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Episode: Elon's Million Dollar Giveaway, OpenAI and Microsoft Tensions, and Guests Chantal Fernandez and Lauren Sherman

Author: New York Magazine
Duration: 01:15:00

Episode Shownotes

Kara and Scott discuss Disney's succession plans, and Netflix's latest blockbuster earnings. Then, a new report details tensions between Microsoft and OpenAI. But could the two companies realistically walk away from their partnership? Plus, Donald Trump's closing argument takes a vulgar turn, and Elon Musk's million dollar giveaway faces legal

scrutiny. Our Friends of Pivot are Chantal Fernandez from The Cut, and Lauren Sherman from Puck. Chantal and Lauren have teamed up to write the new book, "Selling Sexy: Victoria’s Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon." Follow Chantal at @chantalfdez and Lauren at @lapresmidi. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at @pivotpodcastofficial. 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

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_08
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00:00:12 Speaker_08
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00:00:42 Speaker_08
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00:00:52 Speaker_08
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00:01:03 Speaker_02
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00:01:23 Speaker_02
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00:01:35 Speaker_02
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00:01:48 Speaker_08
I just, I really, today is not a day to be late. Oh, you're wearing a Liberty hat, leave it on. Oh, he's being a lesbian, okay. Put on your earphones, we gotta go. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

00:02:04 Speaker_08
I'm Cara Swisher and it's Coctober. No, Scott, we'll get to that in a second. Welcome.

00:02:10 Speaker_10
What, Coctober?

00:02:11 Speaker_08
Get it? Arnold Palmer, Coctober surprise, get it?

00:02:15 Speaker_02
Oh. Yeah, I asked for an Arnold Palmer stiff yesterday at Jack's by Frida and they didn't get it. They're like, what? What do you mean stiff? I'm like, it's a joke.

00:02:24 Speaker_08
I can't drink that now. It's so sad. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. We're going to get to it.

00:02:28 Speaker_02
Well, lesbians have always had a thing around.

00:02:30 Speaker_08
Exactly. I've always loved an Arnold Palmer. You're a lesbian now.

00:02:33 Speaker_02
No, no, no, no, no. I'm a power lesbian.

00:02:36 Speaker_08
Oh, right. Okay.

00:02:37 Speaker_02
I am a power lesbian. I have never been to a WNBA game.

00:02:42 Speaker_02
And because I know Kara Swisher, this total power lesbian couple, Leanne and Pia, I won't say their last names because for security reasons, I think they're very high profile, but they know who they are.

00:02:52 Speaker_02
I get to go, this is what it means to be friends with Kara Swisher, my first WNBA game. I go to the last game of the finals, on the floor, Spike Lee came by and said hi to all the important people, he totally ignored me.

00:03:05 Speaker_02
Spike, I think your movies are overrated, no offense, but anyways. And then, I'm sitting there watching this amazing thing. We have halftime. I go and meet this really interesting woman and her partner. She's an alphabet. She's a VC.

00:03:21 Speaker_02
By the way, not that I noticed, but both kind of crazy hot. Not that I noticed. I just, other people, I got the sounds.

00:03:25 Speaker_08
All right, we don't mind.

00:03:27 Speaker_02
And then I literally, when I was on a plane once, the Dalai Lama was there and he came up to this woman and child and he blessed them with the flowing robes and everything. In the middle of the game, Megan Rapinoe is like waving and hi.

00:03:47 Speaker_02
And I said, Leanne, I think Megan Rapinoe is saying hi. And she looked over, she's like, no, she's waving at you. And I waved back and she jumped up and waved. To be waved at, at Game 5 of the WNBA,

00:04:01 Speaker_02
by Megan Rapinoe, that is literally like being blessed by the llama. I am officially a power lesbian. I am the new fraternity Joy Bag of Donuts representing the lesbian community. What is up with these gay men in tech who are threatened by us, Cara?

00:04:20 Speaker_08
I don't know. What is up? I don't know, but I'm so glad. Megan texted me, she got there late, and I said, pay attention to Scott, give him some love and stuff like that. And I was thrilled you were there.

00:04:31 Speaker_08
I finally, after all your hemming and hawing, you went. I thought you were gonna ghost the lesbians, which would have been the end of your life.

00:04:37 Speaker_02
No, no, no, no, no. These were key fucking scenes. I'm dumb, I'm not crazy.

00:04:39 Speaker_08
Aubrey Plaza was there. There were celebrities aplenty. It was like a rocket.

00:04:43 Speaker_02
Everywhere.

00:04:43 Speaker_08
Tell us why you now like the NBA, please.

00:04:46 Speaker_02
Look, I love the sport. I love watching the energy, the electricity, which is fucking amazing. But the thing that struck me is that I've been thinking a lot about how much young people seem to dislike America.

00:05:00 Speaker_02
And I think it's because our prosperity is not evenly distributed. I do think young people have it more difficult than we had it.

00:05:06 Speaker_02
But I also think social media and algorithms and bad actors on these platforms are trying to convince them that America is a lot worse than it actually is.

00:05:14 Speaker_02
And last night was a lesson for me, and I just don't think people, especially young people, appreciate how far we've come. I used to go to a lot of, my dad was a salesperson for ITT, O.M. Scott, so we used to get a lot of tickets to stuff.

00:05:29 Speaker_02
So I used to go to Rams games, sporting events when I were a kid. were basically corporate VPs. It was all corporate and all wealthy white men. That's it. Those were the only people at sporting goods.

00:05:41 Speaker_02
When James Harris became the first black quarterback who played for the Rams, why was he the first black quarterback? Because the assumption was in all sports that black people did not have leadership skills and couldn't be in the brainy position.

00:05:55 Speaker_02
And of course now every amazing quarterback or near every amazing quarterback is non-white. At that game last night, it was people, I thought it was going to be this big lesbian fest. No, it wasn't.

00:06:06 Speaker_02
There was a healthy gay contention there, but there were straight people there. There were people of all races. I don't want to say all income backgrounds, but even on the dance floor, it wasn't a bunch of

00:06:17 Speaker_02
ridiculously hot white women with huge eyelashes. They had something called the Senior Liberty, and it was a dance troupe.

00:06:24 Speaker_08
Yeah, they were fun.

00:06:25 Speaker_02
Of 60 to 85 year olds. I mean, that shit is wonderful.

00:06:28 Speaker_08
Yeah, it was wonderful. It's got a great energy.

00:06:30 Speaker_02
So that stadium, that stadium is not only America, but I just don't think young people realize how far we've come.

00:06:37 Speaker_08
I know. It was fun. It's actually fun. Did you go to the special area of eating?

00:06:42 Speaker_02
Oh, and they have a little candy room and everything. I love the candy room. It's ridiculous, shoving Mike's candy in my pants and my Charleston shoe, which is always a, you know.

00:06:51 Speaker_08
I am so thrilled you did that.

00:06:54 Speaker_02
I really am.

00:06:55 Speaker_08
I had a great time.

00:06:56 Speaker_02
And your friends are lovely.

00:06:57 Speaker_08
Thank you. Your new name is Barbara as a lesbian, okay?

00:07:00 Speaker_02
Barbara? Babs? Just call me Babs.

00:07:02 Speaker_08
Babs, that's your new name. Papa, can you hear me? Yeah, anyway.

00:07:05 Speaker_02
With all the plastic surgery I've got lined up, I tell them, I went in, my doctor gives me Botox, he says, all right, what do you want to look like? And I'm like, I want to look like Barbara Streisand in the first Yentl.

00:07:16 Speaker_08
Okay, I don't know what to say. All right, we've got to think of more lesbian things for you to do, but I am thrilled you did that. I'm glad you liked it. Did you see the owner?

00:07:24 Speaker_02
Oh, yeah, she was there. Cy, what's her name? Cy, Claire Cy. Yeah, she's terrific. She gave a speech at the end, but yeah, I'm now clearly the representative for the entire lesbian community. Yeah, I'm glad.

00:07:35 Speaker_08
My work is done.

00:07:37 Speaker_02
My work is done. I'm at the top of the heap here. You are.

00:07:39 Speaker_08
Anyway, we've got a lot to get, I'm thrilled. We've got a lot to get to today, including increasing tensions between OpenAI and Microsoft and Elon Musk's million dollar giveaway, which raising legal questions, a lot of them.

00:07:49 Speaker_08
Plus our friends at Pivot are Chantal Fernandez from The Cut and Lauren Sherman from Puck. They've written a new book, which is pretty interesting, Selling Sexy, Victoria's Secret and the Unraveling of an American Icon.

00:08:00 Speaker_08
They just had a new Victoria's Secret show, but the previous owners were all wrapped up. Epstein and all kinds of nonsense. It's a really interesting business story of everything.

