The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Oct 2, 2026 · 21 min · 14 segments
George Hahn connects the dots across the week's biggest stories: why Oura pulled its IPO and what the odds are it ever goes public, how AI agents are clawing back the money we lose to forgotten…
George HahnHost
Ina GartenHost
Sue BirdHost
This week on the Prof G Pod, writer and investor Jack Raines spoke with his friend and fellow VC, JC Barr DiStefano.
They discussed why some companies are welcoming AI agents and others are resisting them.
But it is funny seeing, like, who's leaning into agents and who is saying like, "No," like, "We don't want this."
Yeah.
There's a real, like, bifurcation in the market of, like, just consumer interfaces right now.
Yeah.
I mean, my, like my observation on it so far is, is it, it totally depends on the business model, right? And, like, I think it was, it was last week when Muse was just, like, banging out, like, announcements about new integrations, right? They had, they had Shopify, they had PayPal, they had Expedia, and they had Instacart all, all, all in the span of a couple days, when Amazon also came out and said, "No, you can't do this." Um, but like if you think about those business models, right, like Expedia and Instacart in particular, like they don't wanna be disintermediated by agents that can go do all of these things without them being there, right? So I mean, th-their incentive surely is, like, if we don't do this, then the agents can either bypass us or go to booking.com or Kayak or DoorDash instead.
And so we have to do this for fear of existential risk around our business model.
Like, they make money as long as money flows.
So if an agent does it or a human does it, it doesn't matter.
Like, the pie is just gonna grow for them, and so they just need to make sure that they're in the transaction flow and the payment flow regardless of who, who the end user ends up being.
For consumers, the promise is simple: let an agent deal with the tedious tasks that cost us time and money.
Think canceling subscriptions, chasing refunds, or sitting on hold with customer service.
In a period of about two weeks, we've gone from AI agents are used for software engineering and AI is gonna kill everybody to, "Hey, my mom can find coupons and discount codes in her inbox by asking the little sloth to, like, save her some money." I think the most interesting second order and just longer term effect of Muse and these AI agents in general is how they impact the annoyance economy.
This is everything from being stuck on hold to spending time clicking through endless series of pages to cancel subscription, to screening spam calls or trying to change a flight.
Agents are really good at doing all this stuff, and they don't care about getting bored.
So it's a really interesting thought experiment to think about how agents will begin to upend this annoyance economy, both saving people money by reducing, by reducing the cost of going after the money we leave on the table to zero, and potentially eating away at the profit margins of companies that have largely monetized, like, friction and inertia.
A few data points on how Muse has been helping people save money so far.
Muse helped a user find about $730 in Amazon store credit from more than three years ago that was given to the state to hold.
It also found a $272 refund from when this user switched from Sprint to another phone carrier, and unused gift cards lying in his Yahoo mailbox.
This week on the Prof G Pod, writer and investor Jack Raines spoke with his friend and fellow VC, JC Barr DiStefano.
They discussed why some companies are welcoming AI agents and others are resisting them.
But it is funny seeing, like, who's leaning into agents and who is saying like, "No," like, "We don't want this."
Yeah.
There's a real, like, bifurcation in the market of, like, just consumer interfaces right now.
Yeah.
I mean, my, like my observation on it so far is, is it, it totally depends on the business model, right? And, like, I think it was, it was last week when Muse was just, like, banging out, like, announcements about new integrations, right? They had, they had Shopify, they had PayPal, they had Expedia, and they had Instacart all, all, all in the span of a couple days, when Amazon also came out and said, "No, you can't do this." Um, but like if you think about those business models, right, like Expedia and Instacart in particular, like they don't wanna be disintermediated by agents that can go do all of these things without them being there, right? So I mean, th-their incentive surely is, like, if we don't do this, then the agents can either bypass us or go to booking.com or Kayak or DoorDash instead.
And so we have to do this for fear of existential risk around our business model.
Like, they make money as long as money flows.
So if an agent does it or a human does it, it doesn't matter.
Like, the pie is just gonna grow for them, and so they just need to make sure that they're in the transaction flow and the payment flow regardless of who, who the end user ends up being.
For consumers, the promise is simple: let an agent deal with the tedious tasks that cost us time and money.
Think canceling subscriptions, chasing refunds, or sitting on hold with customer service.
In a period of about two weeks, we've gone from AI agents are used for software engineering and AI is gonna kill everybody to, "Hey, my mom can find coupons and discount codes in her inbox by asking the little sloth to, like, save her some money." I think the most interesting second order and just longer term effect of Muse and these AI agents in general is how they impact the annoyance economy.
This is everything from being stuck on hold to spending time clicking through endless series of pages to cancel subscription, to screening spam calls or trying to change a flight.
Agents are really good at doing all this stuff, and they don't care about getting bored.
So it's a really interesting thought experiment to think about how agents will begin to upend this annoyance economy, both saving people money by reducing, by reducing the cost of going after the money we leave on the table to zero, and potentially eating away at the profit margins of companies that have largely monetized, like, friction and inertia.
A few data points on how Muse has been helping people save money so far.
Muse helped a user find about $730 in Amazon store credit from more than three years ago that was given to the state to hold.
It also found a $272 refund from when this user switched from Sprint to another phone carrier, and unused gift cards lying in his Yahoo mailbox.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.