The Case for Moving Money and Life to Europe, and the Future of Podcast Ads

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1:31Welcome to Office Hours with Prop G. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehours at propgmedia.com. Again, that's officehours at propgmedia.com. Or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode. Okay, question number one. Hi, Scott. This is Wade from Austin, Texas. I have this theory that since all of the American foreign policy lately has been serving to alienate us from the rest of the world, and Europe seems to be partnering up with Canada and maybe the rest of the quote-unquote middle powers and starting to spend more money on defense, loosening some of its regulations and spending a lot more money at the governmental level, that there will be a boom over there.

2:30I know you've previously said that United States is the best place to make money and Europe is the best place to spend it, but I'm sort of curious if that thesis will continue to hold going forward. It also seems like Europe has some great boons for folks, including better family policy, generally safer in a lot of cities, and just good vibes, it feels like, every time I'm there. And it seems like you had the same on your recent trip. So curious to know what you think about pivoting from the U.S. to Europe, considering recent events. Thanks, God. Thanks for the thoughtful question. And I'm a little bit biased here because I did move to Europe four years ago.

3:14I didn't do it because I was leaving America. I did it because America offered us so much prosperity that we had the opportunity to move our family to Europe for a few years. And I've really enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to coming back to the U.S. because I still think, I don't know, there's nothing that makes you realize how American you are than living abroad. But anyway, for the first time, even since I moved there, I'm hearing from a lot of people saying I'm thinking of moving to London or somewhere in Europe. And generally, the wages are lower if you're working. But when you factor in the fact that you don't have to pay for health insurance, oftentimes there's universal pre-K.

3:51Oftentimes you feel comfortable sending your kid to a public school because people, I think some people would argue that the public schooling system is better in certain countries in Europe than the average public school in the United States. And also just a, I don't know, a greater comity of man. Spend some time in Northern Europe and they just all seem to like each other more or have more empathy for one another. Anyways, I think that there is something to the notion that there'll be an arbitrage, especially it seems that Trump is hell-bent on getting people out of the U.S., even if it's getting some of the most talented people or people who are willing to pick our crops or take care of grandma for less money than—or build our homes and less money than domestic workers would do, which is inflationary.

4:38Last month, Trump imposed new 10 and 12.5 % tariffs on goods from 60 trading partners, including the EU. And the administration also announced 50 % tariffs on approximately 20 million of Canadian products. Jesus Christ, what the fuck is he thinking? By the way, all that does is increase the cost of our products that we consume from Canada and shrinks our market because they're not going to just lay down and play dead. They're going to put reciprocal tariffs on our products. In response, Europe and Canada are building partnerships to reduce their dependence on the U.S. This year, Canada proposed a global defense bank backed by 10 countries so far to bolster the defense of like-minded allied nations.

5:16There's new security and economic partnerships. Canada and five Nordic countries agreed to deepen cooperation on military procurement and other areas. In terms of equities or thinking about this as an investment standpoint, I'm investing in European index funds. One, because I'm at a stage where diversification is my call sign for investing. I don't want to get rich. I just don't want to get poor. And when you're young, you make a lot of money through concentration, specifically concentration of your human capital going 110 % all in on something. And you can afford to be a little bit more concentrated in terms of your portfolio and take some bigger swings, although I still am a fan of low-cost index funds and just putting them away, automatic savings, never thinking about them.

5:58And the younger you start, the less you need to put away. But I'm at a stage where I want to be very diversified. And investing in SPY or S &P index funds, it's not that diversified. 10 companies, 40 % of the S &P. So the reason I like investing in Europe is Europe's kind of been left for dead, which says to me that there's opportunity here. In terms of the equity markets, the rotation, you know, word's already out. In 2025, European stocks beat the S &P 500 for only the second time in a decade. And for a U.S. investor, it wasn't even close. The Eurostox 50 returned about 38 % in dollar terms.

6:33You know, it's very hard for us to keep pace when the dollar has lost 28 % of its value in 2020. And it was 18 % for the S &P versus 38%. Again, a good chunk of that delta comes from the falling U.S. dollar as we become politically reckless and spend$7 trillion on$5 trillion in receipts. And also, there's just no getting around it. U.S. valuations are stretched. The S &P's Shiller Index, a measure of how pricey stocks are by compounding prices to 10 years of earnings or by comparing prices to 10 years of earnings, is sitting around 41, which is the second highest reading in 140 years. Behind only guess when, the dot-com peak, the historical average is about 17.

