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Hi everyone, this is Pivot from Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway, where's my friend's call me? Face for podcasting.
That's right, we're on video, Cara. We're on video. We're like the Howard Stern. You're Robin Quivers.
I'm Howard Sterner. I think you're Howard Sterner and I'm Robin Quivers, correct? Is that something we didn't see me in? Yeah.
Well, given to Quivers. Quivers. Oh my God. She's key to the show.
She's the solvent that makes everything work there. Exactly. So we're tweeting this on YouTube because we feel like we want to get more people listening. They want to see how we operate.
Anything. Anything else we want out of this? We might get a ladies a little something. I'm going to start wearing midriffs.
Come on, our fans deserve it. We're not wearing midriffs. We're going to wear different T-shirts. We're going to have props at one point.
With one word wigs. You can wear wigs. I don't care what you do, but no midriffs. We have lovely people taping us here.
We've got a whole new staff. It's going to be great. Anyway, so here, I'm going to try not to touch your face during the whole thing because people will notice. Well, no one else is going to touch my face.
I mean, seriously. All right, well, listen, we've got some big stories to break down. OK. Scott, Jack, who looks like he might be staying at Twitter.
What is happening? So today, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the talks between the Dorsey side at Twitter and Elliot Management, which is Paul Singer, have come to an agreement to add two new board members and an independent third member, $2 billion in stock buybacks, and also paid for part of which with an investment by Silverlake. I guess, Egon Durban at Silverlake, who's an interesting guy, is joining the board. It looks like he doesn't have to give up.
Jack does not have to give his half job. Scott, are you wrong here? What happened? Do they just sensibility come to?
They suddenly meet Jack and really like him. What happens? Scott, give me some news. OK, we're right as rain on this one.
This is, you know why you said that. First off, I doubt you have seen a company, I think Elliot announced this action 10 days ago. I don't think you've ever seen three board seats at a company of this size awarded 10 days after Elliot files the proxy or issues of statement. So this is unprecedented.
And I've been following this as you can imagine really closely. There wasn't a single article that basically said Jack should stay CEO. And so the board, we said this. It was over before it started, three board seats, including one from Elliot, one from Silverlake, a new one.
And I believe in the press release, it talks about them setting up a committee. And in that committee, in the charge or the description of the committee, they use the word succession. So this is peace with honor. But be clear, Jack Dorsey is now dead man walking.
You don't let three people on your board, who have all agreed the CEO should be out in 10 days. You don't cancel your trip to Africa and decide, OK, I'm going to show these guys part-time how awesome I am. He's done. I mean, this is unprecedented.
All right, you're still speaking with that. You're sticking with he's going to be gone. Oh, he's already gone. They don't, they aren't singing.
It's already gone. He's the white walkers. I don't know what the term is, but this guy's this is peace with honor that this needs to be Jack's idea and you need to get to know Jack. Maybe you'll like him.
They said, fine, we're going on the board. And they're going to, this is literally care I've been following one point I was actually considered an activist investor. I've never seen a company fold this fast. 10 days, three board seats.
All right, so we're going to answer four. And you said that you got to get three, two, three. Interesting, Egan Durban from Silver Lake. I know I'm a tongue bit.
I know I'm actually pretty well. He operates out of Silicon Valley. He's super close to Silicon Valley types. What do you make of that?
He gets on the board. They make a billion dollar investment Silver Lake does, obviously, seeing an opportunity. Silver Lake's been in Dell. They've been a whole bunch of different things.
Some of them have worked out. They were in WME, pretty heavy. That did not go public. How do you look at that move?
You know, I mean this. I've interviewed a few people on podcast recently. And you immediately cut to that. You managed to get to insight by asking questions.
That's the correct question. And it's Silver Lake. What is Silver Lake's involvement here? And it means the following.
It means the floor has just been put on the stock. Because if the stock languages are going down, Silver Lake's going to take a private. And then getting a billion dollars into the company and becoming one of the biggest shareholders. And they're doing it under the auspices of a $2 billion re-share repurchase.
But what it is is is Silver Lake wants a foot in the door of equity state to take the company private should the stock not go up. Silver Lake is not a public markets hedge fund. It's a company that takes big, you know, they go whale hunting for, they take the biggest, they do the biggest private equity deals in the world. This is the first step in a take private by Silver Lake should the stock continue to fall.
Interesting. So what's the next step? All right, what's the next step? You said that Jack was being out after 30 days.
But possibly not the case. Or is this one of these quite? How do you, how do you, how do you, this is not a victory for Jack is what you're saying. He's got to stay of execution.
But eventually he's on the gurning at about 90 to 120 days max. You don't let three people on your board that showed up banging, banging at the walls, publicly stating everywhere this guy needs to be out. And then you say, well, I'm gonna, my favorite statement by Jack next week was I'm rethinking Africa given coronavirus and everything else, which is kind of a, putting a heavy lift on everything else. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And put that in there. He should have just said I'm not going. Yeah, I just said it was a mistaken judgment on my mind. But when you have three people come on your board who are this kind of caliber and they're gonna be his largest shareholders, this is basically, this is basically saying, the lead director Philip, I forget his last name.
