Elon's Empire Struggles, Trump's Crypto Summit, and IPO Slump

Speaker 2 So, let me get this straight. Your company has data here, there, and everywhere.
But your AI can't use the data because it's here, there, and everywhere?

Speaker 2 Seems like something's missing. Every business has unique data.
IBM helps your AI access your data wherever it lives to change how you do business.

Speaker 2 Let's create Smarter Business, IBM.

Speaker 3 Support for the show comes from Saks Fifth Avenue. Saks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to holiday your way.

Speaker 3 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 ferragama loafers to wear to a fancy holiday dinner.

Speaker 3 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 3 Make shopping fun and easy this season and find gifts and inspiration to suit your holiday style at Saks Fifth Avenue.

Speaker 4 Do you think we'll ever have sex? Do you think we'll ever have sex?

Speaker 6 The two of us?

Speaker 7 Yeah, just curious.

Speaker 6 I'm down as long as I don't have to be there.

Speaker 8 Hi, everyone.

Speaker 10 This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Speaker 8 I'm Kara Swisher. This is a live broadcast.

Speaker 13 As we said, we were going to do it here. We're very excited.
We always have a great time at South by Southwest.

Speaker 16 How is your South by Southwest, Scott?

Speaker 1 I love it here.

Speaker 5 oh you want to say hi i'm scott galloway go ahead i'm scott galloway okay by the way

Speaker 6 9 a.m on sunday of daylight save what the are you thinking yeah i know i know it's like a it's like a dog whistle from mormons or people with no life who's true literally this is a negative forward-licking indicator of your social options

Speaker 17 what the are you doing here

Speaker 7 i have

Speaker 6 the schedule at 10 that's what i was thinking is like doge in charge of this what is going on oh but they have have you and Senator Warren at the prime time at 4 p.m.

Speaker 6 Billionaires should not exist. Up next, Mark Cuban.

Speaker 6 Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 21 Sorry.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Tax the rich. Somehow I became worth $11 million serving in Congress.
No, it's her house.

Speaker 7 She has a house. Oh, yeah.
It's her house. It is.

Speaker 22 No, she's 8 million. She's 8 million.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 17 That's not rich by these people's standards.

Speaker 22 Okay. Yeah.
All right. Okay.

Speaker 15 She doesn't trade stocks. Anyway, how is your South by Southwest?

Speaker 6 I love it here. I like the food.
I like the people.

Speaker 6 What does a Texan German car enthusiast say?

Speaker 1 What? Audi.

Speaker 6 It's Sunday morning.

Speaker 6 It's Sunday morning.

Speaker 24 Have you been partying?

Speaker 6 You want something dirtier?

Speaker 22 Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 6 I come down here because

Speaker 6 I come down here because my urologist is down here. Oh, here we go.
And you get to my age, you got to drip.

Speaker 6 It takes a good, like, I don't know, three weeks to pee now. And so I go into my urologist, and he's like, did you have sex recently? And I said, yeah, about five days ago.

Speaker 6 And he said, does she live near here? And I said, yeah. And he's like, well, you may want to get back.
I think you're coming.

Speaker 6 Good morning.

Speaker 6 Good morning.

Speaker 6 And yes, they do serve Bloody Marys at 7.30 at the proper hotel.

Speaker 22 Vegetables. God, I am jetlagged.

Speaker 1 I am jet lagged for coming back to my house.

Speaker 6 Are you interviewing Peter Atia, Dr. Peter Attia?

Speaker 25 I am aware of him.

Speaker 6 Well, Peter Atia and Andrew Huberman were like the poster children.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm aware of them.

Speaker 6 You know, big, handsome guys who like work out all the time. Yeah.
They've declared war on alcohol. Yeah.
I'm taking alcohol back. Yeah.
Young people need to drink more.

Speaker 26 That is.

Speaker 6 What is the bigger issue? The alcohol your liver can absolutely handle when you're between the ages of 18 and 40, or the fact that none of you are having sex and making connections.

Speaker 6 Drink more, for God's sakes.

Speaker 10 I think they're doing a lot more weed, is what's happening.

Speaker 27 There's a lot more weed.

Speaker 6 Well, I wouldn't know about that. What do you mean by weed, Carrie?

Speaker 17 I just say that's my impression for you.

Speaker 25 Yeah,

Speaker 6 they're doing drugs, but the thing I don't like about those drugs is I don't think they're as social.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 6 You drink alcohol and you just become more attractive to you, which gives you the confidence to go up to someone who likely does not find you attractive, but maybe over time, and I'm being somewhat serious here, gives you a chance to demonstrate excellence.

Speaker 6 Do you want to know the scariest stat I have seen? We're totally going off script here.

Speaker 8 I'm just, I'm so jet-lagged. I'm fine with it.

Speaker 4 Go ahead.

Speaker 6 She came in from Australia. I did.
Anyways,

Speaker 6 more than half, 51%,

Speaker 6 51% of 18 to 24-year-old males have never asked a woman out in person.

Speaker 6 Think about just how tragic that is, that these young men are not developing the skills to much less potentially meet a romantic partner, have kids, which I think is the whole shooting match.

Speaker 6 Not that you can't be happy without that, but I think everyone should have the option. And then they're not developing social skills.

Speaker 6 And we don't like to talk about this, but your ability to open and establish contact and connection with someone.

Speaker 17 How many women are asking men out?

Speaker 25 Just curious. Oh, isn't that nice? No, it's nice.

Speaker 15 I'm just curious. Why can't that happen?

Speaker 6 Here's the bottom line. We talk a big game, but somewhere between 70 and 80% of women.

Speaker 28 What does that mean?

Speaker 6 Between 70 and 80% of women still say they want the man to initiate contact.

Speaker 6 So they still expect, I mean, think about young men, quite frankly, are getting a lot of mixed messages in my view. And it's making them asocial.

Speaker 6 And then we have the most talented companies in the world who sponsor this conference trying to convince them they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen with an algorithm. Here,

Speaker 6 trust me on this. Trust me.
Go out, drink more, make a series of bad decisions that might pay off.

Speaker 23 I'm not sure you're right on the statistics, honestly, but you should do that.

Speaker 16 Everybody should ask each other out.

Speaker 17 My sons were both asked out by the girls they are now seeing.

Speaker 18 They're girlfriends.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but your sons are handsome.

Speaker 7 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 6 The rest of us have to take our shot.

Speaker 6 The rest of us have to do something like this.

Speaker 25 Do you know what I think you need?

Speaker 29 Oh, God, here he goes again.

Speaker 3 Do you believe in love at first sight?

Speaker 30 No.

Speaker 6 No. Or should I walk by it?

Speaker 1 Show your ass. How about breakfast?

Speaker 19 Do you know what I'm thinking right now?

Speaker 13 I'm reconsidering the possibility of doing another four-year deal with Scott Calloway, but I've just re-reconsidered it.

Speaker 6 You'll be 78. I'll be 36.

Speaker 7 Do you think?

Speaker 6 By the way, by the way, for men, for men, 50 is a new 30, and for women, 40 is a new 90.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 6 I don't, I should have slept in and watched church chat.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 You know what?

Speaker 13 We're going to end up together in like a like.

Speaker 6 You'll be wheeling me around.

Speaker 22 Yes, I'll be wheeling you around. Looking over the wheelchair.

Speaker 16 Yes, and then I'll keel over and you'll be sitting there like by yourself because no one's going to want to talk to you.

Speaker 24 Anyway,

Speaker 8 speaking of shots, we're going to do shots here like we promised.

Speaker 6 I don't do shots.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 27 Yeah, I don't do shots. What do you mean you don't do shots?

Speaker 1 I don't do shots.

Speaker 14 Why?

Speaker 6 Someone, it's like that's a good thing.

Speaker 11 You literally just told him to drink and now you don't do shots.

Speaker 6 We'll put sugary shit on top of it in a lime and pretend like you're going to do a shot today. Literally, this is me at the store house last night.

Speaker 10 sitting the loveliest people come up to me and they're like thank you for your work on struggle just get me off fucking makers and ginger i don't want to talk about anything you're doing a shot because it says don't mess with texas all right we're going to fuck with texas today anyway um as i was saying we're doing our thing we've got a lot to get to today we're taking questions from the live audience of which are going to be most of the show but we want to talk about a couple of things following the news that trump is reigning in elon musk neither of us believe this and doge let's talk about how elon's actual business are doing as he dabbles in government SpaceX's largest starship exploded this past week during a test flight.

Speaker 17 That's the second time it's happened.

Speaker 13 He does blow up a lot of rockets.

Speaker 12 Tesla's sales and stock price are down, and the company is at risk of bleeding cash. Is this business misups happening because of his role in government or in spite of it?

