Meta's Stock Surge, Biden's Economy, and Guest Denise Hamilton

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher, and I'm not in Tulum.

I'm Scott Galloway.

How are you, Kara?

I am in Tulum.

Good.

How's the beach?

How is the beach?

It's really lovely here.

I enjoy it.

I'm not one of these people that complains that Tulum is over.

When I show up somewhere, it usually means it's in the eighth inning of Cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I like to go to Puerto Vallarta with Angie Dickinson and Johnny Carson to live there.

I love Puerto Vallarta.

Yeah.

That's a love boat.

The love boat.

I love it here.

Right.

Exciting and new.

Yeah, I like it.

Yeah, good.

That's nice.

So you're missing

the showers in California.

All my friends there, my house is like deluged and everything.

They're having an atmospheric river.

Yeah, I've heard stuff.

So you don't have any rain there, right?

No rain.

I guess that's the other side.

No, it's gorgeous here.

We're in the Yucatan Peninsula and it's absolutely beautiful.

I think it's right now it's about 70.

It's 74 in ketamine.

I mean, 74 and

windy.

I wish I could go to Tulum.

I've never been there, and I someday shall.

I shall.

You can.

You've just decided not to.

I cannot.

It's not possible for Karis Fisher.

I spent, again, Amanda's still sick.

We had

a long coffee weekend.

And

someday we'll go on vacation someday.

I know where you should go.

One of my favorite hotels in the world, the Rosewood Myakoba down here.

It's in an Avery.

Is that what you're saying?

Oh, Aviary.

Aviary.

Aviary.

It's spectacular.

Anyway, we've got a lot to talk about today, as you said, including why the U.S.

economy continues to defy expectations and why Meta and its shareholders are feeling optimistic after the latest earnings report, which was a blowout.

As Scott, you were 100% right about Meta with your stock pick earlier last year, earlier last year.

Anyway, plus, we'll chat with a friend of Pivot, Denise Hamilton.

She's written a new book, Indivisible: How to Forge Our Differences into a Stronger Future.

We're going to talk about DEI, but she's got a really interesting take, and it's interesting because Cuban is continuing to press on, Mark Cuban is continuing to press on the issue with Elon Musk and others who are saying dopey things on the X.

Anyway, first podcast news: Spotify has renewed its contract with Joe Rogan in a multi-year, $250 million deal.

Until now, the Joe Rogan experience was only available on Spotify.

Now it will be available on other platforms.

I'm sure Joe wanted that and it happened.

Podcast consumption on Spotify has gone up over 230% since the platform's first contract with Rogan in 2020.

Rogan has the most popular podcast in America last year.

So it's shifting away from exclusivity and into ownership and distribution, which is a deal not unsimilar to what I have with Vox and you do too, because we're pioneers.

But talk about the podcast problem because we've talked about Spotify doing uneconomic deals in order to get

the engine going.

Rogan was the most famous.

I suspect it probably was the most

paid off.

Thoughts?

You threaded about it and people got mad at you because Joe Rogan's a jerk, but talk a little bit about it from a business perspective.

Well, let me just start with that.

I have a real personal animus towards Joe Rogan.

I lost someone.

I lost a cousin to COVID.

And then his wife, nine months later, killed herself.

I mean, people just don't have a sense for the ripple effect of this anti-vax misinformation that politicized science.

It took a real toll on people.

And I felt that he engaged in a level of both sidism that was very unproductive for our nation.

And you'll remember this.

I called Spotify and Our CEO, Jim Bankoff, was very supportive and said, I don't deny his free speech rights, but my free speech rights are I'm not going to distribute on Spotify.

And we pulled property off of Spotify and I said, I'm not going to go back on until COVID subsides.

I have real problems with him.

And I know a lot of people who feel like they have to deprogram their sons from Joe Rogan.

And some of the people he's platformed, I don't even name check them, are just so vile.

So I have real personal contempt.

I will even use the contempt for him because I think he abuses his massive talent and reach.

Having said that, trying to separate the person from the politics, he deserves every fucking penny.

I mean,

by one estimate, he's doing 190 million downloads a month.

I mean, it's staggering.

And

it also represents what you talked about, how a lot of these subscription networks are saying that it's getting harder, unless it's professional sports, to reach young, wealthy people.

So if they can, if they can offer a large audience, there's a lot of low-hanging advertising dollars.

And so, they're moving, and they're also trying to,

they're also trying to assuage or share the risk by saying, We'll give you a rev shared deal.

Where Spotify fucked up was assuming that because you're famous, that everyone, anyone gives a shit about your podcast.

That's where they screwed up.

But this is a court, I actually think I don't want to say they got a deal here, a quarter of a billion dollars, a lot of money, but when you have the most popular person, by far

in a medium that's growing, a quarter of a billion dollars over three years is not outrageous.

What are your thoughts?

I agree with you.

I thought that these deals are moving into more economic terms.

I think when you have an ownership and distribution monetization deals, it's kind of fair, right?

Everyone's got skin in the game.

I think the exclusivity was stupid.

You remember, we went around and we were like, we don't want to be exclusive, right?

We never liked that idea.

Even if you got more money, it seemed dumb, right, to us, as you recall when we were chit-chatting with people before we did our current deal.

And I get why they wanted it, but I didn't think it was beneficial because it limited the audience.

And we had, of course, enough advertising.

And I said, and Joe Rogan probably has,

he'll have a little bit of a problem with certain advertisers for sure.

But, you know, I think there's lots of opportunity here.

And I can't imagine someone like him would not want to be on other platforms.

He wants the widest distribution possible.

And that's not a bad thing for, not necessarily a bad thing for Spotify, given if they do advertising and things like that.

They could make up the money in that way.

And that, that said, all all the benefit goes to Joe Rogan here.

That, to me, it seems like he gets all the upside and very zero of the downside.

And they get the downside if there is a downside, including controversy around him.

If he does another boneheaded thing that he tends to do, not just boneheaded, but kind of heinous,

some of his material.

And

they'll get all the downside.

Either they won't make as much money, there's a guarantee here, which isn't, just for people who don't know, is in a, I have one in my contract.

And I think that's good for Joe Rogan.

So Joe Rogan's done, and like you said, it's deserved from an economic point of view.

It's probably not deserved from a personal point of view.

He continues to defy expectations.

So I see why someone would do a deal with him.

It was interesting that Elon wasn't in here, right?

Saying come over to, he tried it with Mr.

Beast to question the money he made there.

Yeah.

I mean, they can't give

Twitter's revenue projected at about $2 billion.

They can't give, they can't, they just couldn't afford it.

But I actually think Spotify is probably going to make money.

If you just like, let's just use them back at the envelope math here: 190 million downloads.

Let's assume four ad breaks, four or six ad breaks on the

on the ad supported.

That's 1.2 billion impressions or

100

or 12 million CPM at 40 bucks.

I mean, you're talking, it's tens of millions of dollars a month.

Unless I'm, am I getting my math wrong?

It's good to be.

I think they're going to do, I think they're both going to do really well.

