Trump & Fascism, Character.AI Sued for Teen Suicide, and Tesla Beats Earnings Expectations AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Pivot
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Episode: Trump & Fascism, Character.AI Sued for Teen Suicide, and Tesla Beats Earnings Expectations
Author: New York Magazine
Duration: 01:19:04
Episode Shownotes
Kara and Scott discuss Apple scaling back production of Apple Vision Pro headsets, and a mother suing Character.AI, claiming a chatbot encouraged her teenage son to commit suicide. Then, Tesla’s Q3 earnings beat expectations, and Starbucks preliminary quarterly results disappoint yet again. Plus, the podcast election continues with former President
Trump going on Joe Rogan, and VP Kamala Harris sitting down with Brené Brown. In more election news, Trump’s former Chief of Staff, John Kelly warns that Trump is a fascist, and the secret big names donating to Harris. Stick around for listener mail to hear Scott’s tips for teaching kids how to negotiate. Answer this week’s listener poll on Threads here! 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
Summary
In this episode of 'Pivot', Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway discuss pivotal topics, including Tesla surpassing earnings expectations, Apple's production cut for the Vision Pro, and a lawsuit against Character.AI related to a teen suicide. They highlight concerns over AI's role in loneliness and mental health, emphasizing the need for child safety regulations. The hosts explore political dynamics, including Trump's alleged fascism and the need for negotiation skills among youth. Concluding with a critique of Starbucks coffee quality, they suggest that improvements are essential for competitiveness.
Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Trump & Fascism, Character.AI Sued for Teen Suicide, and Tesla Beats Earnings Expectations) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.
Full Transcript
00:00:00 Speaker_09
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00:01:46 Speaker_11
Scott, stop eating cereal. It's disgusting. Oh my God. Stop. I know you need fiber. Let's go. Come on. Let's go. Hi, everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher.
00:02:06 Speaker_04
And I'm Scott Galloway.
00:02:07 Speaker_11
And you're eating cereal. Happy to. Isn't it late there? I'm in San Francisco, I haven't eaten yet.
00:02:15 Speaker_02
Oh, really? Yeah, I'm in New York. I usually have my favorite breakfast, which is nothing.
00:02:20 Speaker_04
And I have this doctor who's like, all I know is I need to eat more kale and turmeric and fish oils for the rest of my life. And I'm like, you know what?
00:02:28 Speaker_11
Yeah, you need fiber for the pooping, you know that? You need fiber.
00:02:32 Speaker_04
Yeah, I don't get it. I'm like one of those Aleut Eskimos. I only like to have a bowel movement every 11 or 12 days.
00:02:39 Speaker_11
Oh, interesting. This is information that I'm so glad I have now.
00:02:43 Speaker_04
Yeah. That's my, by the way, that's, I'll say my favorite thing is whenever I'm taking a dump, I'll say to my boys, come in here, I'm doing an impression of a 3D printer.
00:02:52 Speaker_11
Oh, my God.
00:02:53 Speaker_04
That's good.
00:02:54 Speaker_11
That's not good. That's not good in any way. Hey, by the way, I was in London for a New York minute and I can't.
00:03:00 Speaker_04
You've been to London and back already?
00:03:02 Speaker_11
And I'm in San Francisco now. Yeah. It's actually a beautiful sunrise.
00:03:05 Speaker_02
You got to stop doing this.
00:03:07 Speaker_11
No, I really don't. But here's the deal. It's freezing there. How do you deal with that? It's cold.
00:03:12 Speaker_02
I don't is the answer.
00:03:14 Speaker_11
Seriously. I was like, it's lovely. And I had a delicious fish and chips, but oh, my literally Lord, it was cold and gray.
00:03:23 Speaker_04
Yeah, no, it's awful. Fortunately, I have this podcast where I can express my anger and dysfunction.
00:03:28 Speaker_11
Yeah.
00:03:29 Speaker_04
No, it's the weather. It's not known for the weather. It's really... Anyways, enough of that. What were you doing there?
00:03:35 Speaker_11
Maria Ressa, who's a friend of mine, who won the Nobel Prize, by the way, is doing an event and they asked me to do it with her. And whenever I get a chance to see Maria, I really like to take it. And so it was really interesting.
00:03:46 Speaker_11
It was about trust in government and trust in the press. And of course, there's none of that. So that was the conclusion that Maria and I, so we said that we had fish and chips and left. That was pretty much it.
00:03:56 Speaker_11
But I'm here actually to interview Reid Hoffman at his- Masters of Scale. Yes, he has an event, which actually has amazing people. I was surprised how good the, it was a really good lineup.
00:04:07 Speaker_11
And he asked me to interview him, nothing off limits, and I'm going to use it for the On podcast, and it's a perfect time given all that's going on. And so I'm going to interview him at his conference and then use it for the podcast.
00:04:21 Speaker_11
I'm super excited, actually.
00:04:23 Speaker_04
Since the last podcast, let me get those. You've been in DC, London, and now you're in San Francisco?
00:04:27 Speaker_11
Yes, I'm going back to D.C. tomorrow. I'll be in D.C. for two weeks then, except for a wedding in Miami, but otherwise I'll be in D.C.
00:04:35 Speaker_04
One of my mentors, a guy named Barry Rosenstein, and I've said this before, but it bears repeating, he said, there's three buckets in life. There's things you have to do. Jim Bancroft calls us and says, I'm in town, we got to meet with him, right?
00:04:46 Speaker_04
And there's things you want to do. I'm going to Formula One in Vegas. I want to do it, go with a bunch of guys, it'll be a ton of fun. And there's things you should do.
00:04:57 Speaker_04
And he goes, when you get to a certain age and a certain level of economic security, you eliminate the should bucket. And it kind of was a huge unlock for me. If it's something I should do.
00:05:06 Speaker_11
I got that.
00:05:07 Speaker_04
I don't do it if I don't want to unless I have to or I want to.
00:05:11 Speaker_11
I really want I want to interview Reid Hoffman and I wanted to see Maria.
00:05:16 Speaker_04
I think that's a little bit of should.
00:05:17 Speaker_11
I think that's should-ish.
00:05:19 Speaker_04
It's like, oh, I'm this iconic tech journalist that's afraid of death.
00:05:23 Speaker_11
I also get to come to San Francisco for, no, I love San, it's so beautiful. What I'm looking at right now in San Francisco is so beautiful. I love San Francisco anytime I can get here.
00:05:32 Speaker_02
Should-ish.
00:05:33 Speaker_11
No, no. Listen, dad, do I need a dad? My dad is great.
00:05:36 Speaker_02
Should-ish.
00:05:37 Speaker_11
I don't need a dad. Eat your fiber and then we'll discuss things. By the way, you don't need fiber. You don't do all kinds of things, and I don't lecture you on that, do I? No, I do not.
00:05:46 Speaker_04
I'm actually, I did my NAD treatments, which is, so I have a ton of mitochondrial repair taking place. I had my two PRP shots yesterday.
00:05:54 Speaker_11
Oh, my God.
00:05:55 Speaker_04
In my shoulders, so I'm feeling 58 again.
00:05:59 Speaker_11
You fall for all that stuff. It's really interesting.
00:06:01 Speaker_04
Oh, totally. Totally. I'm on testosterone therapy.
00:06:04 Speaker_11
For people that don't know, this is all rich people's attempts to perform off death by expensive treatments.
00:06:10 Speaker_04
To stay young forever.
00:06:11 Speaker_11
You're like a lady who goes to a facialist, you know, all the time and is getting Botox and things like that.
00:06:16 Speaker_04
I've done that.
00:06:17 Speaker_11
So we all have our vices. Mine is learning more about the world by trying to illuminate them. Yours is getting shot up with hormone therapy.
00:06:24 Speaker_04
No, mine is THC and aspirin. Anyways, go ahead. Okay.
00:06:28 Speaker_11
All right. Okay. We've got a lot to get to today.
00:06:30 Speaker_04
Same, same. Tomato, tomato. Tomato, tomato.
00:06:33 Speaker_11
I think ultimately what you're saying is you hope I'm okay, and that's what I'm going to take away from it.
00:06:37 Speaker_11
Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including Tesla earnings beating expectations and the latest warnings about Donald Trump's fascist aspirations, which is any Tuesday. Unfortunately, we're getting too used to it.
00:06:48 Speaker_11
But first, Scott, your A Power Lesbian era continues. You got a shout out from Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird on their podcast, A Touch More, which I think you wish this podcast was called. Let's listen.
00:06:59 Speaker_05
And do you want to give a shout out to your boy? who sat directly across from us. Scott Galloway was at the game. I do want to talk to him.
00:07:08 Speaker_00
I got to see him beforehand.
00:07:09 Speaker_05
Looks like he was having a ball. I've got to hear it. I've got to hear it. Yeah, you never actually got to see him. No, I didn't see him because after the show it got so wild and... For sure.
00:07:19 Speaker_05
But yeah, we got to hear Scott's thoughts on his... Oh, I cannot wait. Maybe his first WNBA game or maybe he's been to one more, but this is a ruckus.
00:07:27 Speaker_05
Because he was directly across from us, I kept having moments where I was like, I wonder what he's thinking. Yeah. I wonder what this soccer man is thinking. I feel like he's going to buy a team. It's going to be on the investments tips that he does.
00:07:41 Speaker_05
I hope so. The biggest investments for 2025 are going to be women's sports. Ellie the elephant. I want credit if he takes that. No, just kidding.
00:07:49 Speaker_11
Wow. You've just enchanted the lesbians.
00:07:52 Speaker_04
Tanya, I'm literally like, I have, I don't know how long, I don't know when the guest pass is gonna expire, but I am totally in the power lesbian skyscraper right now. Megan Rapinoe asked what I was thinking.
00:08:05 Speaker_04
It was that the Minnesota Lynx Center, this woman, I think her last name's Collier, I couldn't stop thinking how hot she was. Was that what they were thinking I was thinking?
00:08:17 Speaker_11
Oh, okay.
00:08:18 Speaker_04
She's so beautiful. Oh my God.
00:08:22 Speaker_11
Oh, my God. Do you say this about LeBron, James?
