Trump's Movie Tariffs, Buffett's Retirement, and Elon's New City

Transcript

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odo.

Speaker 2 Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?

Speaker 1 Introducing Odo.

Speaker 5 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 6 It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

Speaker 8 CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 5 And the best part?

Speaker 11 Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 12 That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.

Speaker 14 So why not you?

Speaker 17 Try Odo for free at odo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 18 Support for this show comes from Upwork. If you're overextended and understaffed, Upwork Business Plus helps you bring in top quality freelancers fast.

Speaker 18 You can get instant access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork in marketing, design, AI, and more, ready to jump in and take work off your plate.

Speaker 18 Upwork Business Plus sources vets and shortlists proven experts so you can stop doing it all and delegate with confidence.

Speaker 18 Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you get $500 in credit. Go to upwork.com slash save now and claim the offer before December 31st, 2025.

Speaker 18 Again, that's upwork.com slash S-A-V-E, scale smarter with top talent and $500 in credit. Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 18 Support for this show comes from Upwork. If you're overextended and understaffed, Upwork Business Plus helps you bring in top-quality freelancers fast.

Speaker 18 You can get instant access to the top 1% of talent on Upwork in marketing, design, AI, and more, ready to jump in and take work off your plate.

Speaker 18 Upwork Business Plus sources vets and shortlists proven experts so you can stop doing it all and delegate with confidence.

Speaker 18 Right now, when you spend $1,000 on Upwork Business Plus, you get $500 in credit. Go to upwork.com/slash save now and claim the offer before December 31st, 2025.

Speaker 18 Again, that's upwork.com slash S-A-V-E, scale smarter with top talent and $500 in credit. Terms and conditions apply.

Speaker 20 PBS libraries,

Speaker 22 I mean, what's next?

Speaker 24 You're going like to some interpretive dance with Alan Alda?

Speaker 27 You literally could not be more woke.

Speaker 28 Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
I'm Kara Swisher.

Speaker 30 And I'm Scott Galloway.

Speaker 28 So I've just returned from my grand tour of California.

Speaker 26 Oh, you're back already?

Speaker 28 I'm back. I took a red eye last night just to get home for you so I could be in the studio and look really nice.

Speaker 31 You're child.

Speaker 32 I like too much. That worries me.

Speaker 26 And you received a Library Laureate Award and you were on

Speaker 36 Bill Maher.

Speaker 37 Which do you want to talk about first?

Speaker 28 Oh, so many things. I saw Robert Reich.

Speaker 28 I did something for KQED for public media, which was, I was interviewed by PBS people. And right in the middle of my interview, Trump put out his executive order trying to cut funding for PBS and NPR.

Speaker 28 That was interesting.

Speaker 28 I then flew to Los Angeles and did Bill Maher, which was really fun, which was, which was interesting. And

Speaker 28 I gave you a shout-out. Did you hear me give you a shout-out?

Speaker 38 No, but a bunch of people texted me that you name-checked me.

Speaker 21 And I watched the episode.

Speaker 40 I thought you were really good.

Speaker 42 I also, I thought Speaker McCarthy was quite good. And I thought Bill did a really good job of

Speaker 28 except for the woke woman thing at the end.

Speaker 28 But let's listen to me.

Speaker 28 No, I didn't want to talk about it. I made a face and everybody noticed.

Speaker 28 It was stupid. He keeps going on and on about this woman on Love is Blind.
He's obsessed with her because she rejected the man. He just didn't like him.
So let's listen to me calling you out.

Speaker 28 It's the idea that you're the madman theory, this idea that he's playing, I know, the 4D chess thing. I mean, as Scott Galloway on Mark Podcast said, it's like, he's not playing 4D chess.

Speaker 28 He's eating the chess pieces.

Speaker 28 Which is a good joke. I have to attribute it to Skype.

Speaker 18 But there's no point in being chaotic because businesses can't plan. They don't know what to do next.

Speaker 28 Even Kevin McCarthy did enjoy that one, eating the chess pieces.

Speaker 45 Thank you for that. I appreciate that.

Speaker 29 That was nice.

Speaker 28 No problem.

Speaker 23 He's got a good laugh. The most important thing is you look good.

Speaker 28 Thank you. I knew you said that.
That was the, like,

Speaker 28 what about what I said? What about the substance of what I said?

Speaker 16 I thought you thread the needle really well.

Speaker 46 You're able to push back, but also come across as

Speaker 42 goodwill. You're not trying to make the other person look stupid.

Speaker 32 You're just saying exactly what you think, but you're not doing it in a

Speaker 48 that's a skill.

Speaker 49 I don't have that skill.

Speaker 26 I get angry and combative.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 21 And it was good natured.

Speaker 20 I thought I was actually surprised to the upside by the speaker or speaker Emirita or Emiritus.

Speaker 34 And I thought Bill did a good job.

Speaker 42 I did not understand the Cheech and Chong episode.

Speaker 28 Cheech and Chong, although they were lovely. They're fans of Pivot, just so you know.

Speaker 28 Then they smoked afterwards, as you might imagine.

Speaker 44 It would have been quite comfortable.

Speaker 28 Yeah, out on the, you know, it's kind of fun.

Speaker 48 And they're nice guys.

Speaker 28 Lovely, lovely. There's a lot of tension between Cheech and Chang, I would say.
There's a little bit of especially with

Speaker 28 Chong? Chong. Yeah, Chang seems mad at Cheech sometimes.
Anyway,

Speaker 28 yeah, Cheech is sort of younger seeming and more like seemingly in charge. I can't tell.
It's sort of like, you know, it's like being together as a

Speaker 28 professional couple.

Speaker 28 But they were, it was good. It was really fun.
And then I went up to the San Francisco Public Library again and my theme of public stuff

Speaker 28 and

Speaker 28 got the book laureate, which was lovely. The San Francisco Library is cool, though.

Speaker 54 I don't.

Speaker 28 I'm a laureate, Scott.

Speaker 52 So, wait, insulting billionaires is now literature.

Speaker 55 What does that mean?

Speaker 28 Yes, yes, that is correct. They love me there in San Francisco for Insulting Billionaires.
Yes. In a beautiful way, in a beautiful, glorious way.

Speaker 20 PBS, libraries.

Speaker 21 I mean, what's next?

Speaker 22 You're going like to some interpretive dance with Alan Alda.

Speaker 27 You literally could not be more.

Speaker 28 I love Alan Alda. Did you see the Four Seasons? They redid the Four Seasons with

Speaker 28 Tina Faye and a whole bunch of people. And Alan Alda made a parent who was delightful.

Speaker 48 Actually, the last time I was in a library, I took my girlfriend in college to show her that my dick was in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Speaker 57 And then the librarian made me take it out.

Speaker 28 Oh, my God.

Speaker 28 Although I have to say, I haven't been in a library in a very long time.

Speaker 28 That happens to be a gorgeous library, but being in the stacks gave me the the feels you know hanging around in the stacks and sort of uh you know i don't know i just have a lot of memories of the stacks yeah i asked a librarian if she had a book about men with small penises and she said well it's not in yet and i'm like that's the one

Speaker 61 that's the one

Speaker 28 why do you have library jokes one thing i have to say a lot of people did stop me throughout california loving scott and cara i have to say that was really nice and saying we make them feel better in this very difficult time There's a lot of like angst among people and we calm their angst down.

Speaker 28 I suggested Chee Chin Chong for that, but they I tried to check out a book on suicide and they said no, they were worried I wouldn't return it.

Speaker 35 That's wrong. Oh my gosh.
That's just wrong. Oh, don't.
No, there's no good suicide library jokes.

Speaker 28 That's wrong, as usual. As usual.
Anyway, it was lovely. It was a lovely visit to California.

Speaker 36 Did you go to any cool restaurants with cool hot people in LA?

Speaker 28 No. But

Speaker 28 I stayed at the Edition Hotel briefly. Oh, what'd you think of that?

Speaker 45 I keep thinking that I might stay there.

Speaker 35 I mean, it's too young for us.

Speaker 28 Yeah. I was like, what is happening?

Speaker 43 And it has all those sharp edges.

Speaker 22 I'm worried I'm going to cut myself and bleed out on the floor.

Speaker 28 It's very sterile. And there was a lot of like

Speaker 28 succulents. Actually, there's only one succulent.

Speaker 28 They were even chintzy with the succulents. Like you can only have one succulent.

Speaker 28 I like succulents. But anyway, I like to say the word succulent.
Anyway, it was lovely. But now I'm back in DC.

