Hey, I'm Matt Burschell, comedian, writer, and floating head you may or may not have seen on your FYP. I'm starting a brand-new podcast. Wait, don't swipe away. It's called That Sounds Like a Lot.
You know that feeling when you check your phone, read a few headlines, and think, that sounds like a lot. I can't do this. Well, I can. I'm going to get into it every Friday.
You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. I'm going to start by breaking down whatever insanity is happening in the world. Then I'll sit down with a comedian or actor or writer or, honestly, anyone who responds to my DMs. This is not the place to get the news, but it is a place to feel a little bit better about it.
That Sounds Like a Lot, coming May 1st, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Hi, everyone, this is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Hola, Kara, ¿dónde está usted?
Because as a white, heterosexual male mangling the Spanish language, I think that qualifies me to run for president. That sounds great. You sound better than Oldman Beto, your boyfriend Beto, who really screwed up. Oh, Beto.
I'm in London right now. I just had a delicious lunch of fish and chips, which were fantastic. It's the only thing I hope these people in London can do well, because I hope they lose at soccer. Sorry to say, even though I can't stand sports, I do like this game because it's being helmed by my lesbian icon, Megan Rapinoe.
Thank you. Your Lycan, as I call her. Your Lycan. Lycan, yeah.
She's part of the Melissa Etheridge. She's our general. Listen, let's talk about the topics this week. I'm here in London just to do.
I did a very good podcast with Carol Cadwalader, the head of Pearson, all kinds of stuff here. But let's get into the stuff this week. Sports. This is a big thing.
I think it's tonight. The U.S. team is playing the British team. And it's the big time for women's soccer.
And it's going all over the Twitter and all over the Internet, especially because of its captain, Megan Rapinoe's fight with Trump, who then fought back. Thoughts on this? What's going on? Well, first off, I think you're a blessed.
And that is to be in a European city in the midst of a world-class football match. It really is an amazing experience. I was in World Cup in London last year. London, by the way, second best city in the world.
A wonderful city. But to be there with a big match, especially with one of their teams, I don't know where you're going, but they just – the Europeans really do soccer right. And it's just a ton of fun to see the city come alive. Anyways, I think it's great.
I'm going to a bar where I hope to get beat up by British people after we win. That's my thing today. That's an image. I feel sorry for them.
Yeah, me too. So, look, the controversy here is obviously the discrepancy of the pay gap, right? Yeah. And the question I would have, and I'm generally asking this to learn, not to comment because I don't know the answer, but in the 90s and the 2000s, Julia Roberts was the highest-paid actor in the world because she generated the largest box office receipts.
And in the 80s and 70s, Billie Jean King showed a lot of leadership and said, as a percentage of the revenue we create in women's tennis, we're getting a lower percentage of that revenue trickling down to us relative to the men. And she helped start a movement to change that. My question about women's soccer and the controversy over pay is, is it a function of the fact that it just generates a lot less money, or are they indeed being paid less as a percentage of the revenue they produce relative to men? I think one of the things is it generating interest in it is important.
And I think this team, as the last team, I think it was, what, 25 years ago? Whatever. The last team that generated a lot of attention. It was a different time from a media perspective, from an Internet perspective.
And it will be interesting to see what happens, especially with this U.S. women's team, when how much that will change things, because obviously the world is interested in soccer, whether it's men or women. But in the U.S., the interest in soccer is way, you know, wax and wane, essentially. And so in a different media environment, which includes the use of the Internet, which this captain, Megan Rapinoe, and other players use, it will be interesting to see how much attention they can get and how much watching and how much pays for broadcasting and stuff like that.
I think it all links into how much broadcasting pays for these things, correct? Yeah, it's all about TV. TV is what generates the majority of the revenue. But, look, at the end of the day, both great teams, fantastic that we have somebody who's a great spokesperson for America and for the team.
And, you know, go America. I think it's incredibly exciting and inspiring and just fun to watch. All right, so we're here doing this slightly early because of the 4th of July. We usually tape on Thursdays for Fridays, but we're taking a little bit early because of that.
And I'll be on a plane tomorrow back to the U.S., so I can go to Trump's, you know, victory party on the mall, which used to be called the 4th of July. Actually, I'm not going to Washington. But one of the things that got a lot of attention this week, besides history to North Korea, etc., was the debates. Everyone wants to talk about the debates.
