Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview, Adam Neumann’s WeWork Bid, and Meta’s AI Labels

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher in Orlando, and everything smells like a wet dog here.

Scott, what the heck with Florida?

So, one of the greatest

kind of marketing moves is the Four Seasons Orlando and its Lazy River.

The hotels in Orlando could best be described as similar to San Francisco, expensive but bad.

And it literally, you would go to some shitty hotel with a buffet that was $1,100 a night.

And then the Four Seasons came in with their, you know, Four Seasons like service.

By the way, just a quick thing on the Four Seasons, I used to do some work for them.

Their services really, they realized like we can't differentiate on the actual hardware, right?

Everybody has nice properties, or not everybody, but there's Almond, Rosewood, Ritz-Carlton.

So we're going to differentiate on culture and service.

And they hire people who want to be in that business for a career as opposed to some good-looking, you know, waiter or model that's looking to, but it really shows.

I think it's a really impressive organization.

Yeah, I'm into Sheraton, and it smells like a wet dog.

That's all I have to say.

Well, there you go.

Disney World is nearby.

So yay.

You know what I like?

I like to walk into hotels that feel like where you would go to kill yourself.

Yeah, well, this,

as you can see from behind me, I remember I was connecting through Montreal once, and I stayed at a hotel and

I was dating a Mormon girl who was very conservative and we walked into the room and she's like, oh my God, I hope they have they disabled the porn.

And I'm like, it's fucking regular porn, you weirdo.

That's good.

That's good.

Anyway, anyway, I'll soon be going back to DC.

I assume you've already read and tweeted my excerpt from my book today in New York Magazine.

Probably you didn't.

No, I've been reading it over and over and trying to glean all the insight and subtext.

You know, I'm going to support your book when it comes out.

Anyways, let's do a dramatic reading from your book.

We will later when it comes out, the 27th.

This happened, and I was right.

I was right.

I was right.

And again, I was correct.

It's so sad how correct.

Literally, would you do this if you, I was an athlete and I kept getting all the scores?

You're the LeBron James of hardware-loving tech journalist.

Let me just say you wouldn't say that to a male athlete or someone else.

You'd be like, nicewear.

Because you're not a male athlete.

You're a lesbian journalist, and that's fine.

We can all be who we are.

I'm not this.

I'm not speaking to you.

Again, you're still not coming to my book party that you're throwing, correct?

Okay, got that.

I've gotten so many texts from people like Scott Galloway's the host of your book party.

He's not showing up.

And I go on fucking brand.

They do.

They want to see me.

No one cares.

No one cares that I'm not going to be there.

People love us together.

We're going to take a picture of us together at South by Southwest because we're the hot couple.

Everyone's disappointed when they meet me.

I had coffee last night with David Haskell.

New York Magazine had.

He's so handsome.

Oh, yeah, he's lovely.

I mean, great.

Editor-in-chief, fine.

But most importantly, he's very handsome.

He's a handsome man.

He's, no, I really enjoyed him.

I haven't spent that much time with David.

Do you know he owns a whiskey distillery?

Oh, no.

He's literally the most interesting man in the world.

He's the editor-in-chief of New York Magazine.

He's been married.

It sounds like he has a lovely partner for 20 years.

And he has a whiskey distillery in Brooklyn.

And he's a very talented editor.

He did a nice job editing my fantastic piece.

Anyway, him and Genevieve, who's there.

They're all great at New York Magazine, I I have to say.

We've got a lot to get to today, though, including Disney Fox and Warner Brothers teaming up for a new sports app.

I'd love to know your thoughts on this, Scott.

Tucker Carlson's, I'm going to put this in quotes, interview with Vladimir Putin.

I call him Tokyo fucking Rose.

And Adam Newman's attempt to buy back WeWork.

Oh, my goodness.

I know you have a lot to say about that.

But first, former President Donald Trump is not immune from prosecution in his federal 2020 election trial.

A federal appeals court says Trump's team has argued that he was protected from prosecution because his actions are part of his official presidential duties to rig the election, of course.

The election interference trial has been postponed indefinitely while awaiting the immunity decision, but was originally slated to begin next month.

It looks like it's going to move forward.

He has until mid-February to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Most people think the Supreme Court's not going to take this up, and it's going forward.

I mean, this seemed like, come on, like, come on.

It feels like an episode of the West Wing at some point.

Of course, he's not immune.

I know, but weren't you?

I got to be honest, though, it was a touch relieved to see it.

There's been a lot of things that have happened recently that I thought could never happen in America.

So I was happy.

I was happy to see it.

And

the statement they issued was very powerful.

It was something along the lines of...

Three judges, yeah.

Yeah, no unanimous, no individual should be out of the reach of all three branches of government.

That's just not how we operate here.

And I thought it was a very simple, elegant, and powerful statement.

I do too.

It was, uh, people were worried because it took longer, but it was, there was a conservative judge who was actually quite the most persuasive.

I thought, you know, it just was, I think for the most part, courts have been pretty even-handed, both Trump appointees and Democratic appointees have been doing a nice job, except for the lady down in Wet Dog, Florida, who just seems to be wanting to be a Supreme Court judge with the boxes of crap he stole from the United States trial.

The nuclear codes they left in the golf cart charge.

Yeah, the golf, but whatever.

Oh, God, he's such a, he's just terrible.

that's not all.

The GOP is having a bad week.

Nikki Haley lost to a none of these candidates option in Nevada Republican prime league.

Not a surprise because Trump didn't participate, and he they urged his followers to do that.

And the lead GOP negotiator for the Senate border deal is open to voting no on his own bill after Republicans said they want more time to change parts of the bill.

So they've messed up that because of Trump, essentially.

And the House failed, though, to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the border.

Someone I interviewed recently was one of the key no on this votes.

This is Ken Buck.

Mike Gallagher and Ken Buck.

Yes, I've interviewed both of them.

