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I'm Karen Karraswisher and it's 2024. We have so much to catch up on. We're coming to you a little early this week. That's right, Kara.
Welcome back to 2024, New Year's Eve. I found this. I was at a party and I saw this ridiculously hot woman. I went up to her and I said, what's your New Year's resolution?
And she said, fuck you. So I think it's going to be a great year. Oh my God. Oh, God.
There I go. That was your holiday. Your whole holiday. It was really nice.
I just got back from Arsenal Liverpool game where Arsenal went down to nothing, but my sons have taught them fan. I guess taught them hates Arsenal. So I guess it was sort of a thing. We were in Florida for a couple of weeks, which was lovely.
I taught my kid or sort of taught my kid how to drive, which was both gratifying and horrifying at the same time. Kind of like sex with my first wife. Kind of like sex with my first wife anyways. So, so did he go out to do a good drive?
He surprisingly, it's one of those things. I don't know if you I remember thinking when I had kids, I remember thinking when my girlfriend was pregnant, her water will never actually break. I never actually thought it would happen. Oh.
And I can and I can never imagine my dog ever being house trained. I could just never imagine it. And I couldn't imagine that my son would ever be able to drive for some reason. And he can drive.
And here he is. You know, I have to say, I'll get to my holiday. Louis drove a lot during the holidays. We were in California for most of it.
And he drove all over the place. We drove up to Napo. We got oysters. We did all kinds of all four kids were there.
We did a photo shoot of the family in the Bay Area. Yeah, in the Bay Area. It was great. We stayed at my house there and we had a great time.
We had much wine, oysters driving around, shining it down. You were there for two weeks. At least I think it was more than two weeks. And then we had a lovely Christmas at my brother Jeff's house and Louis and he cooked to seven fishes and it was lovely being in California and we had a great time with the whole gang.
And we did all kinds of things. It was very family focused. My New Year's resolution was to be more assertive. But only if you think it's okay.
Okay. All right. Anyway, but one question is how much did you miss me? I missed working.
Okay, that's not what I asked. Yeah, I was enjoying seeing you. Yeah. And I'm answering it back to work too much.
Do you ever feel like it's too much vacation? Yeah, I didn't get much vacation because it's a lot of logistics with all those kids. But yes, I do. I want to get going.
We got things to say because guess what? Even though it's 2024, some things have not changed from last year and the year before today we'll talk about Fallout from Harvard President Claudine Gay's resignation, the New York Times, suing OpenAI and Microsoft and a possible Warner Brothers paramount merger. But obviously our first big story, a Wall Street Journal piece is a new piece that came out last night. Elon Musk has used illegal drugs, wearing leaders at Tesla and SpaceX.
The article cites people close to Musk who say his drug use is ongoing. That includes board members and one name specifically, but it looks like they were all talking, particularly the ketamine and their concerns because of health crisis or damage to the business. Musk has a lot of business with the government and he's already, I don't know if you're saying we should have to do drug tests after he smoked weed on Joe Rogan. This is seemingly more serious and it's interesting that, you know, this has been around.
We've talked about it. Ronan Farrow wrote about it. Like lots of people have cited this issue, not so much in Walter Isaacson's book, which it should have had more about it. But it's sort of an open secret about this.
The Wall Street Journal obviously has lawyered up to be able to say this. In a minute, we're going to bring on my brother Jeff Swisher to help us talk through this one. Just first reaction Scott and then I'll bring on Jeff. Look, we talk a lot about substances, the majority of people, I believe who use substances manage them.
And I'm not an anti-substance person, but along the same lines, there's just no free lunch. And I remember when I saw Arsenio Hall had Eddie Murphy on and this is the 80s and I was in college and Eddie Murphy came and started talking and I'd done enough substances myself to be able to recognize him like Eddie Murphy's fucked up. And when I saw Elon Musk in that interview at The Times deal book, he's fucked up. And it all comes back to one saying, what I tell young people around their use of substances is there's just no free lunch.
And what I have and I'll stop here, but the thing that really struck me was when I was an Aspen this summer, I was alone and I was bored and I was friends with a bunch of friends there and we all went to dinner, like 12 of us, a bunch of total players in technology and private equity and we went to this lounge and I said, what can I get everyone I'm headed to the bar? And this guy goes, they all nodded or laughed and said, we're all in ketamine. And I said, oh my God, everybody? Yeah, it was interesting because this was the holiday season that came out where he has some time off.
I had heard rumors, there was rumors running around Silicon Valley that they had him in Hawaii last year or same thing. And obviously, he's talked about it. Let's be clear, he's talked about his use of ketamine, he's talked about his mental health issues, obviously smoked weed on Joe Rogan and nothing wrong with that except he has government contracts, which is a big problem. And I think away from his own health, which makes you worry, because there's been history of a lot of tech people like this getting into real trouble like Tony Shea.
And you know, I think it's been an ongoing discussion among and between people in Silicon Valley. And this one example in the piece was him being incomprehensible during a SpaceX meeting. And I think you're right that interview, I looked at it and I thought, what he's on something, I mean, I don't have any reported knowledge of it, but it really was such a bizarre interview. It seemed either mental health or something else was happening.
I want to play a clip of a prediction. Scott made about ketamine last September. Let's listen. I don't think you can use something in external substance.
