Podbit · The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Outside South Korea's National Assembly, protesters have stacked funeral wreaths on the sidewalk demanding an end to single-stock leveraged ETFs. Seventy percent of investors in Samsung and SK Hynix leveraged products are in the red. South Korea has rolled out a debt counseling hotline as part of its national suicide prevention program.
Where this was said
At 7:10 · chapter starts 5:35
If Aschenbrenner's story was the institutional version of the leverage disaster, South Korea is the retail version — and it's bigger, messier, and more human in its consequences. In May, exchanges launched single-stock leveraged ETFs tracking Samsung and SK Hynix at 2x, 3x, and 5x multiples [1] — George Hahn "South Korea's stock market fell 44% from its June highs, erasing $2 trillion in value. The culprit: single-stock leveraged ETFs tracking Sa…" 05:31 . By August, the market had fallen 44% from its June highs, and $2 trillion in value had evaporated. The numbers Scott Galloway and Ed cite are staggering: 92% of investors in these products were retail, not institutional. There were two brokerage accounts for every citizen in South Korea. Goldman Sachs estimated that 3.4% of the entire adult population had received a margin call. The human consequences were immediate: South Korea rolled out a debt counseling hotline as part of its national suicide prevention program, and funeral wreaths appeared on the sidewalk outside the National Assembly with a sign reading 'Abolish the single-stock leveraged ETF.' According to Korean stock market regulators, 70% of investors in Samsung and SK Hynix leveraged products are currently underwater. The regulatory response is to stop new listings of these products — but Ed notes that US leveraged ETFs have already grown from $120 billion to $200 billion in AUM since April, with more than half now being single-stock products. America, he warns, is following the same path, perhaps just a few months behind.
Goldman Sachs estimated that 3.4% of South Korea's adult population received a margin call, prompting the government to launch a debt counseling hotline as part of its suicide prevention plan.
In South Korea's single-stock leveraged ETF products, 92% of investors were retail — meaning the risk was almost entirely borne by households, not institutions.
According to Korean stock market regulators, approximately 70% of investors in SK Hynix and Samsung leveraged ETFs are currently underwater.
US leveraged ETFs grew from $120 billion to over $200 billion in AUM between April and August 2026, up nearly 70%, with more than half being single-stock ETFs.
US leveraged ETFs grew from $120 billion to over $200 billion in AUM between April and August 2026 — nearly 70% growth in a few months. More than half are single-stock ETFs, the exact product that destroyed South Korea. The US may just be a few months behind.
Jungian analyst James Hollis distills a good life to four things: shut up (have gratitude, stop whining), suit up (prepare yourself to fulfill a role), show up (do the actual work in service of others), and daily get out of stimulus-response to ask what your deeper wish actually is. The whole landscape of self-help slots into just these four bins.
Toward the end of their 20s, many men discover that all the strategies that earned them recognition and success have stopped working. It's a second adolescence — more important than the first — where the question shifts from 'how do I play the game?' to 'who do I actually want to become?' Most people going through it look fragile from the outside. They're actually building a foundation.
Boys are told from childhood not to cry, not to feel, not to be weak — but anger gets a pass. The result: a generation of men who reroute every emotion, including sadness and fear, through the only acceptable channel. Emotional avoidance isn't toughness, it's misdirected sensitivity.
Men need a 'bank account' of masculine status — muscle, money, success — before society grants them permission to express vulnerability. Chris Bumstead can cry at the Olympia and get celebrated. A struggling nobody doing the same thing gets contempt. This creates a tragic paradox where the men who most need emotional support get the least of it.
Emotional sensitivity isn't a defect — it's a high-resolution scanner for human experience. Highly sensitive people pick up body language, tone, and unspoken tension that others miss entirely. In the right environment, that's not a liability. It's a superpower.
Her supervisor told her she was too emotional for the pediatric ICU. So she asked herself: 'What area of medicine can I cry in?' That question led her to psychiatry. Finding the environment that holds your emotional sensitivity isn't retreat — it's strategy.
For someone with RSD, ghosting isn't ambiguity — it's a self-verdict. Their brain doesn't read 'this relationship ended,' it reads 'I am the reason this failed.' No closure means the brain fills the gap with evidence of personal insufficiency, and it keeps filling indefinitely.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
Every person lives in constant tension between infinite possible selves and the finite, limited self they actually are. Tipping too far toward infinite possibility produces a loss of identity; too much confinement in the finite produces stagnation. Kierkegaard argued that this tension is never solved — only managed.
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