Speaker 39 How do you look at these?

Speaker 36 Because the bus, and then Sterling, which may or may not go public, we'll talk about that in a minute,

Speaker 11 has seen competition from China, from Jeff Bezos, from all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 12 What's happening here?

Speaker 6 Well, I think it's a tale of two

Speaker 6 cities here, and that is Tesla is crashing in the sense that, I mean, you've heard.

Speaker 1 So I'm

Speaker 6 doing breakfast with the Nike people tomorrow. Nike went political with their embrace of Colin Kaepernick, but they did the math, and that is two-thirds of Nike sales are outside of the U.S.

Speaker 6 And no one outside of the U.S. thinks the U.S.
has got race relations right. Two-thirds and probably of their revenue and probably 70 or 80% of their profits come from people under the age of 30.

Speaker 6 They also have a huge customer base in non-whites. So essentially the people who burned their Nikes after they endorsed Nike, that was probably their first pair of Nies.

Speaker 6 And that is they knew that their core audience would probably feel very good about that move.

Speaker 6 As smart as that was,

Speaker 6 Musk's political

Speaker 6 forays or adventures are that stupid because 75% of Republicans say they would never buy EV. He's gone very red pill.
In California, his biggest market, EV sales for Tesla are down dramatically.

Speaker 6 And even after this crash in sales in Europe, if you look at the company,

Speaker 6 it's lost about a third of its value in February. It's lost all of its kind of trump bump gains.

Speaker 6 If you look at it from a valuation perspective, Apple only grew 2% last year, but it trades at a 38 times earnings multiple. Amazon grew 10%,

Speaker 6 38 times PE. NVIDIA grew about 114%, and it has a PE multiple of 40%.

Speaker 6 Tesla grew 1%. Tesla's flat, and it has a price earnings multiple of 144.

Speaker 6 So, Tesla is still, even after shedding a third of its value, is the most overvalued company in tech, maybe the exception of Palantir.

Speaker 6 And the sales are just not, it's crashing. His political calculus as it relates to Tesla was just irrational.
Now,

Speaker 6 to be fair, SpaceX and

Speaker 6 the value proposition of SpaceX is that rockets blow up.

Speaker 6 And that is, they can take risks that NASA and the government can't. And 99% of their launches are successful.
They're responsible for about 78% of the launches right now.

Speaker 6 The Falcon Heavy rocket can get shit into the air, into orbit, for $1,500 a kilogram. The next best is a Russian company called Angora that can do it at three times the cost.

Speaker 6 So their ability to take those sorts of risks and put shit into space for a third of the price of the second best per kilogram launch vehicle, I think SpaceX is going to be worth more than Tesla in 2025.

Speaker 36 But taking your eye off the ball, because there are now competitors, there's going to be increasing amounts of competitors.

Speaker 12 Will the same thing happen?

Speaker 8 Is this political calculation a good one for him?

Speaker 12 Because they may use Starlink at the FAA.

Speaker 30 They may use

Speaker 36 they were buying cyber trucks for some reason for the State Department.

Speaker 6 I think more than trying to increase revenues, it's trying to clear out obstacles. So, there are 11 federal agencies that have 32 investigations currently underway for different Musk companies.

Speaker 6 And a lot of those inspectors and people seem to be getting the axe. So, I don't think his foray into government is about trying to increase revenues.

Speaker 6 I think it's about trying to clear out the inspectors and potential regulation. But it doesn't look like the calculus is very smart here.

Speaker 6 Like, David Sachs getting involved in crypto and then getting Trump to have dinner with the guy from Ripple, who probably promised him money, and then all of a sudden deciding to include Ripple in the strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Speaker 6 By the way, there's nothing fucking strategic about that. And then all of a sudden Ripple rips.
That's pure, that's smart political kleptocracy corruption, but at least that's smart.

Speaker 6 His political forays so far, I don't think are paying off for him.

Speaker 4 You don't think so.

Speaker 12 What will happen then to Tesla from your perspective?

Speaker 40 Just a downward slide of the, I mean, they have to obviously update the cars.

Speaker 4 They're They're talking about self-driving, full self-driving.

Speaker 27 They're talking about robo-taxis, which already are in effect here with Waymo for years, actually.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but you said Waymo's just light years ahead of them. Yeah.
And

Speaker 6 if Tesla starts trading like a regular automobile company in terms of price to earnings, it would be at $14 a share. It's just impossible to rationalize the valuation.

Speaker 6 I still think it's a really good car. I think, you know,

Speaker 6 I can't help it. I get a Tesla on my Uber app, I I cancel, or I let them wait outside.
I know that's wrong.

Speaker 6 But it is a good car. It's a great company.
It should trade at a multiple of 50 to 100% more than the other car companies, meaning it's a $25 or a $30 stock.

Speaker 9 So where's the benefit for him in this kleptocracy you speak of?

Speaker 6 That's the correct question. I don't know.
Fame, narcissism, go red pill, clear out inspectors. To me,

Speaker 6 the calculus is not smart here. Tesla has basically

Speaker 6 become a brand that means has some very negative brand associations.

Speaker 39 I think that too.

Speaker 5 I think people who are buying it are repulsed by it, or actually repulsed by it, and are not.

Speaker 8 But, you know, you see all these stories, and actually, you're seeing violence at Tesla facilities,

Speaker 27 not just there, but at charging stations. The cars are getting defaced.
I think people are embarrassed to have them.

Speaker 35 I mean, the Uber thing is simple.

Speaker 4 I actually don't won't take a Tesla Uber.

Speaker 17 I just don't, I don't like the cars actually myself.

Speaker 12 I find them, it it feels like I'm sitting in the inside of an egg.

Speaker 19 I know it sounds dumb, but if you're in there, it feels sterile.

Speaker 17 And I don't, if I'm going to pay more for a car, an Uber, I want a nice, comfortable car.

Speaker 9 But that's besides the way I think it's just, it's just a brand destruction is what's happening.

Speaker 32 And he doesn't seem to mind because I think he's bored with his other businesses, and this is interesting to him, what he's doing.

Speaker 12 But the pushback is real from the thing.

Speaker 8 Do you think that's the case with him and Marco Rubio?

Speaker 24 There was a very funny SNL skit last night on that.

Speaker 11 Do you think the pushback is actually real?

Speaker 31 People keep predicting he and Trump finally.

Speaker 6 So 92% of Trump's advisors were fired. So there's a 90%.
It's like being second lieutenant in Vietnam.

Speaker 6 You're probably not going to last very long.

Speaker 6 That was ugly.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 It's dark.

Speaker 6 92% of those advisors in the first administration were fired, more than all the advisors that were fired in the previous three administrations. He's very good at creating human heat shields.

Speaker 6 If, in fact, he has told his cabinet they're now in charge and he's an advisor, it means he's done. He does not have the complexion to go to

Speaker 6 Senator Rubio, excuse me, Secretary Rubio. And also, these individuals have no incentives to trim their departments.
They have very difficult jobs, and their departments, all of this is a fine...

Speaker 6 a giant fucking distraction. So far, according to the Wall Street Journal, Doge has saved $2.6 billion.
If he wanted a 6X Doge, just cut off all subsidies to Tesla, which have been $15 billion.

Speaker 6 This is a giant misdirect.

Speaker 6 This is a giant misdirect to get you and mostly young people to look away. Oh, Doge, oh, he's crazy.
He's firing people. All these sad stories about federal employees being fired.

Speaker 4 Well, they're actually real.

Speaker 25 They are actually getting fired.

Speaker 6 I get it. And people in the private sector are fired every day.
But they want you to look over here such that you don't look at the tax plan that is going to add $800 billion to the deficit.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 this is the conspiracy that is elegant and that people aren't looking at. Talk about DEI being a helicopter crash.
Talk about Doge. Talk about inflame people by saying

Speaker 6 stupid laws like male versus female, that's how they're spending their time. Because look over here, not at the fact that

Speaker 6 the fact that the 0.1% who

Speaker 6 will say under the breath, yeah, I don't want to go to his inauguration, but my accountant tells me I'm going to get another $11 million this year.

Speaker 6 This is a conspiracy between the 0.1% and an administration that wants you to look over here and ignore the fact that we're about to levy the greatest increase in taxes in history called a deficit.

Speaker 6 Anyone under the age of 40 in here at some point is either going to have to pay that back or the forward-leaning investments we've been able to make in the past in technology and space and education are going to get crowded out by the interest on this debt, which is now greater than our military.

Speaker 6 So we need to reframe this discussion and say, America is about to incur the greatest tax increase in history on young people that's deferred called the deficit. Don't look at that.
Look at that

Speaker 6 they just fired three people, the National Forestry Service. Who the fuck cares? I know it's sad.
I know it's bad.

