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So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's O-D-O-O.com where I am making out with Cara Swisher, which is so offensive on so many levels. Cara, tell us about your tweet storm and how you made that lovely Kansas company, Shane.
Listen to me. Listen to me. The Hallmark Channel, which is already upsetting enough to have to watch those shows that they put on there, which is by low. They're very heartwarming.
Hugely successful. It's unlikely romance. It is. It is.
I get it. I get the whole thing. But they have ads on there, and there was a Zola ad, which helps you do weddings. It helps you do weddings or whatever.
And they had a bunch of different ads, but it shows how your wedding was better through Zola. And one of them was two brides kissing. That was not the focus of it. They were talking about the stupid Zola ad in the middle of their ceremony.
And it just infuriated me because I just had dinner with my son and explaining, what was it like 20, 30 years ago when I got married the last time? I mean, it was crazy that it was this topic. And he was sort of incredulous that all the different things that went on and how discriminatory was and how terrible it was. And then literally, I get up and look at my phone.
And there was this one million moms had pressured the channel to take down this ad, which is just a dopey ad, by the way. Let me just say, I wasn't like, yay, a lesbian, a dopey, lesbian wedding ad. So I started tweeting. I got sleeping, giants involved.
I got all my famous Twitter friends involved. But a lot of people pushed Ellen, all kinds of the gays. The people who judge went in there complained about it. But this group had just a small amount of people, you know, 25,000 signatures.
I got them 250,000 and pressured them. And so they took it down. And so, you know, after the reaction, which was crazy, which was great, they shifted and the CEO shifted back to it was just it was literally as if it was just been talking to my kid about it. It was 20 years ago suddenly that they were arguing over a silly ad.
And I don't know. That was really disconcerting. So I was upset because I've spent so much money on Zola. We know that Zola, never mind.
I'm sorry. And the first hallmark is a hallmark. I mean, I'm not as you can imagine, I'll watch a lot of Hallmark Channel. The hallmark is a wonderful company.
If you go to Kansas, they're a hugely, I think it's still family on there. Hugely, they're great. Yeah, from media. Yeah, they're like really good, decent people.
And I feel like I don't want to say this is my win, but they did something dumb. It was first off, a million moms is it's difficult when companies do dumb things like this. What's really upsetting is when they're economically stupid. So they responded to a group called a million moms and I got curious.
So I went to their Twitter page or their Twitter account. And there's 4,200 people following them. So they're not a million moms. They're slightly over 4,000 moms, meaning that they're not only giving into weirdos or people who are homophobic, they're giving into people that just don't matter, which is really weird that a company would be shamed by 4,200 moms.
I do like the fact that I do think they owned it. I liked this press release. He said, we made a mistake. We feel stupid about this.
And we're, I mean, let's be honest, you, Pete Buttigieg and Ellen show up, whatever you want, someone's going to nod their head. They're going to go, we don't know what we did, we're wrong and we'll fix it. It's just like, I just want such memories. I just been talking to my son about this and the issues and things that, and I'd be like, no, they would do this.
They would do this. You couldn't do this. And she was asking me why I didn't do certain things in life. And I was like, I want to join the military, by the way, couldn't because I wasn't, I was out and I couldn't do that at the time.
And so I was like, you just couldn't do these things. They would never depict. And we'd been talking about this amazing book called the celluloid closet, which I recommend everybody see, get the book or see the documentary. It's Vito Russo, Lily Tomlin narrates amazing documentary about depictions of gay people in media.
It's such a powerful reminder. Like basically, lesbians always committed suicide. Try the dark-haired lesbian always tried to grab the blonde lady and then get, that has to die. And then either the silly gay man or the conniving gay man.
And it just goes on and on. And it just really does make you understand where these images come from and why people have feelings and how powerful media is and what's astonishing about it. And I will stop my rant is that this was pre-Haze code. A lot of Hollywood was really tolerant and really interesting and all kinds of depictions.
And the very first image ever recorded in a film was too men dancing, which is beautifully depicted in this movie. And they weren't gay necessarily, but it was just a beautiful image. You know what I mean? It was just lovely when you go and watch it.
And so it's just sort of like, you understand, when I show my mom who gave me a really hard time for being gay initially, and every now and then pops off with some kooky. When she saw, I made her see that movie and she was a big movie goer and everything else. And she, when she saw it, she was like, I do really do understand how I got this way. Like, you know what I mean?
