SBF Sentenced, OpenAI's New Voice Tool, and Guest Ari Wallach

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher, live from Buenos Aires in Argentina, where I'm visiting my beautiful son.

Scott is off this week, and today we have a very special guest host, one of my favorite people, New York Times opinion columnist, and a co-host of the Matter of Opinion podcast, Lydia Polgreen.

She also was a recent expert on my Tracy Chapman episode of On with Kara Swisher.

Hi, Lydia.

Hi.

It's great to be back with you, Kara.

You know, anytime the Militia Etheridge can get together and plot taking over the world, you know, is a great day as far as I'm concerned.

I agree.

For those who don't know the Militia Etheridge, there's a loose group of lesbians who run the media.

So stop with the George Soros stuff right wing.

It's actually a group of lesbians.

I used that phrase on Bill Maher that I was on recently, and he loved it.

He thought it was hysterical.

Anyway, we're funny.

Lesbians are funny.

So how are you doing?

How are you doing?

I'm doing great.

I mean, you know, we're all sort of like seesawing between, you know, despair and hope and, you know, looking forward to getting into both extremes today.

But, you know, it's Monday morning.

You know, I'm in beautiful New York City.

I'm just really, really happy to be here with you.

Yeah, I had a giant steak dinner last night with my son Louie here, who's studying at NYU.

He's NYU's campus here for the year.

And we've been wandering around Buenos Aires, which is quite a beautiful city and interesting because it's run by a guy who has Trump-like qualities.

Yeah, Javier Millé.

Yeah,

he's got very trumpy hair.

He does.

Yeah, but

my son does.

I've never been to Argentina, but I hear that the steak and the red wine are really incredible, which is one of my favorite combos.

So, you know, that's real good.

Yeah, I think you would like it.

It's very much like Europe.

It feels a little like San Francisco and Paris got together and had a baby.

But it's nice.

It's very familiar if you travel in Europe.

We're going to run around today and see what we can get into trouble with.

but it's nice to visit.

I just mostly am visiting my son, which is the best part of my day.

Anyway, I'm just curious, before we get into everything, because we've got a lot to talk about, is there anything you're thinking about writing about now?

What is most occupies your time as both on both the podcast and also in your column?

which I adore both of which.

Yeah, you know, I'm always, I know your podcast is called Pivot, and I'm like big on the pivot.

I love to try and sort of highlight the things that other people aren't writing about and talking about.

And so, you know, know,

I spent a lot of time writing and talking about Gaza, for example, which is important and will continue to do that.

But actually, next up on my radar is probably elections in India and in South Africa.

Those are two places that I have lived and that I've spent a lot of time.

And even a foreign correspondent.

Yes.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And, you know, I think

a lot of what I spend my time focused on is thinking about the perspective of the world from the, you know, what we call the global south,

the era of the global north, us rich, wealthy countries, is ending and the global south is ascending.

And, you know, that is one of the big subjects that I care most about.

And so I'm hoping if the Indian government sees fit to give me a visa, that I'll be able to go and travel around India.

I haven't been there in quite some time.

Would they not see fit?

Well, you know,

this is part of the story of what's been happening in India.

You know, we think of it as the world's largest democracy, as this, you know, kind of celebration of openness and freedom.

But in fact, the country is becoming more and more autocratic under its president, under its prime minister, Narendra Modi.

And so, you know, they've really been cracking down on independent journalism in a lot of ways.

And it's become much harder for international journalists to get access to work there.

So

I'm hoping I'll be able to go and travel and see.

And that's a real shift because, you know, India has always been a pretty open place.

Yeah, I've been there as a journalist.

I've been there a number of times.

Yeah, no, I know.

I've been critical of him, of Modi.

You know, it's interesting because I just, we're going to, maybe we'll talk about it in a little bit, but what happened to Erdogan in Turkey, speaking of democracy with a dash of a tonka, a lot of autocracy there.

Explain for the people what happened there.

It was quite a thumping.

And to me, let me just say, I'm the person that says Trump's going to get a thumping like you can't believe.

Everyone else doesn't agree with me, but.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, you know, so Turkey is fascinating.

I was actually there last year in the aftermath of the earthquake, and there was a massive earthquake.

And, you know, you know, thousands upon thousands of people died.

The, you know, government clearly had a, you know, slow and incompetent response.

And everybody thought Erdogan, who's been in power, this guy who, you know, who has increasingly centralized power, taken over the courts, taken over all these things, they thought, okay, finally, he's going to lose, you know, his popularity is going to go down and he's going to lose the presidential election.

Yeah, Trump favorite.

A Trump favorite.

Real strong man vibes.

You know, he cruised to re-election.

He's, you know, stays in power.

And everybody thought, well, that's it, you know, democracy over in Turkey.

But they just had local elections and they got totally thumped in the biggest city, biggest cities.

The opposition, which, you know, has been kind of like battered and down,

sort of came surging back.

And, you know, I think that's, I think that's, that's, that's actually like,

to me, a good analogy for that is what happened in the 2022 midterms, right?

Everybody thought like.

the Democrats are going to get creamed, but in fact, you know, there was all of this kind of, there's this reservoir of anger that overdobs.

And in Turkey, obviously the issues are different.

It's, you know, inflation, it's, you know, the economy, it's, it's earthquake recovery, all kinds of things like that.

The reaction to the earthquake still.

That's part of it, yeah.

And so I think that, you know, democracy dies in darkness, but it dies slowly, you know, and I think that there are places where it can come surging back.

And, you know, I definitely would not count democracy in Turkey out, not for a minute.

Not for a minute.

I would agree.

It was really interesting.

I'm not surprised, though.

People are slow burns.

They're slow burns.

Slow burns, yeah.

And then you also, besides being a great New York Times opinion columnist, you're also co-host of Matter of Opinion podcast.

Explain what the podcast is.

We know your columns and everything else, but explain what you do there.

So Matter of Opinion is a show that I co-host along with three of my brilliant colleagues.

And we just talk about the issues that matter, the things that we're writing about, the things that we're thinking about.

And we try to have smart discussions across a range of different political perspectives and talk about the big issues that are in the news.

It's a lot of fun.

And I would love for your listeners to check it out.

Yeah, it's a great show.

And it appears what day?

So people can.

It comes out on Friday mornings.

Friday mornings.

Excellent.

All right.

just like Pivot, except 100% less penis jokes, I'm guessing, because it's the New York Times.

Anyway,

Lydia, but it's implicit.

It's implicit in there.

It's implicit.

It's implicit.

Yeah.

We've got it speaking slowly.

We've got a lot to get to today, including OpenAI's newest technology, Sam Bankman Freed's sentencing, which you have said, I was surprised by what you have to say about it, and the New York magazine essay that lit up social media.

