The Politics of Joy, Telegram CEO Arrested, and Guest Host Adam Grant

Support for the show comes from Saks Fifth Avenue.

Sacks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to shop for your personal style.

Follow us here, and you can invest in some new arrivals that you'll want to wear again and again, like a relaxed product blazer and Gucci loafers, which can take you from work to the weekend.

Shopping from Saks feels totally customized, from the in-store stylist to a visit to Saks.com, where they can show you things that fit your style and taste.

They'll even let you know when arrivals from your favorite designers are in, or when that Brunello Cachinelli sweater you've been eyeing is back in stock.

So, if you're like me and you need shopping to be personalized and easy, head to Saks Fifth Avenue for the best follow rivals and style inspiration.

AI agents are getting pretty impressive.

You might not even realize you're listening to one right now.

We work 24-7 to resolve customer inquiries.

No hold music, no canned answers, no frustration.

Visit sierra.ai to learn more.

Hey, Adam, how you doing?

Hey, Kara.

How's it going?

Good.

How are you?

Good.

I'm very excited.

Hold on.

Are you?

Just yet.

You don't sound excited.

Ready, ready?

I'll do my Kara impression.

I'm very excited.

I think this is why Scott tells such bad jokes.

He's trying to please me.

He's just trying to get energy.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Don't worry.

It'll be fine.

Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

As Scott Friagos winds down, I have another terrific co-host, Adam Grant.

How are you doing, Adam?

I'm great.

Glad to be here, Kara.

Thanks.

For anyone who doesn't know, everybody knows who Adam is.

He's an organizational psychologist at Wharton, the author of Think Again and so many other books, and the host of the podcast, Rethinking.

A lot of thinking going on with you, isn't it true?

I just think you don't have enough bald professors around you.

That's true.

That's right.

I need one more.

So tell me what you've been doing lately.

I just got back from the DNC and where I didn't get COVID, even though a lot of people did.

But I had a great time, I have to say.

It was fun.

And Scott and I ran around and I had a good time interviewing people.

It was a lot of energy.

100% true.

I don't know how played on television necessarily, but I had a great time.

What have you been doing?

What are you up to?

Oh, almost as fun.

I took two of our kids to Paris for the Olympics.

Oh, whoa.

Tell me about that.

The two are paired, the Democratic Convention and the Olympics in a weird way, don't you think?

In some fashion?

Yeah, it was actually, I wonder how many people were more energized at the DNC because of the Olympics.

Yeah, I think so.

Tell me about the Olympics.

It was a blast.

It was actually such a strange experience to be in a foreign country and feel proud to be an American.

Right.

I've never had so many French people say, go Team USA or good luck.

Oh, really?

Wow.

That was exciting.

And I just think Team USA made an incredible showing, not just athletically, but also from a psychological perspective.

The resilience that we saw in Simone Biles, for example, amazing.

Yeah, Simone Biles was sort of the star of the Olympics in some way.

You know, a lot of attitude.

I'd love you to talk a little about that because that's like her coming back was, you know, it's obviously a dramatic sports story, but it really is something.

She did a lot of work on her management, you know, executive function, I guess.

Yeah, I think all those people who are, you know, who are dissing her in 2021, first of all, they have no idea what it's like to have the twisties, which as a former diver, I've experienced firsthand and is not fun.

It's like relearning how to walk after having a stroke.

Right, right.

And I think, you know, more broadly, a lot of people didn't appreciate that overcoming adversity takes time.

That, you know, I've made this mistake myself, Kara.

I used to define resilience as the speed as well as the strength of your response to adversity.

And I no longer think speed is a key factor.

I think that sometimes people rush to recover and perform, and then they crash harder afterward.

And if we allow a little bit more flexibility, people end up bouncing back more fully or even bouncing forward.

What do you think the key to hers was?

She did a lot of,

I hate to say the word mindfulness because it gets made fun of, but she did a lot of that.

She was, you saw her calmly, quietly being with herself.

It wasn't performative.

It looked like she had, had a system in place or something.

Yeah, it looked like she went back to a routine where she was just working on basic skills, which was helpful and trying to rebuild her confidence.

I think the other thing that was striking was she came back on her own terms.

It wasn't because of external pressure.

She didn't have anything to prove, I think, to the world.

But once she decided that she wanted to do this for herself, the resolve came from within.

Interesting.

So

it was a good experience.

Did you, what did you, from afar, what was the Democratic National Convention like for you?

How did it look from a, especially from a like organizational and management kind of thing?

Oh, that's interesting.

I think, you know, my, my first reactions to it were, one, just a lot of joy and hope just came through even on TV.

Two, a lot of talking heads.

I was surprised there wasn't more interaction, that it was just speech after speech after speech.

Did it feel that way in person too?

No, it it was fun.

There was things between, you know, some of them you didn't listen to because they yammered on, but they were relatively short.

So they,

I think almost all of them were pretty short.

So within a 15-minute time span.

So it wasn't like Trump going on and on at the RNC or anything.

Even hers was very short and to the point, I thought, which was interesting.

I don't know if you know this, but joy is not a strategy, according to the New York Times today.

You know what?

I don't think joy is a strategy, but I think hope is a motivator motivator of a strategy.

Right, right.

That was such a weird piece.

They just, they just want to shit on her.

That's all.

I don't know.

What, what book are you working on?

What is your next focus?

I don't know yet.

What book should I be working on?

Oh, you know, I like podcasting.

I did write, I did manage to

crap out a book.

No, it was a good book.

You interviewed me for it, which was fun in Philadelphia.

I don't know.

I don't know.

What interests you today?

I think the way we think of who's managers and who, I mean, I'm using this in a broader sense, but who a a leader is and who isn't is changing really drastically, right?

I think it is too.

I've been thinking a lot about the shifting nature of leadership and how we're increasingly expecting both CEOs and university presidents, not just politicians, to do this statesmanship work that they're not trained for and that doesn't actually help their organizations.

And I don't know if this is a book yet, but one of the things I'm increasingly frustrated by is the pressure that's coming from below for senior people to make a statement on every single thing.

Every which has been growing over time yeah leadership by press release is not leadership i think what's going on there is they want to feel seen and valued by their organizations and if if people are are putting pressure on you to to make an externally facing statement to me that's a signal that you haven't spent enough time internally hearing what people's concerns are and letting them know that you have their backs individually right it's interesting because you know everything has become so politicized there's not a place in the world that's not politicized although i suspect that's going to change for some reason.

I feel like people are sick and tired of it.

You know, the constant, one of the things that's been interesting is this much shorter campaign on the Harris side.

So much less exhausting.

It feels almost like we're in a European parliamentary system.

Yeah, I wish it was even shorter.

I wish it was over today, but we'll see.

But we've got a lot to get to today, including what the arrest of Telegram CEO means for other tech leaders and the Democrats' new message of joy working.

We'll talk a little bit about that and what messages do work.

Plus, our friend at Pivot is New York Times journalist Anuprita Das.

She's got a new book, Billionaire, Nerd, Savior King, Bill Gates, and His Quest to Shape Our World.

But first, SpaceX will officially bring back two NASA astronauts who've been stuck in space back to Earth next year.

This weekend, NASA announced the SpaceX Dragon capsule has been chosen for the job over Boeing's Starliner.

It's a big deal for SpaceX, who's very good at their jobs.

The astronauts were originally scheduled to be in space for eight days, time of their return.

They've been there eight months.

If you could, what would you do?

What advice would you give these people who now thought they were going to be there for a week and then are sort of marooned or castaways in some fashion?

You know, it's interesting, Kara.

I've actually spent some time with NASA on this.

And one of the things that they train astronauts in is mental time travel

to rewind their mental clocks to the past and the future.

What?

Explain this.

I need more details.

What do I mean by that?

What is mental time travel?

So they called you and said, let's come in and consult with us.

Yeah, I've had a few requests over the years to work with them on resilience and preparing for the psychological and collaboration challenges of being on the space station or doing extended trips.

So looking back to the past is the first thing they do.

