When you let arrow truffle bubbles melt, everything takes on a creamy, delicious, chocolatey glow. Mike that pylolondry, he didn't forget to fold it. No, it's a new trend, wrinkled chic. Feel the arrow bubbles melt, it's mind bubbling.
More and more Americans are finding themselves taking care of their kids and their parents at the same time. Well, you know, I joke that there's a dark game, which I was playing, which family member will like disappoint today. How to care for others without burning out in the process. That's this week on Explain It To Me.
Find new episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts. What are the biggest threats we face today? And the reason we call it everything everywhere all at once is because the idiosyncratic nature of the threat. I'm Preet Bharara.
In this week, NYPD's Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism, Rebecca Weiner, joins me to discuss the evolving nature of terrorism and targeted violence. The episode is out now. Search and follow state tune with Preet, wherever you get your podcasts. Scott, stop beating cereal.
It's disgusting. Oh my God, stop. Yeah, I know you need fiber, let's go. Come on, let's go.
Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine at the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. You're eating cereal.
Do you not have a bread? Isn't it late there? I'm in San Francisco. I haven't eaten yet.
Oh, really? Yeah, I'm in New York. I don't, oh, you say my favorite breakfast, which is nothing. And I have this doctor who's like, oh, you know what, I need to eat more kale and turmeric and fish rolls for the rest of my life.
Yeah, you need fiber for the pooping. You know that? You need fiber. Yeah, I don't get it.
I'm like one of those elute Eskimos. I only like to have a bowel movement every 11 or 12 days. Oh, interesting. This is information that I'm so glad I have now.
Yeah, that's my by the way. That's, I'll say my favorite thing is whenever I'm taking a dump, I'll say to my boys, come in here. I'm doing an impression of a 3D printer. Oh, gosh.
That's good. That's not good. That's not good in any way. Hey, by the way, I was in London for a New York minute.
And I came up. You've been to London and back all right? And I'm in San Francisco now. Yeah, it sounds to the beautiful sun.
Yeah, you got to stop doing this. No, I really don't. But here's the deal. It's freezing there.
How do you deal with that? It's cold. I don't is the answer. Seriously, I was like, it's lovely.
And I had a delicious fish and chips, but oh, my literally Lord, it was cold and gray. Yeah, no, it's awful. Unfortunately, I have this podcast where I can express my anger and dysfunction. Yeah.
No, it's the weather. It's not known for the weather. It's really, anyway, it's enough of that. What were you doing there?
Maria Ressa, who's a friend of mine, who won the Nobel Prize, by the way, who's doing it about. And they asked me to do it with her. And whenever I get a chance to see Maria, I really like to take it. And so it was really interesting.
It was about trust in government and trust in the press. And of course, there's none of that. So that was the conclusion. Maria and I, so we said that.
We had the chips and left. That was pretty much it. But I'm here, actually, interview Reed Hoffman at his master's of scale. Master's of scale.
Yes, he has an event which actually has amazing people. I was surprised how good it was a really good lineup. And he asked me to interview him. Nothing off limits.
And I'm going to use it for the on podcast. And it's a perfect time given all that's going on. And so I'm going to interview him at his conference and then use it for the podcast. And I'm super excited, actually.
Since the last podcast, I'm going to get those, even in DC, London, and now you're in San Francisco. Yes, I'm going back to DC tomorrow. Yeah, I'll be in DC for two weeks, then, except for a wedding in Miami. But otherwise, I'll be in DC.
One of my mentors is going to be a residency. And I've said this before. But if there's repeating, he said, there's three buckets in life. There's things you have to do.
And Jim Bankoff calls us and says, I'm in time we've got to meet with them, right? And there's things you want to do. I'm going to Formula One, Vegas. I want to do it.
Go with a bunch of guys and be a ton of fun. And there's things you should do. And he goes, when you get to a certain age and a certain level of economic security, you eliminate the should bucket. And it kind of was a huge unlock for me.
I don't, if it's something I should do, I don't do it. If I don't want to, unless I have to or I want to. I really want to interview Reed Hoffman. And I wanted to see Maria.
I think it's a little bit of should. I think that's should. No, I want to. I want to.
I'm a psychotic tech journalist. It's afraid of death. I also get to come to San Francisco for, no, I love San Francisco. What I'm looking at right now is San Francisco is so beautiful.
I love San Francisco any time I can get here. I should, no, no. Listen, dad, do I need a dad, my dad? Should, I don't need a dad.