Like, it probably ganda has so much power on people, especially media propaganda. Anyway, thank you. But I don't, what doesn't get enough attention, Kara, is all the things that straight white men weren't allowed to do. True story.
I used to go dancing. I used to go dancing my gay friend. You don't know this, but my best man got further. My children, two different guys, both gay, which makes me, of course, very sensitive to all subjects.
But we used to go dancing and they told me as a straight white male, I was not allowed to dance with my hands above my shoulders. Well, yes. I think that's unfair. I think that's unfair.
I would not want to see you dancing with a bag of gay men. I got to tell you. Keep you out of the car. I'm having an epileptic seizure.
Boom. That's the big dog on the dance. Oh, my God. If Donna Summer came on and you started dancing, I don't know what I would have to do.
Yeah. Nobody. You're laughing a little too hard at that image. Well, I just saw it.
I just saw you in like an oompho bar, like in the Castro, and I'm sure you'd be very popular among the young men. But listen to me, this, you're right. This guy did the right thing. They did it very quickly.
It's just the fact that this is happening now. It's like, are you kidding? By the way, the ad is so ridiculous, too. It's like so harmless.
And so, you know, I know they don't think it's harmless because these 1 million moms are, you know, they, it sounds like the Haze code people. And the Haze code for those people who don't know was a code that they imposed on the movie industry that just killed creativity whatsoever. And it was all kinds of rules around how men and women had to behave and what depictions they could have about immorality. And just these lectures of immorality, just that's enough of that.
Anyway, let's get started. You know, like two years. Two years to your point though, I don't think people of younger generations, particularly our kids, just remember, they just don't appreciate it. How far we come.
The world is entirely different place. And it was awful. It was awful. It was awful.
It was awful. It was awful. The way it impacted my life. I obviously didn't, I didn't understand and I couldn't fully empathize with the discrimination that was going on.
But I had close friends who were closeted days who both passed away from HIV. And it was just people don't realize. They just don't realize. We were in the midst of a plague and all these, you know, not just young men, but just people who were contracting this disease that had such terrible shame around it in the wealthiest country in the world.
We had a president who wouldn't use the word. And this wasn't that long ago. It wasn't that long ago. That was a shameful period.
It really was. It was a shame. I think it's a stain on the whole country. I mean, the good news is we got after it and some incredible scientists let the kind of warm hand of science catch a lot of people.
A couple of my friends are literally alive because of the cocktail. And it looks like they have found cures. It went good and close to the cure, which is amazing. One of the things that's really, you have to keep in mind is these things can go back.
These things can go back. They don't want to go back. So we have to go back. So anyway, let's get to another big story.
Not even slightly related. China and the US agreed to phase one trade deal. It's so confusing. And so business doesn't know how to react because they don't know what it is.
But both China and the United States pulled back on expected tariffs so that we can keep threatening these tariffs. China is expecting to influence a series of taxes. It would have affected everything. The 15% tariff on our side would have affected apples products that are manufactured in China.
But so in the United States, part of the deal is that China will buy more US agriculture, which apparently they were buying before. So it's not much different. So it looks like and it's confusing to business. So the stock market doesn't know how to react.
But you know, big tech and farmers benefited even though they had what they had before. So it's going nowhere, essentially. So it's fascinating what this is going on. But this just seems to be a lot of noise back and forth.
Yeah, this is a page out of Big Tech where you make it so confusing as a means of delay and obfuscation. And the negotiations here are basically an attempt to wallpaper over what was an incredibly overdue, correct conversation around the imbalance and terrible trade practices of China that was an opportunity that was entirely squandered. We are going to end up, any hard analysis about any economist I believe is going to show that we ended up in the same or worst place we were before we started doing this. And the reality is you don't go to war without allies.
And if we had gone to war against the Chinese with our brothers and sisters in Europe, we would have had the leverage to get something done, even negotiating with a nation that thinks in 10 and 20-year increments. All this is a simple market manipulation by a president who was trying to juice the markets, time them, such that he can be reelected. He's been threatening to solve the problem whenever he wants the markets to go up to take credit for it. It's the worst, most ham-handed form of market manipulation.
And you watch, we didn't accomplish jack shit here. This was the worst fought war in the world. It was clumsy. It was stupid.
And to do it without allies has just resulted in a total waste of time. Yeah. And then they, of course, announced this week. I mean, he's trying to show a lot of stuff ahead of the impeachment.