Plus, our friend of Pivot is Ari Wallach, the host of the new PBS series, A Brief History of the Future.

But first, we have to talk about Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter album, which dropped Friday.

It's already Spotify's most streamed album in a single day in 2024, and Amazon's music's most first-day streamed country album by a female artist.

Talks about this because everyone has thoughts about this, including really shitty takes by reviewers who don't like it.

Think it's too commercial, I think.

I can't get a read on what we last talked about Tracy Chapman.

Yeah, no, I mean, you know, I'm a, I'm, I'm, it's interesting.

I'm, I'm a fan of Beyonce.

I would not say that I'm a super fan.

I'm definitely a super fan of Tracy Chapman, but I'm a fan of Beyonce.

I, I, I love her work.

I think she's great.

I've actually never seen her live.

Um, but, you know, I don't, I don't really love those like big stadium shows.

I find them very stressful.

Um, I think this album, I think this album is terrific.

Um, I think it's, it's got just, just like a number of like fantastic bangers on it.

I think that, you know, Beyonce is like one of our great national treasures.

You know, I haven't quite picked out a favorite song on the on the album yet, but I love a lot of the duets.

And particularly the one that she does with Miley Cyrus, I think is just absolutely fantastic.

I am loving the little glow up that Miley Cyrus is having right now.

And so Two Most Wanted, fantastic song.

I have had Texas Hold'em on Repeat.

I think it's a fantastic banger of a song.

Fun song.

Very fun.

I think Blackbird is beautiful.

Yeah, I don't know.

What do you think?

Blackbird is she had a black country women artist sing that, which is just a beautiful song.

It's a

Paul McCartney song, and it's about black women.

Exactly.

Yes, as it's turned out.

I didn't know that.

So

the reaction?

I'm just curious why you think the reaction is thus.

There's so many people, like some of them have a point.

It's very commercial.

It's a lot of fun.

The genres are all over the place, which Beyoncé talks about.

But I'm sort of like, what's the problem with a really fun album?

And I'm fascinated by the reaction.

And then the reaction to the reaction is quite strong.

And it's not just the beehive, let me just say, it's a lot of take factory.

The take factory never closes.

There are three shifts.

Yeah.

I feel sorry for the person on the lobster shift on the, in the take factory, but you know, everybody's got to get paid.

You know, it's interesting.

I think like there's something about

like a black woman having an opinion and something to say in a genre that is dominated by white men, you know, and I think that we're living in a society right now where white men feel that they are under attack and aggrieved.

And country music is the traditional readout of almost exclusive white male power, right?

If you look at the country charts, it's, you know, it's like man after man after man, country radio, man after man after man.

There was that famous quote, I can't remember where it was written up, but that from a country music executive who said that

the girls are like the tomatoes on the salad, you know, of country music.

So women in general are, you know, they don't eat a lot of salad they don't eat a lot of salad yeah so so you know if the meat and potatoes are are are white men um then you know the idea of a woman kind of stepping into this space and then um not just a woman but a black woman um and it's interesting right because i think like you know for for country country music is obviously huge right like it's it it's it's also an amazing global phenomenon people all around the world listen to country music I think of it as the most universal form of music, just like Bollywood is the most universal form of cinema.

it's sentimental, it's whatever, you know.

But

the reality is, in terms of its like kind of cultural power, I feel like country music feels a little bit marginal, you know, and like Beyoncé is like one of the biggest stars in the world.

And country music is like all American music, its roots are in black culture.

I mean, that is just a fact.

Correct, which people are talking about in the React, like she's taking it back.

I don't know if she's doing that, but she's definitely taking it back.

Whether she's taking it back or not, I mean, it's, what is there even to take back?

I mean, this is this is just the history of country music.

I mean, you know, Ray Charles, Country and Western, I mean, it's just such a, you know, like that's where this music comes from.

And it's been de-rascinated.

It's been, you know, put in the hands of

white men.

But it's, it's funny because it does feel of a piece of this kind of sense of

grievance that a lot of white men have, that they're being pushed out of the culture.

They're being pushed out of the frame.

We don't matter anymore.

You know, women don't want to marry us.

You know, they don't want to have our children, blah, blah, blah.

And so I think that there is this sense of, you know, of like being invaded.

And when it's a black woman, it's particularly intimidating, I think.

Yes, particularly on a white horse looking like a Trump rally, which was interesting.

I mean, for those that are in the picture, it's just so, there's so much going on in that film.

So much.

It's a rich text.

It's a rich text.

It's a rich text of information, symbolic.

And

she's the queen of symbols.

You had New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cotton on the podcast, Matter of Opinion, to talk about the role of celebrity in politics.

Talk a little bit about that conversation.

Yeah, it's fascinating.

I mean, Tressie's amazing.

If your listeners aren't reading her, she's totally fantastic.

She is a sociologist, and she often focuses on kind of how popular culture works and

its meaning.

And, as I said, the rich texts.

And it was a fascinating conversation because we think about the role of celebrities in politics and we think that

celebrities have all of this influence.

People have been freaking out, for example, about Taylor Swift.

Is Taylor Swift an op?

Is she going to endorse, blah, blah, blah?

Is her relationship with Travis Kelsey just a plan to kind of set Biden up to win reelection?

And so we had a really fascinating conversation that dug into like actually how little celebrity endorsements really matter.

Yeah, hers might.

Hers might, I have to tell you as well.

It depends, right?

And it's funny because at the end of the conversation where we landed was that the only endorsement that we think could actually make a difference in this election is Dolly Parton.

If Dolly Parton were to give up

her lifelong refusal to get involved in politics, which I think has served her very, very, very well,

you know, she talks about things that may, like, she endorsed vaccines, for example, because she thought that really was a good thing.

She winks at Democrats.

She winks at Democrats.

And also, she's, you know, she's a queer icon, obviously, and she's very, she's a great friend to our LGBTQ community.

But, but she you know she she studiously has avoided avoided electoral politics but i think if a figure like dolly pardon who is just so universally beloved were to step away from that tradition and endorse in this election she won't she won't but if she did it would be a sign that this is a defcon you know um whatever the highest number is um and uh and that you know that that this was an election that was really do or die i don't think it would actually make as much difference as people think it would but but i think in in teloso's case i think the press around it would be so massive it would matter And so it would get people

discussing it.

It could, it could.

And I think, but I think that, I think that the

other thing is that celebrities are, and this was a great point that Tressie made, celebrities follow.

They don't lead, right?

They are not,

they're listening, you know,

both Taylor Swift and Beyonce are billion-dollar brands.

You know, they are huge, huge, huge multi-billion dollar brands.

And so, you know, they're not going to be out on the leading edge of anything.

You know, they're going to be small C conservative and going where their fans are leading them.

And so I think that what you're seeing, and for Taylor, it's bodily autonomy.

