Electric Vehicles, Tech Giant Land Grab and Co-Host Joanna Stern

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Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

The end of Scott-Free August is upon us.

And so, it's no, it's not Louis Swisher again.

I know how much you all loved him.

He was amazing.

But I'm joined by my final guest co-host, Wall Street Journal columnist Joanna Stern.

Joanna, welcome.

It is so great to be here.

And I am also a Louis fan.

Yeah.

He was really good, wasn't he?

He was really good.

It's a lot to live up to.

I know it is.

I know it is.

And you better do it.

And I was going to start off with a Scott impression, but I don't

go for it.

Kiera, you know, my penis problems.

And here I am.

It's another week.

Is that how you hear them?

I'm just curious.

That's how I hear him.

Really?

No, I mean, he's so much more insightful than that, but every time he does talk about such problems, I laugh.

Do you?

Do you think they're funny or should we stop them?

That's one of the debates we're having.

I mean, he honestly, it seems so genuine and seems he's being so honest about it.

It's not even so funny.

I just think he's really just self-deprecating and being honest.

I mean, maybe he's not and it's more of a joke, but you should pull your listeners.

A lot of them think it's too much, honestly.

Okay.

And we'll see, you know, we'll see if that will do something, but sometimes they get overwhelmed with it, especially people who listen with kids and stuff like that.

But he likes them.

Maybe he can move on to another body part.

That's our great hope for him in any case.

How are you doing?

What's going on?

You're at the Wall Street Journal.

You continue to do very excellent videos.

Thank you.

Tell me about what's going on there at the journal.

Things are good.

I just did this big piece on EVs, which I'm hoping we can talk about.

We are going to do that.

Yep.

100%.

Yeah.

I've enjoyed all of your other co-hosts too who are in some legacy media areas and I've enjoyed your conversations with them.

So I'm ready.

I'm ready.

Okay.

All right.

So we have a lot to talk about today.

The Silicon Valley elite at the center of a real estate mystery, for example, Joanna's column about the best EVs on the market.

And I have a lot of thoughts on EVs.

I drive a lot of them.

We'll speak with Professor Peter Turchin about some alarming predictions on social and political unrest in his new book, End Times.

Well, that's a happy thing.

But first, former President Donald Trump is capitalizing off his latest arrest in Georgia, no surprise, raking over $7 million in merchandise and fundraising so far.

I didn't think that was a lot, but I guess it is.

I thought he'd do a lot better.

Less than two hours after leaving the Fulton County Jail, the Trump Save America joint fundraising committee was selling a variety of merch, displaying his mugshot and the words, never surrender.

Of course, it's a photo of him surrendering, as so many.

people pointed out, but whatever, whatever.

Irony is not dead.

Trump and his aides reportedly discuss what the mugshot would look like beforehand, obviously settling on Defiant.

I have said he looks looks like Vigo the Carpathian from Ghostbusters 2.

Trump also used the opportunity to make his return to Twitter after two and a half years off the platform.

He posted the picture.

Pop-punk band Green Day is making merch with the mugshot as well, with profits going to the Greater Good Music Charity to help those affected by the Maui fires.

I doubt Donald Trump will donate a dime to the Maui fires.

How do you think, Joanna?

What do you think of Defiance and using these moments of social media fame for profit?

Not a surprise, I guess.

I guess my biggest question has been, you mentioned the 7.1 million, but how much are others going to make off of the mugs, the literal mug shots,

the mug mug shots?

I think this is a very

clever marketing and merch angle for people.

I mean, it blew up on Etsy and people are selling them all over the place.

Look, I think there's both sides of this, which is profiting.

It's okay.

You've got Trump and his campaign, but you've also got the other side, which all not happy with Trump or happy to see him in this mugshot.

And they want to, you know, have their, their t-shirts and their, their merch like it's a

big concert.

Would you buy one?

I think I kind of would.

I don't, I wouldn't buy one for me personally, but there are certainly, I could name three or four people in my life that I would buy one for.

I actually should buy one right now for my brother-in-law.

And it's fun.

And I think that's where the fun in this is, is that you've got people who are just Trump haters and non-Trump fans and they're buying this because they're like, look, he's finally, finally, right so you've got both sides i also love that he did obviously he he practiced and posed right i was thinking about that the night before i was like oh i bet they're having a meeting right now discussing the pose right what he's going to do he's going to do like blue steel some people i i had i made the joke blue steel s-t-e-a-l

um some people thought he was going to do a smile uh i he has to do project um he couldn't be hapless or crazy like there was one lady who had a crazy one looks like she was going to eat your face Jenna Ellis obviously looked like she was posing for like a selfie at

Fudruckers or something like that.

In any case,

we'll see where it goes.

I just think it's just slightly sad about America that this is what we're doing with it, but I guess it's expected.

Speaking of expected, the iPhone 15 is expected to come in September.

As usual, rumors have begun.

Apple insiders have suggested there may be a significant price hike for the new devices, which may have an upgrade in wireless charging capabilities, better cameras, the switch to USB-C charging port.

Oh, good God.

Apple's latest quarter earnings showed iPhone revenue down 2%.

Joanna, fill us in.

What do you think?

What do you think?

I think it's going to be, you know, another iPhone.

I think

that's where we're going.

If the thing that we're most excited about or talking the most about is a port.

Well, that just tells you where we are and the fact that we're at the iPhone 15, that there's not a lot of fanfare of these things.

Though I do think the port thing is interesting for a few reasons and it will probably be the center of what I cover this fall, because first of all, it's the reason Apple's doing this, right?

This isn't like their choice.

They were like, let's finally put on the thing that everyone would like.

No, that's not why they're doing this.

They're doing this because the EU passed legislation that basically said, hey, you've got to do this by 2024.

If you want to sell your iPhones in the EU, which I'm thinking that's a sizable market for Apple, they're going to sell there.

So they've got to make this change.

And of course, people have wondered, okay, are they going to change the port everywhere, right?

Maybe they would just make a special edition of the iPhone for the EU, but they're not going to do that.

This doesn't make sense.

In fact, I interviewed Apple executives last year and they said, yeah, we're going to have to comply, right?

And so they're complying.

But this is actually the thing that affects a lot of people.

