← Lunch with Jamie
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- [00:04]
A
If you're a regular listener to Lunch with Jamie, you know that. One of the people I enjoy speaking to the most and I personally listen to all the time, is Scott Galloway. He, in my opinion, is just one of the most important voices today. I know he has detractors, as everybody does, but, you know, whether it's pivot, whether it's Prof. G. Whether it's raging moderates, whether it's him, his newsletter, no Mercy, no Malice, his. His hits on news media, he's saying something provocative, he's getting people thinking. His book, Notes on Being a Man, I think is critical reading for everybody. And recently he came out with his Resist and Unsubscribe movement, which I think is one of the best forms of protests that is around. I think things like no Kings are great. I was out for the ICE protest last weekend. I think it's really important to get out there if you can, and participate in protests. I think showing in community, strength in numbers always works, but I think there are other things you can do that are equally as important. And this plan and this movement, Resist and Unsubscribe is one of the smartest things I've seen in a long time. It's been proven that in particular, the Trump administration listens to nothing more than they do than dollars. And to actually take action that leads to a drop in company's values and revenues is just perfect. And Scott put together a great website at Resistant Unsubscribe. I had to get him on the pod to talk quickly, to just ask me a few questions, follow up on some of the ideas. I started to unsubscribe. It's not easy. The family and personally, you have trouble getting rid of things that you learn to live with and that are things you feel like you can't live without, but you definitely can live without. Most things you definitely can live without. Multiple LLMs with multiple rideshare companies, with six streaming services, with, you know, you can change your phone service from AT&T, who has been proven to be working more with ICE and other organizations. Uh, so I, I really felt I got a lot out of this. You know, he's seen a big uptick in. In. In the. The. How this is connecting with people just in the hits on the website. So if you haven't gone there yet, go unsubscribe something right now. It's not that hard. I promise you. You can do it. And we talked a bit about what was the breaking point for him. Uh, not surprisingly, it was the murder of Alex Preddy. And Renee Goode. But then all just seeing this, the, the mass men coming around and throughout our country and the just he's fed up and he's frustrated. He personally is going to start selling his stocks in these companies again. He likes to remind people he's a person of privilege. He can do things like this. He can move money from Goldman Sachs to a bank in Minneapolis to, to put his money to work in places that may make more of an impact. But everybody should do what they can do and don't be overwhelmed. Don't say, okay, I can't do it, it's too much. Just do what you can. And I think that's really important. We also talked about how Kevin Marsh, in his opinion, is a good Fed chair pick. And I think it's important to highlight things when this administration does do something that's positive, it makes the comments when they're doing things more negative, which are majority of the day resonate more because you can point the winds out. And finally, it was really nice he ended our conversation with why he felt my recent movie Roofman was a real positive example of a story about being a father. So hope you enjoy this. I know I did. I'm gonna get Scott back on to talk about his book when we find some more time. But resist and unsubscribe. That's the message for today. Scott Galloway, thank you. I'm honored that you are joining us today and you're making some time. I know how busy you are now more than ever.
- [04:16]
B
Let's.
- [04:17]
A
If you don't know who Scott Galloway is, I'm sorry, turn the podcast off, don't listen. Sign up for something else. I don't need an. He doesn't need an intro. Let's make it simple for today. What is the Resist and Unsubscribe movement? And where do we start?