It's

caring

about trans people and things like that.

I think in this selection, and this was another point that Tressie made, race is less of a factor.

I mean, we have two old white guys.

And so

for Beyonce as a black woman, you know, who is, you know, she sang at Obama's

inaugural ball.

I don't know if you remember that.

I do.

But I think they're both quite conservative.

And so, for example, on what is, I think, truly the most explosive issue right now, which is Gaza, but she really hasn't said anything.

Beyonce hasn't said anything.

I won't expect her to say anything.

So it's interesting, right?

And I think that what you're seeing is that sort of small C conservatism of essentially a mega brand.

Fair point.

That's really smart.

I hadn't thought about it like that.

Speaking of another controversy, you wrote a column of the drama surrounding one of President Biden's judicial nominees.

I think it's Adil Manji, was nominated to the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit last November.

If confirmed, he will be the first Muslim-American appellate judge in the U.S., which is astonishing.

At a nomination hearing in December, he was questioned by several GOP senators about his thoughts on Hamas, terrorist groups in 9-11.

A number of conservative groups have also voiced their opposition, claiming Manji is anti-Semitic and anti-police.

The White House called this a cruel Islamophobic smear campaign.

The The nomination appears to be in jeopardy with at least three Democratic senators now saying they won't vote to confirm in addition to the GOP opposition.

Talk about why you wrote about this.

And you note in the piece that Democrats' behavior here concerns you as much as the Republicans.

Explain.

Yeah, I mean, look, I just think this is an absolute outrage.

You know, Adeal Kimanji is a, you know, kind of bog standard, you know, highly qualified nominee.

He's got the endorsement of the American Bar Association.

You know, he, they tried to smear him as anti-Semitic, essentially because he's a Muslim.

And then, you know, when

a bunch of mainstream Jewish groups came out very strongly in support, saying that there's nothing about this guy that's anti-Semitic, you know, the Anti-Defamation League and others, he's, in fact, worked on

issues of religious freedom with Jewish groups and with Christian groups and things like that.

This is a, you know, this guy is a classic American success story.

You know, he comes to the United States from Pakistan, rises to the pinnacle of his profession, has a family, devotes tons of time to, you know, to charitable work and

pro bono cases and things like that.

Like,

this is America.

This is what the Democratic Party, I mean, honestly, this is what every American should stand for, you know?

And

the Republicans just took everything that this guy has done and tried to turn it into a smear.

When the anti-Semitic thing failed, then they tried to pretend that he was somehow, you know, in league with cop killers through some tenuous.

Anyway, so none of this surprises me.

you know ted cruise is mr bad faith like you know i of course he's going to say that any muslim is anti-semitic you know these these you know tom cotton josh those those kinds of people you know it doesn't surprise me the republicans are very cynical about this stuff what drives me absolutely crazy and which i think is absolutely unacceptable is that democrats fall for it you know they allow themselves to be co-opted by these bad faith attacks by republicans and so you know they they and and and you know technically you've got senators like you know who are in frontline battleground states, and you have these

right-wing conservative judicial groups that are running attack ads against these Democratic senators, basically saying,

this guy is going to vote for a judge

who's Hamas's favorite judicial nominee.

And Democrats are falling for it.

It's Jackie Rosen, who's up for reelection in competitive Nevada, and Catherine Cortez-Masto.

They're saying he's anti-police.

And who's the third one?

It's Joe Manchin, who like is leaving, who's leaving the Senate, right?

So he's got no reason.

It's just a middle finger, you know.

I mean, he's just like, he refuses to vote for any nominee who doesn't have, who can't get a single GOP vote, right?

And that's just, he calls it his little filibuster.

And I'm just like, what a, what a, you know, like, how monstrous is that?

You know, and the thing that drives me insane, actually, those three, those three senators, all three of them voted for a Trump nominee, right?

A guy, a guy who was a Florida, a Florida judge who literally represented a cop killer, right?

Like, this is a guy in 1999.

He represented somebody, and he, in the death penalty phase, the irony is not dead.

The irony.

And these three senators all voted for this guy, right?

So, so Adil Mangi, who's like, never, never defended a cop killer ever in his legal career.

What's going to happen?

I mean, I, you know,

the White House, to its credit, I think, has continued to fight for this nomination.

Corey Booker, who's the hometown, senator

for Adil Manji, has also given passionate speeches.

He's not giving up.

I think a lot of people expected that once it was clear that there were some defections, that he would just roll over and withdraw.

And Adil Manji, to his credit, has not done that.

He sent a strongly worded letter explaining his position.

So we'll see.

When the Senate is back from recess, will they bring him up for a vote?

I want to see.

some leadership from Chuck Schumer on this.

I want to see, but this is something that's worth fighting for.

And I think that, you know, Well, they're worried about the Senate.

They're worried about the Senate, but I mean, you don't win by compromising on your core values.

You just don't.

It's just ugly.

It's ugly.

It's politics.

It's ugly.

And there are places to compromise.

And I just don't think this is one of them.

We have a great story about who we are as a country that Democrats can tell about freedom, about religious liberty, about all of these things.

And it just drives me nuts that they fold.

I get it.

Sometimes about timing

with what's going on in Israel.

I just, it's just one.

I'd like to try one of these.

Yeah, but it's also right now,

think about Michigan, right?

I mean, Biden could lose misogyn over the Muslim vote, right?

And so if Democrats are basically saying we are going to cave to an Islamophobic smear at this moment when they desperately need to reassure not just Muslim voters, but black voters and others who care about Gaza.

The White House is sticking with it.

Anyway, listen to an essay in New York Magazine's The Cut titled The Case for Marrying an Older Man has stirred up a lot of conversation on social media.

You pointed this out.

The writer, Gracie Sophia Christie, tries to explain why an age gap in a partnership can be a good thing, or at least why it was for her.

Though as Slate put it, that viral essay wasn't about age gap.

It's about marrying rich.

I am the older man in my relationship with my wife, which let me, for people who don't know, Lydia's wife.

fixed us up put us on a blind date like through a text through a text i think it was actually through a twitter DM.

It's back when we were all still on Twitter.

Yeah, you're right.

Yeah.

No, I think it was

Twitter DM.

Anyway, Candy got into your wife's DM, your now wife's DMs and said, hey, how would you feel about being fixed up with Kara Swisher?

And Candy's just intuitive like that, you know?

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyway, but oh, did she think about the old, because I'm older.

I'm, I don't know, 15 years older, 14 years older than my wife.

I don't think so because I think at a certain, when you, once you get to a certain age, the age gap doesn't really matter.

That's what I think, right?

I think that the difference between being in your early 20s and being in your early 30s is actually a pretty big difference, right?

I mean, think about your own life.

I mean, your 20s are such a time of angst.