He's trying to show a lot of it. And they did pass some things, even the paid leave for federal workers and things like that. But it is a marketing event, like, really. The issue is they could pass a lot of this bipartisan stuff easily if they want to, the stuff that especially matters.
And you're right, it's where exactly where we were. And tech remains never under threat whatsoever. And it's pushed really hard and sort of kissed up to him. So they would do it.
But it doesn't even matter. You're right. It wasn't going to happen without all the allies. Impulse was the correct impulse to deal with this issue.
But it just, it now looks like we dealt with it, but we didn't. It's just papering over bullshit, really. So there we have it. And speaking of that, papering over bullshit, it was the anniversary of the Sandy Hook shooting over the weekend, that horrible, terrible shooting of all those children.
And last week, there was also another anti-Semitic shooting in New Jersey. And of course, Trump would say he was going to do something about it. He obviously didn't do anything about it. But we should talk a little bit about gun tech.
There was a very good story in the New York Times this week about ghost guns. People want ghost guns. You want to essentially do it yourself guns. You buy it.
You assemble it and you don't need to get it registered. There's no serial numbers. This is an online kind of thing. There's also, obviously, the idea that you could print guns.
There's all kinds of things in gun tech that you could actually use to stop people from being able to use them. Very well. None of it's taken off. So do you have any thoughts?
I mean, it's just, again, we don't have any gun legislation, which I think as these technologies get worse and worse, we have no legislation to deal with guns as they are now in an analog form. Guns is one of those. That's, I don't know if it was the Stalin quote. One death is a tragedy.
A million deaths is a statistic. The way that that's described guns in the US is it's a statistic. Because there's just so many, you know, we have more gun deaths in Japan, Canada, UK, and other leading, you know, western nations combined. It's just, and what's always been strange for me is I'm bad with equipment and clumsy, so I have never had any desire to have guns around me or the appeal of protection or them as a sport.
I've just never related to it. I've always found it sort of weird that, and I think one of the things that damages our public discourse and our decisions is that macho kind of always gets an advantage. And every Democrat who has the testicles to come out against guns or for gun regulation immediately starts with, well, I'm a gun owner and I'd love to go to the shooting range and I'd love to hunt. There's a lot of us out there who quite frankly, and I think this is going to happen.
You know how they're tax havens right now where people move to a state because of low taxes? If there was a city or a municipality and to a certain extent Manhattan is like this that made it just exceptionally difficult for people to own guns, I would consider moving there. Because all I know is someone who follows, who has an appreciation for data is the moment they're more guns around. My kids are more likely to kill themselves.
I'm more likely to get killed by my spouse. You're more likely to be shot in a home invasion because you think you're in a western movie and sit there and try and pull out a gun and then the person with the gun kills you. I just see absolutely no benefit for a huge segment of the population. I understand Second Amendment rights, but it just always seems strange to me that there is more opportunities from a marketplace to say, all right, move here.
Detroit wants to rejuvenate and say we're going to have a gun for you zone and move to Detroit. If you would just rather not be around guns. That is one crazy idea, but I kind of think that's fascinating. We could have a lot of cities already have very strict gun control laws like San Francisco does.
And so there are places like that. If you think about it across a broad spectrum of things, live here and don't get beaten up for being gay, live here and don't get, you know, nonetheless, I think there are these national laws that don't pass it. And this gun tech, I really did have a lot of hope around gun tech that you can only one person could recognize you. It has not taken off.
It has absolutely not taken off. And I'm just, I'm not really clear and instead, as is most things with tech, is that the really crappy ways to use the tech have taken off like these do-it-yourself guns that are available online or these online marketplaces. It's facilitated the sale just the same that it's done with child porn or anything else. Tech has facilitated it and made it a bigger business.
And that's what's disconcerting is that a lot of ways tech could really help here. But it doesn't seem to, there's no startup that's, there's a big player manufacturing these kind of things. And, you know, I think very much like opiates, someday there will be these lawsuits that will put the gun industry out of business in the same way the opiate they're moving, or cigarettes were, and then opiates right now. And I think eventually this will get to that point, but not today.
And by the end, Donald Trump, not for a long time. And so this image of Americans like this is really, you're right. It's just really, it's, especially when you see every single, every single poll is everybody thinks something should be done about this. And it just doesn't, it just doesn't over and over again.
