Writers Strike Deal, Betting Against the FTC, and Guest Mathias Döpfner

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Oh, God, you're such a tasteless fuck, Scott.

Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher, and I'm here to tell you Scott's already in an insufferable fuck mood.

Go ahead, Scott.

Say more.

That's called Scott.

No, you just insulted our producer.

I I did not insult her.

How is that an insult?

You did.

Because you don't tell ladies to take off their glasses.

You don't.

I said she looked like Farah Fawcett without glasses.

I get it.

We are not in an Anne Hathaway Princess Bride movie.

Anybody who wants to tell me I'm better looking based on anything I do, bring it on.

Well, we're not going to.

See, that's never going to happen.

You do.

You do.

Except when we talk about my looks, it's okay.

Let me tell you how a man acts.

My son, I was at a CNBC thing or a taping, and Alex Alex was sitting out in the lobby, and the guy going on right after me said to him, Your mom could smile more.

That's what he said when I was talking about something super fucking serious.

And he said to Alex, you could smile more.

And my son turned to me and he said,

You don't tell women not to smile more, but you could get a better face.

And I loved him from that moment on.

I'm just telling you, don't tell.

Well, okay.

So, first off, I think your son was right.

And I like the fact I think what a man does is he moves to protection, especially around his mother.

The two,

people tell me all the time to smile more.

Now, granted, women have had a history of being told to smile more and have too much emphasis placed on their appearance.

So I can understand that there should be an additional gag reflex.

But I would bet for every time you're told to smile more, I'm told, I get told to smile all the time.

Really?

Interesting.

Interesting.

Well, anyways, point taken.

Point taken.

I don't think you should smile more.

You should do whatever you want, but you go ahead.

You go ahead and be in an Ann Hathaway movie.

Listen, it's perpetrated by everything we do.

Like, you know, these movies where they do that scene where they make the girl beautiful and she was ugly before, but then she's beautiful, that kind of stuff.

Yeah, she has value.

She has more value than we thought when she does her glasses.

Yes, that's exactly.

Anyway, Clark Kent does it too, but he's handsome both times.

Anyway, let's not waste any more time about our feminist issues right now.

Let's get right straight to the big story of the people who wrote these terrible tropes.

The Hollywood Writers and studios have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract.

That's after a marathon, five days of talks.

The deal still needs approval from the Union Board and members for the strike to end.

But first,

let's talk about us because we predicted this pretty closely.

We had initially thought it might go on and on.

We never thought it would be short.

But let's hear what I said back in August 17th when Don Lemon was co-hosting.

My prediction, I'm going to go separately, not on Donald Trump, but on the writer's strike.

I feel like it may settle by by October 15th.

I think there's some pain starting to feel by the studios who are in a better position from a leverage point of view.

I think there's a lot of pain from writers and actors.

And I don't think they're calling them rich people is really working particularly well with the public.

And I think

they have to settle

on some level and maybe push certain things down the road.

I don't know.

I just feel like maybe by October, they'll have to be settled.

Here's what you said a little over a week ago.

Okay, so Drew and Bill were shamed.

They said, look, this is really awful.

You're being an awful person.

But they effectively ended the strike.

And I believe the writer's strike is going to end in the next 30 days, if not the next two weeks.

Here's the thing.

The writer's strike

gets

done within the next 30 days because the big guys that aren't Netflix, the big guys sounds Netflix are like, okay, we've been played.

Netflix, this was a feature, not a bug for Netflix.

The writers, the most important people, the most talented and probably smartest and biggest voices that I can tell, my pulse marketing talked to them.

We're like, I am fed up with this shit.

We have handled this poorly.

So we got it right.

Let's talk what's in the deal first.

As the taping, we don't have the full details, but the New York Times reports the writers got some concessions on most of their demands from the studios, including bigger royalty payments for streaming content and guarantees that AI won't chip away at their credits and compensation.

So what do you think?

What do you think?

Besides we're geniuses.

I think this is

another signal of the beginning of the end of unions.

Interesting.

People think they're stronger.

Tell me why.

And that's perfect for corporations.

Continue to give labor the illusion that they're well represented when only 11% of the workforce or about 3% or 4% of the population are even members of unions,

such that corporations can slice and dice and either move to the 27, either avoid unions or move to the 27 states in the union that are basically have outlawed unions.

But look at it this way, and we won't know

until we get the results.

First off, no matter what the terms were, the WGA has to pretend it's a monumental victory.

Otherwise, why exactly did I lose six months of income?

But look at it this way.

It's a three-year deal.

Effectively, they took everyone's wages as a means of negotiating,

took a lot of their members or all of their members down to compensation of zero for six months.

So over a three-year deal, that means that unless they got an increase of total compensation of 16%,

they've lost money because people are out of work for six months.

So I'll be very curious to see the language, but this hot girl union summer is nothing but a head fake in jazz hands.

The number of people who are actually in unions declined last year.

And again, the stat that just that just kind of perfectly embodies the dissonance here or the head fake around labor and its effectiveness is that 330 Starbucks unionized.

Yes, you noted this last week.

Okay.

Not one of them got a collective bargaining agreement.

And that is for all the jazz hands and excitement and headlines around 330 Starbucks stores unionizing.

It hasn't translated to a single cent and increased compensation for those workers.

Well, not yet, right?

Presumably not yet.

They're just getting started, that particular group.

We're just getting started with the end of this.

Okay.

All right.

Now, tell me, I want you to make, I know this is hard for you.

I want you to make

not a pro-union argument, but what was good about what they did?

Do you think nothing?

About what the writers did?

Yeah, about what the writers and the actors and the UAW, et cetera, et cetera.

They're bringing attention to the fact that in a nation where work is central to our economy and productivity and gives people purpose, And in a nation where we've had unprecedented prosperity, it needs to translate to progress.

And a small nod towards progress is that anyone that works 40 hours should have some dignity and not live below the poverty line.

Their aim is true.

Their intentions

are valid.

They are the wrong construct.

And instead of going to join a picket line that represents 4% of America, Joe Biden should do his job and raise minimum wage for the first time in 15 years across 100% of workers.

So I think it raises attention to the fact that unions have very little leverage.

This made no sense.

Why did this show go uninterrupted?

Why did 11th Hour Stephanie Rule go interrupted?

Why did CNN go interrupted?

But Colbert was off the air.

I mean, without total participation, you don't have a union.

You have something that is going to be atomized and weakened and divided, which is what has happened slowly but surely over the last 30 years in unions.

Now, AI was a big sticking point over, especially over old studio-owned scripts that they could shove it in there and make new, I don't know, bridesmaids' dresses, movies, or whatever.

You know, these are very formulaic, by the way, to start with by regular people.

What do you think about that?

I think my understanding is that

you talk about positives.

I think the WGAGA did raise an important point that will benefit all workers, and that is everybody, and we should be thoughtful about this, should have the rights and ownership of what I'll call their digital twin.

If, I don't know if you've seen, there's a site that you can go to and you can ask a question of Kara Swisher or Scott Galloway, and it will attempt to answer the question in the voice of Kara Swisher or Scott Galloway.

I don't think, I think, I think the two of us should own the rights of that.

