Twitter vs. Substack, Stormy Daniels, and Jennifer Senior On Grief

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 Cachinelli 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.

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start?

Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to.

Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is?

With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro, you just have to hire one.

You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app.

Download today.

Hi, everyone.

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

I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott Galloway is vacationing with the Supreme Court.

So today I'm joined by Olivia Newtsie, New York Magazine's Washington correspondent.

Good to have you here, Olivia.

Thanks for having me, Kara.

So there's so much to talk about, but let's first get to your cover story about Stormy Daniels.

She does a tarot car reading for you, and it's not very happy.

I was very disturbed by it.

She mentioned when I got there to see her that she does readings and I knew that she has a kind of ghost hunting show called Spooky Babes and she's very into all that stuff now.

And I was worried I'd be pushing my luck by asking her to do an Oracle deck reading, but she was game to do it.

And it was shockingly emotional.

I did not, I really was not a believer going in and I still don't know that I am, but it was surprising.

Have you ever done one?

Yeah, it doesn't affect me the way it affected you.

So it was, it was all about sort of storm clouds.

Speaking of Stormy, you had a great reveal in the article also.

She's in close touch with Mary Trump, Kathy Griffin, and Eugene Carroll, which is like some kind of weird Avengers kind of thing.

What was your takeaway from your story?

You know, I had spent some time with her in 2018 when she first became

famous in this way.

I love this

story.

And I was so struck by how sharp she is and how funny she is and how remarkably well well she was handling this extraordinarily bizarre set of circumstances.

And this, and she was adamant at that time.

I am not a victim.

I am not a victim.

I am not a pawn.

I am not a victim.

And I was surprised,

but certainly could not blame her this time around.

She's having a much more difficult time dealing with all of this.

It's much more taxing emotionally.

Post-insurrection,

there really are no boundaries for a lot of these people anymore.

And she's under constant threat and concerned and worried for her child worried for her husband worried for her own life and she's also just been flattened by all of this she was talking about right

never ends never ends it never ever ends and this is something that kathy was saying uh during our interview just people think people will come up and say oh that thing a couple of years ago you know that was so crazy and she's like oh no no no it's ongoing and it doesn't seem like it will ever ever, ever end.

And this is something that they have to deal with forever.

Yeah.

Being affiliated with Trump.

Being affiliated, yeah.

So one of the things is she sort of painted a very dire picture of this guy's not going away.

And at the same time, you went to the Trump arraignment that day.

New York's hottest club.

New York, the arraignment.

What, talk to me about how you feel because you've been covering, you must be exhausted too, because this never ends.

You've been covering him for years and years.

I would say, yeah, I've been covering him for a third of my life almost.

And

which I did not realize when I signed up for that.

I thought it would be, you know, a couple of months, perhaps, a couple of weeks.

I would say I was talking to Catherine Miller from the New York Times earlier today, and she made a joke that she calls this the there are only 40 people alive theory of the world.

That it's just the same cast of people.

This is something that I find extremely disorienting.

Nobody goes away.

They all know each other.

And you link them all together.

They all know each other.

They're all from reality television, or they end up on reality television.

Or dancing.

Or dancing,

a dancing competition.

A lot of surprisingly good dancers in this cast of people, I have to say.

Would you ever do that?

No.

Are you sure?

No, I'm sure.

I think you would win.

I went to dancing school.

I can dance, but I wouldn't.

But it's as though time has collapsed into itself and there are these kind of multiple timelines occurring at once.

And

it is very hard to keep track of everything and to keep track of everyone and to know where one storyline begins and the other ends.

And I think Stormy Daniels is this uniquely American character who's who's in the middle of it and having a similar difficulty.

And with Trump, I mean,

I felt like, you know how eels go back to the place of their birth to die?

No.

No, but go ahead.

That's sort of how I felt, you know, watching him land in Queens that day.

I sort of just thought

there's something so beautifully complete about this.

And I felt like I just had to, I had to be there, you know?

Right, right.

But it's not over.

It's not over.

Stormy Daniels and her tarot card readings.

She was quite, she seems quite perturbed that it's not over and that he's not down.

Yeah, I mean, I think.

you know, if you just heard, oh, Stormy Daniels read her Oracle deck and predicted that things are not going to go well in the future and will probably be worse,

Maybe you would think that she was snickering a bit or having, you know, a bit of an I told you so moment about it.

And she was really heartbroken by it.

She's saddened by it, and she did not seem happy at all.

Because if it's not ending for him, then it's not ending for her or for any of us.

Right.

That's exactly right.

Well, it's an amazing story.

It was fantastic.

And you're continuing to cover Trump's next step.

I have to see this thing through.

I mean, I'm not happy about it, but I have to see this thing through.

I would love to cover literally anything else,

but unfortunately,

I will be seeing this thing through however long that takes.

And any predictions right now at the beginning of the cycle?

Is there anyone else you're following that you're really interested in?

I mean, I'm keeping tabs.

I'm keeping tabs on everyone.

I'm going to go write a DeSantis piece

after this.

Good luck with that.

Good luck with that.

Yeah, the response from his office was basically, go fuck yourself.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, he's unlikable.

unlikable that's my take and short well not with those little those little block heels that he wears he wears taller heels than i do yes i know but short and unlikable i'm short i am short and unlikeable you're very tall just very tall woman and project very tall okay well i'm not anyway go read olivia's cover piece and it's cover of new york magazine this week really wonderful as usual fantastic writing and reporting thank you anyway we have a lot to talk about today we'll talk about dueling court decisions around abortion pills also twitter's latest attempt to lock out competitors and we'll speak with Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Sr.

about loss, grief, and memory.

And I'd love you too to talk about writing long-form articles because you're both sort of experts in that area and fantastic at it.

She certainly is.

Well, you are too.

But first, a gaffe has one of the Bidens in hot water, but it's not the one you think.

First Lady Dr.

Jill Biden stirred up controversy after she suggested the winners and losers of the women's NCAA basketball champions come to the White House.

In the final game, Louisiana State University defeated the team from the University of Iowa by quite a lot.

Most of the players on LSU's teams are black.

The Iowa team is mostly white.

Critics say the First Lady's comments disrespect a historic win for the largely black team.

On the Daily Show, Dessey Lydick said the move would, quote, honor white losers the same as black winners.

Is this a big issue?

Are you surprised?

She never sort of makes a mistake.

It's sort of a role reversal for her and her husband, right?

There is something deeply comic about it.

But I am surprised she's extraordinarily careful and seems to put a tremendous amount of energy into avoiding something just like this.

But

I think if it's a very grandmotherly English teacher, everyone gets a trophy sort of comment.

