The Twitter DeSaster and the Surgeon General’s Social Media Warning

Support for the show comes from Saks Fifth Avenue.

Sacks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to shop for your personal style.

Follow us here, and you can invest in some new arrivals that you'll want to wear again and again, like a relaxed product blazer and Gucci loafers, which can take you from work to the weekend.

Shopping from Saks feels totally customized, from the in-store stylist to a visit to Saks.com, where they can show you things that fit your style and taste.

They'll even let you know when arrivals from your favorite designers are in, or when that Brunello Cacchinelli sweater you've been eyeing is back in stock.

So, if you're like me and you need shopping to be personalized and easy, head to Saks Fifth Avenue for the Best Fall Arrivals and Style inspiration.

To remind you that 60% of sales on Amazon come from independent sellers, here's Scott from String Joy.

Hey y'all, we make guitar strings right here in Nashville, Tennessee.

Scott grows his business through Amazon.

They pick up, store, and deliver his products all across the country.

I love how musicians everywhere can rock out with our guitar strings.

A one, two, three, four.

rock on scott shop small business like mine on amazon

hi everyone this is pivot from new york magazine and the vox media podcast network i'm karao swisher and i have a doctorate thank you what i mean you i i gave the commencement address at Cooper Union and they gave me an honorary doctorate.

And so you may call me Dr.

Swisher now.

Dr.

Swisher?

No, your family now now has two doctors.

Yeah, exactly.

Mine's a fake one, but there I am.

I don't have a PhD or anything near it.

I have a master's degree, but certainly not a PhD.

People all the time introduce me in media as doctor because I assume every professor has a PhD.

Oh, really?

Which I don't, just to be clear.

Yeah.

How was that?

How did your commencement speech go?

It was great.

You know, I have to tell you, Scott, if you want to feel better about the world, meet young people, meet with young people.

The student who was giving the address was astonishing, just a great speech.

They are honest about things, but hopeful and yet at the same time not stupid.

He talked about how he hates the word resilient and being referred to as resilient, which I agree with.

You know what I mean?

Like as if you get used to being under siege.

And so he was great.

It was just, it was great.

And

the woman who runs Cooper Union,

it's a small but really interesting school right in the heart of

the East Village.

And it sort of combines art and science.

And so there's architecture, there's art, there's lots of engineers, mostly engineers.

But it sort of reminds me of that Steve Jobs idea of art and science together.

And you can see it in action.

I just was super impressed.

It used to give every student free tuition.

They had some setbacks, and they're trying to get back to that now.

So the students are.

Was this your first speaking engagement at a

commencement?

Yes, yes.

I did a high school commencement once.

By the way, that's not me wanting to know about you.

That's me prompting you to ask me if I've ever spoken to you.

Did you ever speak at

any kind of commencement, any kind of transition of people to a next thing?

I've spoken at one college commencement.

Do you want to guess where and when it was?

If they were smart, UCLA because you went there.

But

Florida State University.

FSU.

Yeah.

I was the student speaker at the Berkeley commencement.

Oh, my goodness.

When you went there?

That's a real flex.

Wow.

You were elected then, just like this kid that was so amazing at Cooper Union.

Were you elected by your peers?

I wasn't elected.

Oh, I guess I was selected.

They came up to me.

Someone from student government came up and said, we'd like you to be the commencement speaker.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, because usually they get selected now in a vote or competition.

Wow, that's great.

What did you say?

Let me hear a very short version.

Oh,

it was all about my mom.

My mom was sick.

So it was very emotionally manipulative.

No, but you probably was probably heartfelt.

That's called heartfelt, Scott.

It was probably true.

Did you have hair at the time?

A lot of hair.

I had good hair.

As a matter of fact,

you know how I got to Berkeley?

My mode of transportation was a skateboard and a ponytail.

I had a ponytail

in graduate school.

Man, that was a good luck.

That's how you lose your virginity at 19.

Have a ponytail and a skateboard.

The skateboard actually probably helped.

Yeah, you would probably be a good commencement speaker now, I would think.

You're very inspirational.

Yeah, yeah.

I told you,

you helped Alex, for example, you inspired him.

And Louis wants to talk to you about your man book.

He has thoughts about men and his friends and friendship.

And he's very much someone who wants men to be more emotional friends.

We are.

I think a lot of young men are mistaking friends for real friendship.

That's right.

You know, we're, we're, we're online.

I mean, when I first moved to New York, I didn't have friends.

I had wingmen.

I'm like, I'm new to New York.

I need to go out.

I need partners in crime.

But I didn't really appreciate what it meant to invest in and receive friendship.

And

I don't think men in general are very good at it.

This is what Louis was talking about.

And he's made some other friends that are more friends.

And, you know, he's, he struggles with it because he's someone who is a, wants in an emotional friendships with men.

And he wants more from his friends.

He wants to expect more from his friends than just, hey, dude, let's drink or let's go to a strip club or whatever.

It was a very, and I said, you need to talk to to Scott Gallery about this because it was very, this is, I think, what you're writing about a little bit in his book.

So anyway, he has some thoughts.

He has some thoughts he'd like to share with you.

I was very.

If we run out of ideas, we'll turn to his doctorate mother.

You have to call me Dr.

Swisher.

Dr.

Swisher.

Dr.

Swisher is in the house.

Yeah, it was great.

We have a lot to talk about.

Lots has gone on, including last night.

And, of course, the HBO Max rebrand, which you've been having a good time talking about.

Oh, my God.

But today, we have so much.

I want to get to that rebrand first.

But first, I just so you know, we're going to talk today about Ron DeSantis and the Elon Musk experience, a failure to launch, as they're calling it, or disaster.

Get it?

DeSantis disaster.

The Surgeon General says social media is a new smoking, and we'll take a listener question about the HBO Max rebrand.

So we're going to get to that in a minute.

But I want to start with something that's super disturbing to me.

And it's one of the many things, speaking of Ron DeSantis, students at Florida Elementary School can no longer read the poem that Amanda Gorman read at President Biden's inauguration.

It was a beautiful poem.

The school limited access to the poem after a single complaint from a single parent.

The parent complained that the poem is, quote, not educational and contains, quote, indirect hate speech while misidentifying the author as Oprah Winfrey.

Last week, Governor DeSantis signed into law a requirement that the schools pull challenge books within five days of receiving complaints.

This is ridiculous.

Let's listen to part of the poem, The Parent Pointed Out.

Wade, we've braved the belly of the beast.

We've learned that quiet isn't always peace.

And the norms and notions of what just is

isn't always

just is.

And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.

Somehow we do it.

Somehow we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken, but simply unfinished.

Well, she's so impressive.

That was an impressive.

I remember that.

It was very moving.

LGBT book bans are increasingly common, but a report by the Washington Post found that a majority came from just 11 people.

11 people in our nation are doing this.

