If you're tired of endless strolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Peter. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you.
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I'm Kara Swisher. And I was right. I was right, Kara. I was so right.
That dog chocks up another debut. Listen up, clock. Listen, broken clock. It was going to happen.
And tomorrow, Tesla's below 100 bucks a share, and then I will be vindicated. And everyone will love me. Everyone will love me. I love it.
You know, we talked about this last week. When I said he should step down and you said he's going to step down and broken clock is right. You said that. You said broken clock.
Do you remember? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well broken clock.
You are right. You are correct. It's the right thing. Did you see the stock going?
It was crazy. We're going to talk more about it in a little bit. But Merry Christmas. You got an early Christmas gift, everyone on Twitter is saying.
Yeah, it was so funny. Everyone on Twitter is like, Oh my God, I'm so excited for you. Like I was getting married or something. No, it was weird.
Everyone thought this. My sister's like, You must be so happy. I don't know. Happy is the right word.
Well, we're going to discuss how you feel about it. We're going to break it down. But how was your Thanksgiving speaking of your sister? It was wonderful.
We went to a place called Staniel Key in the Exumas. I saw the pictures. You know, snarkling. Got the Zumas.
Got Zumas from places. Or like FaceTime's from gorgeous places. And I'm sitting in my sad little studio in freezing cold DC without heat, essentially. Yeah.
No, you have a rough life. Yeah. Your seven houses in clamoram on your ninth wife is 15 child. No, it's rough for the swishers.
Rough for the salt and the swish. How was swisher picker upper? Give the name picker upper? No, no, it's still salt.
And my Thanksgiving was well. Oh, wow. It's asking. It was the white fish.
We saw. My Thanksgiving was one of those. My favorite holiday. No Jesus.
No, just food. What did you have? What did you have? Oh, wait, what did you have?
Some people have different things. Oh, kidding. It's like they come again. We spent like $11 million on a turkey imported in from some Iranian town where they only feed the turkeys other turkeys.
And it's like it becomes. So your white. The most literally the most rest I've had in a long time was my partner said to me, OK, I am leaving for five minutes. You need to watch the turkey.
Oh, you need to watch it. You have to watch it. Well, the temperature can go above this level or down below this level. I know I'm going to screw this up.
People are very funny about their turkeys. It's funny. Oh, God. I just shot.
You know what? I got a free turkey breast from my son's boss, Pam, the butcher. She gave me turkey boobs as she called them up. Huge turkey boobs.
And we dunked that mother in in buttermilk and left it there. And it was delicious. Who was with you for Thanksgiving? Well, it was just me and Amanda and the two young ones, Clara and Saul.
But then the boys showed up with we had some oysters sent to us by friends as a gift. And so the boys just showed up and then we all were together. It was nice. It was a very lovely time.
We had a good time. They had to go. They had to split Thanksgiving's between my ex and me, but they just decided to come over and we had to they ate all the oysters. I think we said oysters and that was that.
So Louie and Alex, you don't have like a modern family Thanksgiving. We all get together. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, but my sons are adept at oyster shucking. So I was pleased they were there.
So that's that's that is nice. Yeah, it was great. No, we don't do that. No, lesbians.
That's not it. I know people think that of lesbians, but I do not think that's a necessarily good idea. That's my feeling. Yeah, well, my family had a bit of an argument over Thanksgiving dinner.
So I just clicked the end meeting button. Oh, you don't. Anyway, we have a lot to talk about suddenly we have a lot to talk about. So coming up on the show today, we're talking about obviously the big shake up in Twitter and how Scott feels about it and how it in fact Scott and what Scott thinks is going to happen.
A new covid variant that's got the world on edge and will also speak to friend of pivot, John McWhorter, who I really love and his new book woke racism. I had him recently on Twitter space. It's hugely popular. He's got a lot to say we agree on very little, but I really think he's incredibly fantastic.
Thinker. Anyway, first, and you're going to be hearing us talk a lot more about Natalie Printer controls, but safety for young people online more broadly. And I'm going to be talking about these issues with Congress relatively soon. Instagram CEO will testify for Congress next week regarding the app's toxic mental health impacts.
We've kind of been waiting for this. Adam Asary is his first time testifying. He gets he's on the Twitter a lot, making little speeches and stuff, but he spoke about his upcoming appearance on Instagram. Usually these social media hearings are awash, but what do you think?
He's kind of a live wire. You know what? You should take this. You know better than I do.
I think he's really he likes the spotlight. I think he's his Instagrams and tweets are funny. They're interesting. He definitely likes attention.
And I think he's got to learn in front of these people, perhaps to take it down a few notches. I think that'll be hard for him. But we'll say maybe he'll be well trained and they'll keep him in check. I don't know what he can say except we're sorry and we're working on it.
If he says things like, well, we may not be the real real. If he argues with him, I think he's in trouble. I think he should just sit there and take it, unfortunately for him. I think it's, you know what?