I can't imagine that she even realized that she was stepping in it.

But I would have loved to be in the room

when someone told her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Any effect?

I don't know.

I mean, I think it's hard to predict how these things will reverberate and whether or not Joe Biden calling the coach and calling the players, whether or not that will smooth things over in the end.

But I thought it was very interesting that there was no

hesitation in really going after them for it, right?

I mean, it was sort of this pure expression of anger.

Yeah, even I know this.

You don't invite the second place team.

I know this.

I was like, what?

Like, hey, no.

And there's a lot of, you know, everyone was all up in their arms about the dunking in the face thing and the hand thing.

That's what they do in sports.

I was like, you only invite the winners, it seems like.

It's very, it's also, it's very American to do that.

Although it's very nice nice to invite everybody, that's why you win.

So you get to go by yourself.

So I don't know.

How is she doing?

Is she feeling good about it?

He's obviously running for re-election, I think, or maybe not, but that's what most people think at this point.

This White House, if you can believe it, is very different from the last one.

And

one of the fundamental ways that they are different is that it is pretty shut down.

There are not a lot of the way that you would sort of just stick your head out your window and like 11 people would emerge to tell you how Donald Trump was feeling.

That does not really happen here.

And even the people who would know about that sort of thing, I think are extraordinarily protective,

which is another way of saying, I have no idea, Kara, and no one is telling me how she's feeling.

All right, good.

Okay.

All right.

But you assume he's going to run, correct?

I do.

Even despite it, I mean,

I would be surprised.

Oh, well, I certainly don't think that this would be the thing to determine that he would not run.

But who knows?

I mean, smaller events have had monumental consequences in our politics.

Yeah,

they're pretty functional, probably.

I mean, all White Houses are dysfunctional, but presumably this one's more functional.

But it's a low bar.

It's a very low bar.

Speaking of low bars, Clarence Thomas says he did nothing wrong, which is not accurate, after a report revealed that the Supreme Court justice traveled on private jets and super yachts paid for by a wealthy Republican donor.

One trip being over $500,000, Thomas never disclosed the gifts, which he received over a period of decades.

Now Democrats are calling for action with different degrees.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse wants Chief Justice Roberts to investigate, which will not be happening, while AOC says that Thomas should be impeached, which will probably not be happening.

And the Wall Street Journal's opinion page came to Thomas's defense.

There's also attention on the man who paid for those trips, Texas real estate billionaire Harlan Crowe, who does sound like a villainous billionaire by name.

The name itself, Crowe collects Nazi memorabilia, including a signed copy of Mein Kampf and a painting by Hitler.

He reportedly keeps one, that one besides another by George Bush.

Not a lot of context from what I understand.

What a guy.

I mean, what a guy.

Like nobody's focused on the, everyone's focused on the Nazi memorabilia now and not on the fact that he's getting a lot of stuff from a rich guy.

So what do we think of this?

This seems not a surprise and yet pretty awful on some level.

Yeah, before this, I had heard at a dinner party

about how he loves.

traveling in his RV and they go on vacations in this RV.

And I thought that was so fascinating.

And a dream of a story for me would be to embed on this RV with them.

And little did I know that...

But the Thomas, yes.

Little did I know that, in fact,

that is only his Man of the People vacation and he was having way more luxurious vacations.

But it is, I mean, I think...

It's sort of, it's remarkable to watch everyone learn in real time that there is really no system of accountability for the court.

For the court whatsoever.

They can do whatever they want.

For whatsoever.

I mean, I don't know what it would take for there to be some sort of penalty or some effort to impeach, but it certainly does not inspire faith in the system.

Yeah, it absolutely doesn't.

I mean, I think it's not a surprise.

He also has funded all kinds of things, including publications, this guy, Harlan, and a bunch of things.

And so a lot of people came to his defense.

He's a nice guy.

And I was like, I don't think it's about that.

I think it's about him taking him on vacations, even if they're friends.

It's a whole lot of, you know, gimme's that this guy is getting.

I think like the promise of the court or anyone in a position like that is that you will hold yourself to a higher standard.

And that the system does not need to have in place guardrails for you to act ethically.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a very good point.

But we did not factor in when making the system that all manner of personalities would be.

would be finding themselves there.

Yeah.

It's such a Washington story.

I literally felt like I was in an episode of scandal.

I'm like, okay, here we are.

You know what I mean?

Again, and not a surprise, but sort of, sort of lich, yuck, really.

Yeah, very, you know, and then I want to know who everybody else is hanging out with.

You know, that's the kind of thing.

They're not hanging out with you.

No, no, I'm not.

They're not.

I've never been on a super yacht.

But now I kind of want to see this guy's house.

A lot of people have been to this guy.

He didn't like hide away all his collectibles.

I want to go to the Garden of Dictators.

That's where I would like to go.

Is it like a statue garden?

Yes.

He collects heads from across the world.

You know, when fascism and communism fall, he goes and gets one of the heads.

Like, they're all over the place in Eastern Europe, if you go there and Russia.

And so he collects them and puts them in a garden.

What do you think the shipping cost is like?

I don't think he cares.

I think he's a billionaire.

So does I.

I shall have the head of Stalin in my garden, the broken-sided head.

You do see them all over the place there many years ago, but they're probably gone now in rubble.

But he's got them.

That's not something I would decorate my garden with.

I'd put gnomes in, perhaps, but I don't think I'd put Ceausescu.

I don't think I'd want any disembodied head lying around.

Yeah.

Well, there's full statues, too.

There's full statues.

That changes everything.

It changes everything.

Anyway, Strange Man.

Deeply.

Nothing's going to happen.

Nothing's going to happen here.

It's just, it really does feel like an episode of Scandal or Succession.

Did you watch the course?

I thought it was brilliant.

Plot spoiler.

I'm going to warn people.

Plot spoiler.

It was brilliant.

It was really, it was, I had a good interview with Brian Cox last week.

Really?

I thought that the

way that they handle just the awkwardness of death was, I've never seen anything like that portrayed.

And I thought that was really, really brilliant.

Just the yeah, it was sort of in real time.

You were experiencing it while they were.

I think that's really what was in the way it was explained to me is that was the whole goal of it.

And it was beautiful.

I think the acting piece of acting.

I also love

the very, the subtleties of no one in this family knowing how to hug each other properly.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like pat, pat,

like grabbing Connor's arm or just attempting to do this, this

three-child hug.

I thought it was handled so beautifully.

Yeah, the only one that worked was the last shot of them getting married.

Yeah.

That was actually very natural.

Yeah.

Well, he's the only one that doesn't need love.

Yeah.

And so he has it in a weird way.

In a weird way.

That was just a really beautiful shot.