And you would argue, well, that's when use becomes abuse. But I think you're going to find, I think when the biography of this cohort is written, and a lot of this behavior and a lot of this weirdness, we're going to start to hear the word ketamine. Yeah, it's not got that right. Anyway, we're not experts.
So we're bringing on my brother, Dr. Jeffery Swiss should help us talk to this one. Jeff, come on. Hey, Cara, how you doing?
Hey, by the way, our idea, who's idea was it to bring on the good doctor? It was not my idea. It was your idea. But it's a good idea.
Thank you, Scott. And it's good to see you. It's not Scott for August. And it's fantastic.
You look great. I do care. I do have unfortunately one Scott joke for you. Scott, Scott goes to the doctor's office, right?
And he goes into the doctor and he lifts up his killed and he says, doctor, I don't know, I think I'm going crazy. And the doctor says, I don't know about crazy, but I can sure see your nuts. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. All right. Scott, are you on Kevin Jeff? Because that's what I'm saying.
No, I'm not. No, you're not a coming user explain. You use ketamine in your job. Let me talk to you a little bit about ketamine.
So ketamine is what's known as a dissociative anesthetic. And that's really important to understand, you know, what it does. It dissociates you from essentially reality. It was first synthesized in 1962, the year you were born care.
And it was FDA approved in around 1970 for use in anesthesia. And I use it really pretty much on a daily basis. It's a very, very useful anesthetic. In fact, the World Health Organization lists it as one of the invaluable drugs in the world.
It's really good because it has a lot of beneficial effects from an anesthetic standpoint. It's not a respiratory depressant in usual doses. It's not a cardiac depressant. In fact, it slightly increases blood pressure and heart rate.
And it doesn't blend airway reflexes. So it can be used in a pre-hospital setting, let's say in the emergency room to sedate children. I use it as an adjunct anesthetic. I use it because it helps decrease the amount of opiates I use in the operating room.
I use it for procedural sedation. If I'm going to be doing something painful, let's say a regional anesthetic block of the upper extremity, I will give somebody 30 or 40 milligrams of ketamine. And it allows them to actually participate, but essentially not be there. So they feel calmer, right?
What's the effect? Yeah, actually they do. They do, depending on the person, they do sort of leave their body in a sense. In fact, some people describe academy and experiences similar to a near-death experience where they can actually see themselves, let's say floating above their body.
The best description of ketamine from a patient that I ever had was, he told me afterwards, he says, imagine that you're driving a car toward a beautiful sunset and the Grateful Dead is playing on the radio. And it's a fantastic, wonderful day with the breeze blowing through the window. Now for a second, imagine that you're not driving the car, but you are the car and you're driving. And all of a sudden you're not driving the car.
You're a passenger in the car. And that's really a really great description of ketamine. People describe a feeling of melting. You've heard the expression, K-HOL.
People sort of fall into this kind of warm molasses pit when they're on it. And it's a very pleasant experience for most people, not everybody. Some people do get frightening dreams, etc. But for most part, it's a great anesthetic.
And it's very short-acting. Have you had that happen with surgery? Where they get dreams or anything? Oh, yeah, all the time.
I mean, people describe, you know, one of the most common uses for it is when I'm doing, let's say, a little low lady with a hip fracture. And it's very painful to put someone on their side to do a spinal anesthetic. So I'll give them 10 or 20 milligrams of ketamine. And they love it.
I mean, they wake up afterwards and they say, that's the best experience I've ever had. So it's a very euphoric drug. And I can understand why people would use it for recreational purposes, not that it's safe to do so. But talk about it in a recreational context outside of the medical context.
And that is, my understanding is in contrast with alcohol or opiates, it's not physically addictive, but it can be psychologically addictive. That's exactly right. What we were saying before is that tech brows or the tech community or just successful people in general like to believe they found a better blueberry or a better solar panel. And their tech, their diet is better.
And I have found the same thing is true here. The people feel that ketamine is a safer high. Talk about it in the context of addiction and recreational use. Sure.
So you know, ketamine, it's widely available. It's very inexpensive to make and therefore you can get it fairly easily on the street. It is a relatively safe drug in the sense that, you know, as opposed to methamphetamine, which can be really dangerous if you have, you know, cardiac issues, etc., or cocaine. The problem is that like any recreational drug, people tend to binge it.
They like the feeling of it and then they need to start upping their doses of ketamine. And I mean, you know, the really unfortunate situation that happened recently is Matthew Perry. And Matthew Perry was legitimately getting therapy with ketamine for depression. But the problem is he also was using it recreationally.
And he also had other substances in his body on the corners reported at Bupurnorphine. Yeah. So the piece quotes an attorney from Musk saying that he was quote regularly and randomly drug tested, his SpaceX and has never failed a test. But we don't know.
Can you talk about and the attorney said there are other false facts in the Wall Street Journal, but didn't have any details. So this is Alex Spero, who was sort of Musk's lawyer, frontman. But what do you, how do you think about drug testing on this, on this kind of thing? Well, you can, there are ways of testing for ketamine.
The metabolite, it's metabolized by the liver and there are several metabolites of ketamine which are detectable. It's cleared by the liver, but it's excreted in urine and feces. So you can certainly test for it. The problem is it's a fairly short-acting medication.
And it depends when you use it and what the levels are. Clearly with Matthew Perry, for instance, they had it immediately because he wasn't metabolizing anymore after he died. But for people who are using it, you have to catch it fairly soon after they use it to detect it, which is one of the reasons, Scott, you mentioned that I think a lot of these tech grows and stuff are using it. But you know, great caution because dosing is very important.