So it's quite a, it's an astonishingly depressing thing. We're talking about some big social issues, say guns and gays and all kinds of things. Scott. No, it's the only industry that's more protected legislatively than the tech is the gun lobby.
And the scary thing about these guns is about a third of guns are covered by law enforcement of these ghost guns. And basically a ghost gun cannot be traced. And so one of the, one of the ways we solve crimes and we solve murders is that we can, we can trace a bullet, we can trace a crime to a specific gun and then hopefully to its most recent owner and ghost guns obviously are cleaner and you can imagine that organized crime loves ghost guns. So this is, this is a dangerous technology, not only is it disappointing that we don't have some sort of biometric advances that's only one person can be locked into that gun and that's the only person that could fire that.
That would be obvious in terms of innovation, but we're also taking a giant step backwards by not being able to track, you know, again, you're going to see, I mean, this has got to be organized crime's favorite 3D printing, right? This is just absolutely the way to make a gun that can't be traced. Anyways, it's disappointing and it continues to be disappointing. And we, we, so far there's really, and one of the reasons I do love Mayor Bloomberg, I think he's taken a pretty, pretty aggressive stance on this.
He's not afraid of the gun lobby. He's put a lot of money behind gun control initiatives and you know, at some point it'll be time. Anyways. You know, it's interesting is if he, if he gets some traction, I don't know where he is on the traction meter right now, but which you can, we can go into.
But it seems like that he, this is an area he could really just shine in. I think once someone breaks through on this, I think everyone will go, oh yes, I feel, you know what I mean? Despite the gun lobby. And I don't, I really don't think there is vocal.
I think there's a lot of people who, especially at all these shootings, are just tired of what's happening here and want just the most, not even the most minimal, like really serious gun regulation in terms of, of background checks and things that are normally, here we are like screaming and yelling about Uber background checks on drivers or this and that. And this, the basic thing like background checks is so controversial, it's just, it boggles the mind that, that, that that's the case. When we demand safety everywhere else, which is an interesting question of where it goes. Anyway.
Very serious topics. Let's see. Scott, we're very serious today. We should be talking about that yacht.
The dog is eating vlog rod, having champagne sprayed on him. Did you see that yacht, speaking of technology, we're gonna take a break in a minute, but there was a video on this while right now on the internet, some rich guy's yacht. It was, oh, it used to be owned by that Russian billionaire, but then it's owned by another billionaire. It went jamming into, right near you, St.
Martin's into like a Harvard, one of these mega yachts. I didn't see that. It just, it wrecked this, whatever these houses that like watch, get, let these yachts, mega yachts come in and just wrecked it and everyone's watching. It's a great bit.
It's a great viral video. It's really, that must be hard there with all the mega yachts and stuff. Do you have a mega yachts, Scott? Would you go home one of those?
No, I don't. I get, I get wobbly seasick. I don't like boats. Have you been on them?
Have you been on one? I have been on, I have ended up on some, some mega yachts. I'm not a boat person. I'm not a yacht guy, but no, I don't, that's not, that's not how the dog rolls.
The dog likes to be, the dog likes to be on terra firma. I don't, or whatever you call it. I don't, I'm not a boat guy. You like it?
I don't get it. No, I did not. I don't get it. I don't get it.
I don't know how to put it. It was very sad. I'm not sure they're sad. I'm not sure the work people would use on mega yachts is sad.
I think I'm lonely and sad. I know, I understand it's for safety and it's not, but I thought this could be easily taken over. I just, it was not how I want to live my life on my media. Yeah.
The ointment for their sadness is a bunch of hot Russian models and people serving in foogra all day. So don't feel, don't cry for me, Argentina. I think they're going to get fine. We're going to take a quick break now and you're from the same bars.
Just take a moment to have some foogra and we'll be back after this. I'm a said Herndon. And this is America, actually. I'm in Washington, D.C.
this week to interview Ruben Geigo. He's a Democratic Senator from Arizona and he's been thinking openly about running for higher office, but he's recently running to some hot water because of his connection to Congress Monericks Wallwell. I have to learn from this. And I will learn from this.
But, you know, for me, it's out of 2028 question. It's about what it means to be a better first boss in my office and also a better senator to my constituents. This week on America, actually, we asked Geigo about predatory behavior in Washington. His plans for immigration reform and more.