00:08:09 Speaker_02
Oh, wait, you had a big moment.

00:08:10 Speaker_08
I did. I was on one of my favorite people, Desi Lydic, who's not a lesbian, but we all wish you were, on The Daily Show. Let's listen to a clip.

00:08:22 Speaker_09
I think most startups would probably say that they get into it because they want to change the world. They want to make this a better place. They want to help society.

00:08:29 Speaker_09
But these companies, Meta, Google, Amazon, do you think that there's some disillusionment that what they think that they're doing is beneficial?

00:08:38 Speaker_08
Oh, I never thought they thought that. I just think they just said that, along with the fact they'd wear hoodies, but they'd be cashmere hoodies, so they'd cost $600. So, you know. So anyway, it was fun. She was great. That's a great show, I have to say.

00:08:51 Speaker_02
They do a great job.

00:08:52 Speaker_08
Louis came with me, Ivy, his girlfriend, Amanda came up. We had such a ball.

00:08:57 Speaker_02
The thing that I noticed about that show in addition to Jon Stewart and the producers have done an amazing job just like fostering and maturing all these amazing young comedians.

00:09:07 Speaker_02
is the biggest contrast I noticed, because I think I know you know this, I've also been on, but the audience, the audience is young, cool people.

00:09:15 Speaker_02
Quite frankly, when I've gone to other big shows, it's like they empty out the seniors home because they don't have a lot to do. This was people with a lot, young people, funny. The thing they do after is really cool. It's a very, it's a cool scene.

00:09:30 Speaker_02
It's how I imagined the crowd at SNL would be.

00:09:33 Speaker_08
Yeah, great snacks too. Fantastic snacks. Louie took them all.

00:09:35 Speaker_02
She's a star too. She's really impressive.

00:09:39 Speaker_08
She wore sunglasses for me. She's just a lovely person and so funny. I think she's one of the, so many. Ronny Chieng is good. They're all good. Jordan Klepper and the other guy.

00:09:50 Speaker_02
Yeah, they're fantastic. All of them are really good.

00:09:52 Speaker_08
Handsome guy. I love him.

00:09:54 Speaker_02
The handsome guy. Yeah, the big handsome guy.

00:09:56 Speaker_08
He's very funny. Anyway, speaking of handsome guys, Disney will name a new chief executive to replace Bob Iger in 2026. Handsome Bob. Four division leaders at Disney are hoping to grab Iger's spot.

00:10:07 Speaker_08
They are, I think it's Dana Walden, Disney's top television executive. She's also a very close friend of Kamala Harris's. Josh Damaro, who runs the theme parks and video games. Alan Bergman, who is Disney's movie chief. I met him back in the AOL days.

00:10:22 Speaker_08
And Jimmy Pataro, who I also know from Yahoo, who runs ESPN. The announcement came along with a board shakeup. James P. Gorman, the veteran Wall Street banker who joined Disney this year, will become chairman. He's an Iger affiliate, I would say.

00:10:37 Speaker_08
Any idea who's going to be the next Bob Iger?

00:10:41 Speaker_02
The answer is I don't know, but this was overdue. I think it was a mistake for Bob to go back. And I think a lot of these companies that have had real trouble in the markets, I think churn is a good thing.

00:10:52 Speaker_02
And as much as I really like Bob Iger and think he's a great executive, I think we need to clear out this generation and bring in a new generation of people who grew up with different mediums, understand the technologies. I don't know.

00:11:05 Speaker_02
Amongst these four, I don't know any of them. If you were to pick someone.

00:11:09 Speaker_08
I know Jimmy. Jimmy's got digital experience, that's for sure.

00:11:12 Speaker_02
Right. I can't imagine the person, but quite frankly, I can't. I mean, here's the bottom line is that it's so much about luck, like which division you're on and hopefully your division is growing. ESPN right now is a problem. It's a bug, not a feature.

00:11:27 Speaker_02
And if he can turn it around, that's great. But the theme parks and video games, just from a sector standpoint, that guy is going to have an easier time looking good at the right moment than the person who's running ESPN.

00:11:42 Speaker_08
Yeah. What about an outside person? Name an outside person who you'd like to see it, run it.

00:11:47 Speaker_02
God, that's really interesting.

00:11:48 Speaker_08
Besides you and I, which would be fantastic.

00:11:51 Speaker_02
I don't know. I think the most talented guy on the sidelines right now is Jeff Zucker. Yeah. But I don't, I don't know. I don't, I don't have, I don't have a vision for somebody would come in. Do you have any ideas?

00:12:04 Speaker_08
No, I don't actually, which is where we are, right? Like who is like a, you know, remember years ago, Sheryl Sandberg was bandied about for that job. It's gotta be someone who does, can deal with talent and also Wall Street. It's a really tough job.

00:12:18 Speaker_02
I know who they'd like to get, but they can't get them. Ted surround us.

00:12:22 Speaker_08
Oh, yeah, you're right.

00:12:23 Speaker_02
I mean you realize Ted. Yeah, we're going to talk about them in a second worked in a video store for a year. I mean the guy just has a great gut for content. He's a brilliant businessman. He's humble. He's amazing with talent.

00:12:37 Speaker_02
He obviously understands a new age. Now, a lot of talent would say that he single-handedly is starching the margin from talent and absorbing it up until to Netflix, but he's a brilliant businessman.

00:12:50 Speaker_02
And I don't know if you know this, but I bought Netflix at 10 bucks a share. That's the good news. I sold it at eight, and it's now at 700. I literally want to find a time machine so I can go back and kill me and then kill myself.

00:13:03 Speaker_02
That would be my Gulfstream right now. I'm not bitter, Kat.

00:13:06 Speaker_08
I have a name, Donna Langley at Universal. I think she's presided over a lot of really big successes. Elegant, beautiful person, very sharp. Everybody likes her. Doing really well there.

00:13:18 Speaker_08
You know, she's someone that's a really, I think is just well-liked and sharp as a frigging tack. I would put her in the list.

00:13:26 Speaker_03
Right.

00:13:27 Speaker_08
Yeah, anyway, it'll probably be someone internally. I'm guessing either Josh or Dana Walden. One of those.

00:13:34 Speaker_02
I don't know.

00:13:36 Speaker_08
She's been around. She's at Fox. Remember, she's she's been around the block. I think, you know, she's probably her. And if Harris wins, she she gets a big up. I think I would suspect she gets a big up. They are very actual good friends.

00:13:49 Speaker_08
But speaking of Ted Sarandos, Netflix shares are up seven percent after reporting Q3 earnings. The streamer beat expectations on earnings for share and revenue and saw a 35 percent quarter over quarter jump for its ad supported membership tier.

00:14:01 Speaker_08
AdTier accounted for over 50% of sign-ups. That's crazy. They've made it work. The company said it expects Q4 revenue to rise 14% to $10.13 billion and expects a 12% growth revenue in 2025. I mean, they've also got hit shows all over the place.

00:14:18 Speaker_08
Nobody wants this. This little rom-com is doing really well. All kinds of shows. I think Apple's keeping up with a couple of their shows and some others. There's good shows all over the streaming environment right now. this is now a good strategy.

00:14:32 Speaker_08
Netflix is one step ahead of them at all times, you know, in everything.

00:14:35 Speaker_02
They're running away with it, or past tense, they've ran away from it. They keep running. I mean, there's a couple of things that struck me about Netflix.

00:14:45 Speaker_02
The first is, for the first time in their history over the last two years, they haven't increased their content budget, which is them saying, we've kind of won and don't need to, because they have the money, they have the cheap capital with their stock price, but they've sort of,

00:15:00 Speaker_02
because of the writer's strike transferring power to people who already had a large content bank.

00:15:05 Speaker_02
And the reality is none of us were thinking I'm going to unsubscribe from Netflix because my content bank, it's shrunk from 24 months of shit I need to get to to 22 months. And so they, their stock went just apeshit while everyone else went down.

00:15:20 Speaker_02
But also for the first time, more than half their content now is being produced outside of the US. And while Los Angeles will never be Detroit because it has In-N-Out Burger.

00:15:30 Speaker_08
Los Angeles production's way down, but go ahead.

00:15:32 Speaker_02
The spending on content is actually up 2% this year. So it's basically flat, but it's moving from LA to Albuquerque, to Dublin, Ireland, to Madrid, to South Korea.

00:15:42 Speaker_02
So basically Netflix is globalizing the production of the supply chain of the content industry. And it's taking a real toll on the existing creative community. And then you add in the fact that Netflix is only the second largest streamer.

00:15:57 Speaker_02
They think they're the largest. They're not. YouTube is the largest streamer. And then you pull out additional 10 or 15 billion a year in oxygen out from the incremental growth from YouTube and TikTok.