The other thing about ketamine I want to mention is that it can be given by a variety of routes. So you can inject it intravenously, you can subcutaneously inject it, you can intramuscularly inject it, you can snort it, you can swallow it, you can put it up your behind if you want. There's a lot of ways of taking ketamine. And so it's very bioavailable is put it that way.
Bioavailable. Yeah, bioavailable. 100% intravenously, down to about 50% if you take it orally or snorted, it's about 50 to 70%. How do most people, when you give it, you do it intravenously because you're in operating?
How do most people recreationally use it? When I give it, I give it intravenously and intramuscularly. It's a very useful drug. Let's say if you have a person with a, you know, severe mental disorder who is combative prior to anesthesia and I want to start an IV, I can give people intramuscular ketamine in that situation.
And it takes a little bit, but then they'll sort of fall asleep. But usually I give it intravenously. But I think most people who using it recreationally are probably snorting it. Okay.
Yeah. Let's talk about the Matthew Perry you were referencing. He, the corner of the study died from the acute effects of ketamine. He was on ketamine infusion therapy, as you noted.
Talk a little bit about these therapies. There's a lot of people trying very hard to replace opiates and other things with ketamine and other psychedelics. Is that problematic or is just the abuse problematic? I think it's the abuse that's a problematic.
I mean, ketamine for depression is an off-label use. I mean, not that off-label use is wrong. In fact, we every day doctors use medications in off-label manner, which just means it's not FDA approved for that indication. They actually did make a, with called an an anti-americ of ketamine called escedamine, which is a nasal spray, which was approved by the FDA, I think in 2019.
It's called bravado. That was the indication for that is depression. As I said, it's a mirror isomer of ketamine. It's the same drug, but the mirror isomer of it.
But ketamine clinics have popped up like kudzu all over the place. And it's very, very expensive. I mean, thousands of dollars for a couple sessions of injecting. Now, keep in mind that the injection of ketamine in these clinics is a very small dose.
It's typically a half a milligram per kilogram, so usually 30 to 40 milligrams infused over about a 40-minute period. That's not a lot. It's not a lot to get you super high. A little dissociative, but not super high.
When you're using it recreationally, who knows how much people are using? You can't really regulate your dosage. Right. Now, one thing Elon tweeted about ketamine last June, depression is over-diagnosed in the US.
But for some people, it is really brain chemistry issues. He went on to say, quote, zombifying people with SSRIs, for sure happens way too much from what I've seen with friends. Ketamine, take it occasionally, is a better option of my best friends, Elon. So ketamine is in the class of drugs that are called NMDA antagonists.
And there's a lot of very useful work that's being done understanding NMDA antagonists in general for depression. And the research on it is, I wouldn't say it's definitive, but it's definitely statistically significant that ketamine definitely improves symptoms of both unipolar and bipolar depression in the short term. The question is, is it a lasting effect? That's hard to know.
And I think that's ongoing research. And personally, I think Mr. Musk is correct in that sense. SSRIs are very different.
Ketamine is not a first line therapy for depression. It's probably like a third line therapy. Right. And they're trying to get it to be one for people with post-traumatic stress, etc.
Sure. PTSD is a good indication for it. And I personally know people who've had ketamine therapy, who swear by who say that it's really improved them. And so I do think that shutting down any kind of research on this, that's why I don't really like that Matthew Parry article, even this Wall Street Journal article, because it demonizes a very useful drug.
And ketamine is a very useful drug. I mean, similar, what happened with Michael Jackson and Propofol? I mean, every day people tell me you're not going to give me that Propofol drug. It's like, yeah, basically it's the most common anesthetic in the world.
Yes, I'm going to give it to you. And by the way, it's amazing. Oh, it's amazing. It's amazing.
Yeah. Whenever I've had a colonoscopy, I take that thing and 30 minutes later, I mean, it's amazing. Yeah, no, it's literally probably the greatest invention in anesthesia in its history. But not for daily, nightly use.
No, so that's the problem is that you're using Propofol in your living room by someone who did not admit, you know, so it's not the drug that's the problem. It's the person giving it or the person taking it drugs or tools. And if you use tools incorrectly, you know, if you use your skills, you can cut your hand off if you don't use it right. And the same thing with drugs, you got to know what you're doing.
And the widespread recreational use is going to cause problems. But my sense is more generally as it relates to drugs in our society. And I don't know if it's the far right or an attempt to use drugs as a tool to keep people of color down through incarceration and drug bill, whatever it might be. But we have a tendency to go very black and white.
Marijuana helps people sleep, helps people with anxiety, helps kids with glaucoma. But we just decided it was all bad. And it strikes me that no one wants to have a nuanced conversation around what is an appropriate use of a drug. And the fact that something like 85% of people who use alcohol and drugs are functioning, it's not impacting them in a terribly negative way.
Having said that, alcohol is a menace and terrible for tens of millions of homes in America. But nobody wants to have really what I would describe as a thoughtful conversation. They want to sign something is only used in a medical context, but when it's used outside of a medical context, it's immediately must be all negative and all bad. And we demonize it, criminalize it.
In my view, just make things, you much, much worse. Anyways, it wasn't a question. I was a TED talk. I mean, you're right.
The most commonly abused drug by far and away is alcohol. More people drowned because they are drunk doing stupid things in boats than have ever been drowned by ketamine. And it was not close. Right.