I'm just saying he gets the upside.

He gets the upside, they get the downside.

There's probably not a downside if they do it right.

They still can't do these non-economic deals with people who aren't just, they can't just make people popular.

They should go after people who are popular in some small or big way.

That's what they should be focusing in.

Yeah, it just made, it just made no sense.

It would be like, okay,

Megan, it's be like Warner Brothers saying, we're signing Megan to a five-album deal because she married a prince.

It's like, well, there's nothing in her past that would indicate that she can sing.

Or him.

Yeah, or him.

And so those deals made no sense.

But a guy like Joe,

he's a proven commodity.

And from a brand standpoint, it kind of entrenches or cements them is not only number one in audio, but number one in podcasts.

So, you know, it's like a good idea.

It's like when you bring in, you know, A-Rod for a quarter of a billion dollars, you think, well, how does this pencil out?

And you're like, well, it pencils out because people,

you know, the deal that Messi,

they did with Messi, all of a sudden everyone's wearing pink uniform, pink jerseys everywhere for inter-Miami.

So this is,

I,

look,

I think it's a good idea.

I think it's capitalism.

Good for them.

Good for both of them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just wanted you to clarify the heinousness of your feelings.

You have have even more heinous feelings than i do i think he's actually talented and heinous at the same time um anyway um another one the wall street journal is doubling down on the coverage of elon musk drug use reporting and i thought this was a very canny article uh this time reporting he even does them with some board members according to new article musk drug use worried board members and associates so much they suggested he go to rehab or take a break from working or perhaps do drugs with them the report details a culture of peer pressure making friends and board directors feel there was an expectation to join in on the drug use that they wanted to to remain close.

On top of ketamine, Mush reportedly has used LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, and magic mushrooms.

Former, the whole panoply of psychedelics.

Former Tesla director Larry Ellison reportedly urged Muss to come to Hawaii and dry out for the drugs.

In fact, Elon went, I happen to know a little bit about this,

and left, I believe.

The smart thing here was to link the money with the behavior, right?

That these board members are going to do nothing and really show how much money.

I was sort of astonished by how much money these board members were making, hundreds of millions of dollars,

to allow him to behave this way and sort of break a lot of typical board CEO relationships.

As close as they can be, this is sort of the Olympics of suckuppery.

They're not going to crack down on him.

And I thought it was very canny to focus in on the money.

The drug use is

problematic, but this is really what it's about is they want proximity to this guy either for coolness and I think more to the point for cash.

And so it's a real broken system.

And I think that the

judge in Delaware kind of got it flat right in terms of that.

Thoughts?

Yeah, you're right.

So the drugs make for salacious headlines,

but the majority of the drugs he's been allegedly using, you know, many or most, either are legal or are going to be legal.

People's private lives, in my view, should be private.

If he shows up at a SpaceX all hands and is slurring a speech and is clearly under the influence, that takes it to a new level.

But let's assume, give him the benefit of the doubt and say that that was blown out of proportion.

It's like alcohol is whatever.

But go ahead.

Yeah.

But I don't, look, I think private lives should be private lives.

And if someone is able to add the kind of shareholder value he's been able to add,

he deserves enormous compensation.

You know, that was a big deal last week.

Here's the issue.

Governance matters.

And the role of an independent director, I'm on three boards, two unicorns and another, all backed by tier one VCs.

I'm the independent director on two of those three boards or one of the independent directors and right talk about that because a lot of these people were not independent seeming

it means

well independent director here's the issue you're not supposed to have the term independent means you are not supposed to have professional or personal or financial entanglements with this person that might inhibit your ability or bias you towards making decisions that don't represent all stakeholders.

So, for example,

your CEO, these are all conversations I've had in the last six months as the quote-unquote independent director.

All right, this is uncomfortable, but the CEO hasn't hit any milestones.

In other boards I've been on, we would talk about a review of the director of the CEO and have the lead director sit down with the CEO and say, if you continue to miss plan, we're going to have to think about a change in management.

That is what you're supposed to do.

And the majority of the directors had been on the board for 10 years and

know this person very well.

And that doesn't even dawn on them.

We're about to raise money from a tier one institution.

And for some reason, another director really thinks it's a bad idea.

And it's obvious that this person doesn't want to share the limelight with who he believes is a competitor.

You're also supposed to be independent of other directors.

You're supposed to be the person in the room that can think clearly and is forceful yet dignified,

but doesn't know this person and isn't friends with them and isn't making hundreds of millions of dollars in other parts of his empire influencing your ability to be unbiased, no mercy, no malice director at that company full stop.

And these people are the least.

These people are all totally dependent upon them.

Except for two.

Except for two.

Ellison.

Yeah, except for two.

No, Ellison's very close to him.

They're very good friends.

I know, but Ellison doesn't need him.

No, that's right.

But nonetheless,

he will favor him no matter what.

He treats him like a son.

He really does.

I think the woman who left, and then there was another member from Japan who left too.

The two that had an issue and wasn't socializing with him, wasn't in a drug-induced cuddle puddle with him, left because they didn't think this board was serious.

And it's not.

Like, look,

Steve Jervison, who had left, not serious.

You know,

Garcias, not serious.

Like, they're all friends.

They go on vacations with them.

They hang out with them.

They praise him publicly, like in ways that are just untoward.

I don't mind a director being supportive of a CEO, but honestly, you know, take it down.

Like, you know, get a room with some of these directors whenever you see them in public.

And so that's, I think, the issue.

And Larry Elson, I'm sorry, he's just literally going to take Elon's side no matter what he does.

He could literally do almost anything and he'll say nothing.

So even if he doesn't need him, he's he's a pro his proclivity is to favor Elon because he makes him money and and um and he likes the proximity to fun.

That's a keyword, that's the keyword money, and that is if you look at these directors, anyone who didn't know him personally or

hadn't garnered magnificent wealth through this or other of Elon's efforts was an independent director.

Every individual who would some potentially qualify as a truly independent director has left,

Has left.

The money is the money a lot, Scott, because it was like hundreds of millions of dollars.

Most directors have like maybe a million and they get a couple hundred thousand for being on boards and that's a lot.

Like, what do you make?

Like, give me a, pick one and don't say, you don't have to say what it is, but give me like the numbers.

Public company boards, it's mostly dependent upon the stock price.

You get compensation, usually get 100 to 150 grand in compensate current income, and then you get issued equity that has an option value of around 100 grand.

The average pay is around 200 and for 250 or 300,000 a year for a board.

If it's a board like this, and you joined the board more than five years ago, you have, because the stock appreciation here has been incredible, you have tens of millions of dollars.

And when someone has driven hundreds, yeah, and or if you're the lead director, Gracios, I believe that like he has one and a half billion dollars in equity across Musk companies, it is impossible to not understandably and justifiably owe this person a lot when 90% of your net worth has been driven by this person's genius.

And it's okay to have a few of those on the board, but you have to have independents who don't know the guy, are not fond of him.

He is not a sun figure for them.

