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Episode: Bluesky's Moment, Crony Capitalism, and Guest Julie Scelfo of MAMA

Author: New York Magazine
Duration: 01:34:25

Episode Shownotes

Kara and Scott discuss the "Glicked" effect on the box office, and Amazon's new $4 billion investment in Anthropic. Then, Elon Musk and Vivek Rameswamy bring their Silicon Valley buddies into the Department of Government Efficiency, while President-elect Donald Trump gets Wall Street's approval with his Treasury Secretary pick. Plus,

Bluesky continues to surge, and Meta appears to be feeling the heat. Our Friend of Pivot is Julie Scelfo, the founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction or MAMA. Julie explains why she wants transparency, accountability, and legislation to protect kids online. Find MAMA at joinmama.org. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. Follow us on Bluesky at @pivotpod.bsky.social Follow us on TikTok at @pivotpodcast. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at nymag.com/pivot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Summary

In this episode of "Pivot," Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway discuss various current events including the impact of the movie industry's resurgence, Amazon's $4 billion investment in AI company Anthropic, and the emergence of the social media platform Bluesky. They explore themes of crony capitalism, pinpointing concerns about public figures like Elon Musk manipulating government policies. The episode also spotlights Julie Scelfo of Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA), who advocates for children's online safety legislation while highlighting the urgent need for parental engagement due to rising media addiction and associated suicide rates among youth.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Bluesky's Moment, Crony Capitalism, and Guest Julie Scelfo of MAMA) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:02 Speaker_02
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00:02:04 Speaker_05
I see you. Get the fuck on. I'm gonna hand you a new one today.

00:02:09 Speaker_02
Oh fuck, we're still talking about Wicked? Jesus Christ.

00:02:15 Speaker_05
Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher.

00:02:20 Speaker_10
And I'm Scott Galloway.

00:02:21 Speaker_05
And what were you doing ahead of this, and where in the living fuck are you?

00:02:26 Speaker_02
I'm in Sao Paulo. Okay, Brazil. And they have all these wonderful accoutrements. No, still, I got here at 6 a.m.

00:02:33 Speaker_05
Uh-huh.

00:02:34 Speaker_02
From Vegas. You didn't ask me how F1 was.

00:02:36 Speaker_05
I shall in a second.

00:02:38 Speaker_02
Anyways, I'm in what is my favorite hotel in the world, the Sao Paulo Rosewood, and they have all these cool Brazilian cultural items, and I've been walking around. I always try and entertain our producers who are increasingly nonplussed by my humor.

00:02:52 Speaker_02
And I was rubbing my belly and I had this big Brazilian thing. And then a guy I travel with came walking out and he wasn't even phased when he saw me rubbing my belly and shaking some sort of Brazilian music item.

00:03:05 Speaker_02
He basically looked and just kept on moving.

00:03:07 Speaker_05
Yeah, so you're a lover, you're a side piece, whatever.

00:03:10 Speaker_02
It's so nice, one of the nice things about, let's be honest, there's a lot of nice things about being wealthy. One of the things I love, if I find a friend that's not doing anything, I'll be like, come with me to Brazil. And most people will go, sure.

00:03:23 Speaker_05
Sure. Do they have to carry your bags?

00:03:24 Speaker_02
And he's Brazilian, so he knows people here, so he can set up hookers. I mean, really cool restaurants for us.

00:03:29 Speaker_05
Okay. All right. Okay.

00:03:30 Speaker_02
And, yeah, I love it down here. I love São Paulo.

00:03:32 Speaker_05
And now you're audibly eating fruit. What is that fruit?

00:03:35 Speaker_02
It's Brazilian. Everything tastes better here. What is that, a watermelon? Everyone's hotter, and all the food tastes better in Brazil.

00:03:41 Speaker_05
What is that, a watermelon?

00:03:42 Speaker_02
It's watermelon, whatever it is, it's lovely. Is it? I'm trying to eat more fruit for the first time in my life I had.

00:03:48 Speaker_05
So you can be more regular, right? More regular with the fruit.

00:03:51 Speaker_02
I'm good, I'm good. Every seven days I take a dump. I'm like one of those Eliud Eskimos. That's probably a hate crime.

00:03:58 Speaker_05
I just had a friend ask me, just got surgery, how to get a dump. You know what you do? I eat an apple a day and hot coffee in the morning. It works every time.

00:04:06 Speaker_11
Boom, right?

00:04:07 Speaker_05
Thank you. Yeah, just a little bit of constipation advice for you. How was F1? It was really... You kind of stuck it to them a little bit in your piece, but go ahead. Go ahead.

00:04:18 Speaker_02
You thought so?

00:04:18 Speaker_05
A little bit. A little bit. A little bit? Like a little too much, much. A little too ahead of their skis. That's what I got out of it, but go ahead.

00:04:25 Speaker_02
Oh, really? Speaking of which, I actually had breakfast Saturday morning with Greg Maffei, who's the departing CEO. And by the way, let me just say, John Malone has decided to take back the CEO spot at Liberty. The guy's 83.

00:04:39 Speaker_02
When will these people learn to move on? Seriously.

00:04:42 Speaker_05
Can I give you some, I know Greg pretty well from Microsoft, he's in my first book, and I like him now, I didn't like him back then. I have to tell you, John Malone is the single smartest person we've ever had on our stages of our events, period.

00:05:01 Speaker_02
Oh, I don't doubt it.

00:05:02 Speaker_05
Period, like by far.

00:05:03 Speaker_02
Yeah, but at 83, he's decided to retake the helm as an operator?

00:05:08 Speaker_05
I don't know. He had some health issues, I thought. That's what I heard.

00:05:11 Speaker_02
I know, but that's my point. And by the way, Greg Maffei purchased F1 for four and a half million dollars in 2017, and it's worth over 20. F1 has been an enormous success.

00:05:20 Speaker_02
Anyways, I'm biased because I like Greg, but I think he's an exceptionally talented executive.

00:05:26 Speaker_02
I think John Malone, I don't know what happened here, if Greg is really retiring or if he was fired, but I would offer that John Malone, despite being, agreeably, Or, I agree with you, the smartest person in the world. You fired the wrong guy.

00:05:37 Speaker_02
Zaslov has cut shareholder value at Warner Brothers Discovery by 70% and managed to take a third of a billion dollars out of the company. They fired the wrong guy. One guy has built value. One guy is destroying it.

00:05:49 Speaker_02
Shouldn't Malone be taking the helms of Warner Brothers Discovery?

00:05:52 Speaker_05
Interesting, interesting. He owns a big bit of it and he has a lot of control over it, that's for sure. You know, this guy makes bets all over the place. He sort of reminds me of a Rupert Murdoch character, and Rupert was quite lively at 83.

00:06:06 Speaker_11
Much more impressive than Rupert.

00:06:07 Speaker_05
I would agree, that's what I mean. I'm saying Rupert was fine now and is like whatever, wherever the hell he is.

00:06:12 Speaker_02
He basically invented cable TV.

00:06:14 Speaker_05
Yeah, exactly.

00:06:15 Speaker_02
I mean, he made these enormous investments in stealing the ground that everyone thought was crazy. And he understands how to like maneuver the chess pieces. I agree with you. He is really the he's probably the smartest guy we don't talk about.

00:06:25 Speaker_05
He was also early AOL. I've I've run into him a zillion times, interviewed him many times. And I have to tell you, and this is someone who's interviewed, you know, Steve Jobs was close in a different way.

00:06:36 Speaker_10
Ah, now we're name dropping.

00:06:38 Speaker_05
No, I'm just saying.

00:06:39 Speaker_10
Speaking of F1, oh, my God.

00:06:40 Speaker_05
Who am I going to compare him with?

00:06:42 Speaker_10
240 miles an hour of name dropping.

00:06:44 Speaker_05
OK, listen to me. I interviewed Steve Jobs. I don't know what to tell you.

00:06:47 Speaker_02
And the Swisher team is seven laps ahead on the name dropping F1.

00:06:50 Speaker_05
Just because you never actually did these things, it's fine. And you're jealous. But nonetheless, he is he is really quite something. I would not count him out at 83. I had heard that he had health issues. So that was the issue.

00:07:02 Speaker_02
But, you know, I think you can count everyone out at 83. I'm an ageist. I'm sticking with my old ageism.

00:07:06 Speaker_05
All right. OK, you keep doing that. I can't wait till you're 83 and we throw you onto the ice floe and wave goodbye.

00:07:10 Speaker_02
You'll be pushing me around.

00:07:12 Speaker_05
Oh, really? Okay. Well, I'll make sure you have plenty of fruit so you can be regular. Tell me about F1. Was it good? What happened?

00:07:19 Speaker_02
Yeah, last year was the first one in Vegas. I met a bunch of buddies of mine from LA and another buddy of mine from New York, and we went to this great party.

00:07:28 Speaker_02
My friend Scott Sartiano, who's this great entrepreneur who started Zero Bond, had a big party Saturday night, which was incredible. You probably never feel this way, but I was so tired, but it was such a great party.

00:07:38 Speaker_02
And the conflict of like, I'm never at great parties like this, but I'm so tired. And anyway, so I opted to go to sleep early, but the race was great. These other guys, Jason Strauss and Noah Teberberg have this amazing nightlife company.

00:07:55 Speaker_02
that did this incredible viewership deck from the Bellagio. I had a great time.

00:08:02 Speaker_05
I'm going to go to one.

00:08:05 Speaker_02
I want you there to witness my debauchery and judge me. Can't wait to have you.

00:08:10 Speaker_05
I totally don't want to go with you. No, I'll go with you.

00:08:14 Speaker_02
It's not your scene. It's not your scene.

00:08:17 Speaker_05
I know, but I want to see it. There's a lot of ladies going to it. Friends of mine go in packs of ladies.

00:08:22 Speaker_02
40% female fans?

00:08:23 Speaker_05
Yeah. Packs of ladies. I'm not a pack lady person, but whatever. I thought I'd try it out. I'm not in church.

00:08:30 Speaker_02
I see you more at the Miami Book Fair or the Subaru Convocation or whatever.

00:08:34 Speaker_05
I had a great time there, I had a wonderful time.

00:08:36 Speaker_02
Oh, you did go to that, how was that?

00:08:37 Speaker_05
Yes, it was wonderful. I was interviewed by Ben Mesrick who did the book that ultimately led to The Social Network. He did a bunch of books that always get made into movies, good movies actually, Dumb Money, stuff like that.

00:08:49 Speaker_05
And we had a good time, it was packed, let me just tell you, packed with young and old people and really vibrant and fun. University, Miami Dade or something.

00:09:00 Speaker_03
Miami Dade.

00:09:01 Speaker_05
Yeah, it was lovely and really fun. I was sort of like, oh, I can't believe I'm getting on this fucking plane. I was in New York. And I was like, oh, I should cancel it. And then I didn't and I'm glad I didn't. It was really lovely.

00:09:14 Speaker_05
I was pleased to see so many people in person, and I was surprised how many. It was fun. It was kind of funky and fun and packed. And the guy who owns Books and Books, Mitch something or other, he was terrific.

00:09:25 Speaker_02
So you and I had much different weekends.

00:09:27 Speaker_05
Oh, yeah. But I'm just saying, it was great. Yeah. And I got back from New York and I posted about, I did my pilot for CNN. I'm not supposed to say anything, but here I am. It was good.

00:09:35 Speaker_02
What are you piloting? What's the show?

00:09:36 Speaker_05
What's the premise? I already posted on social media. I'm sure the CNN people are losing their minds, but it's called Offscript, and it's with Audie Cornish and Van Latham, who is so cool. He's my new Scott, essentially. Oh, that's good to know.

00:09:49 Speaker_05
But he's handsomer and taller. He has as much hair as you do.

00:09:52 Speaker_02
Your new Scott, but he's more handsome and taller. Well, thank you for that, Cara.