00:16:08 Speaker_02
And this industry is just being, it's being reshaped around Netflix, YouTube, and TikTok. And the existing players are just getting killed.

00:16:18 Speaker_08
They're just floundering. They have some good shows. There are good shows, but they've got, right now, Nobody Wants Us, which is the Zeitgeist show right now, which is about a hot rabbi, essentially. This monster is Eliel and Eric Menendez.

00:16:30 Speaker_08
They might get out of jail with the attention this has brought them. You know, they've got, obviously there are old things like Love is Blind, they've got Stranger Things, et cetera, et cetera.

00:16:39 Speaker_08
And I think what's really interesting, I mean, they've got, they just, just like one after the next, after the next.

00:16:44 Speaker_08
And some of them are just okay, but you see big celebrities like Halle Berry, like all these big names are in there, you know, and all the streamers, which is interesting, but then they have things like You and Yellow Jackets and The Lincoln Lawyer, these shows that are, and The Diplomat, they're bringing that back for,

00:17:03 Speaker_02
And I don't know if you heard, but there is an original scripted drama about big tech that literally had every streamer bidding on it, and they chose to go with Netflix. I think that says something.

00:17:11 Speaker_08
You did. I'm excited to see how it does. I think you picked exactly the right place. I think you're going to hit it.

00:17:15 Speaker_02
That was a tough one. I absolutely love HBO. That was a tough one.

00:17:18 Speaker_08
Yeah, I know, but I think it's right in this ad-supported thing.

00:17:20 Speaker_02
By the way, I had absolutely no influence over who we went with.

00:17:23 Speaker_08
I know, but I think it's good.

00:17:25 Speaker_02
I'm just kind of the tech guy.

00:17:27 Speaker_08
I'm going to interview you when it premieres at the Paris Theater, which Netflix owns.

00:17:31 Speaker_02
Can we do it at the Cannes Film Festival? No, we're going to do the Paris Theater. Juliette Binoche. Binoche? Or Julia Armand. I see myself with either of those people. No, they don't see themselves with you. Rosamund Pike intimidates me.

00:17:44 Speaker_02
She's too crazy hot.

00:17:46 Speaker_08
Yeah, she's going to ignore you completely.

00:17:48 Speaker_02
I need to go with an 80s sex symbol.

00:17:49 Speaker_08
Oh, hello. She'll go like that. Oh, hello. I love her in all the Bond movies and stuff. Okay, let's get to our first big story.

00:18:00 Speaker_08
Sam Altman once called OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft the best romance in tech, but that love is starting to fade, according to a report in the New York Times, which some at Microsoft were pushing back on to me recently. I got a lot of texts.

00:18:11 Speaker_08
Financial pressure on OpenAI and concerns about its stability have contributed to a tension between the two companies. It's super expensive. OpenAI employees have also complained that Microsoft is not providing enough compute power.

00:18:21 Speaker_08
That's going to be a normal complaint. Some of the tension is also tied to Microsoft hedging its AI bets and spending $650 million to hire Mustafa Suleiman and most of the employees from Inflection.

00:18:32 Speaker_08
Sam Altman and several OpenAI executives reportedly not happy about that move. When I interviewed Mustafa earlier this month, I asked him about the team's relationship with OpenAI. Let's listen to that exchange. What is the relationship between them?

00:18:44 Speaker_08
Are you competitors? What do you, how does it?

00:18:46 Speaker_00
No, no, no. We're siblings. You know, sometimes siblings squabble. Sometimes they squabble, but largely we're on the same team, you know? So, and that's amazing for us.

00:18:57 Speaker_00
Like, we collaborate closely with them on everything from, you know, the research side to core infrastructure and so on. Obviously, we build competing products. Right. And I think that's healthy and a natural part of things.

00:19:09 Speaker_00
And so, yeah, it's a good relationship.

00:19:12 Speaker_08
Do you buy that and what do you think about this situation? Are these companies stuck with each other or could they actually go their separate ways?

00:19:19 Speaker_02
No, they're too inextricably linked. The agreement is that I think up until 100 billion, Microsoft gets 49 or 51% of the profits. They're like Siamese twins, but that doesn't mean they don't like each other.

00:19:31 Speaker_02
And at some point, someone takes out a steak knife and threatens to cut the corpus in half. They're so pissed off at the other.

00:19:37 Speaker_02
The issue I find with stuff like this, and it's the most, in my opinion, the most challenging thing in business, is compensation.

00:19:44 Speaker_02
And imagine you're this brilliant young systems engineer or AI, you know, AI developer at Microsoft, and you're working, and there's three of you on your team or five of you or 20 of you, and you're working with the team at OpenAI and you collaborate and integration.

00:19:59 Speaker_02
The folks at OpenAI who've been there three years, say you've both been there at your respective firms three years, right? They're doing the same thing, they're working together, similar skill set.

00:20:09 Speaker_02
And the folks at OpenAI, their options are worth $40 million. And the folks at Microsoft, their options are worth $400,000. It's like, it reminds me of Bain Consulting Firm, started a division called Bain Capital.

00:20:24 Speaker_02
And they lifted, and Mitt Romney, I think, was the founder. They lifted a few of the best and brightest consultants out. And all of a sudden, hey, remember Lisa?

00:20:33 Speaker_02
He used to sit next to us and try and tell Mars how to, if they should go into Thailand or to tell the Libyan government how to improve their image, even though they're murderous.

00:20:44 Speaker_02
Lisa is now at Bain Capital, and I heard she just she got $4 million off her latest deal and we're making $400,000. So I always go to the money. I would bet the friction here is different levels of compensation between people working together.

00:21:01 Speaker_02
I would I would imagine that causes a lot of dissent within Microsoft

00:21:05 Speaker_08
Yeah, that's a really smart point. Well, there's also questions about Microsoft's equity stake and governance rights when OpenAI becomes a for-profit company.

00:21:13 Speaker_08
Both Microsoft and OpenAI have hired investment banks to advise them on this process, so that's also gonna be another issue.

00:21:20 Speaker_02
But you can imagine Microsoft's like, we're a $3 trillion company, you're a $150 billion company, and we've got this brilliant young man.

00:21:26 Speaker_02
It would be impossible for Sam Altman not to have a little bit of a God complex right now and think, you know, my dick is 11 inches even if it's not. And Microsoft is used to a command and control structure.

00:21:40 Speaker_02
And as far as Microsoft is concerned, it's like, we're on top, bitches. We invest a lot of money. We've been very supportive here. And so they probably think, okay, we just need to diversify a little bit away from a company we can't totally control.

00:21:55 Speaker_02
And then OpenAI says, wait, you're diversifying, but you want us to coordinate, not compete. I imagine there's tension and flare-ups and border skirmishes everywhere. Yeah.

00:22:06 Speaker_08
And of course, do we get enough resources? Are we getting enough resources? Anyway, it's a difficult thing. Meanwhile, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati is reportedly raising funds from VCs for a new AI startup.

00:22:15 Speaker_08
Of course she is, and as did the previous people who left, like Ilya Sutskever. Perplexity is also now in funding talks, looking to double its valuation to more than $8 billion. Competitive threats?

00:22:27 Speaker_08
It seems like everyone who worked for FBI is starting their own company, the safety company, even though they're raising an enormous amount of money.

00:22:33 Speaker_08
Dow Jones in the New York Post, by the way, filed a lawsuit against perplexity for copyright infringements. That's the company that a lot of people are targeting. This is just going to happen. This funding is going to continue, correct?

00:22:44 Speaker_02
I mean, the bottom line is once you have 100x return like this and the future looks bigger and brighter and it's one step away from the best performing stock in history, NVIDIA, everyone's looking for places to put money in AI and why not go with the guys who aren't at 150, they're at 40.

00:23:02 Speaker_02
I personally think that if we're talking about the LLMs, I think that open AI is basically running away with it.

00:23:09 Speaker_08
to the Netflix, the Netflix of the sector.

00:23:11 Speaker_02
That's right. And Netflix was the Amazon of media. And OpenAI is going to raise a ton of money, pull away from it.

00:23:17 Speaker_02
I think Anthropic and Claude with their relationship with Amazon will be kind of the lift to OpenAI's Uber, maybe a little stronger, the Pepsi to their Coke. Perplexity has a really nice brand positioning.

00:23:30 Speaker_02
It's seen as AI search, which is brilliant brand positioning.

00:23:34 Speaker_02
I think the rest of these folks, especially at the money they're raising, my advice to any of these companies raising would be to slow your roll around valuation because this is the hard part.

00:23:44 Speaker_02
When I was raising money for Red Envelope, I knew the froth was incredible and I went out and I raised money at a valuation of $120 million. And the problem was within about a year post 2000, it was worth 40 to 60.