You buy the phone and then you figure, hey, I'm going to use my 10 years of plugs and my cables.

I've got them, right?

It's next to my bed.

It's in my car.

It's at my office.

Like, these are the things.

And then this year they're going to change it.

Though, and I should ask you how you feel about that, your an iPhone.

I hate it.

I have so many chargers.

You know, the other day I was looking, you know, everyone in my family needs a charger.

And now there's, there's half of a USB C, you know, you have the plug that is half and you've got to find the car that has not the regular USB charger, but the USB 3 C charger.

And so you're constantly looking for the right dongles, right?

And then, of course, there's the dongles that go with it, some of which do work and some of which do not work.

The amount of time I spend on cables is craziness.

And of course, there's the old Android cables that used to work on, you know, Amazon stuff, but now they're all going to US, USB-C, right?

That's it, right?

Everything, including all those millions of bricks that you have that has USB.

Without the USB-C,

they're going to change those, right?

They're not going to, you're not going to have those.

So all these cars now have to have no USBs, but USB-C.

But will they get rid of USBs completely?

Yeah, USB-A, which is the bigger square one that we've had for a long time, that's going away.

It's going away.

But it's taking time, but I don't know why the car makers, as we'll get into, I just sat in six different cars.

And when I would see like only USB-A, I would be like, ugh.

I'm not buying this car.

I mean,

that's a little bit of an overstatement, but I see two.

They're going to have to have two for a long time because everybody has that, right?

They do.

Though, you know, the newer Teslas have the c and the and the this mustang that i just got is also has the the c but this is right i mean this is the pain point it's going to be near term super frustrating for everyone buying a phone there's no doubt about it long term great we'll go anywhere and it'll just be usb c until it's you know something else in you know 10 years for all the phones including android android phone for all the phones that's right so it'll be it is better long term but in near term when we're we're talking about these things, the car, the bed,

it's a pain.

It's a huge pain for people.

And I expect there to be more interest in that than, you know, some new fancy camera or some smaller bezels or, you know, the new dynamic island on every single phone.

So I think the real thing is, will there be lightning?

So lightning is the connector that's gone into the phone, right?

So like, that's the lightning.

So anything else in the phone?

We're just going to be talking about charging.

ports.

I think it's one of the big areas that it touches so many consumers versus, oh, the new iPhone Pro Max or Ultra, what they call it, has a better Zoom camera, which I think will be very cool and is something that Apple's been behind on compared to Samsung and all the Android makers.

But I think that there's going to be a lot of port conversation.

I'm going to call it Port Palooza.

Really?

That's it?

Really?

Nothing else.

Nothing else exciting.

No, no, there's going to be other stuff.

There'll be a smaller bezel.

I mean, these are the things.

When they get up there and do their little thing, they're going to talk about chargers.

I can't believe they're going to have to.

Nothing else.

And is there anything that...

No, no, they're going to come out.

I could do my long impression of what they're going to come out.

This 15 iPhone 15, they're so excited.

This is the best phone they've made yet.

It's got new colors that you've never seen before.

They're going to talk you through the whole lineup and it starts at this low price.

And we've got on the on these, we've brought all of the features from last year's pros down to the most affordable iPhone 15, right?

And you're going to have the dynamic island, which I actually was a big fan of.

I think that, you know, the little software feature at the top, which is hugely helpful.

They're bring that down.

They're going to say they made bezels smaller.

And there's some talk of sort of the redoing of the buttons and the materials that they're using.

But I think they've found that this design has been really good.

And they're, I mean, you know, I'm assuming they'll make some more space for battery and battery improvements.

And I've been writing about how bad the battery life on my iPhone 14 Pro is.

So it's a huge issue.

Why is that?

Well, Apple's not quite saying.

But what I've, what I wrote in my newsletter a few weeks ago got a lot of attention because it seems those who bought the iPhone 14 Pro last year, including me, have seen the maximum capacity of the battery, which is you start at 100 and then it deteriorates over time.

Usually it deteriorates over time incrementally, but mine has gone from 100% to 88% in less than a year.

And that's not typical.

That's typically been where I've been at two years with an iPhone 12 or something like that.

Lots of theories out there.

My leading theory is actually the battery life is not good and that there has some thermal problems.

It's warmer.

It's warmer.

And it's warmer.

And those things are not good for the phone, the battery.

But on top of that, the more you charge, the more that battery capacity depletes.

But you have to charge it if the battery is.

That's right.

That's right.

So that's my take.

And that in this 14 Pro, they added some things like the dynamic island, like the always on screen that started depleting the battery more and made battery life suffer for many of us that used those things.

And so we charged more, we charged more, and that caused the maximum capacity of the battery to go down.

There are some other theories, you know, about actual the battery itself wasn't the right, was made by different suppliers and things like that.

But I keep thinking it's something to do with the heat and the more use of that battery.

But what are you excited about?

I mean, are you?

I'm not.

I just am going to buy it again.

I don't care.

I just decided I'm going to buy the next one.

I don't know why I'm buying the next one, but I am.

And then I urge my family to buy the next one and they're like, why?

This one works fine that's what my kids do and they just don't want to get a new one um i will just cuz

and then i don't know why i am and turn it in and get some money for it and then i don't know i don't know why i buy the next one yeah see i still love covering the iphone launch

even though it's it's not a significant tech announcement of the year anymore Right, but how are they going to do with it?

That's the thing.

It still pays for a lot of bills over there down at Apple.

It's going to drop off, right?

Is it dropping off or not?

Or everybody's, all young people are using them.

There's no, there's not a big Android gang.

There's a drop off in the smartphone market in general right now.

And I think some of that's post-COVID.

People were upgrading their devices and using them more during COVID.

I think some of that is just longevity of these devices.

You know, Apple also has built

a really solid phone they don't want to break because they want that resale value of that phone to be good.

And that's become huge in other markets.

So look, they've got other things.

Yeah, they've got other things.

They've got the Great Vision Pro, which I know you guys love talking about on here.

You liked it kind of, right?

Oh, I did like it.

I did like it.

I think, yeah, it's, as you said, I listened to that podcast very carefully between you and Scott, and I think it's a long-term bet.

This is the starting point for them, and it's a very interesting.

way ahead.

All right, before we get to their big story, I want to post an apology.

