Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit prep, it's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place, and cuts out a prep by 82%. Less manual work, clear visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance, or call it, calm clients.
Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to vanta.com. Recommendations can be great.
Maybe someone recommended this podcast, and here you are. But home projects are a little different. If the podcast isn't your thing, you might lose a few minutes from your day. If you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your TV, you might end up with a lopsided screen and wall damage.
I know a guy isn't a good strategy for your home. That's why Thumbtack works so well. It matches you with top-rated local pros, with photos, reviews, and credentials, all in one convenient place. For your next home project, try Thumbtack.
Hire the right pro today. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway, capping off the decade.
That's right. That's right. I'm Anderson Cooper, minus the hair of the good looks, and the famous mother. But I'm here, and you're my Kathy Griffin, Kara.
What were you doing 10 years ago, Scott, without you? I was recovering from the recession. I'd just been run over. I had a two-year-old son at home, and I was starting to get my act together professionally.
I'd spent 10 years enjoying a wonderful mid-life crisis partying in New York, and then my son had the poor judgment to come rotating out of my girlfriend, and she got real, and I got back to work. So 10 years ago, I started getting back to work. Oh, wow. I was working for Rupert Murdoch 10 years ago.
Really? Yeah, I worked at all things too. You chapped off at Walt Mossberg's Coattails. Yes, where I did that, but then I surpassed it.
Here we go. Here we go. He was great. I was doing great.
I had a nice day. 2010 was a good time. My children, my kids were smaller, and I'm just looking at some pictures. But we had a really good, we were running all things.
It was going great at the time, and we were doing big deal things there. It sort of just reached its biggest, like, many years of things. So it was a good time. I just started.
I just founded L2. I was obviously teaching, and then I thought, wait back to me. I published a piece of research where I took 1200 data points to analyze a brand digital footprint, and I put the research out and ranking 100 companies and 40 of the companies called me and said, who are you and why are you doing this? And I went to NYU and said, I'll give you stock if you give me the IP, and that was the birth of L2.
That was 2010. Wow. Wow. 10 years ago, today, to this year, not today, but this year, was when we did the famous Mark Zuckerberg's wedding interview, Walt and I did.
That was 10 years ago? That was 10 years ago in June of 2010, and also we did a great Steve Jobs interview. He was quite in good health then. Not great health.
He was sick, but he had a little bit of a rebound. But we did one of the most amazing interviews before we died. But yeah, we interviewed the Mark Zuckerberg's wedding video. Wow.
And I was, let me say, I'm 43 now, so I was 33 then. Yeah, 33. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I'm really old. I was not that young. In any case, we're going through the, what do you even do for this decade? What's your decade plan?
For the next decade? Yeah. I just want to surround myself with people that love me a great deal and they're loved by me and enjoy the salad days, Carol. What else?
That's very nice. That's a lovely thing. I'm going to get bigger and better. That's my plan.
But what is your lesson of the past 10 years? Do you have any lessons? You know, like reflections? Well, I mean, I'm feeling a little bit hung over some, a little bit melancholy, but my lessons from, you didn't do the math.
I'm actually 55 now from 45 to 55. For me, it was a time of recognizing, or waking up at the beginning of my 40s and realizing I didn't have a lot of deep, meaningful relationships that I was very selfish and started investing those relationships. So I come out of the last 10 years with, with a lot. And I just want to, for me, the last 10 years.
And Carol, I don't know if you know this or what a book about this, but I recognize that if I continue to be an island and be just a male to living. I know your book, my children read it. I know that. If I was going to continue to be a, I mean, I was literally kind of the beginning of the decade, living alone in Manhattan, leaving my apartment to go to the ready to get food or sex, living like a gay man, and then I decided this is awesome and I'm good at it.
But if I continue this, all the science says I'm going to die in my 60s because men who live alone. And so I started, I started investing in relationships. It was the smartest thing I've ever done. No, you know, you sound like a lesbian, which is why I like you so much.
Do I? Yes, you do. You're my... I'm the worst lesbian.
I'm literally the worst lesbian. I have only two exposures to lesbian culture, you and Cinemax. Other than that, I have absolutely... I knew you would have to make a tasteless remark about lesbian porn.
Everything I've learned about lesbian porn. Stop. You're not, I'm not letting you go down that lesbian porn avenue. It's not happening today.
Anyway, because the end of the decade, because a lot of people are doing this, we're going to do things a little differently. We're obviously going to go break down a few big stories in the past 10 years. And some of them, let's bring in a few friends of pivot. We've got some good people talking to us.
I haven't heard this yet. No, I haven't heard this yet. I haven't heard this yet. No, I haven't.
Rebecca went out and got them. Thank you, Rebecca. Amazing job. So shall we get started and close this decade down?
