Decoding the Gurus - Gurometer: Teal Swan and Scott Galloway
Aired: 2026-03-18
Duration: 18:54


=== The Borg and Business (01:32) ===

[00:00:26]  Hello and welcome to Decoding the Gurus Garometer Edition.
[00:00:30]  You thought it was gone.
[00:00:32]  You thought it had faded into the midst of time.
[00:00:34]  No, it's back and it's a double bill, Matt.
[00:00:37]  It's a double bill.
[00:00:38]  Scott Galloway, you don't escape Garometer.
[00:00:41]  You will be entered.
[00:00:42]  And you're joined by Teal Swan, who perhaps will be a useful comparison point for him.
[00:00:49]  But yeah.
[00:00:51]  I mean, basically two very similar characters.
[00:00:53]  We'll just do a two-foot, right?
[00:00:55]  They can get the same scores.
[00:00:57]  Basically, the same kind of people.
[00:01:00]  Yeah.
[00:01:00]  Not really.
[00:01:01]  We forgot to do Scott Galloway or things got in the way.
[00:01:05]  Maybe we didn't forget.
[00:01:06]  Maybe we just had other stuff to do.
[00:01:09]  In any case, we're here and we're ready to do it.
[00:01:13]  And the Grometer, for people who don't know, Matt, what is the Grometer?
[00:01:17]  Why don't I put you on the spot?
[00:01:19]  What's a Garometer?
[00:01:20]  Well, it's much like the Borg.
[00:01:22]  It just absorbs entities and integrates their distinctiveness into the collective.
[00:01:28]  Is that a fair description?
[00:01:30]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:30]  That's it.
[00:01:31]  For those who might not be Star Wars geeks, it's the scoring that we give the gurus on 11 factors that we find recurrent.
[00:01:41]  One to five, we score them.
[00:01:42]  We add it up and we do a quick fire round.
[00:01:46]  You'll see how it goes.
[00:01:48]  But, you know, we're on a tight ship schedule today, so we're going to be efficient, Matt.
[00:01:52]  We're going to get straight into business.
[00:01:53]  All right.
[00:01:54]  And let's do them both simultaneously.
[00:01:56]  One factor, two gurus.

=== Defining the Garometer (14:43) ===

[00:01:58]  Yeah.
[00:01:59]  Okay.
[00:02:00]  And as you said earlier, realistically, Scott Galloway could benefit from the comparison.
[00:02:06]  Let's be honest.
[00:02:07]  He could.
[00:02:07]  That's not our intention.
[00:02:08]  It wasn't our intention.
[00:02:10]  No, we're not doing it.
[00:02:11]  It's just we don't have time.
[00:02:13]  We need to do them both at the same time.
[00:02:15]  We need to be efficient.
[00:02:16]  That's right.
[00:02:17]  So let's see.
[00:02:19]  I'm just putting their names in my part of it.
[00:02:22]  All right.
[00:02:23]  So we go time for turn, Matt.
[00:02:25]  That's how we do it.
[00:02:26]  This is how we roll.
[00:02:27]  Okay.
[00:02:28]  So who will start?
[00:02:29]  You do the first one because the second one looks incredibly easy.
[00:02:32]  Okay.
[00:02:32]  Oh, yeah.
[00:02:33]  Right.
[00:02:33]  So the first one is Galaxy Brainness.
[00:02:36]  We know what this is, offering opinions confidently about a wide array of topics.
[00:02:41]  And here, Matt, I'm going to give Teal a five and I'm going to give Scott.
[00:02:48]  He is really going to benefit from this.
[00:02:52]  I'm going to give Scott a free, I think, middle of the road.
[00:02:57]  Because I think he does have quite a lot of ticks around different topics.
[00:03:02]  Although he does stick to, you know, economics and mostly, mostly.
[00:03:08]  He's branching out, mostly.
[00:03:09]  He's branching out.
[00:03:11]  Yeah.
[00:03:12]  So Teal Swan, I feel like she's someone that would basically take any question.
[00:03:16]  Like she's, she's in touch with all of the entities out there in outer space.
[00:03:22]  So really, she's, I think, should be pretty, not confident, but she'd be willing to give her opinion on literally anything.
[00:03:28]  It would be bullshit.
[00:03:29]  It would be some vague aphorism, but she would give it.
[00:03:32]  I think she has insights into everything.