He has not driven your magnificent wealth across his different companies.

You are there to look at this guy through a clear, unbiased lens and protect and represent the 87% of shareholders that aren't him.

He is the only shareholder here.

This is what I read.

And that's why I thought the journal article was canny.

I thought it was very canny to put the drugs.

Look,

something's happened.

Something's occurred here and it's troubling.

That said, it's about the money.

It's about allowing him to, if he was drinking too much, if he was,

you know, having inappropriate relationships, this would be a simple, you know, this is just a backdrop to what is a game of advancing their own interests and their own economic wealth i mean it's just the numbers are and there also want to be across the elon musk companies um whether it's space they all want a piece of spacex what do you think the you know the the long and profound sucking from these men all men almost except for one who's the chairman i think she's making a ton of money but not as much as the rest of them but still inexplicable she treats it like she's a mom and these are the lost boys she still made tens of millions of dollars yeah tens of millions but i'm just saying she's like mom of lost boys.

And oh, so it's literally,

I was like, almost she's the worst, like literally.

She's not even making a lot of money, like compared to the others.

And so it's just a real,

what a mess.

What a mess.

What a mess.

And I'm glad the journal's doing it.

Kudos.

You need term limits.

To a certain extent, this has gone way overboard, but it's understandable.

If, if, if you had made, if this podcast had made, you know, made me

over time was 97% of my net worth.

And you just made me so much money because of your ingenious and your bold visionary working around the clock.

And I was, I had gone from being successful to worth a quarter of a billion dollars.

And then you said, come on my board.

Okay, but might could I really evaluate your performance through

an unfiltered lens for the stakeholders of that company?

Or would I feel so much personal gratitude toward you that it skewed my view?

And you can understand that.

That's okay.

But what you need are people in the room that go, let's talk about the here and the now.

Let's talk about a guy that is threatening to take our IP if we don't give him another $75 billion.

Let's talk about a guy who shows up at another company.

And by the way, I've never even seen people be allowed to work on other companies when they're making this kind of money and is slurring a speech.

Let's talk about these constant stories in the press that are very distracting and probably somewhat discouraging for our employees about his out-of-control drug use.

Let's talk about him saying anti-Semitic or accusing people of being pedophiles on his platform.

We need to have an open and honest conversation with people who can just evaluate that in the context of this company in the here and now.

And I am not on a Gulfstream G650 because of his genius.

I don't owe him anything.

I owe everyone representation.

Those people don't exist on this board.

There's no other shareholder but Elon Musk at any of his companies.

Just let's keep that in mind when you're investing there.

Thank you for that information about being a board director.

That's what you should do.

By the way, it's not being like,

aren't you an old grandma to do this?

That's the way shareholder boards are supposed to work.

Anyway, Nikki Haley appeared on Saturday Night Live this weekend to play herself in a mock town hall cold open.

Let's listen to the clip.

Nikki, don't lose that number.

Nikki Haley, Joel Osmond, Nikki Haley, Joel Osmond, we call her.

Six cents.

Remember that one?

I see dead people.

Yeah, that's what voters will say if they see you and Joe on the ballot.

Oh, that's not very nice, Nikki.

That was very funny.

Haley didn't escape without getting some flack for her own.

Let's listen to another clip.

This is from the wonderful Io Adebari.

I was just curious, what would you say was the main cause of the Civil War?

And do you think it starts with an S and ends with a lavery?

Yep, I probably should have said that the first time.

And live from New York, it's Saturday night.

All right, there's been some controversy of Havering on the show.

Obviously, SNL had had Trump on, and I remember when Jimmy Fallon had him on and like was laughing and joshing with him.

I thought it was funny.

I get why people were mad.

She was there.

I guess my expectations are much lower for Republicans.

So I don't mind her doing this.

What do you think, Scott?

I think that anyone who's upset about this should absolutely get over themselves.

They had John McCain.

They had Obama on.

They've had Trump on.

Trump has hosted.

These people aren't naturally very funny, quite frankly, but SNL has a

SNL has a history of bringing people on.

I like that, quite frankly, they're trying to occasionally nod to the right because

the show is a bunch of incredibly talented young artists who tend to skew left.

So for them to bring on Republicans.

I think it's nice.

I think it shows character on their part.

This is not unusual.

They do this with all the presidential candidates.

It's just everything, everything people have to weigh in on hillary yeah they had hillary on it's like okay fine she they came on she didn't see anything she didn't say anything that weird or strange like

she was funny nothing to see here move along yeah i agree i agree i thought it was funny i thought haley did a good job i i liked the s end with lavery i thought that was i thought it was funny and i know you shouldn't joke about this i get it nikki haley made a ridiculous and heinous comparison at least she's trying to own it yeah trying i mean i i understand the problems, but I'm going to say it's SNL.

Get over it.

It's SNL.

This is what they do.

Anyway, Scott and I, we're in agreement this week.

Wow.

Go on the campaign trail, 24 by 7, have a phone camera everywhere saying everything you say, how you respond.

Remember when Romney said,

you know, whatever he said, 47% of America will, I mean,

I don't care who you are, Obama, you're going to say something really fucking stupid.

And the question is taking, look at all of it, look at their actions, look at their intentions, look at the laws they've passed, and recognize on,

I mean, for God's sakes, the guy she's trying to run against

was talking about grabbing a woman's

expectation low.

I mean, yeah, oh, but yeah, she made a stupid comment about the Civil War.

You know, she also, if you look at, if she's the one that demanded they take down the Confederate flag from the Capitol in South Carolina, you know, it's like if you think Nikki Haley is a racist, you should check your notes.

Anyway,

who cares?

Who cares?

I think, like, let her go on.

Let her get slapped around by them.

I'm good with them slapping me around.

I could have maybe given her one more slap, but I don't know.

I thought she was a good sport.

And

I don't hate to use that term.

Look, it was fine in any case.

Let's get to our first big story.

The U.S.

economy continues to buy expectations with the latest jobs report showing employers added 353,000 jobs in January.

That's the largest gain in a year and nearly twice what was projected.

Wages went up and unemployment rates stayed at a steady 3.7 percent.

The S P also hit record high after the jobs report.

We'll be talking about tech stocks in our next segment.

Even Fox News couldn't deny.

One of them said, wow, and then Maria Bartarona tried to pretend it wasn't good.

But these are astonishing numbers.

Fed chair Jerome Powell was on 60 Minutes on Sunday and was asked about finally bringing interest rates down.

Let's listen to what he has to say.

We have a strong economy.

Growth is going on at a solid pace.

The labor market is strong, 3.7% unemployment.

With the economy strong like that, we feel like we can approach the question of when to begin to reduce interest rates carefully.

And we want to see more evidence that inflation is moving sustainably down to 2%.

We have some confidence in that.

Our confidence is rising.

We just want some more confidence before we take that very important step of beginning to cut interest rates.

So we'll get to what Joe Biden's still not getting credit, though he did rather well in South Carolina, a lot better than people thought.

What do you think of your numbers?

And what do you think of what Powell said first?