Speaker 34 Congratulations on your Library Laureate Award.

Speaker 28 Library Laureate, book laureate is the technical term. And you can call me Laureate from now on.

Speaker 28 Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including Warren Buffett's surprise announcement, Elon getting his own city, and whatever the fuck the President Trump is up to. He's done a big public.

Speaker 28 He's all over the place with all kinds of wacky announcements and some of them disturbing.

Speaker 28 First of all, is the president, all presidents swear an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution? They say it right when they get sworn in.

Speaker 28 But Donald Trump was rethinking that promise on Meet the Press this weekend. It was a very wide-ranging interview with Kristen Welker.
Let's listen.

Speaker 28 But

Speaker 64 even given those numbers that you're talking about, don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as President?

Speaker 34 I don't know.

Speaker 65 I have to respond by saying again, I have brilliant lawyers that work for me.

Speaker 28 I don't know what he was saying. It came during a conversation about deportations.
I don't know if he was referring to the deportations or the Constitution. It wasn't clear to me, actually.

Speaker 28 Also notable from the interview, the president continued to blame former President Biden for the bad parts of the economy. And of course, he took credit for the good parts.

Speaker 28 He did not rule out the use of military force to take Greenland again, said he would add and self-fund a ballroom to the White House. I'm terrified of the gold situation.

Speaker 28 And he, of course, let us know that, quote, everything's okay, unquote.

Speaker 28 Some other fun things the president has done recently includes posting rebuild and open alcatraz on Truth Social.

Speaker 28 And the president posted an AI image of himself as Pope in the official White House account, reposted again on Instagram and X. Many Catholics, including, they made some statements,

Speaker 28 Catholic bishops and cardinals made comments. He's had quite a week.
Any thoughts on any of these things?

Speaker 53 Well, I sort of go to, I'm sort of done with, okay, this is a guy who's...

Speaker 53 interested or acknowledges that he's quite likely has no fidelity to the the Constitution, that he might try to run for a third term, that he's using to

Speaker 67 use military force against our allies, that he doesn't stand on his own two feet, and he finds, he takes responsibility for deporting U.S.

Speaker 24 citizens to what are effectively black sites and then claims that he can't get them back.

Speaker 42 So lack of accountability, lack of.

Speaker 28 But then says he can. He also said he could.
He wanted to.

Speaker 73 Well, but every time he's faced with a hard question, like, will you uphold the Constitution? He says, well, you need to talk to the lawyers.

Speaker 52 I'm sort of at the point now where I'm no longer.

Speaker 54 Um,

Speaker 70 we know this is a person who's a stain on the American experience.

Speaker 27 The

Speaker 73 thing that I find so fascinating, and we're not focused enough on in terms of being this force that's supposedly pushing back, is that Democrats are less popular than the president.

Speaker 34 And I think the hard conversation we need to have is: okay, we all agree he's awful and a threat to America, and it's taking the global economy down, and yet our leadership is so feckless, neutered, and ineffective, they can't push back on it.

Speaker 72 it.

Speaker 41 And so what I would like to see is

Speaker 60 leader Jeffries or Senator Bennett or someone who's, you know, Senator Klobuchar, I'd like to see them draft legislation that says, if you're a nation and you're hosting black sites and U.S.

Speaker 50 citizens have been found to be

Speaker 70 incarcerated in those black sites and you haven't returned them immediately and you're cooperating with this,

Speaker 73 we are going to economically punish you severely.

Speaker 24 If you're a nation that is engaging in fraud around cryptocurrency or investing in schemes that ultimately hurt consumers around the world, we may

Speaker 52 levy the same economic damage on you.

Speaker 53 That bill would not pass, but I think we need to send a flare across the bow that if we take back the House, this is coming.

Speaker 26 So enough already.

Speaker 25 What are we going to do about it?

Speaker 42 I'm kind of sick of reporting about how outrageous the president is. I want to see the Democrats do something.

Speaker 28 Some people are individually, like Rahm Emanuel. There's a bunch that are sort of saying to get some muscle in this.
It's just, it's not a coordinated effort.

Speaker 60 Well, and also, shouldn't there essentially be legislation or a lawsuit filed that says

Speaker 33 the statute of limitations on some of the crimes I believe are being committed are longer than three years and nine months.

Speaker 67 And the justice system, similar to America, its memory is long and its reach is far.

Speaker 72 And for those of you Republicans who think that, or members of the administration or proxies of the administration who believe that you can commit securities fraud or

Speaker 30 wrongful imprisonment, whatever you want to call this,

Speaker 52 God help you when there's an actual DOJ.

Speaker 49 And because,

Speaker 42 you know what?

Speaker 46 I think at some point the Democratic Party needs to be the party of not fucking around.

Speaker 78 And I think we're just being run over.

Speaker 6 And it's not, our popularity is lower than an insurrectionist right now,

Speaker 27 not because we don't have the right ideas, not because he's bad, but we're seen as just so fucking weak.

Speaker 44 People would rather have, and I'm not saying this is the right thing, Americans have decided they'd rather have an autocrat than a weak party.

Speaker 28 Well, it sounds like they don't want any of us, really. That's the

Speaker 48 fair point.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 28 You know, I was thinking as I was, I flew, I flew in the red eye last night, and I was thinking, he'll pardon him.

Speaker 28 He was a part of the interview, he said he was sort of pushing at, he was noting Rubio and J.D. Vance as the possible next presidents, as Republican presidential candidates, and not himself.

Speaker 28 But I was thinking he'll pardon himself on the last day for everything.

Speaker 29 Oh, no, he's going to party hundreds of people, but there needs to be a lot of people.

Speaker 28 No, but he's going to party himself. That's who he's going to pardon.
So he doesn't have to face this stuff.

Speaker 53 I just think we need to come up with creative ways and indicate that you want to talk about executive orders.

Speaker 42 You want to talk about a DOJ.

Speaker 37 You want to talk about,

Speaker 23 I mean, I just,

Speaker 69 we're sitting around just outraged.

Speaker 28 I agree. Like the Alcatraz thing.

Speaker 69 You know what our response has been?

Speaker 42 The most ridiculous thing I've seen all year is when asked how they were pushing back, Senate leader Schumer responded with a strongly worded letter.

Speaker 28 Letter. Oh, Schumer's got to go.

Speaker 26 He's got to go. I mean, my God, we need little.

Speaker 28 Pelosi got mad about the Alcatraz thing. It's a very good tourist attraction in a last time.

Speaker 61 That's, again, another distraction.

Speaker 35 He knows it's never going to happen.

Speaker 42 Don't look at the fact,

Speaker 22 you know, don't look at the fact that my family has

Speaker 40 increased their wealth by $3 billion with a crypto scam since I took president or I took the

Speaker 28 real estate and everything else. Anyway, you're absolutely right, Scott.
Oddly enough, I am actually going to California for a very brief trip

Speaker 28 next week to talk to a whole

Speaker 28 mess of Democrats. You want to meet me? You want to come with me?

Speaker 33 I'm in Hamburg, Germany.

Speaker 37 That's not an easy flight for me.

Speaker 51 And I'm at the age where I'm trying to reduce the things that are bad for my health, like traveling across time zones all the time.

Speaker 28 I will channel you to them.

Speaker 35 I would.

Speaker 28 I said, I'll only come if I can yell at you. Yeah, maybe.
I'll talk to them. I said, I can only come if I can yell at you a lot.

Speaker 53 I did a Zoom with a Republican Congresswoman two days ago talking about the tax status of universities.

Speaker 20 And she wanted to talk about, I had said about a year ago that I thought universities with an endowment over a billion that weren't growing their freshman class size greater than population growth should lose their tax-free status because they need to stop being LVMH and start living up to their mission of being public servants and letting in more kids.

Speaker 6 And immediately, a lot of Republicans have picked up on that and said, under the auspices of revoking their tax-free status.

Speaker 29 And so I said to her, look, if this is an attempt to be a good actor and try and expand freshman class size, I'm down and I want to help you and I want to work on it.

Speaker 37 And I've thought a lot about this.

Speaker 53 If this is nothing but a false flag such you can attack institutions that you see as

Speaker 60 advancing critical thinking, which lately has been bad for the Republican Party.

Speaker 57 I mean, this ridiculous notion that they're revoking tax-free status because of anti-Semitism, there is some real concerns around anti-Semitism across Ivy Leagues.

Speaker 87 This is not why they're doing that, folks.