7:17Get it? It's at 41 historically. It's about 17. And European equities trade at roughly half the multiple for similar sector exposure. At some price, every stock is a good buy, unless it's going to zero, which most stocks aren't. And at some price, every stock is a bad buy, no matter how great the company is. The valuations can get ahead of its skis. The falling dollar has done a lot of the work here. The dollar dropped about 9 % in 2025, its worst year since 2017. And the euro rose from$1.04 to$1.18. For an American, a stronger euro means your European holdings are worth more than when you brought the money home or when you bring the money home.

7:54So you get a double boost. At the same time, it's getting, you know, that makes Europe a little bit more expensive. But Europe is still cheaper, the stocks, because quite frankly, has less exposure to AI and hasn't registered the run up. And that's really the trend that's driving returns across even the small stock index indices are catching up. if you follow where the money is actually going, investors are adding Europe on top of the U.S. holdings, not selling America to buy it. So look, there's two things here. There's lifestyle. I do think that I think you constantly want to be looking at lifestyle arbitrages.

8:30I think Europe is a great arbitrage, quality of life there, slower pace, kind of a greater, less, I don't know, less, it feels like it's less polarized, but maybe I'm just not as in touch with it. I think it's a good move here. And I don't, I've seen or heard from more people who are thinking about moving to Europe. Although having said that, look, it all comes down to the same reductive statement. When you're in your income earning years, I find the U.S. is still the best place. People in the U.S. start from a position of yes. How do we make money together? How do we do stuff together? And Europe is the best place to spend it.

9:07That's not to say you won't be successful as a young person in Europe. I just think it'll take longer. And from a lifestyle standpoint, I think you constantly want to be thinking about a lifestyle arbitrage. It's situational, but I wouldn't be afraid in this day and age to take advantage of the greatest or one of the greatest innovations in history, and that is jet transportation and your ability to go somewhere else. I think it's an incredible opportunity, gives you better perspective, makes you better, I think, at what you do. It is situational, but yes, geographic arbitrage, intra-country and then international, if you're blessed with that type of opportunity.

9:41I think it's an interesting idea or opportunity. But I do believe that just based on valuations, people need to be very thoughtfully thinking about diversifying out of the U.S. Appreciate the question. Question number two comes from a listener who emailed us. Hi, dog. Love all your stuff. I listen to about 40 hours of podcasts a week. Jesus. Stop that. Get outside. Or, I don't know. That's a lot. During that time, I listen to nearly zero minutes of ads because I can skip through them. Additionally, I don't listen to about 100 podcasts per month that automatically download. Other than premium subscriptions, these two things make up nearly all of podcasting revenue.

10:20Have advertisers discovered new metrics to account for these variables? Thanks, David. Okay, so recently, Megaphone, a hosting platform we use at PropG, changed how it plays on Spotify or account. They're getting hip to this. We now get a play each time someone watches or listens to an episode for at least 30 seconds. And still, about half of podcasters use downloads as their main metrics for measuring success, followed by listens and then consumption rates. So if your podcast episodes gets around 25 to 30 downloads in the first week after release, you've already in the top 50 % of podcasters.

10:56So ad dollars continue to grow. I mean, this medium is growing faster than any ad-supported medium. Quote, unquote, the creator economy. It's growing faster, granted, off a smaller base than meta or alphabet revenues right now. It's expected to be an$18 billion business, podcast revenues by 2030. And nearly half of weekly podcast listeners have purchased a product or service after hearing an ad on a podcast. So there's two things. There's a measurement here. The dirty secret of the ad ecosystem is that once someone subscribes to your podcast, when it's downloaded, the podcast gets automatically downloaded off the RSS feed, and some agencies will try and use that as a listen.

11:40Now, advertisers are hip to that, and the CPMs reflect that, that, okay, maybe only a half the people who the podcast is automatically downloaded or the iPhone will actually get listened to. But what you have is, this is what podcasting is going for it. The people at the New York Times think they're too precious to read their own ads. Okay. They think it's a conflict. Fine. When you hear my voice read an ad, supposedly you're more likely to listen to the ad and more likely to trust the advertiser as opposed to when you're watching CNN or Fox and the ads come up, your screen of like, okay, do I really have less restless leg syndrome?