- [04:31]
B
First off, thank you, Jamie. It's always good to see you. So I think, like a lot of people, I was feeling very anxious about what was going on and a little bit helpless. You know, massed secret police in our cities, total overrun of CO or what are supposed to be CO branches of government, parents being shot in the face, ICU nurses serving veterans murdered. In my view. And I believe what Dan Harris says, that action absorbs anxiety. I talk a lot about this stuff, but I wanted to do more than that. And I think I stumbled on something that was sort of hiding in plain sight as a means of pushing back. And that is if you look at where the Trump administration has actually walked back certain actions. It's only been one thing happens. When one thing happens, and that is the market's response, specifically, the tenure goes up or the stock market goes back. That's when he checked back on this annexation of Greenland. That's when he's checked back on tariffs. And so the question is, how could consumers who control 70% of the economy affect or impact the markets? And what you have is 40% of the S&P is now 10 companies. These companies are mostly consumer driven. These companies are very sensitive to growth in their subscriptions. So I thought, okay, the soft tissue here, the string we could pull on that might have a disproportionate impact would be to resist and unsubscribe. So, for example, if you unsubscribe to ChatGPT, that's $240, but it's trading at a 40x revenue. So that effectively hurts the market cap of ChatGPT or OpenAI by $10,000. So if we were able to create a collective movement and infrastructure around going from two LLMs to one, from seven streaming platforms to one, to maybe taking a few less Ubers, that this might register with the individuals who, in my opinion, have been the enablers. Showing up to the President's residents, ridiculously overfunding Melania documentaries, paying for signed hard drives, and then texting me saying, I hate myself. That doesn't help. So my sense is the enablers and the firms that the President listens to are especially sensitive to a slowdown in consumer spending. So I launched the site Resist and Unsubscribe, and I create a series of links around what I call ground zero. These are the companies that are the magnificent 10 and the consumer services you can unsubscribe from. And then what I call the blast zone, and that is these are the companies that are directly enabling ice, whether it's AT&T or Hilton. I want to create an infrastructure that makes it easy for people to use their consumer spending as a weapon, which I think most consumers have not been doing.
- [07:10]
A
I love it. It was so brilliant. You and I chatted about it. I'm so inspired by you, as always. I think my first instinct was like, great, I'm going to unsubscribe. And then obviously I had that feeling of, oh, I can't live without this, I can't live without that. I can't. And then the conversation, the family, which gets even harder. And you've talked about it a bit. So for people who. And this is something which you talk about, which is Great. This is not forever. This is whether it's a month or whatever it is. This is till we can make some impact. All come together at the same time and do something. What's that conversation? What was the conversation like for you at the. At the family table? I suggested we do a zoom as a family because one's away and I have been getting a lot of pushback. Not that they don't want to do their part and they don't aren't up in arms as well, but how have you. How have you navigated that as a father?
- [08:01]
B
Not well. So the family meeting went something like this. We get what you're doing, dad, but this isn't going to make any difference. And why are we paying the price for your political ambitions or ideology? And we agreed to go from six streaming platforms down to one for the month of February. And when I wanted to go to zero and I suggested canceling Netflix, I got that look from my sons of memo to self, smother dad and sleep tonight. So this isn't easy. But what I have found. I did not know that I was a subscriber to Amazon One, their healthcare service. It's 199 bucks a year. I did not realize that. Since 2015, when I joined Uber, I've taken 3,700 Ubers. I don't have a car. I use it as a car service. This is a story of privilege. I take Uber Lux. Uber Lux has raised its prices 7 to 10% a year. Last year I spent $35,000 on Uber. So I'm taking the tube, I'm taking the subway in New York, which is amazing. I'm taking Uber Exmoor, and I think I'm going to save enough money if I want to lease a G wagon. And I realize that's a story of privilege. I do not need three different LLMs. I'm going down to one. I didn't realize I have three separate subscriptions to Apple TV because when I'm on the road and I want to watch Ted Lasso, I forget my password and I end up signing again. I don't want to be the arbiter of telling people, especially not to work or not to buy groceries. I'm economically secure. I have no right to tell people to do that. What I'm trying to say is I put together a site that makes it easier for you to evaluate where you could probably save a little bit of money and have an outsized impact on big tech and potentially send a message to the markets, or at a minimum, send A signal to other consumers that their spending matters. And just as in dry January, it's sort of a chance to recalibrate whether your alcohol intake needs to go back or stay the same. I think you're going to find when you start unsubscribing, you're spending money where you don't need to. And what I've said is do what feels right for you. Maybe it's all of February, maybe you decide that you don't need to be on Amazon prime, that you're not getting your money's worth for Paramount plus whatever it might be. But this is a means I'm trying to create, make it easy for you to make this decision and give consumers the power to use their spending on big tech and on the Trump administration, while also recognizing this is a personal choice. It's up to you. I'm not calling for an end or a beginning. I'm saying this is an easy way to take stock of your consumer power and decide if and where you want to save a little bit of money.