This is like, okay, you guys have won. You don't need to humiliate us. And so they're trying to position this as strikes deal. They got everything they wanted.
I mean, they weren't, Jack wasn't gonna throw up his arms after 10 days and say I'm out, but basically when you, they're announcing a special committee to look at a variety of things including succession. You don't announce a committee to look at succession unless the CEO's leaving. All right, so who are some of the names? What do you think, what's gonna be next?
And then we're gonna get to coronavirus speaking of coronavirus as Jack mentioned. What happens next? The stock goes up because they're gonna start a share repurchase and basically this is the next chapter of Twitter has now the first page has been kind of written or opened. This is a new company now with new ownership.
And Jack and the board, the new board members will pretend to be nice and less Jack, your idea around if Jack showed up, Monday and said I've been all wrong, forgive me for my sins, I'm gonna go full time. This is my plan, this is my product plan. I think maybe they give him some time, but I think in general what they say is after the first or second board meeting, look, this needs, I mean, you know what they might do? They might just start calling him in the morning in the afternoon and making his life miserable.
Board members are allowed to do that and keep in mind he does have another job. So my guess is it'll be now I would say 60 to 90 days so he can claim it's his idea. Basically what he's trying to do is figure out a way. Him and the lead director are trying to figure out a way, peace with honor, the war's over, and they want this to be their idea.
And Jack's gonna try and hold on for as long as he can such that it comes across as his idea. But be clear, this is new ownership, new board members, a private equity player in there. We have never seen a company give up three board seats in 10 days. I've never seen that before.
Yeah, it's interesting to see who they're gonna look at. You know, I was just thinking as I noticed Silver Lake, which I should've thought of Silver Lake of course, but coming here, this is, it's interesting, you know, you can do it as close to someone like Nikesh Rora who used to run ads at Google, who used to be president at Google. There's a whole bunch of people, obviously, people like Susan Wojcicki. You had a great lunch.
Yeah, I thought you had a great lunch. I thought you had that on the top of my head. I was, you know, there's all kinds of people that could go into this job. I don't think Adam Bainer did cost Silver coming back for sure, I just put their name in there.
But there's certainly a lot of people, and now with Silver Lake, there's a couple of people that are sort of, there's all kinds of people that are tight with them. And you know, they're very ensconced into Silicon Valley, royalty, I would say. They're right on Santil Road. They have lovely lunches, just so you know.
Do that, it's good enough. Yeah, yeah. And so it's an interesting gang to bring in here. And they definitely tend to cooperate with the entrepreneurs, like with Michael Dow and others.
But they certainly, they haven't made all the great moves. I'll tell you, WME-1 I think has been tough for them, because they didn't go public. And Dell has been in a real struggle. Has Dell been a struggle?
I don't know much about it. Yeah, over time. I mean, I think it's, they've had ups and downs, but they certainly have enormous amounts of money. And this is typical vegan very much.
He's kind of a, I don't want to use that term that everyone uses as a ball, but that's what he is. And it'll be interesting, but he's super tight with Silicon Valley top notch. Anyway, we'll see. All right, so you are saying there will be a new CEO in 30 to 60 days unless Jack comes back with a plan.
So to be fair, I mean, time goes fast, but this is, okay, we fold, you have the board seats and we're going to put together committee to look at the CEO and we would like a piece, Jack's been a good guy, he's got a history here. We want this to be what I call a dignified exit, but there's just no way you let three adversarial, you give up three adversarial board seats and expect to see how to stick around when their primary justification for getting those board seats was they need a new CEO. Yeah, it's going to be a tougher board. It's going to be a tougher board on.
No, I would go in for that. It's going to be a board. Yeah, well, we got, I mean, I think a lot of them are very close to him and he, you know, like Brett Taylor from Salesforce and I still wouldn't rule out a purchase by someone. That's, you know what I mean?
Like a Salesforce and I think that'll be interesting. So there's, that's an interesting question and just a positive for a second. So Salesforce is interesting although it was board, I think basically said to Benioff who obviously has just so much credibility with this board because it's just delivered in spades and actually no one of their board members, Sandy Robertson is just kind of this very high integrity to smart guy anyway, but who else would it be though? I'm having trouble figuring out somebody asked that question.
Very few people buy it because of, and I choose like none of the big companies. That's right, and it comes on. You know that Chinese companies can buy it's a very direct purchase Disney's gonna buy it at this moment in time. So I think Salesforce is, there's others people have mentioned I'm blanking, but none of the big ones for sure.
And it's a big, it's a big lift for someone. Well right now quite frankly, the odds on pounds down lead dog to buy the same is silver like, no. Yeah, yep, yep going private. Actually we'd be solving a lot of problems for it.
And it's so constant. Anyway interesting move big, big, big move. We'll see what happens Scott. We'll see, I'm gonna keep you on it to see if Jack Dorsey's there and he finds Jesus he often looks like Jesus, but he will see if he like suddenly leaves a job things like that.