I posted a tweet about Vivek Ramaswamy that got some attention.

The tweet was prompting others to create nicknames for him.

And I pointed one out.

I did not actually make up the nickname.

I'm not going to repeat it actually, but using his beginning of his name was

Smarmy.

And I think he is Smarmie, actually.

And if you look at the definition of the name, please look it up.

But he called it out on CNN.

Listen to him calling it out on CNN.

He called it out a bunch of places.

But go ahead.

But I was responding to a question where someone asked me,

what racism have I experienced in recent years?

And I answered honestly, most of that racism has come from the modern left.

It's happening during the course of this campaign.

Kara Swisher calling me Rama Smarmi the other day and reveling in making twists of my last name.

People effectively reducing me to the color of my skin and my attributes.

That comes today from the modern left.

I think this is nonsense.

Honestly, he's still nonsensical.

It was stupid.

It was dumb to make fun of the name.

The American Foundation pointed out the meaning of the name Ramaswamy, which is, quote, a person for whom God is their guide and master.

It's akin to Jesus, I think someone pointed out to me, an aspirational name in practice.

It is sacred.

I should not have made fun of his name.

Indian Americans have pointed out to me, they get their names made fun of.

It was stupid.

I still think he's a terrible person,

but I should have attacked him on policy and all the things he says and all the persistent lies he makes as a candidate.

I do think there are a lot of people making fun of names like Donald Trump, et cetera.

And that happens in any,

it's been happening a lot, especially again, Donald Trump does it.

So it was in that spirit, I guess, but I still shouldn't have

gone down to that level.

I am so sorry for those

whom I offended.

And I just was sorry for doing it.

I shouldn't just say for those who I offended, it was stupid.

It was a stupid tweet, although I still don't know what Vivek's excuse is for most of the things that come out of his mouth.

But nonetheless, I did one stupid tweet and it was stupid.

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

Joanna, in your latest Wall Street Journal column, you wrote about your decision to get an EV and how to put these vehicles to the test.

Your criteria, around 300 miles of battery range, strong safety ratings, and all the coolest tech, and the price tag of $60,000 or less.

That's a pretty high price tag.

In the last year, electric vehicle sales have continued to rise to new levels, but they're very expensive.

They're costing their companies a lot of money to get into this market.

A little bit like streaming, but much more expensive.

As these cars become more and more popular, there are increasing number of choices on the market.

You have acknowledged you are not a car person.

Talk about why you decided to do this.

And before you begin, you know, I have a Chevy Bolt.

I've had electric cars.

I love electric cars.

Talk to me a little bit about why you decided to make the leap to electric.

I do know you.

I've listened to some of your podcasts talking about your bolt, and I'm excited to hear about why you have it.

That's my question to you.

But I moved to the suburbs a year ago.

This is our second car, and we needed a car for me to get to the train and locally around.

It's not so much of a road trip car.

We do take road trips as a family like two to three times a year.

And we have another car for that.

So I thought, okay, this is the moment.

This is the moment.

This makes sense.

I could get an EV, right?

And I had always sort of thought in my mind, oh, it's going to be a Tesla, right?

I drive around this area of New Jersey and it's Teslas everywhere.

It's just, you know, more Teslas than

people, honestly.

In the EV market, yeah.

And so I thought, okay, and as I started really looking at this, and you know, people have always said, oh, they're computers on wheels.

And I've interviewed a number of car CEOs and

I've interviewed Elon Musk and those that are more on the tech side versus the car side.

And I thought, okay, this is the time.

This is the time where I've got to really be evaluating this like a computer, like I've done for many years, reviewed computers, got my start in tech reviewing laptops.

Kara, I think I might have met you and I worked at Laptop Magazine.

And I was like, I'm going to evaluate these like I I would a laptop or a smartphone, right?

Battery life, charging speeds, internal tech, screens.

And yeah, I touched a little bit on the self-driving or sorry, it's not supposed to be self-driving, but you know, semi-autonomous driving, as I've been corrected online this week, semi-autonomous or driver assistance features.

So that's what I decided to do.

And you're totally right.

I wanted to set that price point lower, but it turns out these cars are still really expensive.

Well, not all of them.

The Chevy Bolt isn't.

That's why I bought it.

Yes.

And I wanted it, but I wanted a little bit bigger.

I wanted sort of more of an SUV size hatchback

car for the family, just a little bit more trunk space and front space, I guess.

And

this is what set me out on this path.

I decided on six cars or five cars.

And

it was the Volkswagen ID4, the Hyundai Ionic 5, the Kia EV6, the Mustang,

well, the Ford Mustang Machi, which is too long of a name, and the Tesla Model Y.

And I tested them mostly about a week each and then narrowed down to three.

A lot of people keep saying, why did you cut the Volkswagen?

Why did you cut the Kia?

Honestly, for just preference, I didn't like them as much.

The Volkswagen, the range wasn't as good.

I didn't like

as many of the features it had.

I thought I liked what I was seeing more from the driver's assistance realm

from the other three, that being Tesla, Ford, and Hyundai.

So that's why I narrowed down to those three, Tesla, Ford, and Hyundai, and took them on a road trip with some colleagues.

And we made a crazy video.

And then at the end, I said, I'm going to, I'm going to decide on one of these.

And I thought maybe I would buy.

But at the end, I actually called Marquez Brownlee, who's YouTube, you know, of YouTube fame and quite the EV reviewer, and said to him, Okay, what do you think I should do here?

And his best advice to me was to lease.

So I have now the proud leaser leasey of

a Mustang.

Okay.

So why, why did you go with the Mustang over the Tesla or the Ford?

Was it the Ford that you looked at?

Sorry.

So it's the Ford Mustang Machi.

That's a ridiculously long name.

And I went with that over the Tesla.

It really came down.

I took these three on a road trip.

And then what was the third one?

The third one was the Hyundai Ionic 5.

It came so close to the Ford and the Tesla.

I kept going back and forth.

I'd wake up at night.

I said, oh, no, but this is good about the Tesla, but this is good about the Ford.

And ultimately,

I have thought a little bit more about this even since publishing because a lot of people keep coming at me from the Tesla side.

The Ford is very much like a computer on wheels, but it still keeps some of the traditional things you know about a car, right?