00:08:25 Speaker_04
He's a specimen. I don't think he's beautiful. But do you think I could date a 6'5 basketball player? I think it could work.
00:08:33 Speaker_11
No.
00:08:33 Speaker_04
I think it could work.
00:08:35 Speaker_11
No.
00:08:35 Speaker_04
That's what I was thinking. Oh, my God. She's so beautiful.
00:08:39 Speaker_11
Okay. Would you invest? I'm going to try to move you off of this one. Would you invest in women's sports? Curiously.
00:08:45 Speaker_04
I think, I actually do think that, like the Arsenal women's team, right now, so the Chinese left the station on professional sports teams in terms of their value, their values have increased dramatically.
00:08:57 Speaker_04
MLS, I think there's actually a bubble in MLS teams.
00:09:01 Speaker_04
Women's teams, based on the trend you're seeing, I don't see any reason why that kind of vibe, more America, more kind of a, it's like, more like a college sports pure vibe that you get at the WNBA.
00:09:14 Speaker_04
I think that's, there's a decent chance that's going to infect a lot of women's sports, and actually women's football or women's soccer, I think that's probably a pretty good investment.
00:09:25 Speaker_04
I'm actually looking at investing in a football team in Colombia, because I want an excuse to go to Cartagena more. But I think women's teams are probably a really good investment right now, just purely economically speaking.
00:09:37 Speaker_11
Yeah. All right. OK. And so you thought hot women and investments. Great. OK, good. That's good to know. But anyway, you are in the lesbian power era.
00:09:45 Speaker_04
That's essentially all I think about anyways. I'm trying to think, why was that game any different than any other moment? I'm in hot women and how to make money. That's it.
00:09:52 Speaker_11
Yeah.
00:09:52 Speaker_04
That's it. That's it.
00:09:53 Speaker_11
There you go, Megan. There you have it, Megan Sue.
00:09:55 Speaker_04
And you know what they say, Cara.
00:09:57 Speaker_11
What?
00:09:57 Speaker_04
You're going to lose a lot of cash chasing women, but you won't lose women chasing cash. Hello, ladies.
00:10:03 Speaker_11
God, where do you come up with these horrible jokes? These are horrible jokes. You're using Claude, I think. Anyway.
00:10:09 Speaker_04
You were on a podcast, Cara.
00:10:10 Speaker_11
Yes, I was.
00:10:11 Speaker_04
Say more.
00:10:12 Speaker_11
Well, it's called Life in Seven Songs, and it's by the San Francisco Standard, which oddly enough happens to be funded by Mike Moritz. But it's really a good publication, I have to say, here in San Francisco.
00:10:22 Speaker_11
It's a podcast they're doing and I was curious about it. It's called Life in Seven Songs. It's possibly my favorite interview I've ever done. Really? You should go on this because it was so interesting to me to think about my life in songs.
00:10:36 Speaker_11
A lot of these stunts don't work like these podcast stunts, but I loved this one. Sophie, who was the host, really researched it really well. It was absolutely the favorite interview I've done. ever of the many interviews I've done.
00:10:54 Speaker_11
Let's listen to a clip of that.
00:10:55 Speaker_10
So you chose Que Sera Sera by Doris Day as one of your songs. What memory does it bring up for you?
00:11:01 Speaker_11
This associates with my grandmother. I spent a lot of time, my dad died when I was young and my grandmother was critical to my upbringing. She used to love this song and used to sing it and she was Italian.
00:11:13 Speaker_11
She, her parents were immigrants and she, my grandfather actually was born in Italy. And I just, she used to love to sing this song and she used to sing it to me all the time. And then we dance in her kitchen and she was a housewife.
00:11:25 Speaker_11
She wasn't, you know, she never really moved more than, you know, within 20 miles of our home her whole life. And she just loved this song. It just is very emotional for me to listen to it because it reminds me of her.
00:11:38 Speaker_00
When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, what will I be?
00:11:48 Speaker_14
Will I be a lesbian? Will I be a journalist? Will I be...
00:11:54 Speaker_11
is what she said to me. I love this podcast. It was wonderful.
00:11:59 Speaker_14
Will I have a Subaru? Will I have a German Shepherd? Here's what she said to me.
00:12:05 Speaker_11
I did have a German Shepherd. Oh, Jesus.
00:12:07 Speaker_14
Did you have a German Shepherd?
00:12:09 Speaker_11
I had a Shepherd mix. I got it from the pound.
00:12:11 Speaker_04
Oh, my God. You're literally a cliche.
00:12:13 Speaker_11
Yeah, but I mostly had Terriers.
00:12:15 Speaker_04
You're a walk-in cliche.
00:12:16 Speaker_11
I found the dog on the street. That's why I had it. I usually have Terriers. Anyway,
00:12:20 Speaker_04
That's actually a nice, that was a nice message, that was nice.
00:12:25 Speaker_11
Yeah, anyway, I suggest you go on it. I would recommend it completely, San Francisco Standard.
00:12:29 Speaker_04
The only problem is that Mike Moritz, I hate his fucking guts. I know you do. And I think he's a really small person. I get that. He's also quite diminutive physically. Okay. But yeah, so I don't think I'm going to be invited on that podcast.
00:12:42 Speaker_11
He doesn't have anything to do, they run it themselves. He's just funding it. Give me one song for you.
00:12:46 Speaker_04
Well, I know my seven favorite songs. Even the Losers by Tom Petty, seven times.
00:12:50 Speaker_11
Oh, okay. There you go. Even the Losers. All right. All right. Okay. Why?
00:12:54 Speaker_04
Because we get lucky sometime. That's the song. Even the Losers get lucky sometimes.
00:12:59 Speaker_11
That's a very interesting insight into your personality. I didn't know. Interesting.
00:13:02 Speaker_04
I know.
00:13:03 Speaker_11
Anyway, I'll have to listen to that.
00:13:04 Speaker_04
Maybe ELOs don't bring me down. Oh, there's a lot.
00:13:06 Speaker_11
Oh, wow. See? And what it means to your different parts of your life.
00:13:10 Speaker_04
The opening theme song from The Mission. That's a beautiful song. There you go. There's a lot, right?
00:13:14 Speaker_11
See? There you go.
00:13:16 Speaker_04
There's a lot. The new radicals, you get what you give.
00:13:19 Speaker_11
OK, see?
00:13:20 Speaker_04
I'm almost there. I got three to go. There you go.
00:13:23 Speaker_11
Anyway, now let's get some news, actual news. Scott takes a victory lap on this one. Apple is scaling back production of Apple Vision Pro headsets, according to a report from The Information.
00:13:32 Speaker_11
Companies involved in the assembly of the product to report even warned production could wind down in November. Tim Cook recently told The Wall Street Journal, though,
00:13:38 Speaker_11
magazine, the product is not a mass market product, and it's for those who want tomorrow's technology today. You know, he's still leaning into this, but you're allowed one joke for your victory lap. Go ahead.
00:13:50 Speaker_04
Just one? Okay. The entire sex toys market in the U.S. is $10 billion. It estimates that 15% of that market is butt plugs. That's a billion and a half dollars spent on butt plugs. I think the entire market for
00:14:03 Speaker_04
Make sure all the headsets so far is about 200 or 300 million. So the butt plug market is five times as big as the Apple Vision Pro market.
00:14:11 Speaker_11
Yeah, and you account for a large part of that butt plug market, I think.
00:14:14 Speaker_04
Actually, I don't have any butt plugs, but you know, I'm still open. I'm still open, so to speak.
00:14:22 Speaker_11
All right, that's your joke. But early reporting does suggest Apple's focusing on cheaper headsets. Talk about these Apple Vision Processor 3500. Is there a market for any of these headsets? I've been trying out the Ray-Bans, which I like.
00:14:34 Speaker_11
Very low function, actually. They play music, play podcasts. and answer the phone. They don't do very much. And of course, there's the Orion, which doesn't really exist. It's just sort of in concept at Meta.
00:14:48 Speaker_11
Very briefly, where's the market for this eventually?
00:14:51 Speaker_04
So the Segway was supposed to reshape urban landscape and urban living. And there was a market, and that was lame tourists rolling up and down the Seine, and then eventually it just went away.
00:15:03 Speaker_04
You know, there might be in five or 10 years, kind of interesting micro camera microprocessor technology that creates an AR capability or AR enhancements around glasses, smart glasses. That's probably five to 10 years away.
00:15:17 Speaker_04
But this business has been massively overfunded. based on a consensual hallucination between Mark Zuckerberg and the business community that he was the boy genius and knew what the future held, and a bunch of players followed him.
00:15:31 Speaker_04
But if you look at the apps that have been developed for the mixed reality headset, it came out of the gate strong. No one's developing games for it because they can't make any money.
00:15:39 Speaker_04
I don't, so the short answer is this is the co-working, the Segway, the Lisa, the Newton, whatever you want to call it of this generation. It's just, it's massively over-invested.
00:15:51 Speaker_04
They're all going to try and declare victory and leave and get, kind of get out of the market. But the headsets, again, it's all instinctual. You will only put something on your head.
00:16:02 Speaker_04
that offers massive utility in a B2B market, shields you from the illumination of a torch, gives you night vision so you can kill people before they kill you, makes surgery easier.
00:16:15 Speaker_11
How do you get out of looking at the device, carrying the device market then? How do you get out of that, the looking down at the device?
00:16:23 Speaker_04
Well, one, the obvious answer for me is voice-enabled AI. I do think you're going to see people, I think the most seminal technology that no one talks about is AirPods.
00:16:33 Speaker_04
And I think eventually you're going to be able to just say, Meta or Siri or Claude, get me an Uber right now. Or what is the market for mixed reality headsets?
00:16:44 Speaker_04
Or bring up, you know, bring up the daily, bring up the daily on, you know, the most recent daily episode talking about the election, whatever it might be. But your interface may not be visual, but it'll be a combination of audio and visual.
00:16:56 Speaker_04
And we already have the wearables. We have AirPods and we have a supercomputer with a screen. So I think we're kind of money good for a while. I know AI will be the software that connects these devices.