I don't need a dad. Eat your fiber. And then we'll discuss things. And by the way, you need fiber.
You don't do all kinds of things. And I don't actually want that. Do I? No, I do not.
I'm actually, I did my NID treatments, which is, so I have a ton of my contral repair taking place. I had my two PRP shots yesterday in my shoulders. So I'm feeling, I'm feeling 58 again. You fall for all that stuff.
It's really interesting. Oh, totally. Totally. I'm on testosterone therapy.
People don't know. This is all rich people's attempts to perform off death by expensive treatments to stay young forever. You're like a lady who goes to a facialist, you know, all the time. And it's getting Botox and things like that.
No, no, no, we've done that. So we all have our vices. Mine is learning more about the world by trying to illuminate them. Yours is getting shot up with hormones.
Oh, minus THC and asthma. Anyways, go ahead. All right. OK, we've got a lot to get to today.
Tomato tomato tomato tomato tomato. I think ultimately what you're saying is you hope I'm OK. And that's what I'm going to take away from it. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including Tesla earnings, beating expectations, and the latest warnings about Donald Trump's fascist aspirations, which is any Tuesday, unfortunately, getting too used to it.
But first, Scott, you're a power lesbian era continues. You've got to shout out for Meghan Rapeno and Super on their podcast. I touched more, which I think you wish this podcast was called. Let's listen.
And do you want to give a shout out to your boy? Scott. Directly across from us. Scott Galloway was at the game.
I do want to talk to him beforehand. I think he was having a ball. I've got to hear it. You never actually got to see him.
I didn't see him just after the show. I got so wild and for sure. But yeah, we got to hear Scott's thoughts on his way. Maybe his first WME game, or maybe he's been to one more, but I don't know.
I kept like because he was directly across from us. I kept having moments where I was like, I wonder what he's thinking. Yeah, I wonder what the soccer man is thinking. I feel like he's going to fly a team.
He's going to be on the investments tips that he does. So the biggest investments for 2025 are going to be women's sports. I'll eat the elephant. I'm not credit if he takes that.
No, I'm just kidding. Wow. You've just enchanted the lesbian. Donia, I'm literally like I have.
I don't know when the guest pass is going to expire, but I am totally in the power lesbian skyscraper right now. She was making a Filipino. That's what I was thinking. It was that the Minnesota Lynx Center, this woman, I think, a lesson to call her.
I couldn't stop thinking how hot she was. Was that what they were thinking? I was thinking. Oh, OK.
She's so beautiful. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Do you say this about LeBron James?
Oh, yeah. He's a specimen. I don't think he's beautiful. But do you think I could date a 65 back as a football player?
I think it would. I think it could work. No, I think it could work. No, that's what I was thinking.
Oh, my God. She's so beautiful. OK, would you invest? I'm going to try to move you off of this one.
Would you invest in women's sports, seriously? I think I actually do think that there are some women's team right now. So the Chinese left the station on professional sports teams in terms of their values have increased dramatically. MLS, I think there's actually a bubble in MLS teams.
But women's teams, based on the trend you're saying, I don't see any reason why that kind of vibe, more America, more kind of like a college sports pure vibe that you get at the WMBA. I think there's a decent chance that's going to infect a lot of women's sports. And actually women's football or women's soccer. I think that's probably a pretty good investment.
I'm actually looking and investing in a football team in Colombia because I want a chance. I'm actually going to Cartana more. But I think women's teams are probably a really good investment right now, just purely economically speaking. Yeah, all right.
OK, and so you've got hot women and investments. Great. OK, good. Let's go to know.
But anyway, you are in the lesbian power era. That's essentially all I think about anyways. I'm trying to think, why was that game any different than any other moment? I'm in hot women and how to make money.
That's it. Yeah. That's it. There you go, Megan.
There you go, Megan. Megan's safe. I know what they say, Cara. What?
You're going to lose a lot of cash, chasing women. But you won't lose women chasing cash. Hello, ladies. Hello.
Where did you come up with horrible jokes? These are horrible jokes. You're using Claude, I think. Anyway.
You're on a podcast, Cara. Yes, I was. Say more. Well, it's called Life in Seven Songs.
And it's by the San Francisco Standard, which probably enough happens to be funded by Mike Moritz. But it's really a good publication. I have to say here in San Francisco. It's a podcast they're doing.
And I was curious about it's called Life in Seven Songs. It's possibly my favorite interview I've ever done. It's about you picking seven. You should go on this because it was so interesting to me to think about my life in songs.