Speaker 13 Well, no, Scott, I don't, I think it is actually a hollowing out, not just of the regulators.

Speaker 27 of Elon, although I think that's very clear that that's, I mean, they're definitely a- So what is the percentage?

Speaker 6 The actual percentage.

Speaker 19 It's a very small amount.

Speaker 35 He's not saving any money. I mean, the whole thing is kind of

Speaker 16 a misdirect.

Speaker 11 And at the same time, they were going to pass this tax law anyway.

Speaker 8 They were not going to not pass this tax law.

Speaker 30 And I do think the Democrats, as we talked about last week, focusing in on Elon, is a good, good politically because he's disliked from poll after poll.

Speaker 43 The polls are very clear.

Speaker 10 So I'm not so sure it's the smartest idea to have this particular, this misdirect is different than DEI crashed planes versus something else.

Speaker 29 I do think it's at the heart of what Trump's doing.

Speaker 12 And I think he's antagonizing a lot of his base.

Speaker 17 And by that, I mean people in Washington for no good reason when he could get these things passed no matter what.

Speaker 6 Aaron Ross Powell, I think there's a large percentage of moderates that feel like breaking some eggs and laying off people in the public sector.

Speaker 6 First off,

Speaker 6 if this were an audit, the net results of the audit so far far is there's dramatically less inefficiency, fraud, and waste than we thought in government.

Speaker 6 They're just, if you look at their quote-unquote wall of receipts,

Speaker 6 they haven't been able, it appears, to actually find any fraud or waste. Exactly right.
We saved $8 billion.

Speaker 6 Oh, no, it's actually $8 million and the money's already been spent. And then numbers two, three, and four that they supposedly saved money on weren't real.

Speaker 6 If this is an audit, the government is getting an outstanding clean bill of health around fraud and waste. But having said that, I do think moderates kind of like the idea.

Speaker 6 And every administration has done some form of this, just not so weird. They do.

Speaker 36 There's always that sentence, like, of course, we're all for government reform.

Speaker 22 If you notice, they always do that.

Speaker 6 But these departments are tough.

Speaker 6 Senator or Secretary Rubio isn't going to agree to cuts. If he's actually in charge now, he's got a tough job.
He's not going to say, yeah, you snort.

Speaker 6 Do a few Rails Academy and then come in here and tell me what ambassadors or what people we should lay off.

Speaker 6 He's not going to say that.

Speaker 32 So if he does look like his soul has come out.

Speaker 1 If he has to report into him now, it means Doge is over, yeah.

Speaker 22 Yeah, yeah, we'll see.

Speaker 24 It'll take a while to get him out.

Speaker 22 Elon is a bit like mold.

Speaker 33 So let's talk about how Elon is influencing the business world by moving his Texas here to Texas.

Speaker 12 He's not the first to do it.

Speaker 36 Now Chevron, KFC, and Meta are talking about putting their HQs here. The governor of Delaware, where most Fortune 500 companies are incorporated, is now scrambling to keep companies there.

Speaker 9 You and I have talked about that.

Speaker 10 I mean, do people,

Speaker 36 is this a, you have talked about being a good thing because Texas is more business friendly versus other places.

Speaker 16 I assume other states will try to do the same thing.

Speaker 8 Wyoming, I know, is doing that.

Speaker 17 Nevada, there's certain states that are doing that.

Speaker 39 Do you think Delaware is over as a place to do business?

Speaker 6 No, Delaware is traditionally seen as very corporate friendly, especially then they are efficient around their chancery court and the way they decide stuff.

Speaker 6 I don't think you can be for competition and ask big tech to break up and not support competition among states.

Speaker 6 I think the thing that's going to incent California to get its shit together is a lot of people are leaving for Texas because they do.

Speaker 6 The three greatest arbitrages available, I think, in economic history are one, the arbitrage from fossil fuels to things that build everything from this to the tennis shoes you have probably have petroleum in them.

Speaker 6 Second is to find young, ambitious people who will work as hard or harder because then have dogs and kids and will be 80 or 90% as good as the person who's been with your company 20 years.

Speaker 6 But because they're naïve and can live in a 300-square-foot apartment, you don't have to pay them 30 or 40% as much.

Speaker 6 The most successful companies in the world participate in the arbitrage of young people who don't know any better, right? Those are your most valuable employees.

Speaker 6 It's the overeducated, really hardworking 25-year-old that you pay 80 grand instead of 250 grand to the 40-year-old who has kids.

Speaker 6 The other big arbitrage right now, economically, in the United States, is state arbitrage. And that is people who basically say, okay, and I did this in 2010.

Speaker 6 I got my

Speaker 6 son was denied. He's doing great now because he was speech delayed when he was four from seven out of seven schools that wanted to charge us $58,000 a year for him to play with blocks.

Speaker 6 We moved to Florida. And the school there, a lovely little school, was $12,000.

Speaker 6 So the geographic arbitrage that's taking place across America where people are moving to lower cost, higher quality of living states like Texas and Florida is a great thing.

Speaker 6 So companies coming here, I think, is a good thing. I think it's important.
But what's weird is Meta, Chevron, and KFC, so carbon teen depression and diabetes.

Speaker 15 Would you move to Texas?

Speaker 7 It's a little hot. I would.

Speaker 23 Florida hasn't worked out as well.

Speaker 12 The whole Miami tech thing is sort of a bust right now.

Speaker 21 Yeah, it's a good quality of life, though.

Speaker 6 It's a really nice quality of life.

Speaker 28 I think you can, but that didn't take us.

Speaker 7 I didn't even live here.

Speaker 20 Don't you think you could live there?

Speaker 7 This seems pretty nice.

Speaker 1 No. No?

Speaker 20 No.

Speaker 7 Austin?

Speaker 39 They don't like the gays.

Speaker 1 Austin doesn't like gay people.

Speaker 15 Maybe Austin does, but it's...

Speaker 14 I know that. I'm aware of that.
I'm aware.

Speaker 30 But let me say, I worry about my family a lot, like in different certain states.

Speaker 35 Whether I love Austin, I love this area, but you have a state government that's hostile to my family.

Speaker 22 So it's really hard when I'm making Florida, forget it.

Speaker 8 And I'm even worried in D.C., my kids in a D.C.

Speaker 32 public school.

Speaker 42 And, you know, she brought home, they did like a little diversity moment where they were just, it was coloring in a coloring thing.

Speaker 23 And I thought, oh, wow, one of these fucking senators from some state

Speaker 17 who has no values that I have are going to try to mess with my kids' education.

Speaker 27 I think about it all the time.

Speaker 6 And then I'm like, I don't walk in your shoes, so I take your word for it.

Speaker 24 Yeah, it's just, you just, you have to be thinking really hard about where you want to raise your kids and where, where they're going to attack your family.

Speaker 27 I mean, I just, I, I think about it.

Speaker 22 I didn't think I'd have to think about it again in my life, except now I I do.

Speaker 6 So, again, I don't have your lived experience.

Speaker 25 Right.

Speaker 32 But the taxes, fantastic.

Speaker 6 Well, I know

Speaker 22 extra security.

Speaker 6 As a Florida resident,

Speaker 6 I think a lot of Florida citizens are horrified by some of the laws that have been passed around restricting a woman's right. Yeah.
Women's rights. There's just no doubt about it.
That's rattling.

Speaker 6 But just on the ground, I live in Delroy Beach. It feels like a pretty progressive community that's very open and welcoming.

Speaker 27 I get it.

Speaker 17 But anytime a state can fuck with me, I'm very aware of it.

Speaker 36 And it's one of the reasons I love California and stuff.

Speaker 27 But I get it.

Speaker 14 I get it.

Speaker 12 There's definitely a cost-benefit analysis, but I just find I'd rather be in states that support my family.

Speaker 17 That's all.

Speaker 24 So

Speaker 9 you think a lot of states will move here?

Speaker 31 You do? You do think they'll?

Speaker 6 Oh, there'll definitely be companies that incorporate here and move here.

Speaker 7 Oracle is here.

Speaker 6 I think that's a great thing. I think competition, intrastate competition is really important.

Speaker 6 I think it's good for the...

Speaker 13 You guys are building like crazy here. What in the hell's going on?

Speaker 22 I've never seen such, like, every time I come back here, I think there can't be another building here in Austin, and then there's another fucking building.

Speaker 40 Yeah. It's getting a little much, I'll be honest with you.

Speaker 24 All right,

Speaker 28 let's go on a quick break.

Speaker 27 When we come back, we'll have more for you.

Speaker 47 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 47 With key insights from an AI assistant. Pick a template with a click.
Now your preso looks super slick. Close that deal, yeah, you won.
Do that, doing that, did that, done.

