“I've developed in 25 years of following Brazil an allergy to the word potential, because I feel like it's a fantasy land that everybody knows is just a way to sound optimistic but not really be optimistic. I prefer the word opportunity.”
The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026
Context
Asked whether he is bullish on Brazil, Winter lists its real advantages but warns about household and government debt, before giving this verdict on how people talk about the country.
Transcript
…that affordability is really a concern. And it's been funny to see Brazilian newspapers over the course of this year use the English word affordability when they're talking about this subject and yet more proof of how some of these ideas and agendas get passed back and forth between our countries.
…at least with Brazilian politics and kind of especially with both the right and the left's failure to produce sort of like more moderate candidates. And Brazil still struggles as kind of a stagnated country and with low growth, et cetera. But would you say you are bullish on Brazil?
Look, I am a mix on this question. I think on the one hand, Brazil has all kinds of not just potential. I actually, I've developed in 25 years of following Brazil, I've developed an allergy to the word potential because I feel like it's used to describe like a kind of ideal, like a fantasy land that everybody kind of knows is just a way to sound optimistic, but not really be optimistic. I prefer the word opportunity. And Brazil has concrete opportunities in front of it. It is an exceptional producer of food for the world, number one in so many areas, whether it's beef, soy, iron ore. It's the biggest producer of oil in Latin America now as well. It's not Venezuela or Mexico, or even Guyana. It's Brazil. And it has the advantage in today's convulsed world of being distant from the world's conflict zones, both geographically and geopolitically. Brazil tries to have good relations with everybody, in part because it can, because of its geographic location, but also in part because they think it helps sales. Like you can…
Yeah, I love that answer, and it's how I'd answer it too. So you spent a decade reporting from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and you've written about what you call Latin America's revolution of the rights. Since Trump returned to office, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuador, and Honduras have…
Some of it because of the unique dynamics of this campaign that we've described, the problematic nature of the Bolsonaro family, whose leadership of the Brazilian conservative movement is now very much in doubt, especially after Flavio Bolsonaro fled the country. I think he, in doing so, he has…
Yeah. I don't know if you heard of that book, Uberzin Lu Xpello, Brazil in the Mirror, where there's big research done that found that actually the average Brazilian citizen is kind of conservative and right-wing, right? I think that was the takeaway from the book, which I was very surprised about…
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