And Mike Gallagher, who probably he's a highly intelligent guy, he wasn't going to let, he thought it was just a bridge too far, which of course it is.

So what, any thoughts?

Well,

the criteria is pretty clear.

High crimes and misdemeanors.

You don't get impeached for being incompetent.

You don't get impeached.

And I'm not even saying the Homeland Secretary is incompetent.

but even if they decided to talk themselves into believing that, that's if we're going to start throwing around impeachment as a political weapon, there's, I mean, don't sign a long-term lease in D.C.

if you get elected.

I mean, it's whoever's in power is just going to start impeaching their political enemies.

So this needs, this has a concept of using the impeachment process.

And people would say, well, Scott, it happened with both Trump and with Clinton.

But when you start going into the cabinet and appointed positions, it's just another example of how we're creating more and more dysfunction and ossification of government.

Let me ask you from a brand, speaking of dysfunction, they look like idiots, like chaos.

What can they, they can't do anything.

They've got crazy people all running.

Marjorie Taylor Greene screaming from a podium every five minutes.

From a brand point of view, what does this do?

I just think they look incredible.

Look, at the end of the day,

the perception is that they're chaotic.

I mean, I was even thinking about one of the criteria is that when the U.S.

government goes into an unstable situation in a nation abroad, you'd like to think we just picked the best people.

Generally, that's not, or the most democratic or people with the most American values.

Right up there is someone who actually has control.

In other words, they want to find someone that can actually bring all the different constituencies or tribes or groups or parties and has the authority to actually get something done.

They want to negotiate with someone who has the power to get something done.

And right now, who do you negotiate with in the Republican Party?

Who,

how do they get anything done?

I mean, even James Lankford, very conservative guy who did the border thing, is like, they just like to go on social media without reading what I wrote, right?

You know what I mean?

Like, even he's done all this work.

They've done all this bipartisan work, and they can't do anything because the bomb throwers are in charge of the situation who are just constantly disrupting and screaming and making it impossible.

I do think Andrew Yang has, I like his kind of single issue.

I think his focus on UBI got almost normalized the idea that, look, we redistribute income all the time, and why don't we just have a minimum floor of dignity for people?

I like that concept, and I think he sort of normalized it into a healthy thing.

I'm hopeful that he begins to normalize Final Five and ranked choice voting.

Because right now, if you look at who goes to, literally who goes to Congress, it's literally the crazies get to decide who goes to Washington.

And between that and gerrymandering, where we have hard red and hard blue districts and a small, and then the hardest of the hard show up for the primary,

it just, we have minority rule.

Although, you know, I have to say, it used to be that Democrats were so chaotic and Republicans were so disciplined.

This is just a flip.

It's a total switch.

You know, look, this guy makes Kevin McCarthy look like Nancy Pelosi, who was a very, handled her group rather well when she she was House Majority Leader.

I just, it's so chaotic every day.

And even the New York Times, which is sort of tries to sort of both sides some things sometimes,

was like dysfunctional.

It's really, it's like they don't even know, can't even count votes.

That, I mean, I think that's the job of the speakers.

Well, the border bill, Republicans a few years ago would have prayed for a border bill like this.

Well, it's Trump.

It doesn't throw a single bone to Democrat.

If you read it, you would have thought, again, I said this, you would have thought this is a Republican-sponsored bill that the Democrats will never agree to.

Yeah, yeah, Trump, chaos.

His brand is chaos, as Nikki Haley, who lost to none, said, and she's right.

Meta will start labeling images created with outside AI.

While Meta cannot currently identify AI-generated images perfectly, it is working with partners to improve the ability.

It will also allow users to voluntarily label AI-generated content they upload.

I think people who want to trick people don't want to do that.

But President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, our friend Nick Clegg, admitted it will not be a quote perfect solution.

Metas already labels images created with its own AI, but will begin labeling outside generated content through next year, given, quote, a number of important elections around the world, you think.

The company has also punished users who don't disclose that realistic content was made with AI.

Last month at Davos, Clegg called efforts to detect AI the most urgent task facing tech.

Okay, sure, Nick Clegg.

Like, I trust them so much given how they have behaved before.

But he's right.

It is the most urgent task because it's just the latest iteration, sort of a supercharged version of the shit that's been raining down on us for a decade.

Thoughts?

I think it's hard to fault them for doing this.

I think it's mostly an attempt to kind of put in place a blocking moves or prophylactic against what's really needed here, and that is removal of 230 protection from AI-generated content that's elevated algorithmically around some key categories or elections, health, and anything involving

minors under the age of 18.

So they're trying.

It's like when it reminds me when Apple said in the App Store, oh, for small businesses, we're going to lower the fees because they felt the wolves coming for them.

So I don't, I don't, you know, they're doing what they always do, jazz hands, look over here, we're trying, but I don't think this gets solved.

Just need regulation and liability.

That's all.

Just get some regulation and liability, and they'll suddenly get set.

They'll figure it out.

If you have

the threat of litigation even if it stymies you slightly it really doesn't if you do the right thing it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't but you know good job nick clagger the most urgent task facing tech thank you thank you for informing us of some of the dead fucking obvious anyway love you nick come on the podcast um also we we work co-founder adam newman is reportedly trying to buy back the bankrupt company this is my favorite story i thought you'd love it reminder we work filed for bankruptcy in november of 2023 four years after adam newman stepped down.

Newman's attempts to purchase apparently stretch back to October 2022 when he attempted to arrange a billion dollars in financing, but he was stonewalled by former CEO Sandy Mathrani, who you know, Scott.

The letter was sent by Newman's counsel, cited the sort of Dan Loeb's hedge fund, third point.

But in response, the fund said it only had preliminary conversations with Newman.

Oh, look at that.

And had not made a commitment to participate.

You know, funding secured, I guess.

Just go for it, Scott.

You're the WeWork guy.