Well, what did we say we said board members within, did I say seven days? Ten days. Okay, how many days has it been? It's gonna be gone, within 10 days, but I'm just saying you said he'd be gone.
It's not gone yet. We'll see if he outlast you Scott Galloway. So he's got to stay of execution, but it's, it's okay. All right, all right.
So speaking of coronavirus, other reasons, which actually the ripple effects of coronavirus, not this move by Jack on Africa. You know, South by Southwest, we were supposed to be there this week, we were supposed to be eating barbecue, what you and I together want around being. How dare the virus? People.
COVID-19 is just really rippling through the economy. Everything cancel, all kinds of stuff. And especially the gig economy, including hospitality industry, so if you're new drivers, they're being B renters. And we're gonna look a little bit at how gig workers in general being affected by COVID-19 and what companies and employees that are doing about it.
Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, committed, they will continue to pay hourly contractors, hourly wage if they're affected by COVID-19. Amazon hasn't been an official commitment yet, but they said in a statement they would be helping their hourly workers on their campus in Seattle and Bellevue. Now we're from Apple, about they'll join this move. So again, meanwhile, Uber in this week's New York account of coronavirus includes the first Uber driver, not a surprise.
Uber announced it would be offering compensation drivers affected by COVID-19. That Uber spoke and confirmed the company already compensated by COVID-19, but ultimately non-affected drivers in the UK and Mexico. Meanwhile, Senator Mark Warner said letters to Uber, postmates, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash, and GrubHub urging them financial benefits, their army of gig workers. And of course, there's a bigger impact which we'll talk about on the economy for this.
What do you think? Besides the fact that we're disappointed, we're not gonna be at South by Southwest. The economic impact is all over the place and especially in this area where these companies, which have benefited from gig workers, which you have talked about extensively, are now having to pay the price for that. Yeah, it's just amazing, isn't it?
How much, the same that keeps popping in my mind is that life isn't about what happens to you, it's how you react to what happens to you. And I think about just how much, at least in my mind, or my viewpoint of this, or the complexion, or my mood, has changed in the last just 72 hours. And how the world feels has changed in the last 72 hours, because when we found out South by Southwest was canceled being, you know, I got all choned up and I called you and said, well, why don't we do something in Austin anyways in support of the local community? And both of us like the idea, but we're like, okay, let's wait and see how this plans out.
And as of this morning, you and I are not going anywhere. No. And it's just amazing how much, it feels like in the last 72 hours, the fear, the concern, whatever you wanna call it has gone up about 1% an hour compounding. And it feels like a fear has doubled in the last three days.
Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think, and as you're getting more and more reports and more stories about how the Trump administration has made a mess of this and he's playing golf ball weekend, which is probably better. Let's keep them on the golf links. You know, it's interesting, because I was just thinking, you know, at least in public Pence has been reasonable.
Like he's been trying his best. And every time he says something reasonable, the president says something stupid. Like it's really, it's fascinating to be in his position. Because I feel like he's handling like any public official, Republican or Democrat would, which is, and so are the governors, which thank goodness for governors, including Jansley in Maryland, Larry Hogan, all kinds, and he's a Republican.
But this issue of like where that, how analog vulnerable we are, especially as we have more and more gig economy workers, is really a fascinating moment, you know, in how we think about this and what we do. And you're right, people are panicked. And of course, you know, the whole CPAC thing, the word CPAC are close to the president. Have, you know, they've matched laps, shook the hand of a coronavirus person, but coronavirus and then immediately, relatively soon shook the hand of President Trump and many others and this guy was in the green room.
I mean, just the repercussions are both kind of, you can't write this stuff at the same time, disturbing. So first off, I just want to be recognized for my discipline and willpower to mention that Ted Cruz has been self-quarantined and I'm not going to make a joke. I'm just not going to make a joke about that because of what's going on. But there is, I mean, I love the line.
I thought probably the best series, or one of the best series of last 12 months was the series on Chernobyl from HBO. And the scientist who's credited with being sort of the adult in the room and kind of the hero, the protagonist of the story, has this great line and that is every lie is a debt incurred against the truth. And eventually that debt comes due. And I think about an administration that essentially just lies to people.
It just says, okay, you know, airtight, nothing to worry about. I understand this virus. And at some point in competence, constant turnover and something that is not aging well is two years ago. It looks at the administration cut about 80% of the global virus pandemic response within the CDC cut the budgets there.
When you have a lack of respect for your own institutions that you oversee, it just, and when you were talking about how these companies have responded, it's clear it's really interesting. These companies are now the government and they're now the adults in the room. They're government over the weekend. We want action, we want leadership.
The fact that South Korea is testing or was testing, I think 10,000 people a day and nobody knows how many were testing. It can't even seem to get the right answer. And then you have- That's because we didn't go along with the testing kits. We use our own, that they were as typical.
We didn't go along with the who. Oh, there's going to be so many stories that are going to come out about that. That is it. And the question now is, are we Singapore, where it immediately looks bad and because of a combination of testing, tracking, and then self-quarantine, and also, let's be honest, the Singaporean people are very compliant.