I thought the whole thing was great.

And although Brian Cox really wanted to have a death scene, he really did.

He was kind of pissed.

He was like, what the fuck?

What the fuck?

Back of my head on the toilet.

What the fuck?

What the fuck, Carrie?

He kept saying it was very funny.

But I loved how they did that.

They They were scared to tell.

Oh, God.

I loved how they handled it without, you know, you never saw his full body.

No.

Right.

You just

diminished and out of the picture.

Literally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was great.

Are we on the succession podcast now?

I feel like we're on the succession podcast.

No, we're not.

No, I'm just saying.

I'm just curious.

So everyone's talking about it today, so we have to talk about it.

Okay, it's actually getting huge.

People got real bothered by it in a good way.

Like it really impacted them.

I had to leave the room.

I found it emotional.

Oh, wow.

Huh.

That's interesting.

Okay.

But you cried with Stormy Daniels, and now you're crying in succession.

Interesting.

I'm crying a lot these days.

Yeah.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, goodness, Olivia.

Get it together.

So when was the last time you cried?

Oh,

1969?

1969 or something.

Nice.

70s.

That's long before you existed, Olivia.

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

Access to abortion pills could be in jeopardy after a pair of dueling court rulings came down last week.

First, a Texas judge ruled that the FDA should never have approved mifoprestone, a drug used to terminate pregnancies, among other uses.

That ruling is on pause pending appeal, but if it's upheld, that could take an essential abortion drug off the legal market in the U.S.

Meanwhile, a second court ruled that the same drug must be kept on the market in 17 states plus D.C.

that sued to expand access.

So many Republicans were very quiet after the ruling.

They've been getting hit hard, including in Wisconsin, where they lost that judgeship that was critically important to them.

Have they realized limiting abortion access is a losing issue?

Talk about it from a political point of view.

In a poll of last year, it's mid-term voters, about 60% they were angry, angry over the Supreme Court ruling.

Can you talk about it from a political perspective?

It's this tricky predicament where it is an animating force for both sides.

And it is what they have been campaigning on for so long, right?

It has been animating the right and especially the evangelical right for 30, more than 30 years.

And

it is likewise, people have a long memory about this.

Women have a long memory about this.

I think remember in the last, in the midterms, everyone's saying, oh, well, will people still care?

Will people still care about this by the time voting happens?

And the answer, I think, was a resounding certainly.

And

I do.

I think that it seems like they have been sort of not chastened into changing their views, but not wanting to be beating their chests about this because it had such negative repercussions in these last elections.

So will it continue to do that?

It seems to be continuing to fuel quite a lot of voting for people.

And now this is, it just keeps going.

It keeps going with this trend.

They seem to be pushing it far too far.

Florida, six weeks, you're writing about DeSantis.

That's something else.

You don't even, as someone who's been pregnant, I didn't know for eight weeks, I think, something a long time.

A lot of people don't know for a very long time.

I think that the more that there are stories about women who, regardless of their politics, are having their health negatively affected or their lives in danger, their children's lives in danger, those stories are not just going to go away.

And the more that time goes on and there are real people in danger because of this, who are not political activists, right?

Who are not acting to try to help Joe Biden or any Democrat, this is about healthcare.

And I think that it becomes clearer and clearer how radical this position is the more that those stories are reported on.

Do you talk to Republicans?

I mean, I know Trump was one that said this is too far.

Like, that was, it's not a good thing.

You know, many people had said that.

But he's not a Republican.

It's hard to talk about Joe Biden.

No, right.

He was pro-life, pro-choice very recently.

Right.

But he was with the evangelicals.

Yeah.

But he then became the opposite just for political expediency.

Yeah, of course.

But he had warned about this ruling in the correct, in the correct way.

Do Republicans get that?

And do you think it's going to continue to be a big issue?

Everyone says it's not.

And I keep saying, oh, yeah.

Who's saying it's not?

During the midterms, they thought there was going to be a red wave.

And I was like, no, and the abortion thing was over and this and that.

And I was like, no, it's not.

It's not over by elections.

I just think there's this disconnect where...

On the right and among certain segments of the kind of pundit class

in the kind of centrist left,

people are talking about this as if it is only a political issue, as if it is only about religious fervor and

people who believe in protecting life.

And it's just not about that.

It is about healthcare.

And

I think that that is where the disconnect is, where people are making political predictions, talking about this as if it is just a religious right-wing evangelical issue and not realizing that, no, actually,

everyone is affected by this.

If you know a woman, you will probably be affected by this at some point.

So I think that's where that disconnect is from.

It's the way that we talk about this in this sort of reductive way in our pundit class.

And yes, it's still an effective issue for Democrats.

Should they keep drilling down it?

I mean, the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court looked a lot like a political campaign.

Big spending, endorsements from Planned Parenthood.

Candidates talked about their political beliefs.

The judge in the Texas case, Matthew Kazmarek, is a Trump appointee with a long history of anti-abortion advocacy.

According to the Washington Post, his ruling used the term abortionists and referred to fetuses as unborn children.

Is it a good political thing to press in?

I mean, Biden definitely weighed in on this

against

Kazmarik.

I think that it's certainly a winning issue for Democrats, besides, you know, being in line with

what they actually believe, right?

It's sort of conveniently, unlike with Republicans who are sort of at turns being quiet about this now, it is both a winning issue and something that is very much part of the platform and has been for a long time.

So I think that they will continue to campaign on this.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Do you see any Republican using it in a way that's positive to them and trying to appeal?

Or is it impossible in the modern Republican Party to be anything but for

the overturn of government?

I have not seen a ton of nuance on this on the right.

Have you?

No, not at all.

I'm sort of thinking it's an opportunity.

Yeah.

I kept thinking it was an opportunity.

You know, I'm trying to think of one.

Well, there's a few Republicans, but they're not being loud about it in any way whatsoever.

Right.

Well, it's not really popular to be like a civil libertarian anymore among on the right.

Yeah.

So yeah, we'll see where it goes.

I think it's going to be a potent political issue for a long time to come.

Yeah, I agree.

Olivia, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, Twitter once again locks the doors to keep people from leaving.

We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Jennifer Sr., about her Pulitzer Prize-winning story that inspired her new book.

Only murders in the building, season five.

The Hit Hulu original is back.

The nightluster died.

He was talking with this mobster.

Was he killed in the hit?

We need to go face to face with the mob.

Get ready for a season.

This is how I die.

You can't refuse.

You're going to save the day, like you always do, by being smart, sharp, and almost always find mistakes.

The Hulu Original series, Only Murders in the Building, premieres September 9th, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.

Terms apply.

New episodes Tuesdays.

Support for Pivot comes from LinkedIn.