[00:03:35]  I think that's fair.
[00:03:36]  Scott, you know, he's in the normal range, I would say, of Galaxy Brainers.
[00:03:42]  He is mainly a finance guy, a markets guy.
[00:03:46]  But he's also, you know, he talks, you know, it's the nature of the discourse, right?
[00:03:49]  He's talking about tech.
[00:03:50]  He's talking about AI.
[00:03:51]  He's talking about politics.
[00:03:53]  And I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that.
[00:03:58]  Branched out with the um uh masculinity chat how to be a man with children raising children.
[00:04:05]  I think he's a bit a little bit more galaxy-brained than your average, and that puts him just touching the clinical range.
[00:04:11]  So he gets a three from me, too.
[00:04:13]  You know, your instinct was right, Chris.
[00:04:15]  Three and five, of course.
[00:04:16]  What's next, Matt?
[00:04:18]  Next is cultishness, cultishness, cultishness.
[00:04:22]  It's a very tricky one.
[00:04:25]  How to describe cultishness?
[00:04:26]  It is the act of being cultish.
[00:04:28]  It is imagine a spectrum with a cult at one end and not at all a cult at the other end.
[00:04:34]  Culture measures that spectrum.
[00:04:36]  Um, uh, yeah, so what are you gonna give the to them?
[00:04:40]  I'll let you know this time.
[00:04:42]  Okay, well, let's knock off TL.
[00:04:44]  She's an easy one there, she is a cult leader.
[00:04:46]  Um, most sources agree on that.
[00:04:49]  That's not even our opinion.
[00:04:51]  That's that's what they say.
[00:04:52]  It happens to be our opinion as well, but yeah, it just happens to be our opinion as well.
[00:04:56]  Yeah, so I'm not gonna spend too much time on that.
[00:04:59]  Uh, Scott, uh, no, not at all.
[00:05:03]  I would give him a one.
[00:05:05]  Yeah, I also went the same way.
[00:05:07]  Five and one, I think.
[00:05:09]  Scott, you know, you can talk about him wanting to establish a brand and all that, but it's it's not a cult community.
[00:05:16]  Come on, he's not establishing a cult.
[00:05:18]  There's no Galawites, right?
[00:05:20]  Um, so yeah, that's one and five.
[00:05:24]  I agreed, Matt.
[00:05:25]  Now, anti-establishmentarianism, a kind of reactionary or reactive, if you like, response were anything establishments and institutions do is bad by default.
[00:05:37]  They're all lying to you.
[00:05:39]  They're, you know, out to keep you non-self-actualized.
[00:05:43]  And I again feel that this is a slam dunk for teal.
[00:05:48]  She's going to get a five.
[00:05:50]  Is it?
[00:05:50]  Well, I knew, I knew that you would give her a five, but justify, justify that, Jimmy, because in the material that we listen to, they didn't talk about institutions very much.
[00:06:00]  I mean, she, I mean, maybe implicitly, yes, perhaps.
[00:06:04]  She thinks they're all controlled by satanic worshipers who hid her abuse.
[00:06:11]  And just everything about her screams, new age conspiratuality person.
[00:06:18]  I have no issue giving her a five on this.
[00:06:23]  I think, you know, maybe there's some institutions that she's okay with, but she wants to replace them all with hers.
[00:06:30]  That's the essence of anti-establishmentarianism, isn't it, Matt?
[00:06:35]  Well, she didn't explicitly say that.
[00:06:37]  That's all I'm saying.
[00:06:39]  So, okay.
[00:06:39]  So I'm just going to be a bit more conservative there.
[00:06:43]  Like, I agree with you, right?
[00:06:44]  Like, her whole mode is intrinsically anti-establishment.
[00:06:49]  It's just it didn't come up a great deal in the thing, right?
[00:06:55]  Because it's all that self-help woo spiritual.
[00:06:57]  They're talking about gods and conspiratoriality.
[00:07:00]  Conspiratority and stuff.
[00:07:02]  Yeah.
[00:07:02]  Anyway, but I think if you did get her talking about the, if you did ask her about the government or anything like that, I'm pretty sure it would be anti-establishment.
[00:07:11]  But I got to give it a four because I feel like I just like to see stronger evidence, Chris.
[00:07:16]  Unlike you, who just likes to wing it and goes with your intuitions, I prefer to be like that.