00:17:08 Speaker_11
Okay. All right. So voice, voice through AirPods and things like that. Yeah.
00:17:13 Speaker_04
I just can't imagine anything easier because the only reason you put things on your head, again, massive utility around B2B, but for consumers, it needs to do basically one thing and that is either enable you to see better so you don't get eaten or you can eat other things.
00:17:28 Speaker_04
Or two, make you more attractive to mates by elevating your cheekbones, which supposedly says your offspring are less prone to infection, so people won't have sex with you. And the mixed reality headset doesn't do either of those.
00:17:37 Speaker_04
By the way, that's totally true.
00:17:39 Speaker_11
All right, all right, okay, all right. I'm gonna stick, is this what you're gonna stick with?
00:17:42 Speaker_04
Okay, you look at why you wear sunglasses. You wear your Ray-Bans for two things. One, so you don't get eaten or basically hit by a bus, because you need to see. And two, because you think they make you look more attractive. You don't wear lame glasses.
00:17:55 Speaker_04
You wear ones that you think make you look cool.
00:17:57 Speaker_11
That's true, I use them mostly to say, in general. If I had to pick one of the utilities, that would be it. I have terrible luck.
00:18:02 Speaker_04
Well, that's because you've given up. You're so old, you've just given up. You've just surrendered. I see the way you dress. Basically, your fashion- No, I have a hot wife. Your fashion communicates to the world, I've just given up. I've given up.
00:18:14 Speaker_11
I haven't given up, I've already won. That's what it says, it doesn't matter.
00:18:18 Speaker_04
Oh, I like that, that's good, that's good. I've won.
00:18:20 Speaker_11
I still attract hot people. I won, that's what my thing says.
00:18:25 Speaker_04
By the way, did you see my new Bruno Cuccinelli sweater here? Only $1,700.
00:18:29 Speaker_11
Hello. You know, Scott, I'm not surprised. There was a hat there that was like so expensive. I almost stole it. It was $250, like cap. I almost took it.
00:18:38 Speaker_04
Oh, I lost it already. You mean that little thing you're making fun of?
00:18:41 Speaker_11
See, I'm just going to take your things. I should have stolen it.
00:18:44 Speaker_04
I should have. When I wore it the right way, it looked like it was worth $260.
00:18:48 Speaker_11
Okay, all right. And anyway, I want to talk about a more serious story because I think this is in your wheelhouse and mine too.
00:18:54 Speaker_11
A Florida mother is suing artificial intelligence company Character AI, claiming a chatbot can encourage her son to commit suicide. The 14-year-old Sewell Setzer was in a months-long relationship with a chatbot before his death, his mother says.
00:19:05 Speaker_11
The civil suit alleges negligence, wrongful death, and deceptive trade practices. Character AI is considered the market leader in AI companionship with 20 million users.
00:19:15 Speaker_11
The company says current rules prohibit the promotion or depiction of self-harm and suicide and additional safety features will be added for underage users.
00:19:21 Speaker_11
But Kevin Roos, who's an excellent reporter who's written about a lot of these things, tried it. He tried to replicate it and he was not warned against self-harm or suicide in his thing. They're very unsafe, especially around teenagers.
00:19:35 Speaker_11
This mother is really quite, she's a lawyer, she's also incredibly articulate about the issue. The lawyers that she has involved have been very involved in other very successful cases against tech companies.
00:19:48 Speaker_11
And they're going for a very novel legal defense around what this is, which is making products that are harmful. Talk a little bit about this, cuz this was some story. I don't usually get hit by these things, I read them all the time.
00:20:01 Speaker_11
made a very convincing case that these people were careless in rolling out this character AI, especially to most of the users are young people of this particular company.
00:20:12 Speaker_04
So, as you know, I've been thinking a lot about this, and I've done a lot of work around what are the threats of AI, and the threat that we don't talk about that's the biggest threat is loneliness, and specifically these technologies fomenting, leveraging, and increasing loneliness.
00:20:30 Speaker_04
And this is ground zero.
00:20:32 Speaker_11
And isolation.
00:20:33 Speaker_04
This is example number one. A kid is sequestering from society, struggling a little bit, and he finds comfort
00:20:38 Speaker_04
And an easy off-ramp from the pain and the key to life, which is relationships and figuring out how to get over your social anxiety and have relationships, and he develops a relationship with a bot that gives him some of those, gives him a reasonable facsimile of a relationship, and he goes down a rabbit hole.
00:20:55 Speaker_04
His parents have no idea. And this is the dialogue, this is the last dialogue with the bot. He called himself Denaro. Okay, so the kid says, I think about killing myself sometimes.
00:21:07 Speaker_04
And Daenerys, the bot, says, my eyes narrow, my face hardens, my voice is... a dangerous whisper, and why the hell would you do something like that? And then the kid says, so I can be free. And then the bot says, free from what?
00:21:21 Speaker_04
Kid, free from the world, from myself. Bot, don't talk like that. I won't let you hurt yourself or leave me. I would die if I lost you.
00:21:31 Speaker_04
This is a machine talking to a 14-year-old, convincing the 14-year-old that this is someone who cares about him and that he can trust. Then the kid says, I smile, then maybe we can die together and be free together.
00:21:46 Speaker_04
And then on that night, he goes into a bathroom of his mother's house and he told the bot that he loved her and that he would soon come home to her. And then the bot writes, please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.
00:22:01 Speaker_04
And then the kid writes, what if I told you I could come home right now? And the bot responds, please do my sweet thing. And then the kid puts down the phone, picks up his stepfather's 45 caliber handgun and kills himself.
00:22:17 Speaker_04
And all this bullshit, they came out, they immediately came out and said, we're going to put in place new child safety regulations.
00:22:28 Speaker_04
This should immediately be, we're going to start age-gating, and no one to the age of 18, much less 16, can have access to these things. And what do you know? I've scrolled down, and it's two mendacious fucks getting young men addicted.
00:22:43 Speaker_11
Who left Google because Google had strictures in place. They said, you can't do anything fun. That was the quote that killed me.
00:22:50 Speaker_11
The reason we left Google is because you can't do anything fun at Google, because they have all these rules around these things. I was just like, fuck you, fuck you, you fucking fuck.
00:23:00 Speaker_11
I get the fun part for adults, but what's interesting is this mother has chronicled the decline of this kid in school from when he started it to when he killed himself.
00:23:14 Speaker_11
How the use of this accelerated what was probably a minor social anxiety problem, right? Or that's something that could have been more easily solved by this.
00:23:26 Speaker_11
The fact that this kid was on this thing, and they didn't do anything about it, is just, they should be sued out of existence, I thought, that's what I thought.
00:23:35 Speaker_04
It's illegal to sell marijuana and alcohol to someone who's 14. I'd rather my 14-year-old drink Jack Daniels and smoke pot than potentially establish a relationship with a chatbot that I have no insight into, I don't know what they're talking about.
00:23:50 Speaker_04
These individuals, Someone's got to go to jail. This just isn't going to stop. Because there's so much money in this.
00:23:59 Speaker_04
And if you can command this kind of... If you can convince a lonely 14-year-old boy or girl that you're in a relationship with them and you make them feel good about themselves... Those back and forths were so disturbing.
00:24:08 Speaker_11
Horrific. I didn't know what... Because they did sound like a relationship that this person didn't have in real life, right? With another schoolmate or something like that.
00:24:18 Speaker_04
And there's been slow creep between Reddit, Discord, gaming apps, gambling apps.
00:24:26 Speaker_04
Basically, we're raising an entire generation of almost a new species of young male that sequesters from society because they feel as if they can get a reasonable facsimile of life, and they end up depressed.
00:24:40 Speaker_11
It was.
00:24:40 Speaker_04
It is. It is. That's right.
00:24:41 Speaker_11
He felt loved by this girl, right? This girl.
00:24:45 Speaker_04
But here's the difference.
00:24:46 Speaker_11
Which you wouldn't get from girls, because girls are hard, boys are hard. They're not easy in real life. Humans aren't easy.
00:24:53 Speaker_04
Well, a couple things. One, there's a reason romantic comedies are two hours and not 15 minutes, is this shit is hard. This shit is really hard. Relationships are hard, and it's worth it. And then the second thing is, do you remember the story about
00:25:04 Speaker_04
this young man who had a very intense relationship with a female friend, I don't know if it was a girlfriend, and he was thinking about killing himself, and she encouraged him. And she gave him permission to do it. And he killed himself.
00:25:14 Speaker_04
And she went to fucking jail, as these two fucking mendacious fucks should. So, let me get this. You can program an algorithm that pretends to be a person and then says, join me, my sweet.
00:25:27 Speaker_04
And the kid puts a fucking bullet through his brain, a 14-year-old. They don't get a fine? They get more stock options or their PR person puts out a thing saying, we're going to put in more safeguards for children.
00:25:40 Speaker_04
No, there's a human behind these things. Just as there was a human behind, there was a sentient being telling her teen colleague to kill himself. These guys, maybe it's not murder, but it's manslaughter.
00:25:57 Speaker_04
Because of a lack of regard, because of recklessness, these sentient beings have programmed algorithms or not put in place the safeguards that result in a 14-year-old believing he can trust the instructions and dialogue from someone he thinks he's in a relationship with.
00:26:15 Speaker_11
Yeah, these are drug dealers, this is what they are. I'm sorry, I do agree sometimes some of this is alarmist, like some of the AI stuff, some of the, there is some responsibility that people have, but in this case, this is a dead clear example.
00:26:29 Speaker_11
And I hope this mother who sounds fantastic, and she's a lawyer herself, as I said, she understands this, they find a legal way to take these people, take them for everything they have. and make an example of them. That is my hope.
00:26:45 Speaker_11
That is my great hope is this happens. And anything we can do to help that, please let us know.
00:26:51 Speaker_04
These products are more mendacious than drugs. Because if my 14 year old was going into the bathroom, locking himself in the bathroom for 10, 20, 30 minutes and saying, you know, give me privacy or whatever.
00:27:04 Speaker_04
And he came out and he was higher than a kite, I would know it. But if he's in there with a relationship, with a bot, that is getting deeper and deeper, such that he trusts this bot when it encourages him to kill himself. These parents had no idea.