Well,

you got to give the guy credit.

I mean, he kind of has no shame.

I believe that the reason Adam Newman was not brought up on criminal charges, I don't know if he would have been found guilty.

And the reason why

Elizabeth Holmes is in prison is that

it's a cultural issue involving saving face.

And that is, Masa Yoshi-san decided, or Masa didn't want to lose face and declare bankruptcy and say say that he'd been fooled by Adam Newman.

And as a result, Adam Newman, who is the ultimate poker player in terms of just kind of enormous balls, said, I'll let this thing go under unless you buy me out at a ridiculous premium.

He walked away with, I think, 10 or no one has ever got a 10% commission on losing whatever it was, $60 billion of other people's money.

That has never happened before.

Usually the complaint is, okay, this company is very profitable, but you're overpaying the CEO.

I mean,

if you, whatever you think about Elon Musk's compensation and that, that the compensation committee was not representing all shareholders and could have, you know, they probably could have got the same deal, paying him $10 billion.

This is unprecedented.

And he is shameless.

He went out and immediately did a high-profile thing around trying to pretend that buying apartments was somehow like a kibbutz and something to flow.

Yeah.

Where did that go?

Where did that go?

I think Andreessen horowitz is probably already regretting getting in bed with this guy it's not a good look for them and now he's back saying

anyways if he if his board had decided to had all of a sudden gone you know he misled us and got aggressive with him i think this could have been a very different outcome for him and instead he's back and trying to buy um

uh we work out a bankruptcy i don't think the judge is going to look kindly on him having taken so much money out and then showing up to buy the bond.

I even think there's a law.

Yeah.

He's kind of set, though, doesn't he?

Like, oh my gosh.

Have you spent time with him?

He's very amusing.

I had breakfast with him once, and he's super amusing, but you know, I kept reaching for my wallet.

I was like,

he's very charming, charming, charming.

I have a couple of friends at We Work, and I heard from them the morning I put out that thing.

Then, and when the IPO unwound, basically saying, Thanks, my kids can't go to school now.

Um, but, anyways, he's

the

when Dan Loeb comes out and says, no,

Adam's exaggerating, that's a really bad look for Adam Newman.

And I would bet Dan's going to have nothing to do with this guy now.

No, Dan's a very canny investor.

Yeah.

And I can't imagine any institution,

when you're an institutional investor and you're managing hundreds of millions of dollars of other people's money, you make a lot of money

over the long term just by doing the following, not making stupid mistakes.

And anyone who loses money with Adam Newman right now will be accused of making a stupid mistake.

Yeah.

And so I think it's going to be just very difficult for him.

Maybe he wouldn't lose money.

What do you think of the actual thing?

Let's leave aside that he

fleeced these people and some, you know, or no, he just got took the money.

He didn't fleece them.

They knew they knew just what he was doing.

I would be very interested.

I believe that the board I mean, that's what people will say.

People will say that Elizabeth Holmes lied to her board.

And I would just love to know all the emails about what Adam Newman was saying about the performance of the company.

Anyways, this will all come out, I'm sure,

at some point.

But just to talk about WeWork for a second, WeWork was invented for bankruptcy and for someone to make money here.

Because in bankruptcy, you get to go through there or whatever it is, 770 locations and cherry-pick the ones that are working and exit the leases of the ones that aren't and repackage the thing and pay the debtors some of their money back, issue new equity.

WeWork will live on.

I believe that I bet everyone from Barry Sternlich to a variety of real estate savvy investors are looking at this thing.

Because I called, when I saw, I called a friend of mine who's a distressed credit investor and said, Could you look at the WeWork bonds and what it would cost to take over this company?

Because retail, and this is a retail concept, is invented or bankruptcy is invented for this.

So this will, WeWork will live on to fight another day.

The amount of global coworking space or the user base that uses co-working from

2021 to 2024 is estimated to be up 100%.

The number of people using co-working space has doubled

since the pandemic.

It's a good business.

This is a good business that

has, quite frankly, just a terrible capital structure.

Well, it just wasn't a tech company.

It didn't need a wave company.

You know, he bought all he kind of lathered tech all over it.

That shit was just crazy.

Crazy time is over.

Sandeep came in.

Sandeep is not crazy, but he had a bad capital structure.

They just owed too much money.

And leases, this is what kills retail companies.

Restoration hardware went public in the 90s, and they immediately took the proceeds from their IPO, and they entered into a series of really onerous overpriced leases that basically made the company almost impossible to be profitable.

When you enter into a bad lease, they're 10-year leases.

So that lease is costing you $3 million a year and you're making $2 million.

It's a weeping sore of a liability that will cost you $10 million in losses over 10 years.

But poof, under the auspices of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is a wonderful thing about America, you get to go through and cherry pick all your leases and get out of the bad ones.

We work.

It's like hotels.

They say it's the third person who owns a hotel that makes money.

The first person comes in, builds something beautiful and non-economic.

Someone else comes in and takes it off them.

They lose money.

And then the third person who comes in and buys the hotel for 40 or 60 cents on the dollar makes money.

We're at that third person right now.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a good brand.

By the way, good luck, Adam.

Good luck, Adam.

All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, we'll talk about Warner Brothers, Fox, and Disney joining forces for a new sports app,

discuss Lord HaHa's interview with Vladimir Putin.

I'm sorry, Tucker Carlson, and take a listener mail question about tech layoffs.

Only murders in the building.

Season five.

The Hit Hulu original is back.

He was talking with this mobster.

Was he killed in a hit?

We need to go face to face with the mob.

Get ready for a season.

Wongiono signore.

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 and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.

Terms apply.

New episodes Tuesdays.

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off.

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.

Scott, we're back with some major media news.

This is interesting.

Warner Brothers, Fox, and Disney are teaming up to launch a joint sports streaming service this fall in the hopes of attracting cord-cutting fans.