00:09:56 Speaker_05
He wears a cowboy hat. So he's great. And so it's interesting. I'm going to put some of the interviews in the feed, in my on feed.

00:10:04 Speaker_02
What's the premise of the show?

00:10:05 Speaker_05
A little like a dinner party, a conversation, like us talking in kind of a cool setting. A little less, no, and I'm telling you, it's good. No, you're wrong. You're just jelly. You're jelly when it's a big hit. You're going to be, stop it. You're so jelly.

00:10:21 Speaker_02
Well, the good news is launching it on CNN, right out of the gates, you're gonna have dozens and dozens of viewers. Let me tell you. Dozens and dozens of viewers.

00:10:30 Speaker_05
No, I've tried basically one thing at CNN and you tried six or seven different TV things.

00:10:36 Speaker_02
Five, I'm all for five.

00:10:38 Speaker_05
I'm just saying, if I have a hit here.

00:10:40 Speaker_02
You still wanna do TV, you're trying to beg me to come on TV. I'm not begging you. Dad, the world has said I have a face for podcasting.

00:10:46 Speaker_05
I am zero begging you. I think it's an interesting thing. And I think here's the thing. I read one of these dumb media reporters. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I read like it's all over. I'm like, well, why can you make good stuff? Yes, you can.

00:11:00 Speaker_05
If it switches over to digital, they cut the costs. Right. I think there's some still juice in this lemon to squeeze. That's my, not in the current configuration, but I do. And I think calling anything like it's over is really dumb. That's my feeling.

00:11:15 Speaker_02
Let me just break it down and say what's actually going on here. This is called, this isn't a midlife crisis. This is midlife crises. I check the box with beef and prostitutes. You check the box with TV. Same thing.

00:11:27 Speaker_05
You'll see.

00:11:29 Speaker_02
You're trying to impress somebody by making TV on cable. I enjoy it.

00:11:33 Speaker_05
I'm interested in the challenge of it. Everyone yelled at me when I did podcasting. Let me tell you, guess what everyone yelled at me when I picked Scott Galloway? And you know what I said? Fuck it. I think this guy has something in it.

00:11:46 Speaker_09
Me and cable TV.

00:11:47 Speaker_05
I'm just telling you. Every time people tell me I can't do something, I'm like, go fuck yourself.

00:11:52 Speaker_11
Sticking with beef and pros.

00:11:53 Speaker_05
All right, listen, we got a lot to get to today, including Trump finishes filling out his cabinet and Threads rolls out some changes as blue sky grows to the sky.

00:12:02 Speaker_05
Plus, our friend of Pivot is Julie Scalfo, the founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction, or MAMA, which is what all my four kids call me. But first, let's get to something that also annoys you. Glicken Weekend was a huge success.

00:12:16 Speaker_05
Wicked opened and $114 million domestically, making it the biggest box office launch of a Broadway adaptation, which is incredible.

00:12:22 Speaker_05
And the third biggest domestic debut of this year, I think Wolverine was one of them, Deadpool and Wolverine, but I forget the other one. Internationally, Wicked hit about $164 million. Gladiator is in its second weekend.

00:12:32 Speaker_05
It placed second, placed domestically with $55 million and $220 million worldwide. Overseas, it had debuted before. Wicked is now all over the world. They're both all over the world. You didn't go to either, so you're going to tell us all about it.

00:12:48 Speaker_05
Please do. I am going to go see Gladiator this weekend.

00:12:51 Speaker_02
Yeah, movies are making a big comeback. They're only down 10% this year. They are going to do $10 billion in box office revenue, whereas video games are going to do 180. And we still talk about movies. I'll probably see them both.

00:13:08 Speaker_02
I'll see Gladiator because I like the franchise. I'll see Wicked because you said it was great, and I trust your judgment.

00:13:13 Speaker_05
It was, it was interesting, there was a guy who was forced to go by his girlfriend, he's like, oh, why am I going to this stupid thing? And then she taped it at the end, he's like, that was beautiful.

00:13:20 Speaker_05
So I'm hoping, you're gonna leave in the middle of it. I know you, like you did with Barbie, you're gonna leave. I miss the Divine Gravity song. But I'm excited to see both, I really am. I like both.

00:13:31 Speaker_05
Interestingly, Wicked was 72% women tickets, and Gladiator was 62%. I thought that was pretty low of men buying tickets, not in groups.

00:13:41 Speaker_02
We don't hang out. Yeah. Let me just remind you, one in seven men can't name a single friend and one in four doesn't have a best friend. Yeah.

00:13:47 Speaker_05
Anyway, I'm excited to see both. And I think they've done a beautiful. Let me just say once again, may reiterate John Chu, who I just interviewed, did a great job. But Donna Langley, who's running Universal.

00:14:00 Speaker_05
She's in line for something big, like I say Disney, but something like else. It was really well done. Gladiator costs about $100 million more than Wicked, so it's gonna have to make that up. It's 250 for Wicked, for both, for two movie, each movie.

00:14:16 Speaker_05
There's another one coming out next year cuz it's a two-parter. But Gladiator costs a lot more as an individual movie to make. But Donna Langley, who runs Universal in this area, has really made a big bet here.

00:14:28 Speaker_05
And it looks like she's paid off, including tons and tons of marketing, which I think you would have found interesting. It was all over the Olympics. It's been all over everything. They've been just everywhere.

00:14:39 Speaker_05
This movie's been all, and so has Gladiator. It put stuff on TVs. It did a ton of marketing, and it seems to have paid off.

00:14:46 Speaker_02
Well, you know how witch is right. How? In cursive. I'm going to curse you. That's kind of cute.

00:14:53 Speaker_05
That is cute.

00:14:54 Speaker_02
That's kind of cute.

00:14:55 Speaker_05
Where'd you get that? Where'd you get that? That's a good one. That's actually somewhat clever. That was well done. Anyway, it is much smaller than videos, 100%, but I don't think it's comparable. It's a very nice, it brings back

00:15:07 Speaker_05
movie going a little bit, you're right, it's down quite a bit, box office is down by this year 10%, something like that, some number.

00:15:14 Speaker_02
I've said this morning, I always like trying to draw it to something resembling a learning here. And so many young people want to be in media, and it's a wonderful business in terms of creative outlet. It's pretty simple.

00:15:26 Speaker_02
When you're picking media, the first litmus test should be, what size screen does this media end up on? And there's an inverse correlation between the return on your invested capital and the size of the screen.

00:15:37 Speaker_02
If you're producing content or you're in the ecosystem producing media for a giant screen, a movie theater, you could be an eight on a scale of one to 10 and you will get a return of five. If you're going into a smaller screen that's on,

00:15:52 Speaker_02
wall in your living room, you could be an eight and you'll get a six or seven or maybe an eight, still a big business, still a real business.

00:15:58 Speaker_02
But the majority of capital, human and financial in the entire TV industry has been sequestered, sucked up, usurped by the shareholders of Netflix for a variety of dynamics. And then if you're creating content or media,

00:16:12 Speaker_02
that goes on a small string on a phone, you can be a six and you're probably gonna get an eight in terms of return. So kids, don't let, you know, mama, don't let your kids grow up to be in film or TV.

00:16:26 Speaker_02
Have them figure out a way to develop compelling content that can be consumed on a mobile device.

00:16:30 Speaker_05
Yeah, or that you could take this stuff and move it up. You have to be thinking of it all the time. You have to be thinking of it constantly.

00:16:36 Speaker_02
Yeah, but think about our medium. Our medium is basically a phone and then AirPods. And the smallest screen in the world, oh my God, I just thought of something brilliant.

00:16:43 Speaker_05
What?

00:16:43 Speaker_02
The smallest screen in the world are AirPods that go in your ears. Oh, I like it.

00:16:48 Speaker_05
It's got to be in real time. This is what I bring out in here.

00:16:50 Speaker_02
There you go.

00:16:51 Speaker_05
I move away the chaff and then we come to the heart of things. Interesting, Amazon is investing another $4 billion in Anthropic. Think of things that are going up and to the right.

00:17:00 Speaker_05
As part of the investment, Anthropic has agreed to make AWS its primary cloud and training partner, that's probably what this money was for, and use Amazon's in-house AI chips.

00:17:09 Speaker_05
Anthropic has been discussing raising funding at $40 billion valuation, as is Elon Musk's XAI. OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in October, bringing its valuation to $157 billion. I think Musk's is higher than that now. But they're up and to the right.

00:17:25 Speaker_05
So this is Amazon's play here, Anthropic, with Claude.

00:17:29 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's the same people. Microsoft is having kind of weird tension. They don't want to be too reliant on the shit show of corporate governance that is OpenAI. Amazon is Anthropic. I mean, they're all sort of intertwined.

00:17:42 Speaker_02
It's all going to the same players. But just the capital appetites of these companies, they're sort of reliant on the biggest players that can offer compute, but just the voracious appetite of these companies to build bigger and bigger LLMs.

00:17:57 Speaker_02
I mean, if you read that, it's kind of these white papers from, what's his name, Dario, the kid, or the guy from Anthropic, and then Sam Altman, they basically put out these long thought pieces saying, I'm really fucking smart, please invest 10 more billion dollars in my company.

00:18:13 Speaker_02
We have never seen an industry that is this capital hungry. And I wonder, as excited as the market is, I wonder, there's going to be a player here where the capital is going to run out. Who do you think?

00:18:26 Speaker_05
Anybody?

00:18:27 Speaker_02
Well, it's kind of already happened. You know who the first victim was that couldn't raise the amount of capital they needed? It was inflection.

00:18:33 Speaker_05
Yeah, that got sold to Microsoft, yeah.

00:18:35 Speaker_02
Yeah, so it was kind of a weird acqui-hire, courtesy of Reid Hoffman, but these things, they're talking about the next big model that these things go on could cost $10, $50, $100 billion. I mean, Hoffman's throwing around the T-word, trillion.

00:18:53 Speaker_02
I just wonder at what point one of these folks hits a wall. The investment I would like to make right now, and if you know the CEO, please introduce me, I want to make an investment, is Perplexity.

00:19:03 Speaker_02
I think their positioning around AI-driven search is a really elegant brand positioning. And the guy is also a total attention whore, which I think is smart. The whole like, oh, hey, New York Times, use me, I'll replace all your journalists.

00:19:18 Speaker_02
That's a total play for PR. It's totally craven and it's totally smart.

00:19:22 Speaker_05
Yeah, he's an interesting character. He really irritates a lot of people. I don't know him. I met the Anthropocene, I think. I don't know. I gotta do some meetings. I gotta do some meetings.

00:19:34 Speaker_02
Do some original reporting.

00:19:35 Speaker_05
I shall. That's what I do all the time. All day long, my friend. Speaking of which, I was, you know, there was this report that TikTok CEO Shou Chu is consulting Elon Musk about incoming administration.

00:19:49 Speaker_05
I talked to TikTok people, they said this is overblown beyond belief. You know, everyone's relating everything to Elon Musk, talking to them, including the Chinese leaders.

00:19:57 Speaker_05
which have leverage over Musk, hoping to be beneficial in the Trump administration.

00:20:02 Speaker_05
I think this is all being overexploited, except for the people they're bringing in to their DOGE thing again, and I don't want to call it DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency, people involved,

00:20:16 Speaker_05
In the early stages, investor Mark Andreessen, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, former Uber CEO who was disgraced and fired, Travis Kalanick and Boring Company, President Steve Davis. Davis is a longtime back totem of Musk's.

00:20:34 Speaker_05
And Mark, well, we know Mark and Ackman, he's a loudmouth. They're all the loudmouths, essentially. And Travis, that was a fascinating choice.

00:20:43 Speaker_10
Can you say more about what, you put out a text, what does Travis have to do?

00:20:48 Speaker_05
What's going on here? They're all part of the same mob scene there. It's Shurvin Teshevar, if you remember him. He's in Miami, right? Yeah, they're all part of the same crew, and it's just the crew.