Speaker 48 Now you can do that, do that with Acrobat.

Speaker 47 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 49 Monday Sidekick: the AI agent that knows you and your business, thinks ahead and takes action. Ask at anything, seriously.
Monday Sidekick: AI you'll love to use.

Speaker 49 Start a a free trial today on Monday.com.

Speaker 50 Let's be honest, are you happy with your job? Like, really happy? The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that.

Speaker 50 Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown, or one we never wanted in the first place. But still, we stick it out, and we give reasons like, what if the next move is even worse?

Speaker 50 I've already put years into this place.

Speaker 1 And maybe the most most common one, isn't everyone kind of miserable at work?

Speaker 50 But there's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving. It's time to get unstuck.
It's time for Strawberry.me.

Speaker 50 They match you with a certified career coach who helps you go from where you are to where you actually want to be.

Speaker 50 Your coach helps you get clear on your goals, create a plan, build your confidence, and keeps you accountable along the way. So don't leave your career to to chance.

Speaker 50 Take action and own your future with a professional coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
That's strawberry.me slash unstuck.

Speaker 37 Okay, Scott, we're back. On Friday, President Trump

Speaker 15 held the first ever crypto summit at the White House usually.

Speaker 7 Such a pro, right?

Speaker 20 What an elegant segue.

Speaker 6 How did she pull it off?

Speaker 6 Oh, my God. What are you doing here on a sunny morning?

Speaker 11 Can I just tell you, there is no way you could do what I do.

Speaker 8 See, the crowd agrees.

Speaker 1 On a lot of levels.

Speaker 22 Let me just say, you're the,

Speaker 1 if you understood what's happening here, you're the pretty one incredibly.

Speaker 27 You're the pretty one who just sits there and stays in the city.

Speaker 7 I'm sorry, Kier, what did you say?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'm the pretty one.

Speaker 1 Do you think we'll ever have sex?

Speaker 7 That's what I get. Do you think we'll ever have sex?

Speaker 5 Do you think we'll ever have sex?

Speaker 6 The two of us?

Speaker 32 Yeah, just curious.

Speaker 6 I'm down as long as I don't have to be there.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 14 That would be so weird.

Speaker 6 I was just like, oh, God, you don't know what it takes to get me going now, Kara. Yeah.

Speaker 6 It's a Pam Greer film, eight bottle of cocaine and a cattle prod up my ass, and then it's go time.

Speaker 6 It's go time for a good 90 seconds.

Speaker 7 I was just thinking about that.

Speaker 25 And then when I climax, I scream out, surrender, Dorothy.

Speaker 6 Or my favorite from Wicked.

Speaker 7 I'm melting.

Speaker 6 How did we get here?

Speaker 25 Get us out of this. No, I'm just chilling.

Speaker 6 Get us out of this.

Speaker 1 I'm going to cry.

Speaker 18 I've never thought about having sex, just so you know.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Which is why you brought it up. Yeah, I'm just.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 9 It just seems like the inevitable end of our relationship.

Speaker 22 Oh, God.

Speaker 4 Suddenly we'll look at it.

Speaker 5 It's like a movie, like a whole movie.

Speaker 7 Just ate. Okay, all right.

Speaker 25 Okay, now we're back. Okay.

Speaker 15 President Trump held the first ever crypto summit at the White House.

Speaker 28 Crypto experts, lawmakers, administration officials gathered as Trump declared a war on crypto is over.

Speaker 28 A day earlier, Trump signed an executive order creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve and separate digital assets stockpile.

Speaker 12 The reserve will be established with Bitcoin that has been seized from federal law enforcement.

Speaker 8 I don't know how much that is.

Speaker 9 During Trump's second term, the SEC had already closed several investigations

Speaker 31 into cryptocurrency firms.

Speaker 8 Sam Bankman Freed, if you saw him on Tucker Carlson the other day,

Speaker 39 he's hoping to get in on that forgiveness.

Speaker 37 The disgrace FTX founders reportedly been campaigning for a pardon from President Trump.

Speaker 4 I bet he gets it.

Speaker 24 What do you think of the reserve?

Speaker 14 And

Speaker 30 will you be thinking about more crypto investments now that this is happening?

Speaker 24 You and I have been sort of in and out on whether crypto is good.

Speaker 42 I ultimately think it's probably more, some of it's okay, some of it isn't.

Speaker 27 Some of the people in crypto find this disturbing, the way they're doing this, in the way they found the Biden administration to be too difficult in terms of rolling things out.

Speaker 6 So this is essentially just pure pay-for-play. And

Speaker 6 Republicans would argue that, okay, we're just more transparent about it. But the crypto community gave $285 million to the Trump campaign.
And what do you know?

Speaker 6 He's decided to have a quote-unquote strategic Bitcoin reserve. It makes absolutely no sense.

Speaker 6 You have a strategic petroleum reserve, and it is strategic strategic because if there's a war or our supply chain of fossil fuels gets cut off, we don't want our economy to come to a halt if we need to build tanks or just keep the economy open.

Speaker 6 So we have a strategic reserve. What's going to happen if we run out of Bitcoin? Like, how is that a defense threat?

Speaker 6 So there's nothing strategic about it. What it is is the following.
You give me $285 million.

Speaker 6 So I'm going to increase the deficit.

Speaker 6 I mean, when we seize assets, when the FBI seizes assets, they immediately sell them because they don't want to be in the business of owning boats or Bitcoin or whatever. That's not their job.

Speaker 6 They're not hedge fund managers. If you have a nation that's creating more revenue than you're spending, then you have a sovereign fund that tries to find alpha.

Speaker 9 Which they're also trying to do with sovereign fund.

Speaker 4 He's talked about that.

Speaker 1 But why? We don't need a sovereign fund.

Speaker 6 We need higher taxes and lower spending. We don't have any additional money because then you're saying the government is better at allocating investment capital than the investment community.

Speaker 6 And by the way, all this isn't, again, another increase in a deficit to transfer wealth to his 0.1 percenters such that you can own a little bit of Bitcoin. Here's a crazy idea.

Speaker 6 Go buy your own fucking Bitcoin. I mean, it just, this makes no sense whatsoever.
This is pure, you gave me $285 million.

Speaker 6 So I'm going to come up with a bunch of jazz hands around why we should have a strategic reserve. And by the way, there's a negative implication.

Speaker 6 Bitcoin is terrible for the United States strategically because

Speaker 6 the biggest, baddest carrier strike force in our arsenal is an invisible one called the U.S. dollar.

Speaker 6 And when we put sanctions on a country, it has teeth because we can stop them from trading in dollars, which makes it very hard for them to do business globally.

Speaker 6 So, if you're going to create another global reserve currency, all you are doing is attacking our aircraft carrier squadron called the dollar.

Speaker 6 So, this is not only kleptocracy and pay-for-play and make no sense, it's actually damaging to the underlying strength of America because

Speaker 12 a lot of people felt the Biden administration had been hostile, especially Gary Gensler, who you and I both talked to,

Speaker 27 that they had been hostile to the development of it, trying to over-regulate it.

Speaker 10 I do understand why their inclination is to regulate it because it's currency.

Speaker 17 It does affect other parts of the economy.

Speaker 6 Bitcoin has established it. First off, I don't think you can talk about Bitcoin in the same breath as the other ones.

Speaker 6 Bitcoin has established itself as a credible store of value because the genius of Bitcoin is they've created this algorithm or this methodology where you have to constantly throw numbers to unlock or mine Bitcoin.

Speaker 6 And people now believe the market now believes that they're going to stop minting at 21 million. So Bitcoin is increasing less fast than gold reserves.
Then we're printing US dollars.

Speaker 6 So the market says this is a legitimate store of value. That is an asset class.
What's to stop anyone at Doja or Ripple or ETH from massively increasing the supply?

Speaker 6 It's supposed to be one of three things. It's supposed to be a payment mechanism.
No one's using this shit for payments. It's supposed to have utility.

Speaker 6 You could argue ETH and some of them, maybe they make payments. Maybe other stable coins go on their technology.
But for the most part, there's no real utility here, folks.

Speaker 6 It's not like Dennis used Bitcoin to fill your cavities. There's just, there's no real utility.
What it could be is a store of value.

Speaker 6 And one of them, in my view, has created a store of value, and that is a legitimate store of value. And that's Bitcoin.

Speaker 6 Other than that, it's pure speculation, which is fun but the notion that we're going to get involved you're about to see in 36 months you're going to see a raft of stories about crypto scams that happen between now and the next 36 months because you could make an argument that it was being overregulated or there was a lack of regulation which created insecurity like people i think brian armstrong will fairly say just tell us what the rules are and we'll comply but they couldn't get any clarity so you could argue there was an underregulation but there was opaque regulation

Speaker 6 But now it's the Wild West. You're going to see

Speaker 22 Bitcoin right now?