The platform, which does not yet have a name or price,

Hulu 2, Hulu, Hulu Sport, I don't know, will feature games from major professional leagues and college conferences.

It will be a standalone app, but subscribers will also be able to bundle it with Hulu Max and Disney Plus.

Each of the companies will have a one-third stake in the venture and will have equal board representation.

Wow, interesting.

I thought this was, I texted all these people right away,

which, of course, they said nothing to me that was interesting that I could use.

Of course, it's a nail in the coffin for linear television.

What do you think of this?

Well, look, a powerful enemy that has manufacturing might and a culture and

really well-trained officers and rolls into Poland and then takes over or gets France to surrender in like a few weeks creates strange bedfellows.

I mean, think about this.

Not that long ago, the Russians, the British, and the Americans decided to stand shoulder to shoulder together and fight a common enemy.

This is the Allies fighting Netflix.

They're like, guys, we hate each other, but they have finally woken up and said, we're competitors.

We're not enemies.

And cable, the cable bundle used to have 100 million households paying for it.

It's now down to 70 million.

And it's essentially dying.

Nobody, it's similar.

I was on the board of a company that was a yellow pages business, and you think, well, that's a shitty business.

It's like, well, actually, it was a very profitable business.

And as long as you consolidated every two or three years or every 18 months, we'd go by the biggest yellow pages company in the the Northwest and the biggest one in Canada.

And as long as you can cut costs faster than revenue declines, you can actually hemorrhage cash flow and profitability because the market lets you buy this shit at a very low price because it's going out of business.

The cable bundle is going away.

I just got cable said no one under the age of 30 ever.

They know this is their days are numbered.

In the meantime, it's still a great business.

So what do you do?

You consolidate.

And

these three huge players have have said, we have to be a no-brainer.

And sports, we still have the relationships.

We still have the capital to lock up stuff between the three of us.

The consolidated offering here is pretty powerful.

And we're going to have a melting ice cube, but it's going to melt.

It's going to melt less quickly.

And we're going to, you know.

punch back.

This is a bold and smart move by the cable guys.

Yeah, it's interesting.

YouTube,

the pay TV service on YouTube now has more than 8 million subscribers.

They got it.

This is, I mean, everyone's a lot of people are moving to YouTube.

I should have mentioned that.

YouTube's a big competitor, too.

Yeah, I mean, they just announced people were intake of breath at that.

It's one of the largest TV providers in the country now.

So they have to do things like this.

This is the way it goes.

This is the valley of death they must go through.

It was Peacock who did that Dolphins Kansas City game.

You couldn't watch it on broadcast television.

And it did great.

And everyone screamed bloody murder and then watched it.

So the streaming is the way to go with the streaming or apps are online and they have to, and they should be together because like they need a bigger boat.

They need a bigger boat and this is a bigger boat.

Well, and

even just for simplification, I have trouble if I, if there's, I mean, this sounds weird.

I don't even know where I would watch a Super Bowl.

Like I need my third, I hope my 13-year-old's home this Sunday.

Otherwise, I won't watch the Super Bowl because I won't be able to figure out where to watch it.

I don't know what network it's on.

I don't, you know, I.

Me neither.

What is it on?

But again, I forget what an espresso machine is every morning.

So granted.

Yeah, that's true.

That's fair.

That's fair.

That's fair.

But you're right.

This is a good move by them.

Let's see if they get along.

You know, they had all those issues with Hulu, which was, they tried to do that.

And it was, again, like a turducken, like my favorite word in all time.

But they really do have to understand this is the only way.

And then they can compete and cooperate.

That's really the only way to go.

It's an aggressive move.

I like it.

Moving on, Tucker Carlson sat down with Vladimir Putin in Russia for what's sure to be a hard-hitting interview.

It was conducted on Tuesday, according to the Kremlin.

Carlson is the first Western media figure to interview Putin since the start of the war, not for lack of asking.

The interview will be unedited, according to Carlson, and will go up on X, where apparently Elon Musk has promised not to suppress or block it.

Fine.

Why would we think he would?

Carlson said he was alone among Western journalists in trying to get an interview with Putin, a claim that Christian Amenpur called absurd.

And actually, the Russian government corrected him, saying he had no way of knowing.

We've been asked 499 million times by other reporters.

He had a series of lies in his touting of this thing that Abby Phillip from CNN did a terrific job pushing down.

He had like seven or six or seven lies right at the top.

Putin's spokesman said Carlson was selected because he has, quote, a position which differs from other English language media.

And of course, all this is happening as Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gersovich remains imprisoned in Russia.

That's an actual journalist, Tucker.

Please stop calling yourself a journalist.

He does that sometimes and sometimes says he's not.

Well, I'm going to give him a nod on that one.

So thoughts?

It's fine that he's talking to him, I guess, but sure.

Yeah,

I don't think there's anything unusual or wrong about a journalist being cherry-picked.

He's not a journalist.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Okay.

By an entertainment figure, whatever you want to call him.

He was seen as favorable or will be friendly to the person they're interviewing.

It lacks credibility when when they bring in someone like a Christian Amanpour or even a guy like Chris Wallace when he was at Fox to interview Clinton.

There's more credibility.

People listen to the interview.

But I don't think this is anything strange or untoward or fine.

I don't think it's untoward.

I just feel like I didn't appreciate all the lies at the top of his thing, which is he just can't, he cannot just do an interview and shut up about it.

He's got to drag everybody else inaccurately.

That's what drives, I think, reporters crazy.

And also, Putin's not going to give an interview to anyone like Christiane Aminpur.

They just, she won't.

That's right.

But people, I think people realize that.

I'll be curious, but I would imagine the first thing that's going to happen is everyone from the New York Times to, you know, I mean, name the outlet.

BBC is going to just splice and dice this thing and go, okay,

lie.

This makes no sense.

This is not true.