I think it's I think it's his job interview or a striout for to be CEO Facebook. Interesting. Because if he does well, if he's combative, but just combative enough, but likable and makes good points and forceful, he'll be the CEO of Facebook, which is a new world. It'll be created as a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge.
People think Andrew Bosworth is the person who's going to be not always mix them up. We've interviewed them together. Is that right? He's the CTO.
Yeah, yeah, he's a really close to Mark. I don't know. I feel like a tech person is going to be taken just like in the Twitter situation. Probably right.
Talk about stuff. But this guy's a really interesting character and he can be very touchy and stuff, but he's also very funny and obviously talented. People seem to like him that work there. But I think Congress is a whole different beast.
And I don't what would you say if you were him? What would you advise him if you were PR in him? We're proud of the progress we've made. We need to do better.
Okay. Three things you remember in a crisis. One, talk to our gut takes responsibility. I take responsibility for this.
I take it very seriously. Two, acknowledge the problem. This is unacceptable. What's going on here is wrong.
We think a lot of it has probably been exaggerated. We think a lot of it makes for a good headline and it's been exaggerated. But even if it's a fraction of what has been claimed here, which we acknowledge. Should he even say that?
I think he shouldn't say that. I think they should stop with that line of PR. I'm sorry, you're saying don't condition it. Just say.
Don't condition it. Yeah. Why would you condition it? That's a good point.
I think it'll be impossible for them not to not to go to a lot of this is an plonifer portion, but and probably some of it has to share. So anyways, and then list all the things they're doing to try and address it and to say to, you know, and he'll he'll you watch. He'll bring in some personal stuff. You know, I have a daughter to bring in.
He'll turn it into a personal story and talk about all the stuff they're doing. But this is an opportunity for a new face to say there's a new sheriff in town. I'm taking a different approach. I think it becomes off as combative and in your face.
I think it's going to get really ugly, really fast with the guy. Yeah, I think the problem is when they say what are you doing? The last one of the specific questions are you going to enforce identity? Well, what about age gating?
Yeah. Well, you know, the questions will get very pointed, very fast. I hope unless it's just about grandstanding. Like we want to protect her.
You'll see a lot of that. Yeah, I know. You'll see a lot of that. You'll see a lot of a lot of the questioning.
They'll take up their entire five minutes and they'll never get a chance to speak. They'll just make speeches. It's going to be hard for me like to speak. He loves to speak.
Anyway, we'll see what happens. Adam Good Luck and come see me if you're in DC. We'll have coffee. Anyway, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin is a new owner of an original US Constitution.
I don't believe these are for private sale after you outbid a crypto coalition that's thought about the documents. He paid over $43 million for the rare copy. Griffin isn't known to be a collector of historical artifacts, but he is a skeptic of crypto currency. We are gushing the crypto boys.
Meanwhile, the group behind the field may have to pay over $1 million in Ethereum fees to refund their backers. They had a group of them. This is really interesting. I thought this was fascinating.
I don't know if we have enough billionaires to send off all the crypto dudes, but what do you think about this? Well, if you think about valuation, the more people you can get into to bid on something and their returns or expectations are lower and oftentimes they want to own, they get psychic value out of owning a share in the Green Bay Packers. They get psychic value out of owning a share of the Glasgow Rangers which I'm going to own a bunch. Because it's fun.
shareholder and Apple, and typically speaking the private to public leap where you go from a small group of institutional investors to a large number of retail investors, results in greater valuation and a greater tolerance to support a higher valuation. They're willing to pay higher prices. I don't know if it's because they're less disciplined or they get more emotional reward, they're not prepared, whatever you want to call it. So the idea of taking an organization that has a mission and setting up that kind of smart contract if you will and then expanding it to say, okay, there's a small number of universe, really, of people who are going to buy the Constitution.
They're just not a lot of people who will put in. And spill gates and some other guys. Yeah, 40 million bucks for a piece of American history that may or may not be resellable, nah, yeah, where do you store it, what do you do with it? So, but when you say to an organization, you get to a museum, they often do that, but go ahead.
If you give people the opportunity to buy a piece of Constitution for a hundred bucks, the auspices of an organization that has trust, a governance that is built in with technology, with a lack of human arbiters who are going to, you believe screw you, you're going to see, I think from Dow's, I think this is just to be kidding. Yeah, you said this over, this has been one of your latest things. Well, what, you're going to have a doubt, a doubt, like basically say we're going to acquire the Dallas Cowboys, or we're going to bid on, we're going to bid on all birds, or we're going to see Dow's do some fucking crazy shit in the next 12 months. That's going to be very exciting.
And the idea, it's like the means of people, right? I mean, in that genre. Well, it's interesting because valuations are things trade on fundamentals, sometimes they trade on technicals, and then the third thing that's miniatures is they can trade on a movement. And what happens when an organization says we're going to fund a hundred million dollars to go into an organization to go acquire a certain amount of Chevron, and then we're going to try and replace the board and go all non fossil fuels.