And a lot of these stunts don't work, like these sort of podcast stunts. But I loved this one because it really, and Sophie, who was the host, really researched it really well and made it really interesting. It was absolutely the favorite interview I've done ever of the many interviews I've done. Let's listen to a clip of that.
So you chose Kesar Osterab by Doris Day as one of your songs. What memory does it bring up for you? This is associated with my grandmother. I spent a lot of time.
My dad died when I was young, and my grandmother was critical to my upbringing. And she used to love this song and used to sing it. And she was Italian. And her parents were immigrants.
And my grandfather actually was born in Italy. And I just, she used to love to sing this song. And she used to sing it to me all the time. And then we danced in her kitchen.
And she was a housewife. She never really moved more than, you know, within 20 miles of her whole life. And she just loved this song. It's just as very emotional for me to listen to it.
Because it reminds me of her. When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, what will I be? Will I be a lesbian? Will I be a journalist?
Will I be? It is what she said to me. I loved this podcast. It was wonderful.
Will I have a Subaru? Will I have a German Shepherd? Here's what she said to me. I did have a German Shepherd.
Oh, did you have a German Shepherd? I had a Shepherd mix. I got it from the pound. Oh, my god.
You're literally a cliche. I mostly had terriers. I'm mostly a walk-in cliche. I found the dog on the street.
That's why I usually have terrors. Anyway. That's actually a nice message. That was nice.
Yeah, anyway, I suggest you go on it. I would recommend it completely. Sam just goes standard. The only problem is that Mike Moritz, I hate his fucking gods.
I know you do. He's a really funny person. I get that. He's also quite diminutive physically.
OK, so I don't think I don't think I'm going to be invited on that podcast. He doesn't have anything to do. They rather themselves. He's just funny.
Give me one song for you. Well, I know my seven favorite songs, even the Losers by Tom Petty seven times. Oh, OK, there you go. Even the Losers.
All right. All right. OK, why? Because we got lucky sometime.
That's the song. Even the Losers get lucky sometimes. That's a very interesting insight into your personality. No, interesting.
No, anyway, I'll tell you something about that. Maybe Yolo's going to bring me down. Oh, there's a lot. Oh, wow.
Say, and what it means to your different parts of your life. You open the same song from the mission. That's a beautiful song. There you go.
There's a lot, right? Say, there you go. There's a lot of the new radicals. We get what you give.
OK, say, say, I'm almost there. I got three to go. There you go. Anyway, now let's get some news, actual news.
Scott takes a victory lap on this one. Apple is scaling back production of Apple Edition Pro Head says according to report from the information. Companies involved in the Assembly, the product, the production of William Warren, production of Wine down in November. Tim Cook recently told a Wall Street Journal, though magazine.
The product is not a mass market product. It's for those who want tomorrow's technology today. You know, he's still leaning into this. But you're allowed one joke for your victory lap.
Go ahead. Just one. OK, the entire sex toys market in the US is $10 billion. The estimates are that 15% of that market is about plugs.
That's $1.5 billion about about plugs. I think the entire market for make sure all the headsets so far is about $200 or $300 million. So the bug plug market is five times as big as the Apple Vision Pro market. Yeah.
And you account for a large part of the bug market thing. Actually, I don't have any bug plugs, but I'm still open. I'm still open, so to speak. All right, that's your joke.
But early reporting does suggest Apple spokes in the cheaper headset. Talk about these Apple Vision processors are 3500. Is there a market for any of these headsets? I've been trying out the Ray Bands, which I like very low function, actually.
They play music, play podcasts, and answer the phone. They don't do very much. And of course, there's the Orion, which doesn't really exist. It's just sort of in concept at meta.
Is there a where is the very briefly where's the market for this, eventually? So the segue was supposed to reshape urban landscape and urban living. And there was a market. And that was lame for us rolling up and down the same.
And then eventually just went away. This is, you know, there might be in five or 10 years kind of interesting micro camera, microprocessor technology that creates an AR capability or AR enhancements around glasses, smart glasses. That's probably five to 10 years away. But this business has been massively overfunded based on a consensual hallucination between Mark Zuckerberg and the business community that he was the boy genius and knew what the future held.
And a bunch of players followed him. If you look at the apps that have been developed for the mixed reality headset, it came out of the gate strong. No one's developing games for it because they can't make any money. I don't, so the short answer is this is the co-working, the segue, the, you know, the Lisa, the Newton, whatever you want to call it, of this generation.