But Zelensky has been all over the media.

You know, so Putin should be interviewed.

And

I hope that Tucker surprises people and asks some hard questions.

But I don't think we're in for a surprise here.

That would be great.

It was so funny.

I was like, this is just, it's just going to be nonsense, but people will make, at least he's talking.

We'll see it, right?

Again, and not just in his own settings.

But

one thing that was really weird was Chimath Palihapatiya, who you and I both know.

I don't know him.

I don't know.

I know of him, but I don't know.

It's fine.

Tucker Carls is an elite athlete at the top of his game.

He's dropping threes from mid-court.

Like it's a free throw, and he's charging the game as a result.

It's hard for MSN to process what is happening to them.

Making it casual like this, it's not, this is a, this is a stone cold killer, Putin and deserve.

He should have a great reporter interview him who has, knows about it.

And that's fine if this guy got it and this guy got it because he sucked up.

Fine.

I get it.

It happens all the time.

These guys, their idol is Elon Musk, and Elon has gone hard.

Hard, right, correct.

The immigration stuff.

Let me just say thank you, Mark Cuban, for just continuing to troll him in a really, very very clever way.

And of course, he's just stupidly not able to react, just calling Mark a moron, which is like, oh, well done.

One thing that Musk did tweet this week was he had

a chart from Disney.

He's all over.

Bob Iger.

He's obsessed with him, I think.

He said, an anonymous source sent this to me from Disney.

It is mandatory.

Institutionalized racism and sexism.

Well, he's backing the lawsuit of the woman who started the man.

Woman, yeah, Gina Carana, whatever.

But let me just say, he publishes as if it was like i've done some journalismism and it was a chart published by variety in the fall of 2020 in a news article we talked about it on pivot like i literally was like oh journalismism by woodward and bernstein

honestly it's just google just google it elon these people get out of media that's what my story in the new york magazine is about get the okay do media do you know much about the lawsuit that he's funding i think it's interesting because he's saying she's claiming that it was discrimination and harassment.

For being right-wing or conservative.

So she equated Republicans speaking out, the scrutiny they're getting, and quote unquote, the persecution.

She equated that to the persecution of the Jews in World War II.

All right, so that was not an elegant thing to say.

And

I personally believe they shouldn't have fired her for that.

I think people should be allowed to have political views.

And I think it's important to separate the person from the politics.

Having said that, it's well within the rights of the company to fire you.

If you're saying shit that

might

decrease the likelihood that someone's going to come to your movie, that's not against the law to fire you for that.

They can't fire you because you're a woman, gay, black,

disabled.

There are laws against certain things, but they can fire you for being a fucking idiot.

They can fire you for saying it's, there's another interesting case.

There was this president of a university or a chancellor who was doing porn videos with his wife.

It was something to do with cooking.

And he was fired.

And he said, you're violating my First Amendment rights.

And that's like, no.

First Amendment says the university can't prosecute you for doing this, but they can fire you for it, just as Disney could fire her.

I don't think they should have, but it's within their rights.

And let's be honest, folks.

And I would think Elon Musk would absolutely believe this when it's convenient for him.

No company.

Of course.

He fired someone for saying what he thought.

Yeah.

He does this all the time.

Anyone who grabs a mic mic and speaks on behalf of anything where he could have had the mic is going to get fired.

He's fired several people.

No company, and I think young people need to understand this.

No company owes you a living.

And if you make shit harder for them, even if at the beginning you think you're being woke, they might say you're a leader and pretend.

But be clear, someone is taking notes and saying, next layoff, I've got a name for you.

Yeah, I agree.

Listen.

Nobody owes you a living.

Listen, he thinks he's Reid Hoffman funding Gene Care.

Whatever.

Good luck.

bonchons bonchans read hoffman you can't hold his water elon can't hold reed hoffman's water but the billionaires funding these things is a

this deal with the hulk hogan it's frightening but it's a little bit troubling billionaires on both sides funding lawsuits it feels a little i don't know i think it must have happened before we just didn't know about it um i suspect i suspect uh finally dartman has announced a return to its pre-pandemic policy of requiring applicants to submit standardized test scores this is interesting the school said the decision was based on new research showing SAT and ACT scores helped predict the first year college performance.

Dartmouth is the first diving college to reinstate the test requirement.

MIT and Georgetown are also standardized, require standardized tests for applicants.

More than 1,900 U.S.

colleges and universities are currently test optional.

I talked about this with my kids.

I was so surprised when they didn't have to.

Alex particularly didn't have to submit.

I think Louis did.

I'm trying to remember.

What do you think, Scott?

You're the expert here on this stuff.

I think this is great.

And the reason, there's two reasons for this.

The first is Claudine.

The second is gay.

University leadership have correctly ascertained that they made a mistake trying to be in cosplay social engineers or

evangelists for progressive orthodoxy.

What they are, universities are meant to be a center of excellence.

And part of that center of excellence requires certain metrics and mandates and tests that give advantage to people who are excellent.

And while there may have been cultural issues determining the outcomes of SAT and ACT scores,

it's actually, there's just no doubt about it.

One,

it is a very good predictor.

It's a better predictor of success and achievement in college than grades.

And also, you have to go back to the roots of the SAT.

The reason the SAT was invented was to help level up kids that didn't come from rich neighborhoods.

Yeah, that's what this research shows.

That's what this research shows.

And because we become so fucking woke.

Bro, here he goes.

I apologize.

I know you hate that.

At universities, we decided, well, we have figured out that there are certain cultural.

Yeah, you're right.

The kid who can afford tutors and can take the SAT is going to do better.

But also, the kid who's just really got an aptitude for math and university admissions directors are smart enough that if you give them more data points, they can figure the shit out.

They can figure out, okay, this kid comes from a neighborhood where they can't can't afford to keep the lights on, or he's from a single-parent household, or she's from a single-parent household and has managed to do really well on the math portion of the SAT.