00:23:58 Speaker_02
And it just creates all sorts of dysfunction at the board level.

00:24:02 Speaker_08
And also with employees who are all like, I'm rich.

00:24:05 Speaker_02
Well, I'm not. And then you have some people in the boardroom who are like, I'm on a board right now. And the way their view of the CEO is entirely based on when they invested. The people who invested recently are like, what the fuck is going on here?

00:24:19 Speaker_02
We don't have any affinity for this guy's idiot fucking decisions. And the early investors are like, oh, cut her some slack. And I'm like, well, that's because you're up 10x on your investment. I get why you are very forgiving.

00:24:33 Speaker_02
But the folks who invested last year are, you know, probably down 30 percent. Anyways, it's mismatched durations.

00:24:41 Speaker_08
Smart advice. They won't take it. They will grab as well.

00:24:45 Speaker_02
They sort of have. I mean, this is a tough one because they sort of have a responsibility. to protect sort of existing shareholders and not take the dilution. But if I look at, you know that graph that shows time to mass adoption?

00:24:58 Speaker_02
You know, TV took 10 or 20 years, then the facts took five years, then Instagram took three years. The cycle time to mass adoption of a 10X product is getting shorter and shorter. And unfortunately, that also means the time to monopoly or duopoly.

00:25:15 Speaker_02
And I think the duopoly is already formed here. I think it's open video.

00:25:18 Speaker_08
the Netflix of. Anyway, we'll see what happens. I think they're going to raise money and they're not going to listen to a very good piece of advice you just gave, actually.

00:25:25 Speaker_08
Also, for the latest episode of On with Kara Swisher, I interviewed Robert Downey Jr. He's starring in the Broadway play McNeil, which gets into some ethics and morality issues around AI.

00:25:35 Speaker_08
I asked him about the implications for Hollywood, who is doing some lawsuits, some deals, etc. Let's listen. So, Robert, these images are deep fakes of you and others. They use Genovese to create these digital replicas.

00:25:48 Speaker_08
Tony Stark died in Avengers Endgame. They could resurrect him without you existing now, given how much body work you have. And do you have a rider to protect your likeness, something you want in your contracts going forward?

00:26:01 Speaker_05
I'm not worried about them hijacking my character's soul because there's like three or four guys and gals who make all the decisions there anyway, and they would never do that to me, with or without me.

00:26:14 Speaker_08
But future executives certainly will.

00:26:16 Speaker_05
Well, you're right. And I would like to here state that I intend to sue all future executives just on spec.

00:26:24 Speaker_08
You'll be dead, Robert.

00:26:26 Speaker_05
I know, but my law firm will still be very active.

00:26:31 Speaker_08
It was an interesting discussion. He's a very sharp cookie. This is a really interesting show. But it is interesting because he has an enormous body of work.

00:26:40 Speaker_11
Oh, one of the great actors of our time.

00:26:41 Speaker_08
Really. He won the Oscar, you know.

00:26:43 Speaker_11
For Chaplin, right?

00:26:44 Speaker_08
No, he won it for Oppenheimer. But it was interesting because he really does think about these things, but it'll be interesting to see what happens to actors like him going forward. Because he's coming back, by the way, as Dr. Doom.

00:26:58 Speaker_08
He's becoming a villain, which is interesting. We did we get we touched really briefly on Elon and he was sort of like, you know, that guy, not me.

00:27:08 Speaker_08
He's not playing me because he thinks he's Tony Stark and Tony Stark does not think he is Elon in many ways. Anyway, let's go on a quick break. We come back. Donald Trump's closing arguments take a vulgar. That's the word they're using. Vulgar turn.

00:27:22 Speaker_08
It's a penis joke, Scott, and you're the expert, so we'll talk about it, and we'll speak with friends of Pivot, Chantal Fernandez and Lauren Sherman about the rise and fall of Victoria's Secret, a really fascinating business story.

00:27:36 Speaker_02
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00:28:28 Speaker_02
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00:30:06 Speaker_08
Scott, we're back with two weeks to go until Election Day. The presidential candidates are making their closing arguments in very different ways.

00:30:12 Speaker_08
Vice President Kamala Harris focused on abortion rights at a rally in Atlanta over the weekend and visited black churches in a push for early voting.

00:30:18 Speaker_08
Former President Donald Trump had a stage managed photo op at a McDonald's serving fries to supporters in a closed place. That was after a rally where he shared a story about golfer Arnold Palmer's penis.

00:30:32 Speaker_08
By the way, his daughter today said Arnold Palmer did not like Donald Trump and thought that was grotesque. You're the expert on penis jokes, so why don't you, what did you think of this penis joke he made?

00:30:43 Speaker_02
I don't know. Look, it represents So, all right, the person who wants to be commander-in-chief and represent us to allies and enemies and to parliaments around the world, you got to put on a tie.

00:30:59 Speaker_02
And that is, you're going to church, you got to put on a tie. You're going to a funeral, you got to put on a tie. You want to be president of the United States, you just secure that shit.

00:31:08 Speaker_02
You acquit yourself and you compose yourself with a certain level of decorum. You are the ultimate statesman, full stop. So that, at a minimum, it sort of says, it just reflects poorly on this person's qualifications to command that role.

00:31:24 Speaker_02
Two, and I don't like to say this, but I think it's true, I think that is a big part of his appeal, because I think for the last 30 or 40 years, politicians stood in front of people

00:31:36 Speaker_02
and told them whatever they thought they wanted to hear and use PG-13 or G-rated analogies and language. And people just felt like, I'm just sick of being lied to.

00:31:47 Speaker_08
Yeah, but do they want a penis joke like this?

00:31:50 Speaker_02
Yeah, but I think it's part of his appeal care because he's raw. I hate to use this word. He is authentically a crude and coarse person. And there's a certain level of that outrageousness that I think appeals to his base.

00:32:06 Speaker_08
I don't. I think he seems cognitively disabled. I think this is lack of inhibition. I don't think this was planned. I think, you know, I have heard from people who spend time with him, he is kind of, he is kind of dirty in person, right?

00:32:18 Speaker_08
Like in privately, he tells dirty jokes and stuff. I think he's lost his fucking mind. I think he's cognitively disabled and he doesn't have control. And it's not just doing it on, Arnold Palmer's penis, which is gross, I think.

00:32:31 Speaker_08
And I think a lot of independents don't like it much, didn't like that one. There's one thing to be funny, the other thing that it's just weird and creepy, I think. I'm not so sure it is appealing, this new one.

00:32:44 Speaker_02
But here's the problem. The strategy works, Cara, because we're talking about this, which people don't really care about, instead of saying, okay, if he implements tariffs and cuts down on immigration, it's gonna be wildly inflationary.

00:32:58 Speaker_02
And so he'd rather, hey, look over here at my outrageous behavior. The people who don't like him will be indignant about it. The people who do like him don't care. Instead of having a thoughtful conversation around policies,

00:33:10 Speaker_02
that would be massive inflationary for America. So quite frankly, he wins on this stuff.

00:33:17 Speaker_08
Yeah, it's true. He's willing to go low when they go low. I go lower, very low subterranean. There's such a contrast in these two candidates.

00:33:25 Speaker_08
I mean, I you know, Jim Gaffigan at one of those dinners was like, if you don't understand the contrast, I don't know what's wrong with you. There's a lot of surrogates out there.

00:33:34 Speaker_08
Michelle and Barack Obama are both hitting the campaign trail with Harris this week. Liz Cheney is campaigning with the vice president. And Elon Musk is doing town halls in Pennsylvania, engaging in some potentially illegal practices.

00:33:46 Speaker_08
You've talked about the importance of surrogates. Trump also indicated that Nikki Haley might be joining him on the campaign trail. We'll see. Do you think they're effective at this point in the game?

00:33:55 Speaker_02
Well, first off, actors traditionally have shown they always lean Democratic, whether it's Warren Beatty and McGovern, actors always seem to, and there isn't a lot of evidence that that helps.

00:34:08 Speaker_02
I do think it's really powerful to have the Obamas out there. I think Secretary Buttigieg, Governor Shapiro, Governor Whitmer, I think these are powerful, articulate surrogates. And if you look at kind of the team,

00:34:23 Speaker_02
You know, it's it's it's Kellyanne Conway and Ted Nugent on the Trump side.

00:34:27 Speaker_08
It's just an Elon.

00:34:29 Speaker_02
Yeah. And Elon and just going to Elon for a second. The same issue is there. I saw everyone with their hair on fire citing election election law saying.

00:34:39 Speaker_08
Just so people don't know, let me fill them in. Elon is randomly awarding a million-dollar daily prize to registered swing voters who sign his PAC's petition supporting the First and Second Amendments.