We're done with the 10s. We're going into the 20s, my friend. Let's stop the mic. The roaring 20s.
And you know how that ended. Not so well. Big decade breakdown. Let's get into it.
Number one fang. This was a huge decade for big tech. It was very big in 2010, but not as big as it is now. It's a cliché, but really a bit of a reckoning for Silicon Valley toward the end.
And you obviously Scott published a book called The Four. Yeah. A key moment of the decade. No, but you said The Four.
That's how I met you. Did you coin this term fang or not? No, I didn't. I coined the term The Four.
But no, I didn't coin the term fang. That's not me. Thank you, though. Anyway, what do you think about this big tech?
I think this has been the thing. What do I think about it? Yeah, I do think. First off, they've gone from one trillion value to four trillion, which is the GDP of an expain.
Incredible prosperity. Incredible potential. We spent the first six or seven years arguing over which one of their leaders was going to run for president. They've been incredible vessels for the transfer of wealth in the rest of the world of the US.
But there's a dark side. When I started writing that book, it was a love letter. Yeah, you did. People don't remember this, but I used to literally be the biggest evangelist in the world for these firms.
I thought they were just incredible. And by the way, they said, you were talking a decade and you asked me what I was doing in 2008. I literally got run over by the recession. And I know you're not supposed to talk about money because rich people create this dictum or this gestalt where you're not supposed to talk about money such that they can pretend that they're just following their passion.
It's like a godfather said only rich people tell you not to talk about money. But I had at the end of the recession, I got run over my account and I said, how much money do I have? Because at one time, when I was much younger, I had what felt like a lot of money. It wasn't a lot of money where I was in my life and where the success I thought I'd achieved.
And I took all of that money and I put it into two stocks. I put it into Amazon and Apple. And those companies since then have gone up, I don't know, between seven and 12-fold. So I want to be clear, big tech, economically, save my ass.
And I started writing a book about them because I was so impressed with them. And by the end of the book, after really understanding them, the book, as you know, turned into a cautionary tale. And ever since then, I just get more and more disturbed. But I am absolutely biting the hand that not only fed me, but save my ass.
There's been incredible economic prosperity. But we, you know, the question is, have we opted for economic prosperity at the expense of income inequality, you know, at the risk of the weaponization of our democracy? Have we lost all empathy? Are we dividing into different cohorts?
Have we turned our backs on teen depression because of economic prosperity? Have we been overwhelmed by private power where the government is no longer a countervailing force, but a co-conspirator, which is a key step to fascism? There is a lot to be concerned about here. Yeah.
It's been a big shift. You know, people don't realize this, but Uber didn't get founded until 2009 and Airbnb 2008. And, you know, Facebook was, when I did that interview, he wasn't huge. Like, he wasn't, like, he was sort of, obviously, up and coming.
But they weren't dominant in the way they were. And, obviously, Steve Jobs was still living. You know, he didn't die until 2011. But, you know, there was a whole different kind of internet.
It was sort of in the, it was sort of a hopeful time. It certainly was. It absolutely was. And we didn't see the seeds of what was coming in the middle of the Obama administration.
So it was sort of, sort of, sort of fascinating to think about how quickly that had changed. You were quite at that book at the fore. It was a love letter. You're right.
That's exactly right. Which is kind of interesting. And I do think what will be interesting in this next decade of what's going to happen with these companies and what will they continue to do this? Do they understand the damage they've done?
Where is the room for the safe internet, the people who are going to create the good internet and the possibilities? And I think that's, I have some hopefulness about that. It's like, who is going to do that? And I do have some hopefulness that someone is going to figure out ways to remake some of these things.
So it's not just a continued, sort of, you know, transfer from everybody to them. And I think that would be a great thing to have. The only one that kind of looks like it right now to probably be someone new, but I've come full circle on this. I think the only one that sort of feels a little bit like that is your guy having to be able to snap.
And I'm glad that they're doing so well. And one to one communication is much healthier than the sort of group performative. And you don't feel like you're speaking to someone so you tend to be much meaner and trolls can bad actors can weaponize it. It feels like it'll be interesting.
Obviously, the internet was the medium of the last 10 years. I wonder what will be the medium of the next thing or is what impact will it have? Or does it discontinue to more and more power and more and more of the spoils continue to get concentrated? Yeah, he's an interesting character.
I'm going to do, he just talked to them this morning actually. I'm doing something for them at CES. And then he's coming to code this year. So it's going to be really interesting.
I agree with you. He's a really interesting character. I'm like, I'm looking forward to talking about that. That's why I invited him to talk about where it goes.
Instead of just barely thinking about the shit that Facebook's pulled on, I want to talk about where things are going and where the safe internet is. So it's one of my things I want to talk about a lot in the next decade. He's like, what are we going to make from this mess? And what can all the players start to think about?