00:21:00 Speaker_05
It's literally like watching, like, Lucchesi's are coming in, essentially, allegedly. You know, it's like, it feels like that, and they bring with them some people who have talent and some people who,

00:21:14 Speaker_05
are really dumb or terrible, mostly terrible, and some people, hangers-on, and some people, and there's a lot of those, and all of whom are beholden to Musk and suck up to him. That's their thing in common, all of them.

00:21:29 Speaker_05
Or they're really thirsty, like Bill Ackman. I know you like him, but he's so thirsty for being not who he is. Mark Andreaston, I think, is probably the most malevolent of this group.

00:21:41 Speaker_05
Smart, obviously successful, but really an unpleasant character overall.

00:21:48 Speaker_02
Who amongst them do you like?

00:21:50 Speaker_05
Not this group. I don't know Steve Davis. I've heard he's smart. I mean, they're all, I mean, obviously Musk is smart.

00:21:57 Speaker_02
I like Travis Kalanick because he throws a great party and invited me like three years ago for Halloween.

00:22:03 Speaker_05
Oh, did he? Okay. Well, we did a lot of reporting on him and he ended up being fired, and justifiably so. He presided over a really toxic, well, you can go watch all the movies and read the books. He's just a toxic person. But, you know, he's not stupid.

00:22:19 Speaker_02
Do you think that's fair?

00:22:20 Speaker_05
Yeah, I do. I think he created a toxic work environment.

00:22:23 Speaker_02
I mean, Getz is toxic. Do you really think Travis was toxic?

00:22:25 Speaker_05
Yes. You've not read and you've clearly not read any of them.

00:22:29 Speaker_02
You clearly have not read anything. You have not read anything. As I said at the Miami book fair.

00:22:34 Speaker_05
As I said, yes, I do. Yes, I do. Compare him to Dara Khosrowshahi. That's all I would say. He's created a healthy, smart... He's great.

00:22:44 Speaker_02
He's great.

00:22:45 Speaker_05
And, you know, the stuff that Travis was up to was all kind of... I like the guy who runs Lyft, too.

00:22:48 Speaker_02
David, the CEO of Lyft. He's a good guy.

00:22:50 Speaker_05
Yeah, fine, they're all great, they're all fine. Like this guy had to make it a hand-waving throw fest. Travis, decent guy? No, he's not.

00:22:58 Speaker_11
No, I'm sorry, not Travis, who was I saying? Oh, shit.

00:23:01 Speaker_05
Doris, fantastic.

00:23:02 Speaker_11
Oh no, Brian, Brian Chesky, we like Brian.

00:23:04 Speaker_05
Lovely, lovely. Everybody has their faults, but this guy just went out of his way to be a douchebag, like really, in a way that was really icky. You know, the whole thing with women, the anti-women stuff was heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy.

00:23:18 Speaker_05
And that may not bother you, but it bothered me. So- Is there an air hockey table involved?

00:23:23 Speaker_02
There's different- No. There's something- No. Okay, hold on.

00:23:28 Speaker_02
I do think, I've been thinking a lot about the Department of Education recently because this is ridiculous bullshit that we want to eliminate what is probably the best forward-leaning investment in history.

00:23:37 Speaker_02
And that's the Department of Education, in my view. I think it's paid more dividends than NASA. Whatever. There are different levels of mendacious.

00:23:45 Speaker_02
And I think one of the things we need in the senior year of high school for kids is one, a class on, and I love the word you use, adulting, right? My kid can do integers but doesn't understand the interest rate on his Greenlight credit card.

00:23:57 Speaker_02
We need to tell young people to train them about sexuality in a more thoughtful, real-world place, specifically how to express romantic interest while making someone feel safe.

00:24:08 Speaker_02
And three, I think we need to bring back civics and teach kids just how incredibly fortunate they are that the best decision they ever made was to be born in America.

00:24:18 Speaker_02
And finally, I really do think we need much more thoughtful and concerted training and education around critical thinking.

00:24:25 Speaker_02
Because, all right, people are conflating people who've had scandals, who've been unfaithful outside of their marriage or whatever, or New York Magazine hit pieces on podcasters, which made no fucking sense to me, or taking advantage of a White House intern, that is worse.

00:24:41 Speaker_02
But it's not in the same goddamn league as having sex with a minor. And we tend to group all of these things into the same thing. They're not. Some activities are right. People are human. People fuck up fine. And then people should be disqualified.

00:24:58 Speaker_02
Matt Gaetz couldn't get a job at a law firm, much less be attorney general.

00:25:04 Speaker_05
And neither could some of these people. And now they're running government stuff. Neither could some of these people.

00:25:09 Speaker_11
Right, right.

00:25:11 Speaker_05
I'm just like, yeah, if Matt Gaetz is your bar, everything else, it's like saying, don't be evil. Everything else to the left of it is like, whatever, right?

00:25:19 Speaker_02
Tom Bondi looks like fucking Thurgood Marshall because she's following Matt Gaetz.

00:25:22 Speaker_05
I know, I know. Exactly. That's exactly. And she certainly is not. You know, there's all kinds of reporting on her behavior. You know, these are all, they seem all very shifty and crony.

00:25:32 Speaker_05
One of the ones that is really, it's just now Brennan Carr, who's going to be the head of the FCC, thank God they don't have that much power, tells Maria Bartiromo he's going to make sure the government no longer treats Elon Musk unfairly.

00:25:44 Speaker_05
I'm not sure when that happened. And says he's going to take a look at blocking George Soros from buying radio stations. If this isn't crony capitalism, all these like, companies. on, like, seriously.

00:25:55 Speaker_02
But Elon Musk can buy MSNBC and Twitter.

00:25:58 Speaker_05
No, he's not going to buy them. You know what I mean? It's like, these people.

00:26:02 Speaker_02
That should be the new name for your, you know, number seven million rated TV show. It should be called These People. That would be good. These People.

00:26:09 Speaker_05
These People. You're welcome.

00:26:12 Speaker_09
I want to credit. Executive producer. From executive producer Scott Galloway.

00:26:16 Speaker_05
I welcome your doubt because Happened before when I started a blog. Happened before when I started podcasting. Happened before when I picked Scott Calloway. I'm good with your doubt. I love your doubt.

00:26:29 Speaker_11
Don't conflate me with cable television.

00:26:32 Speaker_05
I'm just saying, I see something. I see something. something I see, I don't know, I have a feeling.

00:26:38 Speaker_02
After working my ass off for 30 years, I'm an overnight success because of Kara Swisher. There's some truth in that. I'm just, no. There's some truth in that.

00:26:43 Speaker_05
No, there is some truth in that, I'm sorry. There's some truth in that. That's what I'm saying, is that I don't like, I have to listen to my own instincts here, so I'm gonna do that. It's part of an entire ecosystem I'm in.

00:26:54 Speaker_02
Gotta be honest, I was rolling with some pretty hot ladies in F1, and a bunch of times at the casino, people would yell out, hey Prof G, and I felt like I should text you and say, thanks for this. Thanks for this.

00:27:04 Speaker_05
Yeah, it's nice. So anyway, they're not, they're just like, I'm sorry, all I say to Charles Kalanick is, our co-host Rashad, he's managed to turn that company thing, and he spent a lot of time doing all kinds of stuff.

00:27:15 Speaker_05
At one point he was like, he wrote memos that was like, you all should only fuck each other if you're not in the direct line thing, and I can't fuck any. He was so, he had so much like- He was a kid, he was immature.

00:27:27 Speaker_02
I would describe it as immaturity. I wouldn't describe him, look, you know better than me. I don't think he was malicious. I would describe him as very immature and shouldn't have been the CEO of a company of that importance.

00:27:37 Speaker_05
Perhaps, perhaps. Speaking of MSNBC, people are in a panic that England's going to buy it because he tweeted it. about buying it. It's ridiculous. I've talked to the Comcast people. They're going to spin it off and then it'll be a shareholder thing.

00:27:50 Speaker_05
They're not going to turn around and sell it to Elon Musk. It's just not going to happen. And he could buy shares in it once it's a public company in about a year. Something like that. I kind of, I had some discussions with Comcast people.

00:28:04 Speaker_05
It kind of makes sense to put it off in one thing, and they'll either rise or fail based on what they make, and as much as they digitize it, that's my feeling, right? I don't know what else to say.

00:28:13 Speaker_02
We talked about this. Good bank, bad banks makes all the sense in the world. These are good assets. They still make a ton of money.

00:28:20 Speaker_02
There's still a lot of 70-year-olds that buy a lot of insurance and reverse mortgages and Buicks and still invest in mutual funds thinking that some guy who looks old like them knows how to pick stocks, which they don't.

00:28:33 Speaker_02
So there's a lot of money to be made there.

00:28:36 Speaker_05
The thing is, they're declining assets, and what they need to do- Yes, but they don't have- all I'm saying is they get all the money now, so they could do- they could actually make good things. They could shift around.

00:28:46 Speaker_05
You know, everyone thought one thing was you could shift with this money. Before, they used to send all the money over to Peacock or whoever.

00:28:52 Speaker_05
Now they get to keep the money, and they can either figure out something forward to do with it, or continue to milk it. Either way.

00:29:00 Speaker_02
It's not the worst thing in the world. They can make some cool stuff. They'll consolidate the back end, and they'll move to a stock that offers a dividend, like a mature company.

00:29:13 Speaker_02
And they'll come up with new stuff, just as long as it's not crazy, stupid, expensive. Like, they can't afford to be in the streaming market. That's why they're getting out.

00:29:22 Speaker_02
That's a race to the bottom, being led by Netflix, which has 38 gallons of gasoline for everyone everyone else has. But there'll be, this is a smart, we've talked about this, this is a smart move. It'll be good.

00:29:36 Speaker_02
The whole industry is going to be smaller. It's not going to be as high paying. It is leaking market share to other formats. We're about to have much more competition.

00:29:46 Speaker_02
Basically, what do you call an anchor that used to make $3 million and left in a huff because they only offered her 1 million? A podcaster. you're gonna see essentially every news anchor in America is about to have a podcast.

00:29:59 Speaker_05
Don't I know it. Don't I know it. I get called by all of them.

00:30:02 Speaker_02
Let me just give you some numbers here, though. You want to talk about income inequality. There are 3 million podcasts. 600,000 put out a podcast every week, right? I would venture that maybe generously 600 or 1 in 1,000, 0.1%, 0.1% make money.

00:30:22 Speaker_02
When I was on, and I like this story because it makes me look good, when I was on crew at UCLA, we had 10 oarsmen go to the Olympics out of a total of 2,800 since it became a varsity sport, meaning that approximately 0.3%, I was three times more likely at the age of 19 to end up in the Olympics than having a top podcast.

00:30:45 Speaker_02
So, this is how difficult it is to get to a sustainable podcast right now. It is more difficult.

00:30:54 Speaker_02
If you end up being a varsity athlete at a university, there's a greater likelihood you'll end up in the Olympics than have a successful self-sustaining podcast. I did that on my own. Isn't that good?

00:31:03 Speaker_05
We should go to the Olympics. You and I, we compete in shot put.

00:31:07 Speaker_02
You shot put.

00:31:09 Speaker_05
That thing with the ice where you could do the sweeping thing and I could do the pushing.

00:31:14 Speaker_02
Curling? No, here's the thing. This is what I tell kids that are athletes. My kids have the perfect amount of athletic ability.

00:31:21 Speaker_02
And that is they're good enough to play on their teams, but they're nowhere near good enough to have any delusions of grandeur that they're gonna get a college scholarship or play professional sports. That is just the right amount of athletic skill.

00:31:32 Speaker_02
Because I was an athlete, but I had absolutely no chance of doing anything. I didn't have those delusions. I got on with my life, and I went and got a job. My friends who were world-class athletes, a couple of them went to the Olympics in Seoul.