Nostalgia around what are your favorite memories from being on Earth can give you something to look forward to when you go back.

But then also fast forwarding into the future and imagining, okay, this might be my last time in outer space.

What will I want to have experienced?

Oh, I think that often gives them an opportunity to appreciate being stuck as opposed to feeling like, I can't wait to get out of here.

Right.

I don't know.

I think I would be crazy.

I couldn't do those things.

I wouldn't do it in the first place.

No, I couldn't do those things.

I don't have the mental capacity.

I do think about where I am physically all the time, you know, and if I can get out, I'm always looking for an exit.

There's no exit, right?

There's no exit.

And it's small, too.

Yeah, it's small.

And you're just with people.

I don't know.

You think they might go crazy.

I don't know.

The whole thing.

I maybe I've seen too many sci-fi movies, but one of the things that's important for when you're in those kind of, I guess they're adventures, right?

They're modern day adventures.

I mean, one of the things you see in studies of astronauts and cosmonauts is they do come back changed.

And it's a little bit similar to the kind of near-death experience that you went through.

But in spaceflight, it's called the overview effect, where a lot of astronauts will say, you know, you're looking at a thin blue arc.

of an atmosphere that protects all life as we know it.

And you can't see borders.

You can't see differences between countries or states.

It seems like all of humanity is literally, you know, sort of dependent on each other.

And so, you know, after doing that kind of experience, people come back with more universal values.

They care more about humanity as a species.

They're more concerned about animals and protecting the environment and less likely to be caught up in divisions that are kind of ordinary.

It's a woke astronaut.

They'd be someone

in the good way.

That's true.

Maybe.

I don't know.

Well, what happened with Elon Musk?

He's the opposite.

He doesn't know.

You know, nobody's sent him to outer space yet, right?

Yes, we need him to go soon.

I think he should go for a long time.

But Kara, there is an open question there about what happens when you stay for an extended period of time on the moon or on Mars for that matter.

Like, do you become a Martian?

No, you become stupid.

You know, I actually interviewed an astrobiologist about this many years ago because, you know, he was touting and others how great it would be.

And I said, well, what would it be for the human body?

And he's like, oh, you get stupid and short is what happens.

The gravity compresses you and weak.

And unless you're very underground, unless you're quite far underground, the radioactivity affects your intelligence.

Right.

And so I was like, oh, so you become like, I don't know if all the science fiction about it is these crazy dark trolls living under Mars, but it's not healthy, including moon travel.

I saw Mark Kelly at the DNC and he talks about this all the time, the difference between him and his brother, who spent, I think his brother spent more time there.

They're twin brothers, and the differences are really quite profound in terms of

their bodies and what's happening.

Are you saying Scott is now dumber than Mark?

I don't know.

I think he's, I think there's bone issues.

I think there's all kinds of, anyway, who knows?

I mean, humans will adapt eventually.

Another thing that's in the news, the CEO of encrypted messaging app Telegram has been arrested in France.

It's still unclear what's happened here.

The arrest is reportedly tied to Telegram's content moderation policies and unwillingness to cooperate with law enforcement.

Now, they probably wouldn't tell them.

There's a lot of criminal activity on Telegram.

I know they're all screaming about all the tech bros,

free speech, but there's a lot of really nefarious activity on that app because they don't do anything around moderation policies.

Telegram has around 900 million active users.

Often, the policies are criticized for disinformation, extremism, exploitation of Mayors, and cybercrime, drug crime, weapons crime, all kinds of crime.

It doesn't do anything.

And so I think he can be held for 96 hours.

You know, he has said nothing.

You know, the company has said very little.

Also, so I'm kind of like waiting to see what actually happening.

But how much should we hold executives at these companies responsible?

Again, you were just talking about CEOs that have bigger duties than

they're just shareholders, essentially.

This is so complicated.

I think there's a legal, there's a moral, there's a practical element of this.

And I just don't know where to draw the line, Kara.

You're the tech expert.

So I want to turn this back to you.

But, you know, part of me wonders, are we then going to start holding cell phone companies accountable too for what people say in their calls or in their text messages?

And is it better to have it happening in an app where it's a little bit less underground and maybe it can be tracked and caught?

I don't know.

You're the tech expert.

You tell me.

How do we deal with this?

I think when it comes to criminal activity,

they think they're different on every other aspect, right?

And they aren't.

They're not different than a phone company or, you know, some, I don't know, a rental, a rent, a Hertz rental card.

And I don't know.

I feel that that's part of living in a society is that if you're, if you help facilitate criminal activity, it's not necessarily your fault, but you do have to give the government information.

That said, when the government came for Apple,

I thought, you know, I was actually talking to some FBI people this weekend and we were arguing about the Apple encryption thing.

And I was like, if you all can't get in that phone, that's your problem.

Like, you know, you should do better.

You know, you should be able to crack those phones or hire people who can.

And in Apple's case, I think they made a very coging case why they shouldn't, you know, undo encryption or give a back door to government.

That's a very different thing than, you know, if there's criminal activity and then you can't get the information out of the company where the information was happening.

The disinformation and extremism,

you you know, we're just going to have to live with, unfortunately.

But exploitation of my cease, it's a big cease Sam

site.

I'm sorry.

It just is.

And the same thing with cyber crimes and weaponry and drugs.

And I don't know.

I think our government should be able to do that.

We're in surprising agreement on this one.

Yeah.

So you're writing the regulation.

What does the policy say?

Oh, if it has to do, you know, with disinformation and extremism, we're just going to have to let it go.

Like,

unless it's terrorist activity, right?

If they're using it to communicate, which they are, but they have other systems, by the way.

But exploitation of minors and cybercrime and weapons dealing, just like everybody else.

You're arresting the CEOs, not finding the companies.

Yeah, arresting the CEOs.

Why not?

Like, you know, I think fining doesn't matter to these companies, you know, and, you know, themselves making themselves into like this.

You know, obviously,

you wonder.

I bet Mark Zuckerberg wondered if he could go to France, right?

Unless he's showing he's trying to help on those topics.

And I think Facebook certainly has tried to stop the exploitation of minors.

I think Elon Musk is in more danger of being arrested because he's explicitly said, I don't care.

You know, I don't care.

But when it comes to exploitation of minors, I feel like it's a very sharp red line of not letting free speech trump the ability to catch these perpetrators.

Yeah, I think that's right.

And I think you're spot on also about the fine problem.

Do you know the behavioral economics work on a fine as a price?

No, tell me.

Okay, Yuri Genesee and his colleagues did this hilarious experiment where

daycare centers started charging parents if they were late to pick up their kids.

Right, right.

And then the parents said, oh,

this is just really cheap extra daycare.

And they showed up even later.

Oh, wow.

And I think we see the same thing with CEOs.

When you find them.

Sure, it's fine.

You say, all right, this is the cost of doing that practice that I already wanted to do anyway.

It's worth it.

So it's like the parking ticket thing.

I always am like, ah, I'll risk the parking ticket because I'd like to park here.

I do it all the time.

Oh, my God.

It's a real study.

Sure.

Why wouldn't you?

If we have any D.C.

police listening, you should

keep an eye out for Kara Swisher.

Don't left on Red is a thing.

I'm telling you, left on Red is a thing.

Anyway,

that's really interesting.

Of course.

Of course.

Yeah, fines don't matter.

I used to call everything Facebook had been fine a parking ticket.

You know, it's just they were willing to pay it because they got to do what they want.

And, you know, Eric Schmidt, the CE, the former CEO, essentially said that, like, let's take what we want and then get pay for it later, essentially, if we, even if they get to us kind of thing.

But that's an attitude of a lot of people these days, like Donald Trump, et cetera.

You know,

the way our society holds together, if you will have an overview, is not, is very delicate and fragile, I think, in a lot of ways.

I love that overview idea.

It's so interesting.

I always think that when I'm flying in a plane and you're pretty high up, but you can see the ground, everything makes sense looking down.

And then when you get closer, you can't see a thing, which is interesting.