This week on net worth and chill, I'm breaking down the institution everyone's talking about right now, but nobody actually understands the federal reserve. With all the drama happening between Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, you're probably seeing headlines and wondering what any of this has to do with your money. Spoiler alert, it's everything. I'll explain what the Fed actually is, why it exists, and how this one institution controls the interest rates on your mortgage, credit cards, student loans, and more.
We're diving into why raising or cutting rates isn't just boring policy talk. It's the difference between affording a house or watching crisis viral out of control. Plus, I'm breaking down the current controversy over firing Fed board members and why both Republicans and Democrats are freaking out about it because this fight isn't just political theater, it could mean real chaos for your wallet. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash your rich BFF.
Welcome back to Pivot. Let's take a listener question. Today's question comes from a listener, Andrew Hines. Here's what we want to know, Rebecca, can you read the question?
Currently, the NFL brings in around $3 billion a year from Fox, NBC, and CBS for the TV rights for games. Those contracts expire at the end of 2022. It seems so clear to me that Amazon will swoop in and buy the rights to host every one of those games. Thoughts?
Well, this is a big topic. This has been debated before with Google and Facebook and others. Where are we on this? We went back and forth and back and forth.
Back in 2017 at the Code Conference, Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix. And Netflix hadn't entered into sports because he doesn't think streaming had much to add to the medium because games are not something you can go back and rewatch on demand. So, you know, will he change his mind or will someone else like Amazon, Google, Google slash YouTube, Facebook even get in here? Oh, yeah.
So every year I make a series of predictions. And in 2017, I predicted that Amazon would buy the rights to the Super Bowl. And I got wrong. It hasn't happened yet.
But effectively, it's interesting to read, because he saw an opportunity around original scripted information as an HBO that without commercials, we can add a lot of value. But to a certain extent, the commercials are almost accretive with sports because they're Nike ads and sports attract such a broad range of demographics that they get reach. They're one of the few mediums that still gets massive reach that people still endure the ads so they can make a lot of money. So essentially, sports are not as monetizable or not as accretive as shareholders in the consumer experience.
Explain that for people who don't know the word accretive. It's like you're to stop or explain what that means. It's what insecure professors are out to mean value add. It's basically my way of trying to pretend I'm smarter than I am.
So there's no value add. In other words, a scripted television series on Netflix without commercials adds a lot of value to the consumer because the consumer doesn't want to be interrupted by ads for opioid induced constipation. Whereas if you're watching the Super Bowl, it's a three hour long journey. You don't mind ads as much.
The ads are generally have hot people with no shirts, drinking beer, and have Nike ads which are fun to watch. And they can get so much money for those ads because those products have a difficult time finding any medium with that type of reach that they pay so much. So it's difficult. In other words, TV is kind of the last place where it really leverages commercials around sports.
And so it's hard for them to justify the kind of payments, the kind of investment that we need to capture sports. And to a certain extent, broadcast television has said, like the Americans have said, to the Japanese and the Germans, you come after our pickup trucks. It's going to be war. The broadcast television is basically said, sports is our last stand.
That is our last stand. We are going big on Final Four. We're going to make ridiculously expensive investments. We're going to take a blank check approach because sports are our pickup truck to Detroit.
Or what is pickup trucks to Detroit? Sports is to broadcast television. However, at the end of the day, it's the deepest pocket in Bezos. Bezos has got the deepest pocket in the world.
So look, it's just a matter of time. It's going to be huge. It's going to be another nail in the coffin. It's going to be like World Cup.
It's sort of happening around the Premier League. Yeah. He's doing these soccer matches. Amazon Prime are doing soccer matches in Britain, taking on British base broadcasters, which we've heard about.
The company says so far the matches have set records for the most sign-up since Amazon launched its prime subscription service in the UK in 2007. So people do watch these things on these meetings. Sports? Yeah.
They do. Maybe there's going to be a shift in the way, just the way people shifted. No one thought broadcast television like, you know, perfect Thursday or whatever. It was called must see TV.
We'd change it all, but it has completely. So what would it take for sports watching to shift, you know, not in front of the cow, you know, in a different way? Because it works with in Britain. It's working with Britain.
But none of these big companies have bellied up and paid this money that Fox, NBC and CBS has done for TV rights to games. Well, and I think the leagues also recognize that they want to keep broadcast television alive because it's been a huge source of income from them. My kids, my boys, don't really watch sports, but they're ones man city, ones man, they love the Premier League. They watch FC Barcelona.