From talking about sports, discussing the latest movies, everyone is looking for a real connection to the people around them.

But it's not just person to person, it's the same connection that's needed in business.

And it can be the hardest part about B2B marketing, finding the right people, making the right connections.

But instead of spending hours and hours scavenging social media feeds, you can just tap LinkedIn ads to reach the right professionals.

According to LinkedIn, they have grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, making it stand apart from other ad buys.

You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, and company revenue, giving you all the professionals you need to reach in one place.

So you can stop wasting wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads.

LinkedIn will even give you $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it for yourself.

Just go to linkedin.com slash pivot pod.

That's linkedin.com slash pivot pod.

Terms and conditions apply.

Only on LinkedIn ads.

Okay, Olivia, we're back.

Twitter users can once again post about their favorite newsletters.

That wasn't the case last week when Twitter took escalating steps to block access to Substack, the newsletter service.

Here's what happened.

First, Substack announced a new Twitter-like feature called Notes.

Then Twitter made it harder for users to engage with tweets that mentioned Substack.

Eventually, Twitter blocked searches for the word Substack, which I noticed.

Twitter's CEO Elon Musk claims the actions were necessary because Substack tried to download a massive portion of the Twitter database.

Substack's CEO denies the claim.

I'm with Substack's CEO on that.

So are you on Twitter a lot?

Should writers stay on?

I mean, I view it as a necessary evil to continue to have an account there.

I'm not really, I mean, I'm active on it, depending on how much I am procrastinating,

I might be active on it.

I don't, but I don't really look at it anymore.

I mean, there was a time when I think like a lot of people, especially in our industry, I was compulsively online and was constantly chatting with people on Twitter.

Now I mostly use it just to share my work because I have an audience there that I've, you know, I've been on Twitter since since I was 16, Kara.

I know, but that was like last week.

I mean, I have really complicated feelings about it because I think that it taught me how to write in some ways.

How so?

I mean, it taught me about brevity.

When it was 140 characters, it was like a writing boot camp in some ways.

And it's where I found an audience.

Friend of Pivot, Casey Newton, wrote last week, who you know also, Twitter is extremely hard to kill.

And for journalists who have come to rely on it, there's almost no indignity.

They won't suffer to get their fixed.

But Matt Taibbi quit last week after he makes his living off of Substack, but he was also one of the hand-picked journalists covering the shitty Twitter files.

Covering that must as recently as covering.

Yeah, covering is a broad term.

And journalists is a broad term in that case.

Well, he is a journalist.

Come on.

Yes, he is a journalist.

No, I'm talking about the Twitter files.

I'm sorry.

They didn't do a very good job.

They did a bad job of reporting.

That's all I'll say.

It was weird.

It was weird.

They didn't, it was cherry-picked in a lot of ways.

What about the use for politicians and the media that covers it?

Because

that's where it really comes alive in a lot of ways.

It's the Hollywood doesn't use it that much, except for marketing.

Right.

And fewer and fewer people are using it.

The numbers are going down.

But the political media nexus is quite strong, no matter, like with people dunking on each other or putting things out or having a reaction to a reaction, etc.

Right.

How important is it still?

I mean, I think it is important.

I think it's important for that class of people the way that Instagram is important for Hollywood, right?

It's this direct line where you don't have to filter through any media intermediaries, right?

So it's very attractive for politicians or for any type of activist trying to speak directly to people.

I don't think it's going to go away, but what do you think?

I mean, why is this, why is he handling this so poorly?

I don't know.

Everyone thinks there's always a plan with him.

I don't think there is.

I think he operates completely as an id.

No, it's all id.

What he feels that day, whether he decides to cover up the the W on the Twitter sign, make Titter.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Did he do that?

Yeah, he did that.

Yeah.

All it says to me is, hug me.

My parents didn't.

Would you hug him?

No.

You wouldn't?

No.

If he was crying

and he asked you for a hug, you would not hug Elon Musk.

I would not.

I would not hug him.

What would you do?

Would you walk away?

Say,

you should get some help.

That's what I would say.

You need some help.

But asking you for a hug would be asking for help.

Go hug your children do you think i'm imagining a succession style hug frankly like an awkward no yes yes what it would be i would do that i would hug stereotyped though i certainly would well of course who wouldn't hug stormy daniels exactly exactly i don't know but let's move off the hugs for a second i just want i'm just curious when you think about like it being used like by trump but he still gets on it by using true social how do you follow him there where do you just look at true social and well um they they actually banned me they removed removed my account from Truth Social

after my lunch.

Did the Chinese government have a problem with you?

Sorry,

allegedly.

I wrote a story about Donald Trump

around Christmas time where he was on the cover.

Yes, it was.

And he did not like the story.

And I cheekily used my Truth Social account that I had just to monitor him.

And also this account called like Hot Girls Who Golf.

Those are the only accounts that I followed on there.

But But I tweeted or I truced whatever the hell they call it at him with the article and said, like, you know, thank you for your time or something like that.

And they immediately removed my account.

Wow.

So I haven't looked at it since then.

I thought they were forced free speech.

I'm shocked and appalled.

It turns out that they are not for free speech, Kara.

Jason Miller will get is getting a text from me in a second.

Oh, God.

Well, that's better you than me.

That's true.

Although I don't even think he's running it.

So do you think it's important for him to have these?

It doesn't matter.

Not at all.

I don't know.

I mean, Twitter was so essential to his political rise.

It really was.

And it was sort of like

it was his art form, right?

I mean, this man is a frustrated, failed artist.

And we know that that never ends well in history.

And

he really, I mean, he was perfect for that platform.

And fatally with fatal consequences.

And it's weird that he is not on it.

And I kind of assumed that they would find a way to navigate whatever the complicated factors are with Truth Social.

Yeah, but he's not on it, but he hasn't gone back to Twitter.

He's not, yeah.

He seems to like where he is.

He likes his new little home.

Well, or is he there because he has to be there because of whatever the intricacies of his feel

are?

I think he likes it.

I think he likes the big all-cap screaming, vomiting kind of thing.

Look, I think from him, it's not really a difference, right?

Because he's probably, he says to his assistant or whatever underling is meandering about his haunted mansion.

He says, oh, post, you know, post this.

Post this, all caps on this word, exclamation, enjoy.

Stormy Daniels is a horse face, exclamation point, send it now.

And that process, it's not as if he's sitting there on his phone typing these things out and reading the replies, although they do, they will print out replies and bring them to him so he can see, which is a process that's existed since he was in Trump Tower.

So he's not sitting there with his little fingers in his haunted matches.

Little fingers typing out.

Yeah.

So do you think in the election this is going to matter?