Anyway, let's get to our first big story.

Vice President Kamala Harris is moving into the next phase of her campaign with the Democratic National Convention.

Now in the rearview mirror, the Harris campaign said over the weekend and now raised $540 million since launching last month, with $82 million coming during the convention.

Nearly a third of those donations from the convention came from first-time contributors.

I started with the idea of joy that the Harris campaign and Democrats are leaning into heavily.

We heard it mentioned in a number of convention speeches last week.

And on the flip side, Senator Lindsey Graham offered the Republicans' counterargument to join an interview on CNN this weekend.

Let's listen.

Americans are not joyful when they go to the gas station.

and fill up their car.

They're not joyful when they make their mortgage payment.

They're not joyful when they go to the grocery store.

People are hurting.

And this whole joy love fest doesn't exist in the real world.

I thought this was relatively intelligent from Lizzie Graham, who off the, you know, which is like a broken clock is race twice twice a day.

Talk a little bit about it.

What do you think about the politics of joy?

You've written in the past about the power of collective effervescence, which is a kind of a cooler way to say it, but joy is an easier word, just three letters.

Essentially, group happiness that was essenti that was especially powerful post-COVID.

Can you talk a little bit about this?

Yeah, I think the sociologist Sturkheim first wrote about collective effervescence is that sense of energy and purpose you get in a group when you have a common goal together.

And I do think that's what the Kamala Harris campaign has created for a lot of people who either thought Biden was too old or just weren't energized by his candidacy.

I don't want to say that Lindsey Graham is onto something, but at the same time,

you don't want to be Pollyanna as a leader.

You want people to understand that you recognize the pain and the hardship they're facing.

And that's why I would frame this much more as hope than joy.

I think joy is about the trend.

Well, hope is taken by Obama, but go ahead.

Well, you could say that, but I think in analyzing it, what we're really talking about is energy people have around a possible future, not about the present.

Nobody's feeling joy around this if Trump wins.

So I think that the fact that it's forward-looking means it really is hope, not joy.

I think it's anticipatory.

I think it's excitement about what's to come.

And I do think that energizes people to vote.

And I think, you know,

we have had a long political, I guess, streak of, you know, of politicians bashing and trashing each other.

But I don't want to assume it always has to be that way.

I look, for example, at the campaign that Hala Thomas Dotter ran in Iceland for president recently, where she won refusing to attack her opponents, running a campaign based on curiosity and hope and enthusiasm.

And people resonate with that.

Now, Iceland is a tiny country, but I wouldn't assume that America, which is often regarded as the most enthusiastic country on earth, couldn't operate that way too.

And I guess we'll find out as people begin to turn out at the polls.

What do you think, Kara?

You know, I think it works.

I think it's fine.

I don't know why they have to crap all over joy.

It's like they're like a skunk at a garden party.

It's like, let them have it it for a minute i mean it worked for obama it worked for clinton it works it works it worked for reagan right reagan was the original morning in america guy right it's and he was talking about the future i think what um i think she has pretty definitely talked about problems right she just doesn't do them with a sense of

shrug shoulders, right?

She's like, let's go forward.

Dread.

Dread, right?

It's all, I think the Biden campaign, I was talking to someone

again this weekend.

And when they go, democracy is on the ballot, I'm like, like, oh, no, really?

I have to save democracy.

You know, you, I think it's overwhelming and it makes you grief stricken, right?

But you have to have some sense of possibility, right?

Or you can't go on.

Like, I don't know.

I'm not an expert in this area.

But no, but I think you're capturing the trend that I've seen in the data.

It's about, yeah, we can fix this.

And ironically, as dark as Trump was in 2016, I alone can fix this was the overwhelming message that a lot of people heard.

So that was a good, it was a strong man.

I can help you.

I can, I'm big daddy kind of thing.

How does he channel it into strategy and policy?

What are some effective leadership qualities, positive and negative, you're seeing from both of them, from Kamala Harris and Trump?

You were posting about the study about looking at the negative impact of rudeness and disrespect on team performance in other fields.

That's all he's got at this point.

He hasn't been able to pivot to anything hopeful in any fashion.

Talk a little bit about negative

qualities you're seeing for both of them and positive.

Well, I think one of the things that the Trump campaign was doing well was attacking Biden on age.

And they did not, it doesn't seem like they had much of a backup strategy once Harris took over.

And they seem to be scrambling quite a bit now.

If I were them, I would probably take a little bit of ownership over weird.

and say, look, you know, America has always been weird.

Weird has been a driver of innovation, has been a major source of fuel for disruption.

And I think there might be a missed opportunity there as opposed to trying to prove, no, no, no, we're normal.

Yeah, anyone who says they're not weird is weird.

That's the thing.

Anyone who's been to high school knows that one, right?

Knows that trick.

So you would take over weird.

They can't.

They seem perpetually offended by it.

It seems to have hit quite effectively.

Yeah, which is, I think, surprising in some ways.

I wonder if part of the reason it works is because it's not as heavy as the other attacks that have been tried.

You know, everybody is exhausted by the felon, rapist, you know, immoral.

It's like, oh, this is just so much to think about.

And it's also just not persuasive to people who are undecided or independent.

Because if they thought that, they would have already decided not to vote for him.

Right, right.

So I think there's a missed opportunity there.

What does the word, why does that an effective word over deplorables seem to seem to elitist and rude?

And yeah, it's also just, I think it's not as, um, it's not as judgmental.

I think that we all know weird people that we accept.

So it's a way of saying, hey, you're not like us without saying, you know, you're less than us.

Right.

Got that.

So one of the things she did, I thought effectively, it seemed to work when she was listing a bunch of things they were doing.

And then she's like, they're out of their damn minds, the way she talked.

Talk about that.

That was effective, I think.

Maybe it wasn't, but I felt it was.

What did you think was effective about that?

I'm curious.

Because I've heard regular people say it.

Like when someone, you're at work and boss does something and you're like they're out of their damn eye like you can feel everybody feels good about talking like and it doesn't feel really rude yeah it so it sounds like in part it's validating what some people are already feeling

as and I think it's also

at some level I don't know I don't know how far I would go with this Kara but part of me hears that language and thinks

okay

we're tired of all of this trying to reason through and rationalize the, you know, the appeal of Trump.

Right.

How many articles were written in 2016 and 2017 about, well, actually, you know, it's, it's not X, Y, or Z thing that you hate.

It's really, you know, people are feeling

that economic precarity and, you know, they feel seen by Trump.

It's like, no, some of this is just ridiculous and unacceptable.

Let's not legitimate it.

Right.

Yeah.

So what is the, what is her best quality and the one you think is problematic for her, possibly problematic, and the same with him?

Okay, so I think her best quality right now is momentum,

fresh energy.

I think that's what we're all riding on.

I think her biggest challenge is a lot of people don't think they know what she stands for.

They're either proxying Biden's policies as hers or they're saying, I don't really know what her principles are.

I don't know what she's going to try to implement.

Yeah, I call it Kamal Curious

in a positive way.

That's a great way frame it.

I do think she handled that really effectively in her speech when she talked about Israel's right to exist, but also how, you know, some of the Israeli government actions in

Gaza were unacceptable and how Palestine has a right to self-determination, too.

I thought she walked that line very effectively in a way that, frankly, very few people have done.

It was, you know, I looked at it carefully, and each sentence was strong, right?

It was, so it felt like everybody was addressed, but it didn't feel like she was modulating wimpily, right?

That's how I took it too.

And I think those kinds of messages will probably be helpful in the next two months.

I probably wouldn't debate Trump at this point.

I think.

Oh, well, he might not.

He's trying to.

Yeah, it looks like he's waffling, but I don't see a lot of upside for her.

Do you?

I do.

I do.

Because she could get him to say something terrible, like one more terrible thing.

I mean, how many more do we need, though?

I think she could get him to say something very terrible.

Do you really think?

Okay, let's assume she could do it.

Yeah.

Do you really think there's anything he could say at this point that would hurt his candidacy?

There are several words he could say about her and about people of color.