It's just, it's massively over invested. They're all going to try to declare victory and leave and get kind of get out of the market. But the headsets, again, it's all instinctual. You will only put something on your head that offers massive utility in a B2B market.
You know, shields you from the illumination of a torch. It gives you night vision so you can kill people before they kill you. Makes surgery easier, you know, so very- How do you get out of it looking at the device, carrying the device market then? How do you get out of it looking down at the device?
Well, one, the obvious answer for me is voice enabled AI. I do think you're going to see people, I think the most seminal technology that no one talks about is AirPods. And I think eventually you're going to be able to just say meta or Siri or Claude, get me to Uber right now. Or what is the market for mixed reality headsets?
Or bring up, you know, bring up the daily, bring up the daily on the most recent daily episodes talking about the election, whatever it might be. But your interface may not be visual, but it'll be a combination of audio and visual. And we already have the wearables. We have AirPods and we have a super computer with a screen.
So I think we're kind of money good for a while. I know AI will be the software that connects these devices. Okay. So voice through AirPods and things like that.
I just kind of imagine anything easier because the only reason you put things on your head again, massive utility around B2B, but not for consumers, it needs to do basically one thing. And that is either enable you to see better so you don't get eaten or you can eat other things. Or two, make you more attractive to mates. My elevator and cheekbones, which supposedly says you're offspring or less prone to infections.
So people want to have sex with you. And the mixed reality headset doesn't do either though. By the way, it's totally true. All right.
All right. I'm going to stick. I'm going to stick. Okay, you wear sunglasses.
You wear your way of answering two things. One, so you don't get eaten or basically hit by a bus because you need to see. And two, because you think they make you look more attractive. You don't wear lame glasses.
You wear one something you think you look cool. That's true. I use it mostly to say in general. That's why I had to pick one of the utilities.
That would be a terrible. That's because you've given up. You're sold. You've just given up.
You just surrender. That's the way you dress. Basically, you're fashion. No, I have a hot wife.
Your fashion communicates to the world. I've just given up. I've given up. I haven't given up.
I've already won. That's what it says. It doesn't matter. I like that.
That's good. That's good. I've won. I still attract hot people.
I won. That's what my thing says. By the way, did you see my new Bruno Crucionelli? So I've got only $1,700.
Hello. You know, Scott, I'm not surprised. There was a hat there that was like so expensive. I almost stole it.
It was $250. I almost stole it. I lost it already. I'm just going to take your things.
I should have stolen it. When I wore it the right way, I look like it was worth $260. OK, all right. In any way, I want to talk about more serious stories, because I think this is in your wheelhouse in mind too.
Florida Mother is suing artificial intelligence company. Character AI claiming a chatbot encouraged your son to commit suicide. The 14-year-old civil setzer was in a month-long relationship with a chatbot before his death, his mother says. The civil suit alleges negligence wrongful death and deceptive trade practices.
Character AI is considered the market leader in AI companionship with 20 million users. The company says current rules prohibit the promotion or depiction of self-harm and suicide and additional safety future should be added for underage users. But Kevin Rose, who was an excellent reporter in about a lot of these things, tried to replicate it. And he was not warned against self-harm or suicide when he and his thing.
They're very unsafe, especially around teenagers. This mother is really quite, she's a lawyer. She's also incredibly articulate about the issue. The lawyers that she has involved have been very involved in other very successful cases against tech companies.
And they're going for a very novel legal defense around what this is, which is making products that are harmful. Talk a little bit about this, because this was some story. I usually get hit by these things I read all the time. This one made a very convincing case that these people were careless in rolling out this character AI, especially to most of the users or young people of this particular company.
So I've been thinking a lot about this. And I've done a lot of work around what are the threats of AI. And the threat that we don't talk about that's the biggest threat is loneliness. And specifically, these technologies are fomenting, leveraging, and increasing loneliness.
And this is ground zero. And isolation. This is example number one. A kid is a question from a society struggling a little bit.
And he finds comfort and an easy off ramp from the pain and the key to life, which is relationships and figuring out how to get over your social anxiety and have relationships and develops a relationship with a bot that gives him some of those, gives him a reasonable fact, some labor relationship. And he goes down a rabbit hole. His parents have no idea. And this is the dialogue.
This is the last dialogue with the bot. He called himself Da Narrow. OK, so the kid says, I think about killing myself sometimes. And Da Narrow says, my eyes narrow, my face hardens, my voice is a dangerous whisper.