- [10:30]
A
Yeah, I love that. I think that the concept that this is temporary for the most part. I mean, again, as you said, you may find ways just to save money, which is obviously great for everybody no matter where you stand. So I think hopefully it's going to have a long term effect that's beneficial personally, separate from changing the world potentially. You know, I think Cory Booker's quote to me, there are a couple of quotes I love and stand by, which is, don't let your inability to do everything undermine your ability to do something is so resonant with this in particular, right? It's like this, like you look at your, you look at your, your whole life and you're like, I can't, I can't do all that. But just focusing on what you can do makes a big impact, as you said. And I love the way you spell it out so clearly.
- [11:14]
B
One, cancel ChatGPT subscription. It's trading at 40 times revenues, $240 a year. So you decide just to do anthropic. That's a $10,000 hit to their market cap. If we were to say, all right, I want to hit Kroger's, they trade at 0.3 times revenues. You'd have to get five families to stop buying groceries for a year. So what I'm suggesting is consumers don't realize, if we're going to kick them, let's kick them in the balls. And the testicles are subscription tech revenues that are responsible for a disproportionate amount of market cap. So this is how are we smart? How? I'm trying to figure out a way for consumers like me. I really admire people who give up their Saturday and go protest. I don't do that. I'm too selfish. I don't do that. I really admire people who are soaked so upset about this, they decide not to go into work. I admire it. I hope and trust a bunch of us turn out in November. I also think we have not really thought what is the greatest impact relative to effort? And just a little bit of analysis around your spend around big tech subscriptions, you're going to find you can have a big impact. It's this. I can't think of a greater ROI relative to consumer effort. You know, the hundreds of thousands of people that show up in the no Kings protests, that's an enormous amount of effort. It's powerful. I worry sometimes, Jamie, it's more cinematic than it is effective. We have these protests. We feel good. They are important. It feels good to do things with other people. But if we could get a million, 2 million, 3 million people to unsubscribe from Apple TV to not have Amazon prime and any of these individuals notice a downtick in their subscription revenues. Microsoft missed its growth estimates by 1%. It lost 10% of its value. Other NASDAQ stocks traded down in sympathy. The NASDAQ 100 declined 1.5% in one day. That is what the Trump administration listens to. So I'm trying to figure out a way to stumble upon a secret weapon we didn't even realize we had.
- [13:18]
A
I love it. And I think, listen, I think on the protests, Jess Tarlov and I went to the Milk Kings together in New York. And I think that all those things are valuable. And again, I think it comes back to just doing what you can do, doing something. I think this thing in particular really, I think is going to be very effective with the Trump administration. I do, I'm going to. We talked a little bit on text and I'm going to, I'm going to encourage you to see if we can come up with a day again. It's almost like a, it's almost like a digital protest. In the next coming days, as your resist and unsubscribe goes, I think if you get together with all these people who are behind this movement now with you and say, hey, let's pick whatever, you know, Thursday the 12th as a day, we are all gonna make an effort. You haven't done it already. Don't Worry if you've done it, been doing it every day, great. If you've unsubscribed for everything, great. But let's pick a day and let's really hurt them. And it's like almost like a worldwide virtual protest, I think could be really interesting. Can you talk a little about the metrics? I heard they sound amazing from. I know you and I were talking the day it happened on Friday and what the impact and what the response you've gotten is pretty extraordinary.