Well, I mean, let's just review.

Biden summarized it.

The U.S.

is the strongest economy in the world.

Let's just talk about jobs created by President.

Joe Biden, in three years, his administration has overseeing the creation of 14.8 million jobs.

Okay, well, it's not jobs.

That must be inflation.

They're handling the economy.

No, inflation is crashing faster than in any G7 economy.

Well, what about China?

He's not paying enough attention to China.

China has lost 40% of its stock market value in the last three years and has a 25% unemployment rate across people under the age of 30.

The problem, the issue is just as William Gibson said, the future is here.

It's not evenly distributed.

The prosperity here is unprecedented, but in America, it's not evenly distributed.

And so much of this prosperity continues to be crammed into the top 1%, if maybe not the top 10%,

that the lower 90 doesn't feel, doesn't, doesn't sense this prosperity.

And this is around

a real need for systemic change around tax policy, around leveling up young people, around stopping the generational theft where the average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy.

We have

the pie is growing faster than any nation in the world, but we keep deciding to give more and more of the pie to a smaller group of people.

And then every day, these algorithms shove their lack of success in their face.

What you're not on a jet, what you're, you don't have amazing abs, you're not making millions of dollars trading stocks.

Well, you're a fucking failure and people feel a lot of shame.

But the numbers don't lie relative to any nation, any nation, we have the strongest economy on multiple dimensions.

So, so why isn't Biden getting the credit?

Let's talk a little bit about that.

Latest NBC news poll shows Trump with a 22% advantage over Biden on the question of which Canada would do a better job handling the economy.

By the way, Trump is taking credit for this economy inexplicably.

And some reporters, Maria Bartarona, possibly the worst

interviewer in history,

was letting him do that.

Why do you think he's not getting credit?

And what should Biden be telling voters?

Now, let me just say, every time these polls come out, he tends to do 30 to 40 percent better.

That said, this is an NBC poll that showed him up on Trump a lot in the last election cycle.

One strategy, we're starting to see Biden taking aim at grocery chains and other companies keeping food prices high, which they are.

Talk about that.

What are your thoughts on

how he gets credit for what is clearly a Joe Biden economy?

But we've lost trust in our institutions.

So when the Labor Department of Labor and Bureau and Statistics comes out with these numbers, they don't trust it.

They trust their feelings.

Well, Fox is telling me that the economy sucks, and maybe I don't feel the same uplift.

And while I've got, while I've registered a six or an eight or a 10% increase in my salary, that's because I'm awesome.

But diapers are more expensive.

That's the president's fault.

Everything has become, I feel like people don't even make really decisions anymore, that 45% on the right and 45% on the left see all decisions through the lens of their political party.

When Trump was elected president, Republicans, the day he was inaugurated, said the economy was doing better.

And then Democrats are equally biased.

When Biden was elected, they all of a sudden decided the economy was doing really well.

There's a lack of faith in institutions and in data.

And this is on a broader level, that's what's so fucking scary about what's going on because the playbook of moving to fascism is don't trust the academics, don't trust the experts, don't trust the data, certainly don't trust journalists.

Trust your emotions and your feelings and who makes you feel the best.

There There used to be a time when at one point, all legislators on both sides of the aisle would wait till the data came in, and then they would defer to the data.

Right.

Yeah, they don't now.

They're immediately.

Yeah, they have the idea of it still sucks has got to go on with the Republicans.

They can't, because it looks like it's going to break right.

The good feelings are going to break right when the election's happening for Biden, which is interesting.

Like, that's the issue.

This is a lagging indicator, right?

People suddenly feel better, even though they should feel, money should feel better now.

They're not going to for a couple of months.

And then they will.

Then they will.

When the housing market breaks a little bit.

We were guilty of it when Trump was president.

When Trump was elected, no joke, the next day, I sold, I think, almost all of my stocks.

I'm like, this guy's a fucking idiot and an autocrat.

That's not going to be good for the markets.

And the reality is the stock market boomed that year.

Unemployment among non-whites hit record lows during his administration.

Tax breaks.

And yeah, you could argue, well, it was deficit spending.

I mean, we're all going to decide

how to interpret the data based on our emotion.

And instead, we should, you know, we need to, and I don't know how you teach this in school critical thinking.

Your emotions need to be, need to be, I don't want to call it filtered, but they need to be checked in a sober analysis of the data, regardless of whether it comports to your narrative or not.

Yep, agreed.

Anyway, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, Metastock surges to a record high and we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Denise Hamilton, about what people are getting wrong about DEI.

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Scott, we're back.

Meta has been done.

Wall Street's top comeback kit after its fourth quarter earnings report showed profits have tripled.

The news sent Meta stock rising 20% on Friday, closing at an all-time high.

The stock surged and added some $200 billion to Meta's market value and increased Mark Zuckerberg's net worth by more than $28 billion.

The company also announced it's paying its first ever dividend.

That's an old company thing to do at 50 cents a share, probably smart, and revealed plans for a $50 billion stock buyback.

It doesn't know what to do with all the money it made.

You're not surprised to see Meta doing this well.

Success is being attributed to a rebound in digital ads, as well as optimism over its investments in AI and probably getting out of the metaverse.

We're also seeing, and quickly, we're also seeing the impact of Mark Zuckerberg's so-called quote year of efficiency with cost-cutting measures that included reducing the company's headcount by 22%.

If you're a Meta investor, does the profitability outweigh the regulatory and safety concerns, which were there?

He had not a great performance on the Hill.

And what about the momentum?

Tell me about what you think about that.

Well, if we're just going to be capitalists here,

this is nothing short of remarkable.

And the number that stuck out to me are the numbers.

They decreased.

This is a company that is an information age company.

The majority of their costs are people.

They pay their people really well.

That's their biggest expense line is people.

Their headcount decreased 22%.

over the last 12 months.

If you read that, you'd be like, oh shit, this company is in massive structural decline.

Companies that are really struggling, I mean, Ford and GM, the year before they went bankrupt, they didn't lay off 22% of their workforce.

But wait, what makes this historic?

They grew the revenue.

The year they laid off 22% of their people, they grew their revenue 16%,

which resulted in this nitroglycerin of reduced costs while maintaining revenue growth of an explosion in net income of 62%.

In addition, on a tactical level, Mark Zuckerberg said, Okay, Tim Cook, you think you're going to sequester me from end consumers?

I'm going to deploy AI and figure out a way to not only compensate for the decrease in effectiveness of the advertising that you have levied on me through my inability to track via iOS, I'm going to use AI to not only get back to level water, but now supposedly the ROI on ad dollars going through Meta are now 30% more effective than pre-pandemic because of AI.

And just to wrap this up, the tragedy here is the following.

I feel like I know exactly what's going on at Meta.

They have deployed their 600-plus strong, talented, well-paid public relations and comms people to say, circle the four corners of the earth and get everyone talking about what our historic earnings and wash over the fact that we continue to create massive despair and death across households with teens across America.

We need to bury that story.

And here's what's going to happen.