They're not dumb.

They take adversity into account.

I think this is a great thing.

We are centers of excellence, not places for social engineering.

You know, they made a mistake for themselves.

They saw some research and they changed it.

Good for them.

Good for them.

Anyway.

100%.

A plus.

Yes, A plus.

And, you know, I took the SAT next to Mariska Hargotay.

Oh.

And she looked over and she said hi what's your name and i froze oh no it could have you could have been she's rolin speaking of roland and the money she's got to be god i could be married i could be mr mariska hargotay residuals the residuals are that lady you know who she's good friends with savannah guthrie oh my god i was surprised yeah i saw a picture of the money text i'm like is she your good friend i love Marisca.

Oh, my heart is beating fast just thinking of the life I could have had with Mariska Hargotay.

Where would we have lived?

You know what?

I invited, I'm going to get her to come to my book party in New York, and then you're not going to be there.

I just couldn't handle it.

I can't handle it.

I just, I'm going to get her.

Mariska.

I wonder if she's thought about me as much as I've thought about her.

I'm going to get her to come to the book party, and then you're going to be sad, sad, sad, Scott.

Anyway, we love you, Mariska.

We love you.

Olivia Benson, really, she's Olivia Benson.

All right, we're going to pivot to a listener question.

This question comes from email via Christy.

I'll read it.

Hi, Karen Scott.

Again, I'm first.

Long time, first time.

Love the show.

It was my most listened-to podcast of 2023.

I have a question about layoffs in big tech.

When almost an entire team is taken out, what career advice do you have for those who remain?

Is there any career value in sticking around, or should we just run screaming?

Many thanks, Christy.

This has happened a lot recently, entire teams, and then one person's left, essentially.

Talk to me, Scott.

What do you think?

You've run more companies than me.

It's dangerous to give reductive advice to someone involving their career and their money because what I find generally is advice, it's easy to give kind of bold, non-nuanced advice when you're dealing with other people's money and other people's careers.

So the first thing

she should do or this person should do is assemble a kitchen cabinet of people.

They can look at the situation dispassionately, and she can give all the details to and

give her good advice because it is very hard to read the label from inside of the bottle.

Now, having said that, generally speaking, change and tumult within an organization is both emotionally rattling, but also represents opportunity.

And that is now she, I mean, the way to look at it is she's the most senior person in the group.

Right.

Now, guess what?

They need her more.

I can interject.

That happened to Steve Case.

The person above him was taken out by the board, and he suddenly became, he was like a lower level person and he became, he moved up to CEO, but it was like battlefield kind of thing now that I remember it.

But that's what happened to him.

But go ahead.

He stayed.

So one, talk to some people.

And two,

even if you decide, so if you decide this is just unworkable, it's taking a toll on my mental health, whatever it is, the other piece of advice I do give to professionals is don't leave until you have another job.

Or I mean, if you, if you're financially secure and you're not worried, fine.

But generally, what I have found is it's much easier to get a job when you have one.

And also every two or three years, regardless, you should do a market check and see what your worth is and what the market is out there just to get a sense for what you're worth in the marketplace and kind of keep you fresh.

But change within an organization, even when it involves layoffs, if you're the last man or woman surviving, oftentimes that spells opportunity.

Yep.

Great, great advice.

That's exactly right.

I don't have anything.

I don't, I leave whenever I want.

I don't live in places where my whole thing gets and I, and when we, we didn't really, I didn't really do layoffs.

I fired people, but that was individually.

Um, I just, it is an opportunity.

I think you saying it's an opportunity is absolutely right.

There is often in tumult opportunity.

I say that, you know, a lot to people where there's layoffs happening.

Should I take the layoff?

Should I go?

Should I stay?

I'm like, if they like, if you like what you're doing, there's always opportunity when there's layoffs.

If you're not being the one being laid off or leaving because there's a buyout or whatever.

So, speaking of Steve Case, of AOL, just so you know, that's what I was talking about.

Also, and this sounds crass, really think about the money.

And if it's a tech company, you have options, probably.

Are those options in the money?

How much have you vested?

How much will you vest if you stick around?

And what does that represent financially for you and your family?

I have a very close friend who actually runs one of my companies who is a star at AOL.

And at the age of like 34 in the late 90s, when AOL was just booming, he had made $10 million in equity.

And he and his wife and his kids, they're really super impressive family.

They said, I'm going to leave AOL and we've decided we're going to go live in Europe for a couple of years.

And I said to him, I said, wow, but aren't you killing at AOL?

He's like, yeah, but we got, you know, 10 million bucks, which is a lot of money.

And I'm like, so what would you be leaving on the table?

And he's like, well, I'd be leaving probably another 10 million bucks.

I'm like, when would you get that 10 million bucks?

He's like, well, I'd have to stick around another two years.

And I'm like, stay.

Stay.

You're under the impression right now that you're going to be a star quarterback the rest of your life.

The ability to make 10 million bucks in 24 months, I'm like, that's not going to happen again.

That's just not going to happen again.

So just have a financial security is really important for you and your family.

Unless you're like going to Google, right?

Unless you're like going to Google.

Yeah, unless you're going to be the head of AI at Open AI.

But, and you know what?

He stayed.

And it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Don't, Don't underestimate how difficult it is to have a high-paying job.

Yeah, those options, you've got to think about what the,

it's a non-zero chance you could probably do okay.

We even had a going-away party for him, and it really pissed me off.

All these people are like, we admire you so much.

This is such the right call.

I'm like, don't be a fucking idiot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get up and go to work.

Put on your down vest and go to work.

Do you remember that scene in the Hugh Grant movie with Julia Roberts, where she plays a famous star and all his, you know, he decides not to get uh notting hill um he turns down her offer to go out she comes and brings him that that amazing expensive painting and uh and she

and he says i think maybe not like when she comes back to beg to come back to him and she's like the biggest star in the world and all his friends are like good decision good and they're sitting looking at this incredibly expensive picture and good good good decision good decision and then this one guy comes in i love him this actor and he comes in and they tell him what it is.