Yes.

Everyone's talked about him saying those words, but him saying them in a public setting is a very different situation.

It's super ugly.

It's like Bull Conner.

If you could get him into a Bull Conner moment, that would be effective.

If he could say something terrible about women, not nasty women, something worse.

And he's called her worse names.

Yeah, you could, yes, there are words.

And do you think her ability to think on her feet and her prosecutor experience will allow her to debate him in a way that other people have tried and failed?

Not so much.

Well, she's good at it.

She has the scales, certainly.

But I think her very being offends him.

I do think what was interesting to me recently is he keeps attacking walls, who doesn't matter, even though he's totally appealing.

But he never attacks her like he attacks walls.

And I'm like, oh, you think you're running against Walls?

It doesn't matter.

Like he's just an extra added cherry on the top of this happy fest, right?

He's not like, he matters, but he doesn't matter kind of thing.

Yeah, I think part of his strategy is he throws a lot of things against the wall to see what sticks.

And Walls is a new target, right?

Kamala Harris is not entirely new.

He's been dealing with her over the course of the Biden presidency.

Okay, give you his negatives and positives.

Yeah, well, look, I think one thing that he's doing effectively, and it bothers me to my core that this is effective, is he's continuing to delegitimate all the sources of credibility that would call into question his competence and his character, right?

So you can't trust the media, they're fake news.

You know, all the people who are prosecuting me, oh, that's the Biden Justice Department.

And it has created, I think, some lingering questions in the minds of people who would otherwise, in a different era, have said, you know what, we got to move on.

This guy is not qualified to lead.

And what about negative qualities?

I think on the negative side, beyond what we've already talked about, I think

he seems to be even more undisciplined than he was before.

There isn't a semblance of a strategy right now.

And for somebody who's as effective at communicating on the fly as he is, you would expect a little bit more focus.

Trevor Burrus: And not rambling.

Well, one of the things could be age.

And it's interesting that the media is not covering his obvious cognitive deficits.

Now, you wrote about President Biden, a column in the New York Times back in July, shortly before he stepped aside.

You talked about how there was a group think happening with no one being honest about the reality of the situation.

This is pretty common in politics and business, particularly with a powerful or controlling leader.

First of all, what do you see as the best way to communicate and get people to see through the reality?

And tell me why you decided to write that.

I thought, I was surprised and also thought it was terrific.

Oh, thank you.

Why were you surprised?

Because you don't seem to go, you're not a limb goer.

You know what I mean?

Like, I can see George Clooney doing it, but although I was swired by George Clooney, actually, I was like, huh, this is too.

This is going to cost you right like and and calling him we we got in scott and i got in trouble for saying he should step aside a lot um so talk a little bit about why you did that and what's the best way to get out of groupthink happening i just thought it was an interesting take and what was happening there All right.

Yeah.

I'll start with the why.

So I don't think about this from a cost-benefit perspective.

I think about it more in terms of,

is this an issue where I have unique expertise to bring to the table?

And so I don't weigh in on a lot of politics because I don't,

as a a social scientist, I'm adding value there.

But in this case, you know, he's making a leadership decision.

And I'm watching him, first of all, fall in the escalation of commitment trap where he's throwing good money after bad and digging his heels in when he should be doing a clear-eyed analysis of what are my odds of winning and how much am I hurting the congressional races down the ticket, which took way too long to happen, in my view.

And so I thought, okay, there's an analysis waiting to be done there that actually brings evidence from organizational psychology to the table.

I have something to say here and nobody else is talking about it.

And then in terms of how to get out of that kind of situation, I think that unfortunately, what you need is a group of people who are committed to principles larger than just abusing the leader.

So

if I'm talking to Team Biden back in July, the first conversation I'm having with them is, is your goal to make Biden feel good about you and solidify that relationship, or is your goal for Trump to lose the the election?

And if you focus on that latter goal, it becomes a lot easier to be candid.

I think too many people are doing the political calculus, and this is what you see in the research on Groupthink:

people ask, well, you know, is this going to help me or hurt me?

And what you want is not a logic of consequences, as Jim March first put it, but a logic of appropriateness: of what should a person like me do in a situation like this?

What's the right thing to do?

And there's no question there.

The right thing to do is to challenge him and get him to recognize the very real possibility that he's basically driving a sinking ship.

So only one person did that very effectively, Nancy Pelosi.

And she said it.

She goes, my goal is to defeat Trump.

And unfortunately, our relationship is the, you know, the collateral damage, essentially.

You had a great conversation with Nancy Pelosi about that.

I think she was the only person who did it effectively publicly.

I heard from a bunch of people who had private conversations with Biden.

I even got one note from somebody who said, I used your your article as a template for how to talk to him.

And I said, You could have just called me.

We know each other.

But they wouldn't have called me.

And I had to write to them in the pages of the New York Times, which was a hot moment for me.

But I guess you've experienced that many times.

Many times.

How do you get a leader to do that?

Because, you know, here you are, you've finally gotten to the presidency after all these years.

You do have cognitive issues, right?

You're, you're like stubborn as a personality before you were older.

And it only, it only, you know, calcifies, I think, in people's, their personalities calcify essentially.

Yeah.

My, my impression from talking to people who were close to Biden around this was that the legacy conversation was effective, that getting him to think about how he wanted to be remembered and also following in the footsteps of George Washington, who walked away from power, not wanting to take that third term when the people around him were encouraging him to do it.

I think that precedent was very powerful.

I think, you know, a lot of people focused on the lost message, which was not effective.

He He did not want to believe that he was not the best person to beat Trump.

And so reframing that as a gain, and this comes right out of the evidence on how to get people to de-escalate their commitment,

was effective in getting him to say, okay, there's actually upside here, right?

I can pass the torch.

I can solidify my legacy.

I can elevate the next generation.

I can lift up a woman of color for a shot at the presidency.

I think those arguments landed.

And that is very much what we see outside of the Oval Office is if you're going to have that kind of conversation with a leader in power,

you have to help them recognize that they're compromised in their judgment, that they're obviously going to be looking for information that convinces them that they're going to win and discounting anything that would lead them to lose.

And so I would have gotten him to pre-commit to say, okay, they're a group of people I trust or they're a group of polls that I would be willing to trust.

And if the polls hit a certain level, then yes, I will step aside.

Right.

No, that's difficult.

I was just reading, there was an excerpt from a new book about the Twitter takeover.

And a lot of it was about people who knew better this was particularly around the blue rollout which wasn't going to work and a lot of us said this like come on um internally that knew that and continued tried to say it and then couldn't and there was all these people that had to cope with the leader you know who was different one-on-one versus in a group where they had to feel dominant in a group some situations are impossible correct that you can't because it's their you know it's their pop stand and so they're going to do what they want it is frustrating how much of this rests on the shoulders of a leader, right?

To not only ask for dissenting views, but to prove that they can handle the truth.

If you have a leader that doesn't do that, I think you're going out on a limb there.

I think the first thing you could do is

just say, I'm worried that people are not going to be honest with you because they care a lot about your approval.

And your opinion, you know, it has real weight around here.

Can we do an anonymous pull?

And sometimes that's enough if the leader is open to it.

I think to your point, it's a lot easier to have trust one-on-one than it is in a large group setting.

And so I would try to catch the leader before or afterward.

But easier said than done.

You know, I think that

weak leaders shoot the messenger.

I think that strong leaders praise the messenger, but truly great leaders promote the messenger.

And I don't think we have enough leaders doing that.

No, not any, actually, in my experience.

I don't know.

Anyway, it's a really interesting.

We'll see what happens.

I do think one of the things I will say about Kamala Harris, having spent a lot of time with her, is she really does try to listen to a lot of opinions.

I was always struck by that about her.

She'd always have me in and say, what's the worst thing here?

What's the, you know, very much like a lawyer would, like, what can I get hit with?

What can I, and it wasn't so much political.

It was more like, challenge me.

so I can make a better argument.

It was interesting.

She's a really interesting case.

That's encouraging.