So anyway, big tech. That's one of the big tech is the big story. And realizing how much has changed in just a very short 10 years. Number two, obviously politics.
There's been a pretty big decade for politics and presidents. We've had two very different presidents in the past 10 years. Barack Obama and Donald Trump couldn't be like polar opposites. There's probably too much digging here.
But we reached out to Scott's friend. And someone I admire very much. Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado. He is one of the candidates for president and has been a senator for the past decade.
So we asked about what he thinks about the biggest moment in policy this decade. When we look back at the past decade, I'd say that a moment that stands out is one of the most important to me is the failure of Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. I was part of the Gang of Eight that wrote the bill in 2013. And its ultimate failure in the House of Representatives was emblematic of a crisis in our democracy.
And in many ways, that set the stage for Donald Trump. It set the stage for Donald Trump's anti-immigrant screeds that he started his campaign with and the way that he's governed our country. Well, I'd agree with him. I would agree with him.
And I think he wasn't just the immigration reform. It was taking using tech to really get this message out in a way. He had started with the Central Park Five. You know, he had a history of doing this.
But he really did sort of amp it up on using digital means to do this and including some stuff, you know, breaking people apart over this issue. It was a big element in the Russian disinformation campaign. What do you think, Scott? Well, just, I mean, I'm very, as you know, I'm very impressed and fond of Senator Bennett.
The way I met him was his office reached out to me and said the senator would like you to come down and talk to him a little bit about big tech and its impact on our society. And I ended up spending a couple hours with him. And he was so fascinated with the notion of income inequality as it relates to big tech. And he was taking notes.
And you could tell this is a guy. You just meet him. And he, I don't want to say it was sort of my faith in government, but he made me a lot more optimistic that you could just tell this guy was very committed to helping others that had been, had really been heard by income inequality. You know, school superintendent, tremendous empathy.
You've noted that his demographic and his style are the timing could not be worse for him. Sort of a substantive quiet. You know, he's not, he's not loud. He's not dramatic.
His best tweet when he was, you know, he's still running for president or if the Democratic nomination was, elect me president, I promise you won't have to think of me every day. I'll just handle the North Koreans. But it's, I think it's important for, at least what I found is when you get to know a lot of our elected representatives, it does, I think it does. When you don't see it filtered through the lens of Fox, or through an impeachment trial, it does in many ways restore your faith in government.
And he's a very impressive, decent man and exactly who we would want representing us. But yeah, I also believe, quite frankly, that it, it, it shone a light. My senior senator here, Marco Rubio, basically, in my opinion, cut and run from immigration reform because he was pandering to his far right constituents. He's a pander.
We had an opportunity to, to basically, the fact that we didn't pass that regulation as Senator Bennett led to a lot of very divisive things and we don't like to acknowledge it, but the notion that somehow we woke up one day and there were 11 million undocumented workers here, we let them in because they're an incredibly flexible agile workforce that we bring in to, to form our produce, take care of our seniors, help us in the service industry, and the notion that somehow these people came over without our knowing. And by the way, it's been incredibly economic beneficial for us. And then all of a sudden we're like, okay, let's demonize them now. It's been, it's been very.
And it's, I think, I think Senator Bennett's correct. He's incredibly erudite. He's just really impressive. I also went and visited him.
And just one of these, it does restore your faith in people when you talk to someone. He's a very good public servant. He's a very fine public servant. But what do you think the story is?
I think it is, you know, related Trump. Trump is the biggest part of the decade. He just is. It's a hundred percent.
Trump, Trump signifies. Some people would say Trump signifies this undercurrent of anger and also, quite frankly, of bigotry and tribal nature. I think everybody thought had gone away and is still there. And, you know, it just, it's just not getting around.
The election of Trump, in my view, is the, is the earthquake, the trimmer, the seismic event, whatever you want to call it, of the decade. So Barack Obama began the decade. And he's almost feels zeroed out in a lot of ways. He isn't zeroed out, obviously.
He's a historic presidency. But, you know, it's just really interesting but how forgotten that is. Like, in comparison of how outsized Trump's role has been. And, you know, again, it's a role that's been emphasized by tech.
Again, he's used tech really strongly. He's used, obviously, not just Twitter and his, his outbursts and exclamation points and all caps letters on Twitter. But the Russian disinformation. The uses of disinformation to manipulate politics.
The political ads. You know what I mean? It's all been part of parcel to his success. And a reality show television part of our world.
That we so love in this country. It's all, you know, sort of an echoed and re-echoed and echoed. It's been critical to his success. Yeah.
And what will be interesting about moving into the next decade. It'll be so critical. We've had moments like this. We've had incredible threats.
