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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And this is Scott Galloway.
Hello, Scott Galloway. It was so good to see you this week. We did a very nice live event and everybody loved it. The sponsors loved us.
The audience loved us. It was amazing. Yeah, it was nice. And I get my observation, Kara.
I got the sense you are in a really good place. Are my senses of observation accurate? You seemed as if you're doing well. I'm always doing well, Scott.
See, that I disagree with. I do not have anything to complain about. I know. We had three generations.
We had three generations of Swishers there, which made it an event, a Swisher event. We had your mom, and we had your soon-to-be new kid. I don't know how to say that. In utero is the term.
In utero. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And what do they think of the event?
Three generations of Swishers. All girls, which is very exciting. I mean, I'm very excited about that. That's obviously the most important thing.
But I really enjoyed our event together. And people are comparing us to Regis and Kathie Lee. They're making all kinds of, like, comparisons. I feel like you're Kathie Lee, obviously.
Correct? Oh, the drunk, crazy one who's obsessed with you? Yeah, yeah. 100%.
We have a bingo. That's the big dog. Yeah, I like Kathie Lee. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Anyway, we're going to do more of these events because people love it. And fans were really lining up. They were gathered around you.
They have this, like, huge man crush on Scott Galloway. No, they just think I'm holding. Everyone thinks I take vaping to an extent that I'm going to show up with some sleeve or something. So what cities are we picking?
What cities are we picking? I don't know. Where do you want to go? Where do you want to go?
I don't know. I'm pretty down with anything. Although speaking of cities, I decided that I was recently granted an American Express gold card. So my credit has gone way up and I'm going to announce officially here that I'm lobbying in an offer to purchase the assets and domain of Uzbekistan.
Okay, why? Well, one, I just think it'd be cool to say you're Uzbeki. I just think that sounds cool. All right.
And I'm pretty sure I have a net worth that's greater than the president's. And if he's going to release his taxes, I'll release mine. I'm pretty confident I have more money. So I think I should own a sovereign territory.
I'm ready. Okay, Uzbekistan it is. No, but if you could buy anything, would it be Greenland? I would buy.
What would I buy? France, obviously. Oh, that'd be awesome. That'd be awesome.
France. I wonder, France. Move into the Louvre or the Orsay? Move into the D'Orsay.
Yeah, Louvre. Okay, well, I won't live in the Louvre. Listen to me. We're going to get into the serious topic.
First, I just Denmark's situation, which also took place over Twitter again. This is like, now we're doing foreign policy. We did national policy on Twitter, foreign policy on Twitter. The Danish Prime Minister said, uh, she's a new prime minister.
And she's fantastic. And she said, it's absurd that he wants to do this. And he got mad and started tweeting like a lunatic about it. And you can't talk to me this way.
You know, of course, use the term nasty, nasty for a woman, which is his favorite moniker for a woman. Just because she used the word absurd, which it is. So what do you make of all this? Like international policy over Twitter.
So I think, I mean, the medium, the medium is one thing, but I think the long lasting damage here is that our allies bring incredible half military mind cooperation around intelligence. And effectively what the president is doing with his kind of eight year old id, you know, no safeguards, nobody around him who has the authority to rein him in. He's basically for the warhawks out there are people who can link our defense and our brave women and men who guard our shores to our prosperity and our freedoms. He's basically cut our military in half because we no longer have the full faith and cooperation of allies that have taken a half a century or seven years to develop those relationships.
He's trashing these relationships that have taken decades. Denmark was one of the first nations to agree to go into Iraq and Afghanistan with us. And they lost 40 brave young men and women fighting alongside our soldiers. And so, and you know, that kind of commitment, that kind of, you know, whether or not that was a good idea for them long-term, sure they thought about it.
But more than anything, they thought about this is our ally. This is our brother, our sister in arms. And when they find reason to get in harm's way, we go with them. And the question is the next time we need our brothers and sisters overseas to put themselves in harm's way alongside with us, are they more inclined to say no?
So this stuff is just, it's incredibly damaging long-term. Well, it is. I do think the media matters because I think it's, brings it to a level of absurdity. You know, including this week, tweeting that he was King of Israel.
Like someone who said he was King of Israel. King of the Jews! Oh my God. You know, guys who passed over once at his son-in-law's.