Yeah, it was.

It was.

And I was always like, oh, you're fucked on that one, you know?

And she welcomed it.

I didn't say she welcomed it, but she, she wasn't pretending it wasn't true.

Anyway, but that's, that's what good, I think that's what good leaders do, collect all kinds, and then make a decision, even if it's wrong.

All right, Adam, let's go on a quick break when we come back to questions being raised about gender in this election.

And we'll speak with friend of Pivot, Anupri Tadas, about the evolution of Bill Gates.

Support for this show comes from IBM.

Is your AI built for everyone or is it built to work with the tools your business relies on?

IBM's AI agents are tailored to your business and can easily integrate with the tools you're already using so they can work across your business, not just some parts of it.

Get started with AI Agents at IBM.com.

That's iBM.com.

The AI Built for Business, IBM.

Support for this show comes from OnePassword.

If you're an IT or security pro, managing devices, identities, and applications can feel overwhelming and risky.

Trelica by OnePassword helps conquer SaaS sprawl and shadow IT by discovering every app your team uses, managed or not.

Take the first step to better security for your team.

Learn more at onepassword.com slash podcast offer.

That's onepassword.com slash podcast offer.

All lowercase.

Support for this show comes from Robinhood.

Wouldn't it be great to manage your portfolio on one platform?

With Robinhood, not only can you trade individual stocks and ETFs, you can also seamlessly buy and sell crypto at low costs.

Trade all in one place.

Get started now on Robinhood.

Trading crypto involves significant risk.

Crypto trading is offered through an account with Robinhood Crypto LLC.

Robinhood Crypto is licensed to engage in virtual currency business activity by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Crypto held through Robinhood Crypto is not FDIC insured or SIPIC protected.

Investing involves risk, including loss of principal.

Securities trading is offered through an account with Robinhood Financial LLC, member SIPIC, a registered broker dealer.

Adam, we're back.

If Kamala Harris wins the election in November, it'll be a victory for the history books as she becomes the first woman president of the United States, although she's not really leaning into that.

Interestingly, the historic nature of Harris's candidacy is being downplayed by her campaign, a strategy in direct contrast we saw with Hillary Clinton.

I'm with her.

She's a lot of wheez in

her messaging.

It hasn't stopped a number of outlets continuing to ask, is America finally ready for a woman president?

I know you have some thoughts on that question, America being ready for a woman president.

Why do you find it problematic?

I find it horrifying, but tell me why.

Well, it's a stupid question.

First of all, 65 million Americans voted for Hillary Clinton eight years ago.

Right.

We're ready.

Right.

Yeah.

Secondly, asking the question actually reduces people's likelihood of voting for a woman.

There's evidence that if people support a female candidate, but they're afraid that others won't, that that can discourage some of them from voting.

And so I think we need to change that narrative really quickly and say, look, yes, America is ready to vote for a woman.

We've been ready for a long time.

Let's do it.

Should she focus on it?

Nancy Wilson has said the prospect of the first woman president brings tears to my eyes, but not the votes to the ballot box.

It's icing on the cake, but it ain't the cake.

Oh, God, she is.

You got to study her.

I think that's your next talk.

At 84?

Yeah.

She's not too old to run.

Talk about that issue making.

Should she talk about it?

Because I think if she does talk about it, it is, is, or I'm a black woman or whatever, a woman of color.

No, I think, I think she's she's taking the right approach.

I think she doesn't want to be branded as a diversity candidate.

I think also the more that she activates gender and or race, the more that she associates herself with stereotypes.

We want to get away from stereotypes, right?

I mean, I don't need to tell you this, Kara.

The evidence is overwhelming that women are more likely to get hit when they're running for leadership for being self-serving, for lacking warmth, for questions of integrity, which is just grossly unfair.

And so, let's not make that any more salient than it already is.

So that's pretending it's not happening because there's a lot of talk about the role of masculinity in the election.

People do lean into that and the contrast between the two sides.

Scott was talking about it at the convention last week.

With the Republicans, we've got Donald Trump and J.D.

Vance offering a sort of uber masculinity, a different kind of masculinity, with one pollster is described as the testosterone ticket.

I would say the

HGH ticket, like a little too much testosterone.

On the

Democratic side, we see Tim Walls who's offering a tenderness and toughness, as we saw in his convention speech.

Now, you've written a lot about masculinity and gender stereotypes.

What do you think of the contrast?

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, I think the problem is that the stereotypes we have of men tend to overlap a lot with our prototypes of effective leaders, right?

When you ask people to describe what makes a leader great, they say, we want somebody who's bold, dominant, assertive.

And those are the same intuitive assumptions that people make about men.

And so you get this nice overlap.

I really like the way that the Harris-Walls campaign is breaking that form and saying, look, you can do tough tough love.

And I think both of the candidates, both Harris and Walls, are modeling different versions of that.

You know, we have sort of what's been called the mama bear effect with Kamala Harris's presentation, right?

She's going to take down drug dealers.

She's going to fight the drug manufacturers on the cost of insulin.

That's different than Sarah Palin.

That was one of her most effective lines.

I'm a, you know,

I'm an attack dog of a mom.

Like I'm a...

Sarah Palin had effective lines?

Yes, she did.

She had, I remember, I'm a hockey mom.

Don't get in the way way of a hockey mother, that kind of thing.

Oh, that works.

I mean, that is when women are given cultural freedom and permission to be tough on behalf of others.

Right.

And Walls, I think the football coach persona and the dad jokes are capturing that really nicely.

How does it play?

Because, you know, there was a discussion about Gus Walls' display of emotion at the DNC.

Super heinous remarks by

Culture.

There were several people that were really did nothing.

They were just heinous people.

I don't know what else to say, and they should not have children, but

you have strong feelings about that.

I do.

I do.

I do.

Because, you know, it's sickening to attack children in general and in particular for showing emotion when we are so we're a society that doesn't show enough emotion.

So, but talk about that

showing of emotion.

He's very, his kids in him are obviously bonded.

It's not fake.

It's this, it's so like, you know,

it's just a real thing.

How does that play with people?

They seem comfortable with it.

Yeah, I think they're doing it in a way that's socially appropriate.

And that's the key, right?

You don't see Walls bawling at a movie.

You see the emotion around his commitment to his family.

And I think that's strong love, right?

As opposed to, I lack control or I'm a weak man.

And so I do think they have to be a little bit careful about that.

But it works when it's connected to something that everybody values and admires.

But is that effective to lean into those masculine gender stereotypes for the ticket and for the other one, too, for the Trump vance, which is hyper-testosterone male.

Yeah.

Look,

it's easier to violate stereotypes in the desirable than undesirable direction, right?

So it's easier for a man to be hyper-masculine than it is to be a little bit feminine.

But I think on this one,

I think it works and I think we have precedent for it.

I think Lincoln was one of our first models for this, right?

It wasn't just the, you know, the charisma as a speaker and the vision as a leader.

He held office hours listening to the concerns of ordinary citizens so that he could better address their problems.

Now, obviously, that doesn't scale to America 2024, but the care he showed in that, right, I think is very much something we associate with presidents.

And I actually ran an experiment back in 2015, 16, where I just reminded people that Lincoln did that.

And all of a sudden, they were more willing to vote for a female candidate.

Oh, interesting.

Wow.

That's interesting.

So she she should also lean into that empathy, just that kind of thing.

I think so.

I'm a little reluctant on it because I don't want to essentialize gender differences that are, you know, that are heavily socialized around expectations.

You're absolutely right.

I want to make the case.

Look, men can be caring and empathetic.

Lincoln did it.

Women can be tough and strong.

We're seeing that from Kamala Harris now.

But I do think because people associate women so strongly with empathy and compassion, it's probably not a bad idea to amplify that a little bit.

Right.

No, absolutely.

I think if she shows, I think there's a line where you're tough and strong, but if you don't have some level of humor, I think she does.

She's not, someone's like, she's like Hillary.

I'm like, she's nothing like Hillary.

Hillary is,

I think Barack Obama did nail it.