But immunities have always kicked in. Whether it's deciding to enter Europe during World War II after the tremendous damage of World War I, deciding to put our manufacturing base into production, the embrace of civil rights, globalization. I mean, there's just been so many seminal sort of, let's say, immunities have kicked into overcome what have been, you know, tremendous threats to our society. What will be interesting is in the next, you know, couple of years or just year if immunities begin to come against what is fairly, fairly unhealthy and threatening things to our democracy, whether it's us or the tech being weaponized by bad actors out of Russia or this general move towards autocracy as opposed to democracy.
Everyone accuses, you know, the big story on the left, or the big story that Trump has been able to promote with his 60 million followers on Twitter is somehow the far left, or that we're prone to being socialist. And I think the bigger story is how the right has become much more prone to fascism. And the notion that fascism at its core is extreme nationalism refusals to condone violence and the demonization of immigrants. I mean, if there was ever a playbook for fascism playing out right now, it would have, it would have a president Trump on the cover.
So I'm hopeful that as this happens throughout our history, that when we enter these dark times, the immunities begin to kick in. So I'm waiting on the immunities care. I hope it started yesterday. I don't know.
I think tech does emphasize this in a way that, you know, television did in a lot of ways with Joe McCarthy as he came drunk or in more sweaty. That's not us, right? Like, you know, it sounds dumb, but it's the same thing with Nixon. It's just when is it going to help make it clear that this is not what we are, but we are this way.
I think people say this is not who we are. I'm like, it's precisely who we are. We're also, we're also other things. We're also good.
And we pulled back from Joe McCarthy. You know, one of the stories that really affected me this week, I think it was in the Washington Post. It was about the Tulsa massacre, as they sometimes called the race riots. That's not what it was.
You know, they're using all this technology to find graves, of mass graves there. This just was essentially murders of white people to this incredibly thriving black community in Tulsa called Greenwood. And one of the things, I just was like reminded, I'm like, we're just awful as a people. We're just awful.
And I was sort of fascinated by the debate that's going on about it. And, you know, here's something, like tech is not part of this, but it's being used to sort of resurrect something we should remember. And the fact that I didn't know more about it sort of angered myself. I was like, I should know about these things.
And hopefully we can sort of start to unearth some of these qualities we have that we have to look at really hard. So we'll see. We'll see. But Trump is, unfortunately, the main politics thing.
When we get back after this, we're going to do more of the top decade breakdown, killing women in diversity and leadership, streaming wars and more. Support for the show comes from O2. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder?
With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing O2. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.
CRM, Accounting, Inventory, Ecommerce and more. And the best part? O2 replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.
So why not you? Try O2 for free at O2.com. That's O-D-O-O.com. Support for the show comes from O2.
Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder? With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing O2.
It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, Accounting, Inventory, Ecommerce and more. And the best part?
O2 replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O2 for free at O2.com.
That's O-D-O-O.com. Okay, stop. Let's keep going on the decade in review. Did you have hair at the beginning of the decade?
I'm not. Just curious. No, I shaved my head in my early 30s so I could raise money for my startup for the higher valuation. I actually have hair.
I had a ponytail in graduate school. By the way, if you... I need a picture of that. You need to put that on the Internet.
We need to see that picture. Was there a ponytail with a comb over? Or just a... It was like a bad novelty act.
It would send out to cool girls down. They'd be like, all right, they're out of control. Send out the way with a ponytail to cool them down. Wait, did you have a bald head in a ponytail?
Because that's a little bad. No, and with a Corvette. I was pathetic, but I wasn't fucking ridiculous. You weren't galloping.
No, I had an actual hair. My hair, believe it or not, granted it was a low bar. But my hair used to be my best feature. I want to see a picture.
Send. Put a picture on the Internet. Okay, next breakdown. Number three.
Women in diversity and leadership. Huge decade for women. There was a women's march in Washington. And the Me Too movement.
And there's more women in Congress. For all Democrats, pretty much. So I think all Democrats. So we reached out to a friend of Pivot.
Rashma Sojani. Who is a founder and CEO of Girls Who Code. To talk about how women fared in tech and leadership over the last decade. I think when we look back at this decade, we're going to realize that this was the moment that we had a reckoning with technology and that women rose up.
Look, I mean, I think we're at a tipping point, right? Women aren't putting up bullshit anymore. All you need to do is look at the walkouts and the protests in the past year. Many that are inspired by Me Too.
And the fact that you have girls standing up every single day being change makers. I'm hopeful that women and girls are going to rise up and they're going to lead. And they're going to push tech companies to be better. They're going to push tech companies to go back to reading their mission statements.
And to really reconciling the fact that right now, they're out of touch with their values. Yeah. I think Rashma is more positive than I am about this. I mean, there's a lot of things that happen.