And, you know, am I going to make it in life?

How, you know, what am I going to?

And you see somebody who's just 10 years ahead of you and you're like, wow, they figured it out.

So the first thing I want to say about this essay is, and this is just like huge kudos to your

colleagues at the cut.

I mean, you know, New York Magazine, I feel is just

fucking killing it, you you know, like between Nepo babies.

They love like pulling the strips.

I gotta say, like, like, like,

I'm not really on Twitter anymore.

My handle is still there, but I'm not active on Twitter anymore.

But for the first time, I was like, I just got to see what the conversation is.

And it sort of like made Twitter fun again to see all of people's hot takes about this like insane personal essay.

So to me, like the sort of meta circumstances were really fun.

What was your, what was the one that you know when Twitter was good?

When Twitter was really, really good.

Yeah.

My favorite tweet was

from Caitlin Phillips.

She goes by the handle YOLO Ethics.

And her tweet was, this is not about age gaps or marrying rich guys.

It's about having red hair and how easy life is when you have red hair, which I thought was just hilarious.

You know, like everybody kind of had their angle and their funny thing to say about this, about this piece.

But

what I thought was really interesting and sort of my social media joke about it was that, do you know what red shirting is?

No, but you put it in.

Yeah, it's basically like when you hold boys back because they mature at a at a slower state.

Oh, yes.

You know,

boys tend to mature more slowly than girls.

And, you know, so, so like, you hold a kid back and put them into first, into kindergarten a year later.

You know, that's called redshirting.

So I said, this is, this is red shirting, but for husbands.

And I think it makes sense, right?

Because women are more mature at younger ages.

Men are, you know.

Well, how do you explain the lesbian thing then?

Because I think it works out great.

I think it's, yeah, it's what I told Amanda was I'll die way before her and she has a chance to get married again and do the same thing, that kind of thing, you know, for one.

And I don't know, I we don't ever, I never think about it as a thing once people reach a certain age.

I think, I think that's right.

I think once you reach a certain age, it doesn't matter what you do.

I don't even know how old you are.

I don't know how old anyone is.

Well, so interestingly, so I never give relationship advice because I always think, like, what do I know?

Like, why, like, you know, I just got super, super lucky.

I met, you know, I met my wife when we were in college.

We were literally teenagers, you know, and we've been been together since, you know, my senior year, you know, and she and I are actually the same age.

We're, we're, you know, we were born five months apart, you know, so,

you know, but I like, I don't know, like, I got hit by lightning.

I'm very, very lucky I married the right person and I managed to stay with them.

Like, you know, like, I wish everyone happiness and love and good luck in all of those things.

And, and, you know, I'm not sure I have any wisdom to offer beyond that.

But yeah, well, I like it.

I am, and thank you, Keith.

Yeah, I mean, listen, take love where you find it.

That's all I got to say.

You know,

age gap, no age gap.

What's wrong with marrying rich?

What's wrong with marrying rich?

I mean, you know,

I advocate marrying rich.

Why not?

As long as there's love.

That's something that matters.

Yeah, as long as there's love.

Oh, as long as there's love.

In any case, it was a great essay.

You should read it in New York Magazine.

All right, Lydia, let's go on a quick break when we come back.

Open AI's newest tool and the safety warnings accompanying it.

And our friend of Pivot, Ari Wallach, is going to tell us why we should be hopeful about about the future.

Only Murders in the Building, season five.

The hit Hulu original is back.

We need to go face to face with the mob.

Get ready for a season.

This is how I die.

You can't refuse.

You're going to save the day, like you always do, by being smart, sharp, and almost always find mistakes.

The Hulu Original series, Only Murders in the Building, premieres September 9th, streaming on Hulu Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.

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Lydia, we're back.

Sam Bankman-Fried is going to prison for 25 years following a sentencing last week, though prosecutors had argued for 40 to 50 years behind bar.

Judge Lewis Kaplan also ordered Bankman-Fried to forfeit $11 billion in assets.

The judge recommended the sentence be served at a low or medium security prison in the Bay Area near Bankman-Fried's parents.

Bankman-Fried apologized to FDX investors and employees before sentencing, saying his decisions haunt him every day.

Last week, we were predicting how harsh the judge would be.

Thoughts.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I am generally speaking against very, very long sentences

for pretty much anything, but especially for nonviolent crime.

And I think that, you know, there are a lot of people who just can't stand.

You know, Sam Bankman-Fried, who thinks that he's a privileged, you know, rich kid who has no moral compass and thinks that, you know, his shit don't stink and therefore, and because he had quote-unquote good intentions, blah, blah, blah.

And I accept all that.

But I just don't believe that the point of the criminal justice system is retribution.

I think

it's,

you know, should be to reform people.

Is he reformable?

I don't know.

But 25 years seems like a long time.

Well, the judge didn't think so and said so.

I know.

I mean, it's interesting because he got the middle.

I mean, a lot of these judges tend to do the middle, right?

He could have gotten 110 years.

And I'm trying to think, people similarly got 11.

It was Elizabeth Holmes.

Yeah, I think that's right.

But

if you look at Madoff got a lot.

Yeah, Madoff got a lot.

And he, you know, destroyed people's lives.

And, you know, Sam Bank Freed also destroyed people's lives.

Don't get me wrong.

But, you know, the United States is an outlier in terms of the length of sentences that we give people.

And I just think that as a general rule, that's a thing.

And I'm a person who believes in consistency.

And therefore, if I, so, for example, if Trump were convicted of any of his crimes,

I would hold the same view, even though this is a person for whom I have utter and complete moral contempt.

I just think that our prison sentences are too long.

That's my.

I was surprised by this from you.

I really wasn't.

Really?

I was surprised.

I thought you'd say throw the book at him.

No, no.

I'm not a person who believes in retribution and vengeance.

Well, the judge was making the point that he'll do it again.

Like, he's dangerous.

He's not at all sorry.

for what he did.

He's just sorry he got caught.

Absolutely.

But I think that we need to find other ways to reform

punish and to incentivize good behavior.

I just don't know that like locking someone up for 25 years at my expense is a great way to solve this problem.

He'll be 50 some when he gets out, which is plenty of time to make trouble.

Right.

I mean, I think also like, you know, the problem, the problem of Sam Bankman-Fried is a problem of, it's a social problem.

It's a problem of capitalism.

It's a problem of the way that our economy and our society valorizes certain kinds of people.

And I think those are big problems that we need to figure out how to solve, right?

But I don't think him sitting in prison is going to do it.

Well, what could he do?

Well, I don't know how I would be.

He'd be able to come back.

You know, Mike Milken, they all have these comebacks.

And he's certainly someone, you know, that Mark Andreessen would immediately back.

The problem is capitalism, Kara.