You know, they look like they got largely under control or are we Italy where just three weeks ago, there were only 17 people. And now we have 17 million people being quarantined and we're not sure. I mean, this is going to be so interesting to limits the tension between handling something like this and democracy because this is one of those times where authoritarian rule looks like it's actually great. Well, authoritarian, they're just incompetent.
That's really incompetent and selfish and trying to hide it because of the loving of the stock market. I think the stock market, I think the combination of him being a germophobe. And I don't think we can stress how important that is, just doesn't want to face it. And then the second part, his obsession with the stock market as a proxy, you are right, these companies, these tech companies have become the government and they're the first to step out McDonald's has not done so and others that have gig economy workers, essentially.
And so they do have to step up along with governors in terms of governing this country, which is fascinating. Like, what, this can't happen continually. The government has to step in and actually do its job, but it's really interesting that they've stepped up. Did you pull up your phone?
I mean, we taped this to the report. Market's not 2000 points. That shit is getting real. It is, because of the gas prices and things like that.
So what's the effect on the bottom line for this weekend? Which, these tech companies are gonna take these costs on and not the government and then this stock market situation? What is your viewpoint here? Where does it go?
Well, I mean, the honest answer is, I don't know. The, I mean, if you look at what's just so interesting is, and you always related to your past, but so let me back up, these companies in my opinion, the tech companies and these leaders are doing the right thing and I think they're leaders. I think they're saying, all right, who's most vulnerable? Small and medium business, gig workers, kind of blue collar workers.
And what the government should have done over the weekend is something similar and announced some sort of, so there is monetary policy is no longer a weapon. Interest rates are so low, we're out of bullets. It's got to be some sort of fiscal policy. What I mean by that is, over the weekend, the president should have announced a policy such that every small and medium sized business can get a zero percentage loan to make sure that the wheels are humming because we will get through this.
I don't know if it's a month, I don't know if it's a year, but you wanna make sure there's small and medium size businesses on the other side, there's still a lot. And the other ones, that is economically what you would refer to as a vulnerable population here. And we can't, cutting interest rates isn't gonna do anything. What we would need to do is, I forget what's Katrina, but literally at one point it started handing out prepaid credit cards or charge cards.
And just, you've got to put some money or access to credit in the hands of small business. Where this could get ugly is that, and I didn't really understand this until I read Andrew Ross Sorkin's book, Too Big to Fail, that the thing that creates recessions barreling towards depressions is not the stock market, it's an absence of credit. Or basically when companies no longer can get credit. That's what causes depressions.
Let me just say, my friend of mine who's a big gator in New York has had millions of dollars of business just taken away and she was talking about like the iterations of her, she has 300 workers that she can't give anymore hours to. And so she's doing everything to protect their salaries because they've worked continually. But think about that, hundreds of workers then can't work. And then that the iteration, iteration, iteration, all over the place, and this is a small business owner, even if it's a big business.
And it's not gonna pay bills, right? That's what you do and then you need credit to do that. And so that's gonna iterate with small businesses also. Airlines will need relief from the government hotels.
Those are the most obvious ones, but it iterates everywhere. And especially as this economy has become more of a gig economy, it's really the government that has to step in and do what a long time ago, Avenue said, I talked about it, it's like, what is the healthcare benefits for gig workers? What are, how do we define an employee anymore? And this is exactly the kind of thing that changes the attitudes towards that.
So you don't, you have insurance for what happens. So it's a big deal. We're gonna, one more before we have a friend of pivot coming on, but before that Facebook removes Trump ads, misleading ads by President Trump's reelection campaign about the 2020 census. The Trump campaign released ads on a platform that said President Trump needs you to take the official 2020 congressional district census today.
We need to hear from you in the most important election history. The Trump campaign linked the census directly, the Trump campaign, a misrepresentation of an official government survey, the Census Bureau. We're supposed to begin the population survey until next week, which is also in this middle of this crisis, is you wonder what the, how they're gonna hire people. Facebook said on Thursday that the Trump campaign's message violated its policy against interference in the census.
Facebook bars, the misrepresentation of dates, locations, times and methods of census participation. Facebook said in a statement, quote, there are policies in place to prevent confusion around the official US census, and this is an example of those being enforced. You know, this is the right thing, but at the same time they kept that Joe Biden video up, like that, they're being attacked for that. Twitter said it was misrepresentative, or manipulative, or some word they put on the bottom where nobody sees it.
So what do you think prompt them to take those ads? And they've been so lenient on other free speech. Well, that's a thing. I just don't know.
It seems to me that terms of service are nearly impossible to understand the consistency around them. I don't, you know, I mean, every time the president speaks, it shows the inconsistency of their terms of service because he's still on Twitter. I never know what to expect, like who they're gonna boot off, who they're not. I don't understand.
I don't understand their approach to it. I understand who makes these decisions, and that's part of the problem. And that is, even if it was a ham-handed policy, as long as it was consistent, it's like, the best relationships, you'd rather be in a relationship with someone who is wrong, but as long as they're consistently wrong. You know what to expect.
That's our relationships. There you go. There you go. I'm inappropriate, but you're used to that.