I think when you, everyone should have the rights over the IP of their digital twin.

And the WGA has made some progress raising that issue.

But let's be clear, for all the talk about how precious and creative the community is here, seven or eight of the 10 of the best performing films in 2021 and 2022 were basically reheated IP.

They were either Toy Story 8

or Thor 11 Rangoon or taking something to

a movie production of a play or something.

Fast and Furious.

There was a Fast and Furious.

Yeah,

though original, it's the original scripts that did best, like Barbie and Oppenheimer and some others.

Would you call Barbie an original IP?

Well, it is.

Well, it's never been a movie.

Like, sure.

Yes, I would.

Most people do consider it that it's original IP.

It's using other IP that was in another area, but original scripts did rather well.

The whole idea was people were tired of

the Marvel movies and this and that.

They're tired of the constantly retreading.

And I think that's an interesting thing.

There's always trends that happen.

If they get a good one, people will love it, right?

But you're right.

You're right.

Creativity needs, human creativity needs to improve around a lot of this entertainment entertainment because there's so much creativity elsewhere online, on places like TikTok, on Reddit, all over the place.

There's really interesting content being created from, you know, with a nod to older things.

Nothing is new under the sun, but there is some level of creativity.

But one thing is clear.

I think what Barry Diller and many others are saying is let's sue the bastards if the tech companies if they steal our stuff.

Right?

That's really what I think is most important.

And if they can all get it together to realize they're on the same side, as we, you and I have said a lot, they are really fighting against the tech companies eventually.

That's really the fight.

That's the actual fight.

But let's talk about next steps.

WGA picketing is suspended.

But writers can join the actors' picket lines.

I don't think that's going to go on for too long.

WGA leadership votes on the contract today, Tuesday.

If it passes, the 11,000 plus guild members vote whether to ratify it.

Writers can return to work pretty quickly, but not until the contract is formalized.

I know a lot of my writer friends are like writing now.

They're just going for it.

Talk shows will be the first ones back.

Where does it leave this business, Scott, from your perspective?

Substantially weakened.

I mean,

there's a few things when calculating the game theory around a strike.

The first is what kind of leverage do you have?

And unless you have 100% participation, you don't have any leverage.

So when the Teamsters struck against UPS, UPS represented 23% of all package volume.

And overnight, tens of millions of consumers would start getting messages when they ordered Calfalon from William Sonoma that I'm sorry, your shipment has been delayed indefinitely because of the UPS strike.

And in addition, that company, UPS, you know,

get really, really hammered really quickly with the strike.

So they had leverage.

Then look at what's happened here.

Three of the four biggest players, or four of the five biggest players,

they were trying to suck blood from Iraq.

And that is these companies were deeply impaired already.

And if you didn't know, and we keep saying this, if you didn't know there was a right of strike, you would know.

There's so many substitutes.

I think that was one of your best points.

I agree.

So you wouldn't know it.

The consumer didn't care that the writers were on strike.

And not only that, the most profitable company in their sector,

Netflix, the strike was a feature, not a bug, because they got a lot of content from outside the U.S.

Their subscriptions went up.

I mean, essentially every content company but Netflix, their stock went down dramatically since the beginning of the strike.

It's interesting.

I got a note.

Someone was in a text train with some writer, Hollywood people, and they go, someone said, looks like the long national nightmare is finally ending.

And someone else wrote back, a writer, well-known writer, said, Praise the Lord.

Now we comb through the rubble to see what's left of our business.

And I thought that said it perfectly.

Well, the writers I've been talking to said that the thing that has really changed the Gestalt or the Zeitgeist or the mood is the writer's strike was upsetting, but they said the thing that has really impacted them was what they to see is just the unexpected decline of of their hero, Disney, that if Disney's going down, we're all going down.

And let's look since since the writer's strike, since the beginning of the writer's strike, Disney stock is off 19%, Warner Brothers down 13%, and Paramount stock has been cut in half.

It's off 45%.

And Netflix is up 20%.

It's come back a little bit, but it's still up 20%.

So you had, and

this is what you should be doing.

One, they don't have the leverage because they don't have

of, it's like, why is this show on and not this show?

No one could figure it out.

Well, the union got in there and it didn't get in here, whatever it might be.

But, you know, you have,

they're going, they're striking against the wrong people.

Again, the stat I love is that in one day, when Microsoft announced it was incorporating AI into its office suite, the market capitalization of Microsoft went up $174 billion.

That's more than the value of Disney.

And Disney's operating margins have gone down 75%.

So who should you be striking against?

And they do have leverage.

These LLMs and AI, what do you think they're crawling?

I mean,

100%.

This is going to be a big legal fight.

This is going to be big.

They're striking against the wrong people.

They're going after the, they're trying to squeeze blood from the wrong rock.

Right.

So this is a three-year contract, as you noted.

Is there any issues you see coming up?

That's good that it's three years.

They don't have to yell at each other for three years.

But

do you think they've learned anything here?

Do you think this is sinking in?

I know after that when Diller was noting the tech people being the real problem, I got dozens of calls from Hollywood people that like they're like the like they're I oh you're right.

Like, you know what I mean?

But do you think they've learned on on all sides, I think?

Do you think

they've learned anything?

You know what?

I don't feel close to it.

What I would say is, do you notice how quiet Tim Cook, you notice how they're like, let's just stay out of the way?

Yes, of course.

I notice.

They're like, we don't even want, we want to pretend we have nothing to do with this.

We want to pretend that when Apple or Llama, when Meta launches, we're going to pretend that it has nothing to do with us.

When in fact, it has everything to do with them.

Because when I write in,

please write an outline for a chapter on testosterone.

I'm writing this book on masculinity.

And it comes back with stuff.

I'm like, well, whose content is this thing crawling?

And should they get a portion of my book proceeds?

Or

should Microsoft be paying them for the right to crawl their data?

Who owes you money?

Who is the end user that is

right?

They get value for your work.

And they think that what they don't realize is the person they used to extract value from,

someone ordering cable television, because they're like, Dad, we have to have cable TV.

So pay $140 for the Joey Bagadona Special Star ESPN Jets plus Big Bang Theory for the last 40 seasons.

And then we're going to bundle in Bravo 7, 8, and 9 because it's a regulated monopoly called Cable.

That 17-year-old no longer cares.

Like, yeah, Dad, cut the cord.

Mom, I don't need it.

Cut the cord.

Can I ask you a question?

Where did you steal Joey Bagged Donuts from?

I love that term, Joey Baggaget Donuts.

I know you do.

You use that a lot.

I just was thinking, where did Scott steal that from?

This little LLM named Scott Galloway.

I think I, I think I, I don't know where I got Joey Bagga Donuts.

I don't know whose data I've crawled there.

Where have you gotten that from?

I have not heard that from anyone else but you, and I just thought of it because you said it again.

JBD.

JBD.

No, but your question around what has everyone learned here.

Look, if you look at it, it's simple.

I think that the real learning should be the following.

The NASDAQ had its best first half in 40 years, and 70% of its gains were from seven companies.