You could have someone and they could pull it off. They could pull it off. So I just think the imagination, I'm very excited. Stone and suit is what they call it, stone soup, but they didn't get the, they lost a Ken Griffin and it'll be interesting about sellers if they want to sell it to these people.
That's, I mean, of course money is money. So, but it's really exciting. I think this is an interesting new trend Scott. I think you put your finger on the pulse of the situation as usual.
So also speaking of it's very briefly Chinese regulators have asked DD, China's right during giant, which has seen a lot of changes, including departure of executive etc. Lots of control to delist from the New York Stock Exchange. They say it's out of concern for data security. Just, I don't, it doesn't make any sense.
It's just more China control of major tech areas. I think that's pretty much that. Yeah. Somebody at DD's pissed off the wrong person.
I remember meeting with a friend of mine. You just shut up on my office and we become friendly. And he's this wonderful Russian guy. He's an entrepreneur now and it started some really interesting companies in the US.
And I said, why did you leave Russia? Yeah. It seems like you were doing really well there. I imagine you got a really nice life as a wealthy person living in Moscow.
And he said, you never know when the call's gonna come. I'm like, what do you mean the call? He said, well, you don't get the call because your career can end, even your life can end with a call. And then there's the wrong person calls and decides you're an enemy of the state or an enemy of their company, whatever it is.
And he's like, and you just don't know what can happen. Yeah. And this call happened. Someone at DD really pissed off the wrong person.
Yeah, it's interesting. They decided to make an example of them for lack of a better term. Yeah. Yeah.
But it's, I mean, they're basically, they're basically going to run them out of business. Yeah. It's an interesting thing because there, there's all these various people there. I met the founder many years ago in China.
He had been working at Alibaba before that, I think he's Chang-cheng Wei. But he didn't speak English, but super aggressive entrepreneur. You could just feel like he was speaking, we had a translator between us, but he would, you could feel sort of the, just like Jack Ma, I mean, a lot of people there, like at all these companies. And so, I think it's interesting to see what happens to this class of entrepreneur there in China, but they were very eager to meet with reporters and et cetera, et cetera.
And it was an interesting time. Obviously, Jean Liu, who comes from a very prominent tech family in China also, sort of in squash down. We'll see what happens there. I mean, there was a class of entrepreneurial that China, in China that I wonder where it goes.
It is an interesting thought when my friends brought up and you're kind of nibbling around the edges of it, it's the huge opportunity for America because our wild, you know, we constantly criticize it. The wild west of tech has gotten too wild to see if there's not enough sheriffs. But at the same time that respect for innovation, that cutting them a lot of slack is probably going to attract a lot of Chinese entrepreneurs, I think. I mean, this is what happens.
This is why entrepreneurship is quashed so much in a lot of countries and that is you can build something great and then have it taken away from you, buy to government or by a nationalist or populist movement. And America is known for kind of erring on the side of you. Who's coming for you? Who would you say?
Don't know. Don't know. Anytime. That's why I buy a great dink.
Don't get into my house. You're talking about me. I got one. You're talking about me.
She's not me. She's not me. You would scare. She's really an aggressive.
No. No. No. No.
That's not me. That's not like me. Yeah. That's really big.
I'm not. It's a little bit bigger than that. It's a little bit bigger. It's a little bit bigger.
It's a little bit bigger. But listen, we're going to get on to our big stories. We're going to talk about Twitter. We're going to make that number two because of John coming on because I think that'll be an interesting person get some thoughts on.
But let's very quickly talk about the new coronavirus variant that has realed markets and disrupted international travel dubbed, I think it's Ami Cron. The variant was first identified in South Africa. It's been found in the UK, Israel, Belgium, Hong Kong. The WHO has labeled it a variant of concern.
label you a variant of concern. The market dipped on the news. That sounds a little sexy. I mean, I think that's an interesting way whatsoever.
The Dow has its birthday year on Friday, though. Zoom and Peloton shares increased in price. Markets even down again on Monday, but people are worried. The US, because people are sort of coming back just here in DC, they had dropped the mask mandate, which is probably going to go right back up, rolled out travel restrictions on southern African nations.
President Biden has been criticized for delaying the US ban as well after the holiday weekend. It's a very dicey political issue. You know, everybody sort of had it with doing, going back and forth and back and forth. And, you know, it just adds fuel to the fire of the crazies.
We're like, now they're going to keep us under their thumb with these different variants, et cetera. Moderna and Pfizer are racing to provide an Ami-Kron specific booster by early next year. I just got the regular booster. Meanwhile, hundreds of Google employees signed up manifesto protesting the company's vaccine mandate.
People are getting, you know, sort of, oh, someone did at the party told me they were over COVID. I was like, okay, just, okay, whatever. I didn't know what to say. I just moved on at this holiday party.
So what do you think? At the start of the pandemic, we talked about contact tracing and testing as a primary means to fight this now to hope it's for better vaccines? What are your thoughts about what's happening here? So I'm trying to be better about staying in my lane and that is not speaking to the epidemiological ramifications here because I have no fucking idea or training here.