It's late capitalism and the way we practice it.

Late capitalism.

I like that.

Speaking of early capitalism, OpenAI has announced its latest tool, Voice Engine.

According to the company, it can recreate a person's voice within 15 seconds of that person talking.

And by the way, there's plenty of also data on both Liddy and I in general and voice all over the place.

The technology will not be released publicly just yet, with OpenAI citing safety concerns about usage.

You think, particularly in an election year, the company said it's also worried about the tech being used for voice authenticators that control access to online bank accounts and other private applications.

OpenAI unveiled its video generator tool, SOAR, in February, which is being held off for public use while they red team how it could be misused, like every friggin' which way.

Come

Talk about the risks here.

Talk about what you think about this.

You're not a techie, just for people who

I'm just curious what you think about all these.

Obviously, I could think of a hundred things as someone who covers tech.

Yeah.

And I've talked, and I could think of a hundred things about the other ones.

When Facebook, FaceTime came out, I was, I had a list that all of which came to pass.

Talk about what you think about here.

Yeah, I mean, I actually have to say, and this is maybe an unpopular view, like I worry less about

like election interference and misinformation and fake news.

I think like in the in the grand scheme of things, like when we look at what happened in 2016 and elsewhere, like I actually think that the quote unquote, you know, technology misinformation played less of a role than we think.

I, what terrifies me, because this is a thing that like happened to my grandmother, for example, is like, you know, you get a phone call and it's like, you, it's your grandchild and they're like, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm in trouble and I need you to wire me money.

And, you know, those are the kinds of things that I actually, actually, that actually keep me up at night is that

it won't be

that you're impersonating Donald Trump because there are lots of people who can already do that, right?

With their own voices quite persuasively.

Right.

Saturday night live.

No, totally.

But that ordinary people,

the bank account thing, the voice print verification thing, all of those things are just really, really terrifying.

They just shouldn't do it.

They just shouldn't do it.

And I think that this is one of those things where it's just like a basic issue of like the safety of the public that, you know, this is like monkey's paw stuff.

Like, let's just, you know, Pandora's box.

Like, you know.

Except someone's going to do it.

Someone is going to do it, no matter what.

There'll be those, even if OpenAI doesn't, it's available to people, these kind of things.

Yeah.

No, I think, I think that's right.

But I think that, like, you know, if ever there was a case for, you know, government to take an aggressive stand and regulate, like, this is it.

You think they will?

Well, I don't.

I don't have a ton of faith.

No, but I think that they should.

Well, they certainly didn't do it around

facial recognition.

They haven't done it around privacy.

They haven't done it around.

The video generator tool is similar, but different.

You know what I mean?

That's more of a risk to entertainment, although you could do all kinds of things.

It just doesn't look quite

totally.

And like, you know, deep fake porn.

And, you know, they're just listening, the dystopian possibilities here are just endless.

But I don't know.

What would you suggest, Kara?

How do you think this should work?

You know, I keep, I feel like, speaking of, you know, if if you're going to use this mythology, I feel like Cassandra, I remember being in that room with Facebook when they were introducing Facebook Live and suggesting three or four things that I thought were dystopian.

And they just dismissed them.

And they knew the government, they absolutely knew the government was going to do anything about it and beyond the cool element of it.

Like, what a tool.

And I think

voice replication is, it can go so many ways, right?

Now, I do think people will then be on to it.

Most, many people, but not not everybody, will be on to the ability.

And so, I would assume banks would just change the authentication so you can't control access, right?

That's all they have to do.

Just that's over.

You have to have another means of doing so.

Um, you know, people have been cheating for centuries.

It's not, this is not a new fresh thing, but this certainly makes it easier.

You could see this in the hands of Russians, particularly who are particularly venal and taking people's money.

Uh, you know, that's how they use the internet, all these crime gangs.

You know, you know, you don't need people, you don't need to kidnap people anymore to steal their bank account, right?

That was the old thing.

You've got their eyeball or their voice or whatever.

You just need to replicate it.

So I think the banks have got to decide what to do.

It's like that's one way of doing it.

Other is getting into buildings.

You know, there's all kinds of ways you could use all these things.

But, you know, that's any Mission Impossible movie on any year, right?

They always do things like this.

What I would suggest is people look at any like Mission Impossible or any science fiction movie, and there it is, what they'll do with the tools as they come available.

Yeah, but I think that, no, I think that's right.

But I also think that, you know,

people can insist on friction, right?

I mean, the whole point of technology is to reduce friction.

And, you know, we can, you know, you can, as a consumer, say, no, I'd like to introduce a little more friction into this transaction.

And I want it to be a little bit less seamless.

You know,

100%.

A hundred percent.

But I think the voice generation, I don't see the pluses for it at all.

I don't even see why you'd want it.

And the video thing, I do.

If you're in entertainment, you want to save money, you know what I mean?

That could be that's a different thing, but it could equally abuse and together completely abuse, right?

And so, I just

think Congress has to act and they won't.

I mean, will they even understand it?

I mean, they do derocracy, right?

They do, you think?

They do, they can do it, they regulate everything else so they can do it.

Somehow, they'll figure it out, they can hire people, experts, expertise.

Anyway, uh, anyway, we'll see what happens.

Uh, but let's bring on our friend of Pivot.

Ari Wallach is a futurist and a host of the new PBS series, A Brief History of the Future.

The show examines the ways people are problem-solving and working to improve the world for the next generations.

I welcome it.

I wish I was a futurist.

So, Ari, explain what a futurist is.

So, you know, look, there's two different ways of thinking about what a futurist is.

There's the way that people think about it in the kind of common way, which is we have a a crystal ball and we go into a room or we go onto a stage and we tell and we predict this is what tomorrow is going to be.

The reality is it's a much more structured endeavor.

So a lot of what we do is we look at megatrends.

We look at things that have been happening

for several years, oftentimes decades, and then we start to extrapolate what those would be like moving forward the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years.

And then within that, we build scenarios or stories about what might happen, not best case, not worst case, but probabilistically, what is likely to occur giving these mega trends.

So, that's what kind of professional futurists do.

Right.

It's a profession.

So, in this series, you're really offering a positive view of the future.

There's so much, you know, especially in science fiction elsewhere.

You're trying to move away from doom and gloom and dystopia.

Why did you feel it was important to explore?

And I'll just make a note here.

It's one of the things I've been trying to do a lot more lately about where the good parts are.

As you say in the show, we're currently at a sort of inflection point to decide our fate around the, especially in the environment, but also AI and all kinds of things.

Talk a little bit about why you did the positive spin and what the inflection point is.

Look, for 20 years, I've been a futurist and I've been going into rooms.

And

what happens more often than not is CEOs or government leaders will say the same thing.

What's the worst thing that's going to happen?