It doesn't go as far in the direction of Tesla of getting rid of all those buttons and knobs and screens in front of you.

And my wife, who's she'll listen to that, she's not the best driver, okay?

And

I'll say that nicely here.

And

there was something a little bit more comfortable about driving that forward.

Also,

I like betting on the future here on Ford because of what they're doing next year with the chargers and being able to take advantage of the Tesla charging network.

So I'm not saying, look, Tesla is, this is Tesla's world.

We're just living in their charging world, all the rest of us.

They own it.

And it's certainly the best route to go if you've got

taking long road trips, et cetera.

But I wasn't in that boat.

And that will change.

By the way, everybody, that will change.

There will be more and more charging networks.

They will, they will run it for a long time, but it will eventually be a commodity.

But go ahead.

I hope so.

But no, no.

And so, you know, small things like the Ford had carplay.

It had this other screen in front of the, you know, ahead of the

steering wheel.

So I could actually see how fast I was going and the battery.

And that made a difference, especially when thinking about my wife driving this car or our nanny or somebody else stepping into this car and being able to feel comfortable on the road.

I also really think that Ford is doing a really smart job on those driving assistance features.

They have this thing called Blue Cruise.

You can take your hands off the wheel.

And this is where I've heard a lot from the Tesla fans over the last couple of days.

And there's no doubt Tesla is a leader in this semi-autonomous driving stuff.

It's clear to me what's happening in the car in the Ford.

There's a communication that's happening with me as the driver.

Well, I think you're touching on something, which is that I think a Tesla looks like the inside of an egg.

That's what it looks like to me.

Like there's nothing going on and it sucks the romance out of cars.

It sucks the design out of cars.

I think it's an attractive car, but it could be, it's sort of,

okay.

It looks like any old thing.

And I think they haven't made any innovations in the screens in front of you.

They don't want to.

They like the way they have it.

I think that in the older cars with the giant computer screen glued to the thing, I don't get it.

I don't know why there couldn't be more beautiful design.

And I've seen some of the really high-end ones, the Mercedes and the BMWs, that are beautiful, the way they depict screens, right?

It's creative.

I find nothing creative about it.

I would have bought a Tesla that was better.

I just didn't want to sit in it.

Like, you know what I mean?

It was like, it was, it left me cold as a car.

And it's funny, like, in through this process of doing this piece, I had one of our producers try to dig up.

old footage of car commercials, right?

And they never used to show the inside of the car, which is kind of crazy since that's the thing the driver's looking at the most.

But they always showed the outside of the car, right?

And now that's changed, and you want that inside to feel comfortable and familiar, I think, is somewhat of what you're saying.

It's not just familiar, it's romance of driving.

Like you, this, it literally, I feel like I'm in an Android phone.

That's, you know what I mean?

Like, there's something about Apple that's fun, right?

When people get in my Chevy Bold, driver, people that are parking the car, whatever, they're like, what is this fun little car?

Like, they, you can feel it.

It has a kinetic feel of color, beauty.

It's just a lovely, little, adorable car, right?

That's my car, it's adorable.

And it was very inexpensive.

inexpensive it was in the thirty thousand dollar range in that area um and so that's what i the the the sexlessness of it it looks like a kendall of a car i guess i don't know what else to say it just says no i love that it's a kendall of a car right there's no genitals on that car at all um and so i want cars with genitals i'm sorry um what what is the biggest issues you encountered with it is it is charging right presumably you're fine i have a charger at my house but yeah so i was going to ask you about that because when that will be my next piece is installing the home charger and the easy.

Easy, but there's so many options.

Again, there's like,

this is where I like this kind of comparativeness of the early days of smartphones and, you know, back to the idea of the iPhones.

Like it wasn't obvious that you should buy the, you know, the iPhone X, right?

There was a competitive landscape.

We compared these things.

Now we sort of just assume, I'm going to get the iPhone.

If you're an iPhone user or if you're Android, you say, oh, I'm going to get the Pixel.

I'm going to get the next Samsung.

Do you, so you went with the Ford.

Do you think that Tesla's in a world?

I think they're in a world of trouble with these competitors.

Although there's a large inventory of unsold cars sitting on lots with EV sales, it depends on the car.

Obviously, Tesla's cut the prices, which is trying to spur more demand.

What do you imagine?

This is going to be competitive finally, I think, ultimately.

I think it's going to be very competitive, but there's a big butt here.

There is so much incentive from the government and what's happening right now with cut with with the rebates and all of that, that that is strengthening Tesla's position.

That I think it's going to be a no-brainer for most people to get a Tesla.

And I agree with you.

The charging network is going to change.

I hope.

They're opening up their world,

but it is superior right now.

I mean, if you, when you charge your bolt on the road,

where do you go?

What kind of place do you go?

I go to the grocery store and I park and

there's always, there's just charges everywhere now.

And I don't know if that's going to continue.

Do you know what brand it is?

I don't even pay attention.

I don't, I don't, you know, I think Eevee Go maybe sometimes.

Evie go.

There's a bunch of them.

There's a bunch of them, but there's a lot of them in the cities I'm in, right?

I don't know if I'd feel the same way in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I don't know.

But I have taken it on long rides up and down the East Coast.

Never had a problem.

Not once.

You know, I have to think about it for sure.

It's not like, you know, I pass a gas station and

see them every, you know, that's easy.

That's a no-brainer, right?

There's always a gas station somewhere.

And so that's the issue is being planning, but there's lots of apps right now to find them.

I think, you know, I agree.

They have an advantage in their manufacturing and battery.

They have an advantage of everything else, but they've done nothing in terms of design.

And if Cybertruck is their answer to that, oh my God, no.

Like the Rivian is beautiful.

Really beautiful.

So there's the charging aspect, but there's also the tax breaks, which are super benefiting Tesla right now.

In the end, look, I will say, I would have saved money getting a Tesla.

Right, but I think eventually it will be all of them.

Like, I just, I think this is just a matter of time.

And I wish they would innovate more with their, it's like if Apple kept not making the phones better, which they did, this is what it feels like.

They're not making these cars more interesting from a design point of view, but we'll see what people, people, people.

And then the other part is people don't want to buy Elon Musk's cars.

There is an element of the people that would naturally buy electric cars.

being repulsed by him.