And he goes, you fucking idiot.

Like, what are you talking about?

And then they all jump the car and rush to her.

But it was just a great, you fucking idiot.

So the movie, actually, the movie that best is the best lesson around the issue that this caller's calling in about is Albert Brooks Loss in America.

Oh, great movie.

Everything he does.

He basically decides to, you know, he's a big addict

and he basically decides to throw it all in and see America.

And his wife ends up, she's a gambling addict and loses all their money in Vegas.

And he ends up like, you know, he goes to this local job community trying to get a job.

And he's like, I was looking for, they have a box and they're like crossing guard, you know, eight bucks an hour.

And he's like, he's like, I was actually looking more for like $110,000, $120,000 a year.

And he's like, let me see if we have a $110,000 box with jobs.

And he ends up, you know, going back to Madison Avenue and eating shit and getting his old job back.

I think Albert Brooks is an absolutely underappreciated talent.

Broadcast news.

Broadcast news.

Greatest.

One of the greatest lines in movie history is when William Hurt asked Albert Brooks, and he plays the star, like empty suit, handsome broadcaster.

He says, what do you do when your reality exceeds your wildest dreams?

And Albert Brooks goes, keep it to yourself.

It's so good.

And I got to tell you, let's have another Albert Brooks moment, Defending Your Life with Meryl Streep.

My outstanding.

Outstanding.

We got to find, let's find Albert Brooks.

I have heard he listens to us.

I've heard that.

That is a wonderful film.

Thank you for bringing that up.

Yeah.

Oh, what a fan.

Mario Streep is at her best.

It's such a fun, wonderful,

just to do yourself a fucking favor.

He gets hit by, he gets hit by a bus driving a convertible BMW, listening to Barbara Stripes.

We're so old.

We are so dating.

We're so old, but that's okay.

We'll take it.

Anyway, I was drinking Lancer's wine when I saw that show.

Lancer's wine in that weird bottle.

Oh my god, speaking of throwback, I just so you know, I totally scrambled the jets after we had our talk on pivot because I was like so excited.

And then you tweeted me, you texted me something about Tracy Chapman because we both love him because you're a lesbian too.

Um, I've got a great episode.

I scrambled the jets.

I literally yesterday said, We're doing this on

Tracy Chapman.

And I got Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times, she also has a great podcast, uh, matter of opinion at the times.

Uh, Maura Johnston, who is a Boston music critic, and then Estelle Caswell, who did this great podcast for Vox called The Earworm.

She's amazing.

And we just geeked out on Tracy Chapman, and you'll love it.

I know you don't listen on, but this one you should.

Fast Car is a song about social mobility, being able to go from one place to another and not being trapped.

So I think that that music spoke to something that people were really, really, really viscerally experiencing.

It's not just Fast Car.

The whole album is incredibly political.

Well, I think she was also very explicit about the old idea that the personal is political and i think that the album is kind of a holistic depiction of just her thoughts and feelings over the course of many years a huge theme in the album is like fight or flight and i think that to me really resonates oh i'm i'm i put out a a thread yesterday.

I'm like, anyone else listen to this song 25 times in the last 24 hours?

I cannot stop listening to Tracy Chapman right now.

My little lesbian, lesbian.

My little lesbian.

I love you becoming a lesbian slowly.

One of the, and I've said this a lot.

I've garnered a lot of wonderful things from our friendship, but one of the things I didn't expect is on a regular basis, you know how people come up to us and say hi.

That happens two or three times a day.

That's wonderful.

But once a month, someone comes up to me and goes, hi, I'm a lesbian.

Like, and I'm like, well, good for you.

Like, and it struck me, I'm like, do gay women think that heterosexual men naturally don't don't have a bias against them or something?

Because

they're nice.

They come up like, they're like, oh, I too am a lesbian.

Yes.

And you are lesbian friendly.

You are your friend.

Let's have a conversation.

And I'm like, we love a lesbian.

I have no idea how to respond to that.

We love a lesbo and you are a deaf, you are in the lesbo category.

That's why.

It's so funny, but people say to me, the people say to me, oh, they'll say like, you know, I'm on Kara's team.

And I'm like, what team is that?

What do you mean?

It's just hilarious.

It's a wonderful welcoming community, and we'll protect you in the apocalypse.

That's all you need to know.

I'm ready.

We'll protect you.

We'll go.

He's in.

He's in.

Now that I'm out of my procreating years, I'm ready to live with lesbians.

We'll watch you.

I don't understand why people don't think lesbians don't like men.

I mean, there's that old joke, they don't have to sleep with them.

Why would they not?

Why would they dislike them?

I have found, and it's dangerous to make reductive generalizations about any group.

I have found in general, they're incredibly friendly to men.

All the lesbians I know love men.

They want to go on dates with men.

It just doesn't involve sex.

It just

not all straight women like men.

So anyways, I don't.

It's not true.

Yeah, I don't.

I, you know, a lot of the, one of the reasons someone was asking me writing this memoir why I got along so well with all these men.

And I was like, well, I think it's because I'm a lesbian a little bit.

They like can talk to me.

They feel more comfortable.

I don't know.

There's something happening there.

But I was at one event with a whole bunch of VCs who are just blabbing away, telling me everything.

And then some woman goes by and they're like, oh, girl, what do you think of her?

And they started to make incredibly sexist remarks about a very confident executive.

And I literally looked at them and I go, still a feminist, still a feminist.

And it was like, it was very funny.

It was.

I thought that story was going to be better.

I like the story where I used to call my assistant jiggles.

Is that wrong?

Is that wrong?

Oh, good God.

Anyway, if you've got a question of your own you'd like answered, send it our way.