But what struck me about it was how fast the markets snap back and it's now become a different input for stocks. And that is Moderna added $13.5 billion of market capitalization. So zoom out at billions, you know, airline stock. It's become, we're such a consumer or a dollar-driven society that kind of things we look to.
We look at infection rates, but everyone kind of looks at the markets and says, well, how's this impacting business? And what struck me is this conversation over office space. I think we are getting so good and so used to not going into work and not traveling. This has had an impact on me.
I was excited. I just joined the board of ledger, the cold store hardware wallet out of Paris. And I was supposed to go to a board meeting in a week and a half. And it's in Paris.
And I saw that Paris has instituted a mass mandate. And I started thinking, well, one kind of form of citizenship is you just don't need to be a vessel to carry anything anywhere. And fewer places you go that aren't necessary. So I'm probably going to say to them, I'm cutting non-necessary or unnecessary business for a lot of it.
And I'm probably not going to go. When you think about that has big impact on the economy, right? Because if it's a business person not going, it's not like I'm going to go back twice. I'm just not going.
I'm just not going. Right. And so this has big impact. It struck me with how quickly the markets snap back.
And also, I tend to think this stuff now, I don't want to call it hyperbole, but it makes for a great headline, right? A variant that might get around. So I wonder how it'll be really interesting to see if in fact it is. I mean, the virus is I guess doing what's supposed to be.
It's more infectious. This is what a virus does. It varies itself. That's the whole point of a virus, really.
That's this job. And this one's doing an excellent job at being a virus. But it's true. It's really interesting to think about like how, you know, I've been going to several, just one holiday party for Hanukkah and it was everything was outdoors.
It was really interesting. It was what happened to be a warm night last night. And it was so weird to be in a social setting, right? And then I was like, I'd go home.
I was like, I have to wear pants. I've sort of been like this all the time and I invited me to an event. And I was like, do I have to wear pants? Are there pants involved?
And I just feel like the virus has beat me into our pants. It'll be interesting to see, you know, we of course have our event coming up and code went back and forth and back and forth for a long time and it worked very well. And I think if we do it in the right way, I doubt we would cancel it, right? We would just try to do what we do to code.
Just trying. But yeah, it's a new way of living. And we'll do it in a very safe way. But it'll be interesting to see what kind of calculations of course it's in Florida.
So it doesn't really matter what you can do, whatever you want to go here. So what is what does the Google knows to say though that people don't want to vaccine mandates. They also don't want to go back to work, etc, etc. I know people think that so how many liberalies not, I don't know why people keep saying that just because they are not so liberal.
It's more libertarian than liberal. Exactly. Right. Exactly.
I think if liberal when it's convenient, it's libertarian when they don't want to pay taxes or really. They're just not they're just not they're not that their centrist would be what I would say most of them are, but they're not risk taking politically most of them in either direction actually. So what do you what do you imagine is going to happen to these you know with these increasing protests that haven't been that many in this country compared to in Europe and etc. But I think people are resisting it.
I think I think that's the way I think. What's the total employee base of Google? I mean it's tens of thousands. Thank you.
So yeah, but my sense is people people I saw the story and I thought well, it's to me this is more validation that people are fine with the vaccine mandate if they can only get a couple hundred people to sign this thing at Google. Yeah, that's true. It's a great one. It's to me it's it's more like well that means you know 22,000 didn't and I imagine everyone heard about it and could have signed it.
Yeah, there's a quiet as I said, this quiet group of people and then super loud people. But there's a I think I think a lot of everything obviously about higher ed lately. In the last 50 years ago, one in four jobs required a college education. Now it's two and three.
Whereas the number of college seats has barely kept pace with population growth, but that totally misses the demand for college degrees and that is the number of jobs that are created the need a college degree has doubled if not tripled. Meaning that if you have a college degree from a strong institution much less of a degree in engineering or computer science, you have tremendous leverage. And around those 50 years ago, if you decided you didn't want to vaccinate it, be like, okay, get the fuck out of here. Yeah.
The amount of leverage that has transitioned to college educated or elite school certified employees is really incredible. And so to me, this is all about leverage like, oh, this bothers me. I'm gonna have a walk out if you did. I'm trying to imagine doing a walk out in 1970s, I TT, I would have liked to see what happened to you.
They would have been like, okay, just keep walking. Yeah. So I think this I think this reflects a society where there are people who get to protest and people who get health care and people who get to take the Google bus and people who can think big thoughts and talk about how important progressive values are. And then people in the middle of the state are like, well, isn't that nice that you have these big liberal thoughts after you get rich?
Whereas a lot of people- These aren't liberal. These are more like, no, nobody touches my body. But I saw this as validation of the vaccines. What do you think?
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. People in Silicon Valley confuse me politically.
So who knows why they're doing it? They sometimes just like to do things. You're right. It's a small group of people.
It is. It just is. Just like with everything else. They're very, I would say, a very non-political group of people late to the point of laziness as long as you give them dry cleaning and snacks.