And how do we position ourselves not to be part of the worst thing?

It's not how do we position ourselves not to contribute to it, but how do we avoid it?

And so it occurred to me, I have 15-year-old twin daughters, and when I look at their bookcase in their room for young adult fiction, every single book that takes place in the future is dystopian.

And then when we look at youth today, where depending on which poll you look at, anywhere from 70 to 80% say they have kind of dread towards the future.

I think back about when I was their age in the 90s, and I was optimistic about the future.

Now, obviously, there were very different trends happening at the time, but net net, and this goes back to sports psychology, you know,

if you can't see it, you can't be it.

And if all we're showing is doom and gloom, and this is not to take away from the doom and gloom of the current moment, that is what we are going to head towards, right?

If we look back at the last time.

There were good stories about tomorrow that took place not in a perfect future, but in a better future, we have to go back to the mid-1960s to Star Trek, right?

There was the first interracial kiss kiss on Star Trek decades before we actually saw it anywhere else on TV.

That hasn't happened for quite some time.

So people who don't know, that was Uhura and Shatner, I believe, but go ahead.

I was going to say that, but I realized I'm in the company that someone can name drop.

So it was them.

And so.

Look, the responsibility of a futurist isn't just to kind of help your clients win the future, right?

I mean, look, I don't begrudge folks who do that.

I decided several years ago that that's not going to be the way that I'm going to do it anymore.

For me, it's no longer, you know, client A wins and client B loses.

For me now, I view this as much as a much kind of larger Homo sapien project.

We either all win or we all kind of lose, and we have to enter it into that way.

I mean, it's really fascinating.

And I come at this, I mean, Ari, your work is so interesting.

And I come at this from having been a foreign correspondent.

And I remember I wrote

a piece

many years ago when I was covering the crisis in Darfur, which is

the region of Sudan, there was a ethnic cleansing and all these horrible things were happening.

And a thing that I'd noticed was just that

every interview that I do with someone who was like living in a straw hut, having been chased from their home was like,

here's my baby and I'm hopeful for my baby's future, you know?

And like, so I did some research about this and I found that like there was actually like, you know, that Africa was actually the most optimistic continent on the earth, that the Gallup polling showed that.

So, I mean, one of the things that I think is really fascinating about the work that you're doing in this series is like you really went all around the world and talked to lots of different kinds of people.

And it's often the people that you think have the least reason to be optimistic who have the most hope for like what the future could hold.

And I'm curious, like,

what did your sort of reporting and research show about that?

Well, it's interesting.

So the way I kind of, I mentioned several years ago, I decided to make the switch into a kind of more protopian protopian or optimistic futuring, not Pollyanish, protopian.

We'll get to that in a second.

Where that came from was I was doing work for the UN Refugee Agency, and we were in the Horn of Africa.

And to your point, Lydia, more often than not, those were the most optimistic folks about the future, the people that were literally on the run for their lives.

Whereas people in the global north or in America were the most dystopian, the most doom and gloom.

And we can get into that in a second.

But that's what I found as I traveled the world were

people who could look at the future i don't want to be binary about it but either again looking at it as a place that it was this noun that they were hurtling towards or they looked at the future as a verb it's a thing that they were making and that they were actually a participant in It varied where I went in the world, but in generally, that mindset was the key differentiator between folks and how they thought about tomorrow.

And that's what I found.

You know, it was in Morocco, four hours through the the Atlas Mountains that I met with someone who was running one of the largest concentrated solar power plants in the world.

And he said, we're going to be energy independent.

And eventually, much like Buckminster Fuller talked about decades ago, we will link with other energy grids around the world.

You don't hear that talk in America.

You hear about the grid failing.

There you hear about futures that we want to live in as opposed to futures that we want to run from.

Well, you hear about the grid failing, but you also hear about,

you know, well, I don't want that solar array in in my backyard.

Or, you know, so it's this combination of like already having a certain amount of resources and power that you don't want to give up that, you know, prevents you from imagining futures that might involve change.

Yeah, I mean, look, one of the more interesting, look, every conversation was interesting around the world, but

I met with the woman, Yatasha Womack, who's kind of considered,

she wrote the book Afrofuturism.

And

in our conversation, she's written a lot more since then.

She said, look, to be clear,

she's like we she was talking about black americans but in general she was saying we've been living in a dystopia for 400 years right so we've now kind of gone through it and we are looking at this on the other side about what futures do we want to build so you don't necessarily have to travel to kind of these exotic places you can go to chicago and find people who understand that so much of the future is dictated obviously by our past.

You can, you know, she and I recently talked about Haiti in the same way, right?

You can look about where we've come from as a harbinger, not just of where we might go, but also where we don't want to go.

And it's again, this is a subtle mindset shift, but I found as I traveled the world that folks who were willing to go there, which was to say

the past is not a path dependency.

There is a different future.

And it's not a rainbows and unicorns future, but there's a different future that we can choose that centers humanity as opposed to centering technology or late stage capitalism or Silicon Valley ethos that can get us to where we want to go.

The most important thing, though, that I found in the reporting was that people had to have a pretty good idea of where they wanted to go.

And again, this wasn't a utopia, but it was a world that they wanted, that they were okay with themselves living in, but more importantly, with their descendants living in generations from now.

Yeah, let me ask you,

you talk about, you met with a bunch of interesting people in unusual jobs, including a circular economist, a futures generation commissioner, a death doula.

Who really blew you away with their perspective?

You just mentioned someone who obviously did, but name one or two who really

look, I love going to Lawrence Livermore lab and seeing the fusion center and seeing all this.

I grew up on Pop Psy and Wired and all this stuff.

But you just mentioned who really blew me away, which was Alua Arthur, who's a death doula.

And the conversation, what's a death doula doing in a show about the future?

But a lot of what she and I talked about was the kind of the reality that until you can envision a world beyond your own lifespan, so you kind of get over your own lifespan bias, it's very difficult to take actions for the far future.

And in the West, we have death anxiety.

And in more Eastern cultures, there's more death awareness.

That's deeply tied into kind of cultural and religious underpinnings of how they think about death.

A lot of what she does, and we visit her in the high mountains of Arizona, where she was doing a death doula training, is getting people to be comfortable with the idea of their their own mortality.

And we, and we know that as people go through that, as they move from death anxiety to death awareness, they are able to take better actions and decisions for the far future.

That blew me away.

This was going to be a show about, everyone thought, oh, this is a show about monorails and jet packs and quantum and nano.

Why is there a woman wrapping people in death shawls?

But that's partly how we get to where we want to go.

Yeah, 100%.

It's actually, it informs everything I do, actually.

But what's interesting is the people I cover tend to be much more, how am I going to stop death?

That's where they're moving now.

Well, you know, life extension and everything else, which is kind of the opposite.