There was, you know, Elizabeth Holmes got a lot of attention, obviously Sheryl Sandberg, who had started the decade in 2012. She had the eighth member and the first woman on the Facebook board of directors, which took a while. It was long after she joined the company. And you know, then you had the Google walkouts over these issues.
You had the Me Too movement. But then you had sort of a massive Yahoo with Marissa Mayer and not very many women CEOs and declining numbers of women in leadership positions at tech companies. And not the case of media companies. I think there's more women in charge there.
But what do you make of this? Well, I've always thought that as someone who was raised by a single mother, so when my parents got divorced, they were what I would call fairly equivalent on a balanced scorecard professionally. My mom was more intelligent, but my dad was more charismatic. But they both had been pulled out of school in the eighth grade, immigrated to America.
And my dad went on to be national sales manager of own Scots and make a very good living. And my mom went on to be a secretary. And when you were in the 70s and you were a single mother with a kid, you could either be a travel agent or a real estate agent or a secretary. I always felt that the ism or the greatest discrimination in our society.
And I saw this firsthand was sexism. I still think women have it harder than almost any cohort. And other cohorts and other forms of discrimination get a lot of attention as they should. But I think as we stand here and now, I still think that it's the thing that creates the most, you know, the bottom line is when they give money, they don't experiment.
So when they give money to the men, the brothel and the bars thrive. When they give money to women, the kids get bigger and fatter. Right? And the best thing we can do in society, in my opinion, globally and I believe with Christians on this is to fully fund Planned Parenthood and make sure that women always have access to safe family planning and to economically liberate women.
That is still the means, the faster we will pass to a better world. It's 100%. And the numbers keep decreasing. You know, I think there will be some reckoning.
You know, I'm really looking forward to this Google investigation and how they handle issues around women. I think a lot's going to come out about that, hopefully, and how the managers who were so fed did not handle these issues very well. And it's something I do want to talk about, Senator Pichai, who was not running the company during this decade, but now is a part of the decade. He's been running it.
And it's tried to sort of clean it up. But at the same time, you know, you worry about something like the MeToo movement, integrity, or whatever it is, just losing its steam. You know, and that's my worry. And then not having enough women, like, you can go to St.
Petersburg or somewhere, it's just there's not enough women so that you can, some can succeed and some can't. Like, so much is writing on these women who are fallible human beings. And just such that I don't leave a segment without getting a ton of hate on Twitter. I would argue that people will incorrectly look at the MeToo movement as a seminal moment in terms of progress for women.
I worry that the MeToo movement has entered a phase where we're now taking all agency responsibility away from women and we're starting to treat a lot of these situations as if the women are children and that they have no accountability or responsibility. And I worry that over time that people will look back on and think that it was not as beneficial to women as they originally thought. I don't agree with you. Telling stories is so critical.
The ability to tell stories is not taking away agency. It's telling stories. And it's not that they aren't going to be like edge situations and things like that. But the ability to talk about your experience in the workplace, which every woman has, they have 10 episodes and some of them are minor, like stupid and remarks.
I guess we can let that go. It should stop. I'm not suggesting we let it go. I think you're right.
I think it was overdue. It was a healthy conversation. It needed to happen. But the idea of the sexual situation, similar to how we treat any sexual situation with the child, whoever is involved is guilty because children have no agency and they should never be in that situation.
I feel like in some instances the way the media portrays some of these situations is if the women have absolutely no agency and I wonder if that is good or if there's a negative part of it. Let me go on to where I think the more under reported victory if you will, or one of the most important things as it relates to female leadership and that is what is the one country, the one developed country that never had a recession. It's a trivia question. You know what country that was?
I'm so thrilled. It was Germany. Germany has been the economic engine of Europe, Germany, and it's for a few reasons. One, manufacturing.
I never used to buy into the notion of how important manufacturing was, but the bottom line is if you look at innovation, when you outsource manufacturing and making things, you do lose a lot of innovation. Two, they've always had a lot of respect and appreciation for the dignity of work and boards or mandated boards or directors that have representation from labor. They really value the middle class there. And three, I think they've had some of the most competent leadership of the 20th century in the form of Angela Merkel.
And I think she's just an incredibly thoughtful, humble leader who's all about doing what's right for the German people. I mean, she's not famous. I don't think she's, I think she is an inspiration. And I think that's a moment we will talk about in 50 years as it relates to female leadership that doesn't get the attention it deserves.
I think she will go down as one of the more important leaders of the last 50 years. But I do think, I think the telling stories, I think Susan Fowler's essay and also Ellen Powell really did telling their stories. They were not, they had agency. They had plenty of agency.
And it led to like the Travis being pushed. I think though, among other things it sort of led to a number of stories about the behaviors there. And so we'll see. At some point, I think people are on notice.