They're fascinated by Premier League soccer. And what is interesting about their TV viewing patterns is the change has been around distribution. The change has been around format. They watch these kind of 30-minute, I don't know what they're calling it.
We're going to get to our gaming and collapse at 30 minutes. But it's coming. We're going to see all sorts of, I think, innovation around that. I think it's largely going to be fueled by betting.
I think betting is where we're going to see the next wave of value creation in sports. Is these little micro bets? Is there going to be a goal in the next, you know, will this be a pass or a running play? You can see how that could just start to take off and create a new level of addiction, a new level of engagement and massive revenues.
It'll be curious if one of the big tech guys gets into that. Which one? Okay. If you had a pick and then we're going to get to wins and bills.
But which one would you pick? I don't think Netflix is going to enter here. They haven't entered news very much. They haven't entered anything that's not something that you go back and redo.
So which one? Is it Amazon? Is it? Which one needs Apple?
Amazon, Apple, Google slash YouTube, Facebook, which of those four? If you could look at each of them why they might need it, go through them really quickly. Well, Facebook, I mean, the obvious one is YouTube because it's basically the largest TV network in the world. Facebook could do really interesting things around micro-targeting.
And they also want to jumpstart video. You can see, I don't think, for some reason I don't think it fits the Apple brand as well. I guess I could sell out iPhones if they were the only one that brought you into the NHL or whatever it is. Who it will be in my view is Amazon because one, they have the deep pockets.
Two, they have Prime, which they're trying to juice and they can monetize that investment several different ways. As you say, through people buying paper towels and Prime and also it's got the key asset and the reason why they will bid on the Super Bowl is it's run by a man who's in the midst of a full blown midlife crisis who wants to take his new girlfriend to the Super Bowl and be the man. He can go to the Super Bowl. He can like, yeah, but not the big.
This will be the Bezos ball. If Amazon starts broadcast, that takes it to a new level. He's not only the big dog. He's the biggest dog.
If it's the Amazon ball, that'll be a lot of fun. It'll be Amazon because of a midlife crisis. Well, all right. His companies are run by 50-something year old men.
What happens the network said, look, Disney just bought the Fox or they got all those sports, right? What do they do? What does a Disney or an NBC or CBS do? Well, slowly but surely.
I mean, as we've said, anything with advertising means you're poor. They have become ad driven programming has become the tax that the technologically poor are littered in the poor pay. But here's the good news for these guys. There's a lot of income inequality.
A lot of people who don't have the money to buy $40 worth of Apple downloadable programs for their kids. So there's broadcast or free television, unfortunately the population for that is not going anywhere. Things always take longer to go out of business than you'll think. I think these businesses from an investment standpoint and the broadcast networks will actually be a good investment because everyone, including us, is talking about their imminent demise.
In 1999, you could buy a Blockbuster franchise for two times cashflow and everyone knew they were going out of business, but they were around for another 13 years, so they were actually a great investment. I think Macy's right now and I get so much shit every time I bring up the word Macy's. Macy's might be a decent stock because yeah, Macy's is going out of business, but it's not going out of business as quickly as everyone thinks. So I think broadcast networks will absolutely go out of business, but the death will be less eminent than people think.
Oh, that was a lot there. That was a lot there. That was a lot. This was very substantive.
This is absolutely right. You've changed my thinking on this. I thought the tech companies would swoop in too, and they have not, and that's a very interesting thing. So let's go very quickly then to wins and fails because again, I was speaking of wins.
I thought that SNL was very funny, speaking one of them was a Macy's ad with kids. I don't know if you saw it. It was very funny. Take off on those Macy's ads where families are all wandering around smiling and laughing and they did a great thing about how difficult it is to put clothing on children.
So it was very funny. They did a great job. And then the best one they did was obviously the Conway marriage. They had Scarlett Johansson on the show and they did a version of a marriage story with Conway's and it was very funny.
They are really very funny from week to week in a way that I think I can't imagine having that much lasting power. And I feel obviously it was hallmark, but they have redeemed themselves. So that's mine this week. What is yours?
Well, so my win is Hallmark. I think they screwed up. They owned it. It's a great company.
And I liked it. The CEO said, why is it a great company? Explain the great company to sub it for me, please. Well, this is a company that sells greeting cards that by all standards should be out of business.