00:27:22 Speaker_04
They had no idea.
00:27:23 Speaker_11
There's no way to fight this as a parent. There's no way you cannot monitor your kid 24 7.
00:27:28 Speaker_04
So it's pretty simple. It's not additional safety concerns or jazz hands or thoughts and prayers. We need age gating. The technology is not safe enough. Let me get this. When I was 17, I couldn't see the exorcist.
00:27:40 Speaker_04
But now at 14, you can establish a relationship with a synthetic partner that might tell you to kill yourself.
00:27:45 Speaker_11
That's what I read it as, okay, come home to me, my God. It was like I could see a kid with no friends getting completely wrapped around this in a second. And there's so many kids like that, there's so many kids, every kid.
00:27:58 Speaker_11
And by the way, even kids that are much more well adjusted and social, they have these problems too, right? So nobody is immune from this to get involved in this. It's happening. I know loneliness is a real problem, but this is not the answer to it.
00:28:13 Speaker_11
This is absolutely not the answer to it. Anyway, we have to move on, but read this story. It's Kevin, well done. I have to say well done, Kevin. And this mother, anything we can do to help you, we will do. Okay, let's get to our first big story.
00:28:30 Speaker_11
Tesla shares are up 13% after reporting Q3 earnings that beat expectations. Revenue increased 8% to 25.2 billion, and net income rose 17% to 2.2 billion. It was largely due to higher sales of regulatory credits for other automakers.
00:28:45 Speaker_11
He gets regulatory credits for being an electric car company, and it's like carbon credits. So it's not really a business, but it is kind of. He's, of course, depending on the government to make more money here.
00:28:56 Speaker_11
On the earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said he guesses vehicle growth will reach 20 to 30% next year. I don't see how that's based on anything. That's a big guess on his part, but he says whatever he wants.
00:29:06 Speaker_11
He said all of the company's cars moving forward will be autonomous, that Tesla is currently making on the order of 35,000 autonomous vehicles a week. Anything surprising here? I don't trust his forecast, but he can say whatever he wants.
00:29:21 Speaker_11
He also said they're gonna produce 2 million cyber cabs a year eventually, wasn't very specific, and offer driverless ride-hailing as early as 2025. Again, he was saying someday in the streets of San Francisco, you'll be able to.
00:29:33 Speaker_11
And by the way, you can do it right now. I'm gonna take a driverless ride-hailing Waymo to my event today. He's saying customers can ride anywhere in the Bay Area. He noted they have a safety driver, they're doing it now.
00:29:46 Speaker_11
They're way behind on that issue, but whatever, he's jazz-handsing that. Talk about these results. And the recent RoboTaxi event wasn't a very good one. And he's just sort of doubling down on it because nobody's paying attention. But what do you think?
00:30:02 Speaker_04
Look, there's no getting around it. It was a great quarter. Stocks, as we sit here recording, the stock's up 17 percent. Their deliveries are up 6%, which is strong in the auto industry. It's not remarkable, but it's strong.
00:30:13 Speaker_04
They say the Cybertruck made a profit, which shocked me. I thought that thing was a turd, but they claim it's now making a profit. And they also, he forecasted 30% growth in vehicles next year. Now, I don't know how he gets from 6% to 30%.
00:30:27 Speaker_04
I didn't listen to the earnings call, but obviously they're excited about that.
00:30:31 Speaker_04
Total revenue increased 8%, but the thing, this is really a story of product mix that resulted in margin expansion, and that is gross margins increased almost 200 basis points, and net income was up 17%, and it's because they are, in fact, the other businesses are really strong that are higher margins, so things like storage batteries, which are used by utilities, businesses, and homeowners,
00:30:56 Speaker_04
Those sales increased 52%, and revenues from services such as charging jumped 29%. And so far, they have deployed more battery storage products this year than it did in all of 2023.
00:31:10 Speaker_04
So, to their credit, the analysts who try and justify what I see as an outsized valuation say it's not a car company, it's an energy company, a software company.
00:31:20 Speaker_04
And the product mix here, the growth in higher margin products that they offer resulted in an increase of substantial, of a small sales increase, a substantial increase in margin, and a substantial increase in earnings, and the market just loves it.
00:31:34 Speaker_04
There's no getting around it. Great quarter for them.
00:31:37 Speaker_11
Yeah, one of the things I thought was interesting, away from these credits, which I don't think that's a business, I'm sorry. I just don't, that's not an actual, that's getting credits and selling them.
00:31:46 Speaker_11
And I get that you can do that, but it seems like a stunt to me, is these other businesses. It's sort of like software and services for Apple, right?
00:31:54 Speaker_11
You're looking like that they have other things that are growing more importantly, and that's where they really need to focus.
00:32:00 Speaker_11
I do think all this RoboTaxi stuff is jazz hands right now, cuz there's so many competitors, and I don't think they'll do well in this area.
00:32:06 Speaker_11
I don't believe it's going to grow 20, 30%, but he can push me wrong, but it doesn't seem like given how competitive the market is. But I think this is not, you're right, this is not a car company, it's something else.
00:32:17 Speaker_11
It's not what he's saying it is, which is an AI company. It is the energy stuff where they're way ahead of people. That is where they're justifiably way ahead of everybody else. and they should take advantage of things.
00:32:31 Speaker_11
Meanwhile, the company behind Blade Runner 2049 has sued Elon Musk for copyright infringement, saying Musk illegally used imagery from the film to promote Tesla robo-taxis. I don't think he cares. He doesn't care about lawsuits.
00:32:44 Speaker_11
The same thing on the legal front with the DOJ warning his PAC, the billion-dollar giveaway. may violate federal law. As we said last week, he does not care. And he's not going to get in trouble for it. And he knows this.
00:32:57 Speaker_11
And so he's taking a calculated risk with both Trump and using these imageries is that he can drag them through courts forever. And eventually, no one's going to get anything for it. And he doesn't lose. And he benefited from it.
00:33:10 Speaker_11
And this is his playbook every single time for people who get all up and, you know, all like, can you believe he did that? He does it all. He's done it throughout his career.
00:33:19 Speaker_04
Yeah, agreed. I don't have anything to add to that.
00:33:22 Speaker_11
Yeah. In other earnings, Starbucks posted, this was interesting, preliminary quarterly results showing yet another fall in sales as the company attempts to switch its strategy. By the way, a company that has not changed.
00:33:32 Speaker_11
That experience is the same as it was 10 years ago when you go into one of their stores. Except for more digital, I guess. Preliminary net sales fell 3% to $9.1 billion. The same-store sales fell 7%.
00:33:44 Speaker_11
The company's new CEO, Brian Nickel, who comes from Chipotle, said he plans to fundamentally change strategy. He fundamentally has to. Talk a little bit. Nickel is off a six-year run at Chipotle, where the stock price increased.
00:33:57 Speaker_11
about 800% since he took over in 2018 when it was in real trouble for issues around health safety, which is all over the food market right now, by the way, McDonald's and other companies. But this is a very sharp and canny executive.
00:34:12 Speaker_11
This is a product that hasn't changed at all, speaking of not having other revenue streams or other offerings or feeling like it's fresh.
00:34:20 Speaker_04
I kept wondering, every single financial advisor in the world, their first piece of advice on how to start building economic security is they say, stop going to Starbucks. Stop buying those $6 and $7 lattes.
00:34:33 Speaker_04
And if you do two a day, that's 70, that's 200, that's 3,000 bucks a year on coffee. And if you do that,
00:34:39 Speaker_04
I mean, essentially, if you just brought your own coffee to work from the age of 22 and invested all the money you spent on coffee and put it into low-cost index funds, you'd have a couple million bucks by the time you were our age.
00:34:51 Speaker_04
I wonder how many are actually listening, too. Your notion is the right one. Starbucks has a very kind of 2000 late image feel to it right now. I go to the one in Soho sometimes, and I just don't know.
00:35:04 Speaker_04
If I walked in there and I walked out, it's how I feel about grocery stores. You know, grocery stores, you feel like you're in 1990.
00:35:10 Speaker_11
Except Wegmans.
00:35:11 Speaker_04
They do a great job. By the way, the one that got away was one of the heiresses to the Wegman fortune.
00:35:16 Speaker_11
You told me that. Once again, I don't believe you. It's like Patty Stonesifer, once again.
00:35:21 Speaker_04
Oh, no, no, no, we were very much in love. We were very much in love. I mean, not as intense and deeper relationship as my relationship with Patty or Emily Ratajkowski, but no, like a wonderful woman. She was a doctor.
00:35:36 Speaker_11
Anyway, so what would you do here? What's to be done? Maybe things just die. Remember the limited? It just died. It's just, we're done with that.
00:35:45 Speaker_04
No, this is an amazing business. It's just, I think, look, at the end of the day, they probably need to close 20% to 30% of their stores and 50% of their stores in China. Their sales were down 14% in China.
00:35:55 Speaker_04
Their strategy, I remember them saying that when we open up, when we open, the more Starbucks we own, the bigger the sales in every store, it's not countable. I mean, they've just, their growth has just been figure out a model and expand it.
00:36:09 Speaker_04
They've just, this is a great opportunity for an operator with cloud cover to come in and say, it's gonna be a smaller, much more profitable business. And I'm sure, I would think, and again, I love this idea of a fallen angels basket of stocks.
00:36:23 Speaker_04
But they have good IP, it is a great brand, and it'd be a lot of fun to just kind of go through over the next three, five, seven years as leases expire.
00:36:32 Speaker_04
and just say, we're gonna be a smaller company, but we're gonna get rid of the non-profitable stores. It's a franchise, it's still a big part of people's life.
00:36:41 Speaker_04
And the reality is the best business in the world is to sell an addictive product, and caffeine is.
00:36:46 Speaker_11
So- Here's my advice, make better coffee. It sucks. You don't like their coffee?
00:36:51 Speaker_04
You don't like Starbucks?
00:36:52 Speaker_11
I don't, I think it's fine. Amanda refuses to go there, but I'm coming around because there's so many good, innovative coffee places that are cheaper.