00:31:44 Speaker_02
A couple of them ended up playing triple B ball. Now, two went on to be huge. Troy Aikman and Reggie Miller were also my class, but those guys were freakish. But the majority of them by the age of 28 or 29 were just starting their lives.

00:31:58 Speaker_02
It is a really, really difficult way to make a living. And what I tell young people in sports is, unless you're getting bright, flashing green lights, that you're gonna be in the 0.001%.

00:32:09 Speaker_02
I mean, some of the, Ed O'Bannon was like a, the guy was a god on the basketball court. And he didn't, you know, he lasted one year in the pros. It's a very, it's a very difficult way. to make a living, but here's the good news.

00:32:24 Speaker_02
What I tell young people is the same skills you bring to sports, teamwork, knowing how to lose, grit, real discipline, competitive, like just an incredible drive, all of these things apply all of them to a profession that you get better at as you get older, business, medicine, because here's the wonderful thing.

00:32:43 Speaker_02
I go to the U.S. Open every year and I was thinking about this. I would rather be Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer. If I could switch spots to be the number one or the number two in the world, I would do that.

00:32:53 Speaker_02
But the number five guy, I'd rather be me because I get to buy my way into the U.S. Open and I'm not nervous. I get to enjoy it more than him. And this guy is the number five player in the world. Do you know who the number five player in the world is?

00:33:05 Speaker_11
No.

00:33:06 Speaker_02
Neither does anybody else, unless you're super into tennis. So here's the thing, find an industry that you get better at as you get older. Don't go into modeling, don't go into sports.

00:33:17 Speaker_02
I would even say most of the creative industries, most people, that hormone leaves you when you're 30 and you start learning about the world and you stop being a genius. Find a profession you get better at as you get older.

00:33:28 Speaker_05
Good piece of advice by Scott Galloway. Very nice.

00:33:33 Speaker_02
That's why you took a chance on me like cable news.

00:33:35 Speaker_05
I did. You'll see. You're going to see.

00:33:39 Speaker_02
I like your show with Chris Wallace. I like it. Why wouldn't they just reinvent you and have you be Chris Wallace?

00:33:45 Speaker_05
I actually like this one better. I'll tell you why I like this one. It feels like a podcast video, you know, on video. That's what it has, that vibe. And so I kind of find it, it was really fun to make.

00:33:56 Speaker_05
And some, I was also, and we'll play some later on Have I Got News For You, which is showing very strong ratings actually, up 61%. From 10 people to 16?

00:34:02 Speaker_02
I'm sorry, go ahead.

00:34:04 Speaker_05
No, it's doing rather well, Scott, and if you get a sponsor attached, you can do really, I will just tell you, on, for example, I just got all the numbers, we're way up in terms of revenues, and people listening in, but the revenues have gone up quite a bit in this area last year.

00:34:20 Speaker_02
Yeah, but you're making my point, and I did this chart, which I'm especially proud of. Do you realize we need somewhere between a third and a seventh of the people to reach 100,000 people as any cable news program?

00:34:35 Speaker_02
And so on somewhere between a third and the seventh of the audience, we can make as much money. And if you get the same audience, which we do, as a decent cable show, and you can do it with five people. Do you know how many people it takes?

00:34:49 Speaker_02
I mean, you see, you go into CNN, DC, every studio, how many, that show you're producing, or you're gonna do for CNN, how many people do you think touch or spend a lot of time on that show to produce what is either 21 or 42 minutes of good content?

00:35:03 Speaker_05
I don't actually know, but it was a lot smaller than before. And that was good because everyone was really lively.

00:35:09 Speaker_02
So a dozen people in the control room, editing, sound, all that shit. You're right. At least.

00:35:15 Speaker_05
Yeah, you're right. We have more than just a few. And it was really interesting. I mean, he's absolutely right on his voice for next year to grow like enormously and stuff like that. So you're absolutely right. And we're in a good spot.

00:35:27 Speaker_05
I like my podcast most of all.

00:35:29 Speaker_02
Which one? Which one do you enjoy the most? I'm curious. This one. Yeah, me too. Thanks for saying that. I enjoy this one the most. This one. I agree.

00:35:36 Speaker_05
I like all the others, though. I really enjoy the others, though. Anyway, let's get to our first big story. President-elect Donald Trump will be picking a new SEC chair.

00:35:48 Speaker_05
I don't love focusing everything on this Trump picks because some of them are so asinine. Some are okay. But Gary Gensler announced last week he'll be stepping down and leaving the SEC on January 20th in the light of crypto bros everywhere.

00:35:59 Speaker_05
Trump has yet to reveal Gensler's replacement. This will be a really important replacement, but the pick will likely be someone friendlier to both Wall Street and crypto. Gensler's departure is no surprise to anyone. Bitcoin surged past $98,000.

00:36:12 Speaker_05
I forget what it is today. Mark Cuban posted, Gary Gensler is leaving the SEC about two years too late. I believe his stance on crypto was the reason so many young crypto owning men voted Republican, which is interesting.

00:36:24 Speaker_05
You know, Mark said, say we're crypto agnostic positive, but not like. douche nozzle people positive. So, no, I think we're all in the same place Mark is. I think Gensler really did try.

00:36:39 Speaker_05
I see why he was doing it, but at the same time, he was unusually obstructive. You talked to him at one of our events about this. So, what do you think they should do? I mean, Kamala Harris was much more embracing of it, but not as much as Trump.

00:36:56 Speaker_05
So anybody you think, and let me just, I'll get to Scott Besant or however you pronounce it in a second, but who should be the head of the SEC? Because you don't want like this crony capitalism that you might be seeing.

00:37:06 Speaker_05
You know, Mark Cuban, Andy Lemus had cross purposes with the SEC for many years, obviously. But thoughts?

00:37:14 Speaker_02
I don't know, I would go, I mean, it'd be nice if you could find someone who's a little bit younger and a little bit more in touch with some of the new technologies. Keep in mind,

00:37:23 Speaker_02
You know, no one likes the regulator in bold times and everyone blames the regulation for under regulation when shit gets real and people lose their money. And so I don't, you know, I'd love to see a guy like David Solomon.

00:37:36 Speaker_02
I think he understands the markets. I think he's forward looking, but at the same time, it's, This is a long-winded way, Cara, of saying, I don't know.

00:37:47 Speaker_02
The crypto thing has garnered a disproportionate, other than Musk, you would argue that as an asset class, no asset class dominated this election in terms of swing voters like crypto. Crypto, there's some wonderful things about it.

00:37:59 Speaker_02
It has established itself as a tangible asset class, specifically Bitcoin. And visionaries like Michael Saylor who have defied all odds in terms of corporate governance.

00:38:10 Speaker_05
Miami, speaking of Miami.

00:38:12 Speaker_02
Also issued billions of dollars in debt on the backs of the credit worthiness of a company in business intelligence and then went out and bought Bitcoin, which is just fucking crazy. And meanwhile, the stock's up nine and a half fold.

00:38:24 Speaker_02
I mean, this guy really is a visionary. You know, I'd like to see someone who understands these technologies. But at the same time, the SEC, the problem with the SEC is the SEC is mostly there. It's supposed to be there to protect investors.

00:38:36 Speaker_02
Now, part of protection is not only regulation, but it's also ensuring that the markets are robust and people can make money and embracing risk and generally speaking, America.

00:38:46 Speaker_02
errors on the side of a lack of regulation such that we can let our horses run.

00:38:52 Speaker_02
But the problem with the SEC over the last 20 or 30 years, I would argue, and I've had a lot of involvement with the SEC because I was an activist investor, is they're supposed to be there to protect investors. They're not.

00:39:03 Speaker_02
They're there to protect management. And that is they implement all these rules where if you buy more than 5% of shares, you have to disclose your intentions. They give management the benefit of the doubt.

00:39:12 Speaker_02
They basically have been weaponized by management to transfer money from shareholders and the general public to management. And so that needs to change.

00:39:21 Speaker_02
But you probably, I would think with the SEC, want someone who understands the law, understands innovation. Because, I mean, just slow your roll around the crypto thing, guys. Because if all of a sudden these shit coins come back,

00:39:35 Speaker_02
and you convince a bunch of retail investors to invest in this thing, you could see a lot of good people lose everything. Everything.

00:39:44 Speaker_02
And so the notion that we just want to embrace somebody who's just going to try and, I mean, basically what crypto has said is just put a guy in there that's going to figure out a way to irrationally, artificially explode the value of my Bitcoin.

00:39:58 Speaker_02
And that's, again, there's a common thing among cronyism and kleptocracy, and that is do whatever is required to transfer money from the entrance of the people who don't have money yet to the incumbents that already own this shit.

00:40:11 Speaker_02
And that's not the way you operate America. The way you operate America is create a playing environment such that young people

00:40:17 Speaker_02
can move up the ladder, they can save more than they can spend, and they can start investing in assets at a reasonable price, instead of just pumping up the value of every market, housing, crypto, and stocks, such the incumbents like me get richer and richer.

00:40:30 Speaker_05
Now, speaking of which, in this, it will be interesting to see who they pick. I think he'll end up picking someone. He seems to be very calm on the Wall Street picks, like, you know, very normal.

00:40:38 Speaker_03
They're credible.

00:40:39 Speaker_05
They're credible. Donald Trump made a flurry of these nominations when we spoke last week. He nominated, the most important was Scott Besant for Treasury Secretary, claiming that Besant will make America rich again. America is rich, you dumb fuck.

00:40:53 Speaker_05
It's just not the right people, right? It's just not everybody.

00:40:55 Speaker_02
It's just not evenly distributed. It's what William Gibson said about the future. Prosperity is here. It's just not evenly distributed.

00:41:01 Speaker_05
That's correct. This election follows an internal battle in Trump world that adviser likened to a knife fight with, that would have been fun, with Besant versus Howard Lutnick.

00:41:11 Speaker_05
Besant was once a protege of George Soros, as we said, was not a negative thing, major Democratic donor, which is a concern for some Trump allies. But like Trump, Besant favors tariffs and deregulation. I'm not sure how much he favors.

00:41:22 Speaker_05
the terror of Fard, I suspect deregulation, certainly. He's also been an advocate for blockchain and digital assets, probably very, in probably a very normal way.

00:41:32 Speaker_05
Trump seems to be pleasing Wall Street with his choice, but not so Elon Musk, who is pushing for a let neck, probably because it can control him more. By the way, Bassett would be the first openly gay treasury secretary.

00:41:42 Speaker_05
I think that's kind of interesting.

00:41:43 Speaker_02
We should also point out, to be fair, I think the LGBTQ community on a number of levels actually did pretty well in this election. Meaning? Well, the first transgender woman elected to Congress.

00:41:54 Speaker_05
Yes. Democrat. Yeah.

00:41:55 Speaker_02
There was a decent amount of victory and progress on the LGBT community in this election.

00:42:00 Speaker_05
Well, not not the laws that are coming, Scott. I mean, I'll be again, I'll be living with you in London at some point. It's worrisome for come on over.

00:42:07 Speaker_02
The weather's fine. That's a lie. That's a lie.

00:42:10 Speaker_05
But talk about percent. I think you're wrong about gays and lesbians. I think we I think Sarah McBride seems to be like a class class act. And compared to Nancy Mace, it's double edged because she was elected.

00:42:21 Speaker_02
Right. Yeah.

00:42:23 Speaker_05
Right, that's right. I have nothing but regard for her. And I like how she's rolling. We'll see how she does. Bessette, talk about Bessette.

00:42:30 Speaker_02
A hedge fund manager. And the thing that shocked everybody is that, of course, they think that Soros somehow is the enemy. He's very qualified.

00:42:39 Speaker_02
You need someone... The thing that gives me hope or the respite, the consolation, the silver, not even line, the silver dotted silver line in all of this, is that Trump does appear to think, okay, when it comes to laws, it doesn't matter.