And the nexus between Musk and him is important because there is a nexus now, Elon's move towards Trump.

I think in a way

when I was working on that story, a current campaign official told me that he would be back on Twitter, that they did have plans for him to come back.

I'm sure that they are waiting until they want to level a particularly devastating insult at Ron DeSantis or whoever else emerges and they will arrive on that platform and he will have some sort of classically Trumpian missive to welcome himself back.

And it's good that Elon's running it for them now, right?

They're pretty thrilled.

I mean, you know better than I do.

I mean, do you think that they're similar personality-wise?

Well, Elon's obviously a lot smarter,

obviously, I mean, by a factor of a lot.

But, you know, Trump has some horse sense.

Yeah, I do.

I think they didn't have very good.

They just need attention almost 24-7, and it's sad and pathetic and also dangerous.

Do you worry about your data on there following you?

I don't put anything on there now.

I wouldn't put my credit card.

To pay for Twitter Blue?

You wouldn't pay for Twitter Blue?

I mean, again, I have been on there since I was literally a child.

I assume that my privacy has been violated on there for a very long time.

Time and will continue to be violated.

I don't think anything is private.

The young people are not.

I don't think anything is tied beyond.

I don't think there's anything that you tidy.

I'm not paying for Twitter at all.

Well, of course not.

I mean, I think that being verified is mortifying and I've always thought that it was mortifying.

So

this has aged very well in the last few weeks.

My refusal to get verified.

Yes, yes, yeah.

Well, here we are.

All right.

Let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

Jennifer Sr.

is a staff writer at the Atlantic where she won the Pulsar Prize for her 2021 story, What Bobby McIlvain Left Behind.

That story is now available as a book titled On Grief.

Welcome, Jennifer Sr.

Hey, Kara.

How are you?

Good.

Glad to have you here and talking to us.

Your book is wonderful, as I suspected.

The story was amazing.

I'm going to have you start.

Walk us through.

Your story.

Broadly, it's about a family mourning the loss of their son who died on 9-11.

It's also about memory and the act of journaling.

It's also about misinformation, which I think I found really jarring.

So tell us about it and what prompted you to do this.

Well, the crudest answer is Bobby McIlvain, who died on September 11th, was my brother's roommate, you know, both in college and when they were young men.

They were roommates for eight straight years, almost to the day, right?

Like they threw their duffel bags on the same bunk bed, you know, in early September.

And then he died on September 11th, eight years later.

I knew him.

I adored him.

It was devastating when he died.

And

what kind of led me to the story were a couple of things.

I mean, it was the 20th anniversary, but those are kind of fake pegs.

But the Atlantic was doing something, and Jeff called me, Jeff Goldberg, the editor, and said,

Do you happen to know any families to whom this might have happened?

Do you happen to have any, you know, we have like people thinking about like the policy and foreign policy and blah, blah, blah.

And I was, and I said, you know,

I do.

And at first, I thought I was pitching a marriage story because as you point out, you were flicking at the infer, missing the misinformation thing.

I thought I was going to be writing a story about initially Bobby's father became a huge truther.

He embraced all the 9-11 conspiracy theories.

And in fact, he started tailoring his own, made them really bespoke, really arcane, got deep in the weeds about really in the marshes about some really weird stuff.

And his wife is like totally indifferent to this stuff.

She would walk across the street and around the corner and then go halfway across the country to never have to think about 9-11, much less its origins and all that stuff.

Right.

So I thought,

you know, screw all of the stories about like, how do you get along with your Trump-loving uncle at Thanksgiving?

Like, how do you stay married after like 20 years, right?

After you've lost your son

and negotiate that unbelievable gulf, right?

That just seems so much bigger and so much more challenging.

So I thought I was going to be writing a story about a marriage, but then I also realized there was a story to be written that was maybe even more

to me.

I don't know if it's more beguiling because I'm a writer or whatever.

Bobby was this diarist.

He was this, he wanted to be a novelist.

He kept all these diaries since he was a teenager.

And

his last diary was sitting on his desk when he died.

And his father in this total fugue state gave that diary away to the woman that Bobby was about to propose to because she saw that her name was all over it and she wanted it.

And

it was,

he was trying to be kind, right?

But after he did it, his wife was like, how could you have done that?

How could you have given away the last thing that our kid ever wrote when this was a chance to hear his voice one last time.

It was fresh conversation.

Oh my God, are you kidding?

She was so broken by this and she was desperate to get this diary back.

And she asked this woman,

her name was also Jen, you know, would you give me this diary back?

And she wouldn't give it back.

And yeah, and I wouldn't give that diary back.

And that's the story.

Yeah, that's the story.

Yeah.

So, Olivia, you also write long form and very,

very pungently, same way, I think.

What would you have done with this story?

Have you written a story like this?

I don't think I've ever written anything this tricky.

I mean, it sounds like an impossibly difficult thing to navigate.

Was it?

That's incredibly nice of you to say.

I mean,

I mean, yeah, and no.

On the one hand, I'd been obsessed with that diary for 20 years.

And in some ways, I'd been writing this story in my head for 20 years.

So you'd be amazed at how fast something comes out, like when you've been unconsciously, subconsciously writing something.

In fact, Olivia, I bet you know that, what that sense is like.

I'm sure there are things that have been.

Oh, of course.

And I think like the greatest impediment for me anyway with writing is when I don't have the time to sit and just think it through, even just idly, right?

Not even in my conscious mind.

But if I haven't been able to take that time, that's where I'm, that's when I'm bumping up into not.

not knowing how to phrase something or whatever.

But if I've spent any time at all, mulling something over,

usually it just comes right out.

That's so interesting.

And, you know, and some of it's not even conscious.

Exactly, right?

It's like you don't even know what work your unconscious mind is doing.

So imagine having like a 20-year gestation period.

Like there's no mammal I can think of that like, you know, is pregnant for 20 years or something.

This was like the world's longest pregnancy.

Like, I mean, I had this thing going for 20 years, you know, and so like, I feel like that's a long gestation.

Did you know you were ready?

I was so ready to do it.

I mean, the tricky parts were like the McElvanes have become these dear family friends.

And my brother has remained very close to Bobby's younger brother.

So what I didn't want to do was ruin these precious friendships, you know,

over a piece of journalism because, like, I had to have my priorities straight on that one.

So I too had never done anything like this.

What happened there?

Yeah.

How do you deal with that?

Can I tell you, I sort of violated like a lot of the traditional rules.

I made sure that the McElvane sort of knew what was going to be in it.

I mean, I do that.

I read to them.

I do that.

Yeah.

Well, so thank you.

So I do too.

If you're dealing with civilian, first of all, even with politicians.