They're just type of way. And so I don't expect more. I don't find them to be leaders from a societal perspective or a political perspective. So whatever.
They can yammer on us. And they love to yammer. They're yammer. So it's the highest degree you're right.
All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Jack Dorsey's big move and welcome back our friend at Pivot, John McWhorter, author of the book, Woke Racism. Hey, I'm Matt Bischell, comedian, writer, and floating head. You may or may not have seen on your 4U page.
And I'm starting a brand new podcast. Wait, wait. Don't swipe away. It's called That Sounds Like A Lot.
As in, that feeling when you check your phone in the morning, you read three headlines and you immediately think, oh, that sounds like a lot. I can't deal with all this. But guess what? I can deal with it.
And I'm going to get into it every Friday. I'll break down whatever chaos is happening in the world. Then I'll sit down with a comedian. You can be progressive and not be like fucking annoying.
Maybe an actor. They got communism in zone too far. You go, why? Does the Sadie Hawkins dance happen?
Maybe a filmmaker. Since leaving that show, I'm challenged to sparing. I just got to hang out and try to do some of the charm life. Could be a politician, basically anyone who responds to my cold DMs.
We're recording the whole thing in a beautiful studio. So yes, you can watch it on YouTube or you can listen wherever you get your podcast. This is not the place to get the news, but it is the place to feel a little better about it. That sounds like a lot.
Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Maria Sharapova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey.
Follow Pretty Tough wherever you get your podcasts. Alright, Sky, I'm gonna just let you have this one. Jack Dorsey is leaving Twitter as you predicted for two and a half years. I don't know how long we've been together.
How long we've been together. I think our first show you said that. He was the CEO and we'll leave the board, which that to me was much more interesting, not saying chairman, etc. The CTO since 2011, he's been CTO since 2011, he's met the companies since 2011, Pare Agarwal takes over as CEO immediately.
Brett Taylor, who was president of Salesforce, who formerly worked at Facebook, I know him pretty well, will become board chairman. Interesting. I really like Brett Taylor, quite a bit. He's a lovely guy.
Twitter stock jumped on the news of Dorsey leaving. It came very suddenly. He's been delving into cryptocurrency. There were rumors running all over the place around the cryptocurrency stuff.
Is the government interested in him? Is this and that? But he's really moved on. I think he allegedly is the person who picked the new CEO, whose preference was.
What do you think? Give me some thoughts. Well, it comes down to two things. That is the stock is where it was in October of 2014.
Meanwhile, over at Google, etc. We'll go ahead. Okay, well, let's talk about that. Let's see where Google was in 2013.
Google has gone up sevenfold in the last eight years and Twitter has gone up zero. Twitter, for any tech company much less, a social media platform has been a terrible performer. It's like, well, what's wrong? When you get to the basic question of, do we have the wrong guy or gal?
I was like, well, he works our part time. That used to be end of conversation. But this is when I doubled down on this prediction. Jack Dorsey was fired the day, not that Elliot got seats on the board.
But part of the agreement that they came to with Elliot, who by the way, Twitter knew they were all wet when a big shareholder came in, was that they des staggered the board. Now, what does that mean? It means that the entire board can be swept out at an annual meeting. And what that means is that there's this company's now held accountable, that the weapon of mass delay or weapons of mass obfuscation known as a staggered board are gone.
And I believe, I don't know if it was six months ago, I don't know if it was three months ago, but they said, boss, it is time for you to go. In fact, he's leaving the board. He has 93% of his wealth at swear. What's interesting, Cara, is I think there's an on zero probability that within the next, first off, by the end of 2022, Twitter is no longer a independent company.
This thing's in play now. It's an incredible asset. It is undervalued asset we both talked about. Again, I'll be paying a lot of attention to Brett Taylor.
He's connected all over the place, Salesforce, obviously, close with Mark Benioff who at one point tried to buy Twitter. So he's, and he's all over. He's connected all over tech, very well-liked guy. It was at Facebook.
They bought a startup a million years ago. I think it was interesting. They pick tech forward folks over the media ones. These are all tech Brett and Parle are both tech forward people versus media, meaning they're not leaning into the media.
They also didn't go with their CFO, Ned Segal, who was sort of against making any cryptocurrency investments. They had debated that and Vijigotti, who made the big Trump decision, I think most pretended to Jack, but Vijig was the one that was really at the forefront of a lot of their free speech stuff. It'll be interesting that I want to watch what happens to them to those executives. Also, their head product came on and a number of other, and some others.
So it'll be interesting to see what happens to them. You know, it was likely, you know, it was likely to acquire your Twitter as now. Square, you said Square, but there's others, Salesforce. There's what's correct.
Yeah, it could be a crypto company. It could be a lot of things. So it could be Square. Sorry, FinTech.
I shouldn't say crypto FinTech. PayPal. Yeah. And it'll be interesting to see what happens around these free speech decisions.