The serial complaint filers accounted for 6% of all challengers, but were responsible for 60%

of all filings.

It's a loud group.

And just in time for Pride Month, I'll note Target removed some of its LGBTQ plus merchandise after backlash threatened its workers' safety.

The retail has featured Pride products in June for more than a decade.

Well, if you think about what we have now, a campaign conducted by certain parents and student unions to ceremonially ban books, books targeted or those seen as subversive or representing ideologies opposed to a certain viewpoint,

books that are mostly written

a lot about coming of age.

about views that are contrary to kind of what you'll call this

conservative American Christianity.

Now, what I just said there

is the exact description.

If you go to Wikipedia and read the first paragraph, but take out the word Nazi,

what I just read is how Wikipedia describes the Nazi book burnings.

And to not call on the past around how and immediately say to yourself, this is how it all starts.

They're targeting, it's thinly veiled.

If she were a white poet whose parents lived in Alabama

and she drove a pickup truck, would they have banned the poem?

This is so, this is such thinly veiled bigotry and weirdness.

And there's not enough people who are old enough or unfortunately know a World War II veteran or a Holocaust survivor.

And then you have the world's most powerful man saying to a

famous kind of target of anti-Semitism that he hates humanity.

And then we have essentially these book burnings, but they can't burn books anymore because they're digital, so they just ban them.

It's just like, folks, you know, society, Western society has been here before, and the story doesn't end well.

It's such a small group of people.

That's, you know, right-wing commentator and Dickless Wonder Matt Walsh tweeted about his movement.

We can't boycott every woke company, but we can pick one.

It hardly matters which, and target it with ruthless boycott campaign, claim one scalp, and then move on to the next.

First of all,

I don't even know what to say about a person like this.

He's the one that always attacks trans people.

He's really quite,

like, I don't even know what to say about him.

The less said, the better.

Anyway, it's a very strange thing that so few people are involved in this.

And it's something you talk about a lot, which is the, you know, the intolerant.

minority and not even just a minority of the minority is doing this.

And that's what you have to keep in mind.

Most people sort of shrug their shoulders.

There was a great video of it of, I think it was a a target employer, and she's like, there's nothing wrong with this pride stuff.

Like, she was handling it well, like, and she was sort of perplexed.

And this guy was being aggressive at her.

And, like, this is, you know, pedo and grooming and all this stuff.

And she handled it beautifully, but was completely like, can I help you with something?

Do you want to buy something?

Please leave me alone.

That kind of stuff.

So it's weird.

It's just most people are like, what are you talking about, you stupid person?

kind of stuff.

Well, I think, and I think it's a lesson for both sides because,

I mean, at Netflix, when people were upset about what Dave Chappelle was saying, Ted Sarandis came out and said,

words are not violence.

If this offends you and pushing the boundaries, letting comics push the boundaries of saying uncomfortable things offends you, you shouldn't work here.

And I think that at the same time,

school districts and the Sea of Target needs to say, if this offends you, you shouldn't shop here.

So

there's more of it from the far right, but just to be fair, some of those dangerous themes around.

Come on, Scott, you're doing it again.

It's all from the right right now against trans people, against gay people, against black people.

This is not, you're not seeing a left-wing person march into a Chick-fil-A and saying, you're all too religious.

You don't see it.

It doesn't happen.

Or let's have legislation against

the people of Hobby Law.

It's just not happening.

Let me be clear.

It's much more dangerous.

It's much more cruel from the right.

But there is still an emerging narrative and a temptation on both sides of the polls to try and shame people and deny them of their right to catalyze a conversation when you don't agree with them.

And that if you don't adopt a narrative, that you are a bad person and someone that is dangerous.

That happens from both sides, Gara.

Yes, but on one side, it is just words, as you say, and the other, it's action.

It's actual action.

That's true.

On the far left, they're not passing legislation.

Yeah, I agree.

It's just, there's a very big difference here, and they've gotten taken, physically taken.

You're doing it again.

You're doing it again.

Both sides.

I'm calling Christiana Manpur.

So we can discuss this because she said both sides is not neutral.

You know, ever since you got your doctoric, you're unbearable.

That's doctor Swisher to you, and the doctor is in and declaring you sick in the head.

Anyway,

this is going to go on because this is how they operate on the the fringes and into the middle, trying to cause us all so much divisiveness.

And let me just say, Amanda Gorman, your poem was beautiful and deserves widespread reading.

It probably will sell a lot more copies because these imbeciles target it.

Anyway, in tech news, Meta will sell Giphy.

This is interesting to Shutterstock for $53 million.

It's the first time it had to sell off an asset because of antitrust regulations.

It originally bought it for $300 million, was ordered by UK competition authorities to divest.

They'd fought it for a bit.

You know, I guess it's not working for them.

And they had to divest it anyway in this year of efficiency and begin another round of layoffs Wednesday, by the way, targeting 10,000 business employees.

Lost a lot of money here.

Well, that's the way it goes.

You know, I think they probably were like, oh, oh, well, let's just move along.

Yeah, this is, you know, okay, we bought something, it didn't work.

It's an easy give.

It's not, I mean, I was never entirely sure.

I guess that the new, I'm trying to go back to the original justification for purchasing it for half a billion bucks.

That if you have an attribute.

Explain what Giphy is for people so they don't know what they're saying.

Oh, it's essentially it creates, it's those wonderful little videos or memes that you can insert into a tweet or a piece of online content.

But it's a way of differentiating a piece of content and it's really fun and it's really interesting.

And if you type in Kara Swisher commencement speech, I don't know what you get.

That would be interesting.

Nothing.

Nothing.

It doesn't show up on Twitter, FYI.

But

I guess the idea was if we go vertical and we own this media company that gives differentiates our content versus content posted on another platform.

But I guess they were never able to justify or they were worried about raising any trust flags if they didn't let people post, use Giphy for other platforms.

Because my understanding is I can go on Giphy and post it on other platforms.

So, but yeah, 90% decline destruction and value.

Good for, I mean, the good employees at Giphy built something really cool and they had Facebook shareholders overpay for it by 10x.

Yeah, and there we have it.

And then move along.

It's probably fine at Shutterstock.

Those things are, I use them all the time.

I like them.

You love them.

You went on a Giphy orgy this morning with your review of the DeSantis thing, which we'll come back to.

I thought it was a pretty good review.

I thought it was a pretty good assessment.

If you say so yourself.

If I say so.

It was very doctoral.

I'm thinking of changing it to a doctorate on fuck ups.

We'll talk about that in a minute.

Jack Sweeney, the man who ran a Twitter account tracking Elon Musk's private jet, is now focused on Governor Ron DeSantis' move.

Ron DeSantis uses a lot of people's private planes, by the way.

Users can now follow the flight paths of DeSantis' private plane on DeSantis jet on Twitter.