Go to nymag.com/slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 8-5551-PIVOT.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions.

And you can make a lesbian prediction if you need to.

Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.

I'm just doubling down.

Apple's mixed reality headset is a giant thud.

It's DOA.

And And it's more evidence that

a violation of the most basic tenets of technology businesses is the products that are a technology in search of a problem don't work.

And the fact that I can see my calendar on a door, it's like, well, I could also just pin a calendar to my door.

I think it violates some very basic anthropological truisms.

And that is we don't like our peripheral vision inhibited because the things that could eat us or we could eat generally attack us from behind or from the side.

And that's why we get nauseous, we get very uncomfortable.

And also, I think I can speculate what happened here.

And that is Mark Zuckerberg is really angry and fed up with having a lack of control and having Sunder and Tim Cook determine his future because they control the end distribution in the form of Android and iOS.

And he doesn't have a hardware device.

So for about 10 years, the better part of a decade and tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars, he's attempted to go vertical and establish his own platform.

He did it with the portal.

And his latest vision was to spend literally tens of billions of dollars establishing direct distribution through a new hardware channel, a headset.

And I believe what happened was two to three years ago, when likely the mixed reality headset was green lit, Tim Cook said, I hate this guy, and we're not going to let him do an end run around us and establish any sort of direct distribution.

So let's take two, three, five billion dollars, which by the way is nothing for us, and let's create a call option.

Because if the headset thing does resonate with consumers, he's going to be way out ahead of us.

So let's take two or three billion dollars and let's just say it's almost like insurance.

And let's build our own headset.

And if this thing takes off, we have the premier product and we'll stick out our elbows.

We're better at design.

We're better at consumer.

We have a better brand.

We'll make it better.

But the problem is over the course of that two years when the mixed reality headset was in development, it became increasingly clear that the boy genius, like everyone else, makes mistakes and the headset doesn't work.

But he was so far down the path with this thing, I think he had to release it.

And I believe.

All right, here's, I see your point.

I see your point.

That said, let me just give you some statistics.

It's sold out.

It's pre-orders, 200,000.

Okay, and I'm sold out because there's just one of me.

That doesn't mean anything.

I get that.

It's still.

It was always going to be sold out.

No, it wasn't actually.

They were worried it wasn't.

Always.

Always.

How many did they produce?

People are willing.

A couple hundred.

It's not a huge business.

Mark Gerbin noted that.

It's going to be five, 600,000 units or something like that.

That said, I like that they're doing it.

I, you know, Ben, listen, I'll point to negative reviews.

Ben Thompson from Strategory said, this is a cool area, but this has too many glitches, too many things he didn't like, guests sign in, things like that.

I am fine with this insurance with them.

Consumers seem willing to embrace this, which is interesting.

One, people that should stop doing it and

driving your Tesla and

doing videos and stunts of doing it.

Come on, stop it.

So officials are issuing warnings about that, driving Teslas or the Cybertruck

and

warning people about wearing the goggles while they're driving.

Stop doing it.

You look like fucking incels and idiots.

And Pete Buttigieg said it.

Reminder, all advanced driver assistance systems available today require a human driver to be fully in control and fully engaged in driving tests at all times.

I mean, really.

I mean, stop it.

I agree with you to some extent, but it's selling okay.

It's It's selling pretty well.

Apple is the best managed brand in the world.

And they have the ability to absolutely predict and stack pre-orders and sales.

And then they will manufacture 20% less such that they can

create and foment the illusion of scarcity.

This thing, I mean,

when I saw him on the cover of Vanity Fair, first off, Vanity Fair has officially jumped the shark.

I thought that was a ridiculous cover.

And two,

this thing, I don't doubt that certain technology will waterfall into.

I think Apple will have a successful product, as will Meta, when they incorporate this technology and the micro cameras and the processing gets to the point where you can elegantly incorporate this technology into a cool pair of Oliver People's Glasses or Purcell's or, you know, Warby Part, whatever it might be.

That, that is a winner.

But right now, strapping an iPad to your face, which is what this is,

is fucking ridiculous.

Here's the thing.

Here's the thing.

My vasectomy costs exactly $3,500.

Do you think the coincidence that a vasectomy and the mixed reality had said?

You're not having sex with this thing.

You keep making this metaphor.

No, but

it has the same effect.

It means you'll never propagate.

You put this thing on your head.

It's a cheap vasectomy.

Everywhere I bring it.

Everywhere I bring it, include with packs of young people.

They want to try it on.

I got to tell you, I've never gotten so much interesting.

Then you're hanging out with the wrong young people.

No, I'm telling you, everywhere I go, everyone's like, can I try it on every place I go?

By the way,

I'm getting my third vasectomy this week because it's worth $3,500 for me to have Dr.

Schwartz touch my genitalia.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

I'm going to give it.

I'm giving it.

I'm giving it.

I'm a long hall.

I'm going to move.

I'm a long all down.

Sad.

It's like.

My big end of the twins, it's like they knew they were good looking at some point and they're sad.

They're no longer, no longer are.

That's from Texas.

All right.

All right.

We're moving along.

We're moving on.

Okay.

That's your prediction.

We shall see.

We're you're all right.

Come on.

I'm moving you fucking along.

Let me just say, let's go back to my memoir.

Most of it, I'm right, and I'm right here.

Anyway, this thing, oh my God, thud.

Thud.

This is, they're going to stop talking about this thing in a couple weeks.

Wrong.

Non-thud.

No thud.

Our producers are like, read us out and don't let it make another vasectomy joke.

Okay, Scott, that's the show.

We'll be back on Tuesday with more pivot.

We'll see about that.

Read us out, please.

Today's show is produced by Lara Naim, Zoe Marcus, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Intertot engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miles Severio.

Nishak 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 next week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

They don't even allow porn on this thing, Kara.

This is a giant thud.

This is a giant thud.