America is going to be much more obsessed and talk more about profits than the death and despair of teens, because in America, we have opted for capitalism over the health of our children.

So I look at this and think it is both.

I can appreciate how amazing it is through the lens of someone who's a capitalist, is very focused on economic security.

I think it's an amazing thing to build for other people.

I think it's what makes one of the things that makes America great.

The problem is it's wallpapering over

our children's mental health.

Yes, indeed.

Yes.

And that was a bad performance he had on the Hill.

He did.

He just was,

as you know, neither of us have any affection for the politics, politicians who could have done something about it.

But he didn't look good.

It wasn't a good look, but it reminded people of what he had done.

Just for people to be aware, Mark and Meta hit another milestone.

Facebook turning 20 this week.

He posted about the anniversary Zuckerberg did on Facebook, of course, with a look back video, noting in part the best is yet to come.

What a...

incredibly creative thing to think of.

I have been there all the 20 years.

And just so you know, my book is coming out in a few short weeks.

Mark Zuckerberg is a big character in it.

I have had some memorable interactions with him over those years, including in the early years.

One of the stories I have in the book is the first thing he said to me was, so you think I'm an asshole.

And so

I don't think you're an asshole, Mark, but you're a lot of other things I don't like so much.

And I do give you kudos for your capitalistic

strategery.

You're very good at, you're good at business, Mark Zuckerberg, and ability to pivot away from really some heinous stuff that your company's responsible for.

I mean, he seems reinvigorated.

He seems re-engaged.

Where do you think Meta's going to be in the next 20 years, Scott Gallery?

And how are you?

You bought that stock last year.

How are you looking at them as a company?

No, I divested of Meta several years ago because people started correctly pointing out that I should post the company and say they're bad for them.

But you bought theirs.

You recommended their stock.

It was my number one stock pick for 2020.

You bought their stock.

Is that right?

No, no, I didn't buy.

I didn't buy.

Got it.

I just said when the stock was at 80 bucks, it's been oversold.

And regardless of this ridiculous concentral hallucination called the Reality Labs, the cash volcano that is Instagram and will at some point be WhatsApp and the core platform, it's been totally oversold.

And what is it, app 400 now?

Anyway, but I've never, I didn't participate personally in that.

I will never own this stock.

I think that, and I've said this, I think Mark Zuckerberg and Shar Sandberg will go down in history as two people who've created more despair and depression across children than two individuals.

And as we've said, they're culpable, but they're not the culprits.

It really represents a breakdown in what our elected officials are supposed to do.

Meta as a whole is the most successful product, thing, invention, innovation in the history of mankind.

Whole.

It's the most successful successful thing that has ever been launched he is arguably unfortunately because i don't i i think that in america people good people and he might be a good person have an incredible ability to rationalize the damage they're doing for as long as they can because america has essentially forgives everyone as long as you're rich and as long as you don't break laws and but i think mark zuckerberg is probably i mean there's so many incredible business minds out there, Ted Saranda, Satya Nadella, Tim Cook.

I mean, these people are just, these people are brilliant.

And

they not only are big thinkers, they are operationally outstanding.

They understand people.

They understand management.

They understand communications.

Mark Zuckerberg, I would argue, is probably the premier.

So where does he, what 20 years?

20 years.

I have no fucking idea.

He's 20 years in.

20 years is too long.

Who knows?

20 years is too long.

Yeah.

WhatsApp.

I think WhatsApp will be their growth vehicle for the next 10 years is what I would say.

Okay, good.

Okay.

You know, I think he's run laps around all these executives.

Even though even better products, Snap just announced plans to lay up 10% of its global workforce around 529 employees.

Shares are up for doing that because the cost cutting is a good thing.

And they already had done some.

But he's running laps around everyone.

I do think Snap's a better product.

But he's managed to make really, he's starting to make decent products, really good.

Instagram, it was a smart buy.

I think Threads is quite good.

I think it's getting better.

You know, he's getting better.

It's getting better.

He just is.

The products are getting better, but you're 100% right.

They're responsible.

He continues to not be as concerned with the impact of his products as he needs to be and thoughtful about it.

He should know by now and should.

They're so scared of liability and everything else that they refuse to step up and be.

It's his time to, Bill Gates did it, turned himself around a little bit.

Not totally, by the way, but

it's his moment to sort of start to take responsibility for what he's doing.

I don't think he's going to do a Bezos and go off and like be the best ad for Midlife Crisis ever.

But he has an opportunity to be a leader.

I think he does.

I think he does.

And I think he's capable of it.

I've never thought he was as villainous a figure as others have become, but I think

he can take responsibility and I wish he would.

And that's not me believing he will, because I don't think he will.

So we'll see.

My pushback here, and we talked about this in the last episode, but quickly, I think supposedly Goebbels had real regrets.

Oh, it didn't fucking matter.

Don't drag in the Nazi.

He had real regrets.

Yes.

Got it.

I got it.

This guy's doing a lot of damage.

He is.

And thinking that someday his better angels will show up.

The allied forces, the P-51s.

The fighting force, the invading army we need has to be our lawmakers.

I agree.

Agree.

But

worrying about whether or not on his deathbed, he has a moment of clarity around the incredible harm he's done.

I don't give a shit.

We want the Marines to move in on this motherfucker.

And they're our elected representatives.

I agree.

I agree.

You know what?

In my book, I call him the most carelessly dangerous person in the history of tech.

So I hope that's enough.

Anyway, let us get to our friend of Pivot.

Denise Hamilton is an inclusion strategist and author of Indivisible, How to Forge Our Differences into a Stronger Future.

Adam Grant insisted I have you on the podcast, Denise,

and said you're brilliant.

Welcome.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you so much for having me.

No problem.

I want you to explain what an inclusion strategist does.

It's kind of one of those words that

Scott might make fun of in a sentence in a minute, but go ahead.

Go ahead.

He has lots of questions here.

Yeah, I think that, you know, just because you know how to sell sprockets, it doesn't necessarily mean you know how to address issues of inclusion in your organization.

So I actually help leaders operationalize DEI goals, like make them real, right?

I have the fiduciary experience and the business experience to know that sometimes our objectives and our values don't always align.

And so how do you make it actually happen in a way that's executable and can show demonstrable results.

Right.

So in the book, you acknowledge that we have outgrown, you say, quote, we have outgrown the language of DEI.

Talk about a more effective approach, because you also write many organizations have confused DEI with public relations.

I think it is something Scott talks about.

So talk about that idea of the language and what would be a more effective approach.

Yeah, I think we say things, I mean, what does it mean to be diverse, diverse from who, equal to who, included by who?

We still center one group and kind of everybody's scratching and clawing and trying to get to the middle.

And I kind of feel like there is no middle.

There's no hierarchy.

There's no caste system, at least there shouldn't be.

So if we could remove that language and just kind of move to a space of like, what is the actual goal?

And in my opinion, the actual goal is to be indivisible, to have an environment where giftedness is allowed to emerge.

We remove artificial barriers, whether intentional or unintentional, to make sure that we have the best opportunities.