Now, Jack has been pretty steadfast and forward compared. I know a lot of people criticize him, but he's made decisions before other people make difficult decisions around free speech, harassment, all kinds of stuff. Lee engineering, what it means for Donald Trump, which I think, you know, with a new owner. What's fascinating, they've had just a few CEOs of Twitter.
It cost always one, obviously, of the founder was it'll be interesting to see what this guy does using, he's just a place that he could be like such an Adeliot Microsoft to do something with it. I don't know what you think. I guess all this things imply that this kind of influence this user base, a FinTech company can come in and turn what is right now, I think a $37 billion market job company. If you're, if you're, if you're PayPal, you're $250 billion.
If you can just get a fraction of those people to start using your platform, is that worth a 12 or 15% dilution? That's why Mark Benny off wanted to buy it. That's why I think a lot of people care are sharpening their pencils. Yeah.
Looking at Twitter now. And now it's a single class of it's not a staggered board. This thing is, this thing is in play. And I think Jack, people say he doesn't have a big ego.
I can't imagine he wouldn't enjoy turning around and reuniting his sister wives. I think he's going to, he's going to, he's going to, that's all together. I know I like Jack. You know, I like Jack.
You know, I like Jack. You make fun of him all the time, but I do think he has some ethical. He's like a nice man. He is and is interesting and he's got ethical much more.
I mean, I think he made it. He took a long time to do it and argued with me and others many times about it, but I thought he, they, especially Vijay, who I have great respect for there. They're very thoughtful around that. That said, I've talked to a lot of people recently and they're like, this is the craziest freaking place to work ever.
It's like a lot of turnover, a lot of drama. It's always been like, always since it's beginning, a very emotional company. And so, you know, there's a lot of chaos internally at this company, almost since it's founding. That said, the impact is so much greater than its value than its financial value, which is interesting.
It's a modern economy is a version of the New York Times. And that is, it's arguably one of the most influential organizations in the world. And it's shitty for shareholders. And it shouldn't, it probably, it either needs to, it either needs to step up and start figuring out a membership model, like Twitter, blue, come on, can you have a fucking break.
And it needs to get serious. It needs to pivot to a different business model, or it needs to be acquired by FinTech Company to better monetize the platform. But this thing, oh my gosh, is this thing in plain out? The other thing is, it's an opportunity for them to really clean up the shit.
I mean, I absolutely love Twitter. And I can't tell you, 80% of the really negative comments I get are from a bot or from an anonymous account who is trying to erode the credibility of their target with the Virginary tactics. It is a cesspool of lies and unfair of slander and defamation. And they could clean it up.
Yeah, some great things that let me just say, Twitter is also one of the most amazingly fun places to be. Anyway, just so the biggest legacy of Dorsey, besides inventing it, thanks, Jack, is Tweet Length from 140 to 280 characters, Twitter Spaces, obviously Twitter Blue, Twitter Moments, a short-lived fleet speaker, some of the mistakes, obviously it's shut down, Periscope and Vine, which left an opening for TikTok. People do not know this, but Twitter was another company around podcasting. And they failed.
And Twitter came out of it much like Slack, came out of a gaming company. So this company has had quite a ride and a lot of characters around it. So let us give thanks to Jack Dorsey at the same time, Jack, it needs to be worth a lot more. So you need to move along.
Well, I have a slightly different take and that is he did a really shitty job. And that is he was bad for shareholders, bad for the Commonwealth and bad for the planet. So good riddance. Okay, I would not like to run that company.
And actually, we would have a fascinating time running that company. I would make a hard call, so I certainly would say with you. Anyway, thank you, Scott, for your thoughts. Tesla's stock $100.
That's all I need. Okay, I know, I know that's true. But that's not happening. Yeah, that guy's got a lot more zip in the news.
Anyway, we're going to let's bring in our friend of Pivot. John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics at Columbia University and a columnist of the New York Times. In his new book, Woke Racism, he argues that anti racism has become a new religion on the left. And it's hurting the people it claims to serve.
Welcome to Pivot, John. How are you doing again? I'm so thrilled to be here again. There's Scott.
I'm going to let Scott do many of the questions because you and I had a really great discussion on Twitter spaces. But I just want to say, I'd love your thoughts on the Twitter situation. We just got just trashed Jack Dorsey. I don't know if you've heard, but he was finally right.
Broken clock right about him leaving after years of predicting it. So I just love your thoughts about what do you think this means, if anything? You use Twitter a lot and you talk about it a lot. So I love that question.
And then we're going to let Scott take over. Well, to tell you the truth, Twitter always surprises me because it brings out a certain kind of person who is a very ordinary person. We often talk about the Twitter troll as if it's some bizarre, physically deformed or socially deformed person. But you can tell that a lot of people who behave that way on Twitter are quite ordinary people.
And there has always been a kind of person who would have been willing to spread this kind of vial if there only existed the technology to do it. Definitely there needs to be some sort of re-considering of Twitter and how it operates in general. Nobody's been prepared for what Twitter has been. And I'm not sure that I've seen him as somebody who was in a position to really think in a larger way about how we need to limit or change this thing that makes everybody a village and is a force for evil as much as it's a force for good.