And that's the best part. Even if they're a little scared for now. Good. Good.
They should be scared. And so that's my feeling is that telling stories is literally the most powerful thing you can do. And then you can't say you didn't know. Like that's to me the most important part of this.
You cannot say you didn't know. There was a great story about something that was going on instead of the affair in Hollywood Reporter Kim Masters. Again, it was great. It was well done.
I thought read that. It was a really interesting question. I think it was, it was how people perceive things and talking about sex. Anyway, we'll see.
We'll see where it goes. And again, in this story that Bloomberg Business Week had about the Vision Fund, it's an all-male management team. All-male. All-male.
Well done. Anyway, number four. Streaming wars and content. Obviously over the past decade, a lot has changed in the way we consume media and the story we definitely watching the decade ahead.
So we got Richard Plepler, my favorite. You love Richard. I love him. He's so elegant.
The former chairman and CEO of HBO on what his defining moment of media was in the past decade. I think when you're talking about some of the transcendent moments in American culture over the last decade, you'd have to be in April 2011 with the airing of Game of Thrones, which of course became something of a cultural phenomenon. Nobody knew that Thrones was going to be Thrones, and it's listening to one of the grand intangibles when something breaks through like that. And I think anybody who says to you that they either knew that that was going to happen or they had an instinct that something before it hit the cultural nerve was going to hit the cultural nerve, I think they're lying to you.
All right. Richard, by the way, has been reporting his own production company and talks with Apple. It's going to happen. He's going to be making more.
And I would be remissing that he also did Sopranos. So, you know, this guy has been sort of at the, has sort of really put a lot of stuff in. I think the thing he's talking about is coalescing around good TV. The TV got so good in the past decade.
I think TV used to be the idiot box. Now it's the intelligent box, essentially. So what do you think is the defining moment in these media wars? I believe the defining art form of our generation in a hundred years when they look back.
It won't be, you know, Damien Hirst. It won't be, I don't know, the music that's coming out. Although 80s music makes a run for it because it's genius care, but the defining art form is television. There's more risk-taking.
There's more resources. TV used to be, you know, the best show on TV used to be Cheers or Mash. But I think television is, you know, we tend to mock it. And unfortunately, it's ruined, but less ruined by this, you know, this tax called advertising.
But I would argue that probably House of Cards was a more seminal moment because I think Netflix, I mean, the bottom is Netflix, eight HBO. And there was a lot of reason that HBO probably couldn't be Netflix because they had investors who demanded profits. But I would argue probably the more seminal moment was when Netflix went into original scripted television with House of Cards. Look, the streaming wars, we started, we started a world where HBO was, was in TV, was getting, I think, a quarter of the budget.
It's now been featured. I mean, just as FedEx and fulfillment has become a feature of a business that can monetize it through prime, media is becoming a feature of businesses that will monetize their programming through Mandalorian dolls, theme parks, paper towels, or phones or iPhones. So the media industry is started the decade, you know, with tremendous innovation. And now it is, I don't even know how to describe it.
It's being featured, if you will, or this notion that it's becoming a feature not a product that's a standalone profitable business in and among itself. And the next few years are going to be really crazy. But television, the defining art form, House of Cards, Netflix, you know, Reed Hastings was just kind of the, you know, the tech genius. I know he gets talked about a lot, but he doesn't get the same amount of oxygen as these other guys because again, here's, here's the thing, one of the things that media has taught me is to sync the big tech and Netflix.
So the contrast I take away from it is that social media, if you will, is nicotine. And that is, it's addictive and it's not good for you, but it doesn't necessarily, or we don't think it gives you cancer. It's, it's the advertising, which is the tobacco that gives you all the carcinogens and the cancer. And the reason why Netflix, which is just, just as important or as penetrator arguably has as much influence over people as a Facebook or a Twitter, the reason why it hasn't been weaponized, the reason why it isn't creating the type of damage is that it doesn't have advertising.
So for me, Netflix kind of shows that, okay, social media is the nicotine, but the real cancer of these business models and something we should look at is the advertising. Yeah. So I will say, I'm going to give it to Richard because look, they had done this, they had started a game of thrones much earlier. House of Cards did not come out until 2013.
I think, I think Netflix was taking from the HBO play very beautiful. And so I think the idea that television could be that good, you know, was, was something that I think HBO definitely pioneered completely. And then they still do succession. They still manage to hit it out of the park.
I'm going to leave it for a series of wins. They spent $50 or $70 million per Emmy and Amazon prime has spent $350 million and Netflix spent $200 million. The culture, the case studies that will be written by HBO or about HBO, I think will be more about how you create a culture that is that productive, that is able to produce such incredible quality on what is literally a fraction of the budget of the other players. And if I were any media company, it's like, if you're any basketball team, you watch where Michael Jordan goes, I would be watching where Richard goes.