And that's, I think, a bigger deal than people realize.

This is the people who would buy buy Teslas.

The people who buy Teslas are mostly progressive people, right?

He's got to change the minds of people, conservatives, to buy his car.

Who would want to really buy a gas guzzler?

Cause what do they care?

And it was shocking to me, you know, Wall Street Journal readers, how many I heard from saying, Tesla is the superior car.

Parentheses, I don't like Elon Musk.

You know, sort of like making that clear, but Tesla is the superior car.

And look, I'll say, I did not want to factor those politics into this decision.

I wanted to buy the best car for me.

And I really probably should have caveatted for me and my family, because it's not the best one under 60.

There's going to be something's best for somebody else.

And it's the same thing with reviewing anything.

And this turned out to be the best.

Will in a few years leasing, will a Tesla or a Rivian hopefully come down in price?

And

well, Rivian or maybe something else come down in price.

Tesla seems like they're going to stay in this price mark.

Maybe it'll be a better option for me.

So here's one that President Biden, Biden, as you notice, has been making a big push towards electric vehicles.

It puts him at odds with the United Auto Workers, who are concerned about what EVs mean for their jobs and wages.

Last week, the UAW voted to authorize a strike if the Detroit big three car companies fail to offer competitive contract by September 14th, though EVs are not the only issue at play.

We'll see where this goes.

I mean, they're going to make more electric cars.

It's just a question.

It's a little bit like streaming, and Tesla is Netflix, I think, in a lot of ways, which gives them an advantage 100%

in these streaming discussions.

And the others have to pay a lot of money to get into this business, which they should have been in from the beginning.

And I think that that's around them opening up the charging network is just an indicator of that, obviously.

And look, I think even thinking

years down the line,

these companies are all going to be adopting Tesla's port, right?

The North American charging port or standard or whatever it's called.

And so it's going to put them in a dominating position in charging.

It's going to be a good business for them.

The charging is going to be a good business for them.

I think.

But until it's not, of course, they'll abuse it like every other company that has an advantage.

And then there'll be lawsuits and then blah, blah, blah, blah.

But you're right.

It does give them an advantage.

It's like the lightning port or whatever people tend to use.

But eventually, I do think what's really great here is the amount of competition that's going to, you're going to see in this area.

And that you had a choice now in a very short amount of years.

All it indicates to me is it's not quite like phones.

It's a car buying is a very different experience, right?

You want a lot of things.

And I think that if Tesla does offer more stuff than what they're offering now,

I just, they leave me cold.

I also didn't want to buy a Volvo.

They leave me cold, right?

Like it's, and I know it's a better car, a safer car, right?

I was like, I hate.

Do you know what my other car is, Kara?

What?

What?

Evolvo.

Yeah.

I hate them.

I hate getting in them.

I feel like I'm not clean enough.

I don't know what to say.

I just, there is an emotional element to buying cars that is not the same with buying phones necessarily, although there's an emotional element with phones too.

We'll see.

Overall, are you still happy with your decision to lease and also the one you picked?

I mean, it's day two.

So, you know, nothing's broken yet.

So you're going to drive by gas stations and say, see a sucker.

That's what you're going to do a lot of doing.

Yeah.

I'm liking it so far.

I mean, My six-year-old was upset that I didn't get the Tesla because it doesn't fart.

Oh, right.

So I'm trying to figure out ways right now.

If anyone out there knows how to make my Mustang fart.

Explain why the farting happens.

Oh, why the software feature.

I mean, Elon Musk thought this would be funny, I assume.

I guess, and you can program it to do that, but you can also in the dash say, okay, you know, press the button and have it fart.

Or you can have, if you sit on the seat, a whoopee cushion, a virtual whoopee cushion that will fart.

And my son thought that was the funniest thing ever, if he could just have that in a car all the time.

And so there were tears.

There were tears that happened.

I think you'll really like the electric car experience.

It's really fun to do it and you can see where it's going as time goes on.

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

When we come back, the tech leaders are making a real estate grab and we'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Peter Turchin, about his new book, End Times.

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Okay, Joanna, we're back from spent a very short amount of time on this.

It's been a mystery for quite some time who's buying $800 million worth of farmland in Northern California?

Well, the mystery is solved, according to the New York Times report.

Flannery Associates is a company.

It's backed by a number of Silicon Valley investors, including venture capitalist Michael Moritz, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Mark Andreessen of Andreessen Horror with fame and other things, and Lorraine Powell Jobs, among others.

The goal is a land grab, which is about 52,000 acres, more than three times the size of Manhattan.

It's apparently to build a brand new city.

What do you make of this?

Any thoughts?

I just was wondering if you think you'll be banned.

No, I won't.

Some of the most people like me.

Some of those people don't.

You're right.

They'll probably just hunt me down.

Or they're going to come for you and ask you to come move there.

Yeah, I'm not moving there.

I like San Francisco.

But

what do you think of this?

They always think they can do everything better.

That's my, oh, it's them again doing everything better, right?

I mean, I guess there's so little information about what this actually is yet.

I think the mysteriousness of it is very interesting.

The fact that they've been trying to hide this for so many years at this point, and even now won't exactly talk about what this is going to be.

Obviously, some, you know, we have some utopian all-green energy city of some sort.

I should ask you, what do you think the motivation is?

I just think they get around and say we can do this better.

I think it's, you know, they listen, utopian cities, there's one in Brazil.

Elon Musk has a town called Snailbrook, which he's describes as sort of Texas utopia.

It's essentially a company town.

You know, coal mining companies built towns.

Look, Dearborn, speaking of cars, Dearborn, Michigan, right?

Like, there's all kinds of cities that grow up around industries, I guess.

And so that's nothing new.

And there's this idea of seasteading, you know, building stuff under the sea or on the sea or whatever.

It's not a new thing.

Like, there's always been these dreams of redoing the cities.

And cities are mostly organic.

They grow from nothing, right?

They just sort of happen to be at the, at the,

you know, I think Pittsburgh is because of where it is, at the bunch of rivers.

Now, we wouldn't pick a city for that reason now because we don't depend on rivers, right?

So cities just sort of happen for all kinds of reasons, economic reasons.

So whatever, build your city.

I think they're off to a rocky start from reading.