Speaker 6 I'm a no-coiner. I was on the board of a company called Ledger, which was a crypto hardware wallet, because I wanted to learn more.
But I generally don't invest in things I don't understand.

Speaker 6 And I speak, I'll go down and I'll have lunch with Michael Saylor whenever I'm in Miami. And within about 10 minutes of hearing him, he's brilliant.
I start thinking, put everything into Bitcoin.

Speaker 6 Put everything, this guy's just so much fucking smarter than me. Put everything into Bitcoin.
And then by the time I leave lunch, I'm like, I I have no fucking idea what Bitcoin is.

Speaker 6 I don't understand it. I just don't get it.
So I'm a no-coiner. Do you own any?

Speaker 11 I do, but I can't find it.

Speaker 6 You can't find it. Yeah.

Speaker 7 That's right. I bought it.
You told me that.

Speaker 28 Yeah, I bought it at the beginning.

Speaker 9 People know this story.

Speaker 43 I bought it at the beginning.

Speaker 12 I was writing a story about Wences Casares, who started Zappo, and I bought

Speaker 51 10.

Speaker 22 10 or 50 Bitcoin. I don't know, but it was like 50 bucks each.

Speaker 12 And must have been 10 because they spent $500.

Speaker 6 I've been using that to our advantage. That story is out there that Kara has like $50 million in Bitcoin in like a drawer somewhere.

Speaker 7 It's not in the drawer.

Speaker 6 It's probably a Lucky's house, but whenever I'm with Bancoff, we're in the midst of it.

Speaker 40 Hey, go get my mother, do something.

Speaker 6 Whenever we're in the midst of negotiating a new four-year deal with Vox, and I'm just malicious and Machiavellian. And last night, I'm like, oh, hey, Jim.
She's like, what are you doing?

Speaker 6 I'm going to the Spotify party. They want to talk to us.

Speaker 6 And also, and also, I heard Kara found her crypto.

Speaker 6 From Spotify.

Speaker 1 Anyway,

Speaker 7 anyway. By the way, Netflix is getting into podcasting.
Just saying.

Speaker 7 Just saying. Oh, just saying.

Speaker 12 So no Bitcoin for us.

Speaker 24 All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break, and we'll be back with our next big story.

Speaker 6 Support for the show comes from Odo.

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

Speaker 3 Before you know it, you find yourself drowning in software and processes instead of focusing on what matters, growing your business. This is where Odo comes in.

Speaker 3 It's the only business software you'll ever need. Odo is an all-in-one fully integrated platform that handles everything.
That means CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, and more.

Speaker 3 No more app overload, no more juggling logins, just one seamless system that makes work easier. And the best part is that Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 3 It's built to grow with your business, whether you're just starting out or you're already scaling up. Plus, it's easy to use, customizable, and designed to streamline every process.

Speaker 3 It's time to put the clutter aside and focus on what really matters: running your business. Thousands of businesses have made the switch, so why not you? Try Odu for free at odu.com.
That's odoo.com.

Speaker 37 All right, Scott, we're back with our next big

Speaker 8 You won't take a shot.

Speaker 25 I have liquor for you.

Speaker 6 That's why she makes the big bucks.

Speaker 28 I do.

Speaker 19 I make the big bucks.

Speaker 28 We're back with our next big story.

Speaker 39 Let's talk very quickly about IPOs because I want to get to questions from the audience.

Speaker 27 I want you to be brief here. I know it's difficult for you.

Speaker 11 2025 was expected to be a big year for IPOs, thanks to Trump and his pro-business anti-regulation administration.

Speaker 12 But with tariff whiff blash, regulatory changes, inflation concerns out there, we're not seeing an IPO just yet, although StubHub and Discord are reportedly getting ready to dip their toes in the waters.

Speaker 36 Some other long-rumored is Xi'an, OpenAI, and SpaceX.

Speaker 12 What is the, is it a good time to go public?

Speaker 38 It doesn't seem like there have been any.

Speaker 12 Xi'an, for example, is facing some headwinds with Trump, ending the de minimis loophole that allows them to ship cheap goods from China to the U.S. without paying taxes and import duties.

Speaker 29 Where is the IPO market, briefly?

Speaker 6 It's kind of the walking dead. In 2021, there were a thousand IPOs that raised $280 billion.

Speaker 6 Last year, there were 150 IPOs that raised 30 billion. I mean, the IPO market is just literally dead.

Speaker 6 It hasn't been this bad for this long in a long time. And we keep hoping something is going to set the starting gun for it again.
And I thought it was going to, I got this wrong.

Speaker 6 I thought Reddit was going to ignite the market, and it hasn't.

Speaker 6 The IPO market is still really dormant. It's just very

Speaker 7 cold,

Speaker 30 terrible.

Speaker 24 And will it come back with any of these?

Speaker 27 These are promising companies, obviously.

Speaker 6 You would think, but I mean, is this a cyclical thing or is it structural? Because it used to be you couldn't get these types of valuations unless you tapped into deep institutional capital.

Speaker 6 But now that institutional capital has moved into the private markets. And when OpenAI can raise money at a $300 billion market cap, which creates a greater value than 90% of public companies.

Speaker 6 And you have opportunities or access to liquidity, secondary markets.

Speaker 7 $40 billion?

Speaker 7 Is that right?

Speaker 42 Something that's $40 to $60.

Speaker 6 But the point is, do we need the public markets?

Speaker 6 The problem is, is that yet again, we are sequestering the majority of the upside of our prosperity to the private markets that consists mostly of 0.1 percenters and institutional investors.

Speaker 6 The people who got to invest in Google, you know, retail investors, have done exceptionally well. Same as Apple.

Speaker 6 The problem is institutional money figured out why are we giving away these gains to the retail market? We can capture them privately and offer employees liquidity and have less regulation.

Speaker 6 So unfortunately, right now, the retail markets have become the last stop when you can't find private investors to take your valuation up. And most of the margin, most of the juice

Speaker 6 gets squeezed out. So yet again, the IPU market is another indication of the fact that we're cramming all the prosperity into a small number of people.

Speaker 34 There's also been lack of interest in being public, in being

Speaker 8 not the thing you want anymore because of regulation, because of public-facing

Speaker 30 things.

Speaker 30 I bet a lot of these companies may go private.

Speaker 8 Do you ever see one of the very big companies going private?

Speaker 6 That is an excellent point.

Speaker 6 If you look at some of the fallen angels and you look at the amount of money, capital sitting on the sidelines in private equity, it's over $4 trillion of capital waiting to be deployed.

Speaker 6 I think we're going to see, I did my predictions deck yesterday, I think we're going to see the biggest take private in history this year.

Speaker 6 And it'll be, in my opinion, my three favorite targets are Intel, which is arguably the worst managed company in tech over the last 20 years.

Speaker 6 I mean, it's one thing when your stock goes into the shit or when your company's in structural decline, right? Warner Brothers Discovery, they can claim we're facing headwinds.

Speaker 6 Intel has literally been in the best business in the world for the last 30 years.

Speaker 6 And they have been one of the worst performing stocks. Someone might step up.
I think it's got a 70 or 80 billion. Someone might step up and go there.

Speaker 6 The two others I like are Boeing and the third is Target. Big, big, outstanding brands, decent management, great businesses, and the opportunity to get them.
You know, they're fallen angels.

Speaker 6 They're on sale right now. And there's so much money.
I think there could be a club deal to take one of those companies private.

Speaker 1 Private.

Speaker 10 Those are the three. Would you be part of that?

Speaker 7 One of those?

Speaker 6 I don't think so. Yeah.

Speaker 44 Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 32 All right.

Speaker 11 Get ready to ask questions.

Speaker 19 Taylor, bring out the liquor, please.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 11 Scott, you're going to have a shot.

Speaker 17 You promised.

Speaker 5 Thank you.

Speaker 1 You can do do a little one.

Speaker 32 You can do it.

Speaker 22 This is Taylor, everybody.

Speaker 16 Taylor Graben, who is amazing.

Speaker 37 She's one of our... Go ahead.

Speaker 6 Taylor is from Texas. Where are you from, Taylor?

Speaker 7 Puerto Ranzas.

Speaker 6 Portaranzas.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Oh, my God. Hello.

Speaker 31 Anyway, she's amazing.

Speaker 30 We have an amazing, by the way, take a moment.

Speaker 17 All our staffs on all our podcasts are amazing.

Speaker 7 Ish.

Speaker 38 Ish. No, they're great.

Speaker 4 They have to put up with Scott, obviously.

Speaker 25 Thank you, Taylor.