00:42:56 Speaker_02
When it comes to the Department of Education, oh, it doesn't matter. But at least he's smart enough to know none of this shit matters if the economy isn't well run. The economy is the mothership.

00:43:08 Speaker_02
And I would argue their picks and the people they're vetting, including Scott Besant, he's an adult. He understands the markets. He's a very bright guy. So I'm heartened by this pick.

00:43:21 Speaker_02
And Nalita, this is, you could argue, this is the only pick, you know, typically in a nod to the other party, they would give someone from the other party, you know, Department of Transportation, just to try and pretend to be

00:43:32 Speaker_02
to try and pretend to be bipartisan, that shit's gone out the window. And they're not only not bipartisan, they'll pick the fucking craziest person as long as you supported me regardless of how ridiculous your lack of qualifications are.

00:43:47 Speaker_02
When it comes to running the economy, I think Trump says, at least he believes, okay, this shit's for real. And regardless of the fact this guy worked for Soros, and I want to be clear, I know a lot of people who've worked at Soros Fund Management.

00:44:01 Speaker_02
It's not about their political views. It's about their ability to make money. And that's what he's decided here. He's gone for a brain over politics. So I think this is a great pick. I'm excited about it.

00:44:12 Speaker_05
Yeah, I was much calmed down by this one. And, you know, Stephanie Ruhle was telling me this was the guy that was good. There was another one, I forget who it was. Pam Bondi, as you noted, is Trump's new choice for attorney general.

00:44:22 Speaker_05
Again, following the lowest bar of all, Matt Gaetz stepping aside last week should have been no surprise. Bondi is a former Florida attorney general who later served as Trump's defense team during his first impeachment trial.

00:44:33 Speaker_05
She's worked as a lobbyist with clients including General Motors, Amazon and Uber. She currently leads the legal arm of a right-wing think tank with ties to the Trump transition team.

00:44:42 Speaker_05
There was some kerfuffle about her dropping a case against Trump University and getting a $25,000 donation by Trump. She's certainly the more conventional choice, although she seems to be an election denier, that's what it looks like.

00:44:57 Speaker_05
And by the way, her brother is an attorney who represented Tesla in the SEC fraud case against Elon. These people's interconnectedness is just something to see, it's really something. Again, as you said, she's not as bad as him, so oh well.

00:45:13 Speaker_02
She'll fly right through, but just back to the thing I noticed about the sun was this morning, the stock market opened up four or 500, you know what you're hearing in the markets right now? A gigantic fucking exhale.

00:45:25 Speaker_02
They're like, when they said, okay, if they put, I mean, what are they going to do? But the head of his paper route in charge of treasury,

00:45:34 Speaker_05
Nobody liked Lutnick, I'll tell you that. No. I heard terrible things about Lutnick from Republicans, Democrats. They thought he was just a thirsty, a thirst trap for attention and was not qualified. I think they think this guy is certainly qualified.

00:45:49 Speaker_05
Anyway, a few, that's right, a few. Anyway, Bonnie, we'll see. She'll pass through. We'll see what she can get done.

00:45:55 Speaker_05
Before we say goodbye to Matt Gaetz, I do want to share a clip from CNN's Have I Got News For You, which is a very popular program, up 61%, where I was a panelist this weekend.

00:46:03 Speaker_05
The subject of Gaetz came up, who, by the way, is on Cameo now, so we can buy one if you want.

00:46:08 Speaker_02
We got to do something.

00:46:10 Speaker_05
No, we got it. What should we have him say? The dog and the jungle cat are my favorite.

00:46:14 Speaker_02
I would love to, I would see just how far, I'd like him to give my 17-year-old boy dating advice and just see what he comes back with.

00:46:20 Speaker_05
Oh, no.

00:46:21 Speaker_02
Is that wrong? All right, go for it. Is that wrong?

00:46:23 Speaker_05
Yeah, it is wrong, but it's right.

00:46:24 Speaker_02
His favorite air hockey table? If that's wrong, I don't want to. We gotta do something and see if he does it and play it.

00:46:28 Speaker_05
We gotta think it up. He'll not do it. He's not stupid like George Santos.

00:46:30 Speaker_02
We wanted the attorney general. These guys wanted someone to be attorney general who for 500 bucks Yeah, we'll say whatever. Anyway.

00:46:40 Speaker_05
He's so grotesque. He's going to be on Damn Things with the Stars next, or maybe he was already.

00:46:44 Speaker_05
Anyway, I think you'll enjoy the question I asked my fellow panelists and all lesbians, comedians, Amber Ruffin, Jenny Hagel, and then there were Roy Wood Jr.

00:46:53 Speaker_02
I don't see sexual orientation. It doesn't matter to me.

00:46:55 Speaker_05
In any case, let's listen very quickly. Ladies, isn't Matt Gaetz the kind of guy you dated just before you became gay? Yes. He was the last exit ramp. He was the one where you're like, let me try. Nope, can't do it. Anyway, it was fun.

00:47:13 Speaker_05
It was really, actually it was a very fun show. It goes on just before Bill Maher. I mean, they're trying to build something fun on Saturday night and they rebroadcast Bill Maher, which is kind of a good idea.

00:47:23 Speaker_05
All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, another big week for Blue Sky as threads make some changes. And we'll speak with friend of Pivot, Julie Skelfo, about kids' online safety legislation, quite a controversial issue.

00:47:41 Speaker_05
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00:50:58 Speaker_05
Scott, we're back.

00:50:59 Speaker_05
Blue Sky's growth doesn't appear to be stopping, with the platform crossing more than 21 million users, keeps adding a million users a day, while The Threads has five times more daily active users than Blue Sky ahead of the election.

00:51:10 Speaker_05
That lead has now been reduced to 1.5 times, according to SimilarWeb. So people are really using it. Meta now seems to be feeling the heat, introducing new features suddenly. Oh, competition brings innovation.

00:51:22 Speaker_05
And copying, including custom feeds around topics or people, mimicking BlueSky's capabilities, that's an old Meta trick. Let me just tell you, that's a Facebook original.

00:51:31 Speaker_05
So, Blue Sky is still small compared to Threads, quite small, but it's growing fast. Adam Asari, the head of Instagram, seemed to downplay Blue Sky numbers, sharing that Threads has more than 15 million signups in November alone, agreed.

00:51:44 Speaker_05
Threads have been seeing a million new users a day for the last three months, agreed. But it's very exciting that a small little thing is doing really well. I'm gonna just give, briefly, Blue Sky's financials.

00:51:57 Speaker_05
Blue Sky was initially launched as a spinoff of Twitter under Jack Dorsey. The company has since cut ties with him. That was interesting. Kicked his ass out. Now majority owned by its employees.

00:52:07 Speaker_05
On the latest episode of On With Care Swisher, I assembled a panel of experts to talk Blue Sky threads and ex-Exodus decoders, Nilay Patel, shared what he learned about Blue Sky's financial prospects from CEO Jay Graber.

00:52:19 Speaker_05
Let's listen very quickly and then I'd love your thoughts on this surge.

00:52:23 Speaker_01
So, I interviewed Jay on Decoder earlier this year, and I asked, right, you make money. This is before the explosion. Maybe she has new ideas now. But a lot of their ideas are really interesting, right? She said, we're going to sell people algorithms.

00:52:33 Speaker_01
We're going to allow people to compose lists and sell lists. Well, there's some amount of like, how should we do paid tweets that everybody has in the back of their mind? Like, this should be a native subscription platform.

00:52:43 Speaker_01
So I think their idea is to sell user experience and then to build an ecosystem of basically like B2B SaaS products where other people don't want to start Blue Sky servers. We'll see how it goes. They've got a long way to go.

00:52:54 Speaker_05
I've been contacted by so many very wealthy people about investing in this thing and very big names that people I like actually, who are meeting with them and talking to them.

00:53:06 Speaker_05
So thoughts very first on the surge and then I'll get to the investment soon.

00:53:11 Speaker_02
You know more about this than I do. I just got on. It's the hottest new product introduction, and I know it didn't happen in 2024, but this is the hottest new product in tech right now, no doubt.

00:53:21 Speaker_02
Its user base has gone from 13 million to 23 million in just two weeks. Its usage, its daily active usage is now greater than threads.

00:53:30 Speaker_05
Yeah, yeah, it's getting there. It's close.

00:53:33 Speaker_02
the hottest product in tech right now. And what I would ask you, I would flip it back to you, and it's one simple question, why? What about it is working?

00:53:42 Speaker_05
Well, you know, I think it's fun. It's actually fun. And look, I don't think you have to necessarily choose. I like both. I really do like threads. When Amanda was joking about it, she said, Blue Sky's like the coolest bar you've ever been to. And

00:53:56 Speaker_05
Why are you over at the Cheesecake Factory? And I'm like, the cheesecake is delicious. I think that's probably right, a good metaphor. Threads is better for marketing my stuff, honestly, and actually has a nice vibe too.

00:54:11 Speaker_05
And it's a little more like Instagram with text. I don't find the really funny videos that I like. I find him on threads much more. I know it sounds dumb, chopping up food in creative ways, or doing kind of cool karate moves.

00:54:28 Speaker_05
It's a guy who, mastering the art of camouflage to disappear in any setting, he's an artist who camouflages and then stands in front of things. I wouldn't have found that. on Blue Sky, that would be uncool.

00:54:39 Speaker_05
So I'm fine with that, but I do like it, they're much funnier people. They are assembling a news-forward group of people, a lot of journalists, a lot of Pauls are coming over.

00:54:49 Speaker_05
They're replicating that part of Twitter, the news feeling, and that's something that Threads had pushed away from, which is now, they're now moving back, letting people choose politics if they want, like politics and news.

00:55:02 Speaker_05
They were very much against it, and so days later you'd see things that happened days before.

00:55:07 Speaker_05
So I think Blue Skies grabbed that, and I think that's why they're doing well, because some people like news out of these things, some people like entertainment out of them. And it feels like old Twitter, but not in a toxic way.

00:55:22 Speaker_05
I don't think it's an echo chamber. By the way, guess who's building the echo chamber? Elon Musk is building an echo chamber over on his service. And to pretend otherwise is ridiculous.

00:55:32 Speaker_05
I mean, one of the stories that just came out is that how he's minimizing links to stories so that people don't get to see them. He's creating an echo chamber too, and that's what some of these things are. But I like them both. I like them both.

00:55:46 Speaker_05
So let me ask you about the money part, though. They've raised $15 million in Series A funding back in October, and then there's already interest in a new investment round. Again, I've heard from lots of people.

00:55:57 Speaker_05
The CEO has said the platform is billionaire proof because it's not one centralized feed of content. And again, this echo chamber, I don't know, it's a nothing burger. But talk about why you would or would not invest in this.

00:56:10 Speaker_02
Oh, I mean, you're talking to a guy invested in post.

00:56:14 Speaker_05
Post, yeah.

00:56:16 Speaker_02
Look, there's social media. Why would you do it to make money? There is an enormous, the rivers are reversing. all the money that's gone into traditional media.

00:56:31 Speaker_02
The weird thing about media spend is it is arguably the most resilient business in the world. For about 100 years, advertising or media spend or ad-supported media has been approximately 1.5% of GDP.

00:56:45 Speaker_02
In a recession, it goes to 1.4 because what a lot of people, I'll go back here, a guy named Tyler Johnston, the CMO of dryers. He was my first client out of business school for my brand strategy for profit. We went into a recession, it was 92.

00:56:59 Speaker_02
And he said, we're increasing our ad spending because this is just as all the bigger players are pulling back, this is a unique opportunity for us to grab share at a lower price because ad rates have come down. So generally speaking, media spending

00:57:12 Speaker_02
is incredibly resilient, but it never goes that much greater or that much lower. What's different is where the money goes. Oh my gosh, and the amount of capital still up for grab. You know, we talk about CNN, CNN still does.

00:57:28 Speaker_02
I mean, there's a lot of money still up for grabs here. And now there's going to be money up for grabs among the bigger players.