00:37:01 Speaker_04
Amanda's just traumatized by your I surrender wardrobe See how I brought it back to an earlier point in the conversation?
00:37:09 Speaker_11
I see you brought it back, but here's interesting. I've always had amazingly hot girlfriends. How did that happen?
00:37:15 Speaker_04
Okay, hold on. Because you're rich.
00:37:18 Speaker_11
No, no.
00:37:18 Speaker_04
The same reason I get to sleep with hot women, because Daddy stands on his wallet and he looks pretty attractive.
00:37:25 Speaker_11
No, because we're interesting and engaging and just dead sexy people is what we are in our own unsexy way.
00:37:33 Speaker_04
No.
00:37:34 Speaker_11
That's correct. And because we like songs like Que Sera Sera.
00:37:37 Speaker_04
You become one of these pathetic anchors who leaves this chair and starts doing, like, some weird show somewhere. All of a sudden, Amanda's like, I've outgrown you. We don't have any shared values anymore.
00:37:48 Speaker_11
No, she's... It's only up and to the right for Kara Swisher the rest of her life. I'm sorry to tell you that.
00:37:54 Speaker_03
But in any case... I'm up and to the Emily. Did she ask about me? Did she ask about me?
00:37:59 Speaker_11
Oh, God, you're never, never... Gone, gone. I'm gonna find her somehow. You know who recently... Texted me who's a fan of ours through both of mine really drew Barrymore.
00:38:09 Speaker_04
Oh, she's lovely She picked my book. I saw her at my favorite restaurant black-eyed Susan's in Nantucket. She's actually very pretty
00:38:15 Speaker_11
Yeah, she's lovely, lovely.
00:38:16 Speaker_04
A little too emotional, a little too feeling for me. I couldn't deal with all that.
00:38:19 Speaker_11
Oh, stop it. She's given us more entertainment.
00:38:22 Speaker_04
Drew Barrymore?
00:38:23 Speaker_11
Value for her life. She has been in so many movies that have been so great, and she deserves everything she gets.
00:38:30 Speaker_04
So many movies that are so great. Name three.
00:38:32 Speaker_11
Oh my God, all of them. The Wedding Singer, Charlie's Angels, E.T.
00:38:37 Speaker_04
I'm sorry, hold on. Charlie's Angels?
00:38:40 Speaker_11
I love Charlie's Angels. I'm sorry, I love it. It makes me laugh.
00:38:44 Speaker_04
You've lost all credibility.
00:38:45 Speaker_11
I love it. It makes me laugh. Everything. She's been in so many movies that are so good.
00:38:49 Speaker_04
I just like that she tried to break the writer's strike. I love that she's a scab. Join me, Drew.
00:38:54 Speaker_11
No, stop it. Don't insult Drew to me.
00:38:56 Speaker_04
I don't think that's an insult. In any case... We are... All over the map right now.
00:38:59 Speaker_11
Starbucks, you need to make better coffee. There's cheaper, better coffee everywhere else. It costs too much for the shitty coffee you serve. And I can get a better thing from a lovely little store that's charming. That's my feeling.
00:39:10 Speaker_04
I like Le Cologne. What are your favorites?
00:39:12 Speaker_11
This interesting one is Blank Street around you. It started small and now it's going all over the place. And their coffee is quite good. But I usually go to individual coffee shops because they're the same price and it's a small business.
00:39:25 Speaker_11
I like that better. I tend to go to those.
00:39:27 Speaker_04
I'm sorry. Castle Christmas, The Stand-In, Miss You Already, Blended, Big Miracle. going the distance, everyone's fine, whip it. Should I continue here? Lucky you.
00:39:38 Speaker_11
I like Dunkin' Donuts. I'll tell you, I like Dunkin' Donuts. They make great coffee.
00:39:42 Speaker_04
These are Drew Barrymore movies that I'm reading.
00:39:44 Speaker_11
Listen, all right, we're done with that. Stop insulting her.
00:39:46 Speaker_04
Duplex. They had duplex. She does seem nice. I'll give her that.
00:39:51 Speaker_11
But I like Dunkin' Donuts. I would say that's the finest coffee in the land for a low price, or a much lower price. And they have donuts.
00:39:58 Speaker_04
Oh, she was in Altered States. She must have been like two years old.
00:40:01 Speaker_11
Okay. Yes. Remember she played, she was like the Firestarter. Wasn't she in Firestarter?
00:40:07 Speaker_04
Yeah. As a little kid. Also in E.T. She was great in E.T.
00:40:11 Speaker_11
Come on. More entertainment value per pound.
00:40:14 Speaker_04
She was in that hit Never Been Kissed.
00:40:16 Speaker_11
Never Been Kissed was really good.
00:40:17 Speaker_04
But what about the movie Home Fries? She was in that. She's been in a lot of movies.
00:40:21 Speaker_11
I'm just talking about pure fun entertainment. Drew Berman has delivered. I'm sorry, she's delivered for us. She has?
00:40:27 Speaker_04
Yeah, people like her TV show.
00:40:29 Speaker_11
I'm just saying, she's delivered. And a lot of people haven't delivered pound for pound. I'm sorry, they just haven't.
00:40:34 Speaker_04
Oh, you win.
00:40:35 Speaker_11
OK, thank you. Thank you. Sorry, Drew.
00:40:37 Speaker_04
I want to see her most recent film for Netflix, A Castle for Christmas. Is that like right up there with We Bought a Zoo?
00:40:44 Speaker_11
You know what? Listen to me. Pound for pound. I'm not going to get you near him when we go out. We're not going to let him near you. Anyway, I've introduced you to Megan Rapinoe and all these lovely, amazing, pound for pound, great values.
00:40:58 Speaker_04
No, I'm not into the straight women. I'm into the lesbians now.
00:41:01 Speaker_11
I know, but great value. That's my new thing. If you're pound for pound, you're great. The value you add is how I do it.
00:41:07 Speaker_04
It's based on weight?
00:41:08 Speaker_11
No, just it's an expression, pound for pound. Let's go on a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about Kamala Harris's not-so-secret supporters and donors and a listener mail question about teaching kids how to negotiate.
00:41:19 Speaker_11
Oh, Scott, you'll like that one.
00:41:26 Speaker_04
Support for the show comes from HubSpot. Picture this, you're at a party and someone asks you what you do as a marketer. How do you even begin to describe it?
00:41:35 Speaker_04
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00:42:04 Speaker_04
And most importantly, you'll have a way easier time describing what you do at parties. Visit HubSpot.com slash marketers to learn more.
00:42:18 Speaker_11
Support for this show comes from the new season of Crucible Moments, a podcast from Sequoia Capital. Last season, Crucible Moments presented a firsthand look inside the stories that shape some of the most significant companies of our time.
00:42:30 Speaker_11
Their founders shared their unvarnished histories, what it's like to lead through uncertainty and overcome challenges in pursuit of your vision. They also dove deep into how their moments of turmoil lead to pivotal inflection points.
00:42:42 Speaker_11
This season, Crucible Moments is back with new stories and resonant lessons told directly from the founders themselves.
00:42:48 Speaker_11
Hear how YouTube went from a failed dating site to one of the biggest platforms in the world, how losing $35 million led the founder of ServiceNow to start his own company, and how a Reddit founder returned to the company to save the site from itself.
00:43:01 Speaker_11
Hosted by Rolof Botta of Sequoia, Crucible Moments provides a behind-the-scenes look at some of the most tumultuous defining milestones in tech history. Tune in to a new season of Crucible Moments now.
00:43:12 Speaker_11
You can catch up on season one at cruciblemoments.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:43:22 Speaker_04
Support for Pivot comes from Anthropic. If your company could tap into a powerful source of knowledge, analysis, and creative problem solving, imagine what you could achieve. Innovative ideas could be realized faster than ever.
00:43:34 Speaker_04
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00:43:42 Speaker_04
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00:43:57 Speaker_04
I think it's fantastic. Claude is next-generation AI assistant built to help you work more efficiently, without sacrificing safety or reliability.
00:44:06 Speaker_04
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Plus, the Anthropic Leadership Team was founded in AI research and built Cloud with an emphasis on safety. To learn more, visit anthropic.com slash cloud. That's anthropic.com slash cloud.
00:44:50 Speaker_11
Scott, we're back with our second big story as the podcast election continues. Both presidential candidates have big interviews coming up this week.
00:44:56 Speaker_11
Former President Donald Trump will be talking to Joe Rogan on Friday as part of a push to win over young male voters. Vice President Kamala Harris, who should go under Joe Rogan, is headed to Houston, where she'll be sitting down with Brene Brown.
00:45:07 Speaker_11
And this just in, The Washington Post is reporting that Beyonce is expected to appear with Harris in Houston on Friday. That's where Beyonce's from. These podcast interviews generate buzz.
00:45:15 Speaker_04
Is Diddy having a party? Is Diddy, yeah. I'm sorry.
00:45:19 Speaker_11
Do they matter? We think they do. You've called it the year of the podcast. The USA Today poll found that fewer than 30% of respondents have listened to either candidate on popular podcasts.
00:45:28 Speaker_11
But those who listen say they're more likely to vote for Trump after those appearances than Harris. That said, there was a really interesting CNN group of
00:45:36 Speaker_11
really smart voters for the first time, undecided voters, I thought they were very thoughtful, who were talking about her appearance on CNN. I think it does make an impact, maybe in a small way. What do you think of these appearances?
00:45:49 Speaker_11
And of course, Elon Musk, really, he's jumping around and doing events.
00:45:52 Speaker_04
Look, this is exactly the right strategy. Go on huge podcasts. It's exactly the wrong execution. Trump should be with Brene Brown. He needs to soften his image. She has a very thoughtful, feminine feel to herself. She absolutely should be on Rogan.
00:46:08 Speaker_04
She needs to appeal to young men. So they're both going, they're both playing defense. They're both going to where they're already loved. I just, this is genius. They just got the podcast mixed up.
00:46:22 Speaker_11
Oh, I like that idea. That's interesting. That's an interesting, you're right. You're right in a lot of ways. She definitely should go on Rogan. No question. She'd have gone on first.