But this creates a situation where they're trying to bring ketamine and other psychedelics into really good medical uses. And then it gets either glamorized and demonized, both glamorized and demonized by people like Moskin others, which is a car before the horse, because I think they will be using these. It's an intriguing drug, correct? Scott, what's the responsibility of a board member in this situation?
It looks like several board members talked to her. Someone's worried. This is why I can't imagine the journal would move forward this, you know, Rupert Murdoch and the Murdoch family, but without some level of assurance, the thing. And I have to tell you, discovery would be fascinating because I don't think, you know, the stories of Elon's wild party life are really quite out there all the time.
And they just are. They just are. The governance question here is complicated because supposedly there was a director who resigned over concerns of most. Because they weren't doing anything about it.
Yeah. But I would argue he doesn't, and this goes through a broader issue here, I would argue that he doesn't have any governance, that it's family members and people who have made so much money because of his genius and his bold innovations that effectively they have no power. They're there to have dinner once every three months and collect a big check because his behavior would not be tolerated across anything resembling what you would call a real board of governors who are supposed to represent fiduciaries. They just, they just wouldn't allow it.
So he doesn't have the duties, the duty and care that is levied on fiduciaries in the form of boards of directors does not and has not applied the Elon Musk for a long, long time. The fact that he's still on Twitter, that would never be allowed of a CEO who had done what he has done. A CEO incorrectly accuses former employees of being pedophiles would never be allowed to be a CEO. He plays by a different set of standards and whether you think he should be allowed to or not.
But it goes to a much broader issue. I think the key issue here and what I would describe is the learning or the takeaway for young people. And that is the most important thing you can have in your life is people who love you and serve as guardrails. And to have people idolize you is different than having people who love you.
And I think that guy has a lot of the former and not a lot of the latter. And as someone who has participated in interventions, they don't invite powerful important people to those interventions. They invite people who love you. And this is turning into a cautionary tale along the lines of Tony Shea, because you have a guy who as far as I can tell is a living alone, doesn't have a close relationship with a romantic partner or his children, and is quite frankly just fucking off the rails.
And if at the age of 52, you don't have people in your life who can sit you down and you listen to because you know that it's not that they got rich because of you. It's not because they think you're just so fucking awesome and can land rockets on two surfboards. It's because they just full stop care about you. If you don't have that, especially men, you literally can move it all.
What happens with extended use of ketamine? If you use it a lot and there's no guardrails, as Scott says, there should be and I agree. What happens over time to your mental state or do we not know this? I guess we probably do, right?
Well, yeah. I mean, there's some research on chronic lung traumusic ketamine effects on the liver and on the kidney. I mean, there are physiologic effects of it, which large, large scale use of it can be toxic to your liver and kidney. And what happens then?
Well, you could get anything can damage your liver. I mean, there's so many alcohol number one is the biggest. But so the big problem, I think with ketamine is the psychological as Scott mentioned before, the psychological dependence on it. And it is a dissociative anesthetic.
So you're not going to behave normally if you're doing high doses of ketamine. It just will make you not functional as a human being. And then Scott, as Elon also has a lot of government contracts, which was mentioned in the journal article as CEO and founder SpaceX, and he's also the key man there must because of security claims that gives him access to classified information. I think the journal was trying to pin up like, here's why we're writing this thing.
And obviously the government has already objected when he was doing the weed on Rogan. This is a quantum level of problem, I would think. Yeah, but again, if he's an exceptional person that people and organizations make exceptions for. So for example, he can put a breakthrough heavy rocket, he can launch it and it can blow up.
And he just puts another one up in a few weeks. NASA could never do that. NASA could never send projectiles into space to blow up. He is willing to take risks and has access to capital such that he can put together communications, lower communications networks at the government, at least in this current infrastructure or current regulatory environment isn't able to do.
So he plays a really valuable role. And I don't want to be an apologist with a guy. But to think that he's going to be subject to anything resembling the same standards as other contractors, you might find it unfair. And it is.
There are so many things he would have lost all security clearances for that the government has made exceptions around. He just plays by a different set of rules. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but you could never see the head of the forestry service or the CIA going on podcasts smoking a joint. That person wouldn't be allowed in the government's government building again.
So that's a question for each of you Scott. How do you think a musk is going to react? I haven't seen anything yet. I have no ability to predict his actions, Kara.
I just don't understand. He'll threaten to sue them. Yeah, but I don't. And I think all his fans will come to his, come to his defense and say that he's being persecuted and it's bad reporting, but I don't.
Actually, when I read that, I felt bad because I have had some people in my life who have an addiction. And I find it slowly but surely when you know you've lost them is when they choose. I remember one of the interventions I was in, like one of the most rattling moments I've ever had. Everyone went around.
Kid was addicted to heroin. Everyone around centerpiece said, love you all, your heart's in the right place. I know this is going to kill me. I choose heroin.
I mean, no one knew what to say. So if he in fact is, I think he plays an important role. I don't like the man. I think he abuses his power.
But as it relates to the government innovation, he does play an important role. And you just got to hope a guy with 11 or 12 kids like that gets help. And you also hope that the right way to react is if in fact he is struggling that he's open about his struggles and people can learn from it. Because I do think a lot of people are fighting these demons and quiet and a guy like that who is literally the idol of billions of people.
You know, optimistically, you'd like to think he could play a key role in education about it. How he's actually going to do? I have no idea. You know, I'm better than I do care.