Government officials and landowners don't seem to be too happy.

There's questions about it being close to the Travis Air Force Base.

There's, you know, Flannery is in a lawsuit with some.

some landowners over price fixing because

why wouldn't they price fix as they saw these rich people headed their way with the piles of money because I think Flannery was overpaying for these these acres and it seems that this is another question for you it seems like this is a reaction to just a discontent with Silicon Valley and the the the both the real estate there and the government pushback over the years have you felt like you've you were you were there I mean Did you feel like that was a huge roadblock?

Yeah, they always are complaining about something.

They don't like being told what to do.

They don't like being like, oh, it's too much.

Of course, they're the ones driving up the price of real estate by building their ridiculous homes.

They're the ones sucking in their campuses.

And they're the ones sucking on, you know, they're the ones using the most energy.

Like they're the ones using the planes and the train, like whatever they feel like.

You know, they just don't like being told what to do because they don't get told what to do anywhere else.

They can go from their

from their expensive houses to their expensive planes, to their expensive yachts, to their, you know, whatever.

And then some of them actually think they can do it better and that's fine maybe they can innovate cities but cities are hard right cities are hard and people are weird and good luck building a town if it's nice i'll live there otherwise i can't ever imagine i lived i had a house in hollister for the kids and it was windswept windswept is all and dusty sure i don't know why there i would have picked a lot of other places in california but vacaville it is good luck and i think they'll get a lot of lawsuits and it'll be a big mess and then they'll own a lot of real estate and a really place i wouldn't want to to own a lot of real estate.

But okay, good luck.

Good luck to them.

Good luck to them.

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

Welcome, Professor Peter Turchin, project leader at Complexity Science Hub Vienna.

What if you could anticipate the future and avoid the social unrest and chaos that has disrupted societies for centuries?

That's exactly what our friend of Pivot, Professor Peter Turchin, a project leader at Complexity Science Hub Vienna, is trying to do with the help of math and data.

In examining historical cycles of instability, Turchin has tried to determine the factors and causes that have led to social breakdowns.

He famously predicted in 2010 that America would go through a period of major social upheaval in the 2020s.

It looks like we're right in the middle of it.

And in his new book, End Times, which is a really happy title for a book, he says, We cannot understand social breakdown without a deep analysis of power structures within societies.

All right, Professor Turchin, thank you for coming.

Explain how exactly you're making these predictions right now and sort of go over them

in a wider scheme.

Well, this is part of the new science that we call cleodynamics, the science of history, and it's based on the good old scientific approach, which means that we start with many different theories trying to explain particular aspects of reality, in this case, the dynamics of societies.

We translate theories into mathematical models because we want to study the dynamics, and you cannot study dynamics without such formal apparatus.

And then we collect large amounts of data to test predictions from different theories to

find out which of them fit the data better and which therefore are closer to the real drivers.

So, as you mentioned, you made that prediction, those predictions in 2010.

What are you seeing in the data here going forward?

So, the United States,

since 2010,

it's been a very interesting experience because, remember, that this prediction was a scientific prediction.

It was not a prophecy about what is going to happen in the future, because that's really not possible to do.

The idea was to derive the game, derive a prediction from a theory, and then see how well it corresponds to the reality that

was to unfold in the next 10 years.

And over those 10 years, it was a very strange experience because essentially it was like on the train, you know,

heading for a train wreck and seeing everything unfolding pretty much as the theory has predicted.

So all the trends that

I noted in 2010, they continue developing in the same unfavorable directions during the next 10 years, and in fact, now.

Okay, so explain what those are specifically.

Well,

there are

several factors that drive societies to crisis.

The most important ones are, first of all, what we call popular immiseration, that's declining living standards for the majority of the population.

And secondly, even more importantly, elite overproduction.

Essentially, when a society produces too many elite wannabes for the limited set of power positions that we have for them, the competition between

such elite aspirants becomes so intense and there are so many people who are on the losing side that many of them turn to

working against the system because they cannot make headway within the system.

And so the elite reproduction and resulting production of counter elites, those are people

who are working against

the reigning regime.

That's important because they are the ones who organize and channel popular discontent arising from immiseration.

And that's what has been happening in the United States over the past two or three decades.

Right.

So now that we're in it, is it going to get worse before it gets better?

Is there a solution to it?

Or is it just inevitable, this idea of elite overproduction, meaning too many people want are aspirational to the very top of society.

Is it going to get worse for it to get better?

Or how do you settle that down?

Or you don't?

Yeah, it's not inevitable because we know now we have we've been building a large database of past societies getting into crisis and then emerging from them.

And we know that in 10-15 percent of cases, the elites and the population manage to pull together and solve the problems without without getting into violent revolutions or civil wars.

But this doesn't happen automatically.

This means that we need to have some pro-social elites who would act in the interests of the society at large rather than their own narrow

interests, narrow selfish interests.

And it requires a lot of work and a lot of time because building takes

is harder than destroying.

So, right now, I don't see in the United States, I don't see much understanding on the part of our political leaders

what are the deep roots of the problem that we are in.

It's all in fighting between different political factions without addressing

the deep causes.

Let me give you an example.

So, for example, one

clear way that we can address popular imiseration is to increase the minimum wage, a real minimum wage.

In fact, Joe Biden promised to do that during the election, but nothing has happened.

All right.

So this is an example where something obvious

can work,

not maybe completely solve the problem, but work towards the solution.

But it gives people hope that they have an upward trajectory.

Joanna, we're hearing so much right now about end of times from the tech perspective, from the AI perspective of the danger that that might cause.

How do you see AI,

if you've given thought to this, affecting this split between elites and non-elites?

And if anything,

is AI a greater threat or not as great of a threat as we are as actual humans?

Well,

most of the

discussion about the dangers of AI focuses on AI essentially replacing humans and taking over the world, you know, something like Terminator

thing.

But

our theory actually brings a new point of view on this angle.

So, in the past,

better

technology has replaced workers.

But now, AI got so good, it's replacing

people who are our elites.

So, in particular, think about lawyers.

It turns out that lawyers are the most dangerous class in producing counter-elites.

You know, Lenin was lawyer Mao, Robis Pierre.

Right, so in the United States, we've been over-producing lawyers.