I'd love to get your take on what you think went down. Well, so, you know, we make a lot of predictions, and we made a couple political predictions, I think, seven or four weeks ago. And one of them was that ageism and sexism were going to set in and that Biden and Sanders were going to cede, or this was my prediction, were going to cede share to Beto and Michael Bennett, who I'm a big fan of. And that has not happened.
You actually felt that, I know you're a fan of Kamala Harris, and you were early and right on this. And she has come on like a freight train. And she was a big winner coming out of this. Elizabeth Warren.
So we were right on the ageism part. We were wrong on the sexism part. And that is the two front runners are, if you think of a momentum as a front runner, and I think at this point momentum is even more important than your number. The two candidates with the most momentum are, you know, kind of substance, Elizabeth Warren, Professor Warren, which is awesome to see in academic and actually offering substance as a means of gaining traction and progress.
And then Senator Harris, who wasn't afraid to take on Biden. And it almost felt like you could literally see, we talk about the torch being passed. It was almost as if the torch wasn't passed. It was literally as if she reached across the stage and grabbed it from Joe Biden.
Right, 100%. It was interesting because it looked like a big setup, but he didn't see it coming was fascinating to me. It was really fascinating to me. But what was interesting about her is that she's had a hard time breaking out, especially, you know, in this sort of internet centric quickness.
She's much more, it's harder to get a feel on her immediately. I think what was great about that debate is they had these moments you could pull out. Like she understood the snackable, I hate to use that term because I hate it, but politically snackable moments that everyone could see all the good aspects of her. And she's done it before in hearings where she attacks, you know, Kavanaugh or whoever, because she's a prosecutor, she's very good at that and moments.
And then adding in a little bit of a meme around that little girl was me added to it. And I know it sounds cooked, but I think you have to think about that when you're making anything today. You know, when you're making ads or you're making whatever. And she effectively did that.
And he was caught flat footed on a topic he should have known was coming from someone on that stage. And obviously she would be the obvious person to do it. But I think she did it super effectively, very pithy, very fast. A lot of meme generation.
It just was really well. Whoever choreographed that for her, I thought, really understood the internet to me. It seems like, you know what I mean, really understood how to make that into a bigger deal than it might have been before. So as a general rule, and you and I are on CNBC a lot, whenever you're on short form media, I mean, you're on the debate stage with nine other candidates.
It's by virtue of the construct of short form media. The lesson I didn't learn until a few years ago in internal communication strategy is one, you have to have a series of talking points. And regardless of the question they ask you, you blurt out those talking points. And so it's that old attitude.
You answer the question you want to ask. And, you know, was her response or her going after Joe totally cooked and pre-planned? Or was it very effective? The answer is yes.
And he wasn't sharp on his feet. He could have retorted, Senator, I don't think you're a racist either. And by the way, one of us decided to prosecute cohorts that largely consisted of people and assigns that multiple to the entire thing. So where you have some incredible businesses at WPP, they all get assigned the same shitty multiple of a communications business.
So you're going to end up with a good bank, bad bank split in a lot of these companies. And investment bankers are going to make a lot of money. Which ones are good and which ones are bad? Well, I forget, XXIS and WPP, I forget the name.
Saxis is a data company, I'm mangling again, I'm mangling the word. But there are some digital assets within all of these companies that are really strong. Publicis has Sapient Nitro, which is an outstanding digital agency that would probably trade at a higher multiple, although if they acquired it three years ago, if they spun it out again, it would probably be accretive to shareholders. So you're about to see a deconglomeration across communications.
I think Martin's strategy, and again, I don't like to bet against Martin. Very few people have made money betting against Sir Martin. But I think the old conglomerate model of rolling up these companies, I think the arbitrage has been squeezed out because the best assets that people realized they can get top dollar, especially the digital assets, because all these old companies are looking for digital assets to accessorize their analog outfits. So those companies traded a premium.
So I don't think the conglomerate model moving forward works that well in communications. I think it's going to go the other way. All right. Okay.
So lastly, there's two things happening in social media related to Trump. There's Reddit quarantine, the biggest pro-Trump section of the site last week for hosting violent threats and violating the site's policies. And separately, Twitter said it would start labeling tweets from public figures that break its rules, but leave them up. And they're sort of slowly moving into dealing with it.
But what do you think? I was just like, what? You're now going to label lies as lies? Or how are you going to do that?