I mean, if you were to look at a company 30 or 40 years ago or even 20 years ago, what do you do? Well, we print cards and we charge two bucks or something that costs seven cents to make. And you think, well, is that company sustainable? And they've made huge investments in different mediums.
The Hallmark channel was arguably one of the most successful media companies of the last hundred years. Sitting and Becky is about to go to prison for 10 years on a bunch of shows talking about her husband cheating on her and then a story of her finding more strength from these tragedies. They have sold so much cereal, so much cereal, so much so many pampers and they have created so much shareholder value. And the shareholders of the owners of that company have been really wonderful, generous people in a state that needs business and needs wonderful, generous people.
Kansas, Kansas is a fantastic school. I just like the company. I think they're smart. I think they're innovative.
I think they could have gone away. They took the risk. And it's a great company. So I'm more talking about the company than this instance, but they owned it.
They, they made a mistake. They owned up to it. They said, thank you for apologizing. People weren't like trying to rub it in their face or anything.
So I felt like the whole thing and it brought some awareness that we still faced this bullshit in corporate America that people just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, a great company like this one makes this, which seems like such an obvious, you know, an obvious foul or penalty. It was just a stupid thing to do. So this is still out there. People's mentality that they will do these kinds of stupid things on the whole.
I just thought that I thought it played out well. So my win is Hallmark. No, I don't think they're still gonna be making a Hallmark movie about less than anytime soon. They've talked about it.
The CEO has talked about that idea. But I don't see it like a romance. Like, if Buttigieg becomes president, I don't see the Hallmark show about him and Chase meeting each other. That one.
I don't see that. I don't see it. My loss is the climate summit in Madrid. Oh, yeah.
Literally nothing happened. Everyone. And these are the nicest people in the world and they were angry. These are the nicest, most politically correct people in the world and they were angry about the whole thing.
So it was really, anyways, that's my loss. It's really amazing how no problem. Look at the US isn't involved. I mean, we just pulled out and that was the end of that.
You know what I mean? If us and the Chinese are not involved speaking, which is something about going anywhere. Nothing's good. We're going to be like, well, none of this, what we discussed will matter.
You realize that, of course. You think it's going to happen that fast. You think about 20 years. Yeah, I do.
I think it's like that movie, my favorite movie of all time, which is the movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and Dennis Quaid. Oh, the one where it just gets crazy cold. Yes. I love that movie.
Crazy cold. I like the movie. I liked it. Exactly.
Oh, God. This is an amazing movie with Tilda Swinton about this. What was it called? The Train that has to roam the Earth and we tried to fix global warming and we fixed it too much and the world gets too cold.
That's a wonderful movie. I got the name of that. Yeah. I'm like, I'm in an apocalyptic tone right now, but I like them all.
Anyway, all right. Prediction, Scott, do you have any predictions from the Caribbean except that you're going to be lounging around on yachts and eating foie gras? Why are you in St. Bart's?
Why are you there? I'm here. I think the same place. Do you know why the dog goes to St.
Bart's? Why? Yes. Because he can.
Because he can. It's wonderful here. I'm literally staring out my window. There's a snow day here.
There's like snow days and parts of it. I think there's a snow day. I mean, New York is cold here. But you're just there.
You're just hanging out. You're going to. I'm not allowed to vacation. I'm sick of being stereotyped as a professor.
Everyone thinks I'm at home in my car again, petting my Labrador, watching PBS with a pipe in my mouth. No one thinks that. No one thinks that. No one thinks that.
No one thinks that. Occasionally they let him out of his crate. Occasionally he goes out of my prediction. Everyone thinks you're in a bar, like pontificating to people in your NYU.
But listen to me. What's your prediction? Speak to your pontification. So just as I said last week, and I've got a lot of emails when I said that porn is the greatest experiment with unknown outcomes is being levied on our populace.
I think we're going to hear about Apple in China as soon as the headline news and the noise around the tariffs. If at some point it goes away. The only big tech company that's been able to make any real or sustain in roads in China has been Apple because of its luxury status. But also I wonder what I think Apple and China is going to come up a lot because I wonder what has gone on in terms of their supply chain, in terms of privacy.
And Tim, I don't call it indignant, but a pretty righteous tone around his activities and use it to his advantage. And I wonder what kind of deal with China he has struck and I think we're going to start hearing more uncomfortable things about what China has had to do to stay as relevant and sell as many iPhones. Every lunch over there. I think the company that big is probably, we're going to hear Apple and China in the news more in 2020 and it's not going to be good for Apple.