I put it back to you. I think this article means a lot of people close to my word again as they were last Christmas time. And when there's a little downtime, and I think that's what it looked like to me when I was I was like, Oh, I know who that who said that. You know what I mean?
Like I could guess. So I think a lot of people are worried. And they're worried for a bad outcome in lots of ways, not just economically. And maybe this was their way of talking to him.
His tweets recently have been pretty unhinged or juvenile recently. They've not been, I'm spending some time thinking or anything like that. And so Jeff, that's my last question. If you were, I know some of his doctors, if you were his doctor, what would you say to him if he were to listen?
Well, I would say that, you know, any kind of poly substance abuse is not necessarily in your best health interests. And you know, clearly, you don't go around doing fairly powerful psychoactive medications and drive car or fly a plane or by multi-billion dollar social media companies. And I think that that's what I would tell him. It's just like, you know, like the old adage, everything in moderation.
I mean, one thing I just want to be clear that listeners understand that ketamine is not a dangerous drug in the right hands. But like any drug, it can be misused. And it's a very useful drug. And I would hate to see a drug like ketamine, which is so useful, being demonized and there'll be government reaction against it, etc.
That would be the worst possible thing that could happen because it is a very useful medication. But I would just tell him, you know, like, I mean, it's the same thing that would, if somebody came in and they were showing signs of alcoholism, I would say, this is really bad for you. And this is why you just give him information. He clearly is a very smart man.
And you know, you try to appeal to people's reason. Well, thank you for joining us. Jeff always helpful to have a doctor in the house and in the family. By the way, Jeff and I just finished my book.
It's coming out in the end of February and Jeff and I are going to be working on a book where we'll talk about things like ketamine and other things. It's about tech and healthcare. And so if we're doing it together, it's our next couple of years. The next of the Swisher project.
He's a beautiful writer, by the way, and I'm not good at medicine at all. That's why we brought him in. Jeffrey, thank you so much. You're so welcome.
Thanks. Take care. See you later. Bye.
That was great, Scott. Nice stuff. Dr. Jeff.
I'm a huge fan of Jeff. When I had my hit show on CNN Plus, who's one of the first guests I had. Oh, you did. I forgot.
I forgot. I had two of the five guests. So last name, Swisher. Swisher.
Yeah. Let me just say, like, I know your dad wasn't very involved in your life because he tried to go past the way early and Lucky has her own set of issues, but someone did something right. And I've heard your second brother's a nice man too. Yes, he is.
He's lovely. And they're all great. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. We come back.
We'll talk about repercussions from the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay and we'll hit some other big headlines. Hey, I'm at Michelle comedian, writer and floating head. You may or may not have seen on your four-year 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 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 gonna 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 go coming to them and going too far. You go, why? Does the Sadie Hawkins dance?
Maybe a filmmaker. Since leaving that show, I'm challenged sparing. I just got to hang out and try to do so. You're the one with the charmed life.
Could be a politician, basically anyone who responds to my cold deans. 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 Woman at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come in 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. Scott, we're back. I know you're dying to talk about this. You've been texting me quite a bit over the holidays over this.
Harvard President Kluttingay announced a resignation as we predicted. Gay briefly survived that disaster as congressional hearing. It looked like she was okay, but following accusations of plagiarism that didn't stop, the writing was on the wall, so to speak. After resigning, Gay wrote in a New York Times op-ed, quote, this was merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society.
It's probably true, but it was also a pleasure and an issue. Conservative activist Chris Rufo did say that's exactly what it was up to, one of the people taking credit for Gay's ouster. He posted on X, this is the beginning of the end for DEI in America's institutions, definitely. It was a planned attack by the right, and it worked.
Let me hear what you think about what happened. Actually, my preference is for you to go first here. Oh, I see. You don't want to step on on them or anything.
Not on them. You can be right about a couple of things, and we'll get to it, but Bill Ackman was another person who was really involved in screaming about it on Twitter for a long time and had a lot of stuff where it felt like it was a hunt, which was disturbing. Of course, he's gotten a little slapback because his wife committed what similar things to what Claudine Gay did, and a little worse, even with these Wikipedia lifts, which I think any eighth grader knows to paraphrase. Anyway, the whole thing is a mess online from everyone's hands are dirty, essentially.
I think that because she was, there are total elements here of a black woman who rises to a level, and she has a very elite background. She absolutely does. I think when to exit her, et cetera, et cetera, that you cannot fail. You do not get a pass.
We just talked about with Elan. Elan gets past after past after past. I don't think you get any pass. That's said, if you're the head of Harvard, you kind of have to be really perfect.
If you're not perfect, the knives come out, and you are probably going to be in big trouble when something like this. I think had she apologized better, a lot of people keep telling me, well, she didn't apologize, right? If she'd apologized better, she would have been fine. Bill Ackman's wife did, and I was like, I doubt it.
I think if you're the head of Harvard and the scrutiny was there, and it wasn't stopping, there's only so long that your supporters can hold on. I think she was pulled into a trap and not smart about it in Congress. Again, had she handled it a little differently, maybe she would have made it out, but I still doubt it. I hate to use the word gunning, but they were gunning for her.
Then tweeting things like Ackman A2, the woman who's running MIT, it's just grotesque, that sort of hunting thing. What do you think? There's just so much here. First, with the accusations of plagiarism, I see plagiarism as an in academic context.