So you expect it. So, but with Twitter, with the terms of service around this stuff, you get the feeling it's a bunch of people, press people in a room going, okay, what do we do? And then whoever's allowed his voice gets that decision, they just have to be able to establish anything resembling like a constitution around behavior authority around what gets kicked out. At least that's my sense.
Well, I think the sense is, it's like a bridge too far. They're just pushing for bridge too far. And this group, the Trump group, you know, pushes it too far and then hopes they get through. What you do is you do 20 shitty things like this.
And this is, let me just, let me try to do this technically. This is shitty and manipulative. And lots of groups have been warning Facebook around the disinformation, and especially when it's coming for the president and the Trump campaign. But at first, they're trying to remove the campaign ads on the census.
You know what I mean? Like, until they were alerted. And so they do 20 shitty things, and then 19 of them get to go through. And that's the way these people are.
And that's what they're gonna do. And Facebook is caught, you know, just playing defense the whole time instead of offense, which is what they should be doing. You know, the Biden, again, the Trump campaign was pushing out a very, very doctored video of Biden saying he supported Trump, which is insane. And, you know, that it works for him, Dan Scabino, was pushing it out.
And then the Trump retweeted it. And it was clearly doctored. It just, you know, and again, Twitter did something, but it just labored it, I think there was something at the bottom manipulated video. Which what the hell is that?
Just take it down. Like, it's kind of fascinating. Yeah, but you're right. They don't have any standards, which is really irritating.
And you need standards at this moment to be doing this in terms of what they're gonna do. I don't even get it anymore. I don't even understand what the game is here for them. Where are you today, Cara?
I'm in New York. Oh, you're in New York. I'm just really curious. I have to tell you, the subway was packed, the way it was packed, even though the governor and the mayor were talking about don't go to work if you don't need to.
I was wearing gloves. There were people were not wearing masks or anything like that, a couple of people were. So it seemed like a typical day on the subway to me. People were out all day yesterday in New York in the park.
It was a beautiful day. So it's interesting. I mean, it looked like restaurants were full. You know, I think people are, but I think everywhere you went, people were, you could hear over her and people talking about coronavirus everywhere.
And it's so where we, everyone. So I think people are super nervous. And I do think the business implications, I mean, I spent the weekend thinking about the co-conference and all kinds of the stuff, the iteration. I canceled several, I canceled several speeches.
You and I are supposed to go somewhere in Europe relatively soon and that, you know, who knows who knows what's gonna happen there. I'm hoping this will all level out. That's really what the hope is. Yeah, we're all hoping it burns out.
I mean, what you want, I was thinking about it, what you really want in government is these guys, the goal is you want to be accused at some point of overreacting. To be accused of overreacting is one thing, to be accused of underacting is a crime, is a government official. And that's Trump and I think that's where they are now. They're gonna be accused of underreacting.
They're just not getting around it. There's nothing here that feels like an overreaction. Thank you. This is just something else.
There's a confident is really what it is. Just another example of the confidence. The other thing I was thinking about was, and this goes back to, and I think there's a, I don't know if it's a business lesson, but we talked about Red Envelope last week, I remember this reminded me of, in 2007, it's always this one, two punch. It's always, it's always a combination, a peanut butter and chocolate disaster.
Two things come from opposite or varying directions, one's typically economic, the other's some sort of exogenous impact. When I read Envelope in 2008, the beginning of 2008, the dirty secret of retail is that, especially retail, is that you lose money for 45 weeks a year, and then from basically from Thanksgiving to Christmas, you make a ton of money, and you hope to make it all back. And so we had all of our gifts, all of our cashmere blankets, and a chest, Lord of the rings, chest that's on a cargo ship, and it was a longshoreman strike in Long Beach, and we couldn't offload our product. So we had to go get and extend our line of credit to go buy more stuff to get ready for the Christmas season.
And an analyst, a fixed income analyst at Wells Fargo, recently sort of saw the credit crisis coming and pulled our credit line, and 11 links later, we were chapter 11. So an exogenous event and a lack of credit was sort of the one, two punch for what was a fairly, at the time, what felt like a fairly robust, publicly traded company. And if you think about what's going on now, we obviously have this coronavirus, but what you also have is exogenous shock of oil prices diving and potentially taking down the market. It's like, it's just couldn't have come at a worse time.
And what's also really interesting about this is, I remember, I was born in an era where oil prices going down was good for us because it ceded power, a transfer power from the Gulf backed us. And now oil prices going down is actually a bad thing for our economy because we're a net exporter and the largest energy producer in the world right now. And what might be ground zero, if there is, I think we do plummet into something really dangerous economically, or really historic, what probably will be the ground zero, just as it was subprime in 2008, is the high yield market because 11% of all high yield bonds are energy companies, whose cost of production is now probably above what they can sell their stuff for. So it's not, it's usually a one, two punch, and it feels like you can identify both these kind of fissive stone coming from the economy right now.
They're coming in that way. And you know, again, lastly, and we're gonna go to a break in a second, this is a question of truthfulness about this at the same time, what's happening. I mean, I tweeted a lot this week about my mom who was getting terrible information from Fox News about everything. And my brother and I had to read her the riot act because she was like, oh, you can take the blue shot and it'll be fine.