Speaker 28 No, of course not. Of course not.
Anyway, nonsense.

Speaker 28 Well, I will say, because I enjoy yelling at Democrats about these things, and I will just, I'll just, I'll continue to attribute things to you. That's it.

Speaker 48 Well, I appreciate that.

Speaker 28 I regret to inform you something distracting: that Mark Zuckerberg is raw dogging life.

Speaker 28 The Meta CEO went on the Theo Vaughn podcast and said he drinks coffee recreationally, which was strange enough, and that the DARE program really worked for him.

Speaker 28 We're going to leave all the awkward in for this one. Let's listen to the whole clip.
It's so strange.

Speaker 88 You drink coffee, man, or no?

Speaker 63 No,

Speaker 63 Really?

Speaker 89 Yeah.

Speaker 90 I mean, you've had it. I have.

Speaker 91 Sometimes on vacation, I'll drink it recreationally. It's like every once in a while.

Speaker 88 Just like a, yeah, just like a celebration.

Speaker 34 Yeah, yeah, I know.

Speaker 63 Really?

Speaker 91 Yeah, no. I just like hate anything that messes with.
Like, I don't like any kind of chemicals or anything like that.

Speaker 88 Oh, really? So you like to keep everything to equilibrium?

Speaker 92 Yeah, my sister gives me such a hard time about that.

Speaker 63 She's like, you're just sitting there raw dogging dogging reality. Wow.

Speaker 28 Oh my God.

Speaker 44 Does he know what raw dogging is?

Speaker 28 I feel like he doesn't.

Speaker 93 Yeah.

Speaker 49 I mean, again, that was, it's clear he's not, he's pretty awkward.

Speaker 24 But what people missed was that, and this is terrible, is he's claiming that these new agents he's going to put forward, these AI agents, are going to solve loneliness.

Speaker 28 I'm still stuck on raw dogging that he doesn't know the meaning of it.

Speaker 28 But yes, this is the most important thing was that the three friends, that people have three friends and therefore we're going to replace them by

Speaker 28 with AI.

Speaker 44 With AI.

Speaker 71 And what you, I mean, leave it to Mark Zuckerberg to be the villain claiming to be the hero.

Speaker 24 I love what you said, that every accusation is a confession.

Speaker 73 I mean, this is an awful man who has taken absolutely no responsibility for the damage that he's caused.

Speaker 79 And he wants to further sequester us from one another, not recognizing how dangerous that is.

Speaker 28 Like, he's doing us a favor. I agree.
He had the tone,

Speaker 28 the awkwardness aside, which was heavy here.

Speaker 28 He had a a tone of like, I'm here to save you by giving you bots. So instead of having three friends, you'll have three, probably no friends and 15 bot friends, which is pathetic.

Speaker 54 And I get mocked a lot for the quote unquote, you know, talking about the crisis of lonely to young men.

Speaker 73 And, you know, well, if you're more lonely, pull yourself up by your.

Speaker 70 by your bootstraps.

Speaker 72 And if you're only more emotionally, you know, in touch with your emotions, not having friends has so many ripple effects on the rest of your life professionally.

Speaker 73 When Google puts out a job opening, the person who almost always gets the job is someone who has an advocate internally.

Speaker 76 My advice to young people when they're looking for a job is go out every night and be as social as possible because you want to be put in a room of opportunities when you're not in it.

Speaker 32 Two, do you realize you're much more inclined to stay married when you have a lot of friends because you have someone you can bitch to about your partner?

Speaker 20 You're less likely to be depressed.

Speaker 53 You're much less likely to make really stupid fucking decisions financially.

Speaker 60 So money, marriage, professional opportunities are all correlated to your your ability to establish and maintain friendships.

Speaker 21 And so when you see on average, you know, men have gone from,

Speaker 97 you know, we now have, we now have, I think it's a, what is it, one in seven men don't have a single friend and one in four men can't name a best friend.

Speaker 20 That means that cohort of men is going to be less likely to have relationships, romantic relationships, less likely to get professionally.

Speaker 84 So friendships and being mammalia, it really is an issue.

Speaker 23 And

Speaker 22 again, you have a bunch of tech firms who are compensated to sequester you from anything in the real world so you can spend more time in their world so they can sell you more Nissan ads.

Speaker 28 Yeah, it's really that that was he just doesn't even understand the part that got me and I I was at an AI thing last night in Los Angeles, but is this idea and one of this woman who's a philosopher who's a sort of combines ethics issues and philosophy and AI was like, the thing is, it didn't even occur to him to fix the loneliness problem in a way that included people instead of this without any sense of irony.

Speaker 28 You know what I mean? Like, here's my solution for this. And it's bad, right? And, and it's, I just, there was no irony whatsoever of what he was saying, that this was the way to go.

Speaker 28 Anyway, it's a really, it was, it was a very disturbed, I have to say, I was disturbed by every aspect. And I thought, this guy needs a VR person to get him to stop talking.

Speaker 28 But maybe it's good that you see this or something else. But just, he's gotten worse and more, I would say, twisted.
I don't know what else to say.

Speaker 28 It's so strange and awkward and breathy and laughing at his own jokes. It's really quite disturbing to me.

Speaker 41 Well, he's awkward.

Speaker 20 You're allowed to be awkward.

Speaker 42 There's a lot of awkward young people.

Speaker 28 He's gotten to be something else, but go ahead.

Speaker 73 Again, but that's a distraction of the fact that he keeps producing products that are going to make young people more and more depressed and anxious and obese.

Speaker 98 And

Speaker 28 I guess what I have to say is he really believes this bullshit more than ever. I feel like he really thinks he has all the answers.
And it was a tone of voice.

Speaker 38 But we want to pathologize these people.

Speaker 43 But again, let's move to solutions.

Speaker 53 The seven tobacco executives that stood in front of Congress, whatever it was, 25 years ago, and raised their right hand and said, I do not believe that tobacco is addictive or nicotine is addictive.

Speaker 67 When you are paid not to believe something, or you are paid not to understand something, it is really, you will find it's really difficult for you to understand it because you're paid not to understand it.

Speaker 86 These people are never going to come to their senses and like see the world as it is.

Speaker 85 we need some SAC in fucking Congress to pass laws.

Speaker 28 I agree. So

Speaker 35 okay,

Speaker 80 we probably shouldn't have AI generated humanity and friends for people under the age of 18.

Speaker 82 We need to break these companies up. We need to remove Section 230 protection with AI driven bots.

Speaker 24 So if a kid who thinks he's in a relationship with Cersei from Game of Thrones and he says, should I kill myself?

Speaker 82 And she says, I am waiting for you, my sweet.

Speaker 80 And then he puts a gun in his mouth, then fucking that,

Speaker 69 character AI gets hit hard.

Speaker 100 Instead, we want to run all these stories about how awkward and weird he is.

Speaker 62 Who gives a fuck?

Speaker 94 He's awkward.

Speaker 61 Now, now figure out laws.

Speaker 35 True.

Speaker 28 Well, you're not into distractions, are you? I like this. I like the very clear Scott.
You don't want distractions. Enough of this shit.

Speaker 48 Anyway, it's true.

Speaker 44 You're right. You're right.
You library laureate.

Speaker 28 Let's talk about someone that we all like. We'll go on a quick break and we come back.
Warren Buffett is stepping down. What a legend.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odoo.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 102 One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting.

Speaker 7 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business.

Speaker 97 This is where Odo comes in.

Speaker 10 Odo is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 9 That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 108 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier.

Speaker 111 And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 59 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up.

Speaker 117 Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 92 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters, running your business.

Speaker 12 Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you?

Speaker 17 Try Odo for free at odo.com. That's That's odoo.com.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough, and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 97 This is where Odoo comes in.

Speaker 10 ODU is an all-in-one, fully integrated integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 59 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling it up.

Speaker 16 Try Odoo for free at odo.com.

Speaker 17 That's odoo.com.

Speaker 97 This is where Odoo comes in.

Speaker 10 Odo is an all-in-one fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 17 Try Odu for free at odo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 28 Scott, we're back. Warren Buffett, the 94-year-old Oracle of Omaha, is stepping down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway after 60 years at the helm.
The surprise announcement shocked many shareholders.

Speaker 28 The company's company's annual meeting over the weekend. He's been aging, and I don't think he always knows himself well.

Speaker 28 Buffett named Greg Abel, Berkshire Hathaway's vice president of non-insurance operations, his successor. But he also said he'll hang around in a supporting role and plans to remain chairman.