00:34:48 Speaker_08
Federal law says it's a crime to pay people with the intention of inducing a reward and be cast to vote or get registered. But election law experts are split over whether his actions cross the line. Let me just play this.

00:34:57 Speaker_08
Speaking of Shapiro, Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro was asked about the legality of the giveaway by Kristen Welker on Meet the Press. Let's listen.

00:35:04 Speaker_04
When you start flowing this kind of money into politics, I think it raises serious questions that folks may want to take a look at.

00:35:12 Speaker_08
So you think it might not be legal, yes or no?

00:35:15 Speaker_04
I think it's something that law enforcement can take a look at. I'm not the attorney general anymore at Pennsylvania. I'm the governor. But it does raise some serious questions.

00:35:24 Speaker_08
See, I think this is just risk assessment by Elon. No, they're not going to come after him. And if Trump wins, it won't matter. His allies argue because he's not directly paying for registration, but for a petition signature, it's not illegal.

00:35:34 Speaker_08
It's very typical of him. This is a very typical risk he would take easily, including attacking Dominion systems, which I think is probably not a great risk to necessarily take. But go ahead, finish what you were saying about him.

00:35:46 Speaker_02
It all comes down to incentives and the algebra of deterrence. The whole point of our criminal justice system is that criminals do the math. Or when you're about to commit a crime, you do a math. And it's the following.

00:35:59 Speaker_02
The likelihood I'm caught times the potential penalty has to be greater than the potential upside.

00:36:07 Speaker_02
And one of the biggest problem that ails our society is in certain key sectors and components of our economic system, the algebra of deterrence is all fucked up. And I'll give you a couple of very three stark examples.

00:36:19 Speaker_02
If I'm meta, and I know I sit on top of research that is showing that there was a direct correlation between usage of my platform and teen depression and self-cutting, and I continue to engage in this,

00:36:35 Speaker_02
or I violate my consent decree and I knowingly violate my consent decree, I know that the likelihood I get caught, that the lay and the size of the fine are vastly smaller than the upside of continuing to break the law in taxation.

00:36:53 Speaker_02
All really wealthy people have an incentive to be so fucking aggressive with their taxes because their taxes are so complicated and the IRS has been, until Biden, so underfunded that the likelihood you'll get caught and the penalty are vastly overwhelmed by the amount of money you're going to save.

00:37:12 Speaker_08
Whether they can come get you.

00:37:14 Speaker_02
Yeah, by being incredibly aggressive on your taxes. And now let's go to Musk. Who gives a shit if it's illegal? They're not going to they're not going to put him in jail.

00:37:25 Speaker_02
They're not going to say to Trump, you know, that all of our election laws are the following lie, cheat, break the law, get an office, and then it'll be embarrassing.

00:37:35 Speaker_02
And the election commission will find you and they'll shame your election, your campaign manager. And you're still the fucking senator.

00:37:44 Speaker_02
So the incentives, until they say, until there's some sort of real risk that they can shut down, for example, all your media spending, if they say, OK, if this guy engages in this, he could go to jail or the campaign has to stop all media spending.

00:38:03 Speaker_02
Like you could get an injunction if it's really blatant. What incentive is there for must not to do this?

00:38:09 Speaker_08
Yeah. I agree. I think everyone's like, can you believe I was been asked to be on. I was like, he can he doesn't care. He's not going to pay if if she if he win, if Trump wins, he's scot-free. This is a scot-free risk that he takes.

00:38:22 Speaker_08
And if he loses, she's going to have a hard time going after him. And she probably won't. Right. And so I think our laws, especially election laws, do not anticipate shameless fucks like they just don't. And this is Trump.

00:38:34 Speaker_08
And this is, you know, as you're saying, with the penis joke, it's just I don't think I think Mm-hmm. I think a lot of women, woof, yuck, ew, bleh.

00:38:44 Speaker_08
And I agree with you paying attention to him, but I think it brings to question whether he's cognitively disabled. And that's a negative. That is showing up on poll after poll after poll. Is he Biden too? Dirty Biden, essentially.

00:38:57 Speaker_08
And those numbers are showing some real resonance. We were showing off some stats about that. Is he too old? And then therefore, you're voting for J.D. Vance, who is, oh, paid for by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, essentially.

00:39:11 Speaker_08
So I do think it's a risk for Musk to take, and he will take it, cuz it will be advantaged. And if she wins, I think the risk will be problematic for him, but not fatal. for him, you know, he'll just behave.

00:39:26 Speaker_08
Although saying she hates Christians and stuff like that shows that he's really, he's also mentally, has some mental problems. I think the real quiet winner in this is Peter Thiel, and I think he will take down

00:39:38 Speaker_08
all of them, because he quietly, he's very sharp, he sits behind the scenes. He and Elon did not get along before this, by the way, at all, in a way that was significant.

00:39:49 Speaker_08
So I suspect if Trump wins, there's going to be one ugly, there's going to be one ugly fight going on among those people.

00:39:56 Speaker_02
there's about a one in three chance if Donald Trump is reelected that he dies in office, just based on his age and his body mass index.

00:40:07 Speaker_02
That means there's a guy who was a mediocre entrepreneur, VC at best, served four years in the Marines, which he should be honored for, got elected to Senate, what, two years ago? And this guy is bought and paid for by Peter Thiel.

00:40:24 Speaker_02
It's not his service in the Marines. It's not he's a smart guy. It's not his book. It's not any of that. There's two reasons. that Senator Rance could be a heartbeat from presidency and basically the president. There's two reasons. The first is Peter.

00:40:38 Speaker_02
The second is Teal.

00:40:39 Speaker_08
Yep. That's the one I'm watching. You know, I think Elon's in more trouble in a Trump presidency than Kamala Harris. I think he's got issues and, you know, Democratic issues of investigation and regulatory.

00:40:54 Speaker_08
There is going to be an ugly fight at the top there. If if Trump wins, I wouldn't want to be Trump. I think he's among some very difficult characters.

00:41:05 Speaker_02
I didn't see that. That's interesting. I didn't see that. Because the way I see it, and again, in my opinion, I'd love to write a book called Incentives. I just want people to connect the dots.

00:41:15 Speaker_02
But here are the incentives, and this is what's so dangerous about not immediately having a gag reflex around a move to autocracy. there's greater incentive to support Trump than Harris if you're famous.

00:41:28 Speaker_02
Because here's the thing, if you're Elon Musk and you support Trump very, very visibly and Harris is elected, they're not going to punish your company, they're not going to put you in jail, they believe in rule of law.

00:41:43 Speaker_02
Donald Trump is saying, if I'm elected, I'm gonna prosecute Google to the full extent, or Jews, it's your fault if I don't get elected. So all of the incentives are, okay, if I root for this clown,

00:41:57 Speaker_02
and he doesn't win, I'm okay, because the people, the other side believes in rule of law. They're not gonna, they're not going to go after personal persecution, but the autocrat might come after me. I think that is what's exactly gonna happen.

00:42:12 Speaker_02
So say more, what do you mean, Karen?

00:42:14 Speaker_08
I mean, I think Elon's in more trouble in a Trump presidency. I think he doesn't, he's the one who's sort of, he's got obviously some cognitive issues. He's, you know, he's really lost his mind in many ways, allegedly.

00:42:27 Speaker_08
I think Teal is pulling all the strings here. Peter Teal is quiet and deadly, Elon Musk is loud, and he just reminds me of some of these oligarchs that ended up not living.

00:42:38 Speaker_02
But the whole point of a democracy...

00:42:41 Speaker_02
the whole point of having different branches of governments and members of Congress and three branches and a military, a secretary of defense that comes from a civilian background, not a military, all of these things are meant to put in place checks and balances.

00:42:54 Speaker_02
And we're about to, for the first time, I think, maybe there's someone else, where essentially you have one man, Peter Thiel, who could literally control the president.

00:43:05 Speaker_02
There is no... Something Peter Thiel will never hear from a vice president or potentially a President Vance, something he will never hear is no.

00:43:16 Speaker_08
That's right.

00:43:17 Speaker_02
Ever.

00:43:17 Speaker_08
He's the one I'm watching. I'm not watching email. I mean, it's just a ridiculous circus of a person. And I think it'll end badly for him. But Peter Thiel is the one I'm looking at. Anyway, we'll see. Let's bring in our friends at Pivot.

00:43:35 Speaker_08
Chantal Fernandez is a fashion features writer at The Cut, and Lauren Sherman is Puck's fashion correspondent. Together, they've written a new book, Selling Sexy, Victoria's Secret, and The Unraveling of an American Icon. Welcome, both of you.