00:57:35 Speaker_02
And when you have an entity like that, if they raise money at a valuation of 15 million, that probably means it was sub a billion. You don't raise 15 million on a billion. You don't issue one and a half percent. increase in shares.

00:57:49 Speaker_02
That probably means it was at somewhere between 50 and 200 million. Oh my gosh. I mean, I'm immediately thinking, does Kara Swisher know this guy? Because I want him to open up the round so I can get in. This is- It's run by women, but go ahead.

00:58:03 Speaker_02
This is a company, they will do, I wish this was Predictions Day, they will raise a round, they will announce a round in the next 90 days, if not sooner, at a billion dollars plus.

00:58:14 Speaker_02
This is the hottest product in the hottest category in the world, and that is a media company that can scale, that has network-like scaling ability, and everybody is talking about it. So yeah, why would you invest?

00:58:31 Speaker_02
So you could make a shit ton of money.

00:58:33 Speaker_05
Yeah, I would think so. I think they're trying very hard to make sure that people know people can take their things with them. The CEO was a woman, Jay Graber, has been an advocate of decentralization empowerment, so you're going to get what

00:58:52 Speaker_05
that kind of attitude towards it. It's not here for, you know, very heavy privacy rules. They love moderation. They toss people off. They feel it's a whole they're creating a whole different thing. Censorship. Oh, stop it. Censorship.

00:59:06 Speaker_09
Let me say let me spread misinformation.

00:59:08 Speaker_05
You know who's censoring? Elon Musk. There's story after story.

00:59:12 Speaker_09
I will throttle content that I don't like. That's not censorship.

00:59:16 Speaker_05
That's correct. Thank you. So that's really interesting. And then the COO is a woman. It's a woman run. It's a woman run. But it's not like it precious in any way.

00:59:26 Speaker_02
Got us in there. King of the woman, Amazonia slash Subaru loving slash. Isn't that good for the right man? Wasn't around at the right time. Oh, that was wrong.

00:59:35 Speaker_05
Okay. In any case, you get over there. I'll put you in touch. I don't know them. I don't know Trey Graber. I just think, I like what I hear. It's like, we'll make what we feel like making, you fuckers.

00:59:45 Speaker_05
And if you don't like it, get out of here kind of thing. I like it. You know what I like the best? They were gonna make it as a sub-brand of Twitter, and Jay refused, and then it was spun out, and then they dumped Jack Dorsey.

00:59:59 Speaker_05
That's my favorite part of the whole equation. I love it. I love this.

01:00:03 Speaker_08
Jack, who speaks in those hushed tones, could easily build the biggest beard oil product in the world. I'm going to give you the sense that I give a flying fuck about the world, like Sam Altman, because I speak in hushed, measured tones.

01:00:18 Speaker_05
In any case, we love Blue Sky. It's great. And Amanda, you're right at the same time. I do like threads. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna have, I don't have to, things I like, I like. If I feel good after using a product, I like it.

01:00:28 Speaker_05
And I know it's Mark Zuckerberg, but I like what they've done there. And I like Reddit. I like, there's all these really good products, so.

01:00:35 Speaker_09
Have you seen Reddit's stock price? Yes.

01:00:37 Speaker_02
Jesus Christ. I know. Isn't that crazy? Jesus Cristo. By the way, who said, whose prediction was that the third most trafficked site in America was vastly undervalued at a $5 billion IPO value? Who said that?

01:00:48 Speaker_05
Scott Galloway.

01:00:49 Speaker_02
That's right. What's it at now? Fitz tripled. That bitch is tripled.

01:00:53 Speaker_09
Get us in the blue sky. Get us in the beast sky.

01:00:57 Speaker_05
All right. Okay. We will do that. I will not do that at all. But let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Julie Scalfo is the founder of Mothers Against Media Addiction, or MAMA. That's my name with my kids.

01:01:15 Speaker_05
MAMA is a grassroots initiative working to protect kids from smartphone and social media addiction, as well as to keep them safe online. Welcome, Julie. Good morning.

01:01:23 Speaker_11
Hi.

01:01:24 Speaker_05
Hello. How you doing? All right, so talk a little bit about the organization. There's certainly been a lot of legislation lately and everything else, and this is one of Scott's big topics.

01:01:34 Speaker_05
So we've talked a lot on Pivot about COSA, the Kids Online Safety Act. It was passed the Senate in the summer. It's now stalled in the House. Social media companies have been waging expensive campaigns to gum up the works.

01:01:44 Speaker_05
At the same time, there are some issues with it. So let's talk about how you started the organization. You modeled against Mothers Against Drunk Driving, I guess, which was formed in the 80s.

01:01:54 Speaker_00
Yeah, well, I'm a longtime journalist. I've been a practicing journalist for 20 years. I used to be a staff writer at the New York Times. Before that, I was at Newsweek. And I basically was what you would call a bad-news beat reporter.

01:02:06 Speaker_00
And I covered youth mental health and, unfortunately, suicide. And I was watching suicide rates go up and up and up in adolescence. And then these same problems were trickling down to kids at younger and younger ages.

01:02:17 Speaker_00
And when suicide became the number two cause of death for 10-year-olds in the United States, You know, I've covered some pretty tough stories in my life, but that really shook me. I'm also a mom, and I'm like, what the heck are we doing?

01:02:30 Speaker_00
So I realized there was a lot of groups out there doing great work, but that in order to organize parents at scale, we needed sort of a model where millions of us could join together and get our voices heard.

01:02:43 Speaker_00
Mama, and we're a grassroots movement of parents fighting back against media addiction and creating a world where real life experiences and interactions remain at the heart of a healthy childhood. And we're focused on building chapters.

01:02:55 Speaker_05
How many people? Now, Mothers Against Drunk Driving had huge wins, right? They had huge wins all over the place.

01:03:00 Speaker_00
They had huge wins legislatively, and they also had huge wins in terms of changing the culture, right?

01:03:05 Speaker_00
So that's really what we're about, is helping develop new norms, empowering parents to stand up and fight back against all the BS tech hype that we hear from the finance industry all the time, and give people the power to say, you know what, kids deserve to be kids, and grow up and acquire the basic building blocks of mental health, of social experience, and also the tools they need to be academically successful.

01:03:30 Speaker_05
You are speaking to the choir here, but talk about COSA, the good and the bad of it, because there was some issues around it. Are you optimistic that it will eventually pass and become law?

01:03:39 Speaker_05
And if not, what's the most important legislation right now happening?

01:03:43 Speaker_00
So COSA has to pass by the end of this year. And the reason it has to pass by the end of this year is because it took basically five years of work by hundreds of people. And remember, it's not really controversial at this point.

01:03:55 Speaker_00
We had 91 senators, tripartisan support, pass it. And in the House, it has bipartisan support. It has 64 co-sponsors, 32 Republican, 32 Democrat.

01:04:05 Speaker_00
The only two people in the country who seem not to want to pass it come from the state where just last week it was announced that MEDA is building a $5 billion data processing center.

01:04:16 Speaker_00
So we're talking about the House majority leader, Mike Johnson, and we're talking about Steve Scalise. both from Louisiana. So, Mama actually launched a chapter in Louisiana just last week. There's a lot of ticked-off parents there.

01:04:29 Speaker_00
I mean, it's like the one thing can't we all agree on is that we shouldn't exploit children for profit, and most people do agree with that.

01:04:36 Speaker_00
So, I am optimistic that the most critical parts of COSA can get attached to the budget bill, but it's going to take work. And I know Mama's working on it.

01:04:45 Speaker_00
You know, members of Mama, other groups, we all are expressing to our leaders that we expect this to get done. It's been too long. Scott?

01:04:52 Speaker_02
So thanks for your good and important work, Julie.

01:04:56 Speaker_02
So there's a direct, most recent, all the studies basically show the same thing, including the most recent one from Oxford, and that is there is a linear relationship between self-harm, anxiety, depression, and use of social media amongst adolescents.

01:05:09 Speaker_02
And finally, the data has been so overwhelming, it's hard for almost everyone to ignore, anyone to ignore.

01:05:17 Speaker_02
So if we have bipartisan support, it's not that Mike Johnson and Steven Scalise are against it, it's that there's an entity behind them telling them to be against it and hiding behind something.

01:05:29 Speaker_02
Are those entities Apple, Google, Meta, all of the above? Who are the mendacious fucks actually getting representatives to delay and obfuscate this bipartisan, or as you said, tripartisan bill.

01:05:42 Speaker_00
So we mamas try and use polite language. But to talk about the tech lobby, you can see all of the groups you just mentioned are part of it.

01:05:51 Speaker_00
And even groups like LinkedIn, Pinterest, you know, don't forget that when the age-appropriate design code passed in California, that the tech lobby sued to prevent its implementation.

01:06:04 Speaker_00
I was at a roundtable with the first partner of California a couple weeks ago, and a representative of MEDA was there. And during the discussion, it was a closed-door discussion, she said, oh, we absolutely know that age-appropriate design is critical

01:06:18 Speaker_00
to keep kids safe online. And then I said, oh, so excuse me, does that mean you're going to drop your lawsuit? So, you know, we know issue one does incredible research in this space.

01:06:28 Speaker_00
We know that the tech lobby has spent $90 million in the last three years to block this. We know that the tech lobby has put out these crazy talking points.

01:06:36 Speaker_00
They say to everybody on the left, oh, if you pass the Kids Online Safety Act or other legislation, it's going to put LGBTQ lives at risk, which isn't true.

01:06:44 Speaker_00
They tell the people on the far right, oh, if you pass this legislation, you're gonna block pro-life content and you're gonna censor conservative voices.

01:06:53 Speaker_02
So we now have- And just to press pause, there's nothing about this that would imply any level of content moderation, correct?

01:06:59 Speaker_00
Not only is there nothing about it, but you have far right conservative politicians saying those are tech lobby talking points, don't listen to them, right? So we know it's a bunch of garbage. It's the duty of care thing, correct?

01:07:14 Speaker_00
Explain the duty of care, right? So a duty of care is like something really simple that says if you're making a product that's going to be used by children, we should have a duty of care to make sure kids will be safe on it.

01:07:27 Speaker_00
Really simple things like privacy settings by default at the most private. It still gives parents choice, right? You're Kim Kardashian, you want anybody in the world to be able to contact your child, be famous, fine, go in and change the settings.

01:07:40 Speaker_00
But for the millions of the rest of us, the default settings are the most private so that you don't have strangers soliciting your 10-year-old daughter for nude photos. Or like we saw on TikTok where

01:07:51 Speaker_00
kids, teenagers are being offered money in order to strip. They're being encouraged to create child sexual abuse material. I mean, Scott, you referred to those studies, but it's not even just the studies, the outside studies. We have MEDA's own data.

01:08:05 Speaker_00
They put out a press release on September 12th, you know, bragging about all this great stuff they were doing to decrease the amount of suicide and self-harm content. And in the bottom paragraph of that press release, they acknowledged

01:08:18 Speaker_00
taking action on 12 million separate pieces of suicide and self-harm content this year, just between April and June, okay? That's 48 million pieces of suicide and self-harm content just on those platforms.

01:08:32 Speaker_00
Like, what the heck are we talking about here? Right.

01:08:36 Speaker_05
And let me, in that, In that vein, Meta announced Instagram teen accounts back in September, also built-in privacy features. They also announced a new feature last week to allow users, including teens, to reset their recommendation algorithm.

01:08:48 Speaker_05
Do you see any movement by them? They're trying, it can't feel just a way to cover their ass when it comes to protecting kids. And is it Meta that's the problem? They have Instagram, obviously, which is where more of the younger people are.

01:09:03 Speaker_05
But then there's TikTok and everything else. What do you think about these teen accounts? Is that them just covering their butt?

01:09:11 Speaker_00
Again, I think it's like smoke and mirrors because all of these things that they're introducing are a way of putting the responsibility back onto parents and back onto kids. It's absurd.