[00:07:22]  Now, Scott, Scott, Scott, Scott.
[00:07:25]  I know I.
[00:07:26]  I mean, my gut feeling is he's pro.
[00:07:29]  He's pro-establishment.
[00:07:30]  He's more pro-establishment.
[00:07:31]  He wants more establishment than the median, more than the median American, I would say, for easily.
[00:07:38]  Yeah, I mean, I think his anti-establishment street comes out when he talks about men.
[00:07:43]  You know, they won't let you talk about this and that, but it's kind of restricted.
[00:07:48]  And his solution to those is like more, more investment in institutions and taxes.
[00:07:55]  So it's really more a little bit like pandering down the establishment framing as opposed to being inherently.
[00:08:04]  I think the criticism of Scott, if you want, is he's he's too pro-establishment.
[00:08:09]  So yeah, it's just that's such a common framing.
[00:08:12]  Like you could read any article in The Atlantic or The Guardian, and it'd be something like, we need to talk about X implicitly that no people aren't talking about such and such that they ought to be.
[00:08:23]  So that's kind of what they're doing.
[00:08:26]  So I'm going to give him another one.
[00:08:28]  Next one.
[00:08:29]  What is the next one?
[00:08:31]  Grievance mongering.
[00:08:32]  The having of grievances, personal grievances, inculcating grievance generically against society, against the elites, all that stuff.
[00:08:40]  And yeah.
[00:08:42]  Now, Teal, I feel like grievance was sort of coming out of a pause.
[00:08:47]  Yes.
[00:08:48]  Okay.
[00:08:49]  So you detected that.
[00:08:50]  I was waiting for you to say, I didn't really notice she's like, no, she does do that.
[00:08:56]  She's a cult leader as well.
[00:08:58]  Like, I mean, oh, that whole section about the followers who are not giving that 110%.
[00:09:04]  And they're going to have to be really okay with the aggressive monkishness.
[00:09:09]  That's what our needs.
[00:09:11]  Yeah.
[00:09:11]  I mean, I know too much about Teal that leads me to be aware that she is incredibly grievance mongering, but I don't think it's any secret.
[00:09:21]  That's the thing.
[00:09:22]  Like narratives of grievance about how the elites have ripped us off or something like that didn't explicitly come up.
[00:09:26]  It just, it's interesting.
[00:09:28]  It just came through in her personality in the way that she talked about everything.
[00:09:34]  Yeah.
[00:09:35]  Okay.
[00:09:35]  So I think I am comfortable giving her a five there.
[00:09:39]  I'm five as well.
[00:09:40]  And with Scott, I'm actually again for my disagreements with Scott.
[00:09:45]  One of them is not that he's grievance seems grievance porn.
[00:09:49]  Like I saw him recently appear with Piers Morgan, right?
[00:09:54]  And he was talking to some Mike Stoneovich style conservative, right?
[00:09:58]  Who Michael Knowles was the guy who interviewed Chris Langham.
[00:10:01]  And he was trying to push all his buttons and the Scott Caller was just like, oh, yeah, whatever.
[00:10:06]  No, like this is the policy.
[00:10:08]  And he only talked for like five minutes and he was like, okay, Pierce, see you later.
[00:10:12]  I feel like he just wants to make money, pontificate about his opinions.
[00:10:18]  He doesn't want to be in all these feuds with people.
[00:10:21]  So I don't think that's a big part of his brand.
[00:10:25]  No, and he's very, he's very pleased with himself.
[00:10:27]  He's very happy on a personal level about how life is going for him.
[00:10:31]  He emphasizes how lucky he is or has been.
[00:10:34]  And he doesn't inculcate it either at all.
[00:10:37]  He's aggrieved at getting older.
[00:10:39]  I mean, he's agrieved.
[00:10:40]  That's fair enough.
[00:10:42]  I agree with that.
[00:10:43]  I am too.
[00:10:44]  I am too.
[00:10:45]  Is that a grievancy?
[00:10:49]  I share some of those grievances as well.
[00:10:50]  So that's right.
[00:10:52]  They're getting larger the older I get.
[00:10:54]  But the next one, Matt, is self-aggrandizement and narcissism.
[00:10:59]  And Scott's going to sneak in here.
[00:11:02]  I think he's going to sneak in.
[00:11:03]  I think he's going to push the needle over one here.
[00:11:07]  Yeah.