Yeah, well, it's quantity over quality.

No, I mean, it's fascinating.

So, so, so, as it, as it happens, my, my wife is a, is a social worker and she focuses on hospice and end of life.

And, um, at one point, I asked her, you know, what is it that you actually do in this work?

And, um, you know, she said a bunch of things that are, you know, obviously important.

But the one that really, really stuck with me was that she helps people

increase their tolerance for uncertainty.

And

I think that that's what you're talking about with the death doula, right?

I mean, it's partly sort of like creating this death awareness, but I think it's also being comfortable with the idea that we actually don't know, you know, like you don't know how long you're going to live.

You don't know what the future is going to look like.

But creating that sense of possibility and that ability to kind of live with and

be in equanimity with an uncertain future,

you know, to me feels like a a really, really important, not skill for dying, but actually like a skill for living with the world which we're living right now.

And that's the moment, look, what we talk about in episode two is that we're in this intertidal moment, right?

We're on the kind of tail end,

at least in the West, of this kind of enlightenment rationality thinking, right?

If we can quantify it, if we can measure it, we can own it.

It's man over nature.

And we're seeing that didn't get us as far as we want it to get us, right?

And so, in this intertidal moment between what was and what will be,

that uncertainty leads to a certain sense, a heightened sense of anxiety, which then leads people to become more short-term in their thinking, right?

They're less likely to go out 10, 15, 20 years, let alone hundreds of years, and they're going to think about the next six months.

And so that's why being able to live with that uncertainty is so important in this moment.

Let me ask you a question.

We talk a lot about AI in the future

on this podcast and excitement, but also the dangers.

You dug into both in the series.

Talk about that.

That's another inflection point, obviously.

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that became very apparent as we traveled the world, meeting both with experts in artificial intelligence and also folks who are kind of AI adjacent, is that what we are building, what we are coding right now, and this dovetails of what we were just talking about, are these immortal machines, right?

So it's not just about what we do right now, which is very important, but it's the fact that we are coding in either optimistic visions of tomorrow or significant bias that will be with us much like the COBOL programming and air traffic control systems that's still with us 50 years later that's what we're coding in right now so how we think about ai what we do or do not do right now isn't a six-month thing isn't a two-year thing it could be a 20 or a 200 year thing um what is your favorite um protopian piece of culture is there something that that comes to mind that you're like this is an example of like i wish that there was more of this because you talked about your daughter's bookshelves and dystopian books and things like that.

I'd love a recommendation for something that could maybe evoke that feeling that you're talking about of like possibility.

Obviously, the first thing is a TV show because that's why we made it, right?

To evoke that feeling and that sense of possibility.

You know, I'm actually going to go a little bit backwards here.

I look, it was the old show on NBC called Parenthood.

I look, both my mother passed away a few years ago.

My father passed away when I was 18.

I had a loving, amazing family.

That being said, I'm now a parent.

And it's like, how do you model the best behaviors that you want both in yourself and in your children?

Because that is future making.

And in that, in the TV show Parenthood, that's been off the air for several years now.

I, you know, look, it wasn't perfect.

Those families weren't perfect.

But the way the parents modeled a way of interacting with society, culture, and their children was protopian for me.

That's great.

I'm going to go back and revisit that one.

Yeah, it's a great show.

There was, there was a one called Eight is Enough.

You guys are too young i'm not no i i used to watch eight i loved eight is enough remember yeah yeah that was a great show there's a whole bunch like that in any case speaking of kids you came out of this feeling optimistic about our future our kids futures i have a lot of kids um you have kids i think about the future a lot like almost constantly in everything i do and that's why not just their not just my children um but their children and everything else and i think it's easier to be more positive you have to kind of force yourself when you have children but I don't know about that.

I don't know.

Some people are quite dark.

Did you come out feeling optimistic about our future?

And point to one thing that makes you optimistic.

So look, I went into the show a little bit down on the state of the Homo sapien project, to be totally honest, just because like you all, I read the news.

This is what I do is I look at...

I'm kind of like an anthropologist from the future looking backwards.

Like, where did it go right and where did it go wrong?

And I try to trim Tabos towards the right.

So I went into it a little bit less than where I wanted to be.

I came out of it highly optimistic because what I found was

every single individual that I met with had an optimism that was buoyed by a sense of pragmatic sensibility around where we are as a species and how much there is left to do.

So they weren't seeing this as chapter 10 of 10.

They were all seeing it as chapter one or two of a 20-chapter book.

The thing, look, outside of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, we visited a place called Hoževec, which is also known, you know, they call it a dementia village.

And what they've done, in short, is instead of putting people who are in a memory care situation with neurodegenerative disease in kind of locked wards, they've actually built villages for them where they can shop, they can go to restaurants, all in a safe environment.

It took a tremendous amount of willpower by the founders of Hojavec to convince people that this was a good idea.

I came out of it optimistic the entire show, coming out out of Hojavik, because I realized, yeah, the technology stuff was fascinating in this show.

Don't get me wrong.

But seeing that people could come together and rethink their base assumptions about how we care for one another in the present and therefore in the future changed how I thought we could actually tackle some of our biggest, most wicked social problems.

Yeah.

Well, that's true.

Someone who's dealing with this right now, it's got to change.

It's got to change.

And we saw the change there.

It's crazy how bad it is.

It's really for everybody at every level.

It's really not good, at least in this country.

Ari Wallach, thank you.

A brief history of the future, and I recommend you watch it.

Premieres on PBS this week.

Yeah, thank you very much for having me.

Congrats, Ari.

All right, Lydia, one more quick break, and we'll be back for wins and fails.

Hello, Daisy speaking.

Hello, Daisy.

This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS.

Oh, bless, that does sound serious.

I wouldn't want to end up in any sort of trouble.

This September on Criminal, we've been thinking a lot about scams.

Over the next couple of weeks, we're releasing episodes about a surprising way to stop scammers.

The people you didn't know were on the other end of the line.

And we have a special bonus episode on Criminal Plus with tips to protect yourself.

Listen to Criminal wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for Criminal Plus at thisiscriminal.com/slash plus.

okay lydia let's hear some wins and fails i know you wanted to mention uh jonathan height and his new book the anxious generation which is getting a lot of attention mostly positive from scott and things like that i have i'm yet to interview him or anything else but you had some thoughts or you don't have to have that but your wins and fails yeah i mean it's not a it's not it's not necessarily a win or a fail i just think it's like a kind of a fascinating example of like i think the way that our brains work um you know this this book is getting a lot of attention it's basically you know sort of diagnosing that like, you know, the anxious kids that are having all these mental health issues, that like the really big thing is phones.

And, you know, look, mobile phones, they're new.

They're, you know, clearly a thing that's like, that has, has, has totally transformed children's lives.