Like, she's likable enough.

And it was as sexist as that was.

I think it

really did.

It still exists today, right?

I'm going to disagree with you on that one.

I think that's, you know,

Hillary Clinton having been forced to contort herself into a public image on stage.

I think anybody who interacts with her in person finds her extremely warm and charismatic and likable.

Yeah.

She's a, oh no, she's fantastic.

She's one of these people you want to have a drink with.

But she couldn't translate it.

You're right.

But I think that was another era.

She couldn't.

She felt like she couldn't be herself.

Well, I remember a 538 analysis showing that her approval ratings went down every time she ran for office and up every time she held one.

That's correct.

And I think that speaks to

the traps that are laid, right, for a candidate who doesn't fit into the stereotypes of the job or their gender perfectly to say, look, if they're advocating for themselves, then we're going to penalize them.

But once they're in a position that depends on competence, we're going to celebrate them.

All right.

Last question on this.

It's interesting because a lot of people, Harris is obviously very compelling to people and she's got a lot of charisma.

It's, you know, and someone was like, is this fake?

I'm like, no, this is what she's actually like.

She was contorting herself before.

Like, this is the person we knew as attorney general or senator or district attorney even way back when and then something happened during the election that she tried to be president and then vice presidency um

is is being genuine to yourself the best way to translate as a leader genuine to which self to herself to which she has I don't think she has one self right I think she has no i get

that's traits and skills right i get it but i think yes i think that it's look, I don't think anybody's a good enough actor to sustain multiple months on a campaign trail of faking it.

I think what she's doing now is really smart, which is she's channeling things that are natural for her and bringing them out and making them more visible.

And I do think you're right.

I think she was suppressing a lot of those tendencies before because she didn't want to be perceived as unserious.

And we saw those laughing Kamala memes, but they don't seem to have hurt her.

So I would say, look, you shouldn't, I guess there's a distinction

that sometimes gets made between what you conceal and what you reveal.

I don't think you should display all of your tendencies, but I don't think trying to put on a mask all the time is going to work for anybody.

I think it's not good.

I think there's a thing I had in Silicon Valley of executives who were very different privately from publicly.

And the ones that were successful were the same.

That's what they're like, you know, publicly and privately.

Which is ironic because it's a job that almost forces you to be looking in the mirror constantly.

Yep, absolutely.

But I think you're right.

I think that the less you pay attention to the image you're trying to manufacture, the better.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, let's bring in our friend and pivot to talk about someone whose image has changed quite a bit, Bill Gates.

Anu Prieta Das is a South Asia correspondent for the New York Times and author of the new book, Billionaire Nerd, Saviour King, Bill Gates and his Quest to Shape Our World.

Welcome.

Thanks for for coming on.

Thank you.

Thrilled to be on here.

So the Bill Gates persona has changed so much over the years.

And trust me, I've been there for all of it.

From boy genius, a tech entrepreneur to philanthropist and such.

And you say in the book that he switched between an entitled hero and

somewhat a villain and every shade in between.

You also go into detail about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, noting that why Gates hung around with Epstein may remain a head scratcher forever.

Actually, I have some thoughts on that.

Why?

But talk a little bit about this because he definitely has shifted.

He was very unlikable for much of the time I covered him and difficult,

but always interesting, right?

But someone who it was a problem to cover, I would say, over the many years.

Yeah, when I began looking at him in 2021 after the divorce, because that was really fascinating.

At that moment, there was so much about Gates suddenly in the press.

I went back and looked at the clips from the 80s.

And it's amazing how there's a uniformity about who this guy is in both his public persona and who he was as Microsoft co-CEO.

You know, here's a guy who was could be condescending, mercurial, you know, just didn't like talking to people unless he had to.

Obviously very brilliant.

And a lot of reporters kind of wrote about him that way.

They also looked at him as kind of the archetype of a nerd, you know, kind of this alternate vision, version of masculinity where you're looking at sort of this guy who is slouchy, he doesn't care about the way he comes across, he's wearing these glasses that are frayed at the ends.

And so if you think about it, that guy, that nerd, in a way, is who we think of as the nerd today.

I mean, obviously, the nerds have kind of become tech bros now.

It's a separate conversation.

But that was really interesting to me to see how much

that person from the 80s actually continues to be that person today.

But publicly, he does have a different image.

And so that was,

he's learned.

He's learned.

Yeah.

I think his media handlers have taught him a lot.

Well, except that they doesn't always listen.

Like one of the problems with all these people, and Adam knows this, they don't listen, right?

They think they're great the way they are.

And one of the problems with Gates is he sort of let the jerk part of himself.

constantly.

And it was, he had issues around how to communicate.

I think he used to rock quite a bit more than he does.

He's sort of

the edges have been,

you know, sanded down some of it, but it's still there.

It's the same personality is still there.

Better haircut.

He washes.

I don't mean to joke about it, but he really didn't wash.

I mean, I don't know what else to say.

He didn't.

But

talk,

what do you think about his impact in that regard when he's in

this evolution?

Because he sort of was a villain and now he's not so much a villain, although the Epstein thing has certainly dragged him down perceptibly.

Aaron Powell, there's a huge shift in how the world looks at him, right?

Like here's a guy with billions of dollars.

He could be buying yachts, he could be buying multiple houses, but he's choosing to put this money to work to save, you know, and to fix the world's problems.

So that gives you a very different public persona.

You know, you're the good billionaire.

You're out there helping people in the global south, people who have diseases that are incurable, but you're then researching and investing in vaccines.

What could be wrong with that?

The challenge there, and people don't immediately understand, is that the Gates Foundation is so enormous that it has a lot of influence around the globe.

And we don't really see that in the U.S.

because they've played mostly in charter schools, but they are one of the biggest donors to the WHO.

You know, they have billions to spend on vaccines, on polio, on malaria.

And so when you have that kind of money and you're giving it away, you're both the savior, but you're also influencing global health agendas.

And so I would say that he's seen as a very good guy, but there's also the approach of the Gates Foundation kind of reflects who he is.

And we can talk more about that, of course.

Which is aggression, right?

Dominance.

And bigness and pushiness.

dominance.

Adam?

Hey, Anufrita.

Full disclosure, I've done some work for the Gates Foundation over the years.

And one of the things that's swirling in the last couple of years is conspiracy theories much more than before, right?

About

what's happening with all the farmland being bought and what kind of microchip might be in a vaccine.

What's behind this?

And how widespread is it?

Aaron Powell, it's pretty widespread.

I mean, I think a lot of it came to light during the Epstein

revelations and during the pandemic.

So in 2015, Gates had predicted that the next big event in the world wasn't a nuclear war, but it would be a pandemic.

So when it actually happened, people

kind of looked at him.

Some people looked at him as an oracle, but others kind of looked at him as like, how did he know what was going on?

Was he trying to spread disease?

So that was one set of conspiracy theories.

There's also the idea, as you said, Adam, that he was trying to implant microchips in people.

And that came from a small feasibility study that MIT had done that

looked into some of that, but they decided it was not possible.

But then conspiracy theories take on a life of their own.

And so that became kind of, oh, the Microsoft co-founder wants to implant chips in all of us.

And, you know, so he's evil.

And then the Epstein stuff.

And I think everyone who has been in that Epstein world, everyone who's been connected to Epstein in some way, their reputations have been tainted.

And Gates, again, it's, you know, especially because he was seen as such a good guy.

The fall for him has been even more immense than a lot of the other billionaires and influential people.

Yeah, the Epstein thing is interesting because,

you know, there's a lot more than him went to that island, right?

There's a lot,

a ton of tech people, especially.

And Epstein spent a lot of time cultivating those people.

In a lot of ways, Bill was bored and doesn't get to do a lot of stuff, right?

Because

as rich as you can be, you're often in a sort of, I call it a cashmere prison of your lifestyle that you really can't do much without it being, unless you're totally evil and or totally like, don't care, like Elon Musk, right?

You just decide, what the hell, I'm going to live the whole Bond villain life.