You're trying to, you're deliberately taking credit for someone else's ideas or insights. I don't think that was either her intention nor Nary Oxman's intention. This is a wife of the like, I agree. I just don't, I don't think it's fair.
To call someone out for plagiarism in their PhD dissertation, what this was in both instances was what I would refer to as citation and accuracy. It's sloppy, they should be reprimanded, maybe forced to take a class on. To go after them for this, it really is a witch hunt. I do think that just more broadly, I'm trying to come up with a word whether it's well as a hundred time machining.
But I think there has to be a statute of limitations on non-criminal act. If you're running for president, that's one thing. But in both instances, I found their quote unquote plagiarism, in my view, would elevate to, it's like that notion you take gestures with the intention they're given. I didn't find any of the instances.
They were trying to take credit for someone else's work. They were just very sloppy as academics. I don't think that's why she should have been fired. I do think she should be fired.
I think that the ground has shifted beneath her. I think all this hand ringing over her firing is a little bit dramatic. People get fired all the time, as she evicted them, maybe. But the handling of the situation was horrible.
And I think it warrants her being, and keep in mind, Bob Chapeck didn't handle the situation around the the homophobic activities of Governor DeSantis. He didn't handle it well. He was fired. He was let go.
For a number of reasons, but yes, it's not performing well. And the former CEO won it back. A lot of stuff there. But he lost tens of millions of dollars and was escorted out of the building, basically.
Keep in mind, these people aren't really fired, Cara. They just go back to their jobs as tender professors in their departments. And also, I don't think this was, I think people are over playing their hand when they say it's racist that she was fired. Yeah, it's interesting because she defended herself in the New York Times up at Sing.
She never missed, as you said, misrepresented research that is June or claim credit. There's a lot of power going on, I have to say. You've treated something like there was a shooting of kids somewhere. And you're like, yes, let's focus on plagiarism, by all means.
We have five match shootings over 2024 and the media is obsessed with what is plagiarism. Yeah, and what plagiarism is a very heavy thing because some of it is quite minor. There's very few instances of major plagiarism. The Atlantic had an article headline, Claudine Gay's resignation.
It was overdue. And it was just two sentences, Claudine Gay engaged in academic misconduct, everything else about our cases, irrelevant, including the silly claims of a right wing opponent. So that was sort of a pucks on all their houses, essentially. And so, I think that's one of the things you can have.
These right wingers with a very clear intent here. They can be right about something and it's enough to pull her down. It certainly was enough to pull her down from the head of Harvard because it's such a big name institution. But what you said was that Harvard is an esteemed institution.
They should have quite frankly, you could argue they should have higher standards. And I think if I was on the board of the hospital business at Berkeley and if we were going to look for a new dean, it would loosely be three key criteria. They're ability to manage an organization. And by the way, that doesn't get enough heft.
Because these are big multi-billion dollar organizations with HR and operating budgets. And the second thing is you probably need to be great at fundraising. We don't like to admit that, but that has become the primary job of a chancellor at the head of a school. And they also need ideally, ideally some academic heft because you can't fire faculty, this person has to get along with them and faculty wants someone that's one of their own and has real deep scholarship.
She did not have that. She did not have that. Her academic heft was pretty light. But at the same time, if the board of governors, Harvard presidents, or whatever it's called, they might have decided, and this is okay, we like her, we think she has real leadership potential, maybe she doesn't have academic heft, but she could be great.
That's their right to do that. But Harvard can have it all. And also, it's not a national tragedy. I don't think it's racism that she was fired.
She's been given a lot of advantage and privilege. I think where this all heads, and the more interesting conversation is this comes down to race and DEI and affirmative action. All right. So I want to ask you about that because actually Mark Cuban's been doing a lot saying DEI is great for my companies and has been sort of taking on a lot of critics of DEI.
People get really demented when you talk about it at all. I have to say, I had it on Chris Wallis shows, we can people lost a freaking minds over it. But you've had some criticism of it, of course. Some of it is good.
Some of it is bad. The idea of focusing in on, I think Mark was the most persuasive way of arguing about why it's good for companies. And I would tend to be on his side of the coin, I think creating all these structures of the EI is a problem. But a lot of straight white men are incompetent and never got put to the test the way people of color and women often are.
But several companies seem to be moving away from DEI related job postings. And I know that's true throughout tech, which was very aggressive in this area, with a 44% drop in mid-2023 compared to the previous year according to data from Indeed. Where do you think this is going? Obviously, you've talked a lot about it in the academic setting.
But what about business too? Oh, yeah. I think yes, we in DEI, we've had peak, yes, we in DEI. And you're going to see a lot of corporations use this as cloud cover to unravel the DEI roles and objectives and missions.
And diversity among a board and a workforce is just generally smart behavior. One you want, a workforce that has some connection to your customer base. You don't want groups think. You want people with different backgrounds because when you all start barking up the same tree, you make stupid decisions.
And having said that, in academia, we all began barking up the same tree. And that is we pursued DEI such that it ultimately ended up in a situation where I would argue the most systemic examples of racism in the last 40 years, where under the banner of DEI, where there was shorthand for there's this group of rich white people called Israelis that are oppressors. And I think some of the most racist things that have happened in America have happened on campuses in the last several weeks. In addition- Sure, but you're sounding a little bit like you on tweet, as some of you saw, it was just dumbheaded and not interested in solutions, which was, you know, DEI is racism.