I have this like recurring nightmare that the cure for cancer has already been born.

It was just born in the wrong neighborhood.

And so we, as a humanity, as society, are not getting to benefit from the gifts of all of the members of our society.

And so, you're using the greed argument, like, hey, it's going to be better for the organization.

Well, it's, it's better for humanity.

I know that we have, we kind of forum shopped, right?

And, I think the workplace and schools are the places that people meet.

We're still largely segregated in our private lives.

So we meet in these two forums.

And so they become like the test labs for all of these conversations, but they're really just

a few of the spaces that these topics come up.

These topics are about life.

They're not about, you know, the bottom line.

But I think if an organization is investing resources, they want to see that there's a return on that investment.

And so,

how do we kind of make all of that work?

I think it's really, it's really tricky.

It's really tricky.

Nice to meet you, Denise.

So good to meet you.

Thank you for that.

When we talk about diversity, we talk about what is quote unquote the right mix.

And then ultimately, it's a question of

what are the metrics or the definition of mix?

What drives mix?

And in your view,

is it race?

Is it sexual orientation?

Is it income level?

Is it gender?

Is it the educational certification?

What are the metrics by how we establish and define our success or lack thereof around diversity?

I think that we're still figuring that out.

You know, one thing that we don't really talk about in this conversation is that it's still relatively new.

We're negotiating.

We're figuring it out.

One thing we're all, I hope, clear on is we can't keep going the way we've been going, right?

So I think as we move forward, we need everybody at the table to say, What does forward look like, right?

Because I don't think we're sure about that.

Um, but I think that there's an opportunity that we have when we talk about these topics to determine together what that looks like.

And I think nobody wants ideas to be superimposed on them, you know, they want to be a part of the discussion.

And so, when I think about like what does the right mix look like, it even that framing I kind of resist because it means kind of an artificial target that's why I wrote the book that's why I'm trying to introduce this different concept um

what is optimal for our country that that's that's what I want to understand I don't want a permanent underclass I don't want structures that don't allow our actual problems to get the attention they need to get I don't want people who have gifts for those gifts to be lying fallow because of unreasonable barriers.

So for me, it's not a Noah's Ark approach of two of each kind in the space.

It's creating the actual platform for people to thrive and succeed.

And we're going to disagree.

about some of those tactics, but there are tactics.

I think well-intentioned people can completely disagree about tools and tactics, but we have to be clear about the goal.

And the goal has to be this

method of operation that is better than what we're doing right now.

So, there's been a lot of debate.

Mark Cuban's been very outfront talking about it.

I think in the way you're talking about it, in that it's good for my business.

I can tell you what happened with me, and here's how I look at it, which is a very different way.

And the right has, of course, taken it and used it as a backlash on college campuses, in corporate America, on social media.

And they're using it as sort of a boogeyman kind of thing.

Like, what do they get wrong about DEI?

Because there's proposals aimed at limiting any DEI programs on college campuses that have been introduced in 21 states since 2021, according to Axios.

How do you change that conversation?

Mark certainly is trying to change it, talking about what you're talking about.

But the right has had a lot of, has gotten a lot of mileage out of this.

Yeah, I think I would say instead of banning books, start reading them.

I think that this is, we've done this before.

The same people that are quoting Martin Luther King Jr.

today, you know, would have disapproved of him.

So I think it's really easy to think that in these historical moments, we would have been very different.

I would have stood up.

I would have fought for equality.

I would have done, I wouldn't have been in the crowd yelling at six-year-old Ruby Bridges when she was walking into that school with guards on either side of her.

I would have been different.

But here we are.

This is our generation's opportunity to test where we would have been.

Do we want an equal playing field or not?

Right.

And I think sometimes we get in trouble.

We use these unusually aberrant situations as test cases.

You know, Scott, you and I have something deep, deeply in common.

When people ask me what I think about college campuses and what's going on in college campuses,

I tend to tap out of the conversation because I don't think it's a real conversation.

I don't think Harvard's a school.

I think Harvard's a port key, right?

And for those of us who don't follow Harry Potter references, a port key was a magical object that you could touch and it could transport you to a different place, right?

Everybody wants to touch the Harvard port key to be transported to the highest levels of American society.

It's not real.

If it was a school, it wouldn't have have 1,500 students taken in a year.

If it was about educating the best and brightest, there would be a Harvard Houston or a Harvard Atlanta because they've got enough money to do it, right?

But that's not what it is.

What it is, is a way to access the top next level.

So how do you layer like what's right on top of a foundation that's kind of so wrong?

I think it's important we distinguish between the DEI effectiveness and efforts between what's happened on university university campuses and corporations.

I would argue the former has gone too far and accidentally the snake is eating its own tail and has resulted in instances of racism.

Whereas I think DEI still has a long way to go in the corporate world.

There's too many pale males on the boards I'm on.

Just inevitably I find that.

And then I think, well, is it really about race?

So

what I'd like to know is, do you ever if I look at the hard metrics around who's getting entry into, I bet the kind of companies that hire you that are likely,

I won't call them progressive, but evolved, concerned about these issues, oftentimes the most underrepresented group are non-college graduate white males from red states.

That who is, if you look at Asians are overrepresented in these companies right now.

Women are overrepresented.

Have you ever or have you ever seen a DEI initiative that says we need to do a better job of reaching into non-college red state white males?

I've never seen that as a recommendation coming out of DEI.

Even if you look at the metrics, that would indicate that that's the group that, quite frankly, is underrepresented in our most profitable companies.

Well, I live in Texas and I work in, I work with the late adopter organizations.

I work with some progressive organizations, but the vast majority of my practice is oil and gas, is finance, is commercial real estate.

Because I think that we have to bring everyone along.

And I know a lot of, there's a lot of practitioners that don't work with these populations because it can these environments can be really tough because of what you're talking about.

But I will also say those populations are what give me the kind of optimism and faith to keep going and doing this work because I see the effort.

I'm kind of a secret weapon of CEOs.

I'm passed around by people who have really good intentions, but they don't know how to do it.

And I think very often, to your point,

we can be exclusionary in some of our speech and some of the approaches taken.

And I think there are a number of different places that we need to include and invite people into these conversations.

And I think that the calculus, quite frankly, is different for white men in organizations.

I think it's a different cost to kind of,

there's a humbling of yourself when you're a woman or a person of color and you move into these spaces.

You kind of, of, it's okay for you to say, this is hard, this is challenging for me.

It's a little different when you're a white male going into these spaces and you're low income.

You're expected to like jump on the ramp.

I even share a story in the book about a gentleman that was promoted into leadership in his organization.

And he had to travel for business, but he didn't have a personal credit card.

So

he's gone for weeks at a time.

And literally

his family at home can't pay rent because he has so many company expenses and the company hasn't reimbursed him for his expenses.

He literally thinks he has to quit this job because he can't afford to do the job.

And so

we talked with him and he raised that issue to management.

And they changed the policy because they didn't realize that they were really making this job incredibly hard for the lower income employees in their organization.