- [14:27]
B
Yeah, I think you're being generous. So we launched. I put up the site on Friday. It was meant to be unsubscribe February or subscribe or resist and unsubscribe on Friday. That site got 6,000 unique visits. Today we're going to get somewhere between probably 120 and 200,000 unique visits. So that's significant, but it's obviously not going to move the needle. I was getting about two screenshots of cancellations an hour. Now I'm getting about 40 to 60. And there's little piece of anecdotal evidence. I've been asked by the entire senior class at a high school to give them five minutes on why they should all collectively unsubscribe from Spotify. I'm just getting these weird requests for okay, what if my. I have a small company, I have a site license with anthropic. Can you speak to me about other Options or other LLMs? So we are getting a decent amount of movement. It kind of petered or stalled. I'm trying to be very open and honest this yesterday in terms of traffic to the site. I've done some research on what types of protests register. And what's interesting is that it's usually not the economic impact immediately. It's media bringing attention to the idea of economic impact. So it wasn't Disney unsubscribes that move Iger. It was the fact that it started getting reported everywhere and the threat of economic impact. So what I've done the last two or three days, I've been on CNN three times. I've been on npr. I'm about to go on the Times Radio of London. Right after you. I'm going on Ms. Now. I'm going on Richard Quest. So I'm trying to create a decent amount of buzz in the media and also just more personally, Jamie, when you produce movies, you're putting yourself out there for public failure. It's a nervous time. Right. I believe in this. I've spent a bunch of time on this and you're submitting yourself to basically throwing a party and no one shows up. And what I have found over the last 10 years is I have moved out of risk taking into saying provocative, angry things and heckling from the cheap seats. And I wanted just personally to put myself out there. I've gotten some pushback from some fairly famous people and organizers who've said, you've done this incorrectly. You should be coordinating with different people. I mean, look, I don't have the time or the patience and the skills to coordinate with a bunch of activist groups and famous people arguing over whether Netflix should be on the list or not. But my attitude is, each of us, if we do our own thing, we're thoughtful about it, our heart's in the right place. I know I'm going to get several thousand people unsubscribed, maybe even tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. And if enough people have the confidence that they can do something and risk a little bit of public failure, which is not a big risk at all, that this might add up to something bigger. But I'm kind of sick of just heckling from the cheap seats. I wanted to get back on the field and actually do something.
- [17:18]
A
I appreciate that. I think. I think you're not giving yourself enough credit, because I think you do inspire a lot of people to do a lot of things, but you want to be the man in the arena. You want to get that dust on your face. And you are. And it's going a long way. I mean, this sounds semi obvious. I know you launched this on Friday. What was the light switch moment where you're like, I have to do this. Was there one thing you saw or was there one moment last week or the week before where you're just like, okay, I mean, I know it doesn't take months to do what you did, but it doesn't take an hour. Like, you had to do it. Like, what was that thing? Like, oh, let's. It's go time.
- [17:54]
B
The moment for me was. I mean, it's been a cumulative seeing an ICU nurse murdered, seeing a parent of three get shot in the face three times. The secret police. I think I have a decent command of history, specifically World War II. And this is beginning to have really strong echoes of early 30s Germany. What's going on here? A secret police, A generation of young men with a lack of opportunity running over co equal branches of government, trying to weaponize captains of industry, to ignore the slow descent into fascism, as Hitler did with the industrial giants in the late 30s in exchange for making money. I'm not comparing. I'm not saying that Trump is a genocidal maniac. I don't think he is. But I think we can learn a lot from history about what could happen here. And I do think it could happen here again in some fashion or form. The moment where I got. I don't know, I just said, I gotta do something was. Was. I know the exact moment. It was when Secretary Noem gave a press conference after what I believe is manslaughter and murder of Alex Prady and said that he was a domestic terrorist and that he was showing up with the intent to massacre federal agents. I just thought it reminded me of The Orwell book 1984, I read in high school, where their last act was to demand we ignore our. Our eyes and ears. I was just so upset at that moment. I thought, this is our leadership as people basically going to the grave of a man who tried to care for veterans and literally shitting all over it, just lying to us. And the thought that this person thought, people will believe me if I just say he's a domestic terrorist and that he was there brandishing a weapon and was planning to massacre federal agents. I thought, wow, this has just gone so far. But that was. I mean, different things impact people differently. But for me, that was the moment I said, all right, I'm not going to let perfect be the enemy of good. I'm going to do ready, fire, aim. I called some people at Prop G and I said, I want to do something here. I think I've discovered a way to have an outsized impact. Can we build this site? Everyone at the firm was on board with it. I started calling my friends in the media, and they said, come on, to talk about it. You've been very generous. But that was, for me, kind of the moment where I thought, wow, if you have any fidelity to American values, and as you have registered, so have I. So many blessings from principles of rule of law, protection of civil rights, competition in America to not nod to these things and make somewhat of an effort to turn back what I feel is this slow burn into fascism is just not to nod. It's to be really ungrateful to the blessings that guys like you and I have enjoyed. So that was the moment for me with Secretary Noem accusing Alex Preddy of being a domestic terrorist.