And at the heart of all of those companies' acceleration in the four,

I did the math here, it's somewhere between three and four trillion dollar accretion in stock market value three and four trillion cura was companies where ai is at the center of it nvidia ai is at the center of meta because of reels and their use of ai ai is at the center actually i think of netflix and its recommendation engine ai is at the center of microsoft so the question is if ai is literally sucking the oxygen out of the room and all the market cap, it's like, well, what is driving that value?

And AI, it's incredible technology through LLMs.

But if it doesn't have the coal, if it doesn't have the unstructured data sense and content,

it's not worth anything.

So, my question is, are those coal miners, i.e., the creatives at the very beginning,

pulling ideas out of the earth that didn't exist before and refining them into actual creative, then that's who they need to be consolidating against.

All of these people should regroup next week and go, okay, our next meeting, we're all on the same side of the table.

The WGA, SAG, AFTRA, Iger,

Iger, Sherry Redstone.

And on the other side needs to be Altman, Sandra Pachaya, Nadella.

They're the people you should be negotiating against.

Yeah, Sorrendos.

Let me just say, we have warned you.

We have warned you, Hollywood, who your true enemy is.

This is like a plot of a movie that you think it's one person and then it's really another person.

I think there's a Star Trek poll.

Let me just tell you, we're telling you who your enemy is.

Start to pay attention.

Do you think this will have any effect on the UAW strike or not?

I think it'll be faster.

That one will be faster.

Yeah, I think they have more leverage.

I mean, here's the tough part, though.

Here's just the

hard part.

Again, it's the Elons and the Chinese and the Tech Four.

Anyways, have you noticed that he has the ability when you realize, like, that's a no-win situation for me?

And he's kept awfully mum.

He's kept awfully mum.

Hush, right?

Just like Apple, Tim Cook.

Do you think he's keeping mum because he wants to?

He knows.

Like, I do not want to get into this fight.

Yeah, because I'm good.

But here's the bottom line: the domestic automobile manufacturers produce cars, they have to pay $65 per labor hour.

Do you know the stock prices of Ford, GM, and Solantis are where they were literally before the financial crisis?

Capital hasn't made a dollar off of these companies in 15 years because capital, fairly or unfairly, will just flow to the lowest, to the person with the largest margins, which in this case is the foreign automobile manufacturers in Tesla and Rivian.

So all this starts, quite frankly, unfairly, unless you have unanimity around a union which has the right aims,

it's a race to the bottom.

All the capital flows to the non-union guys.

We do need to move on, but let me just say there's a reason Nilan's quiet and Elon's never quiet.

People were warning you again, automakers and auto workers.

Guess who's going to win here?

This is not a big secret.

We said it earlier.

Now there's been 900 articles about it.

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

And we come back.

We'll talk about how fighting misinformation online has become a losing battle and betting against FTC chair Lena Kahn has become a winning strategy.

Our friend at Pivot is Axel Springer, CEO Matthias Dopfner.

He joins us to talk about the state of media in his new book on trade.

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Scott, we're back in the war on misinformation.

Misinformation is what?

Shockingly winning.

The Washington Post reports that many universities, government agencies, and think tanks working to combat the online spread of misinformation are now shutting down or overhauling their programs and research entirely.

Why?

It's a result of a campaign led by Congressman Jim Jordan and other Republicans in Congress accusing these groups of colluding with tech companies to censor right-wing views.

It's a lot of lawsuits happening.

going on.

This is scary stuff.

These groups were doing a service for the rest of us, studying political falsehoods, sharing important health information.

How bad could it get without misinformation being kept in check and actually being sued to not speak?

The only people who can't speak in a free speech environment, apparently, is scientists and researchers.

The article notes that NIH officials sent a memo in July to some employees warning them not to flag misleading social media posts to tech companies that to limit their communication with the public in answering medical questions.

These are doctors.

One scientist quoted as saying, In the name of protecting free speech, the scientific community is not allowed to speak.

Science is being halted in its tracks.

It seems particularly dangerous ahead of the 2024 election, facing litigation.

Let me give you an example.

Stanford University officials are discussing how they can continue tracking election-related misinformation.

A coalition of researchers may shrink and also stop communicating with X and Facebook about findings.

We've been relying on social media companies to be the watchdogs of misinformation, but thanks to Elon and others, it's not really happening anymore.

So technology is getting more powerful.

The guardrails are disappearing.

It's not anyone.

clear that anyone can stop it.

Maybe the courts, but

and the White House, lastly, has its own issues.

A recent ruling from the Fifth Circuit of Court of Appeals said the White House and other health officials likely violated the First Amendment by getting tech companies to take down posts about COVID and election, COVID misinformation, election fraud.

I don't know, Scott, do you see any way forward?

This is what they did on Roe, legal, legal, legal, legal, legal, and scaring the crap out of people.

I think it sends, I mean, it sends a chill down my spine, the notion that

whenever you have, I mean, there's some really scary data, and I've been doing a bunch of research around AI.

The percentage of people who have a patent, they used to predominantly aggregate to universities.

Now they predominantly aggregate to private companies.

Or patent collectors like Nathan Meilverld and others.

But I'm not talking about ownership of them.

I'm talking about people who actually have their own patent.

If you technically define an inventor as someone who has their own patent,

they used to go to universities and now they still go to universities.

And then sooner rather than later,

they go to the private sector.

And so anytime, and also I think something wonderful about academia is you were told from day one,

we'll give you tenure, we'll protect you as long as you pursue the truth and you check your data really thoroughly and we'll protect you.

And there's something wonderful about that.

And the first universities were placed outside of the city of Athens so they could say what they wanted to.

That's a wonderful part of our society.

So anything that chills them

is really frightening.

Now, the other side of the issue, the judge said something I thought very powerful that kind of stopped me.

Basically, the judge ruled that the administration is open, quote,

improperly influencing tech companies' decisions to remove or suppress posts on the coronavirus and elections, and went on to say that the government has assumed a role similar to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth.

And I thought, wow, that is powerful.

But

what I see is, or what I view this as, is nothing but an externality.

of giving a sector a hall pass such that they're no longer subject to the same laws and standards as the rest of the people in their industry.

I think you're 100%.

That's a very good specific.

Specifically, when we implemented 230 to give nascent technologies protection from the liability most media companies face when they slander or they defame or they spread misinformation and people start dying.

When we removed, when we gave them that liability shield, they started behaving recklessly.

And we haven't adapted our laws in the last 26 years to recognize that these guys are now responsible for the majority of the information we consume.

So into that void stepped the government that said, hey, when it goes viral that there is an outbreak among teenagers of the enlargement of hearts and there really isn't any data to support that it's above where it was before, we would like you to stop to check that data and to make sure it doesn't spread to everybody such that nobody wants to get their kids or their teens vaccinated.

And correctly, correctly, legally, you could say the government shouldn't be telling us what to say.

It's a really powerful argument.

The government should not be telling media companies what to say.

I get it, except that

this is what they've done, these right-wingers all the time, is go to

put lawsuits in front of these people that are doing research.

Every single person I talk to that I have talked to in the past at the Stanford Internet Observatory, everywhere else, they have clammed up like you can't, even off the record, they've clammed up.

And it's crazy.

And it's because they're threatening them.

They're going to threaten them.