But you just, I just said, just to press pause, you invoked MLK, and MLK said something I thought was really powerful.

And he said that we need to bring along the white poor, because if we don't, they're going to resent people of color, and it's going to create further division, and we're never going to come together as a country.

Do you think that when you're talking coaching CEOs, do you talk about, well, let me put forward a thesis, that a better metric for diversity is trying to find good people who have come from lower-income backgrounds as opposed to using other metrics.

What are your thoughts on using that as a metric?

I think that it's one metric.

I don't think it's the metric.

And I'm always careful about better metric, right?

Because I think if you if you've read Isabel Wilkerson's incredible book cast or seen the movie Origin,

there is a caste system that we don't talk about, but that is present in our society.

And I'm very careful about limiting successful blacks.

There's a discussion of like, well, this person is successful.

They don't don't need this support.

These kids come from a successful, their parents are successful.

They don't need that support.

Well, why?

Does Jared Kushner get that support?

Do rich white students get that support all the time, right?

So I'm very careful about things that kind of inject or reinforce what I perceive as a caste element.

I think I come from a low-income background, right?

I know the experience of trying to navigate these really difficult environments as a complete stranger.

So I think it's a metric, but I also think in the United States of America, the exclusion around race was so profound for so long that I don't think you can be intentionally exclusive for hundreds of years and then be accidentally inclusive.

If we just make it class, then everything else will work itself out.

I don't necessarily believe in that, but I will say this.

I'm listening, right?

Like I'm open to to that, that argument and that discussion, but I do have real concerns.

So, I have just one more question.

What advice would you give to a CEO or college president right now, given how tense everything when it comes to just cause it to call it something else like hot dogs or something else?

Make up a new name.

It's new hot dogs now.

People, everyone likes a hot dog, whatever.

I don't know.

Could you have to just change the name because it's been so sullied?

I think that, you know, we've seen an intentional bastardization of all language that is related to this subject.

We can't even define what DEI is.

If you stop a thousand people, you're going to get a thousand different directions because intentionally the language has been altered.

I'm of the opinion, I do the long game of history, right?

And

I'm seeing people changing the names, changing the sections, or changing the class names, or making the club a different name.

I mean, we can do that.

I think that we need to, I think we've lost the plot.

And I think we need to recommit honestly to what it is we're trying to accomplish.

And also be clear of the temptation of the status quo.

You know, our stories, they just don't let us go easily.

We like our stories.

We like the status quo.

We like the way it is.

We say we don't, but we do.

And so we've got to the, I think, step into the space of really challenging what the belief systems are that are going to animate us in the next generation.

I feel like it's our generation's turn to write the next chapter of the American story.

And it shouldn't be a rehashing of chapter seven or eight.

It should be something newer, something better, something more incredible.

And we have to do that together.

We cannot have, you know, there's no question it's it's really it's really radioactive to a lot of people i talk to it's like like, oh, I don't want to say a word.

But we've been here before.

I mean, I don't know.

I walk around the world.

I always say I walk around the world with an inappropriate level of optimism.

I think the only people who change the world are the ones who think they can.

Well, you're working with oil and gas people.

So I assume you are.

I assume you are.

That must be your experience.

Scott, last question.

So I like you came from a low-income.

household and I benefited from affirmative action in the form of Pell Grants and

admissions directors who I think gave me an unfair advantage because of my background.

And it was life-changing for me.

So as someone who came from a low-income background, what institutions or programs really benefited you as a means of trying to identify what works?

Oh, goodness.

What a great question.

I think that

any program that really

created mentorship, where it's people to people, where someone actually said, this is the path, this is the direction.

That's the saddest thing about the attack on DEI for me, is that for a lot of people, they don't speak the language of elite spaces.

They just don't speak the language.

And so many of these programs really support people in navigating the difficulty and sometimes the toxicity of those environments.

Those programs were critical for me.

They were critical.

They're why I'm sitting here right now, you know, because somebody said, Denise, go this way, not that way.

And

I hope, I hope that people

invest

themselves into these processes.

We've outsourced culture kind of to a small group of people on both sides.

And I think what I'd like to see is to have people step into their responsibility for what

the next decade looks like.

So I

will say this, and I think it's really important to say it, you know, I always use the metaphor of we've inherited an old house.

It's got great bones.

That's using our origins.

That's the

little different

is that the foundation has settled and it's crooked now.

All the lines are kind of crooked.

And you want to hang a gallery wall, right?

And you have two choices.

You can get a level out and you can hang all the pictures straight, but it won't look straight.

Or you can eyeball it against the crooked ceiling and you can hang the pictures so they look straight.

I think we've got to decide if we want it to look straight or if we want it to be straight.

And to do that, we've got to address the foundation and we've got to start thinking about the why we do the things we do.

All right.

On that note, I love a good hardware metaphor, as you know, as a lesbian.

Anyway, Denise, thank you so much.

And again, the book is Indivisible, How to Forge Our Differences into a Stronger Future.

We like an optimist.

We do.

Scott's an optimist, a secret optimist.

Thanks, Denise.

Thank you so much.

Nice meeting you.

Don't you love an optimist?

A realistic optimist, anyway.

Yeah, but just on one of the points that I think bears repeating, because I think people are conflating DEI in the private sector with DEI on campuses.

And I think there's a huge distinction.

Corporations benefit from the fact there's this unifying theory called money.

They pursue profits, and

it's somewhat unifying.

And also,

I think with with 51% of Harvard's freshman class is non-white, there's very few corporations that can boast 51% of senior management is non-white.

There's a huge difference and need.

I mean, to just talk about DEI in the context of

the approach and the organizations,

I think DEI is still very much warranted and has a long way to go in corporate America.

I think it's gone too far on the university and universities.

And it bothers me when people just crudely reduce it to all the.

I would agree.

I would agree.

It's a complex topic, as she noted.

Anyway, one more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails.

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

You go first.

Well, the win is obviously lesbians.

Once again, they have triumphed.

A True Detective?

I think we're watching.

I think we're watching the same porn.

What's your win?

I know.

True Detective, amazing show, Jodi Foster.

Being straight on it is very disturbing.

It's really good.

It's so dark.

It's so dark, but it's got such a lesbian vibe, no matter how you slice it.

And then they pretend all these main characters are straight.

They're deeply in love with each other.

No, they're not.

It's just, it's such a good show.

It's so, so grim.

It's so,

I watched, I watched episode one, and I wasn't into it.

It gets, does it get better?

It gets grimmer.

It certainly gets grimmer.

Grimmer.

Grimmer.

Grimmer, grimmer, grimmer.

Like, Amanda was like, if this doesn't turn around, I'm not staying with it.

It's, I love it.

I love it.

But I would say Tracy chapman on the grammys last night um and brandy carlisle uh tracy chapman that's fucking song i literally watched luke hombs and her singing her song fast car i'm thrilled she's making dough from it

I felt like the world was healed for one second.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, she's such a, she doesn't perform in public very much anymore.