Speaker 22 Okay, give him the big one.

Speaker 5 I'll take the little Texas boot.

Speaker 6 I'll do that one, the boot.

Speaker 39 Give him the boot. Okay, give him the boot.
Give him the boot.

Speaker 7 You're trying to get me drunk.

Speaker 11 Yes, I'm not.

Speaker 27 Yes, because I want to have my way with you. Okay.

Speaker 1 There we go.

Speaker 6 All right, enjoy it. There it is again.

Speaker 7 Thanks for that. All right.

Speaker 18 Okay.

Speaker 9 Let us begin with audience questions.

Speaker 8 Everybody, line up here, please.

Speaker 38 Stand up and ask questions of us.

Speaker 5 Start walking.

Speaker 9 You can ask anything you want.

Speaker 23 Anything.

Speaker 7 You got to introduce yourself, though.

Speaker 32 Yes, please.

Speaker 7 Yes, please introduce yourself.

Speaker 6 All right. Hello, I'm Malcolm.

Speaker 7 Okay, start here.

Speaker 52 My question is, how do you guys go about avoiding audience capture and making sure you're not just going over the same points over and over again because it's what your audience has come to expect from you?

Speaker 35 Meaning, I don't even know what that means.

Speaker 6 So like certain people like Joe Rogan, other podcasters have kind of gotten into a silo where they only talk about a certain topic because that's what their audience comes to expect from them. Yeah.

Speaker 6 How do you guys avoid it?

Speaker 11 It's hard. It's actually hard.

Speaker 37 We think about it a lot, especially because we have other podcasts and we're doing other things.

Speaker 22 But one of the things I think is important is actual narrative in stories.

Speaker 29 And I think one of the things that's attractive about our podcast is you follow us over time, right?

Speaker 35 And I notice when we talk to our

Speaker 12 fans, when they come up to us, they like the story about us, about our relationship, not just, you know, and they like the whole story.

Speaker 12 And I think as we follow things and we learn and sort of start to analyze, it's not a bad thing necessarily.

Speaker 27 Obviously,

Speaker 22 sometimes we worry about the Elon-ness of it.

Speaker 24 Like at this point, we get it, but I got to tell you, we're growing.

Speaker 27 Like it's hard to, it's like Trump.

Speaker 43 You're sort of like stuck in a situation.

Speaker 12 He really is consequential.

Speaker 17 And so you can't ignore him.

Speaker 41 But we definitely think about how to be fresh and not repetitive.

Speaker 12 And that's hard because you have to come up with new insights all the time, Scott.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I do think, and we've talked about it, I think we talk about politics too much. And I think a lot of people came in expecting us to talk about tech and business.

Speaker 6 And oftentimes, sometimes justifiably, but we are both passionate about politics and we both feel very invested and we get triggered by some of this stuff.

Speaker 6 But if we were purely about what I'd call purity of editorial and trying to be as appealing to as large a group as possible, which oftentimes involves not alienating 49% of the U.S., we would talk probably less about politics.

Speaker 6 But I don't think that's...

Speaker 12 But it's hard now because they're really fucking in Washington, these assholes.

Speaker 38 I mean, it's really, I always joke.

Speaker 25 Case in point.

Speaker 12 Yeah, it's hard not to, they're there.

Speaker 10 And, you know, David Snacks is deciding on this idiotic crypto reserve.

Speaker 9 You've got, like, they're all wandering.

Speaker 12 I live in Washington now.

Speaker 35 I moved, and then there they are, like the top day.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, fuck, how did they get there?

Speaker 6 Half the nation is right or center right. I'm center left.
She's crazy fucking left.

Speaker 5 No, I'm not.

Speaker 12 You are so much leftier than I am these days, but go ahead.

Speaker 1 Do you think?

Speaker 10 Yeah, really.

Speaker 27 You've become somewhat of a San Francisco lesbian, if I had to be honest.

Speaker 24 You have gone rather less.

Speaker 1 You're more, I'm more expecting the Trump people, right?

Speaker 22 Yeah, let's get through as many as we can.

Speaker 53 Go ahead. My name is Tatum.
This is about trade schools. And Scott, it's kind of for you, but my family owns cosmetology schools and hair and skin.

Speaker 53 So, Kara, you're certainly able to answer this question.

Speaker 7 Okay, thank you.

Speaker 6 No shade, Scott.

Speaker 53 You talk a lot about the diminishing ROI on traditional four-year college degrees and the need for more practical, high-earning career paths.

Speaker 53 Given the rising costs of college and labor shortages in skilled trade, what systematic changes, whether in policy, culture, or corporate investment, do you think are necessary to reposition trade schools as a first-choice pathway rather than a fallback option?

Speaker 44 That's a great question. I'll start very quickly.

Speaker 10 I think it's critically important.

Speaker 12 They do it in Europe, like all the time, and it's not, it's without the shame of it.

Speaker 10 There's something in this country thinking that college is a better option.

Speaker 12 It's just stuck in the minds of parents, I think, in a lot of ways.

Speaker 10 I have a son who I would love to be a chef, for example, and go to school.

Speaker 9 I don't think he happened to like college and it went really well.

Speaker 14 It's gone and he's graduating this year, my oldest son.

Speaker 27 But I do think I thought a lot about like if he wanted to do other things.

Speaker 11 For my other son, college was critical because he's going to be in fusion energy and he needs to be trained and stuff.

Speaker 32 But it's definitely getting this.

Speaker 11 For some reason, there's a stink on the idea of it in this country.

Speaker 17 And I don't know why, because these are great professions.

Speaker 37 They're very difficult.

Speaker 35 They're AI proof in many ways, right?

Speaker 12 And I don't know why there is a sense that that's not the way to go in this country.

Speaker 6 It's true.

Speaker 53 I'm a hairdresser, but went to college first.

Speaker 6 And saying one or the other, a totally different reaction from people.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 6 We don't have an apprentice culture. And if you look at...
There's so many factors that have led to young men struggling, falling further faster than any other court in America.

Speaker 6 And part of it is like, what happened to Otto, Wood, and Metal Shop?

Speaker 6 Two-thirds of males just aren't cut out for liberal arts education. They don't have the discipline.
They don't have the demeanor to get through college. It's just not what they want.

Speaker 6 And unfortunately, a lot of those jobs are passed to the middle class, have been outsourced, or no longer existing. I didn't like Biden's bailout plan of student loans.

Speaker 6 I just thought that was creating more moral hazard, and people were going to borrow more money from a nice lady in a pantsuit with an NYU logo always saying, your education investments in yourself will always pay off.

Speaker 6 And then they get out with a philosophy major and they have $130,000 000 in debt so i didn't like the bailout what they could have done and should do is the following if they were to take a hundred billion dollars and take the hundred biggest of our public universities which are the best in the world and said i will give you a billion dollars over the next 10 years if you do three things one

Speaker 6 you have to expand your enrollments greater than population growth Two, you have to cut your tuition 2% a year, which would result in 10 years, a doubling in the number of freshman seats at half the cost.

Speaker 6 Take it back to the 80s when I applied to UCLA and the admissions rate was 76%,

Speaker 6 and the cost for all seven years of undergrad and grad for me at UCLA and Berkeley was $7,000. I am here because of the generosity of California taxpayers.

Speaker 6 And the third thing they need to do is at least 20% of their certificates need to be non-traditional, non-four-year degrees, nursing, specialty construction, installation of HVAC.

Speaker 6 These jobs, we need these people. And there's this obnoxious self-aggrandizement.

Speaker 6 I have given a lot of my money to UCLA and Berkeley for what's called continuing education because they couldn't call it vocational programs because me and my colleagues are such fucking snobs.

Speaker 6 We need, think about how little the college degree has not innovated. There's amazing jobs.
I was on a plane with this woman who's the IV whisperer. She works at a hospital and she can find any vein.

Speaker 6 That's her whole thing. When they can't find a vein on somebody, they call her.

Speaker 6 And she makes $180,000 working three a year working three 12 hour shifts that's a amazing job and she needed two years of training universities need to innovate and they need to recognize we're not there to make ourselves feel important to this rejectionist culture but to train people to have the economic security for them and their families one you have to grow your population your freshman class faster than population grow growth you have to cut costs two percent a year with inflation and ten years to cut it in half and at least 20 percent of your certificates or have to be some sort of vocational programming that's how we take our universities to the next level and create more.

Speaker 6 So a good message for Democrats, for example, to big ideas and also reignite, give younger people, quite frankly, mostly men, more past on-ramps in the middle class.

Speaker 6 I'm not saying you wouldn't see women, but the program I'm involved in, 70% of the people who show up, who aren't cut out for college, are men.