And they're using this First Amendment as a cudgel when it's all cynical.

It is not a first free speech issue for these people.

It is a, we don't want you to say this because our constituency is a bunch of dumbasses and we want them to stay stupid.

And, you know, perhaps the government shouldn't be involved, but these researchers, are you kidding me?

Like, they're going to sue them out of existence.

This is a, this is a patented technique these people.

I wish the Democrats would use these, Democratic or liberals use these lawsuits more as a cudgel.

But this is a perfected methodology of these groups.

And people like Jim Jordan are the most cynical people on earth.

They're not interested in the truth.

They're interested in shutting down,

you know, shutting down researchers who are telling the truth.

They just don't want, because they believe some of them do.

And you've seen the huge rise in anti-vax power.

There's been so many powers of anti-vax people, people not wanting to get their kids vaccinated.

You know, just like what happened with COVID, this is natural selection happening again, right?

Because a lot of these kids are going to get diseases that don't get vaccinated that have been out of,

that have not happened for decades and decades.

And then the ones who do get vaccinated won't.

And it's, I just, it's so irresponsible on so many levels.

I just don't, I don't know what to say.

When we talk about this stuff, we naturally kind of throw up our arms and tech companies will throw up their arms and their go-to is the delusion of complexity that these are intractable, unsolvable problems.

And for me, it all goes back to the same place and the same potential solution.

And that is

the dissenter's voice is really important.

The first people online who said, well, I think the virus originated in a lab in China were called jingoists and dangerous.

And it ends up, there's probably more veracity to that statement than we'd originally thought.

They don't know.

Let me just, Scott, I'm going to press you there.

Nobody knows.

Well, it's not, it's no longer, I would argue it's no longer a conspiracy theory.

Fine.

fine fine and it's only the only reason that happened was because trump kept saying gina or whatever he was saying that's what it was linked it was next to something else i think you're going to agree with my end destination right okay i think that the dissenter's voice is important and if somebody wants to say i believe mr mRNA vaccines alter your dna they should have the right to say that

The question is, when a social media platform's algorithms who are not benign, they're not malicious, they're just totally indifferent.

They're all about optimizing to get, to sell sell more Nissan ads.

You know what?

Certain types of content enrage people, specifically novel content, which oftentimes can be false or incendiary.

And what we're going to do is we're going to take that content and we're going to elevate it inorganically.

unnaturally.

We're going to elevate it such that it gets more and more sunlight than it would get on its own merits.

And when people start seeing this thing over and over and over, there is a psychological effect.

When you see something over and over and over, you tend to believe it's less crazy than it might be when it only got the natural sunlight based on the merit of the science behind it.

So when a media company, and these are media companies, algorithmically elevates content for their economic benefit, why on earth would they not be subject to the same scrutiny, laws, and obligations as every other media company that decides to elevate content and put it on their prime time and say that Hugo Chavez was weaponizing voting machines?

Well, you know that's a lie, but you elevated it to prime time and you continue to lie about it.

So you have to pay $800 million.

But when there's 3 million times that amount of content on Meta, they're not liable.

It's yep, I agree.

I agree.

Let's sue the bastards.

Let people sue the fucking bastards.

That's what I say.

Well, we got to have carve-outs to 230.

They do.

Anyway.

Okay, let's move on to our next big story.

We've talked a lot about Lena Khan's record as the FTC chair and whether she's taking on Meta, Microsoft, or Activision Blizzard.

she's lost more than she's won.

When one hedge fund is making the most of that losing track record and finding a winning strategy in betting against Khan, according to the Wall Street Journal, by anticipating the failure of Khan's FTC cases and investing in trading accordingly, Florida-based Pentwater Capital is reaping the benefits in a big way.

The CEO of the fund telling the journal after a recent FTC loss, we have had the ability to take something that would have made tens of millions of dollars and instead make many, many times that amount.

They've clearly hired lawyers to go over this because they thought the strategy she had was wrong and weak and they bet against it.

In the case of the Pentwater CEO, he spoke about a recent FTC action against pharmaceutical giant Amgen, saying it was just clear from the reading of the complaint, the government wouldn't be able to prove its case.

I was very surprised the FCC would bring such a weak case.

Not just Pentwater, there's others finding success with the strategy.

This guy doesn't think it's going to last too long because she's going to win at some point.

But what do you think of this?

What would you think about this?

This is interesting.

I thought it was interesting.

I thought it was interesting too, but I think it was unfair to paint this guy as the villain.

You know, hedge funds are.

I don't think they did, did they?

It made it feel like he was doing something wrong, is the way I read it.

Um,

look,

this is a good bet, and that is that over time, over the last 30 years, betting on the side of mergers going through and the government's inability to block mergers has been a good bet.

And when it, when a stock declines 20% on the threat of a lawsuit from the DOJ or the FTC,

it's just a good bet to say, no, I think this merger, I think the whatever you want to call it, the power of capitalism or judges to err on the side of deals getting done, whatever it is.

I mean, the most ridiculous one, literally the most ridiculous one was when the DOJ under Trump filed suit against

ATT merger.

Against ATT taking over Time Warner.

And that, I mean, that was just ridiculous.

But anyways,

this guy is basically betting on lobbyists and betting on

these organizations' power to get these deals through?

And he's been more right than wrong.

How hard is it to this

last year?

Khan said, I'm certainly not someone who thinks success is marked by 100% court record.

If you never bring these hard cases, I think there's a severe cost to that that can lead to stagnation and stasis.

Now, the CEO noted that is that she'll win at some point, or they will win at some point on some of these things.

And the long-awaited Amazon antitrust case is expecting to be filed in federal court this week.

They'll probably probably be looking at this.

Another harder one, I think they just, there's no such thing as an ironclad case, but on the weak ones, it's good to bet against Lena Kahn in that regard.

Yeah, there's two, there's two.

A more active FTC is probably a good thing.

I mean, you can say both ways.

If she keeps racking up, a lot of people would argue that the scrutiny here is what causes a change in.

a change in behavior.

Even if it ultimately ends up going through, they usually have to provide some concessions.

And all of that,

you got to respect someone in their, you know, an academic coming up and saying, I'm not afraid of anybody.

You know, I'm just regardless of whether this and also fighting the good fight.

You could argue you're supposed to fight the good fight regardless.

If you think this is the wrong deal, regardless of

the likelihood of victory here, you're supposed to fight the fight.

Having said that, and we've talked about this over and over, she needs a big win desperately.

She does.

She does.

We'll see.

It's very hard to do what she's doing, but this is just, I thought, I didn't think he came off as a thing.

I thought it was interesting.

Smart guy.

That's what I thought.

I don't know.

I just thought okay these smart guys these hedge fund guys are smart they always find money under every fucking rock there is well actually just a word on hedge funds the best way and i've been involved with hedge funds for 30 years the best way to describe is that true 30 years 20 years the best way to describe hedge funds or alternative investments is expensive but bad and that is if you look at if you look at the stock market against for the last 10 years, they've been crowded into these big names that

you don't need a hedge fund to buy Apple for you.

So they've had to find other means of trying to outperform the S P, and the majority of them have not.

All they have done is underperform the S P and then charge you 2 in 20.