It just sort of created more problems. In terms of Reddit, I'm going to have Steve Hoffman, who's the CEO on the podcast soon, the RICO DeCo podcast. They've been doing a lot more. They have not just quarantine.
They've moved down ugly things really deep into the thing a long time ago. So I feel like Reddit actually did start to address these things in a pretty smart way. Any thoughts on the Twitter thing of labeling the tweets from public figures? I have a viewpoint, but what's your take on this?
And what's the response from these companies? What is the rationalization? If you can label something as a lie and not true, shouldn't you just delete it or prohibit it from ever being deployed? Exactly.
It was interesting. It was sort of like how they sort of slow walked into the Alex Jones thing. I remember being at meetings with all these people. And I said, you're taking him down.
And they're like, no, we're not. We're just a platformer. But then I'm like, you're still taking him down. You'll see.
It'll happen. And it was really interesting how they clung to this until they didn't. And this seems like the same thing. They're slow walking this idea.
And I assume they're talking about Trump because he breaks his rules all the time. So what's going to be on it? Like another lie? Like another, here's the facts.
I don't know. I think the link to like, this is the actual picture of this. Are you going to go back into one? Because he's done hundreds and hundreds of them that are lies.
I mean, that's what I wonder. Like, what happens? And I think they can't figure it out. That's like, you know, The Washington Post has been doing this for two years.
And it's 10,000 lies, many of which are on Twitter. And so, you know, the quarantining that Reddit's doing seems smarter because it's a violent threat. And they just move it off. And they did that to another horrible site, a racist site on that site.
And they moved, even though there's tons of crap in Reddit. They certainly moved it to places that were hard to get to and, you know, in a back, back of a back door. And I think that's the best they can, many of them can do if they want to keep these open platforms. At the same time, I'm not sure why not just say, take it down, like you said.
I don't understand it. We're smart enough to have the nuance to determine it should be deprioritized, but we're not smart enough. It doesn't make any sense. Just don't allow it.
I don't, I think this is sort of a half measure that doesn't make any sense. These companies are coming to grips with the fact that they are media companies. They have to make judgment calls. But I don't understand.
It's almost like if Fox or MSNBC started labeling certain segments as, okay, this is a little bit out there and we're stretching the facts. Right. And they don't do that. They say, all right, we're either putting stuff up we're going to stand behind or we're not.
And so I don't, I don't understand the whole labeling thing. I do have some sympathy around people who have used the president's tweets as an example. And I've kind of come around to Twitter's view that he is a public figure. And the problem is if you were to ever, he's violated their terms of service.
He should technically be kicked off the platform. But then somebody starts a Twitter feed that just has everything he says. He is a public figure. You probably, it's, he's different.
There is rationale for having him on there. I think at the end of the day, these guys are going to have to figure out, all right, we're going to have to employ again, this incredibly expensive thing that every other media employs. And people and just it's either on or it isn't, but not, but labeling it kind of truth meters. I don't know if that works.
Yeah. My, I just did a good podcast with Carol Cadwalader from who, who wrote the Cambridge Analytica story from the Guardian here in London. And one of the things she was saying is, look, in Germany, apparently one of seven people of the Facebook content moderators deal with Germany because there's laws in Germany that says you can't put stuff up. She goes, why don't they just hire more people?
That's going to pay them well and give them good psychological help and et cetera, et cetera. Make them employees. Like they can do it. They do it in Germany.
And so it's a question of whether they want to do it, how much it costs, and if they're forced to do so. And I think forced is the only way this is going to happen. Yeah. I enjoyed your pivot last week with Casey.
I think that is really interesting reporting. And by the way, I realized that it's passive aggressive, but let's have guests on with great hair. Let's be honest. I don't know why you're angry at me, but stop it.
I thought he's done some really interesting work around the PTSD that those guys are observing. Yep. Absolutely. He does have great hair.
And, you know, it's just the way it is. There you go again. There you go again. Stepped in to shut you down as you saw.
You want to talk about a guy scared? Yeah. When Kathy Griffin kind of addressed me in an aggressive way. I never even thought about Kathy Griffin before.
I'm like, oh my God, I am so scared of this person right now. Well, Casey is her day now. That's what she says. Oh, God.
She's smarter and funnier than me. I just want to stay out of her way. You stay out of her way. You're gonna have dinner with her.
Don't worry. You always say that. There you go again. Text about this from my producer, Eric Anderson, who actually used to work at Twitter as well as Google, saying they don't want to set a wrong precedent on the Twitter rules.