Speaker 28 In addition to the big news, Buffett weighed on what's happening with tariffs, saying trade should not be a weapon. He explained how trade can be misused.
Let's listen.

Speaker 122 Trade can be an act of war.

Speaker 35 And

Speaker 122 I think it's led to bad things.

Speaker 35 Just

Speaker 122 the attitudes it's brought out

Speaker 122 in the United States. I mean, we should be looking to trade with the rest of the world, and we should do what we do best, and they should do what they do best.

Speaker 28 You know, it just sense we also had a lot of stuff about kindness that was lovely. As the Wall Street Journal put it, there's only one Warren Buffett and there will never be another.

Speaker 28 I'm going to start talking about his legacy. I was lucky enough to talk to him many times, and I'm hoping maybe one or two more times.

Speaker 28 I one time called him because he was a very, I called Bertha Harthaway because he wasn't doing any internet investing at the beginning, and I wanted to know why when I was working at the journal.

Speaker 28 And I called, and I got the secretary, and she said,

Speaker 28 and I thought, she said, can you hold, please? I said, I have a question for Mr. Buffett.
You know, and I assumed I was going to get to the secret, to the PR person.

Speaker 28 Phone clicks in and it's Warren Buffett. He's like, hi.
And I was like, hi. And we talked about the internet and why he didn't invest in it.

Speaker 28 He later invested and made a spectacular investment in Apple.

Speaker 28 But it was really interesting. And I ended up having dinner with him because I have a friend who's on the board.
And just as he's really so sharp, so interesting, so lovely.

Speaker 28 I met Greg Abel, who also seemed terrific.

Speaker 28 Obviously, Charlie Munger, who recently died, another great. All the people around him are great.
I don't know what else. He just surrounds himself with really high quality, common sense people.

Speaker 28 And a lot of what he said in this last appearance was just common sense about kindness, about

Speaker 28 trade. Whatever he says seems so plain spoken.
You know, not everything he's done has been perfect, that's for sure.

Speaker 28 But I just find this to be the kind of person you want to be leaders of leaders in society. And it just so happens this guy happens to be an investor.
Any thoughts from you?

Speaker 37 Well, he revolutionized the world of investing in terms of buy and hold and buying good companies.

Speaker 67 And

Speaker 49 first off,

Speaker 24 I think that meeting registered what is probably the greatest promotion in history to go from VP of non-insurance operations to CO Berkshire Hathaway.

Speaker 82 I mean, congratulations to Greg.

Speaker 28 Well, he was, he was just so I, this office, which is the simplest office you're ever going to see, I was surprised when I went there.

Speaker 28 There's not many people there. And that was a big role.

Speaker 44 Oh, he's been named as the heir.

Speaker 75 I'm just saying from a title standpoint.

Speaker 28 No, I know.

Speaker 35 That's a pretty big shift in title. That's a much cooler.

Speaker 30 That's a much cooler rap at a conference or at a bar.

Speaker 56 Well, I'm VP VP of non-insurance operations.

Speaker 46 Well, I'm CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

Speaker 111 Those get entirely different responses.

Speaker 94 Anyways,

Speaker 27 look,

Speaker 46 the part of his speech, which I watched, which I thought was most powerful and which is totally counter to the current administration, and quite frankly, what infects America a little bit, is this notion that the global economy is a win-lose.

Speaker 20 And if you look at our economy since World War II, we've 8X'd our GDP.

Speaker 56 We control, basically, we have the most dominant media companies.

Speaker 42 Seven of the 10 most valuable companies in the world are American.

Speaker 49 We have the best universities.

Speaker 24 Our household, average household income has hit almost $80,000, which has vastly outpaced Asian or European countries.

Speaker 24 And this notion somehow that we've been taking advantage of, and if we increase our prosperity, it has to come at the cost of another nation.

Speaker 57 Or if another nation's prosperity is going up, it comes at our cost, is just such lame, tired,

Speaker 24 the most visionary act, in my opinion, of the last hundred years was America said, okay, when we tried to punish Germany after World War I, it didn't work well.

Speaker 114 Because when people are doing really poorly abroad, to believe that you can protect your shores and your kids from that anger is just naive.

Speaker 48 You can't.

Speaker 41 And when people are much more prosperous, they're less likely, A, they want to buy your shit, they want to buy your Netflix, and they want to buy your Ford trucks, and they're less likely to raise disaffected youth who think, you know what, I would like to declare war on that country because I think their extraordinary advantage has come at my cost.

Speaker 23 So, when you want to build prosperity across the oceans, and the problem with the zero-sum thinking that literally President Trump

Speaker 24 defines is this notion somehow that we don't want other nations to do really well, that

Speaker 69 it comes at our cost.

Speaker 43 When other nations prosper, it's generally a proxy for how well we're doing.

Speaker 48 And we have, through global trade, through IP, through our universities, when other nations do well, we do really well.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 85 he just laid this out.

Speaker 38 He wasn't political.

Speaker 87 He didn't use the presidents. He didn't vote the president's name.

Speaker 69 Gay marriage didn't come at the cost of heteronormative marriage.

Speaker 86 There's a very dangerous trope in the manosphere that the assent of women has come at the cost of men.

Speaker 29 It has not.

Speaker 87 Men are struggling for a variety of reasons, but as women thrive, that doesn't mean it's a zero-sum game and we start to do worse.

Speaker 114 You want the world to prosper.

Speaker 21 You want your business, you want nations you trade with.

Speaker 62 And if you look at,

Speaker 38 it's just so obvious since 1945, if you had to pick one nation that has done really well, a lot of people would say the ascent over the last 20 or 30 years of China is probably number one.

Speaker 51 And by the way, that's been amazing for them and amazing for us.

Speaker 85 Their ascent has resulted in incredible prosperity for Americans.

Speaker 59 Have we outsourced certain jobs and not thought about the people we were left behind?

Speaker 80 Absolutely. Is there asymmetry of of trade?

Speaker 16 But the fact that we're able to enjoy such materially wealthy or rich lives is in large part because the Chinese have ascended.

Speaker 87 Also, when countries ascend, they're really inclined not to declare war on you or their neighbors when they're prospering.

Speaker 56 Whenever I go to Mykonos or Obisa, I have noticed a lot of young kids from the Gulf are dominating

Speaker 6 these really expensive restaurants.

Speaker 47 And you know what?

Speaker 72 It's a wonderful thing because they think, you know what, this whole prosperity thing, this whole Western notion of capitalism is really good for us.

Speaker 85 And so we're less likely to be radicalized. We're less likely to be angry.

Speaker 67 And he pointed that out so simply and so eloquently that we have to exit this zero-sum thinking as embodied by the Trump administration right now.

Speaker 28 Yeah, I thought he's just, you know what? Hats off to Warren Buffett. He just is a real classy guy, terrific guy.
Anyway, we're going to move on, but Warren. Good job.
And most

Speaker 28 delightful dinner, one of the most delightful dinners I had with really well-known people. He also ate much of my meal.
I couldn't believe how much that man put away.

Speaker 28 And he's still walking around steak. I bloom it in some onion thing, a bunch of potatoes.
Anyway, it was a completely enjoyable meal. And I was lucky.
I was privileged to have. dinner with him.

Speaker 28 Anyway, a couple of quick things. Apple and Amazon reported earnings late last week.
It was after we had talked. Both companies had strong quarters.

Speaker 28 Apple had $95 billion in revenue and nearly $25 billion in profit. Wow, what a juggernaut.
iPhone sales were up too, hitting almost $47 billion.

Speaker 28 Amazon had $156 billion in revenue and profit was $17 billion, up 64%, though the cloud business is trailing Microsoft's. But tariffs remain a cause for concern for these companies who

Speaker 28 more obvious problems for these two companies than, say, a Google or Meta.

Speaker 28 Tim Cook said tariff could cost Apple $900 million this quarter, even with the company moving to manufacture most iPhones in India. They're trying to do that.

Speaker 28 Amazon noted tariffs and trade policies and recessionary fears are among the range of factors that could make guidance subject to change.

Speaker 28 They were just signaling it.

Speaker 28 Just for people who don't know, Jeff Bezos planned to sell up to 25 million shares in the company over the next year. Probably pretty typical of these sales that happen.
This is a big chunk.

Speaker 28 Very briefly, because I want to get to these Trump tariffs on Hollywood really quickly, but thoughts on the results for those two?