Well, I don't do that with politicians, but yeah.

But I don't tell them what's going to be in it, but I make sure the quotes are right.

Right.

Of course.

And never, I mean, I get from the Gay Tilly School of like, there should not be any surprises.

If you people are surprised, then you're probably being an asshole.

Like, then you're being a dick.

Exactly.

And like,

and why be a dick?

Right.

You don't have have to be a dick.

Good journalism.

And you're like marvelous proof, right?

Because you've got all of these corkers, all of these blockbusters.

So, and clearly everyone keeps coming back to you.

So you're doing something.

I mean, you are like a guy.

I mean, somebody should actually.

They can't quit her.

They can't quit her.

They can't quit her.

And so the question is, like, I mean, one day I would love to sit down with you and find out how you manage everyone.

Yeah.

Can we have like coffee or something?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Okay, ladies, let's talk about this book.

So I want to know what happened with the McElvanes once they read it.

I'll tell you, the best thing about their reaction was this.

I mean, they loved the piece because it got everybody saying Bobby's name, but they also loved it because they're not fancy people.

So, a lot of people who lost people on September 11th have like annual golf tournaments and walk-a-thons, and they hit up their friends every year for money.

And the McElvanes are not the kind of people who do that like that's not what they do right

so

they didn't have to right no they didn't have to you've made it you've made it that way

yeah can you talk about memory and the fallibility of memory because every I remember where I was on 9-11 strangely many people in the story have forgotten a lot about it obviously they have to in some ways because it's so devastating but memory and grief sort of get mixed up together in in weird ways uh especially when someone dies young And people have different memories.

Can you talk a little bit about when you're writing about it?

Because you yourself also have memories that may not be the right memories, right?

Oh my God, can I tell you the craziest thing about this?

Talk about having a fault.

Well, first I'll tell you about all the flawed memories that I sort of found in this story that totally transfixed me.

So a really good example is that Jen, the almost fiancé, because Bobby had bought a ring for her, just hadn't proposed.

She lived with the McElvains after September 11th because she just couldn't tolerate the echoing kind of emptiness of their apartment, right?

Or of her apartment where Bobby was now spending a lot of time.

So this is nuts to me.

If you asked Bobby's younger brother, she stayed there with them for six months.

If you asked Bobby's mom, she stayed there for a week.

Wow.

And she remembers having stayed there for two months.

But like the gulf between six months and a week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that's, and here's another one that I absolutely couldn't get over.

Both Jeff, Bobby's brother, and Jen, they could not decide who slept in Bobby's bed during that time.

Someone slept in Bobby's bed, and it was either his brother like sleeping in his dead brother's bed, or it was like his fiancé sleeping in like this man's bed that she was not going to marry.

and like how can it be that like they couldn't remember waking up to all of Bobby's things and what that

right I mean it is amazing

what well it's part of grief right it's grief

I mean it's exactly it's grief it's how you deal with grief it's how you I don't remember what I did this morning but go ahead

well there's some argument that like

while we're grieving things are more vivid but I I don't think that's true I think that you know and this gets by the way you're skating on very dangerous,

I don't want to say thin ice.

I mean, this is a little bit treacherous because, of course, you want to believe the memories of people who have been raped, who have gone through traumas, who have gone through all kinds of terrible things.

But it is,

it was unnerving to me to hear the different testimony, right?

And we know this from kind of different eyewitness testimony at crimes that you can get radically different kind of

yeah, sort of reports of what happened.

But so here's an example.

I mean, just to show how fallible my own stupid memory was about this.

I was interviewed for a storytelling podcast maybe four months ago.

And they said to me, like, so

what was it like asking the McIlvanes to do this story?

How delicate was it to ask them?

And I was very cheerful.

And I said, oh, they were super open-hearted.

I wrote them a long, heartfelt, careful note.

And they said, of course, yes, absolutely.

We'll do anything we can to help you.

And I went back and I looked at that note recently.

It was not long and hard and careful and heartfelt.

It was like way too short and telegraphic and made me wince when I reread it.

Like it was too careful.

And the Mackle and Helen was so.

cautious with me.

She was not in any way

like, oh, absolutely anything you need.

she said that she wanted to only answer my questions in writing that is how like i and i think i couldn't tolerate the idea

of

unkind

of pressuring them exactly right of being of pressuring them into cool like of of of of keeping at it and saying no you really do want to sit and talk to me but jennifer isn't it sort of like when something works out though and when the reaction to the story is positive from your subjects, doesn't, I find this happens to me too, where I forget all of the negotiating that went into getting the access that I got in the end, or I forget how difficult it was or what the fact-checking process was like, or

all of that just fades or gets distorted.

And I

remember it as an easy process.

Like, this is the second time I'm going to use this metaphor, which is so bananas.

Why I'm doing this, I don't know.

But it's like childbirth.

You forget, you forget the pain.

Like, and it's just like, oh, yay, a baby, like a totally awesome baby.

And yes, right.

I was like, oh, yay, a totally awesome baby.

And I forgot what I did.

But I also think it was just, it was too disruptive of my own self-concept to think that like, oh, I'm an empathetic journalist.

I would never have like leaned on the McAlvanes in this way.

But your mind protects you, I think, right?

Your mind is protecting your self-image when that happens, I think.

Totally.

And that's just what happens.

I think that our minds are protecting us in all kinds of ways.

And that's what happens with mammal.

Then, how do you go now?

I'm going to ask you a couple more questions.

You interviewed Steve Bannon.

It was not a kind piece, but you were right in there with him.

And he answered, you know, I know he's very available.

I know I'm aware of that.

And you have interviewed him too, Olivia.

But when they know, sometimes, and Olivia, you did that famous Trump thing when you were in this office.

And I kept thinking, why are they letting her in there?

What, you wouldn't have invited me?

I would not have.

Are you kidding?

No, no, absolutely not.

Not unless every drawer was locked.

So how do you, come on, you both interviewed someone like a Steve Bannon who has, who, who is not in his best interest necessarily to talk to you.

I'd love to, you know, in this case, it probably wasn't in their best interest to talk to you, but it wasn't in their not best interest to talk to you in this case, because it did preserve his memory in a very lovely way.

But how do you think, both of you think about that when you're doing these kind of long-form things and you have to spend significant significant amounts of time with people

you first live out um well i i'm very curious to hear your opinion on on bannon and his calculation but i i think for a lot of people like that

they know what they're getting into.

Steve Bannon is certainly savvy about the media.

I mean, he's been manipulating the media for years

positively, right?

Spinning himself as being central to history.

And for someone like that, he just wants attention.