And what do you know, he's King of the Jews now. It's just fascinating that like, the media is important because it's a twitchy, reactive, like I'm a, I'm a tantrum thrower. And it gives him the ability. It would be so much, he couldn't tweet some idiotic.
He couldn't say some idiotic thing. He does that all the time. He obviously gives these helicopter press conferences behind the helicopter press conferences. But he, this gives him, it furthers a twitchiness that creates even more chaos.
I do think the media matters here. Yeah. And the other story that was probably overlooked was, I mean, Israel radically fucked up and then they kind of unwound their fuck up. And let me, before I get accused of being an anti-Semite, if you ever say anything negative about Israel, I, let me up my Jew cred.
I'm Jewish. I have a family who lives on Mosha. My cousin was a tank commander in the Israeli army. But for Israel to allow itself to be weaponized by an eight-year or four-year administration and then start excluding elected officials from their country, primarily because, let's be honest, they're not white, is to all of a sudden, of all people that should recognize the dangers of in any way discriminating against people of color, you'd think it would be Israel.
And to their credit, they unwound that. And somebody, somebody pulled their heads out of their asses and said, you know what? This is just a bad idea. And they had the bravery.
Sort of. They had all kinds of conditions and she's not going. The damage was done. Yeah.
This is just awful. I mean, I mean, breaking, you know, breaking, breaking ground out with allies and then weaponizing other allies against your own, your own brothers and sisters who are also elected officials. I just, it's just like, when does this stop, Kara? When does, when does this stop?
When does this bad fucking movie end? Possibly November, 2020. Possibly November, 2020. But here's the deal.
Should journalists stop covering this stuff? I think it's, I had an argument with someone online about this. And I was like, he's the president. Like, you have to cover it.
Like, you don't, it's like, I mean, I know that's kind of a quick answer to something, but it's very hard because it does have real world implications right now. It does have, you know, iterations of him doing this. I think it's impossible not to cover it. You know, I agree that the media, I've always said, obviously the president has got to cover it.
There's some of the stuff as such injurious impact where I think the media is a little bit guilty or a lot guilty, is they're constantly trying to... Remember when you were in high school and I don't know if this ever happened. You'd have me a couple of times. Someone pushes you into a center where there's a fight and starts screaming, fight, fight.
The media is always trying to pit everyone against each other. Even look at the debates. The debates aren't here to provide us with a thoughtful commentary on climate change. It's like, she said, you're a racist.
Your turn. You know, so it's like the media is like a Tyrannosaurus rex. They're attracted towards violence and movement. And they want to create violence wherever they can.
And I think it does a terrible job creating, creating conflict where there doesn't need to be, but yeah, they have to cover this stuff. I don't see how you don't cover this stuff. You know, I don't agree with you on the violence thing because I just interviewed Steve Schwarzman of the Blackstone group. He Tackle the sport, but until we figure out a way to stop the massive unnatural rotation of a man's head and create that sort of brain trauma, then unfortunately, quite frankly, if those injuries resulted in immediate...
Here's the worst thing that happened to these young men, is that the injuries have a lag effect. Because if they had immediate lag effect and a guy who had a Nike contract was all of a sudden shaking and having a palsy right away after he'd been hit, the sport would be shut down. But unfortunately, there's a 10 to 30-year lag. And so by the time they're forgotten and are doing something else, we don't care.
But anyways, what do you think of the Jay-Z NFL deal? I just was like, come on. You know, the Colin Kaepernick, the way they... I don't know.
They're just these owners. I just think they're just awful. Just like as a group, they're awful. They're just the whole thing.
I was sort of like, wow, that's trying to sort of, you know, pretty up something that's not very pretty by putting someone who's super hip and answers your race issues. And I don't know. I don't even know. You know, he's a great entrepreneur and very creative and everything else.
But it just was like, oh, God, really, everything's for sale. You know what I mean? That's what I kept thinking. But we'll see.
We'll see. Who knows? It's interesting brand move on their part. But let's get to Tesla.
No, actually, let's get to WeWork first and then Tesla. WeWork. Oh, my God. WeWork.
I wrote a column and I included Scott Galloway in the New York Times column, even though I have a column in the New York Times. Really? You write for The New York Times, Kara? I do.
But I got inspiration from you. This column about WeWork. And I was showing the different points of view about this company. And I included yours, which was quite firm in the camp that this is a big Ponzi scheme, essentially.