Speaker 37 I thought Amazon had a great quarter.

Speaker 119 I couldn't get over this Kuiper thing.

Speaker 24 I think that's a big deal.

Speaker 72 Amazon's probably most vulnerable to the tariffs because two-thirds of their business is in the U.S.

Speaker 41 And obviously, a lot of their products will be subject to the tariffs.

Speaker 52 But, you know, these companies are just so well, you know, they're so well run.

Speaker 24 AWS grew 17% year-on-year.

Speaker 73 North American retail sales grew 8%, which is the slowest since the pandemic, but it's still vastly outpacing any other retail or other big retailers.

Speaker 20 And the stock fell, but

Speaker 77 right now, I think from the analyst community, they look at Amazon as a cloud company with a retail division.

Speaker 72 So they're they're really focused on AWS.

Speaker 55 And

Speaker 53 I think the most exciting thing about Amazon right now is this, is this Kuiper.

Speaker 44 Kuiper.

Speaker 28 And by the way, it is Kuiper. I got called by the Amazon people.

Speaker 44 It wasn't Cooper.

Speaker 28 It's Kuiper. You were right.
You were correct.

Speaker 35 It's Kuiper, not Cooper.

Speaker 28 It's after a... It's after some astronomer or something like that.
I forget. I should go look.

Speaker 28 But we got it wrong. I got it wrong.

Speaker 28 But yeah, I thought they were, I think they're just still signaling. We don't know, especially Amazon and its retail division.

Speaker 28 Obviously, Apple's going through all kinds of changes because of where they have to make things and pressures from the Trump administration and, you know, just the cost. So

Speaker 28 what's in Apple's favor, people are used to paying high prices for Apple products. So

Speaker 28 this is not, this is a little more price resistant. It's not like they're.
they're dealing with

Speaker 28 people that can't pay the extra kind of stuff.

Speaker 20 I thought Apple had the weakest of all of them.

Speaker 24 Their sales were up 5%, which beat expectations, but I believe a lot of that was front-loading.

Speaker 67 And that is consumers thinking, all right, I keep seeing rumors of the phone going to $2,300

Speaker 66 with tariffs and $3,500 that was produced in the U.S.

Speaker 73 So I thought a lot of people thought, well, it's time for a new iPhone.

Speaker 76 I'm going to pull it forward.

Speaker 24 And I've been selling down, and I've been very public about this, my Apple stake, which I bought in 2010, because I think at a PE of 34, a company that is effectively not growing, its price is a growth company.

Speaker 73 and the reality is it's flat.

Speaker 32 And their big announcement was another increase in dividend and share buyback, which quite frankly is the sign of a very mature company that does not trade at 34 times earnings.

Speaker 26 And there's nothing, you use the word refresh.

Speaker 47 There's nothing that interesting really.

Speaker 24 And also Apple intelligence, which is sort of their attempt at AI, has been delayed again.

Speaker 43 So I think Apple is, I think Apple's in for a rough road.

Speaker 28 It does have a feel of, oh, we've done so many hits. We're done with the hits.
Like, you know what I mean?

Speaker 28 Like, I got to say, I got to give it to them for this particular team, which has been like, I always call them the Rolling Stones, right? They keep going, but it feels like a little bit like

Speaker 28 they should maybe have a new fresh and refresh on a lot of things.

Speaker 28 So that's a they're a must-have for a lot of people, including myself. So it's not like I'm going to abandon them.

Speaker 87 It's an amazing product, but just

Speaker 22 looking at it from a valuation standpoint, let's look at earnings per share growth, right?

Speaker 49 It's 10 to 12%.

Speaker 72 Microsoft is 12%.

Speaker 74 They both trade at about 33 times, a P of about 33 times.

Speaker 24 Alphabet is growing at 18% and trades at a P multiple of 18.

Speaker 72 Amazon grew their EPS 30% and trades at a lower P of 31.

Speaker 24 Meta grew their EPS by 10%, about the same as Apple, and they trade at 22.

Speaker 80 And NVIDIA

Speaker 24 You know, obviously that one's trading at a, you know, a crazy, crazy P.

Speaker 41 But if you just look at, if you just look at bottoms up fundamentals, if you look at growth in earnings and top-line revenue relative to their valuation or price on earnings, Alphabet is the least expensive and Apple by far is the most expensive.

Speaker 28 Yep, I think that's true. I think that's true.
But we'll see where they go. They certainly are doing better than most businesses in this country.

Speaker 28 Some tariff, other tariff updates. Trump says this one came out of nowhere yesterday.
He says he's imposing 100% tariff on movies. This is not a distraction.

Speaker 28 This is strange on movies made overseas, though it's unclear how that will work. By the way, we have a trade surplus when it comes to movies, just so you be clear.

Speaker 28 Netflix shares dropped 3% at the opening bells. Disney Warner Brothers Impairment were also down.

Speaker 28 This one, I just don't get. And I'll get a couple more tariff things, but let me go through them and then we can comment on Timu, the Chinese e-commerce platform, has stopped

Speaker 28 shipping products from China directly to the U.S.

Speaker 28 And the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, who knows from things, was on Bloomberg the other day breaking down what it means, the chaos means for workers and more and the reverberations.

Speaker 28 Let's listen.

Speaker 123 So the trucker hauling four or five containers today, next week, she probably hauls two or three. The dock workers are no longer going to see overtime and double shifts.

Speaker 123 They're going to probably work less than a traditional work week starting right off the bat. Every four containers mean a job.
So when we start dialing this back, it's less job opportunities.

Speaker 18 And what happens if we get a deal?

Speaker 123 If we get a deal, it's going to take about a month.

Speaker 91 Let me walk you through that real quick.

Speaker 123 About two weeks to get the ships repositioned around these major ports, from Qingdao to Shanghai to Jiamen, load up all those containers, and then another two weeks to steam across the Pacific to get to us.

Speaker 28 I mean, this guy's smart. He's got a lot of stats.
He sees, you know, you can see it in real time.

Speaker 28 And then, of course, the reburation just doesn't go to dock workers and it's truckers and it's, it just goes

Speaker 28 throughout the economy.

Speaker 28 The terrorist movie thing, just, I don't even, how are you going to do it? Most admission Mission Impossible is coming up, by the way. I'm so excited.
Final reckoning was made abroad.

Speaker 28 A lot of people, there's a lot of breaks in

Speaker 28 England, they do a lot of stuff. There's a certain Canada

Speaker 28 and everything else to save costs. But how do you, there's movies aren't things either.
And again, we have a trade surplus when it comes to movies going abroad.

Speaker 28 They also have big customers across the globe. That's another thing.
A lot of their business is not just here in this country. It's their global businesses.

Speaker 28 This one was just nuts, as far as I could tell. I just,

Speaker 28 thoughts, any thoughts?

Speaker 23 Yes.

Speaker 76 Stupidity squared, more stupidity.

Speaker 39 We're a net exporter.

Speaker 73 One of the biggest advantages we have as a country is that we're basically running a 24 by 7 commercial on brand America called Baywatch or the Fantastic Four.

Speaker 50 These movies generally reflect an aspirational view of America and the whole world consumes our media.

Speaker 80 And the notion that

Speaker 41 it's easy how this plays out.

Speaker 23 It's this exact same thing that happened with Apple is going to happen with Netflix.

Speaker 50 Someone is going to go, okay,

Speaker 69 if we impose 100% tariff on their movies coming in, which may be even more difficult to surmise than looking at automobile.

Speaker 76 manufacturing where some parts go back and forth across the border a half a dozen or a dozen times.

Speaker 6 This will be even more difficult because if you have an American Warner Brothers film with Warner Brothers, with American actors, American gaffers, but it's being filmed in Prague for tax credits, like what?

Speaker 42 Okay, tell me how we tariff that.

Speaker 35 What do you tariff?

Speaker 28 The tickets? What do you ticket sales?

Speaker 35 The cost?

Speaker 62 The cost of production? I don't know.

Speaker 35 These are all really good questions. Honestly.

Speaker 61 And then when Netflix, who consumers love almost as much as Apple, start going, let me get this, I'm going to have to pay more at the box office and for production.

Speaker 28 They do things across the globe.

Speaker 78 He's going to send production and media businesses into a flurry where they have to pause, stop, think through what is going on here.

Speaker 55 And then he will blink.

Speaker 38 And then he will realize that whenever European nation says, fine, if you want us to put a hundred percent tariff on all of the media coming into Europe from the U.S.,

Speaker 79 You want to see LA really take a dive?