And I think this is what I am.

And so

I always assume he's lonely.

He was lonely and bored or something like that on some level.

But talk about how does he overcome that ultimately?

Because another thing that was happening, because in his changing ways,

you dug into his friend relationship with Warren Buffett in the book, which was, you know, they were very performative about their friendship.

A lot of photos, a lot of aren't we cute kind of thing.

And it was cute.

Like, let's be honest, it was adorable.

Talk a little bit about that too and how the...

what he's doing now.

What do you think he's doing at this moment?

He's focused on, you know, specifically he's focused on climate change.

He talks a lot about AI.

So those are sort of his two big preoccupations right now, climate change in particular.

But he has become this sort of, you know, lovable nerd philanthropist.

And that was actually the image his media team was going for, very much so.

If you think about it in 2000, he was very much the villain, the guy who was, you know, Rockefeller equivalent, this alleged monopolist, Darth Vader, every kind of popular culture villain.

He was that.

And then beginning in 2008, I would say, or mid-2000s, once the Warren Buffett money started going to the Gates Foundation, I think the idea of putting him and Melinda French Gates as the chief spokespeople for the Gates Foundation gained traction.

And then if you look at the friendship, you know, the performative aspects, they're largely, almost entirely from Gates's side.

You know, the goofy videos, the, you know, the corny stuff, it's all cute, but it isn't Buffett who was initiating all of this.

I mean, he went along.

I mean, Buffett and Gates have been friends since 1991.

So obviously, they had kind of a profound and deep connection there.

But it was very important for Gates to manage and sustain that image and to minimize sort of the negatives that were out there from the 90s and 2000s.

So I think Buffett being soft and cuddly in a way really, really helped soften his image as well.

And then the Epstein thing, again,

turned that around.

And where he is right now is someone who's perhaps not going to get the Nobel Peace Prize.

Again, don't hold me to it because we never know.

But I think at one point he might have been a candidate, he and the Gates Foundation, and people at the foundation, people in his personal private office were definitely pitching and aiming for that.

Like if you think of Mohamed Yunus and the Grameen Bank, right?

So that kind of equivalent.

But I would say that at this point, he is obviously really respected and well-regarded, but that taint

isn't going away.

And I don't think it will, at least for, you know, maybe another decade or more.

I'm wondering how this evolution has affected his influence on founders.

You mentioned that he was in some ways the archetype that everyone looked up to.

And I know for a lot of the early 2000s, he was a mentor to up-and-coming tech founders.

Mark Zuckerberg, particularly.

Still.

Among others.

Still.

What does that look like today?

I don't think that Gates

is seen as the model to follow.

I also think that there's been such an evolution of the way tech founders act and behave in a way.

They've, you know, transformed.

If you look at Emily Chang's book, sort of the nerd to bro transformation to me also,

you know, kind of mirrors the growth and impact of tech and care.

Obviously, you know,

you've captured all of this.

So it's the potency.

Like back in the 1990s and 2000s, there was just Gates and he was dominant in people's imaginations.

And now you have five, six, seven, you know, ten different people.

And their physical transformation is very, very interesting.

If you look at it, I was just looking at this picture of Bezos and Gates playing tennis.

And I mean, you know, I mean, the guy looked like a schlub.

I mean, Bezos did.

And so did Zuckerberg, right?

When he first kind of started.

Sure did.

And now he's ripped.

And, you know, he's like asking Muss to a cage match.

We're still waiting for that, of course.

And no, we're not.

We're not waiting for that.

But so I think Geats is...

seen as an elder statesman, but I don't see him as being kind of the model or the hero or the person to emulate, you know, as you have a lot of antitrust issues, you know, Google,

all of these companies, right, being hauled.

Oh, they.

So again, you're not just writing about Bill Gates, but this billionaire class.

You mentioned Mark, Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos,

Elon Musk, and others.

What do you think is the biggest problem this group has currently?

I've never seen, you know, I hate, I've never been so sorry to be right about people.

I have to say, you know, even though everyone's like, oh, you're so mean to me, I'm like, I wish.

They didn't have to be, it didn't have to be like this, right?

And there are some very nice, very people I really do admire.

Um, you see, the direction Mark Cuban is going in is very different, for example.

And he started off as such a jerk, like such a jerk, um, more of a puckish jerk, but not a jerk nonetheless.

Um, you have a whole chapter titled Why We Hate Billionaires, where you note America appears to be growing increasingly uneasy about them.

This is not a new, fresh thing for Americans.

You know, it goes back to the robber barons and everything else.

But can you talk a little bit about them as a group and then the role that they're trying to play in the election quite explicitly and mostly ignorantly.

Right.

I mean, I think the main difference now is just their numbers, right?

You've had this massive increase and a swift growth in wealth.

I think that's what makes people uneasy.

So you've always had the billionaire class, right?

But if you look at the past decade or so, it's just jumped exponentially, whereas incomes for everyone else haven't kept pace in that same way.

So the inequality is like really quite telling from the 80s on.

And so I think that makes people uncomfortable that you've got so many people with so much money.

And that just translates into influence everywhere.

And they have cultural influence, right?

Elon Musk like drives news cycles, multiple news cycles, and that's just one person.

Bill Gates has enough money that his private firm is like a Wall Street firm, right?

And what do they do with their money?

They kind of use it to determine and push for outcomes they think is right for society.

For instance, the charter school movement.

You know, that was time when you had everyone from Zuckerberg to Bloomberg to Gates, of course.

And now Warren Buffett's daughter, Susie, is a big opponent of charter schools.

And so, you know, there's these fights, but all it ties into

what your policy preferences are.

And same thing with campaign finance, right?

You look at the Koch network.

And

so they're buying influence in many ways, but they also have cultural influence.

And I think there is this sense that they've done more than they have in terms of the tale they tell people, the world, and what we buy into, right?

So there are a lot of backstories of how they got to where they are.

But you have the self-made idea.

And right.

Some they're self-made.

There's a lot of them are self-made, but I don't know.

Yeah, I wonder a little bit about some of the unintended consequences of scrutiny.

Obviously, the more power and wealth people accumulate, the more they need to be held accountable.

At the same time, I'm hearing a lot of people say, look, you know, Gates in particular did a lot of good things in terms of getting a computer on every desk and was building good technology and then is trying to do a lot of good.

You may disagree with the way that the foundation allocates their funds, but solving major problems, eradicating diseases, and getting vilified for that too.

What's the point?

Yeah, I think no one, at least I'm definitely not in my book, kind of going after billionaires in any way, saying that, you know, you don't take away from what they've done.

What I was trying to do, what I'm trying to do is even when you say self-made, they are, there are, if you look at the fact that the billionaires list, right, overwhelmingly, they're white and male.

Now, you could make two arguments.

Are white men more successful?

smarter than everyone else or is it that they've had systemic privileges?

Sorry, Adam.

I don't mean to make it make it personal, but you know, you kind of

have a systemic, you know.

Not yet yeah there you go

you're the counterpoint um so i i i think they have obviously contributed a lot but also people often forget that like there is an enormous amount of money and some of it is also it's doing good but it's also building a legacy and a reputation right and i think that's really important for a lot of billionaires how they want to be um remembered so there's two ways you can think of it as hubris and um you know kind of an ego trip, or you can think of it as

really trying to do something as a patriot.

And I think it can be both.

And there is a lot of hubris

in the sense that you

think that you can do one thing, you've done one thing really well, and then you think that that...

makes your skills transferable.

And because you have so much money.

Yeah, you don't think they should be doing Ukraine public foreign policy?

No, I don't either.

Last question for us.

You focus on Gates' ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, who I know very well, including when she was a product manager at Microsoft.

She's obviously started a new chapter for herself after divorce.

She left the Gates Foundation a few months ago, announcing a new direction with her philanthropy.

She's also doing investments through Pivotal ventures.

She also donated $1 billion globally over the next two years to help women and families.

There's a series of women that are doing it very differently.

Mackenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos being one of them.

Lorraine Powell Jobs, doing that.