Well, here's the thing. And my post on WeWork got more hits than anything I've ever posted, which I wasn't expecting. And a lot of people in an effort to balance the arguments included an article from Ben Thompson from Satake. And I think Ben is incredibly thoughtful.
I'm a big fan. And his viewpoint was this could be the next kind of AWS in that it allows people similar to the way they use AWS to scale up or down something they need, in this case, not data storage, but in processing power. But in this case, office space, scale it up or down. And it's incredible AWS-like customer proposition.
And I think he's right. I think this is, in fact, a great... This is being a passenger in Uber is a great value proposition for you because you're getting a $15 ride for $10. And when right now, given that WeWork's going to do about $2 billion in revenues and lose $1.9, when you pay $100 in rent, you're getting $200 worth of office space.
Where I think you missed the point and where my focus is, is that this isn't AWS in the sense that on the company side, they're not getting the economies of scale that AWS is getting. Because once AWS covers their costs, incremental consumers are incredibly high margin. And it doesn't appear that the gross margins or the variable margins on WeWork, they're still shitty. In other words, their costs are not going down as they scale.
So another dollar in revenue costs them another $0.97. And this company just doesn't scale. And in sum, this is a cute little real estate company, a better idea, a great brand, an interesting culture community value proposition, should trade at double the valuation of its peers, meaning it's worth $3 to $5 billion. And what do you have?
You have JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs who are going to register $130 million to fling shit at visitors to the unicorn zoo. And this is going to be fascinating to see if this gets out. Do you think this gets out? You think this gets out?
I don't know. I mean, the way they've done it, the whole, the way they wrote this thing seems like so arrogant and obnoxious. And it's of another era. I was like, wait, you know, 1997 is calling and you need to go back there.
100%. That's really, I think. But when you, I'm just curious, I want some baseball here because I hear from people, but I think when I write something, I hear from an entirely different universe of people because I'm not a journalist, which means I have no standards. So I hear from a lot of people, but my sense is when you write something like that in the New York Times, do you hear from the company and what do they say?
Well, I will let you know. You know, I haven't discussed things with them. I think, you know, I, I went back and forth over whether I should call them and I thought, no, I'm just going to, they put it out there. I'm going to respond to their, to what they wrote because they put out a little, you know, 350 page document about themselves.
And so that's what I was responding to. I think, I think I'm coming sort of around sometimes on some things to your idea of like, why do I even need to talk to them? I can analyze business and numbers and stuff like that on some levels. Once you talk to people, you get you reporters again, a big secret.
You get nicer to them if you talk to them. A hundred percent. They're nice people. They're super likable too.
That's the problem. Right. And I don't mean nice, fair. It's like, you're like, you give them much more than the benefit of the doubt if they talk to you.
If they don't, you just do your job. So I don't know. It's an interesting question. We'll see.
We'll see. That's a, that's a really key point because 30 years ago there were twice as many Kara Swishers as there are today. And that's a frightening image. But what I'm saying is that there were twice as many journalists, the number of journalists in America has been cut in half in the last 30 years, primarily because of Google and Facebook that is sucking all the oxygen out of the air and killed the classified ads, which was sort of the full employment act of journalists.
But half as many journalists and the number of corporate communications executives has trebled. So the ratio of people actually, you know, uncovering this bullshit and pulling the wallpaper off the truth has now, the ratio has gone down six to one. And so corporate communications executives, I think all of us have an obligation to spend a lot of time working with journalists. I mean, I just did an interview with this crazy little paper in Germany.
I'm trying to make an effort to really speak to a lot of journalists if and when I think I can add value. And I, for the most part, don't take calls from corporate communication executives. They're all charming. They're all super nice and I don't want to speak to them.
All right then. And do not stop. Last really quick before we get to a break. Tesla, the rumor of Tesla getting sold to Volkswagen.
What do you make of it? Yeah, that came out in a hot minute. I'll be curious to find out if there's anything going on out there. It started this morning.
Tesla stock spiked and then somebody said, why? Someone asked the question, well, why would Tesla buy this company? Their own EV efforts look to be taking shape. And also all you have to do to get Tesla for much less than it's trading for now is just wait because this company is going to, the stock here is going to crash.
I think the bloom is finally off the Tesla rose. So that, I think it was a rumor that lasted about an hour and all of a sudden, I think the stock is back down again. But somebody leaked the rumor that Volkswagen was going to purchase them. And it was kind of legitimate for about five minutes this morning.