Speaker 55 I mean, LA has basically lost most of its production business.

Speaker 28 Yeah, is it 20 down 26%? It definitely is. It's the cost.
It's everything else. It's still very big there, but it's much less than it was.

Speaker 80 But if you want to see, I mean, he's literally going industry by industry, and at a minimum, he's putting it into a state of paralysis.

Speaker 84 And

Speaker 6 I become pretty good friends with the guy who used to run Warner Brothers Europe.

Speaker 78 Basically, his job was to take Harry Potter and, you know, Batman and come to Europe and start just grabbing money and to say to the biggest Polish streamer, all right, I want seven million dollars for you to be able to run Batman and then go to the London theaters and say, all right, I've got an idea for a Harry Potter play and I need 14% royalties.

Speaker 62 We literally just suck money out of countries using RIP.

Speaker 61 And he doesn't believe they're going to just say, okay, 100% tariff on any media coming in here.

Speaker 28 But on what? That's the thing.

Speaker 28 It's like it's so crazy someone who doesn't have a sense of how important this industry is and how much well it's doing it's just it this one is very dangerous especially these companies are sort of teetering a little bit like they're really trying really hard to get back on their feet with the uh you know with ai coming at them with everything coming out with costs with unions with they've got a tough those people have a tough job now when it used to all be gravy and him doing this and by the way most of them didn't know it i was at an event they're like what in the actual fuck was a lot of producers a lot they're like what is he tariff?

Speaker 28 They just were utter confusion, utter and complete confusion and really stupid.

Speaker 28 Just very quick thoughts on the ports and these things.

Speaker 28 Eric Schmidt, by the way, had an op-ed in the New York Times worth reading, noting between Timu, TikTok, and DeepZeek China was pulling ahead of us in AI. It was sort of one of those typical

Speaker 28 tech people, like China, G or me kind of thing. But worth reading anyway.
Any thoughts about

Speaker 28 this slowdown that's going to happen? And I interviewed Wes Moore today, the governor of Maryland. Same thing with the Port of Baltimore, which is the other big port where lots of stuff comes in.

Speaker 42 Yeah, this is a come before the storm.

Speaker 15 And I live in London, so I'm not, I don't have a front row seat here.

Speaker 82 But my understanding is in about the next four to 12 weeks, you're just going to start to see things trickle through the supply chain and prices will go up and there'll be some shelves that are empty.

Speaker 69 And Americans, Americans basically take their cues from their consumerism.

Speaker 24 And when they see empty shelves, as they did in COVID, the next thing they buy is a gun.

Speaker 66 They get very freaked out when the shelves are empty.

Speaker 37 And the notion somehow that American consumers won't respond, i.e., freak out, about shortages or prices going up.

Speaker 86 This is a nation that was essentially formed off of a rebellion when the price of attacks on tea was increased.

Speaker 28 That's true. Whiskey rebellion.
And we've had a lot of this episode on products. It's always on products.
It's interesting. And

Speaker 86 just Timu and Shein are responsible.

Speaker 41 I mean, in the holidays, 20% of all purchases through the holidays were through either Timu or Shein.

Speaker 50 And all of a sudden, Timu is essentially announced they're just stopping all shipments.

Speaker 23 They're like, and I don't even think it's the tariffs.

Speaker 50 I think it's the insecurity.

Speaker 79 We don't have to plan our business.

Speaker 28 Scott, you're only getting two dolls this Christmas, just so you know. I was going to give you 30.

Speaker 53 To bring this home, I have my roommate, my sophomore year in the fraternity, this lovely guy.

Speaker 20 has that specialty products business,

Speaker 23 everything you get at a conference.

Speaker 66 He had all this stuff on a boat, had to go down to the port and write like a $2 million check, which he just does not have lying around.

Speaker 86 Nice little business, 180 employees, a family business, built amazing living for himself and a lot of people. And I don't know if he's going to survive this.

Speaker 62 He just can't.

Speaker 80 He doesn't have time to reroute his supply chain.

Speaker 87 About 80% of it comes out of China.

Speaker 42 He doesn't have time to reroute a supply chain through all of these other Southeast Asian nations.

Speaker 69 And people, 98%,

Speaker 85 98% 98%

Speaker 33 of the businesses that are run or dependent upon import-export are small and medium-sized business.

Speaker 86 And here's the problem.

Speaker 23 They don't have any fucking lobbyists.

Speaker 85 So let's go back to the media tariffs.

Speaker 28 They don't have the checks, like you said, to pay it.

Speaker 62 Say, yeah, they don't have the capital.

Speaker 80 Say, in fact, he does manage to implement some sort of tariff around

Speaker 30 our content.

Speaker 55 You know who will get an exemption?

Speaker 62 Netflix.

Speaker 6 But the little independent producer of a film or someone who makes little documentaries, they're shit out of luck.

Speaker 60 So this is yet again this transnational oligarchy with a top 1%

Speaker 81 who have access, have lobbyists, and can get on his lunch calendar, get, quite frankly, probably end up stronger in the small and medium-sized business, which by the way, folks, create two-thirds of all new jobs in America.

Speaker 66 They're shit out of luck.

Speaker 6 I mean, they're just...

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 4 he, I, I could just hear in his voice.

Speaker 86 She's like, he doesn't even know how to respond.

Speaker 48 Right. Nope.

Speaker 28 Nope. This This is the stupid.
This was like deeply stupid. I was like, oh my God, this guy's an idiot.
We have to move along, but

Speaker 28 it's really going to, it's not going to be good. And this one, it just shows the idiot.
He's just moving from industry to industry. That's correct.
You're saying that. All right.

Speaker 28 Let's go on a quick break. We come back.
Elon gets his own town in Texas. Let's make quick work of this.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Sachs 5th Avenue.

Speaker 7 Saks 5th Avenue makes it easy to holiday your way, Whether it's finding the right gift or the right outfit, Saks is where you can find everything from a stunning David Yerman bracelet for her or a sleek pair of faragama loafers to wear to a fancy holiday dinner.

Speaker 124 And if you don't know where to start, Saks.com is customized to your personal style so you can save time shopping and spend more time just enjoying the holidays.

Speaker 8 Make shopping fun and easy this season and find gifts and inspiration to suit your holiday style at Saks Fifth Avenue.

Speaker 1 Support for the show comes from Odoo.

Speaker 3 Running a business is hard enough and you don't need to make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other.

Speaker 10 ODU is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 92 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters: running your business.

Speaker 17 Try Odo for free at odo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 18 Adobe Acrobat Studio, so brand new. Show me all the things PDFs can do.
Do your work with ease and speed. PDF spaces is all you need.
Do hours of research in an instant.

Speaker 18 With key insights from an AI assistant. Pick a template with a click.
Now your prezzo looks super slick. Close that deal, yeah, you won.
Do that, doing that, did that, done.

Speaker 18 Now you can do that, do that with Acrobat. Now you can do that, do that.
With the all-new Acrobat. It's time to do your best work with the all-new Adobe Acrobat Studio.

Speaker 28 Scott, we're back. Elon Musk now is his own official company town.

Speaker 28 After voters in a small patch of South Texas, overwhelmingly, most of them, his employees, approved a ballot measure to establish the city of Starbase. Mr.
Potter, oh, I mean, Elon Musk.

Speaker 28 The new city covers about one and a half square miles, is home to SpaceX headquarters. Nearly all the residents are Elon Musk employees, their family members.

Speaker 28 And the first city officials are current or former SpaceX staff.

Speaker 28 Starbase has been described as looking like the set of a science fiction movie with rows of near-identical houses and a massive bronze bust of Elon Musk.

Speaker 28 I don't know what to say, but I'm going to add that he's been on a bit of a media tour this week trying to take victory lapse of zero victories. He appeared on Fox News with Doge worker Edward Cor.

Speaker 28 I think it's Koristine,

Speaker 28 aka Big Balls. I can't even believe we live in this timeline.

Speaker 28 He spoke to journalists about the White House and talked about sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom, eating Hage-Doss, and also compared himself to Buddha.

Speaker 28 In another Fox News interview, this one with Lara Trump, oh God, the

Speaker 28 insider-ness here is so grotesque. Elon responded to the Nazi accusations and comparisons he's faced in recent months.
Let's listen.

Speaker 91 I've not harmed anyone in my life. They've also called President Trump a Nazi, but he also is

Speaker 34 not a violent person.

