a plea deal. Why? A: math. Facing prosecutions in at least three jurisdictions, it’s likely, if he is not reelected, Trump will be tried, co … | Continue reading
Hollywood’s writers and actors are on strike. As I’ve written before, their leaders have picked the wrong moment to cast themselves in a working-class drama. In sum, they have little leverage, as there are too many of them and the strike is a gift for studios looking to slow the … | Continue reading
America has a vision of itself as the land of opportunity, with rights and liberty for everyone. That is not and has never been the reality. But for 250 years we’ve been closing that gap at a greater pace than any other multicultural democracy. Lately, however, there’s eviden … | Continue reading
Last week, Twitter became MySpace: a social network void of innovation being slowly euthanized by Meta. In less than a week, Meta’s Threads registered 110 million users — equivalent to the combined population of Germany and Australia, and the most violent corporate disruption in … | Continue reading
What if there was a drug that extended life, made you happier, healthier, and wealthier, and strengthened your relationships? The good news: It exists. The bad news: It’s being needlessly hoarded. This drug is higher education. America is the world’s premier source, producing the … | Continue reading
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The search for truth is the pursuit of comfort in the face of doubt. Over the past few centuries, the scientific method — and the empirical proof it offers — has increasingly become the world’s go-to for answers. We plant and harvest crops based on meteorology, not astronomy; we … | Continue reading
iStory Every one of us has an origin story: We define ourselves by our background, the narrative of what made us who we are. However, people often don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story, and the narrative of “I” is often that, a story. James Frey found no takers for [ … | Continue reading
I’m at Founders Forum in the Cotswolds … which they assure me is somewhere outside of London. There are a lot of Teslas and recycled Mason jars as … we’re making the world a better place. As at any gathering of the tech elite in 2023, the content could best be described as AI and … | Continue reading
This millennium, Apple has introduced a string of landmark products: the definitive portable music player, the most popular tablet computer, those ubiquitous wireless earbuds, an iconic lightweight laptop and the standard issue coder’s laptop, a new way to pay, a smartwatch that … | Continue reading
I recently spoke at the WSJ Europe CEO conference, and within days a clip from my talk was viewed 7 million times on TikTok. Rewarding, as Elon Musk had spoken earlier in the day and received … fewer. Yes, I’m petty that way. Anyway, the gist of the clip was that young people’s t … | Continue reading
In the past 30 days I’ve been approached by three groups asking if I’m interested in joining a consortium to bid on European football clubs. The prospect violates two of my core investing tenets: stoicism, and boring > sexy. I try to remain unemotional and avoid investments with … | Continue reading
Forty years ago, 190,000 British coal miners went on strike. The U.K. government, which owned the mines, met none of the strikers’ demands. After a year the strike ended with the union gravely weakened. Over the next few years, the British coal industry dwindled to nearly not … | Continue reading
I run two organizations. Prof G Media is a (wait for it) media company that produces books, videos, podcasts, TV shows, talks, and this newsletter. The second organization is the aircraft carrier squadron that runs my life outside of work. The tutors, trainers, accountants, lands … | Continue reading
I’m on a flight from London to LA, where I’ll kick off a six-city tour (then to San Diego, Seattle, Austin, NYC, and Miami). In each city, I’ll stand in front of several hundred people with a hundred-plus charts peering down from behind. Then I’ll tell stories. My favorite part i … | Continue reading
The name of the podcast I co-host with Kara Swisher is “Pivot.” I don’t like the name, but I’ve had my hands on the wheel for so long at my own companies, I’m down with sitting in the backseat and occasionally asking, “Are we there yet?” Besides, Kara does most of the work and ha … | Continue reading
Last week we learned about a significant leak of classified material that exposed key details of the Ukrainian war effort and America’s security apparatus. The perpetrator? Not an extremist group or criminal network, but someone we’re more familiar with. A young man who spends to … | Continue reading
Stabbings, state secrets, whores masquerading as Supreme Court justices — it’s been an especially depressing week in the news. So I’d rather focus on scarves. Specifically, Hermès, the iconic luxury brand. With $12 billion in annual revenue, Hermès now has a larger market capital … | Continue reading
Our podcast, the Prof G Pod, now has four different weekly episodes: Monday is Markets, where we break down the financial news; Wednesday is Office Hours — listeners ask questions; Thursday is Conversations, where we speak with blue-flame thinkers in tech and business; and Saturd … | Continue reading
Until my forties, I was known … but not famous. Known in grad school at Berkeley, known in the e-commerce scene in the Bay Area, and, after having taught 5,000 students, known around NYU’s campus. Day 1 of “fame” came in 2016. The team at L2 (my business intelligence firm) was he … | Continue reading
Sixty years ago, Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged. The book is set in a dystopian United States on the brink of economic collapse. Exhausted by a corrupt government, the hero, John Galt, packs his things and starts a self-sufficient community in an isolated valley, hidden — and sepa … | Continue reading
In 1907, amidst rising interest rates and a declining stock market, two New York bankers attempted to corner the stock of a copper company. Their scheme collapsed, and depositors at the banks that backed them pulled their money. One bank, Knickerbocker Trust, lacked the capital t … | Continue reading
The universe is a product of the collision of materials and gases that added value to one another. Humanity’s ascent to the world’s apex predator is also a function of our ability to add value, converting one substance into another. We learned to morph wood into fire, and walnut … | Continue reading
On Saturday I went on CNN with Michael Smerconish to talk about the challenges young men face in America. The headline: 63% of men aged 18-29 in America are single (neither married nor in a committed relationship) — up from 51% just four years ago. Among women, that number is 34% … | Continue reading
Three years ago today there were 53 known cases of Covid-19 in the United States. The first U.S. death was recorded five days later at the EvergreenHealth Medical Center in Kirkland, Washington. At that point, the only lockdown was in a city that would become the most famous on E … | Continue reading
Regardless of skin color, sexuality, or politics, young men are falling. They are falling behind academically, failing to attach to mates, and trading potential for addiction. Their less-evolved prefrontal cortex is especially susceptible to opportunities for quick dopa hits that … | Continue reading