So this is an industry that...

Explain what 2 and 20 is.

It's 2% of the fee and then 20% of the carry, right?

Rich people and institutions like to think that they're rich because they're smarter and smarter people should have access to a luxury brand and something better.

So instead of just investing in SPY or index or ETF funds, which is exactly what they should be doing, they hire expensive groups of people with big degrees and they say, we're going to to find alpha and different types of underappreciated investments.

And you're going to give us $100 and every year we get $2 of that.

So if you have a hedge fund that has $10 billion under management, on January 1, you get $200 million.

It's a really good business when it gets to scale.

And then if we double that money and we turn $10 billion into $20 billion, we get another...

another $2 billion.

We get 2% of the assets under management and we get 20% of the upside.

And the reality is the majority of alternative investment vehicles that charge you outrageous fees.

Vanguard, I think, charges you 10 basis points or 0.1 every year and none of the upside.

And most Vanguard ETFs have outperformed the majority of these really expensive alternative investments.

That's a very good point, Mink people.

I always say the only people that always get paid are government officials and tax officials and venture capitalists.

They always get paid no matter how low-cost ETF and index loans.

It's the way to go.

It's the way to go.

Anyway, that's really interesting.

But this guy managed to find a little in.

They managed to find a little inn.

Anyway, let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

Matthias Stopfner is the chairman and CEO of Axel Springer, the German media company that owns Politico and Insider, among many others.

They also own some German papers, I understand.

His latest book is The Trade Trap: How to Stop Doing Business with Dictators.

I've interviewed him many times, know him pretty well, a really interesting media figure.

Welcome, Matthias.

Hi, Carol.

Hi, Scott.

Anyway, we're going to get to the book.

But first, I just would love to get your thoughts on the Rupert Murdoch news.

And

I'm going to put retirement in quotes because I don't think that old crone is going anywhere.

But go ahead.

Tell me what you think.

Well, I have no particular insights.

I think it is a complicated succession story, it seems.

I think it is

an interesting retirement age at 92.

The question is whether that is really kind of the mark of a new era of media ownership, because I think really this kind of

type of media owner, media mogul

is probably over.

And that's why it may be the end of an era.

And as we are always open for change and new things, the new era may be even better.

Let's see.

It could be.

Has Murdoch influenced the way you do business?

You were described as a press baron for the digital age, part Murdoch and also part Musk in a New York magazine profile.

But has he influenced you or who influences you?

Well, the figures that really had an impact on my

kind of thinking are more

journalists, publishers,

in the sense of active writers, authors.

But of course, if it is about doing business and creating an incredibly powerful and global media property, of course, Rupert Murdoch is definitely a towering figure.

And as always, with these towering figures, it's

white and black and some grains in between.

I'm just curious, when you think about that, the idea of what is a modern press digital person?

How would you describe it?

Well, there is first this old kind of

saying, if you want to have influence on a newspaper, you should not own it.

And I think that defines very well well a fine line that

I think modern media owners should respect.

Of course, we have values, and hopefully, we are transparent with the values, and the values define a corporate culture.

And there's nothing, no such thing as a neutral media asset or neutral journalist.

It's always human beings, but it should be

not the reflection of the owner's views.

And I think a modern factor would be that you should clearly distinguish between your own views and preferences and the views of your publications.

They should and may not and cannot be in sharp contrast.

That would be also to a certain degree by Goddard.

But keep a distance, keep a healthy distance and don't try to make the media brand an amplification of your own views.

I think that is a very important thing.

Then the second aspect would be that technology plays a completely different role today.

And at least the role of technology should be deeply understood.

You don't need to be a techie in order to do that.

But that is definitely a different priority.

And we may also, yeah, and we may also have to rethink the whole role that a media brand or a publication plays.

It used to be the media brand.

that attracted the readers.

I think today it is way more the authors, the creatives, the creators.

And so perhaps a modern publisher, a digital publisher, is more a bit like a music company where you create an environment and you create an infrastructure and a technology and a marketing that helps great talent to excel and to reach its audience.

But

they definitely play a bigger role than that used to be the case.

So

those would be three criteria, but there are many more perhaps that define a new form of media ownership.

All right, Scott's going to ask a question, but let's talk about the trade trap which you write in this book about the future of our freedom, which you are expressing your opinions, by the way.

And we need to decouple from countries like Russia and China.

How would that happen exactly?

Well, the most important point is

that we have to define that really as an international project and not as a form of unilateral decoupling.

That is the way that the United States have chosen so far.

I think that is not going to solve the problem and it is only weakening the United States.

And if Europe thinks that in dealing with China, with Russia, with other autocracies or dictatorships, they can do it alone, I think they're making a big mistake.

That's why I truly think that isolationism is the absolute counter-recipe for what we got to do.

We need to form, and that is the concrete proposal that I'm making, we need to form a free alliance of democracies that do business together based on three criteria, acceptance of the rule of law, acceptance of human rights, and acceptance of certain CO2 targets.

And everybody who accepts these criteria can become a member in a very informal way and can do tariff-free trade.

Everybody who doesn't accept that can still do trade, but has to pay high tariffs.

And I think that will strengthen democracies.

It's a bit like a tax reform.

In the short term, it may have some costs and perhaps some downsides.

In the mid and long term, it is by far overcompensating these costs and downsides.

And with that, strengthening and defending democracy.

That is, in a nutshell, the proposal that I'm making.

But again, it is only going to work if we reach critical mass.

America can do it alone.

Europe can do it alone.

This transatlantic alliance is the basis.

But then, as many democracies as possible should join from Japan to Canada and Australia to democratic parts of Asia, Latin America, and very importantly, India.

India is a pretty decisive country here.

A more global and woker NATO.

Matthias, good to see you.

We've been having a lot of conversations about the writer's strike and unions more broadly.

And

the term we use is there's a difference between being right and being effective.

And loosely speaking, I've been saying the unions in the U.S.

are right but not effective.

And I would argue in Germany, they're both right and effective.

I'm curious, coming from a nation that is highly unionized, any observations you might have around the rider's strike and what is the difference between unions' role in the U.S.

and their effectiveness and in Germany?

I think a good balance between labor representatives, unions,

and shareholders and executives is healthy and has, in a way, over the long term, paid off for a more stable, more predictable, and fairer system of economy.

All exaggerations are wrong and are worrying.

And I think it is very important that good unions, good labor representatives, really see themselves as the representatives of the workforce of the labor.

And you could always say, in that sense, the interests of the well-being of a company and the well-being of the workers are very much aligned.

Only if the company does well, only if the company is successful, it is in the long run healthy and

good for the employee.

So concretely in that context, without interfering at all and

having a judgment

on the strike in America, I'm a European, so it's hard for me to judge.

But I think in general, whether it's Europe or America, you can never fight progress.

And the most important thing is you have to embrace progress.

You have to embrace progress.

You can discuss and can have a controversial discussion about what is appropriate in order to fairly compensate

creatives, for example, in that concrete context.

But don't try to fight artificial intelligence.

That is a lost case.

We got to embrace this.

We got to benefit from that.