Speaker 6 So many avenues have been shut off, traditional means to economic security for men who are not, quite frankly, they're just not cut out as well for college. They're less mature.

Speaker 6 They're They're less disciplined. There's now more women in college.
It's 60-40 globally now. And by the way, we should do nothing to get in the way of that.

Speaker 6 What I'm suggesting is let's not forget the people who are never going to go to college. They're just not cut out.
Remember that guy in high school? They were everywhere.

Speaker 6 They were just not going to go to college, but they could fix a fucking car. They were really good with their hands.

Speaker 6 And instead, we got rid of those classes and put in computer science and got rid of civics and we end up with fucking Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker 32 Bring back Metal Shop. That's how it happened.

Speaker 22 All right, I'm going to cut you off.

Speaker 7 We're going to try it again.

Speaker 6 Thank you for the question. Yeah, good.

Speaker 26 My name is Moritz. I'm from Germany.
I'm a big fan of the show.

Speaker 1 Where in Germany?

Speaker 26 From where? From Cologne.

Speaker 7 Oh, cool.

Speaker 6 Most beautiful cathedral and the best beer in all Europe. Yes, there are people who would argue with that, but probably you're right.

Speaker 26 Yeah,

Speaker 26 so you talked about it on the show recently, how Elon Musk interfered with the German election and tried to bring down our democracy as well. And my question is,

Speaker 26 are we going to see more of that and what's the end game here? And as you often put it, Scott, what's the effective response probably?

Speaker 26 And also, if I'm saying I love you to my wife who's at home, is that going on the show?

Speaker 32 Yes, yes, it just did. It just did.

Speaker 1 I love you, Anna.

Speaker 16 I'll answer very much.

Speaker 22 I just was in Australia and they're terrified of Elon Musk coming over there and doing something like or Trump getting paying attention to them, especially around their online safety bill that they passed.

Speaker 24 And they're worried about,

Speaker 14 they're absolutely worried about him funding.

Speaker 22 They have a less active right-wing group there, but they're worried about him funding that group.

Speaker 39 He's going to do it all over the world.

Speaker 14 I don't see him stopping.

Speaker 12 I think this is his, he thinks, I don't think it was particularly effective in Germany as much as the amount of, I think it was a negative effect, especially with the most charmless person in politics.

Speaker 6 They doubled their results.

Speaker 33 They did, but it was already on the way.

Speaker 10 They thought it would be more.

Speaker 43 They thought they'd really goose it. But J.D.

Speaker 19 Vance is the most charmless politician in existence right now.

Speaker 11 And I think that,

Speaker 9 you know, when they said Hillary Clinton was likable enough, when Obama said, he's not likable enough.

Speaker 41 And that's why I don't think he's the next president or whatever.

Speaker 27 But I think that he will continue to do so.

Speaker 17 Scott, briefly.

Speaker 6 I'm not as worried about foreign nations as I'm about the U.S. I don't think we want to come to grips with the fact that democracy and rights are now purely a function of wealth.
The R is almost one.

Speaker 6 It's almost perfectly correlated. And if shit gets real and there's some sort of economic shock and they start rounding up people, which we have done, by the way, in the past, right?

Speaker 6 Japanese families who are good citizens, who had kids fighting in the European theater, were rounded up in this country. So we like to believe we're above that.
We are not.

Speaker 6 But the thing is, I have the money to shove a bunch of Bitcoin up my ass and peace out to Dubai. You're going to have to stick around and deal with this bullshit.

Speaker 1 I don't know where I'm going with this.

Speaker 6 I know.

Speaker 7 Anyways. All right, quickly.

Speaker 1 Oh, I know where I am.

Speaker 7 All right.

Speaker 6 Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, basically, in my view, probably swung the election. It so was like 48, 48 in the 2% or 4%.

Speaker 6 And then it's a small number of counties and a small number of states, $285 million, very smart, weaponized to platform. And what do you know? That's the, I'm more worried about the U.S.

Speaker 6 because the thing about Germany and the UK is they're they're like money in politics?

Speaker 6 Let corporations and individuals spend as much as, are you fucking crazy? They're like, we're not going to do that. The whole point of democracy is the demo.

Speaker 1 And democracy,

Speaker 6 we want checks and balances of a populist voting, not a small number of very wealthy people. So in the UK, they've start to finish election in six months.

Speaker 6 And it's much more difficult, I think, to weaponize an election with just sheer brute force of money.

Speaker 6 I'm more hopeful. I think European nations and other nations have decided that money can't pervert their politics to the same extent in the UK.

Speaker 7 I think he's given a new playbook to beyond

Speaker 27 other rich people who've done it in the past, but I think he's given a new playbook to a lot more people.

Speaker 41 And that is where he's been innovative.

Speaker 44 And unfortunately, all right, quickly, let's try to get through as many as we can.

Speaker 54 Hey, I'm Charlie from Vancouver, Canada.

Speaker 54 Go Canada.

Speaker 54 Scott, the last time I asked you a question, you actually asked me a question of what it was like to live in an apartment above a meth lab in Canada.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 54 What would your advice be to Canadians today, given everything going on between our two countries?

Speaker 11 I think you're doing it just right.

Speaker 19 I think your country seems reunited.

Speaker 24 I can't believe Doug Ford is attractive as a candidate right now.

Speaker 11 I think you're all pushing back in a really terrific way.

Speaker 6 Three-quarters of Americans see Canada as an ally, or only one-third of Canada see America as an ally now.

Speaker 6 You want to talk about the most immoral and stupid decision, turning an unbelievable ally and friend into an enemy.

Speaker 6 The largest undefended border in the world is the U.S.-Canadian border. What does that tell you about us? They don't even know why we're trying to fuck with their economy.

Speaker 6 They're like, why are you doing this to this? We know it's going to raise costs for all of us, reduce our prosperity, shrink the economy. Why are you doing this? And the answer is fentanyl.

Speaker 6 The amount of fentanyl that's come over the U.S.-Canadian border could be stuck in a backpack. They think it's less than 1%.
They don't even know why we're doing this shit.

Speaker 6 And here's the thing about Canada.

Speaker 6 Followed us into World War I, were ahead of us in World War II, went over to Year of the European Theater and started training pilots into Kosovo, helped us fight the Taliban.

Speaker 6 I love the question, and I said this yesterday

Speaker 6 about a woman that is friends with Warren Buffett. I thought it was very powerful, a Holocaust survivor.
She said, My definition of friend is, I ask myself, would this person hide me?

Speaker 6 And then you really think about that. It's a very intense puncturing question about what it means to be a real friend.
You know who's a real friend to America? Canada.

Speaker 6 In the Iran hostage crisis, the embassy there hid six Americans and at immense personal risk, got them out of Iran. And then they stuck around.

Speaker 6 If they had been caught, they could have been hanged from cranes.

Speaker 20 Canada hid us.

Speaker 6 Thank you.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 5 I think you handled it very well.

Speaker 19 We're handling it. Okay, here.
Shorter answer, Scott Galloway.

Speaker 46 Well, that'll be tough because I'm going to ask something that pertains to specifically to Scott. I'm Charles from Austin.
Scott, I admire the work that you do related to championing young men.

Speaker 46 I do wonder perhaps if

Speaker 46 are there any similar efforts out there related to trying to really challenge older men when it comes to this idea of leadership?

Speaker 6 Where are we?

Speaker 46 So many of the problems that we have, it seems to me, could be better addressed if we had true leadership. And I don't mean from a left and right political point of view, but honestly, more from a

Speaker 46 just truly leading and being in a position where

Speaker 46 at our core, we know what's right and wrong and having that overvalue or perhaps step above just those baseline, what makes me more money concerns.

Speaker 6 Do you want to?

Speaker 9 I think the problem is older men.

Speaker 19 One time my son said, and I think this is a common thing, is we should send old men to war rather than young men and maybe they'll stop.

Speaker 41 Like, you know, he was making the, which seems to be a pretty obvious point.

Speaker 18 I think we really have a problem with the people above them and it affects younger men, as anyone who has a young man as a son or relative or something like that knows.

Speaker 43 But I do think getting people to change at a higher level is much more difficult, as anyone knows, like when you're dealing with someone like that. It would be great, but I don't think they change.

Speaker 23 I think they get worse and more stuck in their ways. I don't know.
Very briefly, because I want to get to this.

Speaker 6 People my age are 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. People under the age of 40 in this room are 24% less wealthy.

Speaker 6 Every major economic policy, whether it's capital gains deduction or mortgage interest rate deduction, is nothing but a transfer of wealth from the young to the old. Right? Who owns homes and stocks?

Speaker 6 People our age. Who rents and makes their money through current income salary? Young people.
Until we have a series of class traders, older, rich people who say, enough is enough.