There are three times, has been three times as many new law graduates as there are positions for them.

Now, what we know is that the AI is now coming for lawyers.

About half of what they do, well, 46% to be precise, has been estimated, can be automated.

That means that we will be, as soon as this is all implemented, we'll be overproducing lawyers by a factor of six to one.

So, that is obviously a very dangerous situation.

Yes, angry lawyers.

Angry lawyers.

Great.

Yeah, they're good.

They're good at organizing.

They're good at making connections.

So they are

very dangerous types of counter idiots.

I just wanted to throw in China and how you sort of view our production or overproduction of elites versus China's.

This is where I feel so much of our competitiveness right now, and that's where our focus is.

So how do you view China in this whole scheme of your argument?

Well, first of all, let me say again that I have a colleague who is working on China, but that's taking time.

So, what I'll tell you is now essentially my,

you know,

my informal opinion.

Well, China, remember that China has gone into its own time of troubles from roughly speaking 1850 and emerged from that in the 1950s.

So it's well behind the cycle, so to speak, compared, let's say, to the West.

All right.

So they probably have two or three more decades before they will get into their own end times.

Now, specifically,

there are some both

positive

things coming out of China and negative things.

The positive thing is that, surprisingly enough, that their population is declining, so they are producing fewer young people.

And therefore, and young people are the ones who make revolutions.

And therefore, that will diminish the potential for

social

dysfunction and conflict.

On the other hand, right now,

and we have to see the data.

Unfortunately, the data is very hard to get.

But many of these young people, even though the cohort is diminishing, but we get reports that many of them cannot find jobs.

And that's obviously a very dangerous sign.

So exactly how those two different

forces will balance out, it's not clear to me, to tell the truth.

We need to get better data.

Also,

these trends develop over the period of many years.

So you have to wait and see whether the

Chinese authorities are capable of resolving this crisis of joblessness.

amongst the young Chinese people.

Young people.

So when you look at, let me ship back to the United States, when you look at someone like Donald Trump, who you examine a bit in the book, what's his role in this as sort of an accelerator, from what I can understand?

Yeah, well, as I explained in the book, in the United States and in fact, Western democracies, there are two channels towards the elites.

One of them is the wealth route and the other one is the credential route.

So when we were talking about lawyers, I was talking about the credential route.

Trump, on the other hand, exemplifies the wealth route.

So these are people, there has been 10 times as many decamillionaires, people with 10 million of dollars worth of wealth or more over the past 40 years.

And many of them turned to politics.

So, Trump is a typical counter-elit, even though he is very wealthy and you can think of him as part of the elites, but he's not because

he has been,

well,

the ruling elites are working against him.

We see it very clearly now.

He has been hit, slammed with four different

lawsuits, and he's likely to end up in prison.

So by

all the indicators, he is actually a very good example of counter-relist.

Remember that in previous, think about Brothers Gracchi in the late Roman Republic.

They were also members of the ruling class, but they turned against it by organizing the repolitions.

And so Trump is playing a very similar role today.

So what does that mean?

I mean, when you say end times, what does that look?

What does an end time look like from your perspective?

This doesn't sound good.

Is there a silver lining?

Is that the pressure valve that

brings everybody back to normal or not?

Well, first of all, end times are always the times of new beginnings.

Unless we destroy this planet in a nuclear Armageddon or something like that, there are no

beginnings.

Now, that's the good side.

But the problem is that, as I said, in 80 to 85% cases, or maybe 90% of cases, the new times are born in violence, in some kind of a social revolution, a civil war, and maybe even a state collapse and things like that.

So

I'm afraid that judging by these types of statistics, we have a lot of turbulence to work through before we get to the beginnings.

And what does that mean?

I get you're not a prophecy, but you're using data.

What is exactly?

So we can only address this stochastically.

So the road into crisis is fairly channelized.

It's like a ball run rolling down the narrow valley with steep slopes.

But once you get to crisis, you're on the cusp, and there are all kinds of avenues open to you.

And in fact, this is

actually a hopeful thing.

This is where you can nudge our trajectory towards better outcomes.

So the typical outcomes are, as I said, about 60% to 70% of the time there is a bloody civil war or

a social revolution.

All right, about 10-15% of the time the societies manage to pull together and solve the problems by reforms and the right policies.

And then there are situations where you have sort of

that it just keeps dragging on for many decades.

So these are the three possible outcomes that we have to face.

But again, let me repeat it.

If

the ideas that

I've been trying to inject into the public discourse

begin to make a difference, that means that we will be able to actually nudge our trajectory to a better outcome.

But 60% feels like violence, correct?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

But okay, here's another hopeful thing.

It turns out that everybody talks about collapse.

What's collapse?

Right now, if you talk about collapse, like serious, you know, like half of the population gone or more, this

severity of such outcomes has been declining over the past 10,000 years.

So it seems that

we actually have the new analysis that suggests that as societies accumulate better institutions, including democratic institutions, but also productive

economies and things like that, we actually

face lesser probability of outright collapse.

So that's another hopeful sign.

So just total misery.

I read this VICE article back in 2012.

You said, we've seen nothing yet in terms of violence, and you predicted that 2020 was going to be,

as you predicted accurately, was going to be a lot worse.

We're not asking, I guess, for total prediction of the future, but is there a year, is there a moment where you think there is going to be, quote unquote, as you say, end of times for us here in the U.S.

Again, well, first of all, remember that end of time, I didn't come up with that site, the title, that was the publisher.

I much more optimistic.

Good work.

Good work from you.

Yes, yes.

But again, judging from our historical analysis and historical data, these periods of social disruption that tend to go for many years, maybe 10, 15 years is the average.

So that's why I think that the 2020s are going to be times of turbulence and hopefully not outright collapse.

Although that's possible, but turbulence will continue.

So 2024, the elections, 2024, are clearly another really dangerous time.

But even whoever gets elected in 2024, they'll have the job cut out for them because there are so many problems, structural, deep-rooted problems, that 2028 is going to be probably another period of

stress and possible

serious disruption.

So what I'm saying is that

people think that we are past the worst.

Judging from history, that's not the case.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's funny you mentioned, I'm just reading the history of the Roman Republic and I was thinking of the Kracky brothers, right?

At the end of the

Republic.