And I see for the whole industry, for the creative industry, for journalists, for script writers, for actors, for musicians, I see a lot more opportunity if we really use artificial intelligence in order to get empowered and be more creative and be even better with regard to the quality of our creative products.

But to just say

we have to fight that kind of progress, it's not going to work.

So when you're talking about progress, you know, it's interesting because Biden, when he was, President Biden was talking about China in his speech speech at the UN General Assembly last week, he was shifting it a little bit.

And he's saying, We're for de-risking, not decoupling with China, which means acknowledging where they're headed.

And we seek to responsibly manage the competition between our countries so it does not tip into conflict.

Um, do you, and he also, of course, did the prisoner swap last week: five Americans freed in Iran in exchange for five Iranians who'd been in U.S.

custody, plus Iran getting access to six billion dollars in previously flown assets.

Is that the kind of thing you're talking about?

The idea of

a more flexible democratic initiatives or not?

So, first of all, I think these terms, whether it's decoupling or de-risking, don't matter too much.

I mean, it's just a packaging.

The question is really: what is the essence, what is the substance?

And it is very clear that on the one hand, we cannot stop doing business with a country like China tomorrow.

And on the other hand,

I think for me it is crystal clear that we

can't continue on the old path.

And the old path was

the more you do business, you as a democracy, you do business with a non-democracy, the more the non-democracy will turn to a freedom and human rights oriented model.

And that has not been the case.

This old paradigm changed through trade didn't simply happen or it happened the other way around because the more we dealt with Russia,

particularly we, the Europeans, the Germans, the more we strengthened Putin and created basically the Putin that we have to deal with today in this terrible war.

The EU is on a daily basis transferring more than a billion Euro to this dictatorship because we have created an unnecessary energy dependency from Russia.

If trade relationships turn into dependency, it's always bad.

That was the case with Russia, and it is also the case with China.

More than 90% of U.S.

antibiotics are based on components that are exclusively produced in China.

So you could say our health system is already to a certain degree dependent from China.

That is unhealthy and we need to come up with an alternative.

And this alternative, I think, cannot be we stop business tomorrow.

It cannot be unilateral decoupling.

It cannot be a third way for Europe that we try to be best friends with both.

That's not going to work.

We need to step by step reduce dependency, but I think we need to do it based on a self-confident and bold

proposal and behavior.

And that is the one that I'm making in my book, The Trade Trap, because we have been led in a trap.

Now, how to escape?

By saying we join forces, we basically re-establish a transatlantic alliance that is not only a security alliance like the NATO, it is also a trade alliance, perhaps a bit in the spirit of the old GET agreements that work pretty well and way better than W2O, which is a dysfunctional bureaucracy and should cease operation sooner or later.

So you've made big investments in two

growth media companies, Politico and Business Insiders.

You made big investments, which naturally connotes that you're bullish on American media and bullish on the American economy.

Why is it that you're bullish on America and specifically American media?

Well, first of all, experience, because if we look to the developments over the last couple of hundred years and decades, America did pretty well, despite some bad-mouthing, some adversarial trends.

America has a very, very vital ability to, in a way, reinvent itself.

And also, its institutions, its

democratic institutions, have a very strong ability to prevail.

Even if there are crises, we have seen some also in the very recent past.

The American institutions are strong, and the American people are very strong.

This free will of the American people is

the most important thing that I count on.

In America, the value of freedom is deeply rooted in the individual.

And the Americans will never allow to be in a kind of dependent relationship, neither to their own government, which they always want to keep under control in a very healthy manner,

but even more with regard to other nations and particularly with regard to non-democratic nations.

So, in that sense, America remains for me, despite all the crises and the grass on the neighbor's green, maybe always greener, maybe that insiders and

Americans may see some things in darker tones.

But I still think that the likelihood that America is going to remain a healthy democracy is, despite current events, is very high.

And that this kind of aspiration that is very kind of strong in the American society is also an important factor that you can count on.

And that combined with the absolute size of the market, it is still the biggest democratic economy in the world.

I mean, it simply makes it a very attractive market.

Scale is way different.

Look at the European markets.

They are all limited also by languages and geographies that are way smaller.

So the potential in America is simply in a different dimension.

So you're very bullish.

You know, we're a year away from the presidential election.

We've got a government shutdown looming.

There's a concern about disinformation, particularly with AI in the mix.

We got some crazy going on.

We have bad theater goers among our elected officials.

When you think about that,

you are making a very bullish case, but is there things that you and your publications are doing to combat that or not?

It's just you're not worried about it.

Well, yes,

I can give you a very concrete answer.

The thing that worries me perhaps most, and that is a global trend, but it is also very strong in America, is polarization.

I think polarization is super dangerous.

And polarization based on the idea of alternative facts, where each bubble has its own facts,

is even more dangerous because that destroys the fundament of democracy.

Also, it destroys the fundament of free decisions during an election, for example.

Because if you have no mutual factual base, what do you decide upon?

So it is basically opening a door towards manipulation and

propaganda that is then closer to non-democracy.

So that worries me.

And that is, you could say, on the one hand, a political phenomenon on all sides and bubbles in various areas of society.

But it is also something that, unfortunately, some media or

an important amount of media brands are amplifying by also taking predictable sides.

As I said, there is no neutral media outlet, but I think a media brand should always keep a certain degree of unpredictability,

being unbiased, being non-partisan, and being critical towards all sides.

Our role is not to advocate a good idea.

Our role is to ask critical questions, to do perhaps unwelcome investigation, come up with investigative news and scoops, create news in that sense, and be a critical reflection of what the powerful in our society are doing.

I think that is the role of media.

And now you could say basically in America, a lot of media brands are doing pretty much the opposite of what I've just described.

Maybe now we take the contrarian bet.

If almost everybody does this, to do the opposite, opposite, maybe a good contrarian case.

That's our bet.

You're also investing a lot in AI.

You

did some cost-cutting measures across Axelsbringer, laying off some people.

And it was tied to AI, with staffers told that the paper would be, quote, parting ways with colleagues who have tasks that in a digital world are performed by AI and/or automated processes.

And when

we talked last year at Code, you stressed the importance of, as you were noting right now, editorial quality in journalism and digital journals in particular.

Are you concerned at at all that AI has some issues which could also create more polarization and problems?

Clara, honestly, I'm always concerned because, wouldn't I be concerned?

I would be naive and stupid.

They are always dangers.

And with every progress, with every new technology, there is a danger, of course.

I see that, and I see also the need for immediate and strict regulation that protects the IP of the content creator, because otherwise, there is no incentive to ever invest into a film, invest into music, invest into journalism, invest into science.

So that is absolutely vital.

But, and this is my important, but I see a lot more opportunities than threats.

And very concretely in the media industry,

what we have now the historic opportunity to basically delegate all the boring stuff of our business that we had to do.

And I give you some examples, that is the technological part of production.

That is, to a certain degree, error correction, that is translation, that is layout, that is photo selection, that is kind of of aggregating information that is out there and rewrite it.

All that can be delegated to bots step by step, and they will do a good job.

They will do a better job than humans.

And then journalists, human journalists, can focus on what always has been the core, and that is go out and observe reality, describe reality, be a good reporter.

Go somewhere and investigate something that was not supposed to get published and create investigative scoops.