00:43:48 Speaker_08
Hi, thank you for having us. Thanks for having us. The New York Times Review puts it, this book is about bras in the same way that Citizen Kane is a movie about a sled, which is to say, not at all.

00:43:57 Speaker_08
Talk about this, because this is a business story, and for people who don't know, Victoria's Secret just started their fashion shows again after a very controversial, you know, some of the executives, one particular one, the head of marketing, feels like a sexual harasser, like of the old school.

00:44:12 Speaker_08
But talk a little bit about what the story you wanted to tell. Why don't you start, Chantal?

00:44:16 Speaker_06
Yeah, Victoria's Secret has been so connected to the zeitgeist for decades, and we really saw it as a window into the American consumer psyche.

00:44:25 Speaker_06
It's a brand that so many women have had a hate-love relationship with, but it was so dominant, really didn't have any meaningful competitors at its peak. And we really wanted to explore how that happened.

00:44:38 Speaker_06
How did such a tiny boutique come to dominate a really utilitarian category and turn it into a fashion category?

00:44:45 Speaker_06
And it was also a way to talk about the rise of specialty retail, which Les Wexner, who acquired Victoria's Secret from its original founders and scaled it so impressively. He didn't invent specialty retailing, but he sort of perfected that model.

00:44:58 Speaker_06
And through telling the story of specialty retail, it's a way to talk about the way that American fashion has evolved since the 1950s in all of these really fascinating ways.

00:45:08 Speaker_06
And Lauren and I wanted to write this book because there was the Victoria's Secret downfall was really a marketing angle in the media that the angels were out of touch.

00:45:16 Speaker_06
But it was also we felt there was a business story there that hadn't been told that really also led to the challenges that that brand had.

00:45:23 Speaker_08
And Lauren, Wexner is a really unusual character, I think. He obviously shaped Victoria's Secret and brought it to, like, very similar to what happened at Starbucks.

00:45:34 Speaker_08
There was an original Starbucks, and then Howard Schultz made it into Starbucks, essentially. And his maxim for the business was, we sell hope, not help. He also was close with Jeffrey Epstein, who reportedly used his ties to him to lure young women.

00:45:48 Speaker_08
Talk a little bit about him, Lauren.

00:45:51 Speaker_07
So he, it was sort of proto-fast fashion. He changed the way we all shop, and I think everything Chantal said, American culture is consumer culture, and he was hugely important in the making of the American mall as like a part of society.

00:46:09 Speaker_07
And he very, very early, his parents were in the trade like many Jewish immigrants. And he very early saw what his parents were doing. They owned a small store and realized, oh, the price value equation of the clothes they're selling isn't right.

00:46:25 Speaker_07
I could be making things cheaper without brand names and people would buy them because they would feel like they were better value. So it was all about value, value, value. Wexner owning Victoria's Secret, it was more like a Barney's.

00:46:38 Speaker_07
There was sets, this is like late 70s, and you could buy a bra and underwear set that was $2,000 there. When he bought it, like all the old executives, the first thing they talked about was the $20 Red Teddy that he brought to market.

00:46:52 Speaker_07
And he kind of took the style that the Raymonds, the original founders created and scaled it and made it cheaper and faster. And so

00:47:03 Speaker_07
He's a very interesting character, his personal life too, and the relationship he had with Epstein and how much control he gave Epstein over his life. He gave him power of attorney a couple years after they had met.

00:47:16 Speaker_07
And this is a guy who was very closed off and had really only worked with people he knew since high school. A lot of his first business partners were people he grew up with.

00:47:27 Speaker_07
It's a very strange, strange relationship that we get into and it's sort of their relationship and the rise and fall of Epstein sort of mirrors the rise and fall of Victoria's Secret. So... Why? Why with Epstein?

00:47:43 Speaker_07
I think, you know, there's like, you could get psychology 101 here. Wexner is a very shy, closed-off person who did not feel comfortable in New York City in the 80s.

00:47:56 Speaker_07
There's a big New York Magazine profile from, I think, 85, where Wexner's sort of like on the scene in the city, and Epstein provided, you know, as everyone knows, he was charismatic, he had a lot of connections, really powerful people trusted him.

00:48:13 Speaker_07
And so I think Epstein was sort of a buffer to all these things that made Wexner really uncomfortable and he felt protected by him. He also, you know, as Epstein came in,

00:48:24 Speaker_07
Wexler's mother, who had been like a very controlling figure in his life, Bella, had worked at the company essentially since it started. She sort of receded to the background. Epstein took her role on a board of a charity that they worked on.

00:48:40 Speaker_07
Like, there were all these things where Epstein's presence allowed him to kind of get rid of... There's this guy, Bob Mirosky, who had worked with him since the beginning. They fired him, like...

00:48:50 Speaker_07
it allowed him to kind of, he was like a henchman type thing.

00:48:55 Speaker_02
It's nice to meet you both. So my sense is the Epstein scandal makes for interesting media and articles, but it had almost nothing to do with this downfall. I just don't buy it. I think this is a story of merchandising that missed the mark.

00:49:10 Speaker_02
And there's been a ton of scandal. The founder of Abercrombie & Fitch did not drape himself in glory, and they've had an unbelievable renaissance. When I think of Les, I think he got something very right and very wrong.

00:49:24 Speaker_02
He actually was known in specialty retail as the guy that first brought data, like hard data science to specialty retail, at least that's how I remember him.

00:49:32 Speaker_02
But the whole angels, this unattainable aesthetic, the merchandise, it just kind of, like most specialty retail, isn't this just a story of quite frankly, and it's not sexy, but they just got the product wrong for a really long time.

00:49:46 Speaker_06
Yeah, I think by the time the conversation turned against the Angels and it was seen as culturally out of step, they already had a lot of merchandising problems.

00:49:55 Speaker_06
You know, the way that business was structured between e-commerce and stores was completely separate. They hadn't invested in e-commerce.

00:50:03 Speaker_06
There was the rise of the bralette, you know, that kind of underwire molded cup bra that was their bread and butter, their highest margin.

00:50:09 Speaker_06
Yeah, if, you know, if their active wear had been stronger when all of this happened, they probably wouldn't be in the position they are now.

00:50:15 Speaker_07
We really pinpoint it to their miss on the bralette. That's sort of foreshadowing when the bralette became really popular in culture about 10, 11 years ago.

00:50:27 Speaker_07
There were a lot of executives internally who were pushing it, and Wexner in particular was like, no, again, we sell hope, not help. Our vision of sexy is an underwire bra.

00:50:37 Speaker_07
Also, underwire bras are more expensive, they have higher margins, and they're harder to make. We see that as sort of the turning point, that activewear stuff for sure too, and we cover that in the book.

00:50:48 Speaker_07
But I really see the sort of, they really missed the mark on the bralette, and that meant they missed the mark on like everything that was happening in culture and marketing.

00:50:57 Speaker_08
Which happens to many retailers, right? It happens to many. I mean, if you don't get culottes versus pedal pushers, you're fucked.

00:51:03 Speaker_08
I remember several stores here in the Washington area that I covered retail for seven years, and they missed one thing, especially if they were on trend. But you read about the company ended up falling behind digitally because they were ahead.

00:51:13 Speaker_08
They had an early website live streaming these shows. They took advantage of Facebook and Instagram. What happened from your perspective?

00:51:22 Speaker_06
I think Wexner underestimated the power of e-commerce and especially in the 2010s when, you know, there were all these direct-to-consumer startups coming into the space and the technology was really evolving.

00:51:34 Speaker_06
You know, there wasn't that investment at the company. And, you know, he It was a great interview that he did around that time saying that smartphones would be a fad and that, you know, people would want to shop in person.

00:51:46 Speaker_06
You know, he saw especially the bra as something that women were going to want to shop in person for. And he felt he was an outlier like the Apple Store or Sephora that would always draw higher than average traffic in the mall.

00:51:56 Speaker_06
And while there is some truth to that in terms of women wanting to try on bras, you know, the convenience of e-commerce, obviously, we all know this was something that they needed to invest in.

00:52:07 Speaker_06
And they really just weren't until really like 2019, which is crazy.

00:52:12 Speaker_02
I mean, you guys cover retail, I'm curious if you agree with this, but the turnaround that I think doesn't get the attention it receives is Abercrombie & Fitch. When I say we, I was on the board of Urban Outfitters.

00:52:23 Speaker_02
We could have bought Abercrombie & Fitch for $200 million to $500 million just like five years ago. Now it's got a market cap of $8 billion.

00:52:31 Speaker_02
Do you think there's any opportunity or likelihood, Victoria's Secret still has huge awareness, obviously very strong distribution, or I would imagine a ton of leases, some of which are still pretty good.

00:52:43 Speaker_02
Do you think that there's any possibility of an Abercrombie-like turnaround for the firm?

