Podbit · The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Propranolol beta blockers, a shotgunned beer before Bill Maher, and Andrew Huberman's double-inhale breathing technique — Galloway has tried everything. He's candid that the beer method 'is called functioning alcoholism,' but the only thing that truly worked is relentless practice.
Where this was said
At 19:55 · chapter starts 19:08
With brutal candor, Galloway describes his most humiliating panic attack: on stage at the DLD conference in front of 400 people, he began gulping for air, had to put his hands on his knees, and the entire audience went silent, fearing he was having a cardiac event. The aftermath — a month of dread about the next speaking engagement — is as vivid as the incident itself. His toolkit has evolved through trial and error [1] — Scott Galloway "Propranolol beta blockers, a shotgunned beer before Bill Maher, and Andrew Huberman's double-inhale breathing technique — Galloway has trie…" 19:55 : beta blockers (propranolol, the same medication used by concert pianists and violinists) suppress the fight-or-flight response before high-stakes appearances. For his first appearance on Bill Maher, he was so nervous he 'shotgunned a beer' — which he acknowledges with characteristic self-awareness qualifies as 'functioning alcoholism.' He notes that combining beta blockers and alcohol is probably not a good idea, but he's being transparent rather than prescriptive. The deeper message is that his frequency has dropped dramatically: from about once a year to roughly once every 300 engagements, or every 2-3 years — a direct result of volume and practice rather than any pharmaceutical solution.
Galloway estimates he has a panic attack roughly once every 300 speaking engagements, or about once every 2-3 years given his current volume.
About 11% of US adults — roughly 1 in 10 — experience a panic attack in any given year, and as many as a third have had one at some point in their lives.
After a very public panic attack in front of 400 people at the DLD conference, Galloway still gets hired and paid to speak. His insight: after a panic attack, the audience quickly returns to thinking about themselves. Vulnerability is not career-ending — it can make you more likable.
Self-help fails because people are sold one universal cure by the hyper-responders who had a transformative result from it. The real problem is context: every method works for the right person at the right time, which is almost never you just because the author says so.
Spencer Greenberg was once so socially anxious his heart pounded just approaching a stranger. His therapist gave him homework: go to a bar alone, talk to 5 strangers. Starting with asking for the time, he worked up to asking men for hugs — and his anxiety fell dramatically in 6 months.
A person who flies regularly but obsessively checks weather forecasts before every flight is not doing exposure therapy — they're teaching their brain that flying is only safe with the ritual. Safety behaviors prevent the brain from ever learning that the feared thing is actually fine.
The worry-time technique assigns all worries to one scheduled slot (e.g. 5 PM). Every time a worry surfaces, you write it down and ban yourself from engaging with it until that time. When 5 PM arrives, most worries feel trivial and the act of batch-worrying exposes how little it actually accomplishes.
In a randomized study of 20 habit techniques, 'habit reflection' stood out: recall a past habit you successfully built, write down what helped you succeed, then apply those same strategies to your new habit. It works because it's self-adapting — it uses whatever worked for YOU.
The tiny habits technique — always having a minimal version of your habit you can do when life gets in the way — keeps the mental machinery of habit formation from breaking. Paradoxically, people given a tiny-habit fallback option were MORE successful at the full habit, not less.
Fears and worries act like playground bullies — they want to ambush you. But when you deliberately seek them out and choose the time of engagement, they lose their power. The volitional act of starting the fight on your own terms is one of CBT's most underappreciated insights.
Most downtime defaults are things you regret immediately after — phone scrolling, binge TV. 'Glad you did it' activities meet the same need for rest but leave you feeling like you spent your time well. The switch from a bad screen to a documentary, a book, or a walk costs almost no extra effort but compounds into identity over time.
You rarely control your first reactive thought. But you can train your second thought — the response to the trigger — by asking whether your initial reaction is the most helpful one and replacing it with something equally true but more constructive. Over time, that second thought becomes automatic.
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