Have a correspondent at a place on earth where nobody is and nobody sees what is happening there, and come up with very individual and unconventional analysis and opinion pieces, editorials that stimulate discussion.

Those are the things that have always been the interesting part of journalism.

They have distinguished great brands from not-so-great brands.

That was the fun part of our business, and that we can do now.

And we can allocate money and investments from the boring part to the exciting part.

So, Matthias, we caught up a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't know this about you.

You have four sons, so obviously, that forces you to think about the future.

You're sort of at the helm of the bobsled of politics, business, both in Europe and in the U.S.

What do you think the biggest threat, when you think about your sons and their lives after we're gone, what do you think is the biggest threat facing democracies?

Yeah,

Scott, I dedicated my book to my kids because I think the biggest threat is that we lose democracy.

That is what I'm most worried about, that we lose this fundament of a free and open society, of individual freedom, of human rights.

It is driven by economic success and the dependency that step by step is created from countries that have very different values.

And I'm also worried by this by gotten approach that we have more and more companies who excel with regard to ESG standards and focus on every little detail, if it is about gender pronouns, whatever.

And the same company, the same CEO is delegating large parts of the business to non-democratic countries where people are killed because they are gay or women get stoned because of adultery.

That is double standards.

And that shows me that democracy is under attack.

Also, if I look to the numbers of Freedom House, and that also the consensus that it is something that we need to protect is going to disappear, because people think democracy and freedom is granted, it's there, it's going to remain forever.

It's not.

If I'm looking to my four kids, that they may live up in a different world, authoritarian system, surveillance by the state.

Everything is monitored and they are just acting like slaves serving to an authoritarian force.

That is my dystopia.

And this I want to avoid.

And that's why I'm getting up in the morning, trying to be a good journalist and run a media company appropriately.

And that's also why I wrote that book, to stimulate a discussion.

And getting back at the end, what is the biggest threat to free trade from your perspective right now?

The biggest threat to free trade is unilateral decoupling, which is going to foster nationalism.

And that is very unhealthy because we live in a global world and we can only solve the challenges from climate change to

the the kind of big economic challenges.

We can only solve that together and we cannot solve it in a kind of isolated, isolationist, nationalistic manner.

And the other big worry is that if we don't do anything and if we just continue as we do, that we then get undermined by non-democracies.

And

we have seen the writings at the wall.

I mean, just to illustrate that, that the German car industry is pretty dependent on China already.

That the CEO of Daimler had to publicly apologize for an advertisement that was quoting the Dalai Lama in a very, very harmless manner.

And then

when I asked the Chinese ambassador, did he really have to apologize?

The answer was, not really, only if Daimler wanted to continue to sell cars in China.

Then that gives me a flavor of what may happen if we don't do something.

Yeah, absolutely.

Anyway, Matthias is a really interesting book, and

it's true.

They're all linked together in that way.

Anyway, his book is called The Trade Trop, How to Stop Doing Business with Dictators, which I think we should all do immediately.

And it's out now.

Thank you, Matthias.

Thank you, Cara.

Thank you, Scott.

Thanks, Matthias.

Good to see you.

He is an impressive man.

I don't always agree with him, but I got to say, what do you think, Scott?

I think Matthias is a great role model for young people and especially young men.

He's been married for a long time.

He has four sons.

He's a baller professionally, and he takes seriously protecting democracy, protecting people who are less fortunate than him.

You know,

I think he's a great role model for young men and young professionals.

I will note that they're the one company, media company in Germany, that really stresses

issues around anti-Semitism and signing things and pledging and

making people sign it who work there and work with them.

Anyway, Scott, 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.

Do you have any?

Wins is my, it's my brother's birthday.

Happy birthday, David Swisher.

That's my win.

No, yes, that is.

It is.

He's a great brother.

He's a great.

He's the one you don't hear about.

I don't know.

The quiet one.

And he prefers to remain quiet.

And so happy.

That's so unswisher-like.

I know.

He's so unswitch.

We don't know where they dropped him.

They dropped him from like a, like a, down the chimney or something.

He's like quiet and considerate and much more conservative than me and Jeff.

But it just, he's a very, he's, just works hard.

He's a hard worker.

And yeah, he's quiet.

It's not a swisher trait in any way.

Though he has a lot to say.

You'd like him quite a bit.

When he talks, he's very, he's very analytical and everything.

Anyway, I love him.

He's a great brother.

The new Apple, speaking of power of Apple, they have a documentary coming out on supermodels that looks fantastic.

You're looking forward to that.

I am.

It looks great.

I love those ladies because I think they really are really interesting and powerful.

And I'm interested in the business of it.

Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and Cindy Crawford.

And I just think they were such a force.

And just, I don't know, I just think they're interesting all individually.

I'm particularly impressed with Christy Turlington, I have to say,

in in lots of ways.

So I'm excited for it.

That's going to be a win for me.

I'm going to watch that.

And not just because they're, I don't particularly think two moms are prettier than other women, actually,

as a lesbian.

But I just think it looks interesting.

Looks super interesting.

And all of these thoughts running through my head.

Don't say anything.

Don't say anything.

Don't say anything.

I feel as obviously Kevin McCarthy getting pulled around by the nose by Matt Gates.

Honestly, what a failure of leadership on his part.

And I'm not sure there's anything he can do, but man, if you have like such a ridiculous forehead, like Matt Gates in charge of our country, I'm moving to Germany and living with the

Matthias.

That's what I'm doing.

I'm calling him the forehead.

He's a Joey fucking bag of donuts.

No, he's not.

He's something else.

I'm going to think of a name for him.

Okay.

I have two wins.

My first win is

the FBI.

Their mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States.

And they investigate everything from terrorism and counterintelligence to cyber crime to organized crime to violent crime to weapons of mass destruction.

And

their

action or their investigation against Senator Bob Menendez, where they found...

$450,000 in killish and gold bars.

And also on his computer, he had Googled how much is a gold bar worth.

And he's claiming that it's persecution against Latinos and that he, as a function of his Cuban heritage, would take money out.

But the

distinctive, the alleged corruption here, the only people who are more disappointed to hear about the FBI going after Senator Bob Menendez were the far right who would like to deposition the FBI is anything but what they are.

And what the FBI is a group of thousands of men and women who take an oath to the the constitution and who do an outstanding job and just go just try to protect the constitution this guy is a walking corruption oh it's just and then you know who supported him george santos was supporting

gold

i mean i just it's almost it's almost as sort of hilarious the money in the clothes with his name on it with his name on it the gold bars gold bars do you have any gold bars scott i don't own no i don't own any gold bars i thought you might Someone asked me, Does Scott have gold bars?

I go, I bet he does.

Gold bars?

Yeah, somewhere.

I don't know.

Remember on Billions where they went to the safe, him and the wife?

Oh, their go bag?

Their go bag, but there's gold bars.

They're fucking everywhere.

I don't think anyone should have a go bag.

I think when you build a go bag, you've decided to elevate yourself from the comedy of man.

And I think we're all in this together.

Yeah.

As I say that from Marlebone.

You know, to be honest, Scott, if I needed to, I'd trade you for a gold bar if I had to.