Or it's not that big a deal. They're over hyping it and oh, I can go out. And I'm like, listen, lady, you know. I don't know, she should, my sense as you do with the CDC says the CDC, the summer has been perfectly.
I thought they said, if you're elderly or you have an underlying health vulnerability, you should begin to self-quarantine. Well, that was not being broadcast on Fox News, which my mother watched. So she had like at least seven pieces of misinformation. Mom's sick, he better be careful.
That's all I have to say. Lucky. Lucky better not get sick as you watch it, that friggin' Fox News. I mean, it just was so weird.
I mean, usually it's just irritating to listen to her. Now it's like, that's enough, that's funny. There's something interesting there, though. And that is, we, okay, so Fox and Rupert Murdoch, we immediately, you made a connection that they're complicit and they'll be ramifications because traditional media companies can be held liable.
Whereas we're talking about Twitter and Facebook, I think they do a hundred times the damage around stuff in terms of misinformation. But the idea that they might actually be held liable if there's an increase in breakouts seems unthinkable. In reality, it shouldn't be no different if they should have the same responsibilities as every other company. Agreed.
Also, Lucky Carnage should be smarter, but here she goes in the thrall of propaganda. Anyway, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back with a friend of Pivot. I mean, not too so when we get back.
Some say the bubbles in an aero-travel piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth. Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light. Rich, creamy, chocolatey aero-travel. Feel the aero-bubbles melt.
It's mind bubbling. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa. Whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. But Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a frame thrower.
Luckily, Jeff stayed with Amazon and stocked up on Antassids, Ginger Tea, and Milk. Habiniero, more like Habinier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. All right, we're back.
We have a friend of Pivot in the studio. I call her Amina. She's a co-host of the Brilliant Podcast. Call your girlfriend.
And it's publishing her book with her partner there. Big friendship, how we keep each other close coming out this year in July. Amina also used to work in tech, including at Google. It was International Women's Day over the weekend.
And Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the primaries. It was brilliant on Saturday Night Live. So let's talk about women and politics on leadership and social media. Welcome, Amina.
How you doing? Hi, Cara. Thanks for having me. No problem.
You're in Los Angeles right now, correct? I am in Los Angeles right now. It's so early, but it's also a gorgeous day. I figure it is actually very nice here.
Anyway, so we have Scott on the phone also. Scott, say hello to Amina. Hi, Amina. Hi, Scott.
Have you International Women's Day to you? Yeah. I have such a question about that. Can we start that?
Go ahead, please. Go ahead, Scott. Okay, Amina. So International Women's Day, I don't want to say it bothers me, but there's something about it that really bothered me yesterday.
And I want to get to your viewpoint. It kept seeing words like celebrate, honor, pictures of roses, and stories about being good to yourself. And can you be a mom and sexy at the same time? And as someone who was raised by a single mother, you know, and after my dad and my mom split, my dad immediately, who was less talented, went on to make.
I think he was making $50,000 a year, and the only thing my mom could do was be a secretary at 10,000 a year. And my feeling is, if we're really going to have a woman's movement, it's not about honoring or celebrating. It's about paying the more fucking money. And to me, this soft glossed over hallmark channel holiday is missing the script or it's missing the point that we need to economically empower women.
Anyways, I'll stop there your turn. Okay. Wow. Wow.
Wow. Who knew? Trust me. I'm not.
I believe in economic empowerment. All right. Don't worry. It doesn't surprise me.
Here's what here's the deal, right? I think that International Women's Day is just like any of those hallmark holidays is someone that's something that is just very muddled. And at this point is very steeped in capitalism. Like if you know the history of International Women's Day, it was proclaimed by the UN, I want to say in 1975 as a day for to celebrate women's rights and world peace.
And now it is just a shorthand for love yourself, you know, Malala's awesome and you know, brands just giving you all sorts of messaging. And so it means a lot and it doesn't mean anything. I agree with you that the intent of International Women's Day is to talk about parity. And you know, but I think that we live also in a world where that question for us today in 2020 is very it looks very different than it looked like for the women in 1975 and it looked very different than, you know, the first when when the social party of America started designating the state like back in 1908.
And I, you know, I think that like with all things social movements are really fraught and that once capitalism comes into the question, it also just becomes a mess. I personally, I find International Women's Day and its current iteration like very offensive because every day should be International Women's Day. And I think that I care less about cute hashtags and, you know, like people posting the women that have inspired them than I care about the fact that we live in a country where violence against women is something that still happens on a routine basis. We live in a country where women do not get paid the same as men and we live in a country where women are not represented at the highest echelons of power at the same rate as men.
And so I, you know, it's like, it's one thing to bring awareness, but it's another thing to actually like change the fucking system. And, you know, I'm like, we've had decades of awareness. Can we actually do something about it? Well, I agree with you.
I was happy though that my son Louis called me to wish me happy International Women's Day. That was a nice feeling at the same time. It's always nice when Louis calls. That's true 100%.