- [20:46]
A
I figured that, but the way you said it, really, it's just so clear what's happening. I've been recommending a couple books recently. One is running Ground by Nick Thompson. Another is a book called Notes on Being a that you may have heard of, which we still need to bring you on for a full hour to talk about. The other is this book called the Takeover by Timothy Rybeck. Have you read it yet?
- [21:09]
B
I haven't, but we're having Timothy on a podcast.
- [21:12]
A
Scott, it is. I get. I get a little frustrated sometimes about this, like, Trump's Hitler or these, like, it's the end of democracy, like these kind of hyperbolic, kind of crazy statements. When you read this book, it's the most harrowing and sort of scariest thing you'll read because it really shows you not only Hitler, but it shows you the people around him and how it just sort of what happened at that time, how every single piece of society was playing a part of it. And, you know, this is. We're in serious times. I do like what I see from some of the elections happening. And I think the one thing I want to say is it, do what you can do right now, right? Whatever it is, unsubscribe, you know, go to a protest, unsubscribe from everything, from one thing, whatever it is. But everybody's got to vote, right? Like, that's the thing. That's not an optional. That's not optional if you live in America, live in a democracy. And now more than ever, and I think we got to keep reminding people of that. I know you had an interesting moment with Kara on Pivot the other day about selling stocks in companies, and I'm curious where your head is at when it comes to that now.
- [22:28]
B
Yeah. So one of the reasons I got to lead the life I lead is that I bought Amazon and Apple in 2009 after the crash, and I think they're up 20 and 30x. So I am going to. I've sold down most of my Amazon. I'm going to sell. I've decided I'm going to sell my Apple stock. And I don't. I want to be clear, I'm not. I'm not suggesting everyone has an obligation to affix their own oxygen masks first. I'm not suggesting everybody needs to be thoughtful around providing economic security for them and their families. But I want to be out in front of everybody else on this. And so I have. I've been selling down my Apple stock and I'm also going to. I have all of my assets with Goldman Sachs. I love them. I think they're great at what they do. I'm contemplating transferring my assets to the RBC branch in Minneapolis. I Want to send a small but thoughtful and public message that you can have an impact voting with your money. And I love the guys at Goldman. I'm disappointed that Jamie Dimon and David Solomon and other leaders in the financial sector have remained quiet and then just under their breath in private talk about how terrible this is. I get it. It's hard for them to go for anyone to go first because they get punished. A good autocrat punishes the person who goes first, rewards his allies. But I think there needs to be collective action among the CEOs of the biggest companies that this goes beyond politics. And I would argue that firms like Goldman and JP Morgan, ultimately bigger companies in Europe and Latin America are going to stop working with our services firms. You're already saying it about big tech. They're already coming up with reasons to ban the UK is going after Twitter. They're age gating social media across Europe. These all have good justification. But what you're seeing here is global or different markets. Western markets are like, we're no longer done deferring to your good judgment and having American capitalism be the operating system. If you want to treat us this poorly and declare economic war on us, we're going to start declaring economic war on your American firms. I think you're going to see big tech firms kicked out of Western Europe and I think you're going to start to see American services firms pay a price. But anyways, back to I'm going to sell down my American tech stocks. I mean just logistics. I need to be. I'm quite frankly waiting on my tax advisor to tell me what is the tax payment I'm going to need to make. And this is a good problem. I have big gains in these stocks and I also want to be very. I'm really thankful to get people at Amazon and Apple for helping me with my economic security. I'm disappointed that the leadership there is not saying publicly what they've been saying privately. And so I'm going to vote with my feet in my wallet in addition to unsubscribing from Apple tv. Plus I'm going to sell my Apple stock.