And I'm like, well, let me go to a solution. And I've proposed the same solution before. And everyone has a tendency to paint all of academia with the same brush. There are 5,500 universities in University of California, who did away with race-based affirmative action 26 years ago.
60 years ago, the academic gap between black and white was twice what it is or what it was between rich and poor. 60 years onward today, the academic gap between rich and poor is twice what it is between black and white. So affirmative action is important, but it should be based on income and adversity, not on race. Race-based affirmative action in DEI, in my view, causes more problems and it solves.
It started out with the right intention. We need it. We needed it. It needs to evolve.
Affirmative action is a wonderful thing. And by the way, if the board had said we like the idea of having a black woman as the president of Harvard, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think a lot of people went into the polling booth and said it's time for a black president and voted for Obama. There's nothing wrong with that.
But when it gets to a point where you effectively have accidentally the snake starts eating its tail and people can accurately accuse you of racism on the other end, it's become a problem. It's clearly has a let me just read Mark Cuban, he just posted on this. He made a funny one about the Trump administration and then he lists he goes, let me show you what happens. You don't have DEI.
And he listed all the terrible white men that work for Trump. But this is what he wrote. Because I think he's been very thoughtful. Since this seems to be the most common response, let me address it.
This is about whether, because like JD Vance and others, why don't you put an Asian, short Asian lady on your basketball team, which is not even wanting to have a discussion. They just want to be assholes. I know he goes, DEI does not mean you don't hire on merit. Of course, you hire based on merit.
Diversity means you expand the possible pool of candidates as widely as you can. Once you have identified the candidates, you hire the person you believe is the best. What makes the whole, what about the players comment ridiculous? Is that it presumes that all positions are hired based on some quantitative, rather than subjective version of merit.
They aren't. Even choosing the best basketball player is very much a guess, which is why the best players weren't always the first pick in the draft and sometimes go undrafted. The reality is most positions hired in a company don't have a quantitative metric you can use to hire someone. How do you pick the best barista, sales assistant, marketing or salesperson?
More often than not, it's an educated guess. So when a company like IBM says they want to add X percent more people of color, women or whatever group they already know that the majority positions they hire for don't have metrics for picking the best. As Elon Musk said, if merit for a job is roughly the same, then the tiebreaker should be diversity of all kinds, which is exactly what well managed companies choose to do. DEI also does not mean you can't fire someone if you made a mistake.
Of course you can. I'm a big believer in higher slow, fire fast. If it's the wrong person, fire them. Finally, let me address the thought that I'm virtue signaling.
I wrote this on X because I knew very well that almost everyone here would disagree with me. I don't virtue signal. I want people to challenge my positions. I want to have engaging discussions to help me learn.
I think he is doing incredible, like very smart arguing with people who all they want to do is dunk. And on that final thing, and a kudos to him for doing so and going in there, I was there for four seconds and I had to get out right away because it was so nasty. Bill Ackman is now threatening to investigate business insiders saying how do you come up to my wife and children when he himself has done it. His friend, Elon, who he wants to get in on a lot of investments with certainly has attacked Paul Pelosi.
And I do believe his wife, Nary Oxman, did a very good, she acknowledged improper quotes. I don't think she's addressed Wikipedia stuff, but just promised to make corrections. She did that correctly and with great class, I thought. It looks like he's just aching from more war.
And you have someone like Mark Cuban saying, let's figure this out. Let me tell you my experience. Where do you think this is going to go? You know, we're both fans of Mark Cuban.
I would, he's the only business person I would like to see run for president. I didn't mark Rowan to pen his handle it well. He kind of got his trophy. He got his head on the wall.
He's gone quiet. Whereas Bill seems a little bit, I don't want to call a drunk on it. But Bill, Bill had the right as an alumni and somebody's given a lot of money to have his views heard. But also, when he pulls out the time machine, when if he called for the President Gates resignation, because of we're just, in my opinion, incorrect and unfeeling comments and inability to call to say that genocide wasn't qualified as harassment, then I think he's entirely justified to do that.
People said, you know, I think he has the right as someone who's engaged as he is, who's given as much money in an organization that continually raises money. He had the right to say it. When he pulls out the time machine against President Gay, then he needs to be ready to have the time machine pulled out against him and his family. Full stop.
There's no reason why he should be subject of the same scrutiny as the woman he's going after. The issue, in my opinion, that needs more attention is that this is all a giant misdirect. And that is, it becomes a very heated conversation and the conversation and the question shouldn't be who gets in, it should be around how many get in. Because when you're only letting in enough students or similar number of students as a good Starbucks serves in a day, you are, in my opinion, morally corrupt and should not get student funding, should not get government grants, because you are no longer a nonprofit company and you're pursuing an LVMA strategy, you are not a public servant, you are a Birkenback.
And it creates all these heated arguments. We need, this is what we need. With $52 billion, you shouldn't have $15,000, $1500,000, we need to have $15,000. And guess what?
Then you don't have to have arguments over how many non-white or white kids you can let in more kids. So this is all a misdirect that gets, becomes highly emotionally charged, because these organizations aren't fulfilling their mission to be public servants. But we're going to see, I think, you just know, getting around it, you have seen peak D, you have seen peak ESG. And my issue is, I hope it doesn't contaminate the need.