All right, we'll see. It was interesting for it to pop up. That was an interesting rumor because, you know, it's within the realm. The reason why I think it works is it's within the realm of possibility of sale, which was interesting.
Well, there's only two auto companies that can own it. I mean, an auto company is a natural acquirer. And the only two auto companies that have the balance sheet to do it are VW or maybe, well, actually, maybe Daimler and then Toyota. So maybe there's three, but I don't see why any of them would buy this thing.
Because you have to hang with Elon. Oh, for goodness sake. Anyway, Elon. OK, we'll be back with predictions and wins and fails right after this.
But now it's time for an ad. I'm a Seth Herndon, and this is America Actually. We're all talking to each other to see what do we do wrong? What do we not see?
I'm in Washington, D.C. this week to interview Ruben Gallego. He's a Democratic senator from Arizona, and he's been thinking openly about running for higher office. But he's recently run into some hot water because of his connection to Congressman Eric Swalwell.
I have to learn from this, and I will learn from this. But, you know, for me, it's not a 2028 question. It's about what it means to be a better first boss in my office and also a better senator to my constituents. This week on America Actually, we asked Gallego about predatory behavior in Washington.
His plans for immigration reform and more. This week on Network and Chill, I'm breaking down the institution everyone's talking about right now, but nobody actually understands, the Just trying to interact with the Chinese. I thought that was super smart. And I did, I do find, obviously, he's brilliant in many ways.
And so I just was sort of fascinated. I think he still, I think, when I asked him at the end what he would do now if he was a 20-year-old, would he go into, the stuff he just picked was really fascinating. His real knowledge of entertainment, how the entertainment world is changing. He's still going to finance.
He thinks that's undergoing a really interesting thing. And so I think it was interesting. I think he still, I asked him at the end what he would do now if he was a 20-year-old, would he go into, the stuff he just picked was really fascinating. His real knowledge of entertainment, how the entertainment world is changing.
He's still going to finance. He thinks that's undergoing a really interesting thing. And so I think it was interesting. I just, the only thing was that he just absolutely believes all Democrats don't like business.
And I just, that's not true. It's just not, it was sort of a crouch position. You have to be in a crouch position if you're an advisor to Trump. And then the other part was he kept saying, you know, I'm just a businessman.
I'm like, what are you talking about? Like that was my favorite part. I'm like, oh yeah, you're just a regular business guy who happens to have the ear of the president who obviously reveres you. And you're so powerful.
It was, I love when they do that to me. I'm so good at that. Other than having a big fat finger on, on kind of the nuclear codes or the buttons. He's probably in many ways more powerful than any president because there's more longevity there.
And when you brought up a sort of an interesting point around finance is in fact, a lot of kids, when I say kids, my students come to me and ask me what industry they should go into. And there's a great study right now looking at funding to seed startups. And basically funding to any seed startup is a function, or the volume of it is a function of the sector. And what's entirely obvious is all the sectors like retail, social media, all the funding to those seed startups has collapsed.
Why? Because there's monopolies and no one wants to fund companies competing as monopolies. Whereas funding to things like blockchain, finance, microcredit is still really strong because those are not going to, That's right. There's no monopoly there to kick you in the balls over and over.
So again, Which is good. Word memo to the FTC and DOJ. We are in winter right now. We're in the worst of both worlds possible because the number of acquisitions that big four have made has declined by 72% year on year because they're worried about raising antitrust scrutiny.
At the same time, we don't have startups. So we have an absolute killing, an absolute infanticide of innovation right now. And until the DOJ and the FTC get on it and either break these guys up, or quite frankly, and I hope this doesn't happen, say, all right, we're not breaking them up and they begin acquiring companies again in investing. We are literally in, in winter here.
So we're in the worst of both worlds. I always wanted to go to those restaurants and I grew up in a wealthy environment and I didn't. My mom was like, no way. The sizzler was gangster anyway, but my point is tipping the generosity of people is it makes a huge difference in people's lives.
It's a wonderful thing. And it happens about a million times a day in America and DoorDash has decided to fuck this wonderful thing. A lot of them. It's not just DoorDash.
It's like Amazon. Like a lot of people are taking their tip money. Don't take people's tip money. That's the situation.
According to us. DoorDash fail. And they should know, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway eyes on DoorDash. We're watching 30 days ago, they said they were changing it.