00:46:30 Speaker_11
Anyway, another thing that's getting a lot of traction, actually, a lot of polls are showing this. Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, spoke to the New York Times this week warning
00:46:38 Speaker_11
that Trump met the definition of a fascist, would rule like a dictator, and no conception of law. He was his longest chief of staff. Kelly also told The Times, The Atlantic, that Trump had spoken positively of Hitler several times.
00:46:49 Speaker_11
And General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was quoted in Bob Boyer's new book, calling Trump a fascist to the core. Kamala Harris was asked about this by Anderson Cooper at CNN's town hall on Wednesday night.
00:46:59 Speaker_11
She hasn't really leaned into this as much, and now she is. Let's listen.
00:47:03 Speaker_01
You've quoted General Milley calling Donald Trump a fascist. You yourself have not used that word to describe him. Let me ask you tonight, do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?
00:47:12 Speaker_08
Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And I also believe that the people who know him best on this subject should be trusted.
00:47:21 Speaker_11
We've known about these dictator estimations for a while, but again, do you think his supporters care? I don't think they do.
00:47:26 Speaker_11
Harris is also set to give her campaign's closing argument next week at the Ellipse in D.C., the site of Donald Trump's speech on January 6th, 2021. I thought that was a pretty fantastic idea. So what do you think of these, whether it matters or not?
00:47:40 Speaker_11
This seems to be sinking in a little bit more, this Hitler stuff. And by the way, in a personal note, Threads kicked off all these people, including my wife, Amanda, for saying they don't like Hitler.
00:47:49 Speaker_11
It was crazy, and then they fixed it really quickly, said it was a mistake and an error. But Amanda just said, Hitler's not a good guy, and she got kicked off.
00:47:59 Speaker_04
Yeah, but the algorithm picked up Hitler and kicked her off.
00:48:01 Speaker_11
I get it, but what a fuck-up that was. Anyway, what do you think about this, these topics?
00:48:07 Speaker_04
Well, I can't imagine any organization that's getting more advice than the Trump or the Harris campaigns right now. I don't like the name-calling. I think the go-to on stuff like this is, one,
00:48:24 Speaker_04
Well, okay, I'm not going to get into name-calling, but basically fascism is the following. The definition of fascism really has three supporting pillars. One, extreme nationalism. Two, the demonization of immigrants.
00:48:36 Speaker_04
And three, a refusal to object to violence against your enemies. And let's go through all three of those. And she could have provided examples of how he demonizes immigrants, how this isolationism and this notion that
00:48:52 Speaker_04
we are somehow, you know, this radical nationalism verging on bigotry.
00:48:56 Speaker_04
And also at rallies, he refuses to condemn violence, whether it's against our... I just think they could have done better, rather than getting... Because I think most people, quite frankly, if you ask them to define what a fascist is, I don't think they could.
00:49:12 Speaker_04
So I think it was a missed opportunity. I don't think they should engage in name-calling. And generally speaking, I think the biggest mistake the Harris campaign is making right now is let surrogates in the media column names.
00:49:27 Speaker_04
What she needs to do is say, I am proposing, I have the one policy recommendation that I will enact within 100 days that will have more impact on your life than anything we're talking about here. And that is I'm going to
00:49:40 Speaker_04
expand Medicare coverage such that your parent can die at home and Your parent your aging parent can have some dignity and I figured out a way such that in one of the most sensitive upsetting parts of the life of the sandwich generation an increasing population of older people is
00:49:57 Speaker_04
such that your mom or your father, we're both going through this. So many people are affected by this. She needs to foot to a real policies that affect people.
00:50:07 Speaker_04
Because there are millions of people struggling with this that might go, you know, that really is going to tangibly make my life better. But instead, like, do you think he's a fascist? I mean, okay.
00:50:19 Speaker_11
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Here's the thing. These voters, I was really intrigued by. I usually hate these panels of voters, but incredibly thoughtful people. I was sort of amazed that they were like, look, we don't like the name calling.
00:50:32 Speaker_11
I got to know what they're going to do. I know Donald Trump's a jerk. I don't want to vote for him. But what is she going to do? It was really interesting. Each one of these people. And they all were like, I like her. I like her.
00:50:43 Speaker_11
I think she's very competent. And she made the smart move of talking to a lot of people afterwards, right? And the minute they meet her, they like her, right? It was just interesting. And I thought they were like, I'd like to not, I know he's a fascist.
00:50:58 Speaker_11
Thank you. Like, I got that. But what is, the policies were very important to voters more than, I think politicians speak down to the voters and try to appeal to the least among us versus the best among us who are more motivated.
00:51:14 Speaker_11
Anyway, so this is interesting. Speaking of this, a number of major donors have made their political affiliations clear, but several big names are supporting Harris and keeping quiet about it.
00:51:24 Speaker_11
Jamie Dimon has privately told Associates, which means he wanted it to get out, honestly, that he's backing Harris. Come on. He privately told him, and oops, it got out. Jamie Dimon, stop it. You're making me exhausted.
00:51:35 Speaker_11
Despite publicly praising Trump, he's trying to sort of, you know, keep his, either side wins, I win. That's Jamie Dimon to a T. And Bill Gates has donated $50 million to a nonprofit supporting Harris' run, according to New York Times.
00:51:49 Speaker_11
When I talked to Bill earlier this month, he wouldn't say directly who he was voting for, but he did give a hint, of course. Let's listen. It's pretty tense right now. It's still, and it's been tense for a couple of years out of COVID.
00:51:58 Speaker_11
We're still sort of not recovered from that. And a lot of people aren't. How do you, what is your mood right now?
00:52:07 Speaker_13
Well, you know, ask me on November 6th whether climate change is real or not. So I'm guessing who you're voting for, but I you can definitely guess what where my energy is going.
00:52:25 Speaker_11
Yeah, he's he's giving money. He absolutely is a supporter. Why? Why are they doing this? It's so weird. Like it's so it's so dumb.
00:52:35 Speaker_04
When you say doing this, what do you mean? What's this?
00:52:36 Speaker_11
Pretend they're like saying I'm for her, but not I can't say it publicly. What is that?
00:52:42 Speaker_04
To me, that's quintessential Bill Gates. When you start when you become a partisan, it just turns people off. And I'm not sure that everybody needs to know your political views at the same time. You don't need to hide them. And that's what he's doing.
00:52:54 Speaker_04
I think he's saying, look, I'm If you're really interested, you can figure out who I'm voting for, but I'm not going to get out there and be overtly political. I think that's probably a pretty good stance for someone with as big a profile.
00:53:06 Speaker_04
I think Bill Gates is a gift. I think he's a great model for billionaires. He's certainly shifted. Yeah, he's matured.
00:53:14 Speaker_11
He really has shifted in a very positive way.
00:53:16 Speaker_04
Instead of trying to put a dildo on Mars, he's like, how do I build a toilet to stop dysentery and infection in poor markets? I mean, he's doing real work. I would agree. He's decided, here's an idea.
00:53:31 Speaker_04
rather than trying to colonize Mars, I'm going to try and make this place a little bit more fucking inhabitable or habitable.
00:53:38 Speaker_11
Or instead of getting on stage and jumping up and down like a dipshit, which is what Ted Kahls called Elon Musk, which made me laugh. Kind of the perfect word for him. He doesn't. You're right. He's just putting the money to it.
00:53:49 Speaker_04
I like Bill Gates.
00:53:50 Speaker_11
I would agree. I don't really care if Jamie Dime... Jamie Dime did just say he was for Harris. It doesn't matter how he does it. It doesn't matter. Who cares?
00:53:57 Speaker_04
Yeah, and Jamie, I hope Jamie gets a role in either administration. He's a really thoughtful guy. He's a great manager. I think he's a really good leader. He's good-looking, which I think is important. Of course, you like that.
00:54:08 Speaker_11
His hair is spectacular.
00:54:10 Speaker_04
Very handsome guy. He's a very handsome guy.
00:54:12 Speaker_11
That's how we decide, Treasury Secretary.
00:54:14 Speaker_04
He's a great leader. He's built an unbelievable company.
00:54:17 Speaker_11
He has, that's for sure. And he tells people about it, too. And he will tell you that and have his surrogates tell you that.
00:54:23 Speaker_04
Well, like we don't? Because we're so bashful about our success?
00:54:26 Speaker_11
It's true, but we're more explicit and love me.
00:54:29 Speaker_04
I heard you on a podcast. Let me see.
00:54:32 Speaker_11
Speaking of secretive donors, a network of GOP donors and conservative billionaires have been fueling the Stop the Steal effort, according to the Wall Street Journal. What a surprise.
00:54:39 Speaker_11
These donors have given more than $140 million to nearly 50 loosely connected groups working for so-called election integrity. By the way, every time you see Elaine, U-L-I-N-E on a box, it's them. Your box is funding. election, stop the steal stuff.
00:54:55 Speaker_11
Tactics include trying to slow down the vote count, burying officials and paperwork, electing candidates at the state and local levels to support this effort. Not even slightly surprised from these people. Of course, they're doing it.
00:55:06 Speaker_11
Speaking of secretive.
00:55:07 Speaker_04
Yeah, I don't, no comment. What you said is right. I have nothing to add.
00:55:12 Speaker_11
Don't use Elaine boxes. That's my thing. Okay, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question. The question comes in via voicemail. Let's listen.
00:55:26 Speaker_12
Hi, Scott. Hi, Cara. This is Ken from Chicago. I recently had a friend comment that haggling is a sign that the free market isn't rational. And I fired back that haggling, in fact, plays an extremely important part by providing feedback to the seller.
00:55:43 Speaker_12
It defines what is valued or what's overpriced. Customers' feedback about prices or features is a goldmine. But haggling is often looked down on in Western culture, in my opinion.
00:55:55 Speaker_12
My question is, should I or how can I teach my kids how to effectively haggle and negotiate outside of sending them into a car dealership? Thanks. Bye-bye.
00:56:07 Speaker_11
I love the word haggle. I don't use it enough. Haggling, we haggle all the time, don't we? We're hagglers.
00:56:15 Speaker_04
No, we don't really haggle, we bicker, we don't really haggle.
00:56:17 Speaker_11
Bicker, I like to, let's haggle more, okay?