What if the next president is a good one and people want to take him down? They are taking a longer term view. Yeah, right. Long term view.
Speaking of long term view, did you hear Mark Zuckerberg's comments at the Aspen Festival? Yes, I did. The Aspen Ideas Festival. What did you think?
I just, I can't. I can't. You can't? It's just, it's just like blaming everybody else.
I just wish you would take responsibility. It's really a small thing I ask of him. And it's just, it's constantly someone else's fault and someone else's to fix. What do you think?
Well, again, these are the masters. And you got to admire it is, there's a form of genius here that kind of the deflect and delay. And that is, you know, we need help here. There's clearly a problem to address.
So we're going to create this star chamber like council of people to advise us. And it reminds me of occasionally, occasionally my wife gets so fed up with the kids and so exhausted. And they come up to her and say, can we play video games? And she finally goes, ask your father.
And then they ask me and I say, sure. And then she gets angry. So she's tired enough to suggest that they ask me something. And then I'm always wrong.
This is the mother of all ask your fathers from Facebook. They're all, we'd rather not take responsibility. We want to delay and deflect. So we're going to create some bullshit council, which by the way, on 60 seconds notice, Mark Zuckerberg could dissolve the moment he doesn't like what they decide.
But it's an attempt to create sort of a bulletproof or somewhat of a bulletproof vest that says, oh, I see this is a problem. So I'm going to create a council. It'll take six months to figure out the I don't know if it'll be effective, if it'll get traction, but I like the concept of it, that this CEO was caught completely unaware. We don't want to sell to what's going on there.
And obviously, the fail is the Customs and Border Patrol Facebook page that is so vile. It's disgusting. It's disgusting that I can't believe I'm paying the salaries of the people who were posting on this site because they don't deserve to work. They don't deserve my money and they don't deserve taxpayers' money for having these opinions.
You can't hate the people that you're charged with protecting. You really are dealing with the things they said about immigrants were disgusting. And then, of course, the attacks on congresspeople were scary and violent and strange, even if it's just sort of blowing off steam on Facebook. And I think Facebook should dump this group.
Like, it's just, it's a hate group is what it is. And it's not meant to, you know, talk about problems at work, which everybody has. Everyone has gripes at work, but these gripes, the stuff that ProPublica, which did the story put out, it's just appalling, and it's appalling that it's not taken down immediately, I think. So I thought that was it.
And I think the Republicans don't look into this. It'll just be, you know what has happened to this party because it's really no government employee should be able to express these opinions about the people that they're charged with dealing with. It just is not. And especially congresspeople too.
Anyway, those are my wins and fails. Do you have a fail? Yeah, you covered a lot there, but the detention facilities, I mean, some people have compared them to concentration camps, and I don't think that's fair. What happened to Treblinka and Sobibor and Auschwitz was a different ballgame, but they are detention centers.
And I feel as if we're in the land of frequent spills right now. And that is this beautiful carpet called capitalism and democracy in America is we're constantly creating new stains on this thing. And one of those stains is happening right now. Those detention facilities down at the border are shameful and our kids are going to be really embarrassed.
Would you call them internment camps? These words are fascinating. Yeah. Is it internment?
Is it detention? I mean, it does feel they do feel like internment camps, right? Where they are holding people against their will. The conditions are a lot of their basic dignity and human freedoms.
And this comes down to resources and a certain level of humanity that we are not demonstrating at the border. It's really a it's just one of those things, you know, in, in three, five, 10 years, 20 years, we're going to just be really ashamed that we let this happen. You know, ironically enough, I went to my son to the Anne Frank house this week in Amsterdam, which was really, it really affected him. It was great.
I took him to the Anne Frank. He was coming back from a European trip and I think I was really glad to, for them to see this. You know, the small story, obviously Anne Frank is a small story of one person, but she really has touched people all over the globe with the books and what happened to her in Amsterdam. And so it was really interesting.
What was fascinating to me when I was there is they don't allow photography in it, in the place, because it's still the same house where these people were hiding for two years before the Nazis found them and took them away and they died at concentration camps. But not one person around the whole place and all over Europe, everyone's with the phones. It's the same, same disease they have in the United States. But in this one area of Amsterdam, nothing, not one phone, not one, you know, it was really wonderful actually, that people could pick their heads up for a minute and pay attention to a very serious problem that we have today and have always had.