Speaker 6 If we don't reinvest in youth, what's the point of any of this? For the first time in the nation's history, and I think all of our problems can reverse engineer to one data point.

Speaker 6 For the first time in our history, a 30-year-old isn't doing as well as

Speaker 6 his or her parents was at 30. And that's even worse than a 50-year-old not doing well, because when your kid's not doing well, when your daughter's not doing well, it brings down the whole house.

Speaker 6 You just feel bad about America. So, let me now list corporations and corporate corporate leaders.
There's a lot of amazing leaders.

Speaker 6 Let me now list every guy my age in corporate America who is really taking a stand for America and the values that made them rich.

Speaker 22 All right. We'll end on that one.
I'm going to do one thing. I'm going to bring up a woman because we've had all men ask questions.

Speaker 28 So sorry.

Speaker 19 First woman right there.

Speaker 1 Go ahead. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I don't really care what gender you are.

Speaker 14 There's more than two genders.

Speaker 11 Well, Scott, I just, my name's Leah.

Speaker 55 I'm from Austin. I grew up in Houston.
I've lived in this city off and on since the early 80s. So

Speaker 10 you think you're suing some shit.

Speaker 7 I've seen some shit.

Speaker 55 And also, I just want to let you know, Scott, you are on my list of future ex-husbands.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 1 I feel you, babe.

Speaker 7 Anyway, so.

Speaker 38 Why don't you show your stomach? Like, as if that's the most attractive thing.

Speaker 55 He works harder at it than I do.

Speaker 1 I guess.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I got a million questions because I listened to that.

Speaker 44 One quick question.

Speaker 1 So I want to make it quick.

Speaker 15 You and Ed talked about how this is Brexit 2.0.

Speaker 55 This is what we're going through in this country right now. This election we just had is kind of a Brexit 2.0.
Like we made a decision or somebody, I didn't make the decision, but somebody did.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 1 how do we vocalize this?

Speaker 55 How do we get active with people and really have them understand that we have shot ourselves in the foot?

Speaker 7 They think it's a good thing.

Speaker 6 So So Brexit,

Speaker 6 probably the greatest self-inflicted unforced errors are entry into Southeast Asia, going into Iraq, and

Speaker 6 in Europe, Brexit. I live in London.
It's like, how can we figure out a way to make everything more expensive and reduce our salaries? And they managed to do it elegantly with Brexit.

Speaker 6 This is worse than Brexit because it's essentially...

Speaker 6 It's not only morally corrupt and taking away rights for the first time in the history of a democracy, but it's essentially tearing up amazing 80-year-long alliances with the world's biggest economies such that we can blow a murderous autocrat.

Speaker 6 This is economically stupid. It's morally corrupt.
So what can we do? One, try and not have the indignance I have, the emotional reaction, because I think it just tickles the censors of the right.

Speaker 6 Show up with facts, focus, pick your punches on the one or two things. I'm focused on Ukraine and the deficit.

Speaker 6 And quite frankly, we just need to get very activated and send a strong signal in the midterms in 26 and start working on 28.

Speaker 6 So I don't know what else to do other than to say, let's be focused, let's not be emotional, let's bring data, and let's focus on the midterms and 28.

Speaker 38 The Democrats need a project 2029.

Speaker 14 Yeah.

Speaker 10 A really serious one and then get ready to put it in place.

Speaker 36 All right.

Speaker 12 Very, sorry, we only have time for one more question.

Speaker 22 Sorry, right here.

Speaker 56 Make it a bit more. Sorry.
Thank you so much. David from Boston.
I'm confessed I'm a reasonably satisfied seven-year Tesla owner.

Speaker 7 That's all right. It's a good car.

Speaker 8 We don't think it's not a good car.

Speaker 6 It's a decent car.

Speaker 56 But at what point, there's no way that Musk is attending to Tesla, right, in a timely way as CEO.

Speaker 3 How long before the board, of which he is no longer chairman, starts to push back on him being absent?

Speaker 6 Won't happen. They've made so much money.

Speaker 19 They've made so much money.

Speaker 10 And he's picked them.

Speaker 6 He's hand-picked them. They've made so much money.
Yeah.

Speaker 44 Robin Denholm, the chairman, just sold $100 and some million dollars.

Speaker 6 And also, just to be fair to him, he's clearly got a talent at finding good people. So

Speaker 6 I don't think he's been focused on Tesla for a while.

Speaker 6 He doesn't, we have a bias against Elon Musk. I don't know if you've noticed, but

Speaker 6 he's clearly good at attracting and retaining very talented people because these are, I would argue these are well-run companies.

Speaker 6 But his board is not a board of directors.

Speaker 6 They're representing Elon. And quite frankly, he's been right.
He's created a ton of shareholder value. So

Speaker 6 if you've made $150 million, are you really going to dress him down for tweeting or calling someone a pedophile? You're like, no, I got 150 million reasons to ignore this shit.

Speaker 51 Yeah, there's some really good Wall Street Journal reporting on this, on not just the money they've made as a board.

Speaker 17 It's really quite unprecedented.

Speaker 10 This is not a board of directors that has any independence in the way you think about a board.

Speaker 12 And most boards are not, by the way, but this one is a particularly in the tank for Elon.

Speaker 39 And they've done well because of it.

Speaker 19 So the shareholder that they're most interested in is Elon Musk, and that's it.

Speaker 27 And the company has suffered because of it.

Speaker 23 And when it goes, you know, we'll see it goes down.

Speaker 12 But if he has a great car that comes out or suddenly Robo-Taxis work, that would be great.

Speaker 23 I just don't see it at this point going forward.

Speaker 7 I had a Tesla.

Speaker 6 I had a great car. He started calling me names on Twitter.

Speaker 52 So I sold it.

Speaker 6 And, you know, right before I sold it, I took a giant dump in the passenger seat. Heck do you care?

Speaker 38 It's like an episode of White White Lotus.

Speaker 51 Thank you. Anyway.

Speaker 6 Who's in White Lotus?

Speaker 32 He is.

Speaker 5 I just wanted to mention that.

Speaker 7 Where's the cameo?

Speaker 6 Face to radio. Yeah.
Should I be insulted when they call you and say we want you in White Lotus? And they go, but just your voice. Yeah.
Just your voice.

Speaker 5 Well, it's really about you.

Speaker 10 White Lotus is about people like you, just so you know.

Speaker 7 Hot? No.

Speaker 7 I am. Let's be honest.
You're irritating fucking rich people.

Speaker 6 I am so Sidney Sweeney. Seriously.
Seriously.

Speaker 42 You're more Steve Zahn, I think, anyway.

Speaker 6 The guy that showed his nutsack? That's correct.

Speaker 10 And he's not going to do that right here for you to get it.

Speaker 1 Bigger twins.

Speaker 25 No, we're not going to do that.

Speaker 1 We're not going to do that.

Speaker 9 Anyway, I'm sorry.

Speaker 12 We can't answer any more questions because we've got another podcast coming up.

Speaker 28 That's all we have.

Speaker 36 Thank you for listening to your favorite podcast, on your favorite podcast platform.

Speaker 11 And for watching.

Speaker 38 And for watching us on YouTube.

Speaker 16 We're killing it on YouTube for some reason.

Speaker 24 I don't know why.

Speaker 14 We'll be back Friday with more pivots.

Speaker 9 Scott, please read us out.

Speaker 6 Today's show is produced by Lara Naaman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Enertott engineered this Esposo.
Thanks also to Mia Severio, Dan Shulone, and Drew Burroughs.

Speaker 21 Yeshaq Kura is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasting.

Speaker 6 If you'd like to subscribe to the magazine, go to nymag.com. We very much appreciate you waking up on a Sunday morning during daylight savings.
It's great to be here in the great state of Texas.

Speaker 21 It's great to be here by South Byte, and we really do appreciate you coming up and being supportive and just in general just so lovely.

Speaker 6 Thank you so much for making time for us today.

Speaker 47 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 47 With key insights from an AI assistant. Pick a template with a click.
Now your prezo looks super slick. Close that deal, yeah, you won.
Do that, doing that, did that, done.

Speaker 48 Now you can do that, do that, with Acrobat.

Speaker 47 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 20 All right, remember, the machine knows if you're lying. First statement, Carvana will give you a real offer on your car all online.

Speaker 6 False.

Speaker 20 True, actually. You can sell your car in minutes.
False?

Speaker 50 That's gotta pull.

Speaker 20 True again. Carvana will pick up your car from your door, or you can drop it off at one of their car vending machines.

Speaker 50 Sounds too good to be true, so true.

Speaker 20 Finally, caught on. Nice job.
Honesty isn't just their policy, it's their entire model. Sell your car today, too.

Speaker 1 Carvana! Pickup fees may apply.