I interviewed her when she wasn't famous a long time ago

at a festival called Sister Fire in Washington, but right before she got really famous for that first album.

And I got to say, between her and Joni Mitchell and Brandi Carlisle,

I was just, it was, I was like, and then you had last week with Robbie Kaplan winning the case.

I was like, lesbians need to run the fucking show.

That's what I decided.

So wins for the lesbians everywhere, all the place.

And Joni Mitchell's in lesbian adjacent.

So I'll take it.

I'll take it.

In any case, really powerful.

Lesbian adjacent.

Does that mean she's one of the women

with another woman at a bar?

No, leave Joni Mitchell alone.

That was a beautiful rendition of Both Sides Now, which is a song.

I'm not saying anything bad about Johnny Mitchell.

Okay, don't you dare.

I have a Lesbro hoodie that I wear everywhere.

I'm very down with the lesbians.

You are.

You are lesbian adjacent.

You are lesbian adjacent, and I really value.

Lajacent.

Lajacent.

Lesjacent, whatever.

And I think the nonsense in Washington over this border deal, so ridiculous.

They don't want to solve problems.

Like we talk about with tech.

They don't want to solve problems there.

And

Mr.

Speaker of the House

looks like he's his servant.

It just is so Trump's servant.

It's depressing.

There's some real chance to make some headway here, even though we will never make headway, I feel, with this issue.

But boy, are they just showing their true colors?

You know how they say people begin to look like they're dogs when they hang out?

You and I are becoming the same person.

This is no exaggeration.

My win and fail are the exact same thing.

So

I'll try and put a different frame on it.

My fail is this legislation that's

if you read the legislation around the border legislation, the immigration legislation, it's three different things.

It's aid to Ukraine, it's tied to aid to Israel, and then immigration reform or border security.

You would think that it was a bill authored by Republicans and that there is no way Democrats would approve it.

So some of the details.

It would expedite the hearings to see

who is in fact qualifies for asylum.

If they don't, they get shipped back.

There's absolutely no path to citizenship included in it, and it's a massive increase in border security.

It feels very Republican, whether you like it or not.

Joe Biden's taking a big risk here.

Big risk for Joe Biden from the left flank.

The fact that it's being held up by a Republican Speaker of the House is so incredibly cynical, solely because, nakedly, because the president, the former president, wants it to be a campaign issue, despite it being bad for America to continue to have no immigration reform.

It's also going to leave several hundred thousand Ukrainian soldiers who are risking their lives every day to protect the West from ammunition.

They're basically, they're essentially out of cash and

ammunition.

And unfortunately, this has been tied to that.

This is ground zero for when government becomes ineffective.

And because we have so many radicals on the left and the right, and they haven't served in public service, and because there are no term limits, because there is no ranked choice voting to have moderates, we have a bunch of zealots who refuse to get along with each other, who devote the majority of their energy not to helping America, but making the other side look bad.

This is, God, it's just so discouraging.

I really hope that people call their congressperson.

Let's be clear: the left is not blocking this as much as the right.

This is crazy.

I call Speaker of the House

Mike Johnson.

I call my new name for him, it is Little Tiny, but go ahead.

Anyways, we share fail.

My win's the same.

I just thought we do a lot of shit posting of award shows.

I thought there were so many incredible moments.

You mentioned one.

I thought, you know, for a moment, art really is healing or it can be.

When I saw, when I heard that song, it was so powerful with Chaser Chapman and Luke Homes.

And I thought to myself, I hope the young people see that.

And, you know, sometimes you need artistry for that.

That distinct of what you see on cable television, distinctive what you see in your comments on social social media, that the majority of people, regardless of their income, regardless of their sexual orientation, regardless of their politics, get along.

You know, most of us get along.

I mean, can you imagine two more different people, Luke, Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman?

And you just got the sense that they could come together and do something wonderful together.

Most people get along.

The moment I loved was

Miley Cyrus.

Oh, she's right.

Also, lesbian adjacent.

I was so happy for her.

I think she has an unbelievable voice.

And I was also happy, and I'll finish off here.

I was happy to see Taylor Swift,

first artist in history to have Album of the Year four time of the world.

And the other thing I don't get, I don't love her music.

I could do without the pans to her reaction in a football game.

But this coordinated attack on Taylor Swift that seems to be permeating our society, Who exactly would you want better to be a role model for young women?

Like, you don't have to like her music.

You can roll your eyes when you see her at an NFL game.

But

all these attacks on her, I was saying, I was just on this podcast at PLC Young Men, and the guys sort of went off about Taylor Swift.

I'm like, look, if Taylor Swift really triggers you, it probably means you have a problem with women on top.

Because

when Beckham dates Poshpice, everyone loves it because they're famous, but they're not more famous or more powerful than him.

So it's okay.

When this thing erupts and the reality is, as amazing as he is, she is a bigger influence and more powerful than him.

And people just aren't down with that.

If this really triggers you, it's not about Taylor Swift.

It's about you.

And also anyone with parents, didn't you like.

Again, Joni Mitchell is someone whose music I've never really appreciated.

That was a very, a A lot of people weighed into me and started sending me clips of Joani Mitchell's songs.

But anyways, anyone who has parents, she was on stage belting out that song at 80.

She's 80.

I mean,

but it was a really good show.

It was, I would recommend everybody watching every bit of clips from it because it was really, and the costumes were great.

And you're right.

Miley Cyrus is an unsung.

She deserves much more for her talent.

She's super fucking talented.

But if you really need to like chill and feel better about your place in the world and the world's place in you,

take five and a half minutes and listen to that Tracy

and Luke Combs.

That song,

you know, for so many people, that album changed my life.

That song changed my life.

It's a beautiful.

It's a beautiful album.

But that song, I can't listen to it without having all kinds of feels, I got to say.

I don't know why.

I don't drive a fast car.

I don't need a ticket out of here.

Are you talking about a revolution?

Oh, I love that song, too.

I love that whole album.

The whole album.

it took takes me back to my 20s.

And

sorry, all of that.

That's a beautiful song.

Sorry, I'm sorry.

It takes me back to my 20s in a really fantastic and sometimes sad way.

It just has a lot of feels.

Anyway,

we want to hear from you.

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

We also want more of your questions about gaming.

We're going to talk about gaming.

Scott has pointed this out.

What a huge industry.

We're going to cover that topic, and we'd like to hear what you'd like us to hear us cover on that topic.

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

I'm actually going to use gaming on the Vision Pro as I test it.

I'm going to learn how to do gaming because I haven't.

And I'm going to do it.

It's really good on it.

It's really good.

I was wondering if we go on an episode without mentioning it.

By the way, just a quick, quick lesson, mini lesson for men out there.

Make sure that you know how to use tools, but don't be the tool.

I like that.

I like that.

Anyway, that's the show.

We'll be back on Friday with more.

Scott, read us out.

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

Ernie Intertod engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miles Severio.

Nishak Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio.

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

Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine, Vox Media.

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

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

Take five and a half minutes today.

Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs.

Fast go.

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