So what would that change be? Well, as far as I'm concerned, we really do have to consider the notion of freedom of communication when it comes to the sorts of things that can happen on that platform. Who's allowed to be on it for how long, how carefully it's monitored. All of those things are ones that challenge our whole sense of how we're going to monitor things like that because nobody expected that everybody would be able to be in each other's faces via some sort of technology.
Until roughly 2009 when Twitter became default, it really does change the entire fabric of existence. In many ways, I think for example, and people tell me that I'm wrong about this, but I think that the reason that the race dialogue went crazy starting in the early teens was partly because Twitter became default in 2009. I think that had an awful lot to do with the rise of the Tea Party too. Many people seem to think that race was the main issue there.
But I think that also there was a time when Facebook and Twitter became default. That was 2009. That happens to also be exactly when Obama came into office. So I think the book has yet to be written on how significant these things are.
And it's taken a lot of people by surprise. Twitter shapes history. And we're just now beginning to get a sense of how that works. Professor, I'm curious what any of your thoughts regarding the statements that came from out of the Chancellor's Office at UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz regarding the verdict in the written house trial.
Did you see those? No, this I did not say. You mean this morning? No, so there was a couple of statements from Chancellor's of various UC campuses stating, I mean, basically they were what I would call casting a pretty serious value judgment saying that the jury got it wrong.
And there's been a lot of conversation around whether Chancellor's or school leadership should be in the business of creating a platform for these types of discussions, but not actually issuing critiques themselves. And it just felt like it was kind of right in your right in your wheelhouse. Well, no, it's it makes perfect sense if you understand that we are in a period where a certain kind of radical leftist position and I don't mean radical leftist itself as any kind of slur, but a certain radical leftist position believes that battling power differential should be the center of all intellectual moral and artistic endeavor. That is the basic tenant there.
And the idea that you battle power differentials in this way is held so fiercely that you can think of it as a kind of religion. And I believe that it really is what an anthropologist would call a religion and part of it is part of the reason that it is a religion is that there's an evangelical aspect to it. And within this religion, the things that we label as schools actually become churches of a kind as such is very natural that a Chancellor would feel that he or she needed to preach or pro pound about something of this kind when really they're kind of stepping outside of what we would think that person's job would be. And so the written house verdict is one of those things that, you know, turned on certain basic legal technicalities and did not correspond with what most people morally think of written house himself.
That's something that doesn't sit well with that particular church. And so naturally, you have a Chancellor making that kind of statement. Now, the Chancellor wouldn't think of themselves as serving in a religious function. They don't use those labels.
They don't use those words. I think that's what was going on. So talk about your book. Well, Grace, you and I talked about the title because when you started writing it, you were you said that because the word has gotten so weighted, just like fake news and so many others that we discussed.
So why don't you talk a little bit about the development of the book and the title and how you look at the word right now. You're a linguist, obviously. Yeah, it's um, I really do think that it has gotten to the point that a certain kind of person feels that they have found the ultimate answer. I think they really do believe that, you know, Kant used to believe that.
Now they believe that. They think that they're doing good. The idea that if we battle power differentials and we get rid of that problem, then we can walk on into a happier future. And especially there's an idea that we need that to happen before Black America can do better than it does.
And so what you get is not just an ordinary political program, but you have something where people who don't agree with you are to be chased out of the room, they're to be fired, they're to be defenestrated, you're to consider it noxious to be around them even virtually. That sort of thing reminds you of the way heretics were handled not too long ago. In certain kinds of religions and some of them now, as opposed to a political program where there's the notion that white people are permanently stained by white privilege, whether or not that's true, the parallel with the notion of original sin is rather eerie. And there are all sorts of these things, including sometimes a suspension of disbelief.
For example, the idea that you want to defund the police, I understand where that comes from. And a person who belongs to this religion will say that we need to defund the police because the terrible things that the police do. But Black people living in underserved neighborhoods tend not to agree with that. They often want more police.
We're not supposed to talk about that. That hyper woken kind of person doesn't want to hear that as they say it's complicated, but don't seem terribly interested in unraveling the complication. This is what I really do believe has become a religious point of view. And the problem is that often, as in that last example, it hurts Black people or insults Black people rather than helping them because it's come down to what I hate to say is about virtue signaling.
It's signaling that you know that racism exists. And often that's given primacy over actually thinking about things that will help people of a race out in the real world beyond the confines of our discussion, if that makes sense. And you've said that the racial justice movement of the last couple of years has been more involved in virtue signaling versus actually helping Black America. Let's move.
Let's go on the offense here. What is it we could do as organizations and people in media and people that like to think of themselves as progressives to actually engage in a conversation and dialogue, the results and actually helping Black America? I truly believe, and I've been arguing this for 15 years, not just in the wake of this book, I truly believe that what would really help Black communities more than just about anything else is for there to be a sustained battle by all engaged Americans against this thing called the war on drugs. And I know that for many people that might sound like oversimplifying that we need to have a larger and more abstract conversation about racist bias, about systemic racism.