It was really

they were from the top.

That's where they always come from.

The populace come from the very top.

They can't.

Yeah, but they were channeling their

populist party, right?

Just like Trump channels the popular emiseration.

They were channeling popular emiseration in late Republican Rome.

They were 100%.

I hadn't thought of the connection, but you're completely right.

One last question, though.

You're talking about wage increases, for example, the minimum wage to $25 or whatever it should be.

Is there anything else?

Is there one or two other things that could ameliorate this outcome?

Yes, there's some things you please, the left, some people please the right.

So

we can clearly increase

the rate of taxes on the top incomes and wealth.

But on the other hand, we need to deal with illegal immigration

because that is undermining the

wages for especially unskilled workers.

And

we need to shut down the wealth pump, which is taking, you know,

which is called the educational loans, all right?

Because that just takes the money from the poor and gives it to the bankers.

But the Biden administration was unable

to shut down that wealth pump.

So basically,

there are a huge number of possible things

we could do.

We need a general discussion of how we

those things in the best way to solve the problems that we have, which I don't see happening right now.

It's all focusing on partisan in fighting.

Conflict, yes, 100%.

Anyway, it's a really important book to read.

I think you're right.

There are solutions.

And those three you mentioned are quite

difficult, but certainly possible within the realm of possibility.

Anyway, thank you, Professor Peter Turchin.

His book again is so happily named End Times.

And you should read it.

End times are a little different than when we think of it from a biblical sense of view.

Anyway, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you, Peter.

One more quick break.

We'll be back for wins and fails.

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

I will go first.

Wins?

my sons, the Swisher boys.

What a wonderful pair of my older boys.

I have four kids.

But sending Alex off to college this week was really a great moment.

And I think he's going to do great.

And the results of Louis' education so far have been, you saw, you listened to last week.

He's headed to Argentina.

I put him on a plane yesterday.

The only fail there is I miss them terribly.

And I do, someone was saying, I was with my ex-wife, and she's like, I was like, empty nest.

We were joking.

And I was like, not for me, because I have two more kids.

But

that's a fail on my part, but a win at the same time.

And for just a regular weird win, I urge everyone to watch Painkiller.

I don't advise you take them, but you will not take them after watching this show,

which is out right now.

And it's worth watching.

It's about the Sacklers and OxyCon.

I think it's worthwhile to see.

And the fact that we were not able to bring these people to justice was really is in a real way, besides taking some of their money, they still have a ton of it.

It was really a depressing

situation.

They did a great job.

Peter Berg is the director.

Anyway, Joanna, go ahead.

You know what?

I'm going to go off of you.

I had three options for wins, but I'm going to pick your sons as well because I'm going to pick my sons.

I was so inspired listening to your episode last week with Louis.

He's just such a smart, caring,

clearly just

a great kid.

And I have two sons, as you know, Kara.

I'm just, I'm doing doing everything in your footsteps.

I literally copy everything you do, except for your Chevy Bolt.

That's, that's too far.

Just, you're going to go for a ride in it when I see you next and you'll see what's going on.

Sure, yeah.

I will go in a ride, but I won't get it.

But I have two sons.

One is two, one is six.

I'm in the deep exhaustion of it every weekend and every night.

And me and my wife just are like,

you know, we love it, but we're also like, because they were a little bit older.

Could they be a little bit older?

And listening to him just gave me, you know, like, I'm sure you probably thought, oh, I, you know, you miss when they're younger.

And I'm just, I don't miss younger kids.

I have younger kids.

Oh, that's true.

That's so true.

But I just, I, I, it was inspirational to me to, to hear him and to hear him talking with you.

And, um, you know, and to even to, you know, Scott, who's said many times, you know, live in the moment.

And I was listening to one of his episodes where he said I was going to do that in August.

And I just thought, I need to do that more as I'm raising my kids.

So that's my win or your win.

I think your win is my win.

So we're there.

On the fail, I'm going to mention WSJ reporter who has been in jail now or in prison in Russia for too many months.

And last week, it was reported that the Moscow court is extending his time in the detention for three more months.

So that is obviously a big fail, though it was expected.

He will remain behind bars awaiting trial until November 30th.

That was according to a court spokeswoman.

So hopefully, this does not go any longer, but this I know was expected, but but still, nevertheless,

just a giant fail.

Depressing.

He's become a pawn in a political battle between the United States and Russia in a really heinous way on behalf of Russia.

People forget people that are incarcerated unfairly like this, and you should not.

Remember Evan.

I think.

Remember Evan.

And I was thinking about it also just in terms of having sons, as I've watched his parents talk now a couple of times and how hard this has been on them.

But also, also they just don't give up faith and

they

continue to be open and honest and

tell their side of the story, which isn't as inspiring as a parent.

It is indeed.

Again, please keep paying attention to that.

It's a really important thing.

Anyway, Joanna, thank you so much.

One quick programming note.

We have a correction to make on something from last week's mailbag episode.

As several of you have noted, Scott mistakenly said that Magic Donson attended University of Michigan, where my son attends.

In fact, he went to Michigan State.

Our apologies to the Spartans and yet go blue.

I have to say that now as a parent of a Michigan, a University of Michigan student.

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.

Joanna, enjoy your drive and your Mustang Mac.

wallah, whatever they call it, the Mustang Mac E or whatever.

Enjoy it.

I'm excited to go for a ride with you when I see you next.

Maybe we'll do a race.

Maybe we'll do Fast and Furious.

If you watch the video, you watch the video on YouTube, you'll see that we took these cars upstate.

I have a racetrack.

We can go to Connecticut.

The racetrack is waiting for us.

My little bolt will kick your ass.

We'll see how that works.

Anyway, we'll be back on Friday for more.

We really appreciate it.

Joanna, thank you for being the last co-host in Scott Free August.

I really appreciate it.

And again, for those who want to read Joanna, she does wonderful videos and reviews for the Wall Street Journal.

They're really terrific.

They're really the best out there.

You know, a real inheritor of Walt Mossberg's mantle there at the Wall Street Journal.

And we love her.

We think she's great.

Thanks, Kara.

Anyway, I'm going to read us out.

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

Ernie Enderdott engineered this episode.

Make sure you subscribe 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 breakdown of all things tech and business.

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