And it was, it was kind of cool. That was a win. Yeah. So my fail, my fail is the democratic party.
I think the debates were great, great on spectator sport. Obviously winners, Senator Harris and Senator Warren. But I think the democratic party actually became less appealing to the majority of the voters we need in the middle to get Trump out of office. And that is, so as a progressive who considers themselves, you know, a lifelong Democrat, but who's also a white heterosexual male that doesn't speak Spanish and doesn't believe that illegal immigrants should all have a path to citizenship.
I felt like basically the debates said, we're not your party. And I think when they all raised their hand and said, should every undocumented worker have a path to citizenship? I just thought that was ridiculous. There are so many people, including my parents who figured out a way to get here legally.
And I'm not saying that someone who's been here for 10 or 20 years who has been a decent contributor, who has kids here should be deported. But the notion that we're going to say anybody who figures out a way to get here, you should have a path to citizenship is just an invitation to the billionaire or 2 billion people who would like to live in the U.S. And it also says to Americans and people who have immigrated here legally that, you know, we don't represent you anymore. And I think that they're heading down a dangerous path.
And there needs to be some nuance here. We invited 10 or 11 million undocumented workers. It was basically a flexible, inexpensive workforce for us. We knew they were coming over.
They should be treated differently. But to basically say anybody who figures out a way to get here is going to be a citizen. That's just dumb and inviting an immigration crisis, the likes of which we can't even imagine. So it felt to me like they were basically saying to the people in the middle, we don't represent you.
And I think it's they're headed down a very dangerous path. All right. Well, we'll see what happens with that. So let's get to predictions or your forecast, the Scots 101 forecast.
So that's your prediction is that that's going to be a problem or do they have the ability to recover? Oh, it's still early. And, you know, they all go hard left or hard right in the primaries and then they all pivot to the center in the general election. But they've got to realize that the folks in the middle and it's not Twitter.
I don't think it's the people who are best on Twitter at the far left that are going to win this election. Granted, they need to energize the base, but the majority of Americans are somewhere in the middle. And what we saw the Democratic debate was that in my view, again, the people that they need to win over, they're saying we don't really represent you any longer. So I hope we see some centrist candidates emerge with a voice that's more indicative of where the majority of Americans are.
So anyways, two predictions. My prediction is political. Basically, Sanders tweeted it. What are the two consumer brands that are going to lose the most share over the next 30 days?
It's going to be LaCroix. The sparkling water is getting its butt kicked by bubbly of Pepsi brand, which is kind of I realize it's a little bit esoteric. But this is the way my mind works. I love LaCroix.
I don't talk. I love coconut. LaCroix. Oh, no.
LaCroix is hemorrhaging market share. But also Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. I think that America is going to decide we don't want to replace. And this is a terrible identity politics and ages.
But I do think that America's decided that Bernie's time is kind of come and gone, in my view. And I don't think that Joe Biden, the third term of Obama, is going to have a ton of appeal. I think that their combined share of 50 or 60 points is going to decline 20 or 30 points. And we're going to see a new crop of nominees or contenders emerge.
And it's already happening. That's interesting. My boyfriend was saying that Democrats tend to win when it's a young, fresh person versus an older person. Only older people lose, which is interesting.
I know that his point was correct. If you kick out a president after only one term in a good economy, it's got to be for something totally different on almost every dimension. And so Marianne Williamson. There we go.
I thought by the way, most searched person. That's an image. Oh, my God. Okay.
I paid good money to watch. Watch that relationship unfold. He was saying, and I think he made a very good point, that Democrats tend to win when it's a young, fresh person versus an older person. And only older people lose, which is interesting.
I know that his point was correct. If you kick out a president after only one term in a good economy, it's got to be for something totally different on almost every dimension. And so Marianne Williamson. There we go.
I thought by the way, most searched person. That's an image. Oh, my God. Okay.
I paid good money to watch. Watch that relationship unfold. He was saying, and I think he made a very good point, that Democrats tend to win when it's a young, fresh person versus an older person. And only older people lose, which is interesting.
I know that his point was correct. If you kick out a president after only one term in a good economy, it's got to be for something totally different on almost every dimension. And so Marianne Williamson. There we go.
I thought by the way, most searched person. That's an image. Oh, my God. Okay.
I paid good money to watch. Watch that relationship unfold. He was saying, and I think he made a very good point, that Democrats tend to win when it's a young, fresh person versus an older person. And