- [25:21]
A
I think it's a tough thing because I had a friend who was talking to me about listen who one of the most charitable friends I know makes a lot of his money from potentially companies that he doesn't feel comfortable investing in. And you are so charitable. So I think it is. And all this stuff is personal. Have a couple minutes left. I want to quickly. I think we should start really highlighting and champion some of these people who are speaking out and doing great work today. And I, I just saw Evan Spiegel this morning today talking and I, when I was thinking about the, all the, the tech CEOs and all the people doing these and you know, and, and meta and what Zuckerberg does. And Evan's been somebody who's just been like, doing his best to really keep SNAP in a company that's really not as nefarious as some of these other companies. And I think, you know, that's less related to Trump in the moment. But it's just like, I think we need to start heralding people who are stepping up and speaking out and, and, and, and supporting them with our money is, I think that's something that you can do well because you're good at identifying those people and then promoting them and talking about them. So that's another. I'm giving you just more work to do, Scott. That's really my goal here. Yeah, the good guy. I want, I want to see the good guys list. Final thing, quick thought on the Fed chair and then one last question on your book. Have less than two minutes to answer.
- [26:44]
B
I think the Fed chair was a great choice. I was worried it was going to be Eric Trump. He's very qualified. Morgan Stanley was liaison between Bernanke and Wall Street. He's known as a hawk, which gives me some comfort. And also what people don't realize is the reason why Trump was putting so much pressure on Powell is he was hoping he was going to resign from the Board of Governors. Because I've been on a bunch of public company boards and the way corporate governance works is the following. There might be a chair of the board, but there's one or two people on the board who when they speak, everybody listens. And Warsh, I think his name is Warsh may be the new chair of the Federal Reserve, but you can bet whenever Jerome Powell speaks, everyone's going to nod their head and listen. So I was actually really relieved. I think he's a good pick and I do think that Trump has had better picks around the finance stuff. I think he, at least he chooses competent people where as the rest of his cabinet, you know, TV news host, it feels like this is one area that he takes seriously in some. I think it's a good, I think it's a good pick.
- [27:50]
A
I think on the good guys front of highlighting listening, it's important that we do take these moments to say something positive about a Trump pick or a Trump policy, because I think people just get into this place where it's just bad, bad, bad all day. I want to thank you for your book. I'm going to have you are going to come back on at some point in this year so we can talk about the book because I think it's very important. Thank you for joining us today. Good luck with the media tour. I'm there to fight for you.
- [28:15]
B
I just want to press pause. I am really. My book is all about trying to create a code around masculinity, provide, protect, procreate. And the reason why I love Roofman so much and I took my kids to the actual theater to see it, which I never do, is the theme running through that thing is how a father's need and obligation to protect can manifest in very unhealthy ways. But that movie really resonated with me because my favorite things in the world call in these paternal feelings, whether it's Breaking Bad or. But I really love the movie and I think I've been to three movies this year and that was one of them. I really enjoyed it.
- [28:53]
A
Well, that means more than you can imagine. I'll share that with the team and potentially the world on social media. But thanks, Scott. I can't wait to see you in person someday. You're looking great and say hello to the family for me.
- [29:07]
B
All right. Thanks, Jamie. Thanks, Scott.
- [29:08]
A
Okay, thanks.
- [29:09]
B
Bye.
- [29:09]
A
Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Lunch with Jamie. As always, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter@jamieslist.com for my thoughts on all things food, pop culture, politics and more. And remember to join these online conversations and ask my guests questions in real time. Sign up to get a paid subscriber. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Audible and be sure to leave a review. Thanks and see you next time.