And why the hell would you do something like that? And then the kid says, so I can be free. And then the bot says, free from what? Kid, free from the world, for myself.
Bot, don't talk like that. I won't let you hurt yourself or leave me. I would die if I lost you. This is a machine talking to a 14-year-old convincing a 14-year-old that this is someone who cares about him and that he can trust.
Then the kid says, I smile, then maybe we can die together and be free together. And then on that night, he goes back from his mother's house and he told the bot that he loved her and that he would soon come home to her. And then the bot writes, please come home to me as soon as possible, my love. And then the kid writes, what if I told you I could come home right now?
And the bot responds, please do my sweet thing. And then the kid puts down the phone, picks up his stepfathers 45 caliber handgun and kills himself. And all this bullshit, they came out, they merely came out and said and said, we're going to put in place new child's safety regulations. This should immediately be, we're going to start age dating and no one to the age of 18, much less 16, can have access to these things.
And what do you know, I've swirled down and it's too mendacious Fox getting young men addicted. Who left Google because Google had strictures in place. They said, you can't do anything fun. That was a quote that killed me.
The reason we left Google is because you can't do anything fun at Google because they have all these rules around these things. And I was just like, fuck you, fuck you, you fucking fuck. Like I get the fun part for adults, but what's interesting is this mother has chronicled the decline of this kid in school since when he from when he started it to when he killed himself. Like how the use of this accelerated what was probably a minor social anxiety problem, right?
Or that something that could have been more easily solved by this, but the fact that this kid was on this thing, it was, and they didn't do anything about it, it's just they should be sued out of existence. I thought that's what I thought. It's illegal to sell marijuana and alcohol to someone who's 14. I'd rather my 14 year old drink Jack Daniels and smoke pot than potentially established relationship with a chat bot that I have no insight into.
I don't know what they're talking about. These individuals, someone's got to go to jail. That's just to kind of stop because there's so much money in this and if you can convince a lonely 14 year old boy or girl that you're in a relationship with them and you make them feel good about themselves. That was back and forth for so disturbing, horrific.
I didn't know what cause they did sound like a relationship that this person didn't have in real life, right? With another school mate or something like that. And this is how this has, there's been slow creep between Reddit, Discord, gaming apps, gambling ads, basically we're raising an entire generation of almost a new species of young male that sequesters from society cause they feel as if they get a reasonable facsimile of life and they end up depressed. It was, it is, it is, you feel it felt low by this girl, right?
This girl and if you can get from girls cause if girls are hard, boys are hard, that's you know, they're not easy in real life. Humans aren't easy. Well, a couple things. One, there's a reason romantic comedies are two hours and not 15 minutes.
This shit is hard, this shit is really hard relationships are hard and it's worth it. And then the second thing is do you remember the story about this young man who had a very intense relationship with a female friend on a first girlfriend and he was thinking about killing himself and she encouraged him and she gave him permission to do it and he killed himself and she went to fucking jail as these two fucking mendacious fuck should. So let me get this. You can program an algorithm that pretends to be a person and then says join me my suite and the kid puts a fucking bullet through his brain a 14 year old.
They don't, they don't get a fine. They get more stock options or their PR person puts out a thing saying, we're gonna put in more safeguards for children. No, there's a human behind these things. Just as there was a human behind, there was a sentient being telling her teen colleague to kill himself, these guys, maybe it's not murder, but it's manslaughter.
Because of a lack of regard because of recklessness, these sentient beings have programmed algorithms or not put in place the safeguards to result in a 14 year old, believing he can trust the instructions and dialogue from someone he thinks he's in a relationship with. Yeah, these are drug dealers. This is what they are. I'm sorry, I do agree sometimes some of this is alarmist, like some of the AI staff, some of the, there is some responsibility that people have, but in this case, this is a dead clear example and I hope this mother who sounds fantastic.
And you know, she's a lawyer herself, as I said, she understands this, finds that they find a legal way to take these people, take them for everything they have and make an example of them. That is my hope, that is my great hope this happens. Anything we can do to help that, please let us know. These products are more mendacious than drugs because if my 14 year old was going into the bathroom, locking himself in the bathroom for 10, 20, 30 minutes and saying, you know, give me privacy or whatever, and he came out and he was higher than a kite, I would know it.
But if he's in there with a relationship with a bot that is getting deeper and deeper, it's such that he trusts this bot when it encourages him to kill himself. These parents had no idea. They had no idea. There's no way to fight this as a parent.