00:52:48 Speaker_07
Well, Chantal actually did a great profile for New York Magazine on the business and what they've done with it.

00:52:54 Speaker_07
It's a very different business, as you know, bras and fashion, and Victoria's Secret is going to incorporate more clothing into the business again, but it's not as seasonal of a business. It's more about replenishment. It's much smaller.

00:53:10 Speaker_07
Well, Abercrombie is much smaller than Victoria's Secret. So they're very, very different businesses, and the distribution that Victoria's Secret has means that it is still giant. It's still a $6 billion a year.

00:53:24 Speaker_07
Now that that's the product they're shipping, the margin on that is terrible, and it's shrinking. So the business, I see it probably continuing to shrink, shrink, shrink. It's healthy, probably a two, $3 billion business.

00:53:38 Speaker_07
And right now, $6 billion too much would be more profitable to be smaller. But I think, yes, I think there's definitely an opportunity for it to have a renaissance. And Abercrombie was really smart that they didn't rely on the old imagery.

00:53:53 Speaker_07
They used the same billing blocks, genes, cute tops, sweaters, but they made it modern and they divorced it from the Bruce Weber of it all. Victoria's Secret, I don't know if they have like the three savvy executives in place at this moment.

00:54:10 Speaker_07
They just got a new CEO. We'll see what she does. But a lot of that credit has to do with Fran Horowitz and seeing her merchandiser and her marketer and the three of them working together and using the data right. So it's possible.

00:54:22 Speaker_08
Right. Victoria's Secret fashion show returned after a six-year hiatus in the wake of a Me Too and other controversies. This was supposed to be a reinvention for the brand and the show got mixed reviews at best.

00:54:34 Speaker_08
One critic called it a relic of another time. What do you think of what they did there and why? It did feel weird to see it, right? And then the competitors, is it Kim Kardashian, Skims, or some of these fashion companies, Chantal?

00:54:51 Speaker_06
Yeah, Skims, Aerie, Rihanna's brand, those are some of the main competitors beyond sort of the department store brands that don't have much marketing, like Wacol or Notori. The fashion show, I think, was interesting.

00:55:04 Speaker_06
It was an opportunity for them to get a lot of organic media coverage. You know, there was a ton of coverage last week, clips all over social media.

00:55:10 Speaker_06
I think the lesson from Abercrombie is that there's a lot to be gained in focusing on the product over the fantasy or the marketing. And that seems to not be the priority still of Victoria's Secret, though.

00:55:22 Speaker_06
With this show, they pushed, you know, on the Amazon streaming. A lot of it was shoppable in a way that it never was before and was never part of the strategy before. You know, I think It's hard to say.

00:55:33 Speaker_06
We'll see how the results are, but I don't think it moved the needle culturally positive or negatively for the brand. And I'm sure they spent a ton of money on it.

00:55:42 Speaker_06
And, you know, they have a new CEO, Hilary Super, who came from Rihanna's brand, who only started about a month ago. So perhaps her priorities will evolve. And, you know, this show was planned long before she was hired. So it's interesting to track.

00:55:55 Speaker_06
But, yeah, I think there was one reaction I thought was really interesting is especially younger people wanted a campier version of the show, because that's what they remember from the 2010s. And the show was not that campy. It was more sophisticated.

00:56:09 Speaker_06
They had the former Vogue Paris editor in chief styling it, Emanuel Alt. So they were going for that fashion-y angle. And it doesn't really seem like that's what younger people wanted. It felt very Joan Collins.

00:56:18 Speaker_02
I'm just curious, when you look at the world, especially retail, who do you admire the most? Who, who do you think is just killing it right now?

00:56:25 Speaker_06
I really love Skims. I think it's so interesting the way they've taken the Victoria's Secret playbook and twisted it in subtle but profound ways.

00:56:33 Speaker_06
And I think Jens and Emma agreed, who are the couple behind that, are really sharp merchants and understand, again, how to mix that focus on product and marketing.

00:56:44 Speaker_06
The thing about the Kim Kardashian brand, that's a polarizing family as well, but you hear that word of mouth as saying, oh, this product is actually good. you never hear that about Victoria's Secret.

00:56:52 Speaker_06
And I think they could engineer that kind of conversation if they focused on it. They have a lot of product.

00:56:57 Speaker_06
But I think Skims has just been, they've been having fun with the Victoria's Secret model and, you know, bringing back some of their former angels.

00:57:05 Speaker_06
And in a way that Victoria's Secret, I think, has still been sort of in an apologetic era that they seem to be coming out of now with this show, but has been dogging them recently.

00:57:14 Speaker_07
I think the question for Skims is whether or not when they only have four or five stores right now, whether or not they can do retail is important and having a ton of distribution is important. Troy's Secret has 800 stores. That's way too many.

00:57:28 Speaker_07
But like a store, what's a store for? The value of a store is different. it now, and so can SKIMS figure out how to make those stores productive?

00:57:36 Speaker_07
Whether that means people leaving the store and buying stuff online immediately, or buying a ton of stuff in store, that's the big question for me on that front. I mean, I would say generally, in specialty retail,

00:57:52 Speaker_07
I think most companies have not figured out how to make the stores productive. They need to exist, but what does that mean? And there are a lot of big questions from me on that end.

00:58:08 Speaker_07
And there's no exact answer, but the big thing is these stores are a big capital expense. They cost a lot of money, and so how do you make them worth, they need to exist, but how do you make them worthwhile and not erode margins and all that stuff?

00:58:26 Speaker_08
you know, you have Sheen and the others, Uniqlo and stuff like that, or Muji, they're just fine. They're just, you know, and of course they have big stores in New York, but not everywhere.

00:58:36 Speaker_11
Allo, Restoration Hardware, Sephora, there's a bunch of stores that are working.

00:58:41 Speaker_08
In the future, how does that look? Because they open and close very quickly. The stuff is, I don't see Victoria's Secret have any advantage whatsoever when all those are there.

00:58:51 Speaker_07
I think shorter leases and more understanding that this is cyclical. Like, Aloe right now is on top, but they tried to raise, I forget it, like a really crazy valuation last year, and they weren't able to raise the money.

00:59:06 Speaker_07
So everybody thinks Aloe is so great, but they're opening stores like crazy. They have a very interesting business where they have a blanks business that they run under another name that fueled the Aloe business.

00:59:19 Speaker_07
But like, what's it going to be in two years when people are sort of over that aesthetic if they're not able to evolve?

00:59:25 Speaker_02
It's a tale as old as time, right? Especially retailer gets is hot. They raise a ton of capital. They spend like drunken sailors. They overexpand. It's the story of restoration. It's the story of all of them.

00:59:35 Speaker_06
Which is why Victoria's Secret is so impressive because they survived many of those cycles already before. So why is this cycle been so tricky for them?

00:59:44 Speaker_02
I have an idea. I want to pitch all three of you around Victoria's Secret. I want to get your reaction. I saw that fashion show and they're trying to have it both ways. I think they absolutely got it right. porn it up.

00:59:56 Speaker_02
I think they should basically have the hottest men and women and do something with OnlyFans and have a show where basically everyone's just ridiculously fucking hot people naked everywhere. I think they need to embrace their roots. Your thoughts?

01:00:09 Speaker_08
I'm buying underwear from Uniqlo. I'm the same.

01:00:14 Speaker_02
I don't want to fuss. And Uniqlo shares just crashed.

01:00:18 Speaker_06
I like the idea of them doing something more dramatic, like excluding more people. They're trying to appeal to everyone and I think that's tough.

01:00:27 Speaker_07
I just don't think a fashion show is the answer. Have you all looked at their marketing on Instagram? It's terrible. That's where they should be putting the money. The high fashion has embraced OnlyFans in certain cases, and it's worked really well.

01:00:46 Speaker_07
I think that's a clever idea, but they need to be where the customer is. The other big thing is product is king at the moment. People actually think they're experts on what product is good and bad, and their product is not great.

01:01:03 Speaker_07
And so there's no one on TikTok. On TikTok, everybody's like, Abercrombie and jeans fit so well. No one's saying that about a Victoria's Secret bra.

01:01:10 Speaker_06
So because what sells it now is comfort, not sex. You know, if they want to be this huge cross-cultural brand, it's about comfort. Yeah, sorry.

01:01:20 Speaker_02
Scott, no point. I personally think if you took Athleisure or Lululemon and Victoria's Secret, they're inversely correlated. I think women have gone to Athleisure and away from this.

01:01:34 Speaker_02
I mean, you literally, Lululemon, arguably the best performing special retailer of the last 15 years, and it's just kicked the shit out of Victoria's Secret. It's taken all that margin and all that. Yeah, the world has dramatically changed.