Meaning that they are doing that. I just don't think anyone, I don't think anyone is over there and doesn't have to kind of comply with what the Chinese government wants. And when you have a phone and you have data, I just find it hard to believe that Apple has been able to hold their phones and their data and their privacy to the same standards in China as they at least claim to in other parts of the world. I have no evidence of this.
It's a thesis. But I think in 2020 we're going to start hearing a comfortable stories about what Apple has had to do to maintain because they're over a barrel. If China is now, I mean it's just such an important market for them and the Chinese government, they are very smart and they're going to get their pound of flesh. Now how that pound of flesh is manifesting itself.
I don't know if it's, we're going to find that. But there was that story, the Bloomberg story that Apple pushed back on real hard that sort of went sideways for Bloomberg about chips being problematic chips and spying and this and that. And it wasn't trying anything. Yeah, but this is just more like, you do this if you want to do business here or make things here, et cetera.
Yeah. So look, we'll see. I have no evidence. This impeachment thing is just like another news story, just like, oh, it just keeps going.
It doesn't like, it hasn't like changed anything in people's minds. It seems like in the polls. You don't think there's any chance that 17 Republican senators flip? No, I do not think that.
That is my prediction. 17, the only thing that's slightly interesting is that there was a push to have Justin Amash be the impeachment manager, which I would love to see. Yeah, it would be interesting. You know, but no, I'm amazed by how little people are like next, next, next on really appalling things.
So that's, that's what I think. I have no prediction that this will just bleed into the new year pretty much and you'll be down there in the same part of doing everything to it. Anyway. What's Kara Swisher got going on this week?
Last week was a very good week for you. I'm hoping this is a very boring Monday. It was. It's a calm week this week.
I have a lot of meetings. I'm meeting with some publishers. I'm having some meetings. I have an idea for a new idea.
And then I go to sample. You're writing a book? Yeah, maybe. You know, they love them.
Call me. And I'd say no to most of them because I don't have time. Oh my God. They say they all call me and I say no says Kara Swisher.
Oh my God. Literally. Did you just say that? It's magical.
I don't talk to do a book. I kind of put time into this relationship and I cannot take the time out to write a book. You never see me. But I'm going to talk to them.
I have an idea. I have an idea that is just germinating. And I think you will like it when I decide. It's not the algebra of happiness.
I mean, you know, but it's, you know, or the calculus of happiness. Is that the next? Is that your sequel? The calculus of happiness.
You have so not read my book. My son has. My son has. Really?
Both sons of my book and your book and they have read my books and they love your book. They love your book. They both have it. They've read it.
Thank you for saying that. That's so good. Yeah, they have. I'm sorry.
I listened to books. That's what I do. In any case. Lots of things.
And then I'm going to San Francisco. Then I'm going to San Francisco. What are you doing in San Francisco? I'm taking the kids that are taking their year and spending a couple weeks doing a lot of podcasts from there.
All kinds of things. I'm going to go bother Mark Benioff. I'm going to go look at Salesforce, the top of Salesforce tower for the wedding. I'm not.
I can imagine. I would love that. He would do that too. He would still do that.
He would. Honestly, he would. I was joking with him about it and he's like sure I can make it happen. I'm totally kidding.
I just want to see him. I'm going to be standing next to each other again. You look like a different species. When you're standing next to each other.
He's a tall man. He's a big tall man, just like yourself, but he's sort of why he's bigger than you. He's kind of a hulky. Not a lot of dimensions.
He's much bigger than me. No, he's a fan. He's just big. He's a big guy.
I'm an important and wealthy. Oh, well, obviously everybody who's listening understands that part of the county. I was trying to leave that unsaid. That was the silent.
He's a mogul kind of thing. Anyway, Scott, it's time for us to go. Enjoy your weekend. Thank you.
We'll be back on Friday. We'll just never glee each other. I can't quit you with more tech. There's a lot going on this week with the impeachment.
And so we'll be talking about that, I think. But meanwhile, you can read just by using hashtag pivot podcast. We're desperate for your affirmation. Let us know what you think about two times a week.
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Email us at pivot at boxmedia.com. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sonones. Erica Anderson is pivots executive producer. Thanks also to Rebecca Castro and Drew Burrows.
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