He wants to be, I mean, it's, we're talking about last night's episode of Succession, Jennifer, I don't know if you watched it, but when everyone, Tom is like, it's important that I was on the plane with him.

I mean, that's what all of these guys are doing.

They just want everyone to know that they were on the plane.

So they'll take the hit.

They know that they're probably going to have a negative interpretation of at least some of their story or what they're claiming.

But that's really not what it's about to cooperate with mainstream or liberal media.

It's about attention and it's about writing themselves into history.

I mean, that is what Steve Bennett is doing, in my view.

I think that's right.

I mean, I think megalomania plays no small part.

I think that also there's, look, he's partly, and we know this,

he might deny it, but he is a part of the establishment.

He was a Goldman guy.

He was a Hollywood guy.

Oh, my God.

He's going to hate this so much, Jennifer.

But the point is, he

craves kind of the establishment's approval, right?

So the Atlantic, New York Magazine, they're all places to get your passport stamped that I think matters.

A lot like Trump, right?

I mean, for Trump, it's like he hates the media, he hates the media.

All that he wants is the acceptance of the New York media.

That is what animates him.

He came of age in New York.

Yeah.

He came of age here.

So, right, exactly.

I think this all matters to these guys.

Yeah, I can't believe they talked to you.

I still can't believe it.

Let me ask you two more questions.

We got to go soon.

What should people know about grief?

What did you learn about grief from this book?

Oh, yeah, that's great.

That's a good question.

Two things.

First of all, telling anyone like how to grieve, like to move past it, or you should be.

It's a certain, there's like a tyranny, I think, associated with like grieving in a way that you've got to do it sequentially.

You've got to do it in steps.

There's a certain point at which you should be done, you know, and no one grieves sequentially or illogically.

Everybody grieves really idiosyncratically.

That's like the first thing that I would say.

The second thing is that some people never get get over their grief.

And I didn't realize that some people don't want to get over their grief.

They want to live in it and they want to inhabit it.

And it's a way to keep

people live in terror of forgetting, forgetting someone, you know, that like, you know, the, I wrote at some point that, you know, it's the craziest thing that

the dead abandon you, but then you abandon them the dead.

And I think that people don't want to abandon the dead and that that's sometimes why they perpetually grieve and or that they stay in their grief.

And you've got to respect that.

You know, you can't view it as odd or pathological or it's it's just another response.

I was so floored.

I think it came out a few months ago.

Some medical group said that they had determined something called, I think, long grief.

or extended grief.

And I thought that was so strange and so silly because

the idea that after a year or after six months or whatever the time period was that they determined that it was unusual,

how could that be?

I mean, well, that pathologizing it or making it like its own DSM category is just completely whackadoodle to me.

That's so true.

And there have been arguments about that, you know,

with obviously the more rational heads not prevailing, saying, this is a normal response to the human condition.

Are you kidding me?

Like, this is just what love looks like inside out.

Like, it's, it's grief.

Like, what are we talking about here?

Right.

Yeah.

You know, that's absolutely true.

I mean, it's interesting.

I think you can use it positively too, you know, in a way to keep you going.

That's right.

That's right.

But I think that's so interesting, Jennifer.

Like, the idea that people are terrified of exiting that period of trauma.

I always think the hardest part of losing someone is not the immediate aftermath and the shock, but it's that period of time, maybe it's a week later, maybe it's a month later, when people stop calling and people stop dropping by and you stop having cause to mention the name.

And so the idea that your story was

saving them somehow, saving this family, because it puts their son's name in people's mouths again is so powerful.

That's so lovely of you to say.

And it's, and, and yes, thing, you wrote another piece about COVID.

I want to end up on this.

Um, you have long COVID.

I do.

And you wrote very beautifully about it in the Atlantic.

I know

it's interesting because there's been so much trauma for this country and individually for everybody between 9-11, the wars, COVID, everything else.

Talk a little bit about what prompted you to write about this.

Many people don't want to write about their long COVID.

I know a lot of reporters who have it who don't write about it.

Talk to us a little bit about that.

Well, some of it was self-serving.

I knew that like my dead, you know, that my byline was not appearing, and I wanted people to know why.

Partly inspired by

a jackass from the New York Times, who one day, Kara, when you and I are really like,

when we're face to face and we've had, we're deep in our cups, I will tell you who said to me, like, you know, is this your excuse for being underproductive?

And it's like, wow.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They live in fear of that at the New York Times, but go ahead.

Yeah, I know, I know.

But no, what it really was was, you know, I think I was struck by how many people kept saying, are you better now?

Are you better?

Not understanding that it was chronic and that there is no such thing as better, that for a lot of us, like, we don't know if we're ever going to be better.

I actually have something that it's got a big, long, ugly name called hyperadrenergic pots that most people don't recover from.

I was like in the asterisked of percentile of unlucky where like I might have got It looks like I'll have something permanent out of this, although there is a chance that my body will stop attacking itself and that I won't have this autoimmune condition forever.

But people with long COVID, they are looking at possibly, I mean, they don't know when they are looking at ever recovering.

And so I wanted to sort of make clear, please stop asking if I'm better.

Like, please, and also there were, there's a certain amount of prurience once people find out that they

will buttonhole you.

And I don't, you know, it's a lot of the things that actually Helen McElvane had had to deal with.

When, yeah, like, I was thinking of the light thing to see.

Oh, yeah.

Well, and also, I'm mourning just like the fact that I used to be able to like walk without pain.

And

I can't even imagine what it'll be like.

I mean, will I ever be able to like hike?

You know, I mean, I would like just to be able to take a very long stroll without it hurting.

Um, and I have been able to do that lately, which is good.

Um,

but um, knock on wood, you know, knocking now, um, but maybe maybe I'll be able to hike one day.

But yeah, I don't know.

I think I was grieving hard.

I think that's right.

And I don't know, I work a lot of things out on paper.

That's just like how a lot of writers roll.

So I'm interested in the writers who don't want to do it.

It was beautifully done.

I thought it was a real slap in the face to people in a good way.

You know what I mean?

In terms of sort of telling them about that when they want to, you know, as you know, I had a stroke and then I just had a heart surgery and stuff like that.

And the way people behaved, of course, it was mine is much more temporary than than yours is.

And I was very irritated by it on lots of levels.

And I never wrote about it, but I read,

uh-huh.

Yeah.

Well, but, but also, like, I mean, I can understand just because, I mean, you're, you're

a lot better known than I am.

And I think you would have had to, you know, deal with your inbox would have just been teeming for too many weeks.

And people still wouldn't have necessarily, I still got a lot of weird emails in response.

Like even after I'd sort of written about all my vet noirs and the weird things that like people would say to me, they would still, and they were so well-meaning.

Explain what one of them was.