The account displays public flight data with a 24-hour delay.

That keeps it in line with Twitter's rules.

Last December, Twitter banned the Elon Jet account for posting coordinates in near real time.

This may be the only way that voters see the governor's travel.

Earlier this month, DeSantis signed a law protecting travel records of state leaders from public disclosure.

How ridiculous.

Democrats have criticized the bill.

Everybody should, saying it doesn't allow for transparency and allows donors to have secret influence ahead of a presidential campaign.

That law really perplexed me.

Whether or not some of these travels should be public if taxpayers are paying in a lot of places, the governor uses private jets

and

turns it into a Clarence Thomas situation.

So, what do you think about that?

I think you need to separate.

I think if you're flying, if you're using public transportation that's taxpayer funded, there should be a different set of transparency requirements than if you're a private individual flying your own plane.

And where I do have sympathy for you.

But if he's using rich people's planes and they're like in-kind donations to go to campaign events, that's the same thing.

Well, yeah, then

my understanding is the law is that you have to, or it used to be, you had to document that donation as a campaign contribution, and then it becomes public domain.

Where I'm headed is, I'm not sure we should be allowed to track people by their license plate.

If you, the tolls, people pay tolls on highways.

That's technically somewhere.

Someone could probably reverse engineer it and find your traffic.

If you can track someone's plane, shouldn't you be able to track them in their car?

Yeah.

So I don't, I'm not sure you should be able to track someone by plane.

The head of the finance department at NYU Stern, who's brilliant, his name is David Yermak.

And he did this fantastic research 10, 15 years ago where because it's public information, he was tracking the tail numbers of CEOs.

And he found that when CEOs were traveling to a vacation spot the day after their earnings and you could see where they were planning to go with the flight manifest, it meant that the earnings were going to be positive.

Oh, wow.

Because if a guy's headed to Anguia the day after his earnings, it means he's about to post good numbers.

Yeah.

And it was just such amazing research.

But anyways, reverse engineering it to here,

I don't don't know if that should be public domain if you're a private citizen flying.

I get your point.

I see your point there.

I do.

I think it's people are going to do this anyway.

And this is sort of stunt and pranky at rich people.

It could be dangerous, but if it's 24 hours, I don't care.

It's 24 hours.

They feel it's like reporters digging up.

He flew here and then flew there.

But

people that are public servants really do need to say where they get their private planes from.

It seems like

more, most people would be like, Yeah, and we get to say Elizabeth Warren, while she engages in class warfare, is using private jets to get places.

I think that's just fun.

I think that should be open, open season.

Absolutely, and it often is,

it's an attack vector.

But in this case,

Ron, just you're such a choad.

Anyway, and speaking of a choad, let's get to our first big story.

On Wednesday, Governor Ron DeSantis officially kicked off his campaign for the presidency in a Twitter space with Elon Musk.

But like a SpaceX rocket launch, things didn't go quite as planned.

Failure to launch.

The event started late, had technical difficulties, and drew fewer than 600,000 listeners before crashing completely.

It relaunched a few minutes later and had several different problems.

People kept getting thrown off and this and that.

Ran for about an hour, but didn't ever regain its full audience.

People are putting pegging at 150 to 200,000, maybe

concurrent users.

And of course, the Twitter people are like, oh, there's millions, but they're trying to do it over time.

Twitter users called the event a disaster.

Get it, DeSantis.

So did Trump and others.

And everyone took advantage of it.

Trump had funny tweets.

Biden had funny tweets.

Jon Stewart had funny tweets.

Muskbacker Jason Callikanis said it was a DDoS attack, maybe.

And no evidence just made it up.

They made up a lot of things saying this was the biggest online event.

And then everyone posted what the actual biggest online events, live events were BuzzFeed's exploding watermelon in 2016 attracted more than double and Travis Scott's Fortnite concert was 12 million like so so there's lots and lots of other things that have been successful

he would have been better doing an event that everybody covered and then going on Fox it was tiny tiny tiny audience for this thing and also audio disasters so any thoughts I do have thoughts but I want you to go first here because you wrote what I thought was a really interesting tweet storm I want your take and then I'll respond.

Well, let me go over it very quickly.

I was reacting to something Linda Yaccarino wrote, which she talked about as a rare conversation.

Yes, she thought it was a success.

I'm just going to go out on a limb here.

She didn't mention any of the problems.

You know, she said things like, you know, kind of empty words, freedom of speech is priceless.

No one doesn't have freedom of speech here.

Rare and unscripted conversation.

It was completely scripted, but you know, she liked it.

She's going to be CEO there.

I think you got her with a whiskey.

she wouldn't say that.

And I made the point that if she was running NBC at the time and the cameras fell off, she'd be apologizing and giving give backs to advertisers right away.

Like she'd be wondering like, what the fuck happened here?

That's the kind of person she was.

And not pretending it was, it was anything else.

She has to do that, right?

So, but she definitely would be the one calming down advertisers and not using her credibility to not be honest about this business performance because they're trying to become a media company, right?

This company's trying to become a media company and it was a fuck up.

That's just what it was.

And it also took the attention away from DeSantis because the medium was the message, right?

This medium doesn't work.

When they did get down to it, David Sachs, who was the moderator, I called him a junior varsity moderator.

And Elon talked more about themselves and not DeSantis.

And he was sort of, it was like a bad.

I think Joe Rogan's very talented and it's very entertaining.

This was like Joe Rogan on a really bad night.

Then they kept attacking the press.

That's their favorite thing.

They seem obsessed with calling us irrelevant and then never stopping to talk about the media, which is weird.

I like unscripted conversations.

I like when they're like people get to talk.

I had a Twitter spaces.

Mine always had glitch problems and they were very small in comparison.

And it wasn't that much smaller than this, actually.

You know, when we did, when this stuff happens, it's not good.

I was comparing it to my Mark Zuckerberg interview with Walt, where he sweat.

That wasn't a good interview.

He sweat.

It was bad.

It didn't say anything.

It had no insight.

It was just sad.

Okay, he gets nervous, I suppose, but he went on to build the biggest company ever.

So what?

If they really want to do media and they don't have to be reporters, they have to do a better job.

They have to be prepared.

The tech has to work and they have to stop like saying everything was great.

First off, I'd like to announce that I'm running for the Open Senate Suit of Florida and I'm using the premier technology, Escalator.

I'm going to come down and escalate or I'm going to launch it on Foursquare and a dozen people showed up and crashed the site.

Look,

the bottom line is this was really bad for the governor because one, anytime you get anywhere near Elon Musk, he thinks he's God.

And the first 30 minutes, any question he would turn to himself and talk about Twitter.

Yeah.

In addition, it was bad for Musk because do you really want to get in a car

from the guy who brings you I can't host a podcast.

The technology glitches here.

And it was the worst of both worlds.

They tried to pretend it was unscripted.

It clearly wasn't.

They had the governor.

They didn't say anything good.

They had a series of bake questions from people, including someone who's supposedly going to be a possible VP candidate.

And

the story today isn't about any themes he talked about.

It isn't about him.

The story today is just about what a fuck-up it was.

And the thing about Governor DeSantis and his office is to date, they have been very disciplined about message.

Well, not today.

Since this presidential campaign, I think they've fucked up with the Disney thing.

They've done a series of fuck-ups.

He's very, but he's been, his comms group, I don't agree with the message, but they've been very disciplined around

kind of format and venue.

It was such a missed opportunity because the reality is, and we don't like to say this on the left, Florida is an enormous success story.

And if he'd gone to Tampa St.

Pete, when you go to cities in Florida right now, you're surprised at the upside.

You go to Tampa St.

Pete and you go to the Dali Museum and you're like, Jesus, this is a great city.

You go to Orlando, you see the economic vibrancy.

You go to Miami with even some of the impact problems it has.

It's still the coolest city in Latin America and it happens to be

in America.

I mean, Florida is, there's just no getting around it.

I don't know why he didn't focus on that.

It's a success story.

He should have done an Amy Klobisher-like announcement that was very kind of very Florida.

He should have done it from a great success story in Florida.

And he has a lot to work with.

And the reason why he's going to be a formidable candidate is there's just no getting around it.

Florida's doing really well on most dimensions.

Now, in terms of social justice.

Except for the book banning, but go ahead.

Thank you for that, Dr.

Swisher.

Anytime.

For people on the ground and living in Florida, they're like, I'm getting a great value here.

I have a nice quality of life.

I have low crime.

I have good schools.

And by the way, I pay no state taxes.

You know, that's just a winning value proposition.

But instead of focusing on his assets, he travels to Elon Musk on a platform that breaks down.

I mean, that's the story today, was everything that went wrong.

So

this was a real misstep because he does have a lot to work with.

Well, it's

not a savage.

I'm not so sure.

There's a lot of problems in Florida, by the way, and there's been lots of documentation, but fine.

It's fine.

It's a very vibrant state.

So are many states.

But he does.

He should be leaning into his strengths, no question.

He cannot help.

You know, I think he's probably doing this so he can suck up to him and get money from donors, you know, like Elon and his whole group of people around him.

That would be my assumption.

Being a lapdog to a billionaire is not a great look for someone who's supposed to be strong.

I think he's been messing up a lot with the Disney thing,

error, unforced error.

This was unforced error.

And it gives people like Trump, who is so skilled at this, so skilled at these kinds of things.

He had stuff out immediately and it was funny.

You know what I mean?

It was well done.

And it was a good like slap, slap ado on this guy.

And he can continue.

And now they've got a new name, disaster, right?

They've got a new, he finally found it wasn't meatball run.

It wasn't dissanctimonious.

It's disaster.

And so he was doing all this talking about.

They weren't challenging him.

And then we had to hear what David Sachs and Elon Musk think about things.

Like, really, they need to stop talking, those two.

I agree, but this is the governor's shot and his opportunity, and that is

we consistently overestimate ideological issues and social issues impact on people when they go in the voting booth, and we underestimate quality of life issues.

And there's just a large swath of Americans that will vote for whoever they think is going to put more money on their processes.

That's correct.

And then

I don't know if you remember Mayor Frank Jordan, remember him

in San Francisco, Rudy Giuliani, deep,

you know, incandescent

blue cities.

And once every 20 or 30 years, the quality of life gets so bad that when they vote, I quote unquote in a quality of life person.

There are a lot of states and cities that post-COVID, the quality of life has taken a big hit.

And that's what the governor should be focusing on.

Don't know why he's not, why is he hanging out with Elon?

What's

well, you know, Elon does get Elon, look, he's, he's, he probably thought we're going to get so much attention.

It's a new meme for Elon.

Wilfrid

agreed.

But

you can see why they thought this would be a good idea.

The execution here was abysmal.

I mean, it sounded like a podcast in 2012 where they said, we're going to try this new thing called podcasting.

Bear with us.

Yeah.

I think when you stand next to Elon, no one's looking at you.

They're looking at this.

He's a black hole of attention.

Attention, exactly.

One of the things that's interesting is right-wing personalities, of course.

And then it was sad when they're trying to say it was good.

Just say it was bad.

Just please stop.

And then they were all hurt about it.

Like, oh, the media is going crazy.

We're like, no, we're just pointing out you suck.

Right-wing personalities are going all in on Twitter.

This week, the Daily Wire announced it'll upload full episodes of his podcast to Twitter, which Elon was asking them to do.

Tucker Carlson still plans to host a show.

He reportedly is rebuilding his home studio after Fox News repossessed the set and equipment.

God, it costs them more to go get it than the stuff costs.

Oh, God.

You know, there's a lot of right-wing creators going there, but its brand reputation just took a massive hit.

It's right now the Axios Harris Brand Reputation Poll that poll found that Twitter placed 97th out of 100 companies.

I don't know what the last three were, even though the world's biggest ad agency said it no longer considers Twitter to be a, quote, high-risk platform for advertisers.

But that's just because they're giving Linda a chance.

Look, the whole announcement, it was a really good idea.

It could have been a win for both of them if it had been well-produced.

This was a good idea for Twitter.

It was a good idea for DeSantis.

The execution was,

I would be furious if I were the DeSantis folks, and I would be enraged if I were Musk.

He looks, wait, you want me?

I'm sorry, you're trying to create autonomous driving technology and you can't do a fucking podcast?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So apparently there wasn't, I'm excited to hear, read the reporting out of this.

Apparently there wasn't much planning.

I just, I can tell you, when they had lots of people, it was always glitchy.

Like, what?

Hello?

What?

Hang up.

Re-hang up.

You've been on those things with me when I did it.

There was 200,000 people, supposedly, that listened to it, that were stuck around for the 20 minutes.

What you and I are doing right now will have more people listen.

Yeah.

Ron, come on our show.

So the DeSantis announcement gets fewer people than the announcement of Kara Swisher's doctorate.

Yes, yes.

He should have partnered.

They should have partnered with news outlets.

Just their constant vituperative hatred of the media, and of course that means they're obsessed with the media, is really getting in their way.

Just build something good.

Just build a good product.

And in contrast to that, as much as this was a disaster for

DeSantis, you know, it was a victory, was Trump on CNN.

He just owned them.

He just owned them.

And it was, I hate to say it, it was really.

He's the OG.

He's the OG on that stuff.

He just totally manipulated the medium.

And by the way, they had an an intelligent person trying their best to fact check a serial liar.

They filled the audience with sycophants.

And this was just,

it was just, okay,

this is a shit show.

1984 called and wants its technology back.

Honestly, someone tweeted that DeSantis is hoping, waiting around the basket, that Trump goes to jail.

That's what would be his in, right?

But I think Trump could beat him from jail easily.

From jail.

With his hands tied, shackled behind his back.

I actually think the governor's a more formidable candidate than people are saying right now.

I used to think, I was thinking maybe he's done.

I actually think he's got a lot, a lot of people.

All right,

Mr.

Beto O'Rourke's boyfriend.

Okay, we'll see how that works out.

I do not.

Hello, Trinity.

I think

that was a nice pick.

And then who'd you pick after that?

And who did Kara pick the whole time?

Biden.

You did pick.

Thank you.

I think he's,

we're going to take a book.

You think he's more formidable?

I think he's a charm.

He makes Nixon look charming.

That's hard.

He's very wooden.

I think he's charmless.

He looks like he has no friends.

He's Mr.

Straitjacket.

He literally looks like he has no friends.

Like, speaking of men friends, he has no friends at all.

Like, that's it.

No friends.

No friends.

Like, and why would, and he looks uninterested in people.

Like, he doesn't like people.

And I'm sorry, you're not being president if you don't like people.

And technocrats are fine.

Just go run a state.

That's great.

Let's have him and Kamala Harris on the same ticket and we'll call it Brightens Up a Room by Leaving a Ticket.

I don't know.

You can do better, Republicans, honestly.

Honestly.

Anyway, let's go on a quick break.

We come back.

We'll talk about the Surgeon General's new warning and take a listener question about HBO's latest streaming rebrand, which Scott has a lot to say about.

We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair,

yikes, or forgetting sunscreen.

So now you look like a tomato.

Ouch.

Could have done better.

Same goes for where you invest.

Level up and invest smarter with Schwab.

Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it.

Learn more at schwab.com.

At blinds.com, it's not just about window treatments.

It's about you, your style, your space, your way.

Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right.

From free expert design help to our 100% satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows.

Because at blinds.com, the only thing we treat better than windows is you.

Visit blinds.com now for up to 50% off with minimum purchase plus a professional measure at no cost.

Rules and restrictions apply.

Scott, we're back with our second big story.

The Surgeon General says that social media may pose risks to young users.

You're kidding.

In a new report, Dr.

Viveg Murty says that, quote, there are ample indicators that social media can have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.

The report calls on tech companies to enforce age restriction and create strict default settings for young users around privacy and safety.

It also calls on governments to create health and safety standards for tech platforms.

However, the report didn't condemn social media use for all young people, but it did, and it didn't define what healthy social media would look like.

I think a lot of people who have been in this for a while were a little bit underwhelmed, but it was long in the making.

We talked to the Surgeon General on this topic in March of last year.

Scott asked him about age gaining specifically.

Here's what he said.

Part of the challenge we have, though, Scott, and you're getting at the heart of it with your question, is that we actually need data to understand the impact on children, right?

We have some data.

We have alarming rates of depression and anxiety that have increased in our kids.

We have clear evidence, in fact, that the suicide rate has increased significantly in the 10 years prior to the pandemic in young people.

We have record numbers of young people who are saying they feel persistent feelings of hopelessness and sadness.

We know that things are getting worse for our kids.

He stopped short of calling for aid.

He said a lot of words, not age gating.

which you asked him specifically about.

The Surgeon General has the power to recommend, but not enforce, I guess.

I think a lot of people felt he could have been stronger, I guess.

Facebook responded they had already done some of the things he suggested, like automatically setting accounts to private if a user is under 16.

Your thoughts on this?

I think Surgeon General Vivek Murcia is already the most significant Surgeon General we've had in decades.

All right.

Attacks companies, and usually the Surgeon General doesn't do that.

Well, cigarette.

He is attacking probably, in my estimation, what is

the most dangerous omission of our time, and that is rage and loneliness from these companies.

If you read the actual report, it is steeped in rigor and research.

I know this personally.

I mean, I'm low on the totem pole of experts around this stuff.

He called me, him and his team called me several times to try and really...

get to the heart of these issues.

Several of my colleagues have been contacted by him.

He is a serious person doing serious work.

He talks a lot about his own struggles with loneliness as a young man.

He's a father, and it's all steeped in

academia and his experience as a doctor.

This is someone who is doing exactly what he is supposed to be doing.

He is trying to prevent a tragedy that comes.

He's raising the thing.

Your friend Jonathan Haidt did not think it was enough, for sure.

Others did.

You know what I mean?

Like, they wanted an even stronger thing, a cigarette level, I guess.

And I get that.

But he doesn't have that authority.

He has the

public forum.

Yeah.

and what Surgeon General has raised an issue, has gotten more attention around an issue of more importance in the last 40 years.

Okay.

I'm just telling you a lot of people.

It's largely a symbolic position where they stand behind the president when they're actually doing things.

In the outfit, in their outfit.

And then they go on to sell life alert.

I mean, it's just, this has been a position.

He is hands down

addressing an issue that is difficult.

He's doing it with rigor.

And I also think loneliness

with AI,

people are going to start withdrawing even further, especially young men.

And to what your son's comments were about.

And he's directly saying, well, I've already parroted one of his lines.

He gave me the line, people are mistaking friends for friendship.

And he talks about the need for

third places where we make investments in things like parks and leagues and bring people back together.

And the thing I like about him is that he does stuff with grace and he errs on the side.

He's a classy doctor like myself.

He never makes personal attacks.

He never tries to inflame the other side.

He's just like science.

No, he's very measured, science-focused.

But he's sincere.

He is seen as a good actor that's earnest, that is trying to protect the well-being of our children.

I think he should do this all the time and be very firm about it.

I just feel like you've got to really lean into this in a heavy.

If it's going to be like cigarettes, you're going to do the age gating and being a leader.

You can still be a leader even if you don't have enforcement.

Real, a bit like press press press press and and a little less nice like look people that kind of stuff we'll see where it goes he he he always does try to tend to find the middle he seems like that kind of person but in this case he could i think he could have even more impact if he was highly specific and really weighted in there even if it's not his to wade into um and this age gating has a lot of

a lot of issues.

It's nuanced and they could have more data about our kids, their IDs, birth certificates.

It's different than, say, porn or cigarettes because that's a physical thing.

Kids go in and buy cigarettes.

This is information, digital information online using a digital product.

So speaking of regulating social media, TikTok is suing Montana, not a surprise, we said they probably would, violating the First Amendment.

So are a bunch of TikTok users.

First Amendment, Montana is going to lose.

No proof.

They shouldn't be here, as we said.

But the problem for TikTok is there was a report in the Times this week says that TikTok user data is regularly shared in Slack-like tool that employees use to address user complaints.

The data can include a user's driver's license and accessible to employees in China.

This is the issue, even if they're not malevolent, it seeps right through.

Yeah, but you said it.

This creates unnecessary momentum for TikTok because people are busy, and all they'll see is that the Supreme Court or a court, not the Supreme Court, a court overturned the decision to ban TikTok.

And people say, oh, it's illegal.

They shouldn't do it.

And no,

they'll decide that a state can't

overturn a ban on on media that that's a bad idea so this was

this was an unforced error a purely political move by someone who should be an operator the governor of montana yeah but tick tock and i mean uh it's and i'm it's already happening i think senator warren's uh warner's restrict act made a lot of sense they they were good actors here and i'm worried it's losing momentum tick tock is going to the tried and true playbook and that is just wait them out we're like a cat the public and our elected officials are like a cat chasing a dot and it's just like wear them out and then they'll need a nap.

And then have some dumb person like the governor of Montana do something.

Yes.

Let me just reiterate.

TikTok is a national security threat.

It is the ultimate propaganda tool.

The people running TikTok in the United States deserve to be really wealthy.

They're good people who have met an amazing, who

have built an amazing product.

There is no sunlight between a Chinese company and the CCP.

And the CCP is now running the largest streaming network that is bigger than all other streaming networks combined for people under the age of 25.

And every day, our next generation of military, civic, nonprofit, and business leaders are going to feel a little shittier about America because the CCP has its sum on any scale around content reaching our young people.

It absolutely needs to be banned or spun.

And we can't let up here.

We can't move on to the next.

Exact demand.

Exact dement, as I like to say.

Exact dement.

I'm also a French doctor.

Anyway, let us pivot to a listener question just in your wheelhouse, Scott Galloway.

You got, you got.

I can't believe I'm going to be a mailman.

You got mail.

Hi, this is Emily from Phoenix, Arizona.

I just wanted to hear Kara and Scott's take on HBO Max transforming its brand to just Max.

My friends and I are making fun of this relentlessly and also just scratching our heads because the HBO brand is,

in our opinion, one of the best out there, certainly as far as television goes.

So changing it to Macs just seems very bizarre.

And it kind of seems like,

what's the reason for that?

And are they the stupidest company ever?

So thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Oh, I'm going to let you go on, but I have to say, I was at CNN this week because of the DeSantis stuff.

I saw the Max thing, and it doesn't look good.

They took out all the stuff, and there's these big Max things everywhere.

And I brought you stickers, Max stickers that are lying around.

It's jarring when you see it, I have to say.

And it's not jarring in a good way, like, ooh, attractive.

It's, ooh, unattractive.

And I actually,

everybody thought that in the in the lobby.

Everyone's like, no, this is not, this is not pleasing to me.

And again, there's the Skin a Max thing that we like to talk about.

And HBO is great.

And I love that someone from Phoenix is like, are they the stupidest company?

I love that these people are sitting around thinking about it.

But your thoughts, Scott, you have a lot of them.

Well, I started a brand strategy firm.

I've taught brand strategy for 20 years.

It's hard to think of a stupider move.

Brands like this take decades to build.

And I have a real bias here because some of the most moving moments, I think, in the history of television, whether it's the Prince of Doran saying, I will be your champion to Tyrion Lannister or the mother in Six Feet Under looking at the photos of her family and breaking, you know, and sobbing.

I just think HBO has is literally one of the core associations of a brand built over decades is we have assembled a culture of creativity that is fearless in storytelling and moves people and creates

it is if you were to try and embody the zeitgeist of America, cultural America over the last 40 years, somewhere in that word cloud would be the letters HB and O.

And you're going to turn that into Macs.

And the only reason they can come up with is people are confused.

We need something that's more literal, that explains what this actually is.

HBO, we shouldn't lead with HBO.

We have so many other things, right?

Okay, so are people going to mistake the Sopranos for a show about singers?

So we're going to turn it into the big mafia show?

I mean, it's just, this is, Matsushita is going to turn their brand name to shit.

Yeah.

I had Vox.

Ox.

Vox is ox.

I went crazy last night.

You did.

It looked like you were like doing edibles and thinking up names.

And I'm sure people will get used to it, but it's not a happy brand transition, right?

Remember when Airbnb did that thing and everyone thought it looked like a vagina?

I don't remember that.

Yeah.

It could go away, I guess, and you just get used to staring at the vagina.

But this is companies and organizations pray.

That over several generations, they can build intangible associations of this quality in the steps.

So how did it happen?

How did it happen?

I have a feeling that David Zazzo is like,

Discovery,

why is HBO there?

I can see it coming right now.

I think it's the majority of bad decisions in corporate America are made by guys in midlife crisis and its ego.

And this guy comes from the Discovery side of the house and thought that Discovery was an amazing brand.

And if I'm going to give up Discovery and we want something new, and not only that, we need something new that I'm the CEO of.

I don't think he wants to give any credit to the guys.

I mean, Wells Fargo was bought by Norwest, a boring mortgage company in Minneapolis, but they were smart enough to know if we're going to pay this kind of money.

We need to go with the right brand, and they change it to Wells Fargo, right?

Dayton Hudson had this little growth company called Target.

And they said, you know what?

Our kid is now bigger and stronger than we are.

We're going to call the whole company, the whole company Target.

People don't make dumb moves like this.

They go, these things are incredibly hard to build.

Why?

Where do you think it's going to go?

Will it matter?

We'll just like hate it, just get used to it and hate it.

A lot of people feel it looks like the branding, the fonts look like women know this looks like MaxiPads ads, but go ahead.

It'll be seen as an example of where David Zaslov screwed up.

The whole industry is under attack right now.

So consolidation, you can understand the strategy operationally around trying to bring it up.

You can see the beginning of this conversation.

I think he probably dominated it and everyone shut up.

He decided, he made this, I'll bet you anything he made this decision because any consultant, 100%.

Any consultant, anyone in the marketing department with an IQ over 80 said, shouldn't we think about it being HBO if we're only going to pick one brand?

Shouldn't we go with the brand that means quality and great storytelling and the ability to capture the moment?

Instead, we're going to call it max.

You know what they should have called it?

Zaz.

Zaz.

Zazance.

There's a song, A Little Bit of Zaz.

Yeah, this is just literally.

Every brand strategist, my mentor who taught me everything I know about brand strategy, David Ocker, is literally just sitting there with his head in his hands.

Yeah, yeah.

But when Dotson became Nissan, that made absolutely no sense.

But you're used to it.

Does it ultimately, you're a brand person, ultimately people get used to it, right?

They'll be like, oh, it's Max, right?

Yeah, but it's like ultimately they get used to a shittier product.

I mean, it's just, this is, he basically took HBO.

If you had $10 billion

and you tried to recreate a brand like HBO, you probably couldn't do it.

It'd be one in 10 chance you could do it.

So he's taken tens of billions of dollars, or at least billions in equity, and he's taken it into the street and created a fire to warm his ego.

Yeah.

Because he didn't invent HBO.

He invented something else.

This is whenever you can always, really brain dead moves can always be reverse engineered to a guy in his 50s or his 60s who is making a decision from ego, not from business or shareholder value.

This is one of those moves.

This is one of those decisions where I actually think a boards should not dictate strategy.

They should, generally speaking, not get involved in operations, but someone on the board who actually understands branding and

should say, you're taking billions of dollars and you're immolating it.

Yep.

Like, what are you doing?

Disney would never do this.

And by the way, they have a name, Marvel.

If you change theirs to Marvel, you'd be like, that was going to be the name of the.

of MSN back in the day, by the way.

But they have names that would be good too, but they would never do this.

Like Marvel's a good name for something like this.

No,

they understand brand.

They wouldn't.

And they wouldn't have a new CEO who came in from Lucasfilm and go, we're going to call it THX or something.

They would just never do that.

No.

But this will go down as one of the great brand disasters.

You know what?

Discovery would have been a better name than Max.

Honestly, there's

anyway, except Discovery, you think of Guy Fieri.

That's pretty much what you think about.

Is that right?

I think of sharks.

You think of sharks.

Anyway.

I just want to do give, I do want to give David Zaslaw some credit.

I think he is really helping the mental health of Americans because what he's saying to every American is, I'm not, you know, you're not the only one that makes really expensive mistakes.

Yes, you're not the only one.

Elon Musk, we've seen that.

They already realized they fucked up.

They posted on Twitter and Instagram a big logo that says, introducing Max.

And then right below it, it says, the one to watch for HBO.

It's like, they've already realized they fucked up.

Creators are getting mad too because of the way they're phrasing it and stuff like that.

They're changing different things.

There's a whole controversy around that.

Maybe we'll talk about it next week.

Even Amanda was like, she turned it on and it offended her.

She was watching Succession Episode 9, and she's like, I was just offended by the font.

You know what I mean?

Like, I don't want that.

I want HBO.

It's funny.

HBO,

there'll be case studies written for decades, not only around brand, but around culture.

HBO was a 120-pound flyweight that was beating

Larry Holmes.

They were spending $2 or $3 billion a year while Netflix was spending $17.

And what are we talking about around the water cooler?

We're talking about succession and Game of Thrones.

Do you know what HBO stands for, of course?

Because my family was one of the famous companies.

Home box office.

Yeah.

And it was a self-expressive benefit.

My dad used to brag.

I remember at cocktail parties when my dad was trying to sleep with all the other wives at the party.

He would say, oh, Oh, well, we only watch HBO.

Like, that made him a baller.

That was his big,

that was his biggest thing to say homebox office.

No, well, at the Galloway house told, we'll only watch HBO.

And it's like, oh, yeah, that's going to get her.

It used to just be movies.

It used to just be shitty movies when it started.

I remember it because my mother had it on our campus.

You don't remember?

I love it.

The Mind of the Married Man and then the Gary Shandling show.

Yeah, Gary Shandling.

They had some really good stuff.

They were like Early Fox.

Remember Early Fox Network?

That kind of stuff.

It was good.

It was really good.

Rest in peace, peace, HBO.

Rest in peace.

Let's change the name of our podcast, HBO.

That's what we should do.

Good, it'd be good.

Here we are.

The doctors on HBO.

Dr.

HBO.

Let's do that.

The one thing that I have to say, Black Blue Durangan, several is all the different HBO streaming service.

HBO Go, HBO Now.

HBO Joey Bag of Donuts.

Yeah, I know.

HBO Light.

Yeah, I used to call them a joke.

I'm like, what's the name today?

HBO Plus.

Oh, my God.

Max was a good name.

Anyway, if you've got a question of your own, that was a very good session there.

If you've got a David, call us.

Call Scott and Gara.

The doctors are in.

Anyway, if you've got a question of your own and like answered, send it our way and go to nymag.com to submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT.

We love a voice question.

Thank you, Emily from Phoenix, Arizona.

Great question.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions.

There is a lot to talk about when we talk about Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel.

One big question I've got is why in 2025 are late night TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel's show still on TV?

Even in our diminished times, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, they're just some of the biggest faces of their networks.

If you start taking the biggest faces off your networks, you might save some nickels and dimes, but what are you even anymore?

What even is your brand anymore?

I'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels.

And that was James Ponowosek, the TV critic for the New York Times.

And this week, we're talking about Trump and Kimmel, free speech, and a TV format that's remained surprisingly durable for now.

That's this week on Channels, wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

Okay, Scott, let's hear a prediction.

You said you had one, you were saving it, or maybe you have a new one.

My prediction is

after listening to the shit show last night that was the presidential announcement or the candidacy of Governor DeSantis.

And we're speaking on stage at Cannes, which I'm really excited about.

Y'all, we need a friend of Pivot.

I did ask Linda Yaccarino.

Well, my prediction is around Linda.

Yeah.

And just to ensure Linda does, I'm not sure Linda's going to come on stage with us now, but I don't think there was ever any chance she was going to come on stage.

Yeah.

I probably shouldn't, Linda, but you should.

I will tell, and I'm committing to this, every CMO in the room, and this is really essentially, you know, the Cannes Creativity Festival is kind of like a contest around, let's give awards to the advertising that sucks the least.

Yeah.

And let's, let's, you know,

we're all pilots.

But it's in France and there's Rose.

We're all pilots on a 747 for Pan Am and we think we're important, but let's be honest, our days are numbered.

And let's go to a party hosted by our executioners, Google and Meta on the beach.

On the beach.

On the beach.

But what I will say to every CMO in the room, and we will get a ton of them, and I'm speaking in a couple of places, and I will repeat this, that the fastest way between a CMO and an unceremonious exit is to advertise on Twitter.

This is an individual running this company who threatened to sue advertisers who left.

That when an individual sells his stock, says he hates humanity, is subscale, clearly has all sorts of technology issues, but they want to get advertisers to advertise on Twitter.

So if you're a CMO,

literally on a risk-adjusted basis, the stupidest thing you can do, you would be better off starting a meth addiction in terms of your own professional trajectory than advertising on Twitter.

And this goes to my prediction.

She is pushing a rock up a hill that is going to get bigger and heavier every day.

She will be blamed for not restoring the ad revenue that he has

recklessly alienated, and

she will leave or be fired within 12 months.

This is the mother of leaving.

Linda, come on stage with us, please.

This is the mother of.

Well, let me get this.

Let me get this.

I might sue you if you advertise and then leave.

I might threaten to sue you.

I might say that you individually, I'm not scared to

remember, go after people less powerful than me and

use the population of the UK and Germany to say that you're a sex criminal if you do something I don't like or doctor is shrill but advertise with us and she will be blamed for it she will you're gonna give her a chance though they like her she's very well liked she's 90 yeah

and he's such a loyal guy she will be blamed for not accomplishing an impossible task and that is to get people out to advertise on something that was always subscale but now it's subscale and toxic and dangerous for people's careers.