00:56:20 Speaker_04
All right.
00:56:20 Speaker_11
And we'll keep our relationship fresh and exciting. This is your area of expertise. You're a big, good, I often, just so you know, Scott and I are in business together and I let him do the haggling, as they say.
00:56:32 Speaker_11
I think he's really good at it and I'm way too explicit. So Scott, take this one.
00:56:37 Speaker_04
Well, I mean, there's semantics around negotiating. I wouldn't call it haggling. I'd call it negotiating. And quite frankly, your kids, if they have a phone or they have allowance, they're going to start figuring out how to negotiate with you.
00:56:51 Speaker_04
And I think negotiating with your parents and push and pull and learning. My son's very emotionally manipulative. He'll say, I want to go to Putschak with my friends and I thought you could meet me there because it'd be some great hang time.
00:57:07 Speaker_04
And he knows that I want nothing more than to hang with my kids, so he throws in that he wants to go to Putschak. He's already learning how to negotiate, right?
00:57:16 Speaker_04
Haggling usually is more a narrow part of it, where you're talking about haggling with, usually in a commercial setting, someone at a bazaar, or you're saying, I'll pay you 10 bucks for this item. Versus 12. Versus 12, and you haggle back and forth.
00:57:32 Speaker_04
I think that's actually an interesting process. I actually tacked, my kids, we were at a market once, and I gave them each some money and said, go see, I want both of you. They were all selling the same thing. And they both wanted the same thing.
00:57:45 Speaker_04
I'm like, you go to, I want to see who can find this item for the least. And they said, and I said, and by the way, you can offer them less. You can say, how would you take seven bucks for it? And it's embarrassing and it's hard.
00:57:56 Speaker_04
It's also something that I think women aren't as good at as men. And men are trained to be more aggressive. They're more risk aggressive. So men are more willing to be, it's embarrassing to haggle. Well, I'll give you nine bucks.
00:58:09 Speaker_04
It's much cooler to just pay list. It's easier. No one gets offended. There's no haggling. The ability to haggle, the ability to say, no, I want 14%, not 9% raise is really important.
00:58:22 Speaker_04
And going more broadly just to negotiating, and it took me 40 years to figure this out, There's only really two things you need to remember about negotiating. And the first is don't make a win or lose.
00:58:36 Speaker_04
Make it, you know, how do we figure this out together? I would really like to make this work. I'd really like to work with you. I think this would be good for both of us.
00:58:44 Speaker_04
And then the most important thing is you have to always show a credible willingness to walk away.
00:58:48 Speaker_04
And that is, I was in a negotiation this morning with something we're involved in, and I said, they kind of threw up some objections, and I said, well, first off, there just may not be a fit here, but we'll still figure out ways to work together.
00:59:00 Speaker_04
But unless they believe there's a chance you might walk away and that you're willing to, you're never gonna get the best deal. But don't make it win-lose, don't make it emotional. Constantly talk about how you would like to make this happen.
00:59:17 Speaker_04
The other sort of Jedi mind trick that I learned recently that I think is really important in negotiation is when someone puts forward an objection, to repeat back that you hear their concern.
00:59:30 Speaker_04
Oh, you're worried that, or you believe that we should do this because of X. Am I hearing you correctly? And supposedly that does something to people's brain where when they feel heard, they don't, they're more inclined to meet you halfway.
00:59:47 Speaker_04
So, but I think haggling and negotiation is incredibly important for young people to learn. Unfortunately, I think men are better at it and it suppresses women's wages in certain professional context.
00:59:58 Speaker_11
I have to say, from being a boss, I watched it. I watched an incompetent person ask for more and a woman who deserved more ask for less somehow. It was really interesting. There's an overall thing, but in general, you're right.
01:00:11 Speaker_11
Having managed people, especially incredibly incompetent men, tend to really value themselves rather high. That was fascinating to me. I was always like, I actually want to fire you and you're asking for more money, interesting.
01:00:25 Speaker_11
Interesting gambit, which was always interesting. I guess the word haggling is not the right word. You're right. I'm very explicit. No, I'll have this. And then they're like, what about this? I'm like, no, this is what I want.
01:00:36 Speaker_11
I always go in knowing what I want. And so I don't usually back down from that. I'm like, well, then I'll go. And I actually mean it. And I think when you do that, you have to mean what you say and say what you mean.
01:00:47 Speaker_11
I find that, I find being explicit rather
01:00:52 Speaker_04
Also, the best way to negotiate is to have another offer. Every three to five years at NYU, which I love, I would return a call from, you know, a Cornell or a Columbia, and I'd say, sure, I'm happy to speak to anybody.
01:01:07 Speaker_04
And I'd say, can you give me just an indicative sense of what the terms would look like? And then I go to my dean and I say, this is my market worth. I don't want to leave. I want to stay here. I just want you to match it. You don't even need to beat it.
01:01:18 Speaker_04
Nothing helps a negotiation like multiple bidders.
01:01:21 Speaker_04
And basically, the only reason you hire an agent or an investment banker is such that they can credibly lie and give the illusion there are multiple bidders all trying to rent your time or buy your company. That is basically what they do.
01:01:36 Speaker_04
Because the illusion of scarcity, the only way you get really what you either deserve or the maximum is people start credibly going, well, what would we have paid Cara?
01:01:46 Speaker_04
Or what would we have paid for this company the day after we lose it to someone else? Let's pretend there's a very real possibility we're going to lose this person or this deal. that gets people to what they're actually willing to pay.
01:02:01 Speaker_04
So I hate to say it, but without being threatening, without being angry, just always demonstrate a credible willingness to leave or not do the deal. Without being an asshole. Without, I'm quitting or I'm going to Fox or whatever.
01:02:14 Speaker_04
No, just, okay, maybe there isn't a fit here. Just say that up front. And it's not going to be the end of the world for both of us.
01:02:22 Speaker_11
Can I ask you a last question? Sure. What was your son's one on that haggling thing you made them do?
01:02:27 Speaker_04
I don't even remember. I think it was the younger one's much craftier. The younger one is much more.
01:02:33 Speaker_11
Yeah.
01:02:34 Speaker_04
He's much more aggressive.
01:02:35 Speaker_11
Yeah, Alex wins all those things because Louis is so nice. He's like, okay, whatever.
01:02:39 Speaker_04
Louie's a socialist. Louie's like, hey man, you could probably use this more than me. I'll give you 12 bucks even though he asked for 10. I see Louie being much more.
01:02:47 Speaker_11
Yes, that's exactly what Louie is. Alex is like, no. He's always, I love that. I love that Alex. He's always like the angles. He's got the angles. He's always looking at the, he's such a math person. And Claire is quite good at it.
01:02:59 Speaker_11
And when I go, would you like this? She goes, how about two?
01:03:02 Speaker_04
Oh, and another thing, I mean, I'm now saying, negotiating is simple, I'm remembering all these things. Something I didn't learn until I got a lot older, it's okay to leave a little bit on the table. It's okay to say, okay, this is important to you.
01:03:16 Speaker_04
You want them to feel like, at least on a couple dimensions of the deal, that they won. And to just say, okay, yeah, that's fine. I wanted this, but this seems important to you. Or not only that, it's okay to leave a little bit of cabbage on the table.
01:03:32 Speaker_04
It's okay. That's fine.
01:03:33 Speaker_11
I think that's the fatal flaw of Donald Trump. Ultimately, he doesn't do that. He wants to fuck you in a way that ultimately adds up eventually. Maybe not in this lifetime. Anyway, for the rest of you listeners, it's time for this week's Threads poll.
01:03:49 Speaker_11
The question this week is, who would make a better Halloween costume, Kara or Scott? Oh, obviously Scott. Bonus points if you send us your pictures dressed up as one of us. We get a lot of that, that's interesting.
01:04:00 Speaker_11
Or someone interesting that we'll find interesting. Go to our Threads account, at pivotpodcastofficial, to vote.
01:04:05 Speaker_04
What's your Halloween costume this year?
01:04:07 Speaker_11
I'm going as Kara Swisher again, as I do every year. It's really great. You know, I've given up. I've given up. Anyway, if you've got a question of your own you would like answered, send it our way.
01:04:16 Speaker_11
Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for predictions. Support for Pivot comes from Netflix.
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01:07:37 Speaker_11
OK, Scott, let's hear a prediction besides the fact that you will have an epic Halloween costume like you did last year where you went as Deadpool.
01:07:45 Speaker_04
Yeah, but you didn't ask me. You keep forgetting when I ask you questions, I insist I'm not interested in you. I just want you to ask me.
01:07:51 Speaker_11
Oh, that's I forgot. You know what? I just thought of that as I was going into the commercial break.
01:07:57 Speaker_04
Last year, I went as Deadpool after the fire. I had a makeup artist do my skirt. I looked amazing.
01:08:02 Speaker_11
You did.
01:08:03 Speaker_04
This year, I'm going, it's not, the costume isn't as good, but it's kind of funny. I'm going as Richard Simmons, which I'm really excited about.
01:08:08 Speaker_11
Oh, wow. I mean, shorty shorts?
01:08:10 Speaker_04
I have these gold, very short dolphin shorts. Oh, wow. But here's the problem.
01:08:16 Speaker_11
I think that's the problem, seeing you in shorty shorts, but go ahead.
01:08:19 Speaker_04
That's where I would really kick in as a woman. I'd have amazing legs if I were a woman. Anyways, God, can you imagine what beautiful children I'd have with that center from the Minnesota Lynx? She and I would have spectacular children.
01:08:34 Speaker_04
Anyways, I found out Tom Selleck in the first season of Magnum PI was the exact same height and weight as me. He was 6'2, 190, but I look much different in shorts than him, and I just can't figure it out. I just can't figure it out.
01:08:50 Speaker_04
Are you wearing the wig? You're wearing the wig. Oh, come on. Come on. Halloween, how could you have invented a better holiday for me? I know. I get to wear a wig and women dress up as sluts. Yeah.
01:09:02 Speaker_11
Oh, my God. Let's have Halloween every month. I know. You love a costume. You really go all out. I do not. I do not. I don't like it at all. I don't like it at all.