But one of the things that was interesting is that you were talking about representation. All the women out of the out of the presidential race, obviously, all of them are being considered for vice president. What do you make of this? And obviously, Elizabeth Warren did a great job on this week.
But what do you what do you think has happened in this race? We're down to three white guys who are in the in the worst group for coronavirus. What is your feeling on how that played itself out? And, of course, you had interviewed Hillary Clinton many times, had been a sport over in the last election.
Where are we right now? I mean, I think that we are exactly where we have always been. A place where there is a very strong glass ceiling for women. We're in a place where women's leadership is just not taken.
We pay a lot of lip service to it, but we are seeing that it's not actually being paid attention to because the script of the last time in 2016 was that a lot of people said they didn't like Hillary Clinton, which I'm like, you can, fair, voters can feel how they want to feel about it. The thing that I am always fascinated by is when people say we want a woman, not this woman, then what does that magical woman look like that everybody is okay with? And is it possible that it's actually not about individual women, and it is more about the fact that this country is not ready to stomach the idea of a woman in charge? And I think that's a question that we should all be asking ourselves.
We started this election with many women running for president, and, you know, and much like international women's day, we made like a thing of it. It was, you know, there was that big vogue story about it. People keep saying that they're inspired and that they're empowered, and we hear all of the words, but when push comes to shove, what are we seeing? We were saying that like a woman's candidacy is not seen as a viable thing, and we heard the word electable over and over and over and over again when it came to Elizabeth Warren, and maybe the truth is that for women to be electable, people just have to elect them.
Yeah. So I have a question or a thought around that, because if you look around the world, whether it's Thatcher or Merkel, or even I don't want to create an unattainable, you know, I don't want to fall into the trap of something like that. All female leaders are just better and have higher character on a balanced scorecard. I would bet, you know, arguably that there's there's just leaders, and then there's there's not great female leadership in Argentina, what have you, but there are the point is there are leaders that have been democratically elected female leaders and other Western nations, and we can't seem to wrap our heads around it when you describe a female candidate or you describe the attributes of the candidate, and then you put the term female on them, they usually go down three to six points, which would swing almost any election.
Where does it, why is that in the US? Where, if you reverse engineer, where did that start in America, our bill that is resulted in, we handicapped female candidates by three to six points at the polls. What is the ground zero of this? I mean, I don't know that we can diagnose the ground zero that grows just beyond the fact that our country is built on a very, you know, there is an undercurrent of like misogyny and how this country is run.
And I think that that happens by design, but I think that it's also something that a lot of people are really happy to talk about the fact that, you know, maybe that it's 2020 and maybe we have, they're excited about women running, but the truth is that we don't, we just don't have a good model for it. You like, you point to countries like Germany and England, but the truth is that even countries that are, you know, I would say that Americans usually turn their nose down to have had very strong female leadership. If you go to Pakistan, if you go to Liberia, if you go to many other countries that are generally seen as third world countries, they have also accepted the fact that like having women in leadership is a normal fact of life. And so I think that in American politics and in American business, it can't surprise you that we don't have female leaders in politics if we don't see them in business, if we don't see them in tech, if we don't see them in entertainment, the problem is not a problem of one industry.
It's also not a problem of a pipeline as people talk about all the time, that's simply not true. It is just the truth that we have accepted for now that we will let women get as far as a socially acceptable and that it takes someone extraordinarily exceptional to break that mold. And that person has not, that person is not in our consciousness yet. Well, not yet.
Now we talk about, it is a tech and media show. Who do you want to call out in that regard? Why does it, it's the same in tech, it's gotten worse as you know you worked in tech. And then the top 10 podcasts are all in 2019 are all hosted by men.
I mean, and you have a very popular podcast for the year. Yeah, except for that. Well, it's like, who do you not call out, right? Like tech is actually a really good example.
There was a big push when I was in Silicon Valley a couple of years ago where people, you know, started paying a lot of lip service to the fact that we were tracking these numbers. It's like, great, we are tracking the representation. One year, two years, three years, 10 years, the numbers haven't changed in some cases. They've gotten worse.
So what is the point of tracking? If, you know, we say that we are, we are an industry that cares about data that cares about facts and is built on engineering and engineering can not fix this problem. I was like, what does that say about what it is that we're actually doing by just tracking these numbers? So what does it say?
I mean, I think it says that tech and all of America is not ready to have a reckoning with the fact that it's honestly, at this point, I would say embarrassing. We are this, you know, I'm like, we're living in 2020. We are living in the future that we were all told we would live in. And it's very few things have changed when it comes to what is going on for women leadership.
So is there any solutions? I mean, are you making solutions in your book, this big friendship, which is about women's friendship? Yeah. I mean, the solution that I have always looked to is, you know, I think that like for women and for other marginalized people is that we have to build our own power because we are not going to be invited to power.