12:17And who is this ethnically ambiguous person telling me about opioid-induced constipation medication. In addition, the podcast medium itself is more powerful for advertisers because physically, I'm in your ears, like physically, because people listen to it on their AirPods. And also you're doing something intimate so it feels like we're friends and there's just a greater affinity. So the host readover is one of the greatest innovations in advertising, if you will. So more intimate host readover, the 30-second spot, the biggest trend I see. So a lot of people are obsessed with subscriptions and we have subscription on podcasts, but you have to offer a lot, right?

12:59There's more people than you would think willing to endure the ads for free. That's still the biggest ad model. Subscription is for your hardcore fans that don't wanna listen to ads, want exclusive content, wanna feel like they're getting something special. And that's a supplement. We've invested a lot in that because if we can grow the subscription business faster than our core business, it'll increase the multiple on the business. And I'm constantly thinking about enterprise value. What the biggest next trend I think is gonna be is what I'll call strategic or what I think of as NASCAR deals or F1 deals.

13:35What do I mean by that? So I drink beer, I love beer. So I'm talking to a brewer right now. I'm about saying, okay, they called me and said, all right, we see you drinking our beer. We'd like to do a deal with you. We have data partnerships where we highlight the data from a certain company or I'll talk about a specific, you know, there's certain AI platforms that I like and others that I don't. And they say, okay, if you disclose that you can disclose that this is a paid partnership, but talk about how you use our AI platform in an organic way such that it doesn't feel like a direct ad. Those deals bust out of the cost per thousand downward spiral.

14:16CPM is essentially our ads get$40 to$45 CPMs. That's cost per thousand people you reach. So for every thousand people that an ad would reach on Prop G, we get about$40 or$45. By the way, CNN gets about$13 because advertisers have figured out that we have a young, wealthy male listener on average. That is the white whale or the unicorn of advertising. And everybody wants to reach that person because the majority of them are listening to Spotify and watching Netflix and don't see ads. So they're willing to pay a much higher CPM. where you get even much bigger CPMs is in a strategic deal where I might say, okay, I drive X car and I'm gonna talk about it a lot.

14:59Maybe I even do some videos from the car. I mean, this is the whole influencer thing, right? And these direct deals, if you think about some of the bigger podcaster, I just interviewed the guys from, I think it was TBPM, the guys who got sold for a crazy amount of money to OpenAI. They've taken an F1 NASCAR. They have logos. They talk about the products they use and why. It does feel somewhat authentic. and they're able to bust out of the CPM. The CPM downward spiral is places like the trading desk or firms will go searching for that customer and find the least expensive place to find it. And it puts downward pressure on CPMs, which is good for advertisers, bad for the content creators.

15:38So finding a more strategic thoughtful deal where you talk about stuff you use, you can get, quite frankly, much higher CPMs and the brand likes it and you like it. But I do think you're seeing a pretty significant flow out of cable news, magazines, well, that's probably already over, even local news into podcasting because this is where the audience is going. And for us, it's multiple revenue streams. It's advertising, it's subscription revenue via our sub stack, and it's these direct deals, which I'm actually really excited about because there's brands I just talk about organically And I'm like, how do we do this in a more thoughtful way and get paid for it?

16:21Anyways, appreciate the question. It's an interesting time in the ecosystem. We'll be right back after a quick break.

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20:05Welcome back. Question number three. Hey, Profi. My name is Jacob. I am from Lakeland, Florida, kind of the central Florida area. I kind of have two questions. My first one is, as somebody who works in higher education and eventually hopes to move into the academic side of higher education, I am just curious how you feel that, as kind of the economics of higher ed stand, how we can be serving the next generation, and especially the young men in the world. As a young man myself, I'm very passionate about that, and I can see that there is a need. So I'd love your thoughts there. The second one is more about how young people aspiring to go into academia, like yourself, can get to those positions, especially at elite institutions.