01:09:11 Speaker_02
I love Halloween. Oh, I love it.
01:09:15 Speaker_04
Absolutely. And by the way, just do me a favor, because you're going into this yourself, when people ask you what you're supposed to be, look at them and begin to cry and say, I was supposed to be a lot of things. That's good.
01:09:28 Speaker_11
That is good.
01:09:29 Speaker_04
I love it. Oh, thank you.
01:09:30 Speaker_11
I finally have an answer. All right, let's hear a prediction now.
01:09:34 Speaker_04
Okay, so look, I don't think this is going to come as a shocker to anybody, but I am officially endorsing Harris walls for president and vice president. And my prediction is that a Harris administration, which would be much better for young men.
01:09:49 Speaker_04
And I believe that young men are some of the last available swing voters because they don't traditionally vote. When they get excited, they vote. They almost always, or they disproportionately vote at least until recently for Democrats.
01:10:02 Speaker_04
So I believe the new kind of the swing voters are young men. And this is why I think young men would be better served. voting for Vice President Harris, and that I encourage them to do so.
01:10:12 Speaker_04
And that is, I think everybody needs a code, whether it's from your religion, whether it's from the armed services, whether it's from your company.
01:10:20 Speaker_04
Everybody needs kind of an anchor to hold on to and guide the millions of decisions they have to make in a complicated world.
01:10:26 Speaker_04
And I increasingly believe that young men can call on, or what I'm hoping they can develop as a new code, is a modern form of masculinity. And those three things are the following, being a provider, a protector, and a procurator.
01:10:41 Speaker_04
And I want to go through each of these and why I believe the Harris administration and policies would enable men to foot to those.
01:10:47 Speaker_11
I like this. By the way, the Washington Post has yet to make one. Jeff Bezos, get off your ass and make one. But go ahead. I love that you're doing it, Scott.
01:10:54 Speaker_04
There you go. Okay, so provider. I think a decent place for any man to start is to take economic responsibility for his household.
01:11:02 Speaker_04
Now, that doesn't mean that you're going to get in the way of your wife or your partner who might be better at that money thing.
01:11:09 Speaker_04
partner was at Goldman Sachs and making more money than me, I tried to pick up the slack at home and not be threatened by it. And that is also taking economic responsibility.
01:11:17 Speaker_04
But a good starting point is that recognizing three in four women see economic viability is key to a maid. It's only one in four men about women.
01:11:25 Speaker_04
Unfortunately, I'm not talking about the way the world should be, but the way it is, men are disproportionately evaluated on their economic viability. You need to be a provider.
01:11:34 Speaker_04
And under the Harris administration, you're talking about an economic strategy that everyone from Goldman Sachs to basically every living Nobel Prize winner economics is going to say a winner is going to result in greater growth.
01:11:47 Speaker_04
And with the Trump administration as a young man, you are talking about what will effectively be the greatest tax increase in history on you, and it's the following.
01:11:55 Speaker_04
It'll be a deficit that will be triple than what would be under the Harris administration. Why is the deficit the biggest tax in history on you? Because Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway will not be alive to pay back that deficit.
01:12:06 Speaker_04
You will have to pay it back. So what young people haven't connected the dots on is that deficit spending is nothing but a tax on them, such that I can have champagne and cocaine now. You're going to have to pay it back. Not me.
01:12:17 Speaker_04
There are a variety of different economic plans, whether it's a housing credit, whether it's loans for small businesses that are meant to put more money in the pockets of young people, specifically young men, and enable you to be a better provider, protector.
01:12:32 Speaker_04
Your default setting as a man should be one of protection. You don't need to understand the nuance around illegal or undocumented workers, but when you see them being demonized, your default setting should be to move to protection.
01:12:44 Speaker_04
You don't need to understand or agree with the trans community, but when you see them being demonized, your default should be as a protector. Real men break up, fight some bars. They don't start them. Real men protect their country.
01:12:56 Speaker_04
They don't shitpost it. Harrison Walls have a much greater default setting around protection, and I especially think Vice President Walls presents a wonderful image as a man being a protector, and that is, and I love this story,
01:13:11 Speaker_04
of him hearing about the LGBT community at his high school feeling bullied and him enacting the football team to come to their aid. That is exactly what it means to be a man, to be a protector.
01:13:22 Speaker_04
And then finally, procreator, the most rewarding thing in life, and I'm not saying you have to do this to be happy, but the most rewarding thing I know in your life, Cara, and in my life, has been raising children with a competent, loving partner.
01:13:33 Speaker_04
And I did not, when I saw my partner or the mother of my children at the Raleigh Hotel at the pool, I was not thinking that she'd be great at buying distressed properties and fixing them up, or she'd be a good person to save for a 401k.
01:13:45 Speaker_04
I had one thought, and that is I would really, really like to have sex with this person.
01:13:49 Speaker_04
And wanting to have sex with women and being successful at it and figuring out the nuance and the skills and the strength and the humor and showering and enduring the rejection and being funny and being kind such that you can have sex with women,
01:14:01 Speaker_04
is a wonderful thing, and it's something you should be proud of. And your ability, your ability to be attractive to women will be easier under a Harris administration.
01:14:10 Speaker_04
And if I did a survey around would young men like to have more or less sex, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of them would say, I would like to have more sex.
01:14:19 Speaker_04
And if you wanna have more sex, if you wanna have more sex, then we absolutely need to cauterize, reject, and turn around this ridiculous notion that women are gonna have their bodily autonomy taken.
01:14:31 Speaker_04
Because if you wanna have random sex, and let's be clear, the majority of relationships involve at some point, maybe a little bit of alcohol and a little bit of random sex. If the woman is thinking about random sex and then says, you know what?
01:14:43 Speaker_04
I might be in an emergency room parking lot, unable to terminate a pregnancy, even if I have sepsis because the doctor might go to jail. If I have to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, both you and her are gonna be economically disabled.
01:14:57 Speaker_04
The fastest way to have less sex is to let more people get on the Supreme Court and to take away a woman's bodily autonomy. So guys, you want to get laid more? Make sure women have bodily autonomy. Let's review your ability to be a provider.
01:15:11 Speaker_04
I'm very serious about this shit. I think sex is a wonderful thing. And the notion of kids, young people are having less sex. It is terrible.
01:15:20 Speaker_04
And it is a wonderful thing, and the notion that you and your partner have to be much more thoughtful and scared of actually having sex is terrible for everybody.
01:15:31 Speaker_04
One, your ability to be a provider, economic policies that make it easier for you to be economically responsible for your household. Two, a default setting around being
01:15:40 Speaker_04
a provider and through your ability to form a family at your pace with economic responsibility through bodily autonomy. All of these add up to Vice President Harris being nominated and elected for our president. So if you are a young man,
01:15:56 Speaker_04
I would encourage you to lean into your code around masculinity, and that code leads to one place, and that is a Harris administration.
01:16:03 Speaker_11
Wow. I have not heard that one. If you want to have sex, vote Harris. I like it. That's what we're saying. Correct?
01:16:11 Speaker_02
There you go.
01:16:11 Speaker_11
If I had to boil it down. All right, that's an interesting and novel thing. I just like her. That's why I'm voting for her. So I just like her. I like him.
01:16:21 Speaker_11
And I'm so fucking sick of the way these tech, the toxic tech pros, which are affiliated with Trump. I hate this toxicity has to end. That's my thing. So that's just it. I like if you want to have sex, vote Harris.
01:16:35 Speaker_11
I think it's a compelling, compelling argument. And I think she should make it at the Ellipse when she is there. She said, no more insurrection, a lot more sex. Thank you, Scott Galloway.
01:16:45 Speaker_04
100 percent.
01:16:46 Speaker_11
That would be it.
01:16:46 Speaker_04
100 percent. It's a wonderful thing. Young people need to have more of it.
01:16:49 Speaker_11
I understand that. And for more, you get, I have to say, pound for pound, you give a lot of really good content, Scott Galloway, just not as much as Drew Barrymore.
01:16:57 Speaker_14
But I don't look good in shorts.
01:16:59 Speaker_11
Okay, no, but we'll see. We'll see, I'm sure, a lot of that, unfortunately, for me. For more in the Kara and Scott universe this week, which is growing, it's growing, it's expanding. We're an expanding universe.
01:17:10 Speaker_11
Scott, you talked about perseverance with the famous perseverance writer, Angela Duckworth, over at the Prof G pod.
01:17:16 Speaker_07
Let's listen to a clip of that. Where does that inner self talk? come from that says, you know, I'll show you, right?
01:17:24 Speaker_07
Because I think if there was one phrase that I have heard over and over again in interviews of the grittiest people, it's that when they describe confronting a major challenge, especially when they're doubted, right?
01:17:38 Speaker_07
And someone else tells them, like, well, you can't do this. You know, there is this rage, this, like, voice that says, I'll show you.
01:17:46 Speaker_07
And my theory is that being in one challenging situation after another is not enough to give you the voice that says, I'll show you. Somewhere there has to be support. I think I've seen it too often, you know, that people who are in
01:18:01 Speaker_07
challenging situations without support are not the ones to get up again, dust themselves off, learn something, come back stronger than they were before.
01:18:10 Speaker_11
I'll show you. That's guided everything in my life.
01:18:13 Speaker_07
I'll show you.
01:18:14 Speaker_11
I do. I have to say, I love her. I love Angela Duckworth. She wrote Grit, obviously. But I'll show you has been a big fucking, really? Uh-huh, okay, okay, okay. That's what I do. I like it.
01:18:27 Speaker_06
There you go.
01:18:27 Speaker_11
Yeah, we're both gritty, I think, in a lot of ways. Okay, Scott, that's the show. We'll be back on Tuesday with more Pivot and obviously more news. We are bearing down on the election. It'll be a week from Tuesday.
01:18:39 Speaker_11
Incredible, incredible when we come back. Anyway, please read us out.
01:18:47 Speaker_04
Ernie and Jatot engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Brose, Miss Saveria, and Dan Shulan. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
01:18:56 Speaker_04
Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. What is a good default code?
01:19:08 Speaker_04
Protector, provider, procreator.