01:09:22 Speaker_00
We don't ask parents and kids to make sure that cars are safe and install their own seatbelts. We don't ask parents and kids to make sure that the food supply is safe and that there's no ground glass in the baby formula.

01:09:32 Speaker_00
Like, this is a systems-level problem. We need a systems-level solution. And it's not really controversial what needs to happen.

01:09:39 Speaker_00
It's just that a few people who are very rich and control these companies and have unlimited source, you know, unlimited amounts of money and now controlled information sources by which most people get their news, they're able to really control the conversation.

01:09:52 Speaker_00
So that's why we started Mama and that's why so many parents have been, you know, we don't have to convince anybody to join, right? We started this year hoping to be in six states by the end of the year. We're already in 17 states.

01:10:03 Speaker_00
I think our waiting list is for 34 or more. We're moving as quickly as we can. But parents have had enough. Scott?

01:10:10 Speaker_02
Let's see. I mean, look, the reason for this, the thing fueling this, is these companies registered about $11 billion a year advertising to people under the age of 18. So this is about money, nothing else.

01:10:23 Speaker_02
And what I would ask you is, we were talking earlier, Julie, about the importance of critical thinking. One of these things is not like the other. There's several entities here. There's meta, which gets a disproportionate amount of

01:10:38 Speaker_02
blame either deservedly or not deservedly. I've also thought that, quite frankly, Tim Cook gets too much of a hall pass because, quite frankly, he's more likable. And then there's obviously Alphabet, which also controls.

01:10:50 Speaker_02
I mean, the operating systems here could age-gate, Obviously, meta could do a better job of not trying to hide or wallpaper over the research, which indicates that they are, in fact, depressing teens.

01:11:03 Speaker_02
Stack rank for us who you think, from best to worst, among the big platforms and operating systems, have been most and least cooperative trying to figure out a way to keep our children safe.

01:11:16 Speaker_00
You know, I can't create a hierarchy of who I think is problematic in this space. What I can tell you is that I think we need changes at every single level from all of these platforms.

01:11:28 Speaker_00
You know, we started MAMA with a three-part mission, parent education, getting smartphones out of schools, and demanding safeguards. And those safeguards need to happen both at the federal policy level and if

01:11:42 Speaker_00
Congress is going to continue to be dysfunctional. We are optimistic that our state lawmakers are going to move forward and create policies that keep kids safe. We've already seen that in a number of states.

01:11:51 Speaker_00
And we also know the devices themselves need to be made safer. I mean, my kids have iPhones. I use the parent controls. I've told Apple how old my kids are.

01:12:00 Speaker_00
And yet they have an app store that promotes apps that their rating are only for 17-plus, and they're promoting those apps to my 14-year-old. Why are they doing that? We take kids to see a G-rated movie. You don't expect them to show R-rated promos.

01:12:15 Speaker_00
So the changes can happen at every single level, and they need to happen at every single level.

01:12:20 Speaker_02
Well, why not just age gate? Wouldn't a simpler solution just be to age gate, to pass a law that says we age gate pornography, the military, alcohol, marijuana.

01:12:28 Speaker_02
Why wouldn't we just say no one under the age of 16 ever needs to be on a social media platform? And if you aren't putting in place the platforms and technology to ensure no one under the age of 16 is in a social media platform, you've broken the law.

01:12:42 Speaker_02
Wouldn't age gating just be a simpler solve here?

01:12:45 Speaker_00
I think that is a great solution. I think there needs to be multiple solutions. Right. So we're open to a variety of ways of tackling this. But you brought up this question of whether you know who's more to blame than someone else.

01:12:58 Speaker_00
I mean, we want to see products that are safer. We want to see apps that are safer. We want to see transparency so that when these apps get rated, I mean, who's doing these ratings, right? Are they pediatricians? Are they educators?

01:13:10 Speaker_00
Are they people who work for the companies? There needs to be transparency so parents know what's going on. And there need to be policies in place to ensure that you can't exploit kids for money. Enough is enough.

01:13:21 Speaker_05
One of the things, speaking of protecting kids online, Scott and I always say kids are overprotected offline and underprotected online.

01:13:28 Speaker_05
But protecting them is, in an offline way, you're also trying to get phones out of schools, something that a lot of parents push back against. Some do, not a lot. So talk about your argument to parents who say phones are necessary for safety.

01:13:42 Speaker_05
Sometimes when kids are sick, and there's always workarounds in these cases. Both Scott and I are big proponents of this. As someone who has a lot of kids, I want no phones in schools whatsoever. It creates all kinds of

01:13:55 Speaker_05
Distraction, nobody's looking at each other, this is the place they have community. There's so many, honestly, I don't even know why they're allowed in schools. We'll talk about that a little bit.

01:14:06 Speaker_00
Well, I came to this work not only as a journalist, but as someone who studied this weird thing called media ecology. And that was a name that Neil Postman thought of many years ago to look at how different media environments shape human experiences.

01:14:20 Speaker_00
And when you add a new technology to the environment, the effect isn't just additive, it's ecological. Everything about the world and the way we understand things really changes.

01:14:30 Speaker_00
And so as a society right now, I think we're all just completely addicted to the idea that more media and more technology is always better, even though digital technology has advanced to the point that the scale and volume of exposure is literally making us sick.

01:14:46 Speaker_00
And so Scott brought this up earlier, like what's happening in schools, it's not just the smartphones, right?

01:14:50 Speaker_00
We hear from parents all the time that their kindergartners are being forced to use tablets, that their first graders are being issued Chromebooks. These kids can't even carry an electronic. That's been on for a while. That's been going on.

01:15:01 Speaker_00
Right, but the volume and the scale of it is displacing other experiences that are critical for kids to grow up in a healthy way.

01:15:08 Speaker_00
So if the kids are doing math on the screen, they're not getting the building blocks they need to actually understand how math works.

01:15:16 Speaker_00
If the kids are interfacing with their teacher, you know, through Google Classroom, I mean, you have the most elite schools in this country all insisting their kids use Google Classroom, despite all the problems that exist on Google Classroom and the fact that kids have been able to access porn or information about how to hang themselves through that portal.

01:15:33 Speaker_00
So, you know, there's real problems here. And the culture change piece of this, the society piece of this, is that all of us need to start thinking differently about this tech.

01:15:42 Speaker_00
Yes, tech is good for some things, it's helpful, it can be fun, it can solve certain problems, but it also can take things away.

01:15:49 Speaker_00
So that's really what we wanna see, is parents thinking about it differently, educators thinking about it differently, and lawmakers thinking about it differently.

01:15:56 Speaker_05
What do you say to parents who themselves are addicted to phones? Cuz that's what I always say, the problem in this room is not the kids, it's all of you. It's like anyone 30 to 55, or something, whatever, or beyond. But those don't have little kids.

01:16:09 Speaker_00
I mean, 100%, I mean, look, you know, we know that we're addicted too, but part of why I felt there was a need for Mama, in part, it's sort of a branding thing, right?

01:16:19 Speaker_00
Like, there's lots of nonprofit groups, but what's the, you know, you can have two white T-shirts roll off the same factory with different branding, and one you'll pay $5 for in a package at Kmart, and another one you'll lay out 50 bucks for because it's got a certain brand identity.

01:16:35 Speaker_00
So, you know, putting these, products aside and thinking about them differently so that we're not all just beholden to whatever the tech company says, oh, you have to upgrade this year, this product, or you're going to somehow be left behind.

01:16:48 Speaker_00
Is it really going to make your life better? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. So you have to think critically about that. Scott, last question.

01:16:55 Speaker_10
Well, just a two part question. The first is, um, how are you funded?

01:16:59 Speaker_02
And, and two, if somebody says, okay, I agree with this and I want to do something right now, other than crying into Tik TOK or screaming on Twitter, what could they do right now that would help get COSA passed?

01:17:15 Speaker_00
OK, so parents should not cry. They should not scream. They should get pissed. And then they should go to joinmama.org, sign up to be part of our group. We have a form there that they can send with just one click.

01:17:27 Speaker_00
They can send letters to their elected leaders in the Senate and in the House to explain how urgently they want COSA. That's the first thing that they should do.

01:17:36 Speaker_00
The second thing they should do is either join an existing MAMA chapter or start their own chapter. And the reason that we're organizing this way is because there can't just be one leader of the movement.

01:17:46 Speaker_00
So the people who are leading MAMA chapters are these incredible array of men and women who are already They're therapists, they're educators, they're teachers, they're knowledgeable.

01:17:56 Speaker_00
I mean, we have a speech pathologist who joined us because she's so tired of the increase in students who need help because they're not acquiring the early building blocks of language the way they need.

01:18:06 Speaker_00
So don't cry, be pissed, go to joinmama.org and become part of the movement. And the second thing you can do is support us financially. I mean, we were funded with a seed grant from the Center for Humane Technology.

01:18:17 Speaker_00
We've had other foundations write us checks. Tristan Harris. Yep, Tristan Harris. So we're still waiting for some of the really biggest philanthropies out there to recognize the urgent need to get tech under control. They haven't connected all the dots.

01:18:33 Speaker_00
I love me some white papers, but the average person doesn't wanna keep reading white papers. We started with Rand and Truth Decay. Then there was the Stanford Historian Education Group that warned what would happen if we didn't

01:18:45 Speaker_00
give people the knowledge to differentiate different types of information quality online.

01:18:50 Speaker_00
So now we're coming together as Mama and we are giving parents the tools they need to equip their children with the skills that they have to have to be able to function in a society that's so permeated by media.

01:19:02 Speaker_02
Can I make a suggestion real quick? I'm on your site. Sure. I want to give money and I have ADD and you're about to lose me. There's no easy way to get money here.

01:19:10 Speaker_00
Okay, well, we'll fix it. We're a tiny team, Scott. We were hoping to, like I said. Yeah.

01:19:15 Speaker_02
Big button, give now. It's not here.

01:19:17 Speaker_05
Give now. Okay, we'll get on that. That's what Scott says. All right, by the way, by the way, mama.org is the Medical Alert Monitoring Association. Do you think I haven't tried to buy that website? Oh, I know. They're not giving it to you. It's all white.

01:19:32 Speaker_05
I was like, board of directors, all white men. I'm like, what is happening here?

01:19:35 Speaker_00
Yeah, you know, well, maybe some of your listeners can cough up some cash. By the way, I haven't paid myself in two and a half years, and I've donated the money to get this started. I just needed to see the change here.

01:19:46 Speaker_00
And thankfully, a lot of donors are understanding the value. But that's not something we spent money on. I think, I don't know how much they want for that URL. But hopefully, we'll have enough to buy it soon.

01:19:55 Speaker_05
Good luck, good luck, because I tried to get one and never got it. So just you have to work with what you got, do.net or whatever. Joinmama.org. But you will not take money from tech companies, correct?

01:20:08 Speaker_00
I will not take money from social media companies. There are just too many parents whose kids have died because of social media, and it would break their hearts, and I don't want their money. I am not anti-tech, and Mama is not anti-tech.

01:20:21 Speaker_00
So when you refer to tech, that's a very broad thing to say, and I wouldn't say that we'll never take money from any tech company. We are open to working with certain corporate partners that share our values.

01:20:33 Speaker_00
There's a few out there who remarkably, you know, recognize, I shouldn't say remarkably, you know, the erosion of our information environment by all of this social media and so much garbage online.

01:20:45 Speaker_00
It's really making it hard for companies to do business. I mean, talk to people in marketing. Talk to people in advertising.

01:20:51 Speaker_00
You have blue-chip companies that are paying for advertising on social media, and then their ads are showing up next to ads for fentanyl. They're showing up next to ads for, you know, naked children. Who wants that?

01:21:03 Speaker_00
So we really have to clean up the media environment, and I think mom is a big part of that.