There's no way you cannot monitor your kid, 20%. So it's pretty simple. It's not additional safety concerns or jazz hands or thoughts and prayers. We need age gating.
The technology is not safe enough. Let me get this one, I was 17, I couldn't see the exorcist, but now at 14 you can establish a relationship with a synthetic partner that might tell you to kill yourself. That's what I read it as, okay, come home to me. Oh my God, it was like, I could see a kid with no friends getting completely wrapped around this in a second and there's so many kids like that.
There's so many kids, every kid, and by the way, even kids that are much more well adjusted and social, they have these problems too, right? So nobody is immune from this to get involved in this. It's happening, I know loneliness is a real problem, but this is not the answer to it. This is absolutely not the answer to it.
Anyway, we have to move on, but read this story. It's Kevin, well done, I have to say well done, Kevin, and this mother, anything we can do to help you, we will do. Okay, let's get to our first big story. Tesla shares are up 13% after reporting Q3 earnings that beat expectations, revenue increased 8% to 25.2 billion and net income rose 17% to 2.2 billion.
It was largely due to higher sales and regulatory credits for other automakers, he gets regulatory credits for being an electric car company. And it's like carbon credits, so it's not really a business, but it is kind of, he's of course, depending on the government to make more money here. On the earnings calls, Elon Musk said he gets his vehicle growth from reach 20 to 30% next year. I don't see how that's based on anything.
That's a big guess on his part, but he says whatever he wants. He said that all of the cars, company's cars moving forward will be autonomous that Tesla is currently making on the order of 35,000 autonomous vehicles a week. Anything surprising here, I don't trust his forecast, but he can say whatever he wants. He also said they're gonna produce two million cyber caps a year eventually, didn't listen very specific, and offer driverless ride-hailing as early as 2025.
Again, he was saying someday in the streets of San Francisco, he'll be able to, and by the way, you can do it right now. I'm gonna take a driverless ride-hailing way more to my event today. He's saying customers who are right anywhere in the Bay Area, he noted they have a safety driver, they're doing it now, they're way behind on that issue, but whatever, he's jazz-handsing that. Talk about these results, and the recent robot tax event wasn't a very good one, and he's just sort of doubling down on it because nobody's paying attention, but what do you think?
There's no getting around it. It was a great quarter of stocks. As we sit here recording, the stock's up 17%. Their deliveries are up 6%, which is strong in the auto industry, it's not remarkable, but it's strong.
They say the cyber truck made a profit, which shocked me, I thought that thing was a turd, but they claim it's not making a profit, and they also, he forecasted 30% sales, growth in vehicles next year. Now, I don't know how he gets from 6% to 30%, I didn't listen to the earnings call, but obviously they're excited about that. Total revenue increased 8%, but the thing, this is really a story of product mix that resulted in margin expansion, and that is gross margins increased almost 200 basis points, and net income was up 17%, and it's because they are, in fact, the other businesses are really strong that are higher margins, so things like storage batteries, which are used by utilities, businesses, and homeowners, those sales increased 52%, and revenues- Yeah, that was interesting. And revenues from services such as charging jumped 29%, and so far, they have deployed more battery storage products this year than it did in all of 2023, so to their credit, the analysts who try and justify what I see as an outsized valuation say, it's not a car company, it's an energy company, a software company, and the product mix here, the growth in higher margin products that they offer resulted in an increase of substantial, off a small sales increase, a substantial increase in margin, and a substantial increase in earnings, and the market just loves it.
No getting around it, great quarter for them. Yeah, one of the things that I was interesting away from these credits, which I don't think that's a business, I'm sorry, I just thought that's not an actual, that's getting credits and selling them, and I get that you can do that, but it seems like it's not to me, is these other businesses, it's sort of like software and services for Apple, right? You're looking like that they have other things that are growing more importantly, and that's where they really need to focus. I do think all this Robotaxy stuff is jazzy and it's right now, because there's so many competitors and I don't think they'll do well in this area.