[00:11:07]  And let's do Scott first because he's more fun.
[00:11:10]  I think he is very self-deprecatory at times.
[00:11:16]  Like, no, I've, many times, I've heard him.
[00:11:19]  Okay, is he, is he?
[00:11:20]  Well, I just thought some of it is strategic.
[00:11:23]  Like, like, one of his common jokes is how he's completely impotent now.
[00:11:27]  Okay.
[00:11:28]  That's, it's part of the getting old grievance, right?
[00:11:31]  But he does, he does do it in a performative, funny, I think, amusing kind of way.
[00:11:35]  I think underlying that is, I mean, he is also self-aggrandizing in that he does like to talk about how much money he makes and how he's and he's prof G, right?
[00:11:46]  I mean, I know Americans have a different attitude about that, but just yeah, it's like, yeah, professor, professor, professor.
[00:11:53]  So does he does he actually?
[00:11:55]  I'm just curious.
[00:11:55]  I never checked this.
[00:11:56]  Does he publish?
[00:11:57]  Of course he does.
[00:11:58]  It's all over the place.
[00:11:59]  I mean, like research articles, I'm asking.
[00:12:03]  Oh, sorry.
[00:12:04]  I thought you were saying, does he brand himself as professor?
[00:12:06]  Yeah, I mean, this is just something I just naturally do when somebody he doesn't have a Google Scholar account.
[00:12:13]  No, I can't tell.
[00:12:14]  I can't tell.
[00:12:15]  Your one tool was taken from you.
[00:12:18]  Google Scholar.
[00:12:19]  Yeah, no, no.
[00:12:20]  I mean, he doesn't have an account.
[00:12:22]  So as far as I can tell.
[00:12:25]  So it's not easy to quickly check.
[00:12:28]  It doesn't really matter.
[00:12:29]  I was just curious what kind of professor he was.
[00:12:31]  Anyway.
[00:12:33]  So look, I'll give Matura three.
[00:12:34]  I don't know.
[00:12:36]  Medieval you, can you talk me?
[00:12:38]  Can you talk me up from two?
[00:12:40]  No, I'm going to go 3.5, I think, because I agree that relatively speaking, like compared to Tele Swan or Eric Weinstein, he's completely normal person.
[00:12:52]  But I just think the confidence with which he reads off all those statistics, which are false or hyperbolically exaggerated.
[00:13:01]  And I've seen him in various other contexts doing the same sort of thing.
[00:13:06]  So I think he just has a lot of confidence in his takes.
[00:13:09]  And I know he's a professor of marketing and all that kind of stuff, but I'm going to give him 3.5, Matt.
[00:13:14]  I think that's right.
[00:13:16]  He's up there.
[00:13:17]  Sabine Hossenfelder got around three for this.
[00:13:21]  I mean, she should have grown up.
[00:13:22]  This was back when we got to our end.
[00:13:25]  But yeah.
[00:13:28]  Well, that extreme confidence for me isn't really a self-aggrandizement.
[00:13:31]  That would go more into the you know, galaxy brainness or something, offering very confident, overly confident takes across a variety of different things.
[00:13:41]  We don't actually have a specific dimension for people that are overly confident and while they're making incorrect assertions.
[00:13:50]  I'm putting it in here, Matt.
[00:13:51]  I'm putting it in here.
[00:13:53]  You do what you want in your score.
[00:13:55]  Three and five.
[00:13:56]  I'll take away the 0.5.
[00:13:58]  Okay, I'll go three.
[00:13:58]  No, it's fine.
[00:13:59]  Do what you want.
[00:14:00]  I'll give him a two, which pulls him down.
[00:14:01]  Three and five.
[00:14:02]  That's all right.
[00:14:03]  Consensus.
[00:14:04]  That's fine.
[00:14:04]  We welcome diversity of thought at DTG.
[00:14:08]  That's right.
[00:14:09]  Teal Swan.
[00:14:10]  Yeah, fucking hell.
[00:14:11]  Yeah, she's five.
[00:14:12]  Till Swan gets a five.
[00:14:18]  Yeah, she's fine.
[00:14:21]  We don't even know if she's human.
[00:14:22]  She's some sort of demigod, really.
[00:14:26]  That's right.
[00:14:28]  Okay.
[00:14:28]  Next up, Matt.
[00:14:29]  Next up, your turn.