Speaker 91 And in fact, has done a lot to prevent wars and stop wars, which is the very opposite of being a Nazi, actually.

Speaker 28 He doesn't know history. Oh my God.
How can we miss you if you won't go away, Elon? That's my feeling. It's this is ridiculous.
This is every bit of this. It's like he's made a disaster of Doge.

Speaker 28 They are probably going to cost us more money. He's hurt people's lives.
You don't have to, you've harmed people in your life. That's ridiculous.
You don't have to kill people to harm them.

Speaker 28 This, these, the, the way he's setting up these things shows me he's not much of an intellectual in any way. And not that he cares, but

Speaker 28 just the,

Speaker 28 I don't know what to say. This is just so ridiculous.
We're in the most ridiculous timeline, and he needs to pipe down and

Speaker 28 stop sucking up all the attention oxygen. I'd like to stop talking about him.

Speaker 48 Yeah, so

Speaker 24 we're not, we don't shy away from highlighting that he doesn't equit himself well, but I actually

Speaker 74 like the idea of new incorporated cities.

Speaker 28 Oh, do you?

Speaker 62 Well, just because

Speaker 53 if you look at the basic American dream, right, it's to meet somebody,

Speaker 42 get a good job, and someday afford a house.

Speaker 24 And one of the things I like about these initiatives, including the one that those VCs were proposing and, you know, the Inland Empire.

Speaker 28 Yeah, I thought that was interesting too. I know it got a lot of people.

Speaker 26 I like the idea of a kind of

Speaker 67 a free zone or a city where they could take manufactured homes and just build a shit ton of them without it being weaponized.

Speaker 50 I mean, essentially,

Speaker 31 one one of the problems for this kind of NIMBYism is that housing permits have been taken out of the hands of bureaucrats and put into the hands of homeowners who, once they own a home, decide there should be no more homes.

Speaker 74 So I actually like the idea.

Speaker 24 There's some floats, there's some developers in Florida.

Speaker 28 This is a company town. That's different.
What you're talking about is very different than a company town, which is what this is.

Speaker 28 I mean, the whole notion of company towns is such a whether it's here or Ireland or wherever, the mines,

Speaker 28 has a very negative connotation of like one single person

Speaker 28 controlling a town. I have no problem with town creation, and I think that's a great or housing creation.
This is a little different, but go ahead.

Speaker 44 Well, you know, there's,

Speaker 23 like you said, there's company towns.

Speaker 53 I don't, look, I don't like the, I don't like the man the town is focused around, but I like the idea of competition in cities and these things popping up and taking a different approach to how a city is run.

Speaker 57 He'll have capital.

Speaker 24 Hopefully he'll build housing for his employees.

Speaker 61 I don't, I don't know.

Speaker 53 This is this is like the least offensive thing he's done.

Speaker 35 I'm okay with it.

Speaker 28 He's not a Nazi, Scott. He's not a Nazi.
All right, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

Speaker 126 Every day, millions of customers engage with AI agents like me. We resolve queries fast.
We work 24-7 and we're helpful, knowledgeable, and empathetic.

Speaker 126 We're built to be the voice of the brands we serve. Sierra is the platform for building better, more human customer experiences with AI.
No hold music, no generic answers, no frustration.

Speaker 126 Visit Sierra.ai to learn more.

Speaker 127 Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin?

Speaker 127 Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one.

Speaker 127 You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today.

Speaker 88 Sometimes, the difference between success and failure comes down to one chance encounter, or following a counterintuitive instinct, or ignoring conventional wisdom to make a bold decision.

Speaker 88 Like when the founders at Palo Alto Networks wanted to redefine cybersecurity for the modern age.

Speaker 90 Everybody thought we were crazy. Nobody would use the cloud for cybersecurity.

Speaker 88 Or when mobile gaming giant Supercell could only rewrite the rules of the industry after failure in the company's formative stages.

Speaker 92 Many of the best things we've learned have actually come through failures.

Speaker 88 These are all examples of Crucible Moments, turning points in a company's journey that made them what they are today.

Speaker 88 Hosted by Sequoia Capital's Rolof Botto, Crucible Moments is back for a new season. With stories from Zipline, Stripe, Palo Alto Networks, Supercell, and more.

Speaker 88 Subscribe to season three of Crucible Moments. New episodes are out now, and you can catch up on seasons one and two at cruciblemoments.com on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 88 Listen to Crucible Moments today.

Speaker 28 Okay, Scott, some wins and fails. Would you please go first?

Speaker 72 So my win is Representative Tallarico.

Speaker 41 I don't know if he's in the Texas House, but I saw his, he did a speech.

Speaker 24 He's been fantastic on Texas schools.

Speaker 39 He's been talking a lot about vouchers.

Speaker 38 I hate vouchers.

Speaker 73 A lot of my actually wealthy friends really like vouchers and the idea of school choice and competition.

Speaker 41 I see vouchers as nothing more than a giveaway and another transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy.

Speaker 46 And I think about

Speaker 41 the school my kids went to in Florida, which was a private school, a lovely school.

Speaker 74 And I don't doubt that some people would be able to afford to go there if we gave them vouchers.

Speaker 53 But essentially what happens is you lose wealthy dual-income parents in the public schools.

Speaker 24 And all it is, as far as I can tell, not all it is, 780% of it ends up being essentially just a tax rate giveaway for the wealthy who are already in private schools. And now you're going to subsidize.

Speaker 70 subsidize their tuition by $10,000 and take yet even more money out of the public school system.

Speaker 78 And not only that, skim off the most wealthiest parents who it's not even just their money, it's their ability because of their wealth to be engaged in the quality of that school.

Speaker 76 And he also started talking about, he had this great

Speaker 72 session where he started questioning this law and how this law had

Speaker 73 mistakenly referenced litter boxes in schools.

Speaker 48 Let's play the clip.

Speaker 128 Are you aware that Governor Abbott said, quote, kids go to school dressed up as cats with litter boxes in their classrooms.

Speaker 128 Sure.

Speaker 128 Are you also aware that when the governor was asked by the Dallas Morning News to name a single school where this happened, he couldn't?

Speaker 128 And PolitiFact called this a pants on fire false claim started by online rumors?

Speaker 63 Okay.

Speaker 42 I mean, this guy, he really brings,

Speaker 66 he's very forceful yet dignified.

Speaker 72 He's a Texas state representative.

Speaker 24 I really think this kid is a comer.

Speaker 48 He's 35.

Speaker 20 And he also,

Speaker 24 I mean, this is just so,

Speaker 73 it's so weird to go out there and have the governor adopt this talking point that kids are dressing up as cats.

Speaker 24 And this is not only an attack on public schools, but it's an attack, quite frankly, on the whole notion of transgender because they couch it in the notion that kids are.

Speaker 28 are presenting themselves as all sorts of different things and that public schools have gotten so woke and so weird that they're that if you say you're presenting as a cat, they give you a litter box which by the way it's all a fucking lie it's such a lie it's such a lie it's the most happens is like my son growled to someone they're like lying i'm scared that's how it works kids in school a weird adult

Speaker 76 but this kid this kid's a comer so state representative james tellarico i just thought he was so

Speaker 24 uh i don't know dignified i thought god can that guy run for president okay the other guy sure okay yeah i'm i'm i'm just gonna make up lies to give people fodder and because we don't have a populace now because of shitty K through 12 that doesn't critically think, and because we have a media that will repeat any talking point, and the governor picks up this talking point and starts using this as an example.

Speaker 28 Again, distraction, distraction, distraction, constant and persistent distraction. So you're looking at all the stupid stuff.
It's like network has come to life.

Speaker 67 There you go.

Speaker 74 My fail is this whole Maha movement, Make America Healthy Again, and this notion that it has something to do with vaccines or dyes, all of that.

Speaker 16 But just as the pill had massive amounts of estrogen in the 60s and 70s, and they've been able to achieve the job of birth control with lower and lower doses of hormones, vaccines have actually been able to do the same thing.

Speaker 41 They're just as effective with less of quote-unquote,

Speaker 31 with fewer antigens.

Speaker 74 The whole outrage around dyes, I understand our food supply and that it should be looked at

Speaker 50 meticulously.

Speaker 24 But this, this, again, is nothing but a weapon of mass distraction from what is the real problem in health in America.

Speaker 56 And that is in that as you and I, Kara, because we're in the top 1% of income earners, we on average live eight to 10 years longer than someone in the lowest quintile because we don't have to work two jobs.