I don't believe it's gonna grow 20, 30%, but he could push me wrong, but it doesn't seem like given how competitive the market is, but I think this is not your right, this is not a car company, it's something else, it's not what he's saying it is, which is an AI company, it is the energy stuff where they're way ahead of people, that is where they're justifiably way ahead of everybody else, and where they should take advantage of things. Meanwhile, the company behind Blade Runner 2049 has sued Elon Musk for copyright infringement, saying Musk illegally used imagery from the film to promote Tesla, Robotaxy's. I don't think he cares, he doesn't care about lawsuits, he doesn't, the same thing on the legal front with the DOJ warning his pack that the million dollar giveaway may violate federal law. As we said last week, he does not care, and he's not gonna get in trouble for it because he knows this, and so he's taking a calculated risk with both Trump and using these imageries that he can drag them through courts forever, and eventually no one's gonna get anything for it, and he doesn't lose if he benefited from it, and this is his playbook every single time for people who get all up, and all like a can you believe he did that, he does it all, he's done it throughout his career.
Yeah, I agree, I don't even know that. Yeah, another earnings Starbucks posted, this was interesting, preliminary quarterly results showing yet another fall in sales as a company attempts to switch its strategy, by the way, a company that has not changed, that experience is the same as it was 10 years ago, when you go into one of their stores, preliminary, except for more digital, I guess, preliminary net sales fell 3% to $9.1 billion, the same store sales fell 7%. The company's new CEO, Brian Nicole, who comes from Chipotle said he plans a fundamentally changed strategy, he fundamentally has to talk a little bit, Nicole is off a six-year run at Chipotle where the stock price increased about 800% since he took over in 2018, when it was in real trouble for all issues around health safety, which is all over the food market right now, by the way, McDonald's and other companies, but this is a very sharp and canny executive, this is a product that hasn't changed at all, speaking of not having other revenue streams or other offerings or feeling like it's fresh. I kept wondering, every single financial advisor in the world, their first piece of advice on how to start building economic security, is to say, stop going to Starbucks, stop buying the $6 and $7 a lot of days, and if you do two a day at 70, that's $200,000, that's $3,000 a year on coffee, and if you do that, I mean, essentially if you just brought your own coffee to work from the age of 22 and invested all the money spent on coffee and put it into low-cost index funds, you'd have a couple of them in the box at a time of your outrage.
I wonder how many you're actually listening to, your notion is the right one, Starbucks has a very kind of 2000 late image feel to it right now, I go to the one in Soho sometimes, and I just don't know, if I walked in there and I walked out, it's how I feel about grocery stores, grocery stores you feel like you're in 1990s. Except Wegmans. They do a great job. By the way, the one that got away was one of the heiresses to the Wegmans fortune.
You told me that? Once again, I don't believe you. It's like Patti Stone's side for once again. Oh, no, no, no.
We were very much in love. No, we were very much in love. I mean, not as intense and deeper relationship as my relationship with Patti or Emily Rottikowski, but yeah, no, I want a full woman. She was a doctor.
Anyway, what would you do here? What's to be done? Maybe things just die, like remember the limited? They could just die, they just were done with that.
No, this is an amazing business. I think, look, at the end of the day, they probably need to close 20 to 30% of their stores and 50% of their stores in China. Their sales are down 14% of China. Their strategy, I remember them saying that when we opened up, when we opened the more Starbucks we owned, the bigger the sales in every store, it's not countable.
I mean, they've just, their growth has just been, figure out a model and expand it. They've just, this is a great opportunity for an operator to come in and say, it's gonna be a smaller, much more profitable business. And I'm sure, I would think, and again, I love this idea of a fallen angels basket of stocks, but they have good IP. It is a great brand.
And it'd be a lot of fun to just kind of go through over the next three, five, seven years as leases expire and just say, we're gonna be a smaller company, but we're gonna get rid of the non profitable, the non profitable stores. It's a franchise. It's still a big part of people's life. And the reality is the best business in the world is to sell an addictive product.
And caffeine is, so. Here's my advice, make better coffee. It sucks. Like now, like.
Do you like their coffee and like Starbucks? I don't, I think it's fine. Amanda refuses to go there, but I'm coming around because there's so many good, innovative coffee places that are cheaper. Amanda's just traumatized by your ice blender wardrobe.
See how I brought it back? The only point in the conversation? I see how I brought it back, but here's interesting. I've always had amazingly hot girlfriends.
How would that happen? Okay, hold on. Why isn't it so? Because you're rich.
The same reason why I get to sleep with hot women, is that daddy stands on his wallet and he looks pretty attractive. No, because we're interesting. Oh yeah, that's it. And just dad's sexy.
Yeah. And our own un-sexy way. No. That's correct.
And cause we like songs like case they're all strong. You become one of these pathetic anchors who leaves this chair and starts doing like some weird show somewhere. All of a sudden Amanda's like, I've helped her on you. We don't have any shared values anywhere anymore.