01:21:07 Speaker_05
Well, obviously, Meta's one of them, but don't leave Google and Facebook out of the consideration for problematic companies.

01:21:15 Speaker_00
Or Apple. Or Apple.

01:21:16 Speaker_05
I was saying Apple.

01:21:17 Speaker_00
Oh, we're not.

01:21:17 Speaker_05
I meant Apple.

01:21:19 Speaker_00
We're not. And, you know, Karen Scott, when you're ready to wear your mama hats, I mailed them out to you. I have them.

01:21:25 Speaker_05
I wear them. My kids were, like, thrilled with it, mostly because that's what they call me. Anyway, it's a very great organization. Julie, thank you so much.

01:21:32 Speaker_02
Thanks for your good and important work, Julie.

01:21:34 Speaker_05
Yeah, appreciate you guys. Take care.

01:21:51 Speaker_02
Is this true? Yeah, probably. The biggest source of tension and anxiety in my household is the fucking phone.

01:21:57 Speaker_02
And I'm blessed with incredibly healthy, wonderful young men, but occasionally something's up and our first thing is, did something happen online? And you don't know. Online? You just don't know. Yes.

01:22:08 Speaker_05
I agree, I am thrilled both my kids really did get off all the social media sites. They literally YouTube and Reddit just for watching. But I'll never forget when Louie came to me and I said, were you on that? And he's like, that makes me feel bad.

01:22:21 Speaker_05
And I was like, I love you so much. He just understood that that was the cause of his unhappiness. So it just amplified normal teen problems for sure. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

01:22:42 Speaker_04
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01:24:32 Speaker_02
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01:25:36 Speaker_05
Okay, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. You go first today.

01:25:41 Speaker_02
I'm just doing two wins. I'm feeling good. I'm in Brazil. I have nothing to feel failure about. We talked about the one-win blue sky. Competition is great. One of the things that will help our guests implement better safety rules is competition.

01:25:54 Speaker_02
At some point, people will have the ability to say to their kids, no, you can only be on blue sky. I'm not sure we're going to be able to keep our kids off of social media. I would like to see age gating.

01:26:03 Speaker_02
But the second best thing will be competition, because someone will raise their hand and go, here's a competitive positioning. Let's not be awful and have content that results in a greater propensity to self-harm.

01:26:12 Speaker_02
Somebody will produce a child seat that actually protects their kid from a head-on collision, as it's supposed to. So I think competition is great. Blue Sky, we mentioned this. It's grown from 13 million to 23 million users in just two weeks.

01:26:24 Speaker_02
Usage is up five-fold in the past two weeks. So that's the biggest win in tech right now. Week on week or month on month, it's blue sky.

01:26:33 Speaker_02
My other win, and I talk about this a lot, I have really embraced the notion of making a huge effort to spend time with guys. I'm generally a yes to everything right now with the right to cancel. I did it this weekend.

01:26:47 Speaker_02
My friend, my good friend Orlando Machante is literally meeting in Brazil. He's coming from Portugal. Every chance I get now on the back nine as I'm spending time with friends, my kids, my sons, you know, 14 and 17, and this is a good thing.

01:27:02 Speaker_02
It's heartbreaking, but it's a good thing. They have that hormone coming over them going, dad is just not that cool. And I want to spend more time with my friends, not him or his friends. And that's great. That's what they should be doing.

01:27:12 Speaker_02
But I'm reinvesting all of that human capital into brotherhood and camaraderie, and I'm just having the most rewarding time with friends. And it's nice, you're at this age, too.

01:27:22 Speaker_02
We can kind of count our blessings and talk about our kids and be more open and more vulnerable with each other. It's a different dimension. It's a different stage of friendship.

01:27:33 Speaker_02
And with men, when you're in your 20s and 30s, we tend to be much more competitive with each other and trying to outdo each other and signal our success. And, you know, we're just sort of like boys.

01:27:44 Speaker_02
And then it's just nice to get together after our kids, or we can celebrate our kids' victories. We can celebrate how blessed we are. We have, quite frankly, we have a little bit of money to do the shit we couldn't do when we were younger.

01:27:55 Speaker_02
And I'm just leaning in so much to male friendship, and my advice is the following. Your friends who you think are busy and important,

01:28:04 Speaker_02
They may be both of those things, but they love hanging out with other guys, especially ones they have a history with and they can mock and be mocked and just sort of be kids again with.

01:28:14 Speaker_02
I'm just having such a good time with my friends, and it's so rewarding that we're finally at a stage in our lives where we can really lean into that kind of fraternal.

01:28:24 Speaker_02
And what I would say to men is if you wake up and you find out you're one of those guys that's a good person, has some success or not,

01:28:31 Speaker_02
but you just aren't making much of an effort with your friends, it's not gonna happen for you unless you make the effort, and the effort is worth it.

01:28:38 Speaker_05
May I tell you, you can also be friends with women.

01:28:41 Speaker_02
Oh, thanks for that. Like you and I. Jesus Christ, Cara, really? Just let this hang. Just let this be what it is.

01:28:47 Speaker_05
Okay, you love your man friends, your man posse. I always support your posse. Wait, wait a minute, what are you talking about? I'm constantly trying to add to your posse.

01:28:54 Speaker_02
You can be friends with women. Oh, News 11, really?

01:28:57 Speaker_05
I'm just saying, do you know what the most popular TV show ever was? Friends, where they were a whole group of them.

01:29:03 Speaker_02
And I started fucking. I just want to hang out with Ross and whatever his name is. I'm friends with gay men. That's the same thing.

01:29:10 Speaker_05
My son is going only with guys to go do something after Christmas, going skiing. I highly support it, obviously, and I'm not particularly paying for that one. So is Alex. Can I just tell you one thing, speaking of that?

01:29:22 Speaker_05
Alex is going with six male friends to Cancun. at spring break. How do you think that's going to end?

01:29:29 Speaker_02
That's awesome. Fraternity trip?

01:29:30 Speaker_05
I know. Yeah. Well, no, it's just, yeah, it's friends from the fraternity. Yeah. I'm thrilled he's in a fraternity, FYI.

01:29:35 Speaker_02
Is he going to hang out with my favorite friend, first name Tuh, second Kila? It's important that everyone gets sick and throw up on tequila and not be able to smell it for 10 years, because then you know it was like really bad tequila.

01:29:47 Speaker_05
And I literally just said, just don't lose your liver. Yeah, that's awesome. I know, I know. So don't say I don't support male things. My sons go on male trips all the time. Good, good, good, good. All right. Oh, positive.

01:30:04 Speaker_05
I'm sorry, I'm thrilled that both these, Gladiator, that Glicket is doing well. Certain movies do hold a mood among people, and I think these do.

01:30:13 Speaker_05
I think they're about, they're also, they're political in their own way, even though these are old, old, Wicked was 20 years ago, so was Gladiator, the first one, 25 maybe. I think they talk about fighting back against autocracy and unfairness.

01:30:30 Speaker_05
And there's a lot of political messages in them that are, including a lot of Broadway shows that I think are important, and I like how they're delivered.

01:30:38 Speaker_05
Both of them have a lot, there's a really good Slate article talking about how much they have in common. There's also things in common in these movies that I think are good to be reminded of, which is sort of, individually fighting for your freedom.

01:30:51 Speaker_05
They're just fun too, but there are those elements in them that I think are beautifully delivered, especially by Paul Mescal and Cynthia Erivo. I think they deliver them in a really strong and both entertaining and also important. So I like those.

01:31:08 Speaker_05
And I'm going to stick by Glickid no matter what Scott says to me.

01:31:12 Speaker_05
And then negatively, Justice Josephine's special counsel, Jack Smith, has asked the judge to dismiss the federal election interference charges against Donald Trump, largely because he wants to dismiss it, though, without prejudice, acknowledging the Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president.

01:31:32 Speaker_05
If she does that, then they can later bring charges against him after his second White House term. And then the thing is, he could pardon himself, which nobody's ever done, but he does a lot of things nobody's ever done.

01:31:45 Speaker_05
And so it's sort of like, oh, he just bought himself a get-out-of-jail-free card. And that's kind of gross to me in the office.

01:31:52 Speaker_10
I hate to say this, but... Yeah. But the American public bought him that card.

01:31:56 Speaker_05
That's correct, that's correct. That's right, he got himself one. Well, half the American public. Again, story after story about non-landslide, but I'm not gonna go into it with you anymore. I'm not arguing the point. But yes, he did.

01:32:07 Speaker_02
I'll talk about it on my next guys trip.

01:32:10 Speaker_05
Okay, shut up. In any case.

01:32:11 Speaker_02
And you can talk about it on your new CNN show.

01:32:14 Speaker_09
Nobody's watching.

01:32:15 Speaker_05
I have gals and guys on my show. Nobody's watching. Because I have transcended you. Anyway, I find this funny. It feels so crony, it feels so Russia, this stuff feels so Russia, the broligarchs, the, you know, getting off. Brohemian Rhapsody.

01:32:34 Speaker_05
Broligarchs is in the Atlantic, there's a very good story about, called the broligarchs. I find them, I think this crony capitalism is giving me the shakes, I have to say. And that's what this is.

01:32:44 Speaker_05
It's crony capitalism that you advance, like whatever Brennan Carson, I'll help Elon and hurt George Soros. Maybe they did this before in the quiet, but it's grotesque in the public. I'll tell you that. It's grotesque.

01:32:55 Speaker_05
And they're all such thirsty fucks that I don't know what else to say. Anyway, that's my feeling on that. I feel bad for law. Anyway, okay, Scott, you've got to go. So we want to hear from you.

01:33:07 Speaker_05
Send us your question about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

01:33:14 Speaker_05
I'd also like to invite our listeners to join me for a special live recording of On with Kara Swisher presented by ELF, E-L-F Cosmetics on December 3rd in New York City. I'll be chatting with Tubi's CEO Anjali Sood at the Whitney Museum.

01:33:31 Speaker_05
It's going to be a great conversation. I'm really interested in Tubi.

01:33:33 Speaker_11
Wow. Fancy.

01:33:33 Speaker_05
I know. I like Tubi. He's interesting. For tickets, visit voxmediaevents.com slash elf, E-L-F. That's voxmediaevents.com slash elf. Hope to see you there. Okay, Scott, that's the show. Have a happy Thanksgiving. We're going to be off for Thanksgiving.

01:33:48 Speaker_05
What are you doing?

01:33:48 Speaker_02
Oh, that's right.

01:33:49 Speaker_05
Yeah, what do you do?

01:33:50 Speaker_02
I'm thankful for you, Cara, and the opportunities you've presented. Thanks very much.

01:33:53 Speaker_05
I feel the same way about you and your little broligarchs. I do. For more, please read us out and have a great time in Brazil.

01:34:02 Speaker_02
Today's show is produced by Larry Namens, Zoe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Christine Driscoll. Ernie Durtat engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mia Severio, and Dan Shulan. Nishat Karua is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

01:34:14 Speaker_02
Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod.

01:34:23 Speaker_02
We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

01:34:35 Speaker_07
Support for this episode comes from AWS. AWS Generative AI gives you the tools to power your business forward with the security and speed of the world's most experienced cloud.

01:34:48 Speaker_06
2025 is going to be a huge year for the tech industry. AI is either going to take over or maybe kind of start to go away.

01:34:55 Speaker_06
Regulation is going to continue and change the tech industry, or maybe a new president is going to change his mind about how all that is supposed to work.

01:35:03 Speaker_06
We're going to get new gadgets and new apps and new social platforms competing for our time and attention and new information about what it means to be a person on the internet and how we should be thinking about that.

01:35:13 Speaker_06
We have no idea what's coming next year, but on The Vergecast this month, we've decided to speculate wildly anyway. We're spending our time trying to figure out what's coming next year, what isn't, and what it all means. All that on The Vergecast.

01:35:26 Speaker_06
Presented by Polestar.

01:35:28 Speaker_07
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.