Speaker 66 We have access to working out.

Speaker 41 We have access to good food. We have access to good doctors.

Speaker 72 We have access to mental health.

Speaker 78 The reality is, life expectancy is is directly correlated to your income level.

Speaker 38 And unless we do something about income inequality,

Speaker 38 we're just shuffling chairs around on the Titanic.

Speaker 38 And if you look at what's happened in our healthcare system, despite the fact our household income has gone up, our costs per consumer have gone way up, our life expectancy on average has gone down because people live in food deserts.

Speaker 24 They can't get access to good food.

Speaker 41 They can't get access to exercise.

Speaker 84 They're sleep deprived because they're so fucking poor and working so much.

Speaker 43 All of this is a distraction from the fact that he's pushing through a tax cut, which will be a tax cut for the top 5% and a tax increase for the other 95%.

Speaker 22 So no matter what dyes or vaccines you try and demonize, until people in the middle class and lower-income homes have the actual money to pursue health, these outcomes are going to get worse and worse.

Speaker 18 That's a very, very good way of putting it, Scott.

Speaker 28 That's excellent.

Speaker 28 All right, I'll go. My win, Ryan Koogler with this movie Centers, shows once again that original programming really does.

Speaker 28 Oh, you like it.

Speaker 62 Yeah. What can you do?

Speaker 62 What is it?

Speaker 28 It's a movie called Sinners. It's about vampires.

Speaker 28 And it's music and all kinds of things. But what I'm more interested in is the deal he did with Warner Brothers, where he got...

Speaker 28 He got 25, after 25 years, he gets ownership of the film's IP intellectual property. It's a huge achievement to do this.
Studios usually retain full ownership of things.

Speaker 28 And he also has first, something called First Dollar Growth, where he growths, where he'll receive a share of the film's gross ticket sales before any deductions, a deal.

Speaker 28 Let me read this. It was more common in the DV Doom Boomer than it is.
And it's very rare to do this.

Speaker 28 The movie's about ownership and autonomy in a racist society. And so I just, this guy is just

Speaker 28 such an interesting, he made, obviously, Black Panther. He made Fruit Vale Station, where I first noticed him.
Obviously, that was a really big, a big note.

Speaker 28 People got noticed of him, but he's just an astonishing filmmaker. And I just think these deals he's making as a creator of really new,

Speaker 28 fresh content in ways that are creative and interesting. I just think, I just love this idea of him.
I'm looking up the box office right now of Sinners.

Speaker 28 So far, this film, which didn't cost that much to make, has grossed $236 million worldwide, fifth highest growing thing film of 2025.

Speaker 28 so it's just it's it's just doing it's impressing for its quality and everything else um anyway the other one that's doing well is thunderbolts it's supposed to be lovely a marvel movie finally is delightful everyone tells me i should go see it i haven't seen it um so i i feel really i just i don't know i just feel like this guy's creatively incredible and he owns his ip and he's going to own his ip and he's getting this with like creators like him who are creative can outrun ai or anybody else and i just feel I just have a lot of regard for that.

Speaker 28 In the fail, a very good friend of mine died this week in a very tragic fire, Jill Sobuel.

Speaker 28 She's a singer. She performed at All Things D and Code many years.

Speaker 28 I've known her forever. She was best known for the song I Kissed a Girl, which was sort of a song that got a lot of attention way back when.

Speaker 28 But she was an artist, an enduring artist, and one of these artists that traveled a lot, did a lot, made a lot of money traveling, which which a lot of musicians make now.

Speaker 28 She did a show just recently called Fuck Seventh Grade, which was funny about being a seventh grader, wonderful. Such a creative and entrepreneurial spirit, but also one of the kindest people I knew.

Speaker 28 And just,

Speaker 28 I couldn't say enough good things about Jill Sobiel. She was kind and good and just always trying to be different and interesting and trying new things.

Speaker 28 She did a lot of stuff where she would do house concerts for people and all kinds of things just to make it as an artist. And she had an enduring career doing that.

Speaker 28 And she was just recently doing incredibly well. And she was, again, in Minnesota staying with friends, and the house was on fire, and she did not make it out.
Just a shock, 66 years old.

Speaker 28 I just, I took Louie to see and George Hahn actually to see fuck seventh grade.

Speaker 28 And we had a lovely dinner with her after it, Veselka, and just laughed the entire time. She was a, just a, she was just a ray of sunshine.

Speaker 28 I'm going to play a clip from a song that she wrote called A Good Life from her album. I recommend a lot of her songs.

Speaker 28 I've been pummeling people, including Scott, with her songs from her album, California Years. Let's listen.

Speaker 18 When the Russian gangsters sell the bomb and the waves come roaring from the sea,

Speaker 18 a hundred foot swells over Venice Beach. Well, don't be scared and take my hand.
We'll swim into the promised land. It was a good life.

Speaker 18 It was a good, good

Speaker 58 life.

Speaker 28 It was a good life.

Speaker 48 Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for your loss.

Speaker 57 Thank you, Scott.

Speaker 71 You know, we got to live every day like we're meeting with JD Vance.

Speaker 28 Anyway,

Speaker 28 good life. Let's have a good life, Scott.
We We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business, tech, or whatever's on your mind.

Speaker 28 Go to nymag.com/slash pivot, submit a question for the show, or call 85551-PIVOT.

Speaker 28 Elsewhere in the Kara and Scott universe, as I noted, this week I talked to Maryland's Democratic governor, Westmore, who's on the short list for presidential candidates in 2028 on On with Kara Swisher.

Speaker 28 Let's listen to a clip where he talked about how Trump's cuts are impacting his state.

Speaker 89 We have over 260,000 federal employees in the state of Maryland. We have over 160,000 federal jobs that are housed within the state of Maryland.

Speaker 89 So what they are doing, these are not glancing blows at Maryland. These are direct hits at us.
These are direct shots that they are taking at my state and they're taking at my people.

Speaker 89 And so there is nobody who is experiencing this more than Maryland. No one is, no chief executive is experiencing more than me.

Speaker 89 And the thing I was very clear on from Jumpstreet is that I I get the relationship between state government and federal government.

Speaker 27 And I will work with anyone, but I will bow down to no one ever.

Speaker 28 Impressive, impressive politician. We'll see where he goes.
But it was a great interview. We talked about a lot of things, including

Speaker 28 the Francis Scott Key Bridge and a bunch of other stuff. So really interesting man and someone to watch.

Speaker 28 And someone the right wing is very focused in on right now because he's a very appealing politician and young and vibrant.

Speaker 28 Okay, that's the show. Thanks for listening to Pivot and be sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We'll be back on Friday. Scott, read us out.

Speaker 6 Today's show is produced by Lara Naiman, Soe Marcus, Taylor Griffin, and Kevin Oliver.

Speaker 125 Ernie Ertod engineered this episode. Thanks also to Drew Bros, Ms.

Speaker 101 Several, and Dan Shallan.

Speaker 125 Yeshaq Kura is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts.

Speaker 59 Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 110 Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

Speaker 6 You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com/slash pod.

Speaker 104 We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Speaker 10 ODU is an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that handles everything.

Speaker 17 Try Odo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 90 If your team is spending more time chasing paperwork than actually closing, then it's time to consider using Smartsheet.

Speaker 90 Smartsheet is the intelligent intelligent work management platform that embeds AI-powered execution to drive the velocity of work.

Speaker 90 With AI-first capabilities, you can make work management your superpower, getting personalized insights, automatically creating tailored solutions, and streamlining workflows to elevate your work.

Speaker 90 Plus, this intelligence layer unites people, processes, and data, helping you tackle any work management challenge. Visit smartsheet.com/slash Vox.

Speaker 18 We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair,

Speaker 18 yikes, or forgetting sunscreen so now you look like a tomato.

Speaker 90 Ouch.

Speaker 18 Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest.
Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it.
Learn more at schwab.com.

Trump's Movie Tariffs, Buffett's Retirement, and Elon's New City

Press play and read along

Transcript

More episodes from Pivot

Anthropic IPO Chatter, Bitcoin's Turbulent Week, and Kara Gets Caught in a Scandal

Holiday Spending Surge, Fed Chair Future, and Melania's Production Company

Why Scott Galloway Wants Us To Celebrate Masculinity, Not Diminish It | On With Kara Swisher

X's Foreign Trolls, Google's AI Wins, and MTG's Resignation

Meta Monopoly Verdict, Trump Signs the Epstein Bill, and Nvidia's Q3 Earnings