He's going to happen. He's going to do it. He's an independent guy. I think he's been working for people for his whole life.
I met him when he was a PR guy, if you can believe it, at Time Warner and HBO actually. And he worked for Jeff Lucas, which was interesting. But I have to tell you, I just think that wherever he goes, he's going to, obviously it's been rumored and it's going to happily think he's going to do so. He's going to make stuff.
He's going to make stuff. But I think that's what's really important about executives like him. That's why I like him so much. He makes stuff.
And the stuff he makes is good. It's a pleasure to talk to someone who makes stuff. I do think HBO missed a lot of the tech turns 100%. I don't know if he could have done it.
They certainly couldn't have done it within Time Warner the way they were. But they definitely missed the tech turns. But in terms of ushering in this, you wouldn't have Maisel, you wouldn't have House of Cards, you wouldn't have every single one of those streaming networks is due to what HBO started many years ago when it was called Homebox Office, and I'm sorry about just movies. A lot of companies don't reap the benefit of what they did in a lot of ways and I think they're one of them.
But it's going to be an interesting time of who's going to win, obviously Disney's now here and doing a really good job. My kids are watching Disney Plus a lot now, which is interesting. And they've also moved to Apple Music from Spotify. So it'll be interesting to see if the big guys can come back and reclaim their crowns in this area.
Yeah, 100% will be. The media has become, whether it's a quote unquote company masquerading as a platform that's really a media company. And as you've said, propaganda has become even more powerful and more important. And we never realized it could be weaponized to this extent.
But it's just almost sort of impossible to figure out where it goes from here. But it's been a great 10 years, what I'll call creativity around media. And at the same time we've gotten all this shitty reality television, which is of course, Broadstone and Trump. Anyway, so win and fail of the decade, Scott.
If you had to pick, could you pick one big win and one big fail of the decade as it pertains to tech and business? I will go first if you would. I would like you to go first. I'm going to give it to Apple for, you know, Steve Jobs died in 2011.
And I think they've done okay. Like they've done, like everyone was sort of like saying, oh, now Apple was going to die with him. And I think they've done a really interesting job now. People could quibble with stuff, but they've really grown in certain ways.
They haven't been crazy creative in the way you think of them. But I think they've really done it. I think Tim Cook's done a very nice job of running a company. And its, you know, its valuation is huge.
It's gone up in 70% this year or something like that. And the big fail, even though it's a financial success, has to be faced with me. And the awful turn it's taken and inability to really recognize its need to be responsible. I hope it does.
I have great hopes. Just like Nancy Pelosi said about Donald Trump, I pray from Mark Zuckerberg that he will begin to turn this company to a more dulcet direction for our society. Thank you. Wow.
So just as James Carvel said in the great movie, Old School, when Will Ferrell provided a response with a bait question, and James Carvel responded, that was perfect. I think he nailed it. I think Apple's Renaissance. I think all this notion that Steve Jobs was a Jesus figure and no one could run the company, but Jobs and then this, you know, the first openly gay CEO of Fortune 500 Company, quietly tripled the market capitalization and made Apple.
I don't want to say relevant again, but increasingly relevant Apple is just, and then, you know, open stores that totally, went into this dying medium, went vertical, created these temples to the brand. And as they realize the broadcast was starting to lose its effectiveness, transferred money out of broadcast advertising into $7 billion in leases, which was arguably one of the greatest unlocks in the history of business. And then I think this dual-class, young, broken sociopath and its $2 billion beard that have, in my opinion, levied more damage than almost any company in modern history and still get to decide what are the algorithms that present the content that nudge the population of the Southern Hemisphere one way or another. I think Facebook is, and Mark Zuckerberg are the most dangerous organization and individual alive today.
So, yeah, I think you nailed it. Apple and Facebook, the wins and fails of last year. The opposite, too. They're kind of interesting because Tim, obviously, you know, has been outspoken comparatively.
What's interesting about Apple to me, you know, it's kind of a win for the old. You know, because they have, by the way, they could have retired, right? Everything could have just closed down after Steve Jobs died, and they would have been hit. They'd hit after hit after hit after hit.
But they continue. That's what's amazing to me is. This is a group of people. There's all kinds of issues with Apple around workplace and things like that, and they continue to have controversies around their apps, and things like that.
But in general, it's, you know, their taxes, come on, like they got a tax. You know, he started kissing up to Trump a little bit more than he should. But it's really interesting that this is an older group of people who've been together a very long time. And again, I've had so many hits, and I know it's like the Rolling Stones, because I'm trying to think of, like, what would be the rock bit?
Like, it just continues to make good music. Like, it's really kind of fascinating where you get that when you're that rich, and you've done that, had that much success, why you keep succeeding. And so, that's the heartening is an older lady. I think about it.