Well, you know, the war on drugs is part of systemic racism. I'm not denying that systemic racism exists, but the war on drugs creates a Black market for hard drugs. You can make half of a living selling drugs on that Black market. And if you do it, very often you wind up in jail or killed or hurt.
And the time that you spend on that Black market is time that you're not spending getting training and legal work. Now, if I were an underserved Black man growing up in a neighborhood like that, I can imagine selling drugs instead of going and getting a job in a shoe store makes perfect sense. It's not that these are bad people. But if that temptation is there, it ends up ruining Black lives, which would not be ruined if quite simply there were no such thing as that Black market.
That's all I'm not arguing against the war on drugs for libertarian or libertarian reasons. If there were no way to make half of a living selling heroin or anything else on the street, the same people who drift into that choice would drift into getting legal work, in which case we should celebrate and fund vocational education, two years of vocational education for such times, so that they can learn how to repair air conditioners or become electricians or do any number of things, the sorts of which people like us see and we think, boy, those people sure make a lot of money. We always say that about the plumber. How about more Black plumbers?
The idea being that that's where they start. That would help, I believe, more than just about anything, that fashionable anti-racist of the moment are talking about. Were you often wonder about feasibility? All right.
Let me ask two things then, John, because the war on drugs was started by Nixon, the GOP, right, in terms of that, who are now the ones pushing back against this idea of cancel culture, the most probably, the Trump people, everything like that. But one of the things that tends to happen is it really, as powerful as it's made out to be, or is it sort of a loud group of people? Because let's go through them. Louis C.
K just got nominated for a 2022 Grammy. Mel Gibson is now directing the new lethal weapon. Dave Chappelle has said, if this is being canceled, I love it. And his special still on Netflix, he literally was not canceled.
And then a lot of people self-canceled and then scream about it. Glenn Greenwald, John Kleece goes on and on and on. And then they complain about wokeness, but they're doing better than ever. So talk a little bit.
And as you know, you and I have argued about this, I think some things do need to be made accountable. And the word cancel culture and the word woke have gotten, something's happened to them the same thing with fake news, where they don't mean a thing. So could you do a better definition of what you think cancel culture means? Because a lot of people look like they're doing great as having been canceled, allegedly.
That's an interesting take on it. And it's just like what the word woke were caught amidst an evolution cancel culture. And we think particularly of entertainers. Yeah, most entertainers don't get canceled partly because the nature of technology is such that how much can you cancel somebody, even with say Bill Cosby, if you want to see the Cosby show, you can.
But there was a canceled career, but that was a particularly, particularly egregious example. But in general, yes, people who complain that they're being canceled often are no more being canceled than say, Josh Hawley was. But I think cancel culture, just like with critical race theory, the definition has expanded beyond whether or not a comedian can get work for a year and a half. It's also just the general idea that if you're not on board with a certain extremist and usually anti-racist position, then you don't deserve to just be verbally or writtenly abused.
Of course, that's going to happen. You don't deserve to be critiqued, but you should be fired or you should be considered somebody who's not fit for polite company. And so we're talking about them taking random things, Andrew Sullivan being all but fired from New York Magazine, because of his views, which few people would consider to be extremist. But people at New York Magazine just couldn't put up with his even virtual presence.
So he says, let me just say, so he said, I work there. It's not quite that. It's a little more complex than that. But go ahead.
You mean to Andrew Sullivan? Yes. Okay. Or something like an example that I use in the book, there was a curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, who said that within the new regime, he was very interested in looking at art from different people, not just white people, but he wasn't going to stop looking at things from white people completely because it would be reverse discrimination.
Based on that statement, and from what I've seen, it's that statement alone. He wasn't a character, he wasn't obnoxious. He was fired because of the implications of saying that there's even such thing as reverse discrimination. That mood is also falling under the rubric of what I think people call cancel culture.
The idea that you slip up, or you offend just a certain kind of person, and that certain kind of person's judgment means that you no longer can play any reindeer game. That's the mood that they call. Could you make the difference between cancel culture and accountability? Just the word accountability?
Second thing is, the only people I see actually canceled would be someone like Kathy Griffin, who's never recovered. And the people who scream cancel culture are the ones who kind of cancelled her, right? If you think about it, or Monica Lewinsky, or you know what I mean? Like it's the ones who actually get careers are ruined or throughout society, not just because of they say the wrong thing accountability is important.
And a lot of this debate is about what is the difference between accountability and culture of shaming and where the line falls. And I think the line has been shifting. With Kathy Griffin, as far as I was aware, she was coming back. I mean, I think my impression was that maybe there have been some health issues, but she did not stay where she was.
She was another example of how it's hard to cancel somebody, wasn't she? Not really, but she definitely underwent enormous. It was interesting that people that scream about counsel are the ones that canceled her. But that's what I mean is this word keeps shifting around, which means it encompasses everyone, not just a group of people.