In the end times, I go take him.

Gold bar, not bad.

Not bad.

I take that as a compliment.

Not bad.

It's

$62,000 for a keto, just so you know.

Yeah, you're worth $62,000.

Oh, speaking of supermodels, by the way,

California Governor Newsom vetoed the state ban on driverless trucks.

I have called AB 316 stupid.

California has to lean into innovation like this.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, guys.

He was right to do it.

We can't be the state.

Then they wander over to wherever wherever the fuck they wander over to Texas, where they're doing it too.

But California has to be innovating in car.

You know how much I love these.

The lawmakers were speaking of, were egged on by unions and they wanted a human on board for these things.

And I just,

over fears of safety, which I think are misspent, job losses, there's not enough truckers.

Gavin Newsom said no.

And I'm, I got to say, I'm with that supermodel of a governor on that one.

By the way, I think it's looking like he's running for president.

But anyways, different talk show.

Well, that's why he did this, but he's right too.

I don't care.

He's right.

He's correct.

My other win is on your recommendation, I watch Painkiller.

That's not my win.

That series was a fraction as good as Dope Stick, and it was still great.

The beginning of every episode is really, really

moving.

But my win is there's a leading man in it who is so outstanding.

And Matthew Broderick's always good, but that's not who I'm going to talk about.

Do you know who Taylor Kitch is?

Oh, yeah, he was great.

Yes, of course.

He was in Friday Night Lights.

And then he was in

Lone Survivor.

He was great in True Detective.

Oh, yeah, he was in that.

I forgot.

Anyways, this guy, I'll tell you, you can't watch this guy and watch his digression and his fall into addiction and how he tries to get out of it and not feel

empathy for addicts.

And this is.

I agree with you.

I agree with you.

First off, he is such a leading man.

He is so likable.

He is so handsome but in addition he's a you just like you just want to wrap your arms around addicts and sort of say i don't know at least me i've always looked at addicts as like it's a personal failing and get your together and and you just see this guy who has just has everything and is a really good man and strong and just has fallen to addiction.

And I just thought, I thought, I spoke to

a person who's

considered, I guess, technically a whistleblower now about a project I'm working on.

I thought, why would this person do this and speak to us?

And this person said that art is so important in terms of storytelling and empathy and progress.

And that really struck me.

And this embodied that for me, that this guy's portrayal made me so much more empathetic for addicts.

And anyways, my win is leading man, Taylor Kitch.

I think this guy is going to be an enormous, I think he could be kind of like a Marlon Brando-like figure.

i think he was fan fantastic um oddly enough this weekend amanda met one of the uh the screenwriter for it and the showrunner micah fitzerman blue i think that's who she met um and he was wanting to get back to work but um i think i worth seeing and you're right taylor kitch was amazing Yeah, really, really fantastic.

And wow, do you walk?

I mean, as always, at the end of this thing, you walk away just so upset.

Don't you want to just get a sackler, find a sackler anywhere?

That's how I felt after dope sick i live like i know they're not the only problem in the world but i wanted to find a sackler and just be very angry at him in a very angry way anyway um there's a lot of sacklers out there wandering still wandering around they didn't pay anything near what they did to this country they didn't not at all because of because of rudy giuliani as you noticed popped up in that one could you believe that of course i could and but but mary joe white too by the way someone who was had a much better reputation than rudy giuliani a whole bunch of people just totally took a digger for those terrible people for the money.

What do you got planned this week, Kara?

This week I'm going to California.

I'm going to be at Code.

Oh, that's right.

And I'll be

Orange County.

So I'll be there for a short time in LA for a short time.

And then I'm going up to San Francisco for several days

and for the weekend, doing some things around my house, some interviews.

I'm going to look at some of these efforts downtown to try to reinvigorate downtown for possible doing a podcast on it.

What are you doing?

What am I doing?

I'm going to Helsinki on Wednesday and then I come back and then I'm going to the south of France for the weekend and then I'm going to Barcelona for another work event.

Barcelona.

Barcelona.

Barcelona.

Well, that's good.

That's a great situation.

You're such an international man of mystery.

Anyway, I think we got a lot of listeners in Hollywood after all our smart things.

And I've heard from most of them and it hasn't been pretty.

What?

What do you mean?

It hasn't been pretty.

Oh, the union people are mad.

But you continue to slap the union silly for, I don't know why you keep doing it, but there you are.

That's why, right?

They're mad at you for that.

And I've heard from a lot of writers.

I quietly, I get emails.

I get emails from people saying,

you're right, dah, dah, dah, and then I get very public.

Yeah, and then the very, yeah, people are very, very upset.

Oh, can I just say, though, I sent you a picture of a woman with a dog like yours and met them.

Had a great day.

Yeah, they loved.

I took a lot of selfies, and every single person at the two weddings I was at in the past two weeks, every single person, how's Scott?

Everybody.

It's literally like we're married.

That makes me feel good.

It's all of them.

They love the show.

It makes them happy.

They hug.

It was nice.

It was very lovely.

Well, any person who owns a Great Dane is someone who's affectionate and has strong character because you have to.

Did you see that New York Times article about owning a big dog in the city, though?

Actually, big dogs, there was some misinformation in that article.

Great Danes are fantastic apartment dogs because they're actually quite sedentary.

It's the young gun dogs you don't want, like a Vieschla or a German shorter pointer.

That is what you do not want in a city because they will will take off.

Yeah.

Okay.

They will take off.

In a small apartment in New York.

Okay.

That sounds great.

Anyway, how's your great Dane?

Oh, she's adorable.

Although last night I was on the computer and I'm like, get away from me.

You know, she comes over and great danes will rear up their hindquarters as a means of affection.

And I'm like, get away from me.

And I'm not exaggerating.

She went over to her dog bed outside of the TV room, which she never does.

And then I was going to bed.

She used to come down to bed with me.

She wouldn't even look at me.

Yeah.

She wouldn't, she like, wouldn't even, I'm like, I'm like, come on, sweetheart.

And she like wouldn't even look up at me.

And then she didn't come down till like three in the morning.

It's literally,

I am in a passive-aggressive relationship with my great dad.

Oh, I can see that.

That gives you that look, that side-eye.

Very emotional.

Very emotional.

I know you want me.

God damn.

You know you want me.

I am not an affectionate spigot.

You can turn off and on.

Because your wife is, I'm assuming, head-on, like when she's pissed, you know it, right?

And this is.

Oh, no.

You don't want to piss off the Panzer Tank Division on this.

No, you best stay out of that.

Yeah, this one's just do not poke the German bear.

Yeah.

What did I, whatever I said, I've, I'm sorry.

Whatever.

Anyway.

I like the dog doing that.

Oh my God.

You're so controlled by

everybody in your life.

Anyway, we want to hear from you.

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

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

Scott, that's the show and an enjoyable one it were.

We'll be back on Friday for more.

Will you read us out?

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

Ernie Andrew Tott engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows, Mil Severo, and Gadda McFane.

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

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

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

Kara, have a great rest of the week.

You too.

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

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well: collagen smoothies and cold plunges, Pilates classes, and fitness trackers.

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

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

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

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called it truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.