I'm here with you because of affirmative action. Okay, Jewish guy born in the 60s heterosexual, how did that happen? The only reason I got through UCLA was because of Pell Grants, which the government said, if you're from a household that is in the bottom quartile of income earning households, you need our help. And if I hadn't had the government look at me and go, you're, you're, you're needy.
You're, we need to help you. We're going to tax other people. And we're going to give you an unfair advantage. And we're going to elevate you with affirmative action in the form of Pell Grants.
And most Americans, Democrats and Republicans do believe that a lot of Americans have not had the same opportunities and giving them a hand up is acceptable. The question is, what are the metrics for who deserves a hand up in our society every year? The data goes one place. And that is you would rather be born black, non-white, gay, I've think in America right now.
And this wasn't true 20 years ago, much less 50 years ago. But I think it's true now, you'd rather be born non-white than poor in our nation. So you would rather, in my view, we need to think more about how we lift up economically, doesn't that, and by the way, it gets, in terms of effectively who you end up helping, it gets to in 70 to 80% of the cases to the same place. Yeah.
Okay. Well, good point. Okay. That's a really, you've made this argument.
And I said, well, people brought it up to me and said that was the best answer. What you were talking about is doing it economically. In any case, listen, boys, stop with the hunting things, stop with the death, assassin stuff. This isn't a game.
This is really serious. And you can attract really dangerous attacks on these people, no matter what you do. And if you think it's funny or aggressive, it makes you look ridiculous. Anyway, let's move on to some other rapid fire stories.
New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The new lawsuit, the Times says millions of his articles were being used to train automated chat box that now complete compete with the outlet. The lawsuit says to defend that should be held responsible for billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages. OpenAI and Microsoft are also being called to destroy any models and training that uses copyright material from the Times.
Are you surprised? I'm not surprised they're taking legal action. A lot of people will. They just didn't want to do it with a group.
I know Barry Diller had contacted them to do it with him. What do you think about this? I'm not sure. They didn't win the book lawsuit many years ago, not the Times, but media.
I love this. They have the right idea. I just think they're executing it correctly. I think they absolutely should call Barry Diller and the New York Times and the most iconic properties get the most iconic owners of media companies and get Métis Dauphner, get the Newhouse family.
They have been talking. They've all been talking. Yeah, but they all need to speak with one unified voice, Cara, because there's far fewer and more powerful buyers here than there are sellers. So the sellers need to get together and speak with one voice to Microsoft and don't slash open AI to Google because they have models and that is simply they go and say, all right, what percentage of the radio stations revenues are paid to the artist's rights group?
What percentage when you license or you syndicate comics or stories from AP, what percentage of a news page or regional newspapers revenues, they can say it's somewhere between, I don't know what it's somewhere between 10 and 30 percent and then they all bind together and they go to these guys and they start a bidding war. But the New York Times is doing the same thing they did when I was on the board there. I'm doing a lot of name dropping right now because I'm desperate for our listeners affirmation. When I suggested in 2008 that we turn off Google, they laughed at me and said, oh, we're going to send it so much traffic and I'm like, you're overestimating how powerful we are.
Google is more powerful than all of us or most of us. So it has to be all of us speaking to them because they don't necessarily need the New York Times. And the deals they're offering I've heard from a bunch of many people are quite small, modest, like a million, five million. I'm like, you know, much of cost to put the New York Times together quite a bit and then the invaluableness of it being the New York Times because they are pulling big chunks of my stuff.
I've noticed it's like crazy actually. And it is, it feels like theft, whether they're going to win on the Fair Use argument will say that's their argument. It's fair use. This is not fair use.
This is like, this is like walking into a CVS and taking all the aspirin or whatever. But all they need to do is they just got, and the great thing about a consolidated media market is with say two dozen players, they could have a lot. If they did Axl Springer, Conda Nast, you know, the New York Times, the New York Times, or Portfolio Penguin Random House, they got them all together and they had one person represent them. And I said, okay, year one, it's 150.
One of them is going to go, yeah, we want to lock up that content and you create a bit more because it's like the other guys are going to have somebody like an anthropic or someone who's raising money at 30 billion ago. We'll give you 5% of the copy of your billion. And then just sue and sue and sue again, like all over the place, copy or infringement. Anyway, documents tied to a lawsuit involving deceased sex offender, Jeffery Epstein, have been made public over the last few days, a little bit of a nothing burger.
The documents real names and new details about people connected to Epstein, including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Stephen Hawking, all of which we knew. It's a lot of funny Stephen Hawking memes on all over the internet. ESPN has issued an apology for false comments made by Aaron Rodgers, what a pudsy is. On the Pat McAfee show suggesting Jimmy Kimmel could be on the Epstein list, Kimmel has denied allegations and threatened legal action.
ESPN versus Kimmel puts Disney in a tough position because they're all in the same thing. I'm sure Bob Iger had a terrible weekend and Rogers is on this show, on this Pat McAfee show, but he's such a ridiculous showed, but I don't know thoughts. I think it kind of gets back to the same thing. It's like put the time machine away.
If someone committed pedophilia, then the authorities should be alerted and they should see if there's a there, there. But all of this going back in time, I mean, if you're a powerful executive and this guy, you hear this guy has great parties on an island and everyone from Stephen Hawking to whoever, I want to name names are on that island. And he's got Nobel prize winners and it's also a great party. And oh, by the way, the Gulf Stream is swinging through your town.
Three, three, three, three, three. Yeah. And oh, guess who you're going to be on the plane with? I think I probably would have said yes.