It's fine to be relevant. Why don't you go to St. Barr? It's part of the younger women.
Do I need to go on? Tim, you'll never see Tim. No. He's a very simple man, I think.
I think he's a very, he likes football from Alabama. I think that's where I went to college. He talks about football a lot. Yeah.
And he just loves Apple. I think he just, I don't see that. Like, he doesn't really strike me as, I mean, he's very nice sweaters, but otherwise I don't see a lot of spendy spendiness from him. But anyway, it'll be interesting to see if Zuckerberg can redeem himself.
Despite these, you know, like they say, I make a lot of money. So what? I must be right. That's not a good enough excuse anymore as far as I'm concerned.
Good for you. You build a great business by hurting other people. And I think they have to really start to, I would be really lovely to see that in the next decade for him. Not going to happen.
There's about as much a chance of that happening as you're getting me that rabbit coat you keep promising. It's not true. I have hope for Mark. This takes me back to a terrible and awful place when I was eight years old and we used to go to Mission Valley Mall in Laguna, Nagel and my dad would take my mom in, let her try and the rabbit coat.
It was $58 was coming for business. I'll get you a photo. I'll get you a photo. I'll get you a photo.
My dad is living with a flight attendant from Continental Airlines, Cara. It takes me to what Mark Zuckerberg has not done. Let's retire this story for the decade. Let's put it away.
Let's find a district attorney that does a redemption on Mark Zuckerberg. That's what we're going to do. We're not discussing the rabbit coat anymore. It's not happening.
It's done. We're going to have a little, we're going to have a little, like, funeral. The father of food processor. Food processor.
What are you going to do? You have to do your prediction. He's been married four times. What are younger?
One big prediction. And then we have to close. We have a really good close. Our parents are going to talk about us speaking of our parents.
He's that dad of yours. He's just impugned. Let's talk. What is your big prediction?
And then we've got to get out of here. I've got things to do. I've got decades. I've got decades.
I've got my decade to live. My prediction for 2020 is that we're going to see another 20 or 30% increase in the market capitalization of their tech. I just don't see anything slowing them down. I mean, the market might crash, but they'll outperform those four companies or five companies or outperform.
I just don't see anything getting underway right now. Everyone keeps waiting for their fall. I don't see it. We'll see.
Do you have to be back to kissing their ass? Is that what you're going to do? Well, no, I think they're terrible people. I'd like to see one or more of them in an orange jumpsuit.
But from a shareholder perspective, I just don't see unregulated monopolies. And they continue to be unregulated monopolies. And I vote with my feet. People say, well, it's hypocritical of you to be so disparaging these companies and then to invest in them and finance their growth.
And my feeling is I'm a capitalist. I don't want to be some professor in tie-dye barking at the moon. Everyone has an obligation for economic security. But effectively, if you did not invest in these, these companies and Microsoft and Netflix, and I forget what the other crazy performer was, dominoes, like it's the best performing stock other than Netflix, even kind of shut out from the massive increase in the S&P over the last 10 years.
And I just don't see that changing for the next one or two years. I think these companies are going to continue. Every time I use them, every time I look at their moves, every time I see an Amazon van, every time I order something seamlessly off of Instagram now, I think, oh my goodness, these companies, they're just getting their momentum. The flywheel, the mother of all flywheels, the most valuable company in the world, the most valuable company in the world, is EWS, once it's fun.
It's going to be the most valuable company. Who can't own a share of AWS? Who will not be able to not own shares in the biggest cloud company in the world? Those are going to be the shares you give your granddaughter at the christening.
Those are going to be the shares that every pension, every alternative investment company in the world has to own regardless of the evaluation. So anyways, my AWS model. Okay. You're going to keep getting rich and insulting the tech companies.
Very nice. There you go. That's how the dog rolls. He's complex.
Well, let me just then let me use the opportunity to say who raised you and we're going to find out in just a second before we head out for the decade Rebecca also called our parents to talk about how far we come from the decade. We're not lucky. We're not lucky. We're first.
Let's hear cameo from my mother. Lucky Carney, Lucretia Carney. Go for it. Cara is her own person as you know, much to my degree at times.
Yes. She was wearing the aviator sung glass that she was known for that she hasn't changed much. I didn't think she would be as famous, I guess, as she has become. Cara, I am so proud of you.
And while we disagree politically, I love you and I couldn't be more proud or happy for you at this time of your life. Oh my God. She always does this. She's like evil half the time and then calls something like this.
That's going to make you feel good. Yeah, it does. Yeah. Yeah.
But I don't like her political things. I do think Fox News has changed her brain. I really, truly do. It's like, I'm going to, when she dies someday, I'm going to have it.