Like I really believe in building bridges horizontally, I believe in this idea called Shine Theory that is really about, you know, it is about building your own power and instead of hoarding power, the way that like the traditional system does is about making sure that you give it to other people because, you know, I think that at the end of the day, you know, there is a world in which you can have it like in Europe where there is like a quota system, you know, where you say, okay, all boards have to have like a third female leadership. All industries have to do like the government just steps in and says, this is what we have to do because if we leave people to their own devices, it is not going to happen or I think that some of us are playing the long game and really believing that, you know, over generations, it will change but the change is very slow. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, thank you so much for coming on the show and have a great time in Los Angeles.
I mean, this book coming out is called Big Friendship, How We Keep Each Other Close and our fantastic podcast is called Call Your Girlfriend, which is what I just did. Thank you, Amina. So much. All right, Scott, do you feel emboldened now?
Do you feel good about that? So I actually care. I wanted to say this, or I would like to say something on the phone. I do think, so I love the Bill Clinton statement, there's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed with what's right with America and capitalism is definitely, Amina brought up capitalism as it relates to gender balance, and I do think it's happening slowly.
And I think, you know where I think it starts, I think it starts in the boardroom because the board, yeah, people just have a tendency to envision people in leadership roles that are like them and whether they want to admit it or not, that's typically where they go just psychologically. And I've seen it happen over and over on nominee committees and boards where we have to pick a CEO and there are, there has slowly, but surely been over the last 10 years in the last 24 months, it's accelerated and intolerance for all male boards. And I'm not proud to say this, but I've been on several of them. And now what's happening, and this is great, is that a lot of institutional investors ranging from CalPERS, Ontario teachers, I think it's even BlackRock, is that we're not buying stock in any company that has a board that's not diverse, and that is a great way.
It's not just women, by the way, it's not just women, it's all kinds of diversity. Yeah, but my point is, it is, it's happening too late, it's happening not as fast as we would like, but it is happening. And I've seen more momentum around it in the last 24 months than I've seen in the previous 10 years. All right, but I would like it to be legislated at this point because it's getting ridiculous.
Anyway, but before we go, and by the way, Bill Clinton, next week his fail is on this video with this documentary with Hillary Clinton where he just said, we loved it, I didn't see it. I like his apology to Monica Lewinsky, who I think is a wonderful person, and I just think he's just still living in the denial stage of very bad behavior by Bill Clinton. You both apologize? Would they both apologize?
I sort of, it's literally the worst apologies on the planet. I'm sorry, I know you're not supposed to judge apologies, but in this case, it's pretty bad. And it's a long time, a long time taking too long. Anyway, it should have happened a long time ago.
Anyway, before we go, Scott, we're not gonna, we're not gonna, no, we're not a good note. You have a new podcast. That's right. I'm Dr.
Phil, your Oprah. I owe everything to you, but we'll soon leave you and forget you and just send you a Christmas card. I don't want a Christmas card. I don't want to say, maybe I should take it to a spa, because that is all women want.
All right, listen to me. Listen to me. I usually get a distasteful and offensive, which is why I like you. Listen, you're a new podcast.
I want, it's called Prof G. We're gonna play the promo for your podcast, Prof G, because if you can't get enough, Scott, here is some more, Scott. All right, Scott, we're gonna bang out the Prof G podcast promo, take it away. Okay, no problem.
Let's do it. Okay. That's right, bitches. The dog has a pod.
You know, I don't know if you want to call people bitches and not sure if you want to know who the dog is either. No, no, no problem. No problem. Hi, everyone.
The podcast, they suck, but the dog's pod sucks less. You know, I don't know about the negative. Okay. Let's try.
Okay. Four words to describe the Prof G podcast. The first and second Shama and Lama, the third and fourth. Ding and dong.
Show up for Prof G. That was positive. Not true. That made any sense, though.
Got it. Okay. Okay. All right.
Pull it together. My name is Scott Galloway. I'm a professor of marketing and my eastern school of business. I've taught over 4,700 students.
I've served on 12 boards. Started nine businesses. Some of them work. Some of them happen.
I want you to be successful professionally and personally. Let's view over the business world and what can be learned. Show up to Prof G. We're going to have office hours, expert interviews.
Prof G launches on March 19th. Do you heard a D day? Well, this is dog day. March 19th.
Show up the Prof G podcast. Oh my God. Really? What do you think, Kara?
You've created a monster. This is your fault. It is my fault. It was kind of a time machine.
I go back to DLD. You go back. Leave and go get some like German food somewhere. If you could turn back time, Kara.
If I could turn back time. That was a totally offensive promo. Then I think it would work. Yeah.
Really. I have gone full narcissist. I'm like literally. It's invisible and rich.
As if. Oh my God. Yeah, right. Okay.
Scott, everybody should sign up for this. It's Prof G. Office Hours with Scott Galloway. Shama Lamma, friggin ding dong.
Anyway, Scott, read us out. We love your questions. You have a question about a story. You're hearing the news.
Email us at Pivot at boxmedia.com. Be a feature on the show. Now, Scott. Bring us home.
Okay. Today's producer is Rebecca Sinanis. Our executive producer is Erica Anderson. And special thanks to Drew Burroughs and Rebecca Castro.
If you like what you heard, please sign up, download, send us an email. And again, remember, life isn't about what happens to you. It's about how you react to what happens to you.