It's a very different style, you know, and it's not performative.

It certainly isn't look at me.

It's not, you don't see them tweeting endlessly.

Is there a gender difference here in that regard?

I think there is a level of empathy, perhaps.

And going back to Belinda French Gates, she was always the sort of quote, quote-unquote, human counterpoint to Gates's very data-driven approach.

You know, she was thinking of the people, and she has also made a very specific, she's created a very specific niche for herself, right?

Focusing on women and girls.

And so that

dedication to her cause and her choice to do it differently.

And all of them, I think what they're doing is both

jobs, Powell Jobs and French Gates

are building what you call LLCs, right?

So there's the philanthropy piece of it, but they also want to have advocacy.

They also want to invest and they want to have these different arms.

And so to me, I think they are building a different kind of philanthropy, but that's not unique to women.

But I would say the main thing is like really, really having empathy in determining what causes you want to go after,

how you approach people and how you build those connections.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I'll tell a very brief story before you go.

I was backstage with Gates at one of our conferences and Melinda was on stage with Walt Mossberg.

And she was giving a fantastic interview.

I've always thought she was the brains of the operation myself.

And he and I didn't get along very well.

But I turned to him, I said, you know what?

Being married to her, we like you 10% more now.

And he turned to me and he knew my ex-wife who was lovely also.

And he said, and because you're married to her, I like you 10% more.

And I said, so we're at 10%.

And he goes, yes.

It was, it was,

it was something else.

He certainly has changed.

It'll be interesting to see how he goes down in history.

And certainly it's a low bar now.

Anyway, thank you so much.

The book, again, is Billionaire Nerd Savior King, Bill Gates and his quest to shape our world.

We really appreciate you being here.

Thank you.

It was great to be on here.

All right, Adam, one more quick break.

We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

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.

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.

Visit sierra.ai to learn more.

As a founder, you're moving fast towards product market fit, your next round, or your first big enterprise deal.

But with AI accelerating how quickly startups build and ship, security expectations are also coming in faster, and those expectations are higher than ever.

Getting security and compliance right can unlock growth or stall it if you wait too long.

Vanta is a trust management platform that helps businesses automate security and compliance across more than 35 frameworks like SOC2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more.

With deep integrations and automated workflows built for fast-moving teams, Vanta gets you audit ready fast and keeps you secure with continuous monitoring as your models, infrastructure, and customers evolve.

That's why fast-growing startups like Langchain, Ryder, and Cursor have all trusted Vanta to build a scalable compliance foundation from the start.

Go to Vanta.com/slash Vox to save $1,000 today through the Vanta for Startups program and join over 10,000 ambitious companies already scaling with Vanta.

That's vanta.com/slash vox to save $1,000 for a limited time.

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, 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.

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

Download today.

Okay, Adam, let's hear some wins and fails.

Okay, I have a win.

All right.

It looks like Ted Lasso is coming back for season four.

Oh, that was a questionable?

It's a screen.

It was supposed to be,

well, it wasn't supposed to happen.

Right.

They were done.

They did their series finale, and now it's being rebooted.

And what's the, why?

Tell me why.

It sounds like there's energy from a bunch of the stars and maybe Jason Sudekis too.

Yeah, I don't believe they stop at three anymore.

TV is so fun.

It used to be 10 seasons, right?

Or six or seven and stuff like that.

Not okay.

I think if you develop a following like that and create such great content, you have a moral responsibility to keep producing it.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So West Wing should still be going right now.

I don't know if it goes that far.

I mean, shows do run their course, but give us at least five.

All right.

And it's a feel-good show, too.

It's a feel-good show, too.

Absolutely.

Okay.

What's your fail?

Oh, there's so many fails.

I'm going to choose a really obvious one.

I think a big fail has been J.D.

Vance.

So explain.

Just, I mean, this was an avoidable mistake.

There's so many candidates who would not have gotten all the negative attention that Vance has gotten.

And I think they should have known that from how quickly he flip-flopped and also how green he was.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

And

were you surprised by this?

I wasn't.

No, I was surprised that he was chosen, especially given that Ohio was not an easy election for him.

He was chosen by someone who thought he was going to win easily.

That's what it was.

If he had been smart, he would have picked Nikki Haley or someone like Markle Rubio or something.

I think Nikki Haley would have been the ideal choice for him.

But he can't.

And I still wonder if there's an October surprise coming.

Not with her, I don't think.

Honestly, I don't think he likes women.

I'm sorry.

It's just, I don't know.

It's sneaking suspicion of mine.

Do you think he's going to keep Vance?

Well, the Robert Kennedy thing is weird as fuck.

Like, speaking of weird, like, that whole thing, he's trying to position himself as his running mate.

It looked like.

If I were J.D.

Vance, I'd worry quite a bit, right?

I'd be, I'd be, or maybe not worried.

Maybe he wants out.

This can't be a good position to be in.

Well, except what does he do?

Because he really, he isn't, I call him Peter Thiel's failed intern.

I think that was a Rachel Maddow thing, you know, or a butler for billionaires.

But he doesn't have, he shouldn't have been.

He was arrogant to think he could do this job.

I'm sorry.

He wasn't ready.

And the arrogance is so vast, but you know, typical.

Okay, my win

is Moana 2 is coming.

Two movies I'm really excited about.

One is about Christopher Reeve, who I thought was a really wonderful guy.

He played Superman, was also really, he happened to grow up in the town and went to the high school I went to, but there's a new documentary coming out about him.

And of course, he got in a terrible accident while riding a horse and just dedicated his life to a lot of things.

He was a really honorable and really interesting.

very for all him being a superhero was a very deep and fascinating person so i'm excited about that documentary it's called super slash Man coming out.

And then Moana, too, looks fantastic.

I have to see it 50 times.

So I'm very excited that it looks good.

For the negative things, I think

the tech bros using this Pavel Durov's arrest to do

their virtue signaling around free speech is really dishonest and grotesque.

There's a difference between free speech and crimes against children or crimes.

You know, the inability to moderate child sex crimes, I don't feel like you need to be on that side in any way.

And,

you know, but

his biggest, you know, the person who's taking advantage of it much is Elon, but who uses the word pedophile in a really insulting and ridiculous way when it's a very serious topic

is grotesque, I think.

So, you know, we'll see what happens here and what they've done.

I'd like to know what they've done.

I wish there wasn't so much confusion around it.

And I certainly believe in as much free speech as possible, but it does have a limit.

So anyway, we'll see.

We'll see.

But using it for your own purposes and to virtue signal

is childish and

ridiculous.

But I suspect you're people who just want to see the world burn.

So, that's the way you are.

So, I don't know what to say.

I don't know what to say about you, as Tim Waltz would say.

I don't know what to say about you.

That's when you say something like that.

I don't know what.

I don't know what.

Anyway, we want to hear from you.

Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind.

Go to nymag.com/slash pivot, submit a question for the show, or call 855-51-PIVOT.

Adam, that's the show.

As always, I'm very excited to talk to you whenever I do.

And thanks for joining me today.

And obviously tune into Adam's podcast, all his many books.

Anyway, we'll be back on Friday for more and I'll be joined by an extra special group of co-hosts

that will show my empathy, I think, Adam,

and my strength.

Anyway, I will read us out.

And again, thank you so much for doing this.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

This was a blast, Carol.

Cool.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Enderdott engineered this episode.

Nashat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

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

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

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

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business, and then Scott Galloway will be back.

Yes.

Don't bring him back.

I'm bringing him back.

He missed him.

We like the ghettos.

I understand.

How about Scott Free Fall?

This month on Explain It To Me, we're talking about all things wellness.

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well.

Collagen smoothies and cold plunges, Pilates classes, and fitness trackers.

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

And is all this money really making us healthier and happier?

That's this month on Explain It To Me, presented by Pureleaf.

Y laropo que me comprehendora me que dora muy pe queña muy pronto, but

no tene que es suffri por la moda concios vacos de la classes of Amazon.

Amazon, dastamenos, sonriemas.