And guess what? They haven't. They haven't. Eyes baby.
We are watching you. We're watching you. You're watching you, especially sizzler, sizzler, sizzler, Scott. So that's your nickname.
So last thing prediction very quickly. We got to get out of here. So my prediction is I think Spotify is going to come out with a hardware device. I think Spotify has the capital, the Northern European genetics to come up with an incredible design.
I think music is, I don't want to say desperate for a different type of hardware, but I think, what hardware? What are they going to make? The answer is I don't know, but I think you asked for a prediction. I'm trying to do something bold and different here.
And there was a rumor. They filed at the FCC that they're thinking about that. They filed the records with paperwork to release a consumer device. And I think Spotify, I think a European, Northern European design element, listening device or some sort of audio device is brought to you by Spotify has win written all over it.
So my prediction is within the next six to 12 months, Spotify comes out with a piece of hardware for streaming for music. That's fascinating. How does it battle Apple and Google? Like, come on.
Like my kids listen on their phones. Everything. I can't imagine them having a separate device to listen to music. Well, the device, the two companies, the most innovative devices right now, I think in audio are obviously Amazon's Echo device.
And also I think Sonos does a great job. And I really like the CEO there. I think he's a high character, high integrity guy. And I'm a big fan of Sonos.
But I think there's a lot of room when you look at how big that medium is and look at all the innovation. You know, TVs are amazing. They get better and better every year. Look at all the innovation around phones.
When you think about our listening devices, I don't know other than the ones in your ears. I'm talking about a home listening device. I think there's a lot of room for innovation. Spotify has the capital, the content.
They could go vertical. They could make the device differentiated based on the Spotify service. So I think this is begging for Spotify to come into the hardware space. That is a big prediction, Scott.
If that happens, you will be brilliant. Yeah, and if it doesn't, we'll just ignore it and I'll just be me. I'll just be me. All right.
That's a great prediction. I'm going to leave you on that prediction except I want to know when, when, what time does the war with Denmark start? That's right, the Danes, the Danes. It's just, I have no prediction.
Have you been to Copenhagen? What? Have you been to Denmark, Copenhagen? Of course, many times.
Of course. Rich kid, of course I went to Copenhagen. There you go. I didn't go because I didn't have a sizzler there.
So I'm like, that's it. That's it. No, we should move to Northern Europe. We would be, but we would be much less successful in Northern European.
It would be like MSNBC when there's a Democrat in office. No one would give a shit. Everything we would be saying would be like, yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, that makes sense.
It's wonderful. Well, let us end on a quote from Hamlet then. This above all, to thine own self be true. There you go.
Wow. That's a little learning for you. Wow. Good stuff.
Yeah, you want another one? Yes, definitely. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. I should have been an actor.
Acting. You should have been. Take it to be or not to be. I'll leave this with a quote.
Sometimes it's darkest before it's pitch black. When is this all going to end, Kara? When is this all going to end? Never.
All right. It's not going to, Scott. Like you said, good and bad. Good and bad.
Good to see you. What a pleasure to meet your mother. Thank you. Oh, that was that.
That was nice. And thanks. Yes. Careful.
Don't turn your back on her. That's what I say. Before we end, I want a quick plug for my other podcast, Rico Deco, because you'll like this and we'll talk about it next week. Today's episode is a big panel discussion about CDA and section 230.
We had Terry Goldberg, Jeff Cossack, and Mike Masnick. It was a really good substantive discussion with three experts. So please check it out. And we're going to talk.
I want you to listen to that one, because that was really interesting. And I also want to call out an email we got this week from a listener called named Shane. He was at our live show in New York on Tuesday, and he says he loved it. Your show is so refreshing and direct refreshing.
That's us. That's not refreshing. Exactly. We're refreshing.
Oh, my God. Shane also says the crazy news cycle today reminds him of Howard Beal's famous rant on network. I'm mad as hell. I'm not going to take it anymore.
What do you think, Scott? Are you ready to fling open your window and start shouting into the streets of Nantucket? That guy's a role model of mine. I love that.
Probably Faye Dunaway's best film. That's a great movie. Network. OK, that didn't end well for Howard Beal.
FYI. Anyway, I saw Bryan Cranston in the new version of it on Broadway. Oh, my God. Bryan Cranston.
Greatest series in the history of television. Breaking Bad. Oh, my God. It was amazing.
Amazing. Amazing. Amazing show.