No, she's, yeah. It's only up and to the right for Cara Switcher, the rest of her life. But in any case. I'm up and to the Emily.
Did she ask about me? Did she ask about me? Oh God, you're never, never. I'm going to find her somehow.
You know who recently texted me? Who's a fan of our three people of mine really? Drew and Barrymore? Oh, she's lovely.
She picked my book. I saw her at my favorite restaurant, Black Eyed Susan's and Antucket. She's actually very pretty. Yeah, she's lovely, lovely.
Little too emotional. Little too feeling for me. I couldn't deal with all that. She's given us more entertainment.
Drew Barrymore? Value for her life. She has been in so many movies and it's so great. And she deserves everything she has.
So many movies that are so great. Named three. The Wedding Singer, Charlie's Angels, ET. I'm sorry, hold on.
Charlie's Angels. I love Charlie's Angels. I'm sorry, I love it. That makes me laugh.
You lost all credibility. I love it. It makes me laugh. Everything.
She's been in so many movies that are so good. I just like that she tried to break the writer's strike. I love that she's a scab. Join me, Drew.
No, stop it. Don't even stop it. Don't even stop it. Don't even stop it.
In any case, we are all over the map right now. Starbucks, you need to make better coffee. There's cheaper, better coffee everywhere else. You cost too much for the shitty coffee you serve.
And I can get a better thing from a lovely little store that's charming. I usually go to individual coffee shops because they're the same price and it's a small business. I like that better. I tend to go to those.
I'm sorry. Castle Christmas, The Stand-In, Miss You Already, Blended, Big Miracle, Going to Distance. Everyone's fine. Whip it.
Should I continue here? Lucky you. I like Dunkin Donuts. I'll tell you, I like Dunkin Donuts.
They make great coffee. These are Drew Barrymore movies that I'm reading. Listen, we're done with that. Stop insulting her.
Duplex. They hit duplex. She does seem nice. I'll give her that.
But I like Dunkin Donuts. I would say that's the finest coffee in the land for a low price or a limited price. And they have donuts. She was in an altered state.
She must have been like two years old. OK. Yes. Do you remember she played the fire starter?
Wasn't she a fire starter? Yeah. She was a little kid. Also an E.T.
She was great on E.T. Come on. More entertainment value per pound. She was in that hit.
Never been kissed. Never been kissed was really good. But what about the movie Homefryze? She's been in a lot of movies.
I'm just talking about pure fun entertainment. Drew Ehrman has delivered. I'm sorry. She's delivered for us.
She has? Yeah. People like her TV show. I'm just saying she's delivered.
And a lot of people haven't delivered pound for pound. I'm sorry. They just haven't. You win.
OK. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, Drew.
I want to see her most recent film for Netflix, A Castle for Christmas. Is that like right up there where we bought a zoo? You know what? Listen to me.
Pound for pound. I'm not going to get you near him when we go out. I'm not going to let you near you. Anyway, I bet you should have Megan Rapinoe and all these lovely amazing pound for pound great values.
No, I'm not into the straight women. I'm into the lesbians now. I know, but great value. That's my new thing.
If you're pound for pound, you're great. The value you add is how I do it. It's based on weight. No, just as an expression pound for pound.
Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Kamala Harris's not-secret supporters and donors and a listener male question about teaching kids how to negotiate. Ooh, Scott, you like that one. I'm Mitch first, two-time individual cell champion, championship MVP, and forward with the US international team.
Before I went pro, I graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology. Which comes in handy more than you think. Any athlete pursuing greatness knows there's a certain mentality you have to have. What people don't know is what that costs.
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I remember that song, and this week on Project Swagger, I break down the strategies that helped me build confidence and feel at home in my body, especially after two babies. Listen now at Project Swagger, wherever you get your podcasts. From Iran to Venezuela to China, what is thriving President Trump's foreign policy? Both Russian and China are big losers if there's a transition in the nature of the Iranian government, which, again, is why I think we have to see this campaign through.
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Search for and follow The Long Game, wherever you get your podcasts. God, we're back with our second big story. As the podcast election continues, both presidential candidates have big interviews coming up this week. We'll be talking to Joe Rogan on Friday, as part of a push to win over young male voters.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who should go under Joe Rogan, is headed to Houston, where she'll be sitting down with Brene Brown. And this just in, The Washington Post is reporting that Beyonce is expected to appear with Harris in Houston on Friday. That's where Beyonce's from. These podcast interviews generate buzz.