I get it.

But I think that there was a fascinating review of the book by a scientist in the journal Nature who basically was like, hang on a minute, there's correlation here, but there isn't necessarily causation.

And the reality is that there are lots of other factors that are going on out there.

And I'm sure these are addressed in the book.

I mean, you know, school shootings.

I mean, how must it feel for kids to, you know, be hiding under their desks and so on?

You know, the climate collapse.

There are lots of reasons for kids to be anxious.

So,

you know, to me,

the thing that makes me feel uneasy about the thesis of this book is that

we want to think that this one thing is the thing that's causing all of our problems.

But in fact, it's so multifaceted, so multivariate, and it's just hard to know what's actually causing something.

And in fact, the solution might be more global.

I think parents are are are also addicted themselves and so they're feeling like maybe it's making and it makes them feel bad social media definitely makes you feel worse when you're on your phone in a doom scroll you feel worse you can see it right because many of us who aren't addicted to anything i've never you know smoked don't take drugs don't drink but phone for sure i know when it makes me feel bad one of the reasons i've put twitter away on the shelf right because it just started it really made me feel bad so i think that's where they feel like if i feel bad they definitely have to feel bad kind of thing.

You know,

I had a great psychoanalyst that I saw for many years, and he had this thing that he would always say.

He'd say, Lydia, 95% of what people tell you is about themselves, and so is the other 5%.

It's very hard for us.

It's very hard for us not to assume that what we think and feel is what other people think and feel.

Why didn't you just leave therapy at that moment?

Like that, okay.

I know, I know.

Listen, that is, you know, it's gotten me very far.

I left not long after, but I agree with you.

I think the step.

Now, he puts all his stuff out there.

That's what a lot of his fans say.

Look, he's out there.

People can argue.

But a lot of social media, social scientists are like, This is bullshit.

Like, they really are going at it because they think he's not making the case, and he's made he's it's sort of like a silver bullet kind of thing.

And they're not discounting phones and everything else.

What they're saying is, it's not the

multifaceted reason, and if we simplify it, it's going to be a problem.

Um, that's I think that's really what the message is.

Um, I'll do my fail: The New Roadhouse.

Now, listen, people, as you know, I love

myself some Roadhouse and patrick swayzey it's one of my favorite movies don't i'm not apologizing for it in any way it's go watch it it's fantastic especially when he's doing his jiu-jitsu whatever the heck patrick swayzee does um the new one with jake gyllenhall and it's a great cast by the way a lot of good people in it there's that uh that that mma fighter i can't remember his name anyway it's very entertaining in a weird way but it's basically they just keep driving boats onto docks that's really what it is and some cars into bars and uh it's so stupid it's so stupid and all i kept thinking and by the way jake gyllenhall looks fantastic i will say and the fighting is uninspired

oh my god uh i think the fighting is uninspired i think it's dumb it's like dumb people doing dumb things and i i know these movies are dumb but the original roadhouse was not dumb it was great um so it's really bad and i was sad that it was bad and i was on a plane and i just was very disappointed in it and also i kept thinking jake gyllenhall is doing this movie which is really a sad career trajectory for him.

And then Taylor Swift.

I kept thinking of that the whole time.

I was like, wow, they parted.

I don't care that she didn't get the red scarf back because he needs it.

In any case, that is my fail.

What is your win?

That's a bummer because

that's the kind of movie that I would really love to save to watch on a long flight.

So I'll just pick something else.

It was not pleasant.

So my win is, and I don't know if you, if you check this out, I don't stay up late enough to watch it live.

So I just watch clips after the fact, but Rami Youssef on SNL, just like an absolute delight.

He is a Muslim-American comedian,

and he is

just really like we talk a lot about like diversity, equity, and inclusion, and people try to use it as like a bad word.

But there's something just like really, really wonderful about seeing,

you know, a religion that frankly is like underrepresented in our culture, right?

As someone who is a believer and devout,

you know, hosting Saturday Night Live during the holy month of Ramadan, talking about how joyful a time Ramadan is.

Like, this is what America needs, right?

Like, we need to see,

it was delightful.

He was funny.

He was self-deprecating.

He's just an absolute cutie.

Like that little muscle.

That's a lot of fun for Ramadan.

You know,

how Zempic for Ramadan was great.

So I don't know.

So I think that was a big win.

Really, really good job, SNL.

Excellent choice of host.

It was great.

How about you?

What's your win?

My win, I'm going to give it to my lovely wife, Amanda, this week, who you, the reason I have the kids are around is because of you and your wife, mostly your wife, but you too, because you hosted the party that we met, we went to and met at.

I have to say, I've been doing this book to her for weeks, and she has been incredible taking care of the kids.

They're sick every five seconds.

At one point, my son pulled my daughter's elbow out of their socket during one of our trips.

Oh my God.

I know.

She's fine.

It's popped right back in.

Yeah.

Kids are so resilient.

They are.

It's amazing.

And let me just say, she's just been great.

This is the culmination of a lifetime of work for me, doing the book and everything.

And she is here for me, and I really appreciate it.

And I appreciate you guys for introducing us together.

And also, you do know the reason the children exist is because of you guys.

So just keep that in mind.

Well, you know.

One of the, one of the things we have many, we have a number of things in common.

You are, of course, Sweet Generous Karis Wisher, an extraordinary media phenomenon all on your own.

But

I think that one thing that you and I have in common is that we're both wife guys.

Like we're both like really into our wives.

And that's, you know, that's a thing that we share.

So, yeah.

Anyway, they're better than us.

They're better than us.

Well, kind of.

They're different than us.

Anyway, they're great.

To all the wives, we say, yay.

We love wives.

All the wives you say way.

But I also just, I just want to say like one really, really, really big win, Kara, is your book.

I mean, I haven't had a chance to see you and congratulate you on it.

Like, I mean, it's, you know, bestseller.

The audio book is incredible.

Like, you know, and, you know, there have been some really stupid, shitty reviews and you have responded to them with your sword.

And I just love how you deal with it, with the haters and the losers.

Yeah.

And yeah, I don't know.

You're just out there showing us how it's done.

So congratulations on that.

Thank you.

Most people are nice.

Most people, that was just the New York Times.

So anyway, most people have been lovely.

It's been a real lovely ride.

Anyway, speaking of which, 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 to submit a question for the show or call 85551-PIVOT.

That's the show.

Thank you so much for joining me.

I'm one of your biggest fans.

Speaking of which, we'll be back on,

we'll be back on Friday with more, with another special guest host and an appearance by someone you'll enjoy.

I will read us out.

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

Ernie Endredot engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burroughs and Mia Silverio.

Nishat Kerwat is Voxmedia'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 with another breakdown of all things tech and business.

And thank you, Lydia Polgreen.

Thank you.