21:00I am looking currently for PhDs in political science to go down the political theory route. And I'm just curious what insights and thoughts that you might have there to get to that point. Anyway, love what you do and so grateful to learn from you. Yeah, we're going to need a bigger boat, but I'll try and summarize. I have a lot of thoughts on higher ed. And as a basic thesis, if you had a drug that made you less likely to be obese, kill yourself, less likely to get divorced, more likely to vote, more likely to have a much greater income, more likely to have children, more likely to eventually be in public service, would you hoard that drug?

21:43And I worry that as a general rule, higher education no longer sees themselves as public servants, but as luxury brands that has weaponized scarcity to create margin power. And that is, I always pick on Dartmouth. They've got, I think, an eight or a$10 billion endowment, middle of nowhere, let in, I think, I don't know, let in like 800 kids with a good Starbucks service on a weekend. They could let in 8 ,000 and not sacrifice any quality of students. They're in the middle of fucking nowhere. They have the faculty, they have the infrastructure, they have the capital, but they've decided they're a luxury brand.

22:12Fine, they're a private institution, they get to do that, but they shouldn't have be subsidized by taxpayers with grants and tax-free status. The issue is there's a lot of things around affordability. Now, when it comes to affordability, while tuition is up 100 % at public four-year institutions over the last 30 years and 74 % of private nonprofit colleges over the last 30 years, it's vastly—I mean, that's after inflation, right? Right. And during the 24 and 25 school year, students and parents borrowed a total of one hundred and two billion in loans. By the way, student loans are one of a small number of types of debt that is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, which is totally morally corrupt.

22:56If there's anyone we should be forgiving and giving a do over in the form of bankruptcy, which is, I think, a feature, not a bug of our economy, should absolutely be students. So as of Q1, 2026, approximately 43 million borrowers collectively owed roughly 1.7 trillion of federal student loan debt. By the way, I'm not for debt forgiveness. I think there should be targeted industries that are a social good, whether it's a high school teacher or a healthcare professional, where they should have student loan reduction. We should use the balance sheet of America to lower interest rates. But until students start really shopping around and holding their university accountable for issuing them debt on degrees that just don't pay off, you're never going to see costs come down.

23:38There is a gender gap. Women hire college enrollment. It's about, you know, 44 % of women age 18 to 24 were enrolled in college. It was 34 % for men. And the gender gap happens before college. Part of the gap is the growing gap in academic preparation during high school. By the end of high school, female students increasingly outperform male students in the academic measures that predict college enrollment and completion. so what to do it's a nuanced argument because while tuition has gone up the reality is most students don't pay full freight so the question is how do we find this give as many unremarkable kids a remarkable opportunity the top one percent the freakishly remarkable and the rich kids that we let into college right now are the ones that need it the least now in terms of your own desire to get into it, you're looking, it sounds like, to go the tenured route and get a PhD and then try and get a faculty position and work towards tenure.

24:42If you're super passionate and want to be an expert in that field and are passionate about it and just want to be one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet because of your love of the subject material, I'd say go for it. If you're thinking that's your ticket to a great career, You know, I just don't know, boss. I think that tenure is going to come under attack. Also, the same thing that infects our global politics infects academia, and that is old people won't fucking leave. And it creates a lack of opportunity for young academics. I think it's an incredible career to consider. I just don't know if going about it through the tenure track is the way to go.

25:22Unless, assume you don't get a job in academia, would you, are you doing it for because you think you'd be great at having a doctorate and there's other things you might do? Because I wonder what's gonna happen to tenure track. I think AI is gonna kick the shit out of the research that research is about to become much more rigorous and creative and differentiated. And also you're gonna have to be an outstanding teacher because I think the students who are now paying a ton of money wanna actually learn something and God help you if you're not any good and they're paying$7 ,000 for the class. But I think it's an outstanding profession.

26:01I think you wanna start to do a lot of research, a lot of writing. Go direct to Consumer Boss. Find the domain you think you wanna be an expert in and start writing about it and posting about it on all these different mediums. There's a theme here that you want to take advantage of and you want to be cognizant of. Institutions are leaking power to individuals. So rather than needing to go to MS now to get your viewpoints out on politics or become a creator, you can start a sub stack and get a decent following if you're good at what you do. It's a long-winded way of saying, I think academia is an outstanding environment and career.