01:01:50 Speaker_02
I can't get over, though, Well, it's a longer conversation. I love specialty retail, but I really, really enjoy your work.

01:01:56 Speaker_08
All right. Thank you, Chantal Fernandez and Mike Sherman.

01:01:59 Speaker_02
Lean in. Lean into the dirty.

01:02:00 Speaker_08
And again, the book is Selling Sexy, Victoria's Secret, and the Unraveling of an American Icon. Thank you so much. Thank you both. All right, Scott. I love how you come alive when it comes to specialty retail. You love that specialty retail.

01:02:12 Speaker_02
Who built Williamson and Mistress website in 1994, Clara? Yeah, I know.

01:02:15 Speaker_08
I like that. I like that about you. You have a lot of expertise. Anyway, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Support for this show comes from United for Business. Part of building a successful business is deciding what you stand for.

01:02:31 Speaker_08
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And after you binge the series, listen to The Diplomat, the official podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. OK, Scott, let's hear some wins and fails. You go first.

01:05:45 Speaker_02
Well, my win is, I just wanted to bring some attention. I was thinking, how do I show Leanne and Pia some gratitude here? I just want to talk a little bit about the WNBA. The playoffs averaged 970,000 viewers across the first 17 playoff games.

01:05:57 Speaker_02
That's 142% increase over 2023. One year, they're up two and a half fold. They attracted an all-time record of more than 54 million unique viewers this season. In-person attendance averaged 9,800 fans, up 48% from last season.

01:06:16 Speaker_02
Merchandise sales increased 601% from 2023. The WNBA received nearly 2 billion videos across its social media platforms, more than quadruple last season's total. So the nice thing here is at some point this money, this incremental

01:06:30 Speaker_02
attendance is going to result in a TV contract and higher salaries. The other thing that just blew me away, I was asking all about the players. A decent number of the players on the court had given birth.

01:06:41 Speaker_08
Yeah, they have kids. They're wives.

01:06:44 Speaker_02
Slamming into each other. Anyways, my win. My win as a WNBA. And again, thank you, Leanne. My work is done. My kid now retired. And Pia for inviting me to such a great

01:07:00 Speaker_02
My loss is, I just, I can't, I really, and I know that just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean I'm wrong.

01:07:08 Speaker_02
And that is, when I see young Americans and the way, the things they're saying, and the way they're behaving on campus, and the things they say online, I really do believe that they have an entirely incorrect view of America right now.

01:07:23 Speaker_02
And I believe that- It's something you've talked about a lot. Well, folks, OK, so let's just go. I think at the end of the day, the most important thing a government can do is ensure rights, defend our borders and also create a context for prosperity.

01:07:39 Speaker_02
That's Latin for a healthy economy. Let's talk about our economy right here, right now. We are at full employment. That's we have the lowest unemployment since 1968.

01:07:52 Speaker_02
And if you turn on certain networks or listen to certain podcasts, they'd have you believe that it's the fucking depression. Our inflation is at 2.2 percent.

01:08:05 Speaker_08
Bill Maher was pointing this out.

01:08:07 Speaker_02
The lowest in the G7. OK, hold on. What about GDP? What about growth? It's the strongest in the world. We are going to be responsible for 80 percent, according to the World Bank, of 2025 forecasts in GDP. In 1990, the U.S.

01:08:22 Speaker_02
accounted for two fifths of GDP of the G7. Today, it makes up half. Output per person is now 30 percent higher than in Western Europe and Canada and 60 percent higher than in Japan. Gaps that have roughly doubled since 1990.

01:08:37 Speaker_02
Mississippi is America's poorest state. That's the worst in the U.S. economically, but its hardworking residents earn on average more than Brits, Canadians or Germans. And then lately, China has gone backwards.

01:08:53 Speaker_02
Having closed in rapidly on America in the years before the pandemic, its nominal GDP has slipped from about three quarters of America's in 2021 to two thirds today.

01:09:02 Speaker_02
By the way, I should note, I'm getting I'm parroting all of this from Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, my friend. and world-class academic from Yale. The U.S. under Biden became the world's largest energy producer.

01:09:14 Speaker_02
We produce a third more energy than the Saudis and Russia. Biden granted 50 percent more oil and gas drilling permits than under Trump. Biden's deficit.

01:09:24 Speaker_08
Trump's dark vision of this country is completely off.

01:09:28 Speaker_02
The Biden deficit was cut by one third. It tripled under Trump. Immigration the last six months is far below Trump's border crossings the last six months under Trump. And unrivaled 76 record highs in the stock market. in the last year.

01:09:47 Speaker_02
Folks, young people, yeah, we still have work to do, but there are 190 sovereign nations in the world. In terms of prosperity, your rights, your ability to express who you want to be, 189 would trade places with us.

01:10:02 Speaker_02
So yeah, we got work to do, but also take some pause in just how ridiculously fucking lucky And pat yourself on, hold on, hold on. The smartest decision you have made was to be born in America.

01:10:20 Speaker_02
And the notion that it is really bad right now, don't buy it. Don't buy it. All right, all right.

01:10:27 Speaker_08
You're sounding a little like Obama there. I think my win was a really wonderful movie that's SNL, which I think was relatively funny this week. And by the way, Billie Eilish is so fantastic.

01:10:41 Speaker_08
They had Michael Keaton as the guest, and Maya Rudolph was great, but they had a skit about scrolling TikTok that was so funny because it was exactly true.

01:10:49 Speaker_08
It's this video, go find it, because it makes you laugh hysterically, and they were parodying all the different genres of TikTok. And I thought it was just on point and made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

01:11:00 Speaker_08
And because it was exactly like TikTok is, all this ridiculous stuff. And they did a beautiful job of it, which it's something that made me laugh.

01:11:09 Speaker_08
My fail is, are these lies that keep getting, and I know you say they get attention and this and that, but what a terror, I think it dovetails into what you were talking about is that, you know, Trump just was on a thing saying that people go to school and they come back transgender.

01:11:25 Speaker_08
Like he just repeats it again.

01:11:26 Speaker_10
I saw that.

01:11:28 Speaker_08
He's done it.

01:11:28 Speaker_10
You say goodbye. Have a lovely day. You love me.

01:11:32 Speaker_08
You come back Barbara.

01:11:33 Speaker_10
And they come back a girl. Yeah, that happens all the time.

01:11:37 Speaker_08
Never. And like these late term abortions. And these incredible lies they tell are just repulsive. This is not what America is. These are dark and sick people. I'm sorry. Same thing with Elon Musk lying about Dominion, lying about this.

01:11:53 Speaker_08
He did a series of lies, and they have lies that are unchecked. Let me tell you something. They're not unchecked. Someday, someday, I'm sorry.

01:12:04 Speaker_08
I think there's going to be such a backlash against this kind of behavior, this failure of not our best natures. And it's really grotesque to see some of them. And then the Republicans defending this, like Mike Johnson, who is such a tool.

01:12:20 Speaker_08
When Jake Tapper was mentioning the Arnold Palmer thing, it was like pretending it didn't matter. It does matter. This kind of discourse brings us all down. We are, as Scott said, a great country.

01:12:29 Speaker_08
And this is so beneath us, this dark, ugly, lying, pieces of shit version of our country. You know, again, fuck you. That's not what we are. We're much better than that. And I have kids. Scott has kids. We have great hopes for them.

01:12:44 Speaker_08
And they are great people. It's just gross. These are terrible role models. And the sooner they're gone, the better. Anyway. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

01:12:55 Speaker_08
Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. And on that note, the results from last episode's threads poll are in. In response to the question, how often are you personally using AI? 31% of you answered daily.

01:13:08 Speaker_08
This is amazing. 20% of you answered weekly. 31% of you answered occasionally and 18% of you answered never. Interesting. Anything to say very quickly to the 18% who said never?

01:13:23 Speaker_02
When I first moved to New York, my team interviewed and hired an assistant for me. And she walked in and we were talking. She said, oh, I don't use computers. And I said, you can't work here.

01:13:33 Speaker_02
If you want to be gainfully employed in America, you need to understand AI the same way we needed to understand computers.

01:13:38 Speaker_08
Excellent. That's an excellent thing. Scott is not having any of your shit, any of you today. Anyway, that's because he's a lesbian now. Power lesbian. Power lesbian. Excuse me. Hello, ladies. Okay, Barbara. That's the show. We'll be back on Friday for more.

01:13:51 Speaker_08
Read us out.

01:13:52 Speaker_02
Today's show was produced by Laren Amon, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie and her Todd engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Emil Ceverio, and Dan Shulan. Nishat Keroua is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

01:14:04 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.

01:14:12 Speaker_02
We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. Congratulations to the world champion, New York Liberty.