[00:14:30]  Cassandra Complex warning of fraught, terrible things in the future.
[00:14:36]  Talking about the future, predictions and things like that.
[00:14:39]  Yeah, but being, you know.
[00:14:43]  Yeah.
[00:14:44]  Again, Teal feels like she didn't fish in the barrel here, but I'm still going to give her five, so just spoiler.
[00:14:51]  But it is funny because like technically she predicts both terrible.
[00:14:56]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:57]  But I think I do agree on that technicality, but I think it accomplishes the same function, right?
[00:15:04]  Like she isn't actually predicting the future.
[00:15:06]  She's not brave enough to do that.
[00:15:08]  She hedges her bets, but you know, it gives the impression that she can see the future and you need to listen to her.
[00:15:14]  I think she's Khan.
[00:15:15]  She directly does see the future multiple times.
[00:15:18]  So, you know, of course she does.
[00:15:22]  All right.
[00:15:22]  I give it up.
[00:15:23]  So he gets a five for sure.
[00:15:24]  Now, Scotty, look, honestly, in the topics or the fields that he traverses, some degree of Cassandraing is really common, right?
[00:15:36]  Like anyone, people talking about AI, as you know.
[00:15:40]  And it's not just doomers.
[00:15:41]  It's just like, oh, there's going to be a crash or there's going to be whatever.
[00:15:44]  And also talking about markets, you know, there are so many doomers, like, you never know, you got to buy gold or whatever because it's this.
[00:15:51]  He's almost boringly conventional there, which is, things might get better, might not.
[00:15:56]  So put your, you know, he said, he gives the same advice basically as Warren Buffett is pretty much his thing, which is just, you don't know the future.
[00:16:04]  So just be considered.
[00:16:06]  What about his man talk?
[00:16:08]  What about his man talk?
[00:16:09]  Well, I mean, you know, I think we, you know, we gave our opinion on his diagnosis of the problem.
[00:16:17]  Is he Cassandra complex in there?
[00:16:19]  Warning about like the dire consequences to man if we don't intend really Rita does that.
[00:16:27]  I don't really.
[00:16:28]  It's more he's doing the they won't let you talk about this.
[00:16:31]  But even then, when Chris Williamson tried to get him to lean into that, he just seemed to want to pivot back to talking about taxes.

=== Revolutionary Advice (02:12) ===

[00:16:42]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:16:43]  You got to factor in his, how accommodating he is to whoever he's speaking to.
[00:16:48]  Yeah.
[00:16:48]  Okay.
[00:16:49]  I'm going to give him a one.
[00:16:50]  You're right.
[00:16:50]  I'm taking him down to one.
[00:16:51]  I got no reason to give him a two.
[00:16:54]  Sorry.
[00:16:55]  Sorry to all the Scott Galloway haters out there.
[00:16:58]  Must be very unsatisfying for you.
[00:17:00]  Similarly, Matt, the thing with Scott Galloway recently has been doing a campaign against the cancel your subscriptions, the AI and all that.
[00:17:09]  Here's looking at you, Matt.
[00:17:11]  And he was talking about that in Piers Morgan, but it was similar where he was like, yeah, but you know, like in capitalist society, one way you can express discontent is, you know, economically.
[00:17:21]  So that's all I'm saying.
[00:17:23]  Like if you're annoyed by stuff, maybe signal it.
[00:17:26]  And then they were like, what if everybody did this and society collapses?
[00:17:29]  And he was like, no, that's not going to happen.
[00:17:34]  And he was like, you don't have to do it.
[00:17:35]  I'm just saying it's one way you could do it.
[00:17:37]  And I was like, okay, this is quite different where these are numbers.
[00:17:42]  He seemed particularly subdued when he was talking to Pierswork, but whatever the case.
[00:17:47]  Anyway, breath of fresh air.
[00:17:50]  It's almost overly chill.
[00:17:53]  Yeah.
[00:17:53]  Okay.
[00:17:54]  Yeah, so that's that.
[00:17:56]  I've got the next one.
[00:17:57]  Don't worry.
[00:17:58]  Oh, what did you give him?
[00:17:59]  What did you give him?
[00:17:59]  I give him one, by the way.
[00:18:00]  I gave him one too.
[00:18:01]  Okay, yeah.
[00:18:03]  Revolutionary theories, like developing your own revolutionary theories that will completely benefit.
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