And they will hold her responsible and she will leave.

And attempting to be.

I'll tell you what's more important, Scott.

The numbers aren't very good.

The numbers aren't very good.

Like, let's get away from wokeness and he's obnoxious.

If it worked, they'd do it, right?

The numbers aren't good.

That's all.

It's not an effective advertising platform.

That's where he will place the blame is on Linda Yaccarino.

Yeah, he will.

He won't say, Linda, I give you an impossible task.

What can I do to be helpful?

I'll tone it down.

What can I do to help score advertisers?

advertisers?

He's just going to make her life impossible and then hold her responsible for what an awful job she has.

Yeah.

I would love to know what's going on inside her head.

In addition, she's not the CEO.

She's the COO.

I'm going to handle product and strategy.

She's going to handle business and revenue, meaning I need someone to blame.

That's what he said.

I need someone to blame.

She did walk into this, and I think she thinks he's less terrible than he seems.

She was smart to take the job.

Even if it doesn't work out, no one, I didn't know who Linda Yakarina was.

I mean, I run advertising for NBC Universal.

Great.

Is there anyone else here I can speak to?

No, no, I get it.

She wanted to raise

what's timestamp.

12 months or less.

12 months.

All right.

Okay.

She has been literally, this is the mother of all.

Let's pour honey on her and send her hunting for bears.

I mean,

that's a visual.

She's a tough lady.

We'll see.

But they didn't, it didn't do a good job for her.

That's the platform I want to advertise on.

They don't understand technology, and

they might humiliate me in front of 120 million people.

Yes, take my money.

I wonder which presidential candidates will do it.

I'll be like, no, I don't think so.

I'll just go on Fox News.

I think after seeing what happened, where the black hole of attention Elon Musk couldn't resist, the technology issues, all of the negative press they're getting.

I mean, people will go on the platform.

Yeah.

But they're not.

I can't believe I said this in my long tweet storm was just hand it over to Tucker Carlson.

He knows how to do media.

He does.

He puts on a good show.

Even I hate the show.

It's a good show.

Several years ago, right when I was just getting into podcasting, I heard from Andrew Yang's people saying, Andrew really wants to come on your show and talk about his candidacy

for presidency.

And I remember I wrote back and said, the fact that he wants to be on my podcast totally makes him an illegitimate candidate, in my view.

And by the way, I got to know Andrew.

We had a moment.

And we become friends.

And I think he's a good man.

And I think he's had a positive impact on the world of politics.

For the first time, people are actually considering some form of UBI.

I don't think the child tax credit would have gotten anywhere without him creating cloud cover around UBI.

I think he's a good man.

But I remember, you know, he was literally.

You know, the medium, you summarized the perfect.

The medium is the message here.

And the medium yesterday was a fucking shit show.

And so the message.

The message was, this sucks.

The message was, this just doesn't work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And also look at Elon over here.

Anyway, do you have a prediction?

I do not.

I don't know.

I do not.

I do not have, although I was right about it being a shit show.

I forgot.

I have another right one.

Linda Yaccarino is going to come on the show

after she resigns.

And it's going to be a great show.

Linda, we'll help you get a job.

We know everybody.

She's a talented woman.

She's going to be fine.

We will help you get a job.

I'm already talking about her as if she's already been,

she's already left.

We'll see.

We'll see.

As they say on succession, it's a knife fight in the mud.

Life is a knife fight in the mud.

By the way, I'll have a prediction.

The end of succession is going to be a big viewership.

I can't handle it.

It's too emotionally traumatic.

I have two podcasts on it.

That's how good it is.

Two.

Yeah.

Is this week the Sunday?

Yeah.

It's done.

It's over.

Wow.

I don't know how they could do any more surprises.

Are Shiv and Tom going to strangle each other?

I have to even like.

I'm not saying a word.

I say no words.

People should not then be that mean to each other.

And also, as someone lied to my life,

you know, when I know your father's passing had a big impact on you, my mother said, it's getting a little much.

He's dead.

Just put him in the ground.

It's getting a little much.

It's getting a little rancid.

It's getting a little much.

He didn't like you.

He wasn't nice to you.

Put him in the ground and start spending his money.

I have to say, I love all the speculation.

And the funniest one was the person who said, Tom and Chiv are going to have a baby and Cousin Greg is going to imprint on it, you know, like the end of Twilight.

No, it's going to be Rosemary's baby.

It's going to be the spawn of Satan.

There's no baby.

This is a week happening.

There's no baby happening.

There's a week.

You might fast forward.

Who knows?

By the way,

the greatest serious finale in history.

In history.

What?

Was on HBO.

It was the season or the serious finale of Six Feet Under.

That was

a massive kick in the fucking dot, was it?

And then

the Sia, the Sia song.

And the only way they could match that is that they fast forward.

And Greg, Cousin Greg, is the CEO of Waystar and banging models and doing blow off the ass of really, really hot,

really hot

male and female prostitutes.

I am so here for that.

HBO.

I can't believe that.

H to the B to the O, bitches.

HBO.

I cannot believe that you and I agree on the best finale.

That's true.

And also, by the way, rest in peace, Tina Turner.

And we agree on her greatest song, What's Love Got to Do with It?

Although, I will say it's Only Love with Brian Adams.

Jesus.

They were everything.

His voice contrasted with hers.

Everything she did.

Everything she did.

I listened to Tina Turner one year when that big album came out that she got, she got sort of revived again.

And it was in the, I lived in New York and I listened to it on Play and Play and Play Again.

And I just love Tina Turner.

Also Also a decent actress, Mad Max.

I think it was Beyond Thunderdome.

Yeah, Thunderdrome.

And just a cool person.

If you look at, there's a lot of interviews showing up with her online, and

they're all fantastic.

She's just hysterically funny.

She was with Mike Wallace at her beautiful estate.

She had an estate in the south of France, where we'll be, not at the estate.

And it was gorgeous.

He had an infinity pool overlooking the Riviera.

And he goes,

Do you deserve this?

I think he says this to her, which is kind of a weird question.

She deserves this.

But she handles it so beautifully and she goes, I deserve more.

And just the way she did it was quiet and like, fuck you, dude.

Well, you know who bought that estate out of probate already?

Who?

David Zaslov.

He's there now in con.

He's there now with the week of the show.

By the way, what's the chance I'm going to get offered another CNN show right now?

Not at all.

Not at all.

Less than zero.

I'm not, I'm entirely serious.

We're going to have a conversation after this.

We are changing the name of our podcast to HBO.

Read us out.

Just lead us out.

Do not say HBO once more.

Read us out.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Angle, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Durta engineered this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Meal Severio.

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

Be sure to tune in to Girls, the Game of Thrones, to The Wire, and

the Pivot from HBO.

that's good.