Explain what one of them was.

A lot of them had weird advice.

Yeah,

you should take, you know, orange.

Yeah, right, right, exactly.

I had a lot.

I had a lot of that.

I had more than one of those.

I had more than five of those, in fact, you know, and it's like, I, I, I mean,

anyway.

Yeah, I had a lot of you should, so now you have to slow down because of stress.

I'm like, it's a genetic condition, you fucking idiot.

Oh, I got that from, you know, you should take time out to be sick and you should slow down.

And it's like, you know, I did do that.

And have you met me?

Like, I don't, I mean,

do you know anything about how work identified I am?

I mean, like, that's like, and also, there's nothing, I can't walk.

I can't, there, there's so many things I can't do.

This is one thing I can do.

I can lie in bed and type.

Like, please let me lie in bed and type.

Like, you know.

Has your relationship to the idea of loss changed through the course of working on this project?

I don't know.

You know, I mean, has it changed?

I mean,

in some of the ways that I said, I think in that I didn't realize, I mean,

I'm thinking more about grief, that, you know,

that

I

didn't realize that people could live in a glass house of sorrow for forever and that that was where they needed to be.

You know, that was certainly something that,

but in terms of, I mean, I think it's made me very acutely, I mean, because I also lost my health, right?

In a way that I don't know if it's permanent or not.

Nine and a half months already feels

like forever.

So I guess I am starting to develop a more philosophical attitude maybe toward what I have and trying to do that slightly more Buddhist thing of,

I mean, I am the opposite of Buddhist.

I am neurotic to my core, but I am trying to

notice things and appreciate things and breathe things and breathe in and breathe out, you know,

send out, breathe in the bad and live with it, and then breathe it out, you know, and take on my suffering and other people's suffering and then breathe it out.

I mean, all the things you, I'm reading Buddhist books.

Was I doing that before I was there?

No, wow.

Don't you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You want to know?

No one gave them to me after I had a stroke and I was like,

no.

I would be afraid to give you something like that.

You should be.

I want to say people should be afraid to recommend that to me too.

And then people I really, I mean, it's like, you really do want to slap people who recommend like that stuff, especially to people like us again.

But you know what?

I've kind of secretly loved it.

And I'm doing oxygen therapy for an hour and a half every day where I can't bring a screen inside my little hyperbaric oxygen tank.

So what do you do?

You read like a Buddhist book.

It's not the worst thing.

It's not the worst thing.

This is what I'll say.

It's not the worst.

Okay.

On that note.

And orange peel.

Orange peel.

And Jennifer, how are you doing?

How are you doing?

How are you doing?

Anyway,

I love those lines.

They made me laugh.

Hysterically.

How are you doing?

How are you?

That's right.

No, really.

How are you?

I'm terrible.

Thank you.

I'm so awful.

Wait, I'm going to enumerate now, all the ways.

I'm terrible.

Because that's what you want to do.

That's what they want to hear.

Anyway, Jennifer Sr., you should read her really wonderful book on grief based on an article she did for the Atlantic and won the Pulitzer Prize.

It's available now.

I really appreciate it.

Both of you are two of my favorite writers.

And everybody should read this and get a hard copy so that they can keep it and pass it around.

You're, thank you so much.

And you too are two of my favorite journalism gals for Dames or Broads.

I think we decided on Broads.

Dames.

Jennifer, thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

All right, Olivia, one more quick break.

We'll be back for Wins and Fails.

Hello, Daisy speaking.

Hello, Daisy.

This is Phoebe Judge from the IRS.

Oh, bless.

That does sound serious.

I wouldn't want to end up in any sort of trouble.

This September on Criminal, we've been thinking a lot about scams.

Over the next couple of weeks, we're releasing episodes about a surprising way to stop scammers.

The people you didn't know were on the other end of the line.

And we have a special bonus episode on Criminal Plus with tips to protect yourself.

Listen to Criminal wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for Criminal Plus at thisiscriminal.com slash plus.

Okay, Olivia, let's do wins and fails.

I'll go first.

Obviously, the fail is a Tennessee state legislature full of sexual harassers and strange people, peers

on people's seats.

They voted to remove two members last week after they joined an anti-gun protest.

At the time of this taping, local national officials are expected to vote on whether to reinstate them.

It's probably going to happen.

Justin Pearson and Justin Jones were expelled by Republican colleagues.

A third member who participated in the report.

in the protest, Gloria Johnson, was not expelled.

She is white, two are black men.

It's a very bad look.

But as I come to learn, the Tennessee state legislature is a mosh pit of weird win, obviously succession and Jesse Armstrong and Mark Mylod, who's the director of that episode.

Jesse Armstrong wrote it and is the creator of Succession.

Just a beautiful hour of television, I have to say.

It was really moving.

So those are my wins and fails, Olivia.

I guess my win has to be Sting, who it turns out is receiving $5,000 a day because Diddy sampled Every Breath You Take without His Permission.

Wow.

So he pays him $5,000 a day for

race.

Wow.

And he deserves it.

That was a great song.

Right?

Great song.

Great song.

Yeah.

All that sampling is going to be a big deal.

Yeah.

Especially with AI.

Fail.

I guess I'm not pandering, but I guess it's Elon Musk.

It's not going well.

No.

No.

He needs some help.

He needs a hug.

He does need some help, but you're not going to give it to him.

You should hug him.

I mean, look, if he asked, if he was like crying and he said, could I have a hug?

I don't know.

I wouldn't like away.

That's sociopathic.

Hello.

Nice to meet you.

Sorry.

All right, Olivia, you can hug him.

I will just, that's, that's the headline.

I'm not offering it.

I'm just saying if he asked, I wouldn't walk away because I'm not a sociopath.

All right.

I'm going to give him your cell just in case.

All right.

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 855-51-PIVOT.

All right, Olivia, that's the show.

Thank you for joining me.

You're wonderful.

It was really good.

It was a really good discussion.

And you can find Olivia's cover story on Stormy Daniels in the latest issue of New York Magazine.

It's on the cover.

Did I say that again?

It's a wonderful piece.

And

it's very thought-provoking in a lot of ways.

And we're excited.

What are you working on next?

Ron DeSantis.

Call me Ron DeSantis if you're listening.

Yeah, he's not going to listen to this.

Yeah.

I think his PR person called me a groomer.

So

don't assume that'll help you.

No, haven't you tried to groom me?

What the the hell?

No.

Oh my god, stop.

This is going to become an internet thing.

Anyway,

I don't even go there.

I'm not saying a word.

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

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

Ernie Andret engineered this episode.

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

Thanks for listening.

To Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

